Original at http://xkcd.com/924/
July 13, 2011
A potential down side to ubiquitous 3D printing
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Anonymous decides they’re against Ethical Oil
I guess all the popular targets have already been hit, so the rumour is that Anonymous is going to be going after companies working in the oilsands:
In related news, Anonymous said it planned to attack oil firms and banks supporting the controversial extraction of oil from sand in Alberta, Canada. Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Canadian Oil Sands, Imperial Oil, and the Royal Bank of Scotland have been put on notice that they are likely to be targeted in Anonymous’ latest operation, dubbed Project Tarmageddon.
Anonymous began with attacks on the Church of Scientology in early 2008 before it made headline news last year with attacks on financial service firms that blocked donation to WikiLeaks following the release of controversial US diplomatic cables. Another long-running campaign has targeted entertainment industry firms that hassled file sharers or console modders, most notably Sony.
July 12, 2011
An amusing copyright tale (for a change)
Jesse Brown has the most entertaining copyright story I’ve read in quite a while:
But some of the hooligans exposed on Youtube found a clever way to get the video removed—copyright claims. Under Youtube’s “Notice and Takedown” policy, all you need to do is claim you own the rights to a video and demand that it be removed, and Youtube will remove it. The video’s uploader will be informed of the allegation and then have a chance to challenge it.
But here’s the rub: in order to claim ownership of a video’s copyright, you have to identify yourself. And when Youtube informs the uploader that they’re being accused of a copyright violation, they have to tell them who their accuser is. So rioters are indirectly handing their names over to the very people who were trying to identify them.
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Dealing with irritations: two varieties
First up, Charles Stross is questioned about his “credentials” by a budding scholar:
From: numpty#@gmail.comHello, I’m citing your work for a debate article I’m using about space colonization and how it is improbable. I do need credentials however, and I’ve yet to find them online. If you could reply with your credentials that’d be great.
(I assume he’s talking about this; it’s all over the internet, triggered a firestorm, and I keep getting gimme emails from content farms asking to reprint it.)
From: meI’m a novelist, not an academic. If you want credentials, go look me up in wikipedia.
From: numpty#@gmail.comYour time is clearly very valuable, as you would rather argue with me over this than simply take a minute or two to state your credentials. Furthermore, I have no need to know the extent of your writings, I simply need to know if you are indeed certified to be considered a credible source on the topic. For instance, if your credible knowledge is on the topic of slaads and borrowing from George R. R. Martin, you are not considered a credible source on space colonization. So let me just ask you this, why should I believe your article has any rational basis, when for all I know now is your true expertise lies in the githyanki.
And in another instance, Dark Water Muse has to deal with a clueless telephone solicitation:
I had the privilege today of being phoned by fraudsters phishing for access to my computer. This is the second time I’ve received this type of call and I’ve used the same response in both cases. Try it, it’s fun.
[The phone rings. callee answers the phone.]
Callee: Hello?
[several seconds pass before the background noises of a busy call centre can be heard]
Caller [affected by a thick South Asian accent]: Hello?
Callee: Hello??
Caller: can I speak to Mr…uhhh…Goon…please?
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Another end-run around privacy expectations
Julian Sanchez thinks the government has stopped caring whether you are innocent or guilty online:
Thanks to an unwise Supreme Court decision dating from the 70s, information about your private activites loses its Fourth Amendment protection when its held by a “third party” corporation, like a phone company or Internet provider. As many legal scholars have noted, however, this allows constitutional privacy safeguards to be circumvented via a clever two-step process. Step one: The government forces private businesses (ideally the kind a citizen in the modern world can’t easily avoid dealing with) to collect and store certain kinds of information about everyone — anyone might turn out to be a criminal, after all. No Fourth Amendment issue there, because it’s not the government gathering it! Step two: The government gets a subpoena or court order to obtain that information, quite possibly without your knowledge. No Fourth Amendment problem here either, according to the Supreme Court, because now they’re just getting a corporation’s business records, not your private records. It makes no difference that they’re only keeping those records because the government said they had to.
Current law already allows law enforcement to require retention of data about specific suspects — including e-mails and other information as well as IP addresses — to ensure that evidence isn’t erased while they build up enough evidence for a court order. But why spearfish when you can lower a dragnet? Blanket data requirements ensure easy access to a year-and-a-half snapshot of the online activities of millions of Americans — every one a potential criminal.
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July 11, 2011
Can the government force you to provide your password?
