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Hacking the Governator
mytrip writes, "The Democratic rival to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledged that his aides were responsible for obtaining a controversial audio file, in which the Governator was heard disparaging members of other races, in a move that has led to allegations of Web site hacking. A source close to Angelides told CNET News.com that it was possible to 'chop' off the Web links and visit the higher-level 'http://speeches.gov.ca.gov/dir/' directory, which had the controversial audio recording publicly viewable. No password was needed, the source said." And jchernia notes, "As an aside, the California Highway Patrol is running the investigation — maybe the Internet is a truck after all."
So calling someone passionate, but mentioned a way to denote tham as a group is a bad thing?
Am i missing something here?
Have you read my journal today?
Title should be Hacking the Gropenator
then my grandma is a copyright violator. Oh, wait ...
Chopping off URLs.... oh my, these h4x0rz are scary as shit! Hide your megabytes, kids!
I don't consider calling a mix of races 'hot' disparaging.
That's how my friends and I get our online CS programming assignments tested before submitting them.
If you think
Gee, content freely accessible via URLs on the WWW? What a novel concept.
This is simply a matter of deep linking. Just because there's no page with a link to a URL doesn't magically make the accessible URL off-limits. Security through obscurity isn't. If the governator didn't want people to get it they shouldn't have posted it on their web site. Or at least put some form of authentication on it.
So basically, the governor of California fell victim to a "hacking" method that porn sites figured out how to fix ~8 years ago.
Congrats!
I'm sorry, this is not "Hacking," it's the way the web works. They sent the web server a URL, requesting a document, and the web server gave it to them. They didn't do anything nefarious, underhanded, or tricky. The didn't claim to be anybody they weren't, there was no phishing or pretexting or anything like that involved.
Imagine they had called the governor's office and said "Hi, got anything incriminating about the guv on file?" and when told "Sure, would you like a copy?" they said "Yes please!" What would people think then? It's the same darned situation here.
--MarkusQ
"They all are very hot," the governor says of Cubans and Puerto Ricans. "They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it." See: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 006/09/09/GUV.TMP
Yeah, that's right up there with all black people can play basketball, cuz you know, it's in their blood man!
Disparaging? hardly. This is just a sensationalist way to report the news. Here is the actual comment (from the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/09/08/AR2006090800599.html):
"I mean Cuban, Puerto Rican, they are all very hot," the governor says on the recording. "They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."
the article continues...
'Garcia, who is Puerto Rican and the only Latina Republican in the assembly, appeared with Schwarzenegger yesterday and said she was not offended by the governor's comments. Garcia earlier told the Times that she refers to herself a "hot-blooded Latina."
"I love the governor because he is a straight talker just like I am," she said.'
Is it just me, or did this whole thing make you feel like you were on crazy pills? I didn't find anything remotely racist in what he said. He was giving her a compliment. I wish people spoke about me and said,"You know, its just that mix of Norwegian and German... it just makes him hot." The only person that says that about me is my wife, but I guess that will have to suffice. Regardless, Arnold, you can talk about that crazy hot blood in my veins whenever you feel the need to bud. Not that it would matter. Apparently another political candidate being offended "for" someone makes it wrong. What kind of pills were those again?
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
Uhh... so saying that she's attractive is disparaging?
"I mean, they (Cubans and Puerto Ricans) are all very hot...they have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them and together that makes it,"
Big deal! I actually heard hispanics saying just the same kind of thing about themselves.
You just got troll'd!
Anyone remember this? http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/03/08 /harvard_rejects_119_accused_of_hacking_1110274403 / Seems like the media supported the concept that it was hacking. Given, it required more work than in this case, but it was still a case of freely accessible URL.
GET TO THE (url) CHOPPER!
Nice spin there. All he did was call one lady hot. BFD! As much as I think the governator is a joke, this is just getting ridiculous.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
So calling someone passionate, but mentioned a way to denote tham as a group is a bad thing?
Am i missing something here?
Characterising an entire race in any way is racism. I suspect you are missing a lot there.
"As an aside, the California Highway Patrol is running the investigation -- maybe the Internet is a truck after all."
Or maybe because, like many other states, the Highway Patrol is a state police force, and not a city or county agency.
I'm just waiting until there's a move by content providers to ban popup blockers because they prevent people from seeing ads ... thus costing someone potential ad revenue and when someone is deprived of potential revenue (even if the loss of potential revenue is only in their imagination) it is now the equivalent of theft.
There are quite a lot of people who view competent computer use as a form of magic. They are deeply scared of technology, vote people into office who don't understand technology and expect them to legislate their fears away. So if someone accesses information on a website in an unintended manner, it must be computer hacking. What's really funny is that some people who use the Internet everyday, looking at URLs everyday and think manually changing the URL is hacking.
It is all part of an idea that if you use a product in manner which was not intended by the creator it is some sort of crime. If you look at a website in the wrong way, you're a criminal. The people running the website have no responsibility to keep their private files out of publicly accessible directories. If you use home-brew software on an electronic product, you're a criminal. Most of the time it's about a loss of potential revenue.
If the Governor's office thought it was so controversial, why was it on the site in the first place? I agree that it was made public when they uploaded it to their website.
Personally, I don't see the controversy. He repeated a stereotype--which he apparently agrees with--but one that has positive as well as negative connotations. Many of the hispanics I know would consider themselves "hot-blooded" and generally hot (as in attractive).
Nothing to see here; move along.
The CHP merged with the California State Police in 1995. They are the law enforcement authority on CA state property.
http://www.chp.ca.gov/html/history.html
Matt
Did I miss something? Who the heck is kdawson? No offense, just don't remember the name from before on /.New guy?
Viper is the preferred editor of the Emacs operating system.
