A Solution to Hackers? More Hackers
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
“In my years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.”
— John Adams
It's simply a matter of scale. Because the government has accrued so many powers beyond the founding intent, it has become attractive to buy it. As people buy it, the government invests in more powers to keep the gravy going. As long as they do it gradually enough, and make it seem like they have a moral imperative to spend your money because they know better, the state will continue to grow. More power, more corruption; more corruption, more power — until it all becomes too much. If Edward Snowden could offer the government more power to attract more relationship investment from business, then he would have been pardoned in Barack Obama's tenure.
But they don't pay anyone enough to deal with unlimited bullshit. And that's what you get when your boss's boss has no idea what you do or how you do it, and whenever he does the manager's power walk, it looks like you're just sitting there, doing nothing.
The polygraph machine is a psychological trick. The actual lie detector is the operator, just like in Meet the Parents, and the ritual and setting is intended to intimidate you, belittle you, and make you stressed enough for the human to get a read on your reactions.
The test isn't entirely bullshit, but the machine sure is, and I sure wish they'd find a better way to do it without all the gratuitous bullying and humiliation. And since the detectors are human, there's no way to guarantee consistency across tests w.r.t. false positives and false negatives.
I think in an ideal world, questions about past use would never be asked and drug tests would be strictly limited to determining if someone is high/drunk on the job. The fundamental problem is employers losing potentially valuable employees due to their unnecessary and invasive drug policies. The polygraph isn't to blame.
When you combine this with government, you have a recipe for "your life is over" workplace weather conditions. Maybe that storm only blows in once every 10 years, and doesn't take many people... so if you're high-functioning, you might not want to join the island where the heroes are fed to the Minotaur when the political climate goes South, sometimes without warning.
You might want to join the place where the worst-case scenario fail condition is a pink slip and a bad blog post. Naturally.
That's the problem I have with them. We can't say, as a society, that something is ok in one scenario, but say it's bullshit when it matters.
Sure we can.
Sometimes carefully crafted bullshit can be ok. For example, when countries conduct diplomacy, or when poker players bluff, or when intelligence agencies need to hire someone and attempt to scare them into telling the truth or trick them into revealing a lie.
The court system is not a place that should tolerate any kind of bullshit (though like most systems, it sadly does to an extent), so it's different.
* swimming test (aka trial by water): throw them chained into water. a witch would stay afloat, an innocent would sink like a stone.
* prayer test: witches cannot speak scriptures aloud, without making mistakes or omissions. but even if you can it was a devil's trick.
* touch test: victims of sorcery would have a special reaction to physical contact with their evildoer
* witch cake: In cases of mysterious illness or possession, witch-hunters would take a sample of the victim’s urine, mix it with rye-meal and ashes and bake it into a cake. This stomach-turning concoction was then fed to a dog—the “familiars,” or animal helpers, of witches, and would spell out the name. It worked with well in Salem, as knowledge of the recipe led to the conviction then.
* witch marks: numb and insensitive to pain. Moles, scars, birthmarks, sores, supernumerary nipples and tattoos could all qualify.
* Pricking and Scratching Tests on these marks.
* Incantations: very similar to a polygraph test
http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/7-bizarre-witch-tr...
They all worked extremely well over hundreds of years.
aye, even things that aren't true.
The same thing could happen to anyone.
Well, congress is largely responsible for crafting, reviewing, and changing legislation, which is laws, so being a lawyer probably makes a lot of sense. Let's not pretend engineers are incapable of making mistakes, or not fully considering the implications of an action and having to review and fix it later. Engineers are largely kept from making too many mistakes by having evolved a strict set of guidelines to and regulations to adhere to. Many of those same regulations that keep engineers in check were put in place by lawyers.
Edit: going to leave this link right here, since it's incredibly relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/03/researche...
There's the hacker vs. cracker debate, but this is just profoundly disrespectful to me. There's no intentional disrespect here. The author probably has no idea. (Granted, a search for "hacker culture" does yield a Wikipedia article making it quite clear.) I feel disrespected for the complete lack of research on the term and because my core identity is being unintentionally slandered with such _brevity_ without even being understood or recognized. I continue to identify myself to others outside of the software community as a "free software hacker". And when someone sees this website on my computer---Hacker News---what are they to assume? When I'm sitting on an airplane looking at this site, what are they to assume?
Had to vent.
#4) Hacking is cool
http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/d...
If your respirator monitoring machine gets hacked, or your records can not be retrieved to show a drug sensitivity, you could die from complications in an ER. I know for a fact that the hospitals near me run Windows XP, connected to the public internet, on mission critical systems. If a system which controls a switchable lane freeway signal gets hacked, even with generic malware which accidentally causes a crash, a distracted driver could plow into another.
P.S. I'm facinated by your turn of phrase kettle of fish, here it would be a can of worms. Especially strange to me considering what I would think a kettle is [0][1][2][3][4]. Turns out there's such a thing as a fish kettle [5].
[0]: https://www.google.ca/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle [1]: https://www.google.co.uk/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle [2]: https://www.google.com.au/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle [3]: https://www.google.co.nz/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle [4]: https://www.google.co.in/search?tbm=isch&q=kettle [5]: http://www.phrases.org.uk/images/fish-kettle.jpg
They also found it was pretty hard to study general trends, due to an overwhelming number of factors and poor quality of source data.
If the effects of gun laws can be lost in noise among crime statistics, and the right of the people to keep and bear them shall not be infringed, it seems pretty outrageous to suggest that there is any reason to introduce equivalent laws which a) infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms and b) have had no effect that can be detected in the statistics in any implemented form.
Vital records and the corresponding court records are an excellent, high-quality datasource. If your "life saving" laws can not be detected in vital statistics, then you have failed.
It seems like the majority of problems gun control advocates have with firearms is because of hand guns, which are small enough to be easily concealed by people that shouldn't have them in places they shouldn't have them. It also seems like the majority of the practical arguments that control rights advocates have center around the utility of firearms. And if you're making a case for firearms as a check on the government and military, you really want rifles over hand guns anyway.
If the major problems with guns are that they are easy to conceal and transport surreptitiously to locations they should not be, focusing on those attributes makes sense.
But it's not, for all people, and framing the discussion that way is very disingenuous of them. I don't want to ban all guns, I just want to address the problem (because I do think there is a problem), so not everyone wants that.
There is a coalition of gun rights people. Some of them want absolutely no restrictions whatsoever. Some of them are accepting of some controls on certain types of guns. The ones that are accepting of certain types of controls don't appear to object to shutting down any control of guns. If they do object it's not a priority and they're politically irrelevant.
Is it possible your view on this is colored by the narrative that's been presented by people with a vested interest? It wouldn't be the first time that a loud minority controlled a narrative and thus the issue. It's easy to believe there are no moderates, or they constitute a minority, if both sides think the other side is unreasonable and reaching too far, as that can cause people to vote against the perceived agenda of the other side rather than for what they themselves really want.
It is absolutely possible that my views on this topic have been coloured by people with a vested interest, i.e. people who care about it. I don't believe there are no moderates, nor that they constitute a minority. I think the immoderates care more, spend more and are better organised so they have a disproportionate effect on what happens.
Given the choice between getting 80% of what they want and 5% people will choose the first, avoiding defeat at the hands of the enemy has a higher priority than actual perfection.