Declan McCullagh discusses a potentially precedent-setting case in Colorado that may determine whether the 5th amendment applies to your personal passwords:
The Colorado prosecution of a woman accused of a mortgage scam will test whether the government can punish you for refusing to disclose your encryption passphrase.
The Obama administration has asked a federal judge to order the defendant, Ramona Fricosu, to decrypt an encrypted laptop that police found in her bedroom during a raid of her home.
Because Fricosu has opposed the proposal, this could turn into a precedent-setting case. No U.S. appeals court appears to have ruled on whether such an order would be legal or not under the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which broadly protects Americans’ right to remain silent.
I’d hope that the protections against self-incrimination would apply in this case, but government power has been expended so far in the last ten years that it would not surprise me if the courts gut this right in their deference to the executive (just like every other time, it seems).
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The long, quiet development of weaponry
Strategy Page titled this one as “Four Decades To Become An Overnight Sensation”:
Wonder weapons, in general, aren’t. Those spiffy and seemingly magical new “wonder weapons” tend to be old weapons designs that finally got to the point where they lived up to the original hype. Take smart bombs. They were invented, and used quite successfully, during World War II. But these were radio controlled, and required skilled operators to succeed. Expensive as well, and no one wanted to spend the money to train effective operators in peacetime. In wartime, price was no object, and experience was easy to get.
Thus the U.S. dropped smart bombs from their arsenal after World War II, and didn’t revive them until the 1960s, when lasers (developed a decade earlier) were used to bounce their light off a target. A bomb was equipped with a seeker that could home on the reflected laser light, and a guidance kit (battery and motors to operate small wings) to hit the target without an operator. This was cheaper and more effective than the earlier smart bombs. The next big jump, in the 1990s, was the GPS guided bomb, which finally perfected the smart bomb. Thus this wonder weapon took four decades to become an overnight sensation.
Other examples are helicopters, which became iconic of the Vietnam War: first flown in 1904, used sparingly by both sides in World War II, but not in wide use until the 1950s.
While many of these systems are called “wonder weapons,” they aren’t. That’s because every new weapon quickly produces new tactics and combat techniques that reduce the improved capabilities of the new weapons. This is often ignored by historians. Self-preservation is a great motivator, and in the face of new weapons, the enemy will quickly find ways to diminish the wonder.
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A need for speed in 1955 still has lingering influence
Richard Black discusses the start of commercial nuclear power:
An experimental US reactor called EBR-1 generated the first nuclear electricity at its home in Argonne National Laboratory, sending current through a series of lightbulbs in 1951.
But the US did not open the world’s first civilian nuclear power station; that honour went to the USSR, whose tiny Obninsk reactor opened in 1953.
And the world’s first commercial-scale nuclear station was the UK’s Calder Hall, opened the following year.
The race for nuclear power — and with it, political influence — was underway.
“[Soviet President Nikita] Khrushchev… recognised that achievements in nuclear power made it possible to compete with the United States in the world arena — to say ‘our system, the socialist system, is the best — look who is first in areas of science and technology’,” relates Soviet historian Paul Josephson.
“You see a rebirth of hope that there will be a glorious communist future, perhaps a nuclear-powered future.”
All of these early reactors used different designs, with everyone except US scientists forced to work with natural uranium rather than the enriched variety developed during the Manhattan Project.
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July 8, 2011
Oh, it’s not really “censorship”, say Apple fans
Even if Apple is silently censoring their MobileMe email messages:
Writing on the Cult of Mac, John Brownlee reports that Apple applies silent, unpublished content-filters to outgoing MobileMe Email messages, sometimes deleting the messages you send without notifying you. This doesn’t appear to be in Apple’s published terms of using the service, and while an Apple spokesperson has confirmed that this goes on, she disclaims that it is political in nature. The comments on Brownlee’s post are a study in cognitive dissonance from Apple fans, with responses ranging from, “I don’t send politically charged messages so it doesn’t matter,” to “It didn’t happen when I tried it, so it’s not true,” to “All spam filters work this way” (they don’t), and so on.
It’ll be hard to find a way to make this sound nice to folks who aren’t already fully paid-up members of the Apple Fanboy Club.
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Oh Noes! My delivery has been intercepted!!!!
An urgent email to my account tells me that my “parcel from UPS COURIER SERVICE” has been intercepted by the “UNITED STATES POSTAL INSPECTION SERVICE”:
This is to notify you that we have intercepted your parcel from UPS COURIER SERVICE is making the delivery and we have stopped the delivery process for some security reasons stated below:
Our scanning system has detected that your parcel contains a confirmable CARD to the tune of US$1,500,000.00 USD.Such parcel coming from African /Europe/Asia is been verified by the postal inspection service.
