Actually, since the whole question of TFA is about ethical choices, it does have to identify them. It can't view a trash can as being equal to a child pedestrian, for example. It will have to see the difference between a dumpster (hit it, nobody inside dies) and another car (hit it, someone inside it may die). It may even need to weigh the potential occupancy of other vehicles...a bus is likely to hold more people than a scooter.

The question at its heart is not about object avoidance in the article...it's about choices between objects. And that requires identification.

...who's going to make the obligatory, in-poor-taste cancer joke?

Actually, no. There are apps and there is the OS itself. But by the time you're talking about the security model, the OS already exists, and anything you add to that is, essentially, an application. Delivery operates the same way, dependencies can as well. The VB that is within Excel is no less an app than the app that requires .NET framework be installed, a javascript that executes in the browser, or a java applet that requires a JRE. The fact that it depends on something else doesn't change the model. And any app can be malicious or friendly; even a friendly app can be modified or tied with a pre-executed piece of malware.

Indeed; the underlying basis of the article could really match almost any profession. Accountants, HR personnel, programmers, even admin assistants. Not understanding the role of a job invariably means not understanding its challenges or the value it brings. So what? This is not news. Hell, I've seen companies where they didn't understand the value of managers...and thus, promoted/hired people into such roles who had no skill at doing their jobs.

There are currently two solid alternatives to traditional AV. Unfortunately, one is not suitable outside of a well-managed (i.e., corporate) environment and the other probably would not work in a full-featured computer environment.

1. Whitelisting: Application whitelisting is really, really effective. There are ways to circumvent it, but that's true of just about any technical security control. The problem with it is twofold: one, someone needs to develop exactly *what* that whitelist is, and the average home user isn't really up to the task. Bit9 (the leader in the space) has gotten around this to some degree with a cloud-based archive of "known good" files and processes, but your standard home user will still run into a lot of things they don't recognize when they install. And what if one of those things is actually an existing infection? Then they will probably add it to their whitelist...or, on the other hand, err on the side of caution and end up breaking valid software on their systems. The odds of them hitting it exactly right are very small. And even then, they have to maintain the whitelist...so if they're taken in by that "YOU NEED TO UPDATE YOUR VIDEO CODEC LOL" popup window, they'll invariably end up authorizing whatever file gets downloaded ("'Trojan_video.exe'...sounds legit to me!") and infecting their system anyways.

2. The "Walled Garden" Model: In a lot of ways, this is like whitelisting built into the underlying OS, with the OS manufacturer being the custodian of the whitelist. This is how iOS works, so it's actually a proven model. There's only been one discovered instance of malware that's slipped into the App Store, and that was easily eradicated with the press of a button back at the Apple mothership. But on the other hand, there are ancillary effects to forcing all devs to go through a single clearinghouse for software. Apple's cut of the profits, and their cut of any revenue passing through any app sold through the App Store, are obvious issues, but the antitrust risk of a PC OS with only one place to go for software is a latent...and larger risk, going forward. One court decision can break the model entirely; if Apple doesn't collect at least some money from developers, then there's no money to support the App Store and the activities around it. But if there's no central authority, then there goes the chain of trust that's necessary to maintain the safety of the OS. And there's complexity in a PC-based OS environment that you don't find in a tablet or smartphone; in the tablet/phone model, each application is an island, separate onto itself for the most part. You don't have browser plugins, underlying execution environments or interpreters (Air, Java, .NET, Python, Perl, etc.).

Either way, the "blacklist" approach doesn't work. It's all fine to point out that other things (firewalls, IPS, etc.) need to be in place, and that's true...but malware is its own threat, and cannot be fully addressed by solutions that only focus on the attack. Applications will have vulnerabilities; railing against this hasn't accomplished anything in two decades. People will make mistakes, or be social-engineered into doing things they should not do. Supply chains will become infected (remember cameras, USB drives, etc. that have come with malware?) and sometimes those mistakes will affect people besides the mistake-maker. So there needs to be a way to address malware itself.

There are two approaches that, while theoretical, also hold promise. The issue is that they are pretty much theoretical; there's no existing implementation of either of them on any scale, or as a deployable off-the-shelf technology today.

3, The Managed Immunological Response: Assume that malware will exist, and somehow get onto systems. Most complex organisms hold pathogens within themselves that are harmful...and in many cases, even contain them in a symbiotic relationship. Eradicate E. Coli from a human's lower GI tract and they'll develop problems, for example...but E. Coli outside of that part of their body causes major issues and is a health problem. Catch a cold, and you'll be sick for a bit...but your body will get over it. This is what some researchers are aiming towards, and the approach shows a lot of promise in theory. But it requires that the OS operate in a functionally different way, a way that does not currently exist. So...yeah, that's a ways off, if it will ever happen.

4, The Sandboxed World: This is where applications are walled from one another...this is another feature of the iOS model. And as with the Walled Garden, the challenges of this grow severely when you move to the PC world. If it's hard to exchange data between your email client and your word processor, you're going to have a hard time getting things done. This is already something of a nuisance in the tablet/phone world. But if you open up access to the file system, then you create an avenue for bad things, and punch holes in the sandbox walls. So I don't know if it can be fixed in a way that would suit PC users, or if, in a lesser implementation, it could support something akin to the Managed Immunological Response model.

