Hard coded credentials shared across a product line smells much more like a product management decision than a technical one. Having been in the healthcare software industry, I would suspect the software team protested and were threatened into "compliance."
And yet once something has been reduced to practice, it becomes "an algorithm."
The phone company once predicted that by 1960 everyone would need to be a telephone operator. And by 1960 we all were: we instructed the switching system how to route the call, by dialing or punching in a telephone number. We used to have to go to AAA and get maps where some person with training highlighted a driving route (say between Boston and Milwaukee) with indications as to where there was road construction, routing around places where traffic tie-ups were common, where there were hotels, and so forth. This was a valuable service and caused many people to join AAA. Nowdays Google does it for free. The real block was the amount of real-world knowledge needed: what roads went where, where there was road construction, which routes got tied up at rush hour, and so forth. The algorithms were (and still are) trivial: it was the knowledge base that was important. Most "intelligence" is not creative, merely knowledge rich.
As more real-world knowledge gets put into a form computers can manipulate (not "understand") much, much more low-hanging fruit will become amenable to "artificial intelligence." The multi-terabyte disk is the real driver of AI, not the algorithm.
IST is 10.5 hours off EST.
Hal Draper? http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/%3...
But perhaps that won't happen. The guy creates state-sponsored malware, the point of which is to take over others' computers. We already know that once malware is present, the game is over. Doubtless any serious discussion as to what malware can actually have done to his computer (is it really his? Was his last interaction with it almost a decade ago?) would be suppressed as classified. The remaining argument, "it could have happened, computers are magic" would not be impressive to a layman.
If someone has a twisted sense of irony, they might have used malware he wrote to plant the "evidence."
Or, of course, the FBI and CIA might be entirely above board and honest in this instance. It is indeed conceivable.
First open source satellite in 2018? So what was closed source about OSCAR-1, 1961?
LCS = Littoral Combat Ship. The US Navy's response to the F-35.
I think the movie quite straightforwardly expressed most of the misunderstandings associated with the book, and ignored the actual book. I had heard the movie was about 80% complete before the title was licensed and it became Starship Troopers rather than a random dystopia. Learning that the director never bothered to read the book cements it for me.
The book is a coming of age story set in a society where those who have a history of being able to put “all of us” ahead of “me” are in charge. Federal service is by design individually dangerous: service consists of accepting personal risk to further humanity. Jobs without risk are not Federal service; they are just jobs. Jobs with risk but without furthering humanity are also not Federal service: they are just jobs. Laboring in the terraforming of Venus is a service job. Manufacturing machinery for the terraforming of Venus is not. The rewards of citizenship are few and non-monetary: the right to vote, presumably the right to be elected to office, and the opportunity to apply for the few “reserved” government positions (policeman, History and Moral Philosophy teacher). There is no hint that non-citizenship has any implication as to what are typically considered “rights” other than those. Economic activity, owning property, having employees, speaking one’s opinion, and so forth are all unimpacted. There are passages that make it clear that citizenship is widely regarded as fundamentally irrelevant: certainly it is not considered any sort of superior state.
It is this setting that makes the book is so intensely disliked: the everyman who has not demonstrated putting “all of us” ahead of “me” is not allowed to make decisions that affect “all of us.” This incenses those of all political stripes who want to tell everyone else how to live their lives. And yet this is possibly the most creative reconciliation yet of the need for government with the philosophy of Libertarianism. Humanity is one of the most social creatures on the planet, gathering in the millions: we call the infrastructure for these gatherings “government,” and it appears we need it. If we must have government—and it appears we must—what selection criteria is “optimal” for the humans who compose it? Starship Troopers, the book, proposes a demonstrated history of valuing “all of us” over “me.” In the book, it works: and this is the only reason for its endurance given.
Rico, the protagonist, does not sign up for the military. He signs up for Federal service and, for what are basically romantic reasons, chooses the military rather than other work—and is almost rejected for it. The rest of the book, unsurprisingly, follows Rico through several vignettes of military service. The military is a setting for the various growth experiences Rico experiences, not the subject. Nor, in the book’s society, is staying in Federal service compulsory: at least in the infantry branch the book describes, declining to further serve gets you out without penalty (other than forfeiting the privileges of having successfully served). It is only half-way through the book that Rico eventually self-identifies as a member of the military, when he “goes career.”
The military is treated respectfully in the book, but the limits of military power are also explored. The purpose of war has been given as “to destroy the enemy’s will and ability to resist;” the book gives the purpose of the military as using deliberate, focused, measured, precisely applied violence to this end. The book is quite open that force cannot change attitudes or beliefs: force can only change behavior, and that only temporarily. There are those who propose that wholesale slaughter might have its place in war; but this is neither typified nor glorified by the book.
In summary, the Starship Troopers book and Starship Troopers movie have just about nothing to do with one another. The movie is “facism is bad!” The book is “growing up is good” along with a “what if government ran this way?”
* 4.5
I'd also like to point out that several, if not all, of the H1b visa shops simply lie about their candidates. I'm sure Tata will be happy to sell you somebody with 10 years experience in
One can hardly ask for a more authoritative response. Thank you.
