Picture what would happen if on Election Day someone were to plug one of these into an electronic voting machine on which the election officials had accidentally left the USB port exposed. Fry the machine, quickly pocket the stick, call election officials over (or just walk away) and you've slowed voting at that polling place by reducing the number of machines, potentially forcing them to switch to paper ballots. Election officials might question why you're carrying a hammer with you into the voting booth; they're unlikely to ask you to turn out your pockets so they can inspect any USB drives you may be carrying, and a USB drive is easier to hide than a hammer.
Yes, Director, the room you're charged with exploring is dark. It's dark not just for you but for everyone. This include people who want to steal our identities or the contents of our bank accounts, who want to take personal pictures or conversations and broadcast them to the world without our consent, who want to perform corporate espionage, who want to see us to prey upon us and our children. Turning on the light may let you see, but you're outnumbered by the criminals in the darkness who are begging you to flip that switch so they too can see.
If you're willing to step it up and protect us from all those monsters in the dark, then tell us exactly how you plan to protect us and MAYBE we'll let you flip that switch. But somehow I don't think you want to commit the massive amount of resources that will be needed to protect us. If you don't, we want the light to stay off.
Since you say that voter fraud is "well known" and "documented every goddamn election", perhaps you can share some of these documented cases that have been investigated and found to be true and describe the prison sentences the criminals who committed this fraud received.
But anyway, if you wanted to steal an election, I don't think voter impersonation would be the way to do it. Attacking electronic voting machines that have lax, minimal, or no security would probably be less risky and harder to prove if you attacked whatever logging mechanism was present.
I live in Massachusetts. The fee to get an ID is $25 plus a trip to a full service branch of the Registry of Motor Vehicles. In some cases, that trip would be a half hour or hour one-way trip (and could require paying for public transportation if you can't get a ride with a friend or colleague; the subway and/or commuter rail isn't free.)
They threatened a pizza place called Olympia Pizza in Vancouver back before the 2010 games. [According to the Wayback Machine they only started using the rings in their website header in 2014.]
They have some indication other than the whole body, like a large pool of blood or video footage of the murder that doesn't show enough detail to identify the murderer, that the phone's owner has been killed.
The phone was not found until after the victim's body was buried or cremated, and even if it was buried it has been long enough that decomposition would prevent the actual finger from working.
The police have the body, but the fingers were mutilated beyond the capability of the fingerprint sensor to recognize (say the victim was run down and their hands were crushed under the wheels of the car that struck them.) An extreme version of this would be if the victim was killed by an explosion like an IED.
The murderer removed the hands and teeth of the victim to make identification of the body more difficult.
Hire a lawyer to write a (polite but firm) letter requesting that someone at Google contact his client regarding the loss of some of his intellectual property stored by Google. Have the lawyer's office (with its return address) mail it (postal mail) to Google HQ, attention: legal department. If you want, send a carbon copy to your local TV station's "human interest" department -- "years of a local artist's work destroyed by cold, corporate monolith Google" is exactly the kind of story they eat up, and a news crew calling Google's PR department for a comment may get the right attention even if Google Legal doesn't respond.
What rating would the prime minister candidate give this website? How about if the company that provides ads to be displayed on that page accidentally or "accidentally" slipped an ad for a pornographic website into the list of ads to be displayed? Would that change the candidate's rating? How about if a random commenter had posted a section of an ultraviolent story filled with graphic depiction of torture, murder, and cannibalism?
Tell you what, Ms. Leadsom. I'll name a website, and if you can rate all the pages on it for the next seven days and have the general population agree with 50% of your ratings at the end of the week, let's go ahead with your plan. I name the website Reddit, including all its subreddits. Your time starts now. Good luck, and may whatever deities you believe in (if any) have mercy on your soul (if you have one.)
Doesn't it? Consider something like DES. If you had a file on your system encrypted with DES:
In 1977, Diffie and Hellman proposed a machine costing an estimated US$20 million which could find a DES key in a single day. By 1993, Wiener had proposed a key-search machine costing US$1 million which would find a key within 7 hours.
and:
One of the more interesting aspects of COPACOBANA [a DES cracking machine] is its cost factor. One machine can be built for approximately $10,000.[26] The cost decrease by roughly a factor of 25 over the EFF machine is an example of the continuous improvement of digital hardware—see Moore's law. Adjusting for inflation over 8 years yields an even higher improvement of about 30x.