That's all it would have taken. It's the default setting in IIS, but not the default in Apache2, as far as I recall. Anyway, the Gov's web site neglected to apply this fundamental protection. Tough crap, This is pretty silly stuff anyway.
Isn't it Bruce Willis's turn to make disparaging remarks about a racial or ethnic group? It does seem to be the favorite sport of over the hill action stars.
Options -Indexes
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Republican makes off-colo remarks.
Democrats do oppo research on it - by downloading the clip from the Internet.
democrats demonized in the press for doing the same thing as everyone else i.e. downloading and playing the file,/b>
Democrats look worse than Republican who originally made off-color remarks.
Lather rinse, repeat.
Good old liberal media - at it again!
So, someone didn't hack a web site, and someone didn't make racists comments. Right then, all caught up on the news.
My love for you is like a truck, Berserker
Would you like some making fuck, Berserker
My love for you is like a rock, Berserker
Chopping off URLs.... oh my, these h4x0rz are scary as shit!
Why do you think they've got the CHP involved? Someone obviously stole Governor Schwarzenegger's internets and took it to an internet chop-shop, where it's dismantled and sold for parts.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Well watching the local news channel and some quotes by the officals up there in state. They said it was "password protected" and the FBI was getting involved. The governor said he likes to record some of his speeches to look back on and they must have been for only Republican officals with a password for them only is what I am thinking more.
I don't think so. It's not like they were just choosing URLs at random. Even if the accused did the most basic form of this attack (i.e. server directory listings), they were still intentionally using URLs designed to trick the server into giving them access to material they knew they weren't authorized to access.
I have personally designed web sites that worked this way. Back in the early days of the web some web site owners deliberately made web sites "look" like ftp sites. In many cases, they point to the very same directory. It still happens today. Perhaps the Governor's webmaster did this on purpose. Perhaps those viewing the page assumed that was the case. After all, the alternative is that the Governor has an incompetent webmaster and it would be irresponsible to assume such a thing if a reasonable alternative existed, right?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's the fault of Arnold's team if they're too stupid to realize that putting something like this in a publicly accessible directory of the server is 100% pure stupidity.
A better analogy is Arnold team left out boxes of recordings of his speeches and all the boxes say "take one." And behind the front row of boxes was a box with an embarrassing recording in it.
Not only was directory listing enabled, but the filenames are easily guessable. Anyone with basic knowledge of how to construct a URL could have gotten those files.
Obviously, top administration officials are trying to make IT staff the scapegoat in this, which they've tried to do on numerous occasions that the press and public never hear about. A lot of IT people who work for Arnold have their jobs threatened constantly. It's the A/V people who put this on the server in the first place.
Nevertheless, there was probably some demand made months or years ago by Administration officials that made this possible, never documented (few things are in that place), and quickly forgotten.
And it's getting worse, as the tab for state resources investigating a non-event gets higher.
That said, the people (suits) in charge of the governor's website are total idiots. Arnold might have a new Communications Director by the end of the week.
Next time when Arny really says or does something stupid, they'll be more careful.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Seriously, if not being racist means pretending like there are no racial division, then everyone is a racist and you make the term meaningless. Clearly different races are different physically, if nothing else. That's why the whole concept exists in the first place. If we all looked the same, there'd be no concept of race like there is today.
Well, something else we know is that humans like to use generalities. We like to generalize traits, trends, whatever. Helps us deal with understanding overall patterns in data. Thus it should be no surprise that traits get generalized to races. Happens to other things too, you can see all the traits that get generalized to geeks (like not having girlfriends) here on Slashdot.
So if you are going to get all bent every time someone makes a race related observation, ask yourself why. Is it because you think they are a bad person, with a malfunctioning brain? Or maybe is it because you yourself find that you generalize based on things like race, but don't want to admit or verbalize it?
Look the answer to racial division in this country isn't to hide it, to try and pretend like we are all the same and make it taboo to talk about. The answer is to talk about it, to laugh about it, and to understand and accept it. We are all different, physically, mentally, socially, etc. We need to celebrate our differences and understand that they aren't a reason to hate. Trying to hide away from them and make them taboo won't do any good.
I didn't know he was open source...
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
How long before Schwarznazi makes "asking related questions" a crime, like chopping off the more specific part of a URL? Especially if he automatically spits out answers that reveal he's a robot from the future who hates people sent here to destroy us?
--
make install -not war
A smart educated hard-working african american can help you make that diversity quota with somebody you would have hired anyway!
This shouldn't even be news. Taking out some text from the URL is hardly illegal being that it's all accessible to the general public.
It's both nothing and everything. No difference between the two in terms that someone typed in a uri, lack of auditing/checking what goes up the webpage (in terms of plain directory listing or unescaped sql statements in script files), let someone got what they wanted. Both results in data ending up in the wrong hands.
However, an SQL attack and spoofing session ID usually requires knowing more than going to the parent directory, as in, instead of removing what was already given (turning something given in the form of http://example.com/private/directory/page into http://example.com/private/), the 'attacker' (I dislike your use of this term) would have to add something that they were not given (http://example.com/private/directory/page?sid=123 45, or http://example.com/private/directory/page?login=ha cker&pass='%20or%20true. Anything after 'page?' was not given to the user in the first place). That's the main difference.
The directory was not random, it was the path given. Server directory listing is not an attack, it's relatively easy to search for open directories (server directory listings) with a search engine. They did not trick the server or anything, all they did was go up a directory. How would you define "knowing" what files are not authorized for access? The server did not return 403 Forbidden, the server gave them the user the files.
Final note, time for bad analogy time - if anyone likens removing parts of a uri as an illegal act, think about stripping drm from an audio file - both involves bytes removed to have more raw access to the data (data that are not exactly given out).
Please direct all bug reports to
The California Highway Patrol are California's State Troopers.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Read-only address bars. ...to prevent "security" risks like typing in gooogle.com
Sounds more like poor choice of file storage.
