Posts by Charles 9 16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
"If only a few people get a particular spam or phishing email there isn't anything you can/should do about it anyway..."
Except SPEAR Phishing targets only a few people, so you can't ignore them, either. Plus if you mute the dumb who trip false alarms too often, you could end up with a Cry Wolf situation where the stupid user is targeted BECAUSE they cry wolf and get ignored.
"Too many of the younger group (and even older employees) are embedded in the "participation award" mindset."
But then you have the other extreme, with countries like Japan and South Korea where the drive to succeed is SO intense they suffer from high suicide rates (in particular, South Korea last I checked ranked second in the world in per-capita suicides, and that list includes third-world countries--to compare, the US is middle of the pack and the UK somewhere lower).
Basically, it's kind of lose-lose. Coddle them and they don't tolerate lip. Go hard and they don't tolerate failure. Frankly, I'd be scared to learn that the middle is actually UNhappy (where you have intolerant youngsters driven to suicide) and there's no real solution.
Simple. When they build a machine that cannot be interacted at all by humans in any way, shape, or form. Otherwise, physics and Murphy dictate there WILL be a way in spite of God, Man, or the Devil. And if there's a way, there WILL be a way to do it COMPLETELY.
"I don't WANT to sack anyone, I wouldn't be the one sacking anyone either as that's not my job that's for HR to deal with."
That doesn't answer the question, though. What do you do when the person routinely breaking your security policies are over HR's head (like someone on the board) and therefore can't be sacked that easily? Worse, what do you do when you find out it's like that everywhere, meaning jumping ship simply means jumping onto another sinking ship?
"Sack them."
But what do you do when the person you want to sack is someone like an executive with sacking powers of his/her own? Meaning try to sack them and they respond by pulling rank and sacking YOU instead.
That's something I want to know. How many of those "who wouldn't touch security" carry an immunity to any kind of mitigation by way of rank/position? IOW, how do you stop the problem when it comes from up top?
But can they scale and work in OLD cities like London? Also, to increase walkability, you not only have to make the surface pedestrian-friendly but also the locations, meaning you have to pick winners and say who goes where so that all the necessities are within walking distance. All that's going to cost, and you know how averse the citizenry are to new taxes.
"Seriously...most of the vehicles clogging up our roads have only a single occupant."
Ever thought that's because they live and/or work nowhere near their co-workers? Bus isn't an option in my area because the nearest bus stop is a few miles away and often with a full parking lot, the weather is lousy 9/10th of the year and I have knee trouble as it is. Taxis raise the cost of living beyond my range, and I can't move. Basically, it's a personal car or bust.
"Assuming that China doesn't deploy hyperloop on/under/outrigging the existing HS lines for the longer-haul routes."
IINM, there already IS a rail route between Beijing and Shenzen (which is in the PRD), with plans for an HSR route to use that route and continue on to Hong Kong. And since the PRD is a port area (Shenzen is a port city), there's an existing need for freight transport which favors rail.
"This is what is eating the 380's lunch. Unless 380 is improved, the 350 will devour its bigger sibling (especially once the "ridiculously long range" 350 option BA and friends are negotiating for starts shipping)."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but perhaps one of the biggest issues dogging the 380 is that you need special accommodations for it, not just in the runways but at the terminals, whereas B777's and A350's were built to fit within the B747 profile and therefore can fly in placed already built to accommodate 747's and so on without much additional outlay?
"Fuel prices have been amazingly low for the last decade and are showing signs of coming back up. I was expecting oil to snap through $200/barrel when the price wars finally stopped"
That's because the price wars haven't really stopped, only paused as suppliers are keeping themselves in check. And don't forget the work into synthetic fuel production (being conducted by the US Navy, who always have a fuel issue).
It's not G-men but rather accountants who are to blame here. If the money isn't in security, then it simply won't be there. The shareholders will insist on this.
You want an indestructible bridge? Tell us how you can beat physics and make a bridge capable of withstanding a meteor strike on a shoestring budget.
Like any sensible prankster would walk in front of a camera in a clearly identifiable state. Dressing in black complete with mask in the dead of night would be a simple countermeasure. More technically-minded one would try dazzling the cameras with infrared or the like to make their footage useless in court.
Because humans know liability laws favor them over the car because pedestrians are more fragile. If a malicious driver strikes and hurts someone, the court tends to favor the pedestrian unless the circumstances are extreme. Car visual systems just can't match the skills of the heavily-evolved eyeball and brain. How does an automated car respond when one or more pedestrians simply blockade the road and respond to horns with fingers (or worse, paint, so the car can't see them anymore)?
"And then you could put them on a special road to reduce traffic on the normal roads. You could make the special road out of two strips of metal which the truck wheels sort of 'slot' into"
Thing is, what if each of the trailers has to go to a different destination. Isn't that why trucks have their own tractors in the first place: to be able to do the crucial last mile themselves?
I think you're overlooking that for the car to be able to overtake the human in all aspects, including "chicken" cases, you need to overcome the inherent advantage humans have of highly-evolved senses. We've developed an ability (through evolution) of being able to assess lots of things (often UNconsciously) with just a glance or a simple sound (part of why we can't teach it to cars--we often don't consciously know the clues). Thus humans can more accurately discern the trolls than any machine. As for kids playing chicken, kids don't do it with human drivers because they realize that a human driver might not see them--or go "Screw this" and run anyway. I read a recent article that notes that computers have a much easier time with higher-level functions (things that requires techniques like logic) than with lower-level functions (things that depend on "body" functions like manual motion and the senses).
"So PCs are bought when you need them to study or work, maybe waiting for some sale if you have to save some money. And you'll spend those saved money in gifts from the latest bling technology."
Plus like I said PC power is plateauing. Case in point; there are so many capable secondhand PCs on the market these days there's little need to buy new ones. After I built a white-box PC 10 years ago (I actually still have it), all the other machines I've acquired since then have been secondhand. When you can get a Core i5 with monitor, keyboard, and mouse for only $130 used, and you can upgrade the bits you need upgrading, why buy new? And even many of the subpar ones make capable media players with just a few cheap additions.
This should be a warning sign that the PC market in North America is approaching saturation. Most everyone that needs a PC has one with enough oomph to get them through nigh anything they encounter on a daily basis. And thanks to cloud computing, there's less need for spare capacity that rarely gets used. Plus PC computing power is plateauing, showing signs of Diminishing Returns, further convincing owners not to upgrade. It happens to most markets eventually. The smartphone market is slowing down as well so it's not isolated.
Ever heard the phrase, "It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it." A lot of these drudge jobs are also the kinds where machines would have trouble because they're drudgework: getting down in uneven, unpredictable conditions engaged in manual labor and so on. Basically, jobs that needs manual effort and a good set of senses: the kinds of things we got through evolution and can't easily replicate in a machine.
PS. Here's the biggest problem with UBI. Who pays for it that wouldn't have the power to go, "Sod this," and leave before being charged?
"They made a crucial distinction. Humans (and sheep) are very good at recognising faces we know, but very bad at recognising strangers."
We also lose the ability to recognize even faces we know if enough cues disappear. A famous case around the early 90's pretty much shot eyewitness testimony all to hell by showing a suffciently-covered (ex. beard and glasses) celebrity face was mistaken by nearly everyone for the defendant.
"Then you need to make your filtering proxy good enough to permit those connections that are desired whilst forbidding those that aren't. "
And if they're one and the same? IOW, a pwning attack can look too close to a legitimate request to raise your false positive rate too high and get complaints?
"Then you are too clueless to run a business."
Who says I'm running it? When you're told to DIE (Do It or Else), and there's no other ship to jump to, you come to realize a foundering ship is preferable to the sharks.
But at least people know how cars kill people: they get hit by them. Just avoid them. But two REAL real fears are unknown dangers (or something so obscure as to be beyond our ability to picture it) and helplessness (aka foreboding: knowing something bad is coming but being unable to do anything about it). Like eating a "frankenfood" and finding out only decades later that it altered us to the state our children are defective and so on: by which time we're already past the point of no return.
"If a company really wants to improve their security, they need to get rid of the well-liked 20-year tenure managers who have let their skills and training erode to the point where all of their recommendations sound great to the uneducated but in reality are worse than useless. They'll also save a buttload of money."
Except that's usually due to them being on the board and over your head. Suggesting getting rid of them short of a shareholder revolt is considered suicide.
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