DES hasn't changed, but the amount of computational power attackers can bring to bear has.
Or to put it a different way: archers manning a castle's walls were a decent defense against melee soldiers... but they'll do nothing but die when a bomber drops its weaponry inside the walls.
Do we really need to pay people millions of dollars to hit a ball with a stick and run around in a big circle?
Throwing a ball into a basket with the bottom cut out?
Slamming into one another like rutting walruses trying to pound one guy carrying a ball into the turf?
Kicking a ball then chasing madly after said ball, with the occasional (bad) performance of "He touched me, I am slain!" ?
Or smacking a small white ball then walking towards where you hit said small white ball and repeating the process? Just pick the damn thing up and carry it with you!
Having a degree does not necessarily mean you're an expert in all matters. For instance, someone with a PhD in aerospace engineering (a true rocket scientist) is not necessarily someone I'd want performing my appendectomy. Maybe if it was Dr. Buckaroo Banzai performing the procedure I would, but he's a bit of a special case.
Remember the story of the handyman's bill. I have no doubt that most people could enter that command. It might take them a minute or two to hunt-and-peck but they are capable of typing it. That's the $1 piece of the puzzle.
Knowing that one way to obtain the software to download Youtube videos is to enter that command, that's another story entirely -- that's the $9,999 piece.
If this ever comes out, I give it five minutes before some drunk folks decide to try to stick themselves to their friend's car and go down the road at a high rate of speed for the thrill of it. Let's hope that flypaper is strong enough to hold at 50 or 60 miles per hour.
Turn off your computer and make sure it powers down
Drop it in a forty-three-foot hole in the ground
Bury it completely, rocks and boulders should be fine
Then burn all the clothes you may have worn any time you were online!
Do it now "before it emails your grandmother all of your porn."
The nice thing about history is that there's more of it each day. Let's say that 40 years from now they've exhausted the list of obvious candidates from 2016 and before. Some worthy candidates will have been released in the intervening 40 years.
Nintendo tried VR or something like it first or close to first among game companies. It didn't sell very well, but with 30 years of technological improvement maybe a second try would go better.
I think the appeal of VR is extremely limited. How often do you see people riding a bus or a train while playing a game on their phone, or to a lesser extent, on a portable console? Those same people aren't going to strap a contraption on their face and be ignorant to the outside world just to play a game.
Are you sure about that? Seems to me people who are so inattentive to the outside world because they're glued to their smart phones that they need traffic lights in the sidewalk to keep them from wandering into traffic and getting killed might as well take the next step and strap something on their faces to make it clear to everyone that they're not paying attention to what's going on around them.
"'Abort, Retry, Fail?' was the phrase some wormdog scrawled next to the door of the Edit Universe project room. And when the new dataspinners started working, fabricating their worlds on the huge organic comp systems, we'd remind them: if you see this message, always choose 'Retry." from the entry for Matter Editation in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
So... what if I suspect YOU have knowledge of an imminent attack? Are you okay with me chopping off your fingers, one joint at a time, until you tell me what you know? Sure, at first you'll protest that you don't know anything about any attack, that you're a loyal citizen, but I know that's a lie. Snip snip snip... why won't you tell me where the attack is going to take place? I'm running out of fingers, soon I'll have to start on your toes.
And as for "Fighting the enemy with all means necessary is the ONLY way to win a war." -- okay. Let's say you're in charge. Here's a document authorizing bombers to nuke the Middle East, North Korea, Libya, and anywhere else considered to be part of the extended "Axis of Evil" until the ground has all turned into glass. Please sign it. That's guaranteed to kill all our enemies in the regions and nuclear weapons are part of "all means necessary" -- are you okay with ordering the deaths of millions of people, many of whom are innocent, to defeat the enemy? If so, please report to the nearest mental hospital and check yourself in as a psychopath. If not, then we agree that there are lines we should not cross -- now we just need to negotiate where they are.