Well, if you go by the "black blood" as actual blood, perhaps. If you go by background or cultural origin, then perhaps not so much. Part of the issue of racism is that it usually denotes offensive racial remarks. In the majority of cases, a black or latino person would not be offended by a remark that "black people are hot," in fact it would be complimentary.
Also, one's background (again not actual 'blood' or skin colour, but upbringing) tend to influence one's sexual behavior. In terms of actual genetics, race may also promote certain physical attributes which might be attractive. For example, many Asian nationalities tend to have smaller, more petite figures, while so-called "black" races might have more rounding, leading to the common references to 'booty' (large backsides).
You can argue that remarks along those lines are racist as they single out a particular race, but again they lack the negetive connotations. I myself have been known to date quite a few Asians (more than most white people around here), as culturally and physically they have characteristics I find attractive. I have dated white people with similar characteristics, but they are more prevalent in various Asian groups. Were I to comment that I find asians attractive, or "hot" as it were, I doubt they'd be offended, no more than I would be for a Asian who finds paricular preference in Caucasian males.
Calling somebody hot or sexy is a far, far cry from calling them a 'nigger' (especially with the slave references and other negetives it entails).
1. Republican (barely) makes SLIGHTLY off color remark that bothers no one, especially the woman the remark was about, who thought it was funny.
2. L. A. Times prints the story from an "anonymous" source without bothering to do any verification.
3. Despite no one with a functioning brain thinking the comment was anything to even care about, extensive media coverage is given to the blubbering hand wringing and panty soiling histrionics of various key Democrats, including Arnold's opponent, who act as if he was caught eating babies on video.
4. It is revealed that the file was taken from a computer by members of the Phil Angelides staff, possibly illegally, and that the L. A. Times probably knew more about the source than they originally let on, suggesting political dirty tricks collusion.
5. Not one mainstream reporter asks the Phil Angelides campaign what happpened to their pledge of "sticking to the issues".
The leftists on Slashdot and elsewhere torture logic to the point that the UN considers issuing a stern finger wagging.
The actual statement has to sound like the Terminator. Observe:
I mean Cuban, Puerto Rican, they are all very hot
Should be
I.MEAN.CUBAN.PUER.TO.RI.CAN.DEY.ARE.ALL.VER.Y.HO T.
[screen flickers between visible and infrared view, zooms in on a rodent in the wall]
[choice screen appears, -kill, -verbally abuse and process further, -ignore]
.FUCK.YOU.ASS.HOLE.
[At this point the person talking to Arnold should be alarmed and might actually gasp.]
The next statement should be kind of like this:
.THEY.HAVE.THE.YOU.KNOW.PART.OF.THE.BLACK.BLOOD. IN.THEM.AND.PART.OF.THE.LAT.INO.BLOOD.
[DNA sequences labled "BLACK", "LATINO" and "MIX" scroll by with statistics and portions highlighted, "COMMON", "DIVERGENT", "WEAKNESS", "FLAW", "KILLPOINT". The killpoint flashes red and various biological agents dance in the corner with diffusion constants. Special nasal passage pits glow with involuntary anticipation and a new sequence scrolls. "POS. ID: RAT" A faint, high pitched whine can be heard and the wall rat runs for cover.]
.IN.THEM.THAT.TOGETHER.MAKES.IT.
[Laser beams come from his eyes and vaporize a portion of the wall and the rat. The aid runs off screaming and posts the recording in public. Screen flashes "THREAT TERMINATED"]
It's all very science fiction. You have you have to see the vid out recording to understand all the subtle nuances and depth of Arnold's assessment and decision making power. I mean, how many of you have a portable DNA database for blood type and the processing power to instantly and without contact analyze it like Arnold does? It's incredible but it's all verifiable by Holywood Physics.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
-Grym
Think of your webserver as a publicist working in your stead. That publicist should know what is public and what is private. If someone goes to your publicist and asks for information, and your publicist gives it to them willingly, then YOU have implicitly given permission for that transaction to take place. Your publicist is your proxy. If the person who is recieving the information shouldn't be getting it, the fault lies with you for not giving your publicist the training they need to do their job.
On the other hand, if someone goes up and lies to the publicist or attempts to confuse them, they are in the wrong. Your publicist shouldn't be an idiot about it, of course, and shouldn't turn over your medical history to someone claiming to be your lost half-brother's dentist. But the fault does lie with the person making the request under false pretenses.
The ______ Agenda
The irony of this is, of course, that the Governator made this observation jokingly apparently because one of his close aides or cabinet members is Puerto Rican and likes to joke about it. Rather than jumping up and down yelling to make sure everybody knows that he is for equal opportunity and all that, Herrn Schwartzeneggar simply lives his life as if race doesn't matter.
I am very familiar with this, since my wife is asian. One day she asked me if I'm offended by her calling me a "white guy". Seriously. I said "of course not, it's what I am, like you're an asian babe". So I asked why she even asked me that. Turns out she had mentioned to a patient that her husband is a "white guy", and the guy told her it wasn't nice to call me that.
As the parent says, it's just bullshit to act as if race doesn't exist.
What the Governator said isn't racially disparaging. He jokingly made an observation. Those who are so offended by it are people who I personally won't bend over backward to not offend.
Do you have ESP?
Talking about offensive remarks...
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Government websites are always bad on security. Just today I viewed a VDL in the census bureau-no password required, just Google. Is this really a surprise that a politician did something dumb, then got caught because of incompetent security?
The government can't save you.
The tequila helps.
Seriously, what excactly is the "hot" blood type.
Or was he talking about some advanced genetic research that found the hot [temper] gene, and the blood reference was to help the uneducated masses understand.
-don
l'd love to see a folder ''up" button in Firefox and other browsers--it would make "hacking" easier and perhaps educate.
Shouldn't the RIAA be suing over this?
Jerry: I love Chinese women.
Elaine: Isn't that a little racist?
Jerry: If I like their race, how can it be racist?
This reminds me of the time that Bill Clinton was video taped in front of some scale model of a new federal building (or was it a White House gingerbread house on display for the holidays?). Regardless - his immediate reaction on seeing the scale model was that it looked like it had been built for Robert Reich (his 4'-10" Labor Secretary, a cabinet member). Reich (just like the woman with whom Arnold was joking) took it in stride, and frequently jokes about his height himself.
But: such media coverage as even covered a crack like that was mostly in the form of the talking heads chuckling right along with Clinton, their pet guy. If Arnold had made that same remark, he'd get lit up way worse than he has been over this recent bit of nonsense. Political Correctness is bad enough, but it's even worse when it's applied capriciously by people who are not offended, but are trying very hard to make other people feel that they should be offended, because they score some feeble political points in doing so.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
well, that's 30 minutes of your life you'll never get back.
Konqueror has an up button that would do the exact same action as was done in this case.
This made me chuckle... maybe because I mentally heard arnold shouting "GET TO ZEE CHOPPER"
No, that's the way normal human beings interact. Only people who have never really spent much time in a diverse, multiethnic environment get offended by such things... the rest of us tease each other constantly and have a grand old time.
Been in 'multiethnic' evironments all my life too.
Personally, I don't enjoy the stereotype.
These stereotypes are 'cute' if you only run into them once in a while. But what happens when you're trying to communicate at your job or to a customer and the person is intimidated because they think you're probably aggressive?
Then, hiring managers who 'understand' those social dynamics don't put you in front of customers because of this as well?
Or cops, who are more likely to use brute force because they are more likely to get intimidated by you.
Trust me, those are not as far-fetched as you probably think.
Bottom line is that these stereotypes cause many people to be intimated. Intimidated people act funny, or rather irrational. They overcompensate for their fear, so you either get an overly accommodating or aggressive response many times. In most situations that's ok, because we all have to deal with jerks but this becomes a problem when dealing with work or authorities.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Gee, slashdot mods must have really fragile emotional states...
I mean, what kind of a coddled, baby of a person has to call in his friends for help and circle the wagons when a man simply says "hot blooded latina".
On slashdot, this is a thought crime... the slashdot mod will claim to be a 'victim' of 'being offended' and then silence the perp by labeling them as a racist.
Boys and Girls, slashdot is the neo-stalinist liberal. Pathetic.
I wonder what's the PR for that page?
A Truck? C'mon, we all know the Internet is a series of tubes. Noobs.
ooohhh! so that's why Japan is such a multicultural society
Hmmm, then shouldn't it be...?
"I love the governor because he is a straight talker just like I am," she said with a completely unintelligible accent.
Racism requires either preferential treatment, prejudice or implicit or explicit claim of superiority.
True.
Simply attributing a neutral personality trait to a broad ethnic or cultural group and using historical ethnic or cultural heritage as supporting evidence is NOT racist.
Being called hot-blooded is not a 'neutral personality trait'.
It's a very bad thing in many situations and would suggest that people of those races are not suited for certain tasks or positions in society.
Personally, I don't think any of my personility traits are due to my race. And let me ask you, are any of your personality traits due to your race or ethnicity?. It's funny that most people answer 'no' while they go on holding those 'harmless stereotypes' to other people.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
If you found anything in my post racist, well... sorry - get a sense of reality/sense of humor.
He should just get the Termina-RIAA-tor to sue everyone who listened to the files.
Hey, has anyone wondered if the RIAA actually is the real Skynet? Maybe there's no people there anymore, just a bunch of tube-crawling lawyer-bots who are taking over the world, one extortionist lawsuit at a time...
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
Disparaging? hardly. This is just a sensationalist way to report the news.
The problem is that many people believe that nonesense. And the guy is the governor..., he runs the state! Don't you think it's a little worrying he attributes personality traits to race?
There are many of these stereotypes. For instance, I read once that there is a strong 'masculine' stereotype to most things concerning the black race, and similarly a strong 'feminine' basis to most things asian. This may have it's roots in the general physical traits but has migrated into most aspects concerning race. And hence there is some cognitive disonance when we see a black man in a lab coat run experiments or a strong asian man doing manual labor. When we switch the roles around, and our minds feel more at ease.
Now tell me, what does this little harmless stereotype do to the self image of a young black kid who first begins to encounter this 'social norm' in his/her formative years? How does this stereotype affect the black scientist, say in a compentitive field?
Those stereotypes are anything but harmless...
...especially coming from a guy who once admitted to admiring Hitler.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Had to mention that the common acronym for California Highway Patrol is CHiP. In the Hercules cartoon, the town policeman is called Chipocles.
see the subject - it's all right there.
Dude, who's pretending? Do you have any scientific evidence we are not?
We are all scientist around here correct? We are you getting that data to draw your conclusions?
I know it can't be your social experience, we know better than to assume a casual relationship because of some apparent loose correlation of data ( correlation we are not sure exists in the first place ).
We are all different, physically, mentally, socially, etc.
Again, honestly. How so?
What about me, a black man, is inheritedly mentally different from the white guy next to me?
Do you have any evidence to back up your assertions at all?
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Generalizations or stereo-types exist for a reason.
The reason is that people are lazy.
We do not want to have to evaluate everyone we meet on their own merits, so we group them together and apply a label.
Not because 10 out of 10 of the latino people you've met in your life are all hot-blooded does it mean that latino people are predisposed to aggression. There can be a third, independent factor, held by those 10 people that you've met that explain their personality. Maybe there are social factors from their society that influences every member regardless of race to a little more upfront when communicating. That's just an example.
