cramerica

The problem is of course the vagueness in natural languages caused by the complexity of its grammar and the unstated contextual nature of it all.

"The black truck driver ran through the red light."

Is the truck black or is the truck driver black?

Is the driver driving, or is he running on foot?

Is the red light a traffic indicator, or is it a just a beam of red light?

Teaching a computer to figure out the intended interpretation here is a monumental task, and teaching the people to understand how their use of language is actually very easy to misunderstand is even harder.

There are some pretty great comments in here:

ALARM_AND_ABORT.agc - http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/listings/Comanche055/ALARM_AND...

    TC       WHIMPER    -1   #  YES.  DON'T DO POODOO.  DO BAILOUT.

From the Guidance Computer Data Cards -http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/CMC_data_cards_15_Fabrizio_Ber...

"POODOO abort, does software restart (ENEMA) and "GO TO POOH" (flashing Verb 37) unless "AVERAGE G" is running then only software restart"

From THE_LUNAR_LANDING.agc - http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/listings/Luminary099/THE_LUNAR...

    033911,000064: 32,3017    06037        FLAGORGY        TC       INTPRET      #  DIONYSIAN FLAG WAVING


    034090,000243: 32,3241    13247        BZF      P63SPOT4               #  BRANCH IF ANTENNA ALREADY IN POSITION 1
    034091,000244: 
    034092,000245: 32,3242    33254        CAF      CODE500                #  ASTRONAUT:     PLEASE CRANK THE
    034093,000246: 32,3243    04616        TC       BANKCALL               #                 SILLY THING AROUND
    034094,000247: 32,3244    20623        CADR     GOPERF1                               
    034095,000248: 32,3245    16001        TCF      GOTOP00H               #  TERMINATE
    034096,000249: 32,3246    13235        TCF      P63SPOT3               #  PROCEED        SEE IF HE'S LYING


    034101,000254: 32,3251    04635        TC       POSTJUMP               #  OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD ...
    034102,000255: 32,3252    74126        CADR     BURNBABY

>Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mueller addressed a proposal to require telephone companies to retain calling logs for five years — the period the N.S.A. is keeping them — for investigators to consult, rather than allowing the government to collect and store them all. He cautioned that it would take time to subpoena the companies for numbers of interest and get the answers back.

>“The point being that it will take an awful long time,” Mr. Mueller said

So he's saying that having the telecoms store the data instead of the government would mean it would take longer to get the information... Isn't that obvious? The real question is, why does he think the government is entitled to that information in the first place?

>The other innovation unveiled is a pill that a user can swallow, which then switches on, powered by the person’s stomach acid. The pill then transmits an 18-bit signal, essentially making the person a walking password.

I don't know how I feel about this one, nor do I understand how it would work. Do you have to do that every day? Every other day? How would the transmitter inside the pill actually stay in your body?

It would solve it for many sites, but there are plenty that don't have full https support (and some that have none at all)

They go as far as even replacing existing ads with their own, this seems criminal, especially when they are directly impacting google/microsoft/apple by removing their ads and replacing them with their own.

I think the Weev sentencing has major implications for not only white hat hackers (although it hits them pretty hard), but anyone using the internet. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the courts interpretation are to blame. CFAA was written in 1984 and it's so vague that it's can turn anyone working in security and potentially anyone on the internet into a criminal with one click.

The courts are saying here that unauthorized access to a computer occurs whenever the computer owner says so, and the Department of Justice has enforced this point of view. Someone can violate the law even where there is no notice and where no password was hacked. All that is required is that a person, corporate or natural, subsequently says you don’t belong. This is an incredibly dangerous ruling that can criminalize trivial things like google searches.

People should be mad about this, but I fear most do not understand this ruling or the law enough to make sense of it.

It's just comparing two cases that reached a verdict in the same day, sure the cases are different, but the results are very telling. It is a worse offense to access a website without the owners permission than it is to rape someone if you're under 18.

Is this as big of an issue as the article makes it out to be? I just went to about 30 news sites on my iPhone and none of them prompted me to download an app, the more common approach now seems to be a small popup that says "click here to add this homepage to your home screen". The only one that really restricted me was Quora (which isn't news but I saw it mentioned in the comments so I gave it a try).