Since I suspect you're going to bring up Hiroshima and Nagasaki, remember that the US Congress had formally declared war on Japan and Truman specifically instructed the Secretary of War to select military targets for the weapons according to his diary. It was not indiscriminate bombing but carefully planned and targeted attacks.
Slashdot Mirror
Picture what would happen if on Election Day someone were to plug one of these into an electronic voting machine on which the election officials had accidentally left the USB port exposed. Fry the machine, quickly pocket the stick, call election officials over (or just walk away) and you've slowed voting at that polling place by reducing the number of machines, potentially forcing them to switch to paper ballots. Election officials might question why you're carrying a hammer with you into the voting booth; they're unlikely to ask you to turn out your pockets so they can inspect any USB drives you may be carrying, and a USB drive is easier to hide than a hammer.
How about the ongoing performance of As Slow As Possible at St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany?
Yes, Director, the room you're charged with exploring is dark. It's dark not just for you but for everyone. This include people who want to steal our identities or the contents of our bank accounts, who want to take personal pictures or conversations and broadcast them to the world without our consent, who want to perform corporate espionage, who want to see us to prey upon us and our children. Turning on the light may let you see, but you're outnumbered by the criminals in the darkness who are begging you to flip that switch so they too can see.
If you're willing to step it up and protect us from all those monsters in the dark, then tell us exactly how you plan to protect us and MAYBE we'll let you flip that switch. But somehow I don't think you want to commit the massive amount of resources that will be needed to protect us. If you don't, we want the light to stay off.
You mean voter fraud like this? Or this? Or this?
Since you say that voter fraud is "well known" and "documented every goddamn election", perhaps you can share some of these documented cases that have been investigated and found to be true and describe the prison sentences the criminals who committed this fraud received.
But anyway, if you wanted to steal an election, I don't think voter impersonation would be the way to do it. Attacking electronic voting machines that have lax, minimal, or no security would probably be less risky and harder to prove if you attacked whatever logging mechanism was present.
I live in Massachusetts. The fee to get an ID is $25 plus a trip to a full service branch of the Registry of Motor Vehicles. In some cases, that trip would be a half hour or hour one-way trip (and could require paying for public transportation if you can't get a ride with a friend or colleague; the subway and/or commuter rail isn't free.)
Is "None of your damn business" an acceptable option for any or all of those questions? I think it is.
They threatened a pizza place called Olympia Pizza in Vancouver back before the 2010 games. [According to the Wayback Machine they only started using the rings in their website header in 2014.]
Hire a lawyer to write a (polite but firm) letter requesting that someone at Google contact his client regarding the loss of some of his intellectual property stored by Google. Have the lawyer's office (with its return address) mail it (postal mail) to Google HQ, attention: legal department. If you want, send a carbon copy to your local TV station's "human interest" department -- "years of a local artist's work destroyed by cold, corporate monolith Google" is exactly the kind of story they eat up, and a news crew calling Google's PR department for a comment may get the right attention even if Google Legal doesn't respond.
What rating would the prime minister candidate give this website? How about if the company that provides ads to be displayed on that page accidentally or "accidentally" slipped an ad for a pornographic website into the list of ads to be displayed? Would that change the candidate's rating? How about if a random commenter had posted a section of an ultraviolent story filled with graphic depiction of torture, murder, and cannibalism?
Tell you what, Ms. Leadsom. I'll name a website, and if you can rate all the pages on it for the next seven days and have the general population agree with 50% of your ratings at the end of the week, let's go ahead with your plan. I name the website Reddit, including all its subreddits. Your time starts now. Good luck, and may whatever deities you believe in (if any) have mercy on your soul (if you have one.)
and:
DES hasn't changed, but the amount of computational power attackers can bring to bear has.
... but they'll do nothing but die when a bomber drops its weaponry inside the walls.
Or to put it a different way: archers manning a castle's walls were a decent defense against melee soldiers
Maybe. But in this case better safe than sorry -- after all we don't want to piss off Big Brother or its bosses by potentially contaminating Europa.