In the end accepting those stereotypes just hinders the people who do not fit them. Eg. The black intellectual, or the latino business-woman is seen as 'an oreo' because of their calm and intellectual persona.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Clearly different races are different physically, if nothing else Sorry, dude, but clearly neither Cuban nor Puerton Rican are races. Please check your facts. There is no physical difference whatsoever between a Puerto Rican and a Martian. Nationality has nothing to do with race.
Anyone making a joke about the "Information superhighway" will find themselves on the receiving end of can of public whoopass.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
hi...
I haven't posted in a while (three years)...
but this sort of reminds me of something...
remember IDIC from star-trek?
Infinite diversity in Infinite combinations...
This is EXACTLY what is going on. The more interesting story is why the LA Times left out in their original story that the Angiledes camp passed them the information. And today they run another story saying Angiledes group claimed responsibility for giving the info to the Times -- as if the LA Times didn't know!
And why would they run this story as an anonymous source originally? And have Angiledes be outraged in the same story!
The LA Times lost any shred of credibility it had during the recall election when Ahnold won the governorship -- it's just sad to see they still haven't cleaned up their act. It's no wonder they've lost so many readers the last few years (including me).
I've seen big corporation programming consultants for which changing a URL was an unheard of concept, so I'm less surprised that a layperson considers it elite hacking.
Seriously. Being as generic as I can for NDA reasons, let's just say that the corporation I work for paid good bucks to a BIG corporation's consultants to write a web application for them. Well, not even the whole app, but think more or less just the part where you register and set your data and preferences, with a bit of a hierarchy thrown in. (Some users could be, basically, managing others and giving or revoking rights to them.)
The thing ended up years overdue, and needing a whole server farm just to support a modest number of users. (The joys of clueless Buzzword Driven Architecture at its finest, really.) They had to be started and shutdown in a given sequence too, as the modules on one machine depended on those on a second, which depended on those on a third, and so on. As a result, shutting down and restarting the whole system (e.g., for maintenance) took almost a whole day. But that's not the important part. The important part were the endless security issues, such as:
1. yes, failure to account for URL editing. Rights were checked when generating the URLs on a page (e.g., which products, messages, whatever, you can click on), but not when actually accessing the linked page. So you could literally access any data in the database by just typing in its ID in one of those URLs.
2. rights escalation. Did I mention editing URLs? The same went for the "change your password" page. You could just type in another user's id, change their password, and log in as that user. The "super-user" had id 0. 'Nuff said.
3. wide open to cross-site scripting exploits. They hadn't figured out how to quote strings when displaying them on a web page. (Then when they "fixed" that, it encoded them twice and displayed them broken. So they disabled the fix again and tried to downplay the risks of anyone injecting JavaScript.)
4. had obviously never heard of non-repudiation. (Security isn't just about who you let in, but also making reasonably sure who signed that contract or generally did what.) While in the old system a deleted user was just, basically, flagged as disabled, their clever system just deleted the user and his data. And because of foreign key constraints, it cascaded through the tables and erased any data connected to that user. Messages they posted or sent, contracts they signed, everything. Users could delete themselves too. (If anyone has trouble understanding why this is dangerous, think what you could do if your bank had something like that. Take a big loan, move the money somewhere else, delete your user.)
And so on, and so forth.
So, well, if "experts" hadn't heard of such elementary stuff, I can't be that surprised that the governor or a couple of journalists consider them advanced hacking.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I disagree. Most people don't generalise about people they know, only those they don't know (or only slightly know), but this isn't because they're lazy, it's because such generalisations are rational, and improve the ability to survive, and function in the world. We can't know everyone well, so we make assumptions about those we don't know well, using the limited information we have about them. We aren't at all unique in this respect either: other animals generalise extensively, e.g. in their reactions to humans and other species.
The rational thing to do when facing an unknown thing (including an unknown individual) isn't to make no assumptions about it, but rather to make limited assumptions based on whatever information is available about it, together with one's knowledge of what that information means. For example, if you see someone exhibiting all of the characteristics of being infected with a highly contagious disease, you would be wise to avoid them until such time as you can ascertain whether or not they are in fact infected. This may not seem to be fair to someone with, e.g. a non-infectious disease that produces similar symptoms to a highly infectious one, but without such behaviour, the infectious disease would spread much more rapidly amongst the population.
Naturally there may be other factors, but given your example, is there any rational reason to ignore the fact that 10 out of 10 latino people you've met have been hot-blooded (assuming this proportion is substantially different from the general population)? Given the perfect correlation in your sample, if you run into a latino you don't know, it would be quite sensible to assume that person is hot-blooded, until you have sufficient information to make that determination individually.
Continuing with your hypothetical example, the question of whether or not being latino causes hot-bloodedness is not particularly important, relative to the correlation. To the extent that being latino can't be caused by being hot-blooded, any causal relationship would have to go the other way. Moreover, social factors cannot cause an individual to become latino, even if they can perhaps cause hot-bloodedness, so this means the correlation between being latino and being hot-blooded is either a coincidence (and statistical techniques can be used to test this), or that being latino is a causal factor, either indirectly or directly: e.g. at one extreme, it could be argued that being latino leads to being discriminated against, which ultimately leads to a social environment which produces hot-bloodedness, where as at the other extreme, it could be argued that all latinos possess genes which directly lead to hot-bloodedness.
On the whole, what matters in terms of governing rational behaviour is the correlation, not the presence or absence of a causal relationship. To use a fairly ridiculous example, if you find that people wearing red hats are substantially more likely to rob you or people you know than those not wearing red hats, it would be rational to avoid people who wear red hats, irrespective of the fact that it's a virtual certainty that wearing a red hat doesn't cause an individual to become a thief.
Just another slow news day in LA.
(Schwarzenegger said blacks and Latinos were "hot" blooded, meaning they were passionate.
