From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Mar 03 1999 - 04:02:08 MST
Terry Donaghe <tdonaghe@yahoo.com> writes:
> Well, I did get the story off of yahoo news. And I think CNN news
> reported it yesterday. I make no claim to it's truthfulness.
> Perhaps, if this is bogus, it should be of interest to us that so many
> "respected" news organizations picked it up...
Remember the British Telecom "SoulCatcher 2000" chip? Two summers
back, it went all the way around the media, and still crops up (now
usually promoted by some paranoid schizophrenic). The real story was
that BT had held a seminar about future technology, and in the end
speculated a bit about uploading and neurointerfaces. Some less than
brilliant reporter mis-reported it, and news organisation after news
organization copied each other.
I agree with those sceptical about the satelite story. It seems a bit
too much like a Hollywood movie to be true, but the memetic potential
is good - we have been conditioned by a lot of fiction to believe in
this sort of thing.
Can crackers get into a satelite? I think they can, even if it is hard
to judge how likely it is. Can they make sense of the guidance system?
That definitely requires good knowledge about space technology and the
ideosynchracies of the satelite in question - a much taller order. My
guess is that if the story is true, then it is an insider job.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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