The SFLC's guide to GPL compliance denies the dynamic linking isolation claim. The dynamic linking claim has always seemed like voodoo to me: "I have magic pixie dust that permits GPL violations" seems unlikely. But I have heard (non-authoritative) claims that (i) a proprietary application providing a specification for plug-ins, (ii) a GPL plug-in being written and released, and (iii) the application being configured by the user to use the GPL plug-in causes the proprietary application to violate the GPL, for which (iv) release of the proprietary software under the GPL is the only remedy open to the proprietary software owners; and I know a company that has been on the receiving end of exactly such a demand. It seems somewhat far-fetched to me, but then I'm not an intellectual property attorney. But given the "no magic pixie dust" principle, I can't say it's impossible.
Again, thank you.
I am a fan of open source, and typically publish my personal software under AGPL3+. Now, that said, I think the free and open source software (FOSS) community has been hiding from the implications of the increasingly rabid interpretations of its philosophy for some time, and now the chickens are starting to come home to roost—although I admit the parent suing the child for using the family name is an odd first visible symptom.
One of the criticisms of the "viral" GNU Public License (GPL) when it was first introduced was that a third party could use the GPL to force proprietary software into the open source world: using a GPL compiler, for example, "infect" the code with the GPL; or releasing a program running on this Linux thing would mean you had to hand out your source code. Nonsense, said the technologists. And yet that is exactly what Moglen's current statements require: that the Linux kernel (GPL2, all agree) can be made to use the ZFS file system (CDDL, all agree) somehow relicenses ZFS under GPL2—even if the copyright owner disagrees. Say what?
GPL was an attempt to establish a bastion behind which free software could flourish; and flourish it has. The GPL even won the open source/free software wars: the phrase "open source" originally meant you could look at the source and see what it did, and now the phrase means you can look at, copy, modify, and redistribute the source. That is what was originally called "software libre," or "free software," and Stallman used to rail about how "open source" wasn't enough, you needed "software libre." Well, they're the same now; he won.
As long as we don't mix licenses, all is well. But once variant licenses, or licensed and proprietary meet, then the majority of the open source community says it's whatever the Free Software Foundation (FSF) wants that day. Proprietary software can't use open source subroutines (except it's okay if the subroutine is exposed through a public API (except it's back to not okay if the subroutine with the public API is in user space even if the GPL code is just an alternative implementation specified via a configuration file (except it's back to okay if the user space subroutine is part of an assemblage of subroutines that calls itself an operating environment like GTK# or NuttX (except it's back to not okay in situations to be revealed next week)))). But open source software can use all the proprietary software it wants: want to link to a proprietary library? That's not a problem, even if you can't distribute the code because you don't have it. GPL code can use BSD code and magically exempt itself from the need to distribute GPL code (here's the code, but it's not GPL, sorry about that), but BSD code cannot use GPL code: bad, bad BSD code. It's somehow a GPL violation not to be able to distribute a complete build environment for the application. What? I really need to give you a Windows license so you can build my code? How are you fixed for spit?
The idea is wonderful. The creeping "all software is free software, all free software is mine mine mine" is a little worrisome.
About the first google hit refers to the study. See https://books.google.com/books...
The author of the article might want to learn what words mean. They do typically have meanings, you know.
Anonymous data is data not identified with a particular person. It does not mean cannot be identified with a particular person. It also does not mean the data cannot be associated with itself over time.
Five-digit ZIP code areas are pretty big and are not particularly indicative of an individual. Cell tower coverage is typically more detailed than a five-digit ZIP code. ZIP code of residence is trivial to determine from mobile phone records: it’s where your phone spends the majority of the day. ZIP code of work place is also fairly easy to determine: it’s where your phone spends the majority of the day when it’s not at home. Associate these two ZIP codes, though, and the association is unique for about 90 to 95% of the US population. Therefore knowing these two ZIP codes means you have isolated an individual. All anonymity means is that this information, by itself, does not tell you who that individual is. You can find out, though, with a subpoena, not even a warrant—or a friendly employee of the wireless carrier—or if you have someone specific in mind and you know or can find out where they live and work.
It is useful to consider how powerful location data is. A phone goes to a cancer clinic twice a week but not five times a week in 8-hour blocks? The phone owner has cancer. A phone goes to an ob-gyn twice in a single month? The phone owner is pregnant. A phone goes to an ob-gyn once a month for three months running? The phone owner is trying to get pregnant. A phone goes to a particular church most Sunday mornings? The phone owner belongs to the denomination of that church. Two phones are sporadically at the same motel at the same time (even if the particular motel changes)? The phone owners are having an affair. And on and on it goes.
Because de-anonymizing data is so trivial, having access only to anonymous or anonymized data protects against absolutely nothing.
And yet in this particular story, anonymity was retained. You can identify households from individual location data alone, which the study did. You can identify likely political leanings from individual location data alone, which the study did. You don’t need to attach names to the individuals to study the individuals, and this study did not.
Anonymity does not mean you as an individual cannot be identified. It just means you haven’t been—yet.
Almost all typographers, a good many graphics designers, and the occasional layman know that your emotional response to written material is influenced—I did not say determined—by the face used to present it. Bookman, for example, feels simplistic; Palatino feels formal; Souvenir feels intimate; Times feels remote. Compare Helvetica with Futura, for example: Helvetica feels officious in comparison. There are a great many appearance factors at work in our emotional reactions to fonts: letter width, letterspacing, x-height, lines or gentle curves, counter and bowl shapes, stroke width and variability, serif style or line-end style in sans-serifs, and overall blackness are a few. The subtleties may not be apparent—they wouldn't be subtleties if they were, would they?—but lost they are not.
It is not every question that deserves an answer. -- Publilius Syrus