"I mean, they (Cubans and Puerto Ricans) are all very hot...they have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them and together that makes it,")
Cubans and Puerto Ricans and Blacks are passionate?
And Cubans, Puerto Ricans and Blacks have had sexual relations?
With each other!?
um... yeah...
Crime, Work, Education, Poverty, Healthcare... Barry Bonds...
Just a really slow news day.
The average difference across races is less than the average difference amongst individual races.
For example:
actual numbers are fabricated
If the genetic correlation between 'negroids' (or whatever the current term for that race is) and 'orientals' (or east asians or whatever they are now reffered to as) is something like 99.5%, the correlation between two randomly selected people of any 'race' would be 99.2%
This is a fact, and has been published in many books on genetics - sorry no source close to hand.
Harvard isn't too keen on Arnold. Expect them to make a strong distinction, or not to really mention it.
I'm not.
Judging by the quote in TFA, it doesn't even try to peg them in any particular category/skill/whatever-abusable, so I'm still at a loss as to how that stereotype is bad. He just says that Cubans and Puerto-Ricans are "hot". Which, unless I'm missing some vital context information there, is just a personal impression/preference/whatever.
It may surprise you, but different people like different things. And some have some fetish/preference/whatever for a certain race, appearance, trait, whatever. Some people have a fetish about asian women, for example, and think they're "hot". (Even some which most other people would consider at best average-looking or downright homely.) Some like blacks. Some like redheads. Whatever.
It's just a personal fetish or preference, and doesn't actually peg them in any job/skill/category. It's not even anything like, "blacks are good at basketball". It doesn't actually say what they're good at, nor what they're bad at.
Plus, some things are said in private that are just making conversation, not some bigotted dogma. E.g., I might say to a Swede that I like Swedes and admire their history (and to some extent I do), but that doesn't mean I'm actually fixated on it, nor that I'd go nazi-like and start discriminating against against people who aren't of nordic descent, tall and blonde. It's just something which seems like a compliment at the time (and not even a good one at that, but, hey, I'm a nerd), but the rest of the time it's at best a mild idle interest. I don't go and hang posters of viking warriors on the walls of my room or anything.
Heck, even stuff which would count as borderline discrimination in a general context can be used as a compliment in a private conversation, if you're willing to risk that the other one might be offended instead. E.g., saying to a Russian coleague who is a mathematician that Russia sure produces a lot of good mathematicians, might even count as a compliment. Not even necessarily to his "race", but to his culture and the system that, for its other deffects and brutal oppression, did invest in education and in convincing people that academic achievements are _good_ and a thing to be proud of. Yes, it's technically splitting people into categories, but it's (A) meant as just a private compliment, and (B) not something that's anywhere near being dogma or reason for prejudice and discrimination the rest of the time. I can assure you that I can admire a good mathematician regardless of their country of origin.
And it seems to me like the governor's comment there fully fits this category too. It was said in private (or at least not intended for the public anyway), to someone who _is_ in the category he talks about, and, most importantly, that someone did take it as a compliment.
And frankly, I don't see any greater good coming to society if we get to the point where you can't even say what you like, in a private conversation, without offending someone. I mean, seriously, what next? Should I be affraid of saying that I find redheads sexy, for fear of offending blondes and brunettes? (Or even discovering that some redhead is offended too.) Or what? Exactly how does that help us all?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The problem begins right after all of that. Stereotypes aren't necessarily "bad" when they can be demonstrated statistically. The real problem is when people make the leap from "greater than 50% of example-race is something" to "100% of example-race is something" without even considering that there may be exceptions or, even worse, not believing an exception when they actually encounter one. You may (emphasis on may) be able to show statistically that Latino women as a group are more aggressive or confrontational than white women, but anyone smarter than a rock should be able to acknowledge and accept any exceptions.
Anyone who pollutes the domain name space with an excrescence like speeches.gov.ca.gov deserves all they get.
Here ya go.
All fixed for ya now, your good to GO!
In California, the State Police - which is a division of the Department of Motor Vehicles, the agency that issues drivers' licenses - are called the "California Highway Patrol" because primarily most of their work deals with, well, patrolling the highways. But they also investigate crimes which occur in the state, usually in places where the local police or sheriff do not have the equipment or the personnel to investigate adequately. In Texas, the agency that mostly patrols the highways, investigates crime statewide (including operating the famous Texas Rangers), and issues driver's licenses is called the "Department of Public Safety". In Virginia and Maryland the agency that mostly patrols the highways and investigates crime statewide is called the State Police. The fact that the name of the state police in California isn't "State Police" does not change their function.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Just about everyone agrees that this isn't "hacking", but here it has been called "chopping off URLs" and a dozen other things. The proper term for this (which I haven't seen in any posts so far) is "directory browsing". It is countered with the simple method of ensuring every directory has an index page which, if it doesn't actually have content, then is either a redirect to a different page, or contains a simple message, such as "no directory browsing".
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Horse shit. Get some skin. Saying that Nordics sunburn easily doesn't at all imply that the Irish don't. Study some logic.
This is one of those discussions that makes me think I am on another planet. Calling latino people "hot-blooded" is retrograde and offensive. He didn't say, "you know, black people have dark skin". He said they are hot-blooded. Outside the context this is racist on any level. Its like saying asian people can't drive. A lot of slashdotters seem to have crawled out of the woodworks on this one to claim that there are differences between races. Well no shit, but as far as anyone can tell they are purely physical. Unless you have come up with an experiment that can empirically test for "hot bloodedness". Arnold wasn't making an observation based on facts, he was repeating a tired stereotype.
As to your desire to embrace our differences, I am all for that, but we don't need to bring along absurd stereotypes that have no grounding in reality.