How about sports?
Do we really need to pay people millions of dollars to hit a ball with a stick and run around in a big circle?
Throwing a ball into a basket with the bottom cut out?
Slamming into one another like rutting walruses trying to pound one guy carrying a ball into the turf?
Kicking a ball then chasing madly after said ball, with the occasional (bad) performance of "He touched me, I am slain!" ?
Or smacking a small white ball then walking towards where you hit said small white ball and repeating the process? Just pick the damn thing up and carry it with you!
Having a degree does not necessarily mean you're an expert in all matters. For instance, someone with a PhD in aerospace engineering (a true rocket scientist) is not necessarily someone I'd want performing my appendectomy. Maybe if it was Dr. Buckaroo Banzai performing the procedure I would, but he's a bit of a special case.
I thought that was something that only happened in stories about Ye Olden Days (like Robin Hood) but this is literally highway robbery!
How about ejector seats that launch passengers downward, encased in a floating bubble?
Remember the story of the handyman's bill. I have no doubt that most people could enter that command. It might take them a minute or two to hunt-and-peck but they are capable of typing it. That's the $1 piece of the puzzle.
Knowing that one way to obtain the software to download Youtube videos is to enter that command, that's another story entirely -- that's the $9,999 piece.
If this ever comes out, I give it five minutes before some drunk folks decide to try to stick themselves to their friend's car and go down the road at a high rate of speed for the thrill of it. Let's hope that flypaper is strong enough to hold at 50 or 60 miles per hour.
Do it now "before it emails your grandmother all of your porn."
The nice thing about history is that there's more of it each day. Let's say that 40 years from now they've exhausted the list of obvious candidates from 2016 and before. Some worthy candidates will have been released in the intervening 40 years.
Nintendo tried VR or something like it first or close to first among game companies. It didn't sell very well, but with 30 years of technological improvement maybe a second try would go better.
I think the appeal of VR is extremely limited. How often do you see people riding a bus or a train while playing a game on their phone, or to a lesser extent, on a portable console? Those same people aren't going to strap a contraption on their face and be ignorant to the outside world just to play a game.
Are you sure about that? Seems to me people who are so inattentive to the outside world because they're glued to their smart phones that they need traffic lights in the sidewalk to keep them from wandering into traffic and getting killed might as well take the next step and strap something on their faces to make it clear to everyone that they're not paying attention to what's going on around them.
Yes, but the collateral damage (both to drivers in other cars and to property) caused by drivers trying to avoid these idiots would be unfortunate.
"'Abort, Retry, Fail?' was the phrase some wormdog scrawled next to the door of the Edit Universe project room. And when the new dataspinners started working, fabricating their worlds on the huge organic comp systems, we'd remind them: if you see this message, always choose 'Retry." from the entry for Matter Editation in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
So ... what if I suspect YOU have knowledge of an imminent attack? Are you okay with me chopping off your fingers, one joint at a time, until you tell me what you know? Sure, at first you'll protest that you don't know anything about any attack, that you're a loyal citizen, but I know that's a lie. Snip snip snip ... why won't you tell me where the attack is going to take place? I'm running out of fingers, soon I'll have to start on your toes.
And as for "Fighting the enemy with all means necessary is the ONLY way to win a war." -- okay. Let's say you're in charge. Here's a document authorizing bombers to nuke the Middle East, North Korea, Libya, and anywhere else considered to be part of the extended "Axis of Evil" until the ground has all turned into glass. Please sign it. That's guaranteed to kill all our enemies in the regions and nuclear weapons are part of "all means necessary" -- are you okay with ordering the deaths of millions of people, many of whom are innocent, to defeat the enemy? If so, please report to the nearest mental hospital and check yourself in as a psychopath. If not, then we agree that there are lines we should not cross -- now we just need to negotiate where they are.
Since I suspect you're going to bring up Hiroshima and Nagasaki, remember that the US Congress had formally declared war on Japan and Truman specifically instructed the Secretary of War to select military targets for the weapons according to his diary. It was not indiscriminate bombing but carefully planned and targeted attacks.