When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Now police's only tool are military-grade weapons, intended to kill.

And sometimes the situation changes how people is, like in this Standford prison experiment

Add to that how police cover up miscarriages and that you can't film the police, is not just who watches the watchers, but who watches the watchers that have military-grade weapons in the streets and are abusing of them.

We just demobilized from one war, and are nearly done pulling out from another. Surplus is what inevitably happens as a result.

Look at it like this: when you get back from a camping trip, do you set the tent back up at home, and use the cook stove to cook your meals at home too? Of course not. And military equipment is usually better off sold rather than mothballed, especially since the threats keep changing and the cost of upgrades on gear that's in storage (don't forget the logistics) is greater than the cost of replacement, all other things taken into account.

That said, I wonder how much of this billion dollars is from MRAP donations. The military is giving nearly all of their MRAPs to law enforcement agencies, and they aren't exactly cheap. So that could be the bulk of this, easily.

Aaaaand...what kinds of movies did they watch, perchance? Did their dad keep them on a strict diet of Barbara Striesand? No? A few action movies, then? Hm.

Games are one form of entertainment. If someone is going to condemn simulated (and unrealistic) violence in one medium, they really should do so across all media, don't you think?

Are we just trying to make reference to Robin Williams all week?

This is just yet another sign that the military saw the movie 'Toys' ... as if the whole drone program wasn't an obvious enough sign:

http://kotaku.com/5891256/wtpt...

disclaimer : I was an admin for fark.com.

The problem as I see it is that news sites started adding the ability for user comments to try to make their websites more 'sticky'. They wanted people to keep coming back ... but the ones that do are the trolls.

Unless you've modeled your whole site around people commenting, and build up a community, you don't tend to get useful comments -- you either get trolls, people advertising 'work at home', or someone with a follow question about the article that no one every responds to. Once in a while you might get some actually useful information from the general public, the 'I was there' accounts and such ... but it's few and far between.

(note, I'm not commenting on how Fark handles things ... most of their measures were implemented after I left, and I only know some of it; my experience comes with managing other websites)

Allowing anonymous posting that immediately gets shown to the public is just plain stupid. It's begging for trolls. At least with accounts you can monitor the new users, as in most cases you either have the throw-away account (which might have been registered months ago, specifically for use later), or the person who's just constantly obnoxious.

If I ever set up another website, I'm going to the model of 'invitations' where you have to know someone already in the community to get an invite -- because then if we get someone being an ass, we can suspend their friends' accounts, too (giving them some external pressure to not be a dick), or prune the whole tree of accounts if that doesn't help.

So, anyway, my basic categories:

• News websites : people go there for the new, original news.
• Aggregators : people go there to participate in commentary about other things found on the internet, but the focus isn't on original content (slashdot, digg, etc.)
• Blogs : personal journals, run by a person or small group, with commentary on whatever they feel like (includes people's facebooks pages, and sites like Jezebel)

There are some successful hybrids out there ... but if you're going to allow comments, you have to know how to handle them ... and I don't want to say too much, because I don't want to give the trolls info on how to bypass some of the more interesting systems I've seen.

There's actually been a bit of discussion among the library community -- most libraries who offer ebooks get them via Overdrive, which has some major ties (is owned by?) Amazon.

But most libraries have privacy policies, but there's now a third party that can track their citizen's reading habits. There's also complaints about how Amazon sends e-mails to people who have 'checked out' ebooks that tells them to buy the book when it's about to 'expire'.

See, for example, the comments from Librarian Black. (it's in video form, but she raises issues about state laws on keeping lending info private, and most library's policies of not endorsing companies). It's possible that it's changed; I refuse to check out ebooks from my local library, as it's using Overdrive.

The launch of the spacecraft is effectively the start of 'Phase E' (operations) for the instruments ... but there's a lot of things that still have to happen:

• They have to deploy any solar panels (unless it's got an RTG), and align with the sun
• They have to check out the spacecraft health, to make sure that nothing shook loose during launch, and they can talk to it.
• The spacecraft has to get to the right place. (which takes *years* for missions to the outer planets)
• They test the instruments against a known source (calibration lamp or similar)
• They deploy antenna or instrument booms, remove covers, etc.
• They take real measurements (aka. "first light")
• They may perform maneuvers (eg, take an image, roll the spacecraft over, take an image again ... or take an exposure whole rolling) for flat fielding (aka. "calibration")
• They compare the results from the new sensor against other measurements to determine how (aka. "validation")

They refer to this whole period as "commissioning". They're not always run in order (eg, for the missions to the outer planets, which might take *years* to get to, they try to check on the health of the instruments before they get to the planet). For some instruments, it might take years to validate the data.

There's also typically a press conference with the "first release" of the data, after the first calibration is done, but that's more to do with scientists on the ground than the spacecraft itself.

disclaimer : I work for a NASA center, but I don't deal with spacecraft directly; I just manage the data after it's downlinked & processed.