Now, on the other issues with this...yes, this was a private conversation. Also, of course this is plain election year politicking and Angelides should have known better than to get involved in it. But its still racist, sorry.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
I think the origin of the unfortunate fallacy of racial homogeneity (at least in the West) is probably skin colour. When comparing Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans, skin colour is a simple characteristic that is essentially universal within each population (i.e. there are no ethnic Europeans with black skin, and no Sub-Saharan Africans with white skin, except perhaps albinos). Most human traits, however, are not simple ones like skin colour, and result from much more complex genetic combinations, together with at least some environmental influences. As such, they tend to vary greatly within populations, and even if there are often statistically significant differences amongst populations, there is typically considerable overlap from one to the next.
An example of the above that I like to use is differences in height between Europeans and Orientals. It can be statistically shown that Europeans are taller than Orientals, but anyone with eyes can see that this is not universal. It can also very easily be seen that height is not homogeneous within populations. As such, the fact that it can be said with some validity that 'Europeans are tall' and 'Orientals are short', it is overwhelmingly clear that there are any number of short Europeans and tall Orientals, and that anyone who claims race is a perfect predictor of height is speaking utter nonsense.
It's not just about people, apparently the human mind prefers categorized information over unordered information. A binary split (good or bad, for example) is the easiest to handle for the mind which means we subconsciously try to partition our knowledge into a few classes and try to describe objects as easily as possible. Anything that's natural, hard and obviously not organic gets categorized as a stone, no matter what color, shape or chemical makeup it has. Wars are split into "them" and "us" without taking the exact relations between the factions into account (e.g. who cares that Hussein and Bin Laden are enemies, they are our enemy and therefore "they").
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
What they did was technically against the Computer Security Act and the subsequent revisions and ancillary laws. To use a computer in a manner unintended (ie. to lop off the end of a URL so as to access an unintended portion of the site) is illegal and has been proscecuted successfully by both California and the Feds on numerous occasions-- that is whenever they felt like being assholes and couldn't think up anything else to charge them with. Does anybody smell "double-standard" here???
I remember there was an L. A. Times story brought up during the Iran/Contra hearings back in the 1980s that was proven, to the satisfaction of BOTH SIDES in the hearings, to be an utter load of BS. The Times made some weak protests, but sort of shut up and lay low for a bit. They've been a source of yellow journalism and slanted coverage for decades. It's just gotten worse in recent years and they've started doing tabloid level hit pieces. They are a pack of ideological cretins who perform a daily rape of press freedoms.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Arnie didn't use the word "passionate," and he said something that was, indeed, offensive to me and others:
"I mean, they (Cubans and Puerto Ricans) are all very hot...they have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them and together that makes it,"
Someone please tell me what "Latino blood" is, and how and what traits it pre-determines?
I've seen it and I understand what you are saying. It wasn't what arnold was saying at all. He was talking about race.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
"As an aside, the California Highway Patrol is running the investigation "
I wonder if Jon Baker and Franck Poncherello will be assigned this one.
FYI -- this has turned into a he said/she said at this point. It's not clear in the crappy CNET article, but the LA TImes (which broke the story and received the files from the Angiledes group) has a slightly better article that has the Governator's staff claiming it was password protected: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la- me-audio13sep13,1,1414498.story?coll=la-center-pol itics-cal&ctrack=1&cset=true
The CHP (state police in CA) are currently investigating. I'm not geek enough to know if any password protection was required by simply looking at the google cache, and of course the Angiledes group didn't share the link with anyone until after they gave the data to the Times (and the link was killed). If it wasn't password protected (on an otherwise semi-public site -- it was for reporters) I'd agree that there is no issue, and this is simply a counter stunt by the Ahnold camp to make Angiledes look bad.
It is the person who's race it is to make the comment on themselves (if they so wish) from their racial vantage - not the observer of said person.
"Well something we all know is that humans like to use generalities". What I see in that comment is someone who wants someone another to believe in their own use of generalisations by assigning "we all know". Who the hell do you profess to know and speak for? You have but your own assumptions and that is all.
If the data was publicly accessible (a better term, IMO, because 'available' implies intent, which seemed to be missing here), why did the LA Times attribute (and continues to do so, even though the Angelides campaign acknowledges being the source) the recording to an anonymous source? The Time's policy is supposedly to use anonymous sources as a last resort, so why didn't they just obtain their own copy from the server and say, "Hey, look what we found on the governor's web site, and here's the URL so you can get it yourself"?
I noticed that the Times printed today that the Angelides campaign is "saying" (i.e. the Times isn't confirming it, just reporting what the campaign says) that the campaign is the source of the recording. I also noticed that, contrary to the front-page treatment accorded to the orignial story, the acknowledgement got put on page B-8.
It's not just about people, apparently the human mind prefers categorized information over unordered information.
I agree with you entirely.
The question is what do we do about it? Do we say, "it's natural to categorize without merit so it should be allowed". Or do we keep fighting prejudice?
Some people have suggested that we will never see a human society free of social classes because of this. I tend to agree, but I'll argue against prejudice whenever the issue comes up.
it's the least I can do.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
You need to grow up.
Clever signature text goes here.
The irony of this is, of course, that the Governator made this observation jokingly apparently because one of his close aides or cabinet members is Puerto Rican and likes to joke about it.
Seems like the key thing here is that he knew her, so she would know how he meant it and he would know how she would take it.
If he had just walked up to some random Puerto Rican and made the same comments, that could be considered offensive. In the context of friends or coworkers, though, this isn't abnormal at all. The problem is everyone hearing about it isn't cognizant of that context, so they get offended by proxy.
Turns out she had mentioned to a patient that her husband is a "white guy", and the guy told her it wasn't nice to call me that.
Another perfect example. If your wife walked around calling every stranger that walked past "white guy", the patient could probably say that isn't nice. He simply wasn't aware of the context of your relationship where you are both comfortable with your different races.
