People like the folks at MPAA do not need a "how to" manual. That's what they do as a business. They are like leeches which are perfectly adapted to the political ecosystem. The only hope you can have, is to have judicial system independent enough to tackle the issue.

I've read here on /. a lot of critique to the leaking of the Sony dataset and how it was further spread by Wikileak. Taken aside the peculiar personalities linked to Wikileaks and problems one might have with them, THIS is exactly why it is good to have this information out in the world. I can only hope judicial instances will pick up this dataset and start their own investigations, for the little it may help.

It will only help a little, because those leeches are also expert in finding loopholes through regulations. Remember, this is what they do... which is quite ironic for anti-piracy lobbyists. Some countries/regions are fast in finding and closing loopholes, but not in the reign of the MPAA and especially not when it is linked to political corruption / financing of political parties and/or figures.

Not only that. With coarse assumption on the salaries for those 76, the program has easily a social return/benefit of 200%.

I'll just quote the quote...

Obviously, he should have set it to a screenshot of the desktop. Fun times are sure to follow...

Its coming from my personal experience designing hyperspectral imagers capable of doing analysis such as what is presented in the example.

The compression is not really the problem. The biggest issue is data analysis and interpretation.

And the time component is obvious... you don't wand to look at the same object without moving with your handy for 2 hours to get the required SNR to be able to do a spectral analysis. You have minimum requirements in resolutions, spectral band and SNR. Theses parameter will vary lot depending on the species you are trying to identify and with which precision you want to do that. But for a comfortable observation time, with a non-specialized device, you'll quickly come in the range of GB/s... and that even at low spatial resolution.

You can already buy that. FLIR, for example, is doing a thermal imaging module for iphone. And that's much easier than including a hyperspectral imager in the device.

Hyperspectral imaging devices based on MEMS are not new. I've seen the first practical devices presented in conferences about 10 years ago. But I doupt we'll see flexible hyperspectral imaging devices like mobile telephones. Even for bigger hand-held spezialized devices it is far fetched. The problem is simply the data quantity. I deal with this problem daily with hyperspectral imaging; you are producing GB/s of data... Processing that near realtime is a true challenge.

What I can see possible with the state of the art are devices that are specialized to identify specific compounds. But a device that can do a generic and nonspecialized retrieval and identification of chemical compounds requires a lot of processing power - especially when dealing with hyperspectral data in contrast to simple spectral data. If you want to do a quantitative analysis, its even worse.

And christian thought Jerusalem was the center of the world. Things changed much in the last 1500 years... or maybe not that much.

The untraceable used parts value for a 777-200ER is... ZERO. Used and reconditioned parts can be installed on other airplanes, but not without Certificate of Conformity / Form1 and so on. There is a lot of paperwork involved in getting a spare from one airplane onto another one. This includes full traceability. Without this paper trail, the part is useless. And faking a paper trail is possible, but doing so for all parts of a 777-200ER is beyond what's possible without raising red flags.

If it were a old 737, a DC-8 or a Cessna, It could be plausible. The people exploiting some old aircraft in some region of the world live under a, let say, different regulatory oversight. But I doubt any 777-200ER operate under conditions where you could use bootlegged market parts. You may as well sell the raw materials.

I believe that a much better reason to make an airplane AND its passenger disappear, is its payload.

And what about the users of the infrastructure you manage?

Seriously, to those who work in IT departments... how many of the IT users know the rules? How many of them know the rules on the management levels?
How many simply ignore the rules from IT departments, assuming its not important?

Ignorance is not an excuse, but I hope no one is surprised.

Yes, because no one ever tried to produce a watch that does more than tell the time before pebble. [/sarcasm]

I do not fully agree with AC and I find he is definitely going too far. But he also speaks some truth. If it seems too good to be true, it often also is too good to be true. The problem is that for most people, the concept of risk in design is quite abstract. As an engineer, I can weight the risks not only because I know how to do that and have experience doing it, but also because I understand the technologies and problems linked with project management. So when I support a KS project, I have an idea what the risk level is and how good my investment is placed.

Now, most people cannot do this for one reason or another and their decision to invest is solely based on enthusiasms, thrust and first impression. It may be deeply driven by technological ignorance. The person have a high risk of being disappointed because they have implicit expectations of success for a project which may actually have very little chance of succeeding. This is exacerbated by the fact that project closer to the leading edge (or even to the "bleeding edge"), are those who stir the most enthusiasms and interest, even though they are also the projects with the highest risk. This is a dangerous combination when money is in play, as the investors are not fully aware or informed of the risks.

Investing only is safe and low-risk projects as the AC proposes is a solution, but it's not the best promote incubation of new ideas. But maybe better inform KS users of the risks maybe a good idea. Maybe a open risk assessment could be a solution (a bit like an open peer review of KS projects). The potential investors would then be informed of the potential risk associated with backing a project before they do so. Maybe a project with high risk hoping for 500k funding won't get 2 million USD funding anymore, but that maybe for the best as experience showed.

In the mean time, Lenovo made an official Statement on the 3rd Party "Experience Enhancement Software"...

http://news.lenovo.com/article...

Also listed at the end of the statement, the affected models.

Just pull the plug and battery during the process. You'll get definitely rid of the malware.

Yes, and use only self-written OS and self-written programs.

Sorry, but this question is fully based on speculation. How can one even expect an serious answer on this one?

Point is: to ask the question, you need to speculate on what an alien invasion would be. You even need to speculate further to provide an answer. What's that worth? What do you learn out of it? How do I know if I can detect and observe something if I have no Idea what it is?

I could tell you, for example, that we will definitely be able to see the aliens come because of the huge gamma flash their flying saucers produce when they drop from hyperspace nearby Saturn. Our detection change is 100%. Or is it? My answer here is worth nothing, because I have to speculate to what an alien invasion would be. I could sit down with scientist, military analysis et politicians for week and make nice action plans based on what-ifs, but it would all be a waste. Why? Because we simply don't know anything about this topic.

A more serious question would be the same, but replacing "alien invasion" by "potentially hazardous asterioids". Now you can start an interesting discussion because you know what asteroids are and which one can be classified as hazardous. You know what you can observe and what you can't. Knowing the detection limits and methods, you can start to discuss about blind spot and detection probability. Going further you can even talk about mitigation, worst case scenarios and post-impact solutions. On this one I'd gladly sit down with other experts.