Also for the Delivery of the Parcel to continue, you are in obligation to obtain from Spain, a Duly Sworn Affidavit from Spanish High Court which cost only but $320 which will back up the Origin of Fund. This is in line with the Anti-Terrorist Campaign which the USA Government has embarked on recently to protect our Territory from future attacks. You should therefore contact the sender of the CARD or the UPS Courier Agent in Madrid Spain to get the Sworn Affidavit for you while we wait to receive from you the Affidavit File Number to enable us forward your CARD to your address.
I’m so relieved that the US Postal Service is so dedicated to stamping out this sort of thing that it can intercept parcels from Spain to Canada! Of course, the last thing I bought from Spain was some wine through the Ontario government’s monopoly LCBO, so why someone from that country would be sending me a “confirmable CARD to the tune of US$1,500,000.00 USD” is a little bit of a mystery.
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July 6, 2011
July 5, 2011
F-22 still grounded
What initially seemed like an urgent, but relatively trivial problem with the F-22 may involve more time out of service:
What appeared as a simple problem with the U.S. F-22 fighter, has kept 168 of them grounded for over two months, so far. It all began when it appeared that the F-22 fighter might be having a problem with its OBOG (OnBoard Oxygen Generating) system, causing pilots to get drowsy, or even black out, from lack of oxygen. There have been five reports of potential problems in this area lately. As a result, on May 3rd, all F-22s were grounded. But the U.S. Air Force is also checking the OBOGs in F-16, F-15E, A-10, F-35 and T-6 aircraft as well. The problem may just be with the F-22 OBOG, or a general problem with all air force OBOGs. The air force also believes the F-22 problem may not just involve the OBOG. As a result, the grounding is “indefinite” and will continue until the source of the breathing problem is found, and definitely fixed.
If it goes on too long, the air force may consider fitting some F-22s with the older air supplies, just so some of their newest combat aircraft will be available for combat. In the meantime, pilots and ground crews are using simulators and (for the ground crews) and maintenance exercises on the grounded aircraft (in addition to checking a growing list of aircraft components in support of the search for the breathing problem) to retain their skills. The 168 F-22s, costing over $200 million each, have become the most expensive hanger queens (aircraft that spend a lot of time sitting in a hanger getting repaired or worked on) ever.
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July 4, 2011
British Green activist recants opposition to nuclear power
Unlike Germany, which has announced it will be shutting down its nuclear power plants, Britain is considering a new generation of plants to provide an even greater share of their electricity needs. Even a few green activists are changing their tune:
Also, as much as Greens are enthusiastic about solar electricity, in cloudy countries such as ours it is extremely inefficient and expensive. Nuclear power, on the other hand, is one of the cheapest ways of producing electricity, and it is much safer than many environmentalists would have us believe.
The objection of environmentalists to nuclear power — fears about the dangers of nuclear waste and the cost of decommissioning it — are overblown, which explains why many people don’t like the Greens.
[. . .]
Solving many of the world’s most critical environmental challenges will, in some cases, involve doing the exact opposite of what most environmentalists want.
Rather than retreating into hair-shirt austerity, I believe that, just as technology got us into this mess, technology is vital to get us out of it.
That means embracing some things that will make a lot of Green believers choke on their organic muesli.
It has taken me a long time to reach this conclusion. I used to passionately oppose not only nuclear power but GM crops. I once even threw a pie in the face of a Danish scientist who dared to question the orthodox environmental line. So what changed?
Through research, I found that much of what I believed about environmental issues had little, if any, basis in science. Put simply, though my concerns were right, my solutions were wrong.
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July 1, 2011
Guardian contributer learns not to confuse “sociopathy” with “social network”
Kia Abdullah will think twice before letting her inner sociopath out on Twitter in future:
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, three young British men were killed in a bus crash in Thailand, just days after starting their gap year travels. A deeply tragic case — and one that will have left many British parents sick with worry. Annually about 100,000 young Brits take gap years.
But here’s a Twitter reaction from Kia Abdullah, a Guardian contributor:
Even if you think this sort of thing, sending it out immediately over Facebook or Twitter is just asking for a landslide of public abuse to land on your head. People who work in media have the least excuse for this kind of absent-minded faux pas, as they often pounce on celebrity or politician errors of exactly this sort.
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