It was sort of the same way for me -- when I first heard this story, I thought Arnold had been an insensitive jerk. When I discovered that the lady in question had said that it was cool, I changed my mind. The question of what is or is not offensive is always a shady one, and I can't think of any more relevent answer than the one given by the person the allegedly offensive comment was targeted at.
The enemies of Democracy are
Check it and see.
What we have to prevent is people acting upon prejudices without evaluating the people they are acting against. I don't care if someone secretly thinks all blacks are gangsters but if he refuses to employ a person because of that prejudice or attacks black people because he thought they might rob him that's a problem. We can't prevent prejudice but we should do our best to minimize harmful prejudices.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The "races" are different in a few ways physically and a few other correlated traits, but generally that's about it in terms of scientifically well founded differences. After that it's all pseudoscience, prejudices, and anecdotal evidence, in short, bullshit. People want to believe certain things based on their prejudices, and they may even come up with some pseudoscientific justifications for it (as happened in the early 20th century, before WWII), but careful scientific examination of the facts generally shows such claims to be baseless, in reality.
I agree, it is a natural outgrowth of our tendency to make generalizations, it's just not a good one. Humans are good at recognizing patterns, but we seem to get a lot of false positives, which is why superstition and pseudoscience are all over the place. We seem to be particularly bad about making false inferences based on insufficient, anecdotal evidence when it comes to people. I don't know why exactly, but it seems plausible there might be some evolutionary explanation related to the fact that we lived in much smaller more isolated groups until relatively recently. Racism is just a particularly destructive sort of false inference with a very ugly history, which is why people fear it so much. No one gets too bent out of shape about accusations of geeks not having girlfriends because not too many geeks have been rounded up and sent to death chambers based on that sort of thing.
Your idea that it all has something to do with people feeling bad about their own racist tendancies is interesting, but as far as I can see it's without proof. I also think it's mostly a red herring; if there are good reasons to dislike racist comments, then other possible motivations are irrelevant. It seems to me that, for example, a black person may be upset by racist comments about blacks because blacks have been and in some cases continue to be the targets of oppression and violence based on race. And others may get upset by it because, generally, racism is foolishness that leads to the worst forms of human ugliness, which no sane person wants in their society.
I can agree with you insofar as I generally think the best response to racism or other prejudice is to calmly debunk it, explain why it is nonsense. I don't think it's generally useful to jump down peoples' throats over it, as that just makes them angry and defensive.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Per subject. "Hot" is an impression, giving information about the observer rather than the observed. "Hot blooded", by contrast, refers to a personality trait -- particularly, a tendency to view issues in a passionate and emotional (rather than cold and clinical) way.
In many contexts, this could be complimentary; in other contexts, it probably isn't. (One doesn't necessarily want a hot-blooded clinician or judge, for instance).
What we have to prevent is people acting upon prejudices without evaluating the people they are acting against. I don't care if someone secretly thinks all blacks are gangsters but if he refuses to employ a person because of that prejudice or attacks black people because he thought they might rob him that's a problem. We can't prevent prejudice but we should do our best to minimize harmful prejudices.
I half agree with you. It bothers me when people believe in falsehoods (e.g. that all blacks are gangsters), and whilst people should be allowed to believe whatever they like, I think strong efforts should be made to educate people, including presenting unpleasant facts. E.g. if one group are substantially more likely to commit crime (as Muslims are where I live) this shouldn't be hidden, but it should be clearly explained that this higher propensity towards criminality doesn't mean all members of that group are criminals. (If you try to hide the higher group propensity to commit crime, many people will simply draw their own conclusions, including, for instance, a belief that everyone in the relevant group is a criminal.)
As for attacking someone, I think anyone who attacks another person should be punished, irrespective of why (I don't see why attacking someone because of their race is worse than attacking them because you don't like their looks, want to rob them, etc.). On the other hand, I think people should be free to associate with whomever they like, and this includes the sphere of employment.
Those who favour American-style racial quotas for employment should ask themselves a few questions: do they want quotas for things like height, weight, hair colour, eye colour, region/town/city of origin, et al? Ignoring the special case of segregation in the USA, or apartheid in South Africa, which I think did/do warrant corrective policies, why are sex and race special, and worthy of quotas? On the whole, I prefer freedom to quotas, or other attempts to ban "politically incorrect" association or thought.
If I were running a firm, I'd employ the best people, irrespective of attributes like race, sex, et al. A law requiring selection based on particular attributes that are irrelevant to the ability to do the job is, in my view, wrong. It strikes at one of the most basic freedoms in a society (freedom of association), and is one step on the slippery slope towards authoritarianism.
As for attacking someone, I think anyone who attacks another person should be punished, irrespective of why (I don't see why attacking someone because of their race is worse than attacking them because you don't like their looks, want to rob them, etc.).
Of course, that goes without question but removing the prejudices would prevent further attacks like that.
Those who favour American-style racial quotas for employment should ask themselves a few questions: do they want quotas for things like height, weight, hair colour, eye colour, region/town/city of origin, et al? Ignoring the special case of segregation in the USA, or apartheid in South Africa, which I think did/do warrant corrective policies, why are sex and race special, and worthy of quotas? On the whole, I prefer freedom to quotas, or other attempts to ban "politically incorrect" association or thought.
I believe quotas are an interim measure to reduce the problems before a complete reeducation can happen. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like there's much money going into proper education to make measures like this unnecessary in the future... This is one hackish solution. AFAIK woman quotas have pretty much stopped mattering since the gender discrimination became less significant.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I do that all the time to porn sites. If Ahnolds people can't figure out the relatively simply ways to protect against that, it's not anybody else's fault. If they have it on the internet and it's not protected by any sort of security, it's fair game.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction