I suggest we educate users more. That includes harsh facts of life, like the fact that phishers in Romania aren't likely to be prosecuted. Also, don't expect to sue them in a civil court, so any costs incurred as a result of falling for one of these scams will be borne by the victim alone.
Alternatively, we could encourage more mob bosses to use computers. If phishers start stealing from the less nice members of our society, I think this problem would work itself out.
The people who do know how to play the game learned it by faking it. Anyone can fake it. Keep doing that until you figure out what works and what doesn't. Think of it like learning to program a computer that has bad hardware, so the results aren't always the same. Politics is a very personal game, so you have to know your audience.
Aspergers isn't a disability. Operating at a level that others cannot comprehend in a particular field sounds more like a superpower than a disability to me. People who don't understand something like to bring others down to their level, so they call people who are different disabled. Look at the natural abilities and how those affect the lives of each group. Who is really disabled?
Someone who is a great coder should work towards being a great system architect. Use the talents you have and learn enough about other areas to get by. A lot of technical people I know who have traits like Aspergers have developed a level of understanding that can't be taught. That understanding makes it easy for us to forget that there are a lot of people who know just enough to get by - they will never seek to excel in their chosen field. So when it comes to something like office politics, keep in mind that you're competing with people who are only interested in doing the bare minimum.
Ever heard someone quip about being tried by 12 people who aren't smart enough to get out of jury duty?
The people who are on juries come from the same pool of people as phishing victims. If they're not smart enough to recognize the scam when it happens to them, do you really want them deciding your fate?
Courts and laws are very slow to change. The reason phishing and ID theft are so popular is that it's hard to convict someone of a crime you don't understand.
You're not. But if your bumper is only attached by one bolt and is hitting cars in other lanes, you can expect to be held accountable. There's just no penalty when 95% of the cars have the same problem.
The majority of Americans also aren't willing to spend the time and money to fight against usurpations like roadblocks. The roadblocks are considered constitutional because the police are treating everyone equally. You need to have standing with the court to challenge a law, ie be someone who got arrested at such a roadblock.
You can't challenge a law on the grounds that it's morally wrong. Courts don't decide such things. Congress would need to pass a law saying such things are unlawful. It would take a lot of lobbying to get that to happen.
We have the best government money can buy. If we aren't willing to pay, do you think we're going to get better government?
When all you have is a right-trampling-stick, every problem looks like it needs to have its rights trampled. Government can only be used for evil, never for good. Governments exist out of necessity, not because everyone loves them. The government exists as a threat of force to help people get along. If there is anything on the net that needs to be fixed by the government, we first have to figure out how the use of force will help the problem.
What can we do to make the net safer? Go after people who commit crimes online? In the real world, only a small percentage of people are convicted for the crimes they commit. Online it's harder to prove that someone committed a crime, so there needs to be a strong incentive to go after them. Once you have them, there's another serious problem - most juries are not going to understand the case, which makes it hard to get a conviction.
What do you do with the murderers? I believe pharmaceutical companies would pay good money for subjects who are already off the books in the hands of private "law" enforcement professionals.
The lawyers don't even need to be incompetant. There is almost no way anyone could win such a case. However, it would cost the company thousands of dollars each time to have a lawyer go in and argue that the infringement was done by an individual who asserted that they had legal rights to copy the image. Even when you win a lawsuit, you're out the money it took to hire the lawyer to fight it. This is the expense they're trying to avoid.
Corporate lawyers are supposed to protect the companies, and management is supposed to decide how to spend the company's money most effectively. The cost of implementing a retarded policy is very small. Management looks at the cost of paying a lawyer to fight something the company doesn't care about and the cost of the stupid policy and implements the stupid policy because it's more cost effective.
There is no need to worry about if they can defend themselves legally because all of the actions are motivated purely by money. Any form of risk, no matter how small is bad because it can cost money. It's really that simple.
Recycling is a good thing when it's voluntary. Even with the deposit on the containers, it can still be voluntary. Leaving your empty can on a bench where somebody picks it up is a cooperative solution to avoid litter. However, once someone passes a law to force everyone to do it, someone will find a way to collect all the unredeemed deposit money and put it in their own pocket. I would bet that making a federal law to require everyone to do the same thing would turn a working system like Michigan's into a cesspool of corruption in short order.
Unfortunately, that's the trend that's applying to more and more aspects of our lives. Fear of being sued is the driver for this behavior. As a result, we have people who are being paid barely over minimum wage being asked to use their judgement. What's worse is that there is no penalty for errantly refusing to provide the service. This is the inevitable result of focusing on money and forgetting about the customer.
I remember that from when I lived in California. It's a container tax. It imposes upon the consumer to bring the containers to recycling centers where it takes about half an hour and they give you some fraction of the "deposit" since they measure on weight. There are plenty of places you can give up your containers for free since most people don't want to go through the hassle.
The reason all states don't have it is because it's a scam. When coke used to be in glass bottles, we used to take those back to the grocery store and get the deposit back. That system worked fine. The only reason the government got involved was to get their cut of the money.
In fact, many would argue that McDonalds doesn't sell any beef products.
The full specifications would only support this conclusion. Right now, we only think they're making burgers out of lizards and squirrels. The specs would tell us in what percentages and how they're spiced. It's probably better that we don't have that information.
Giving the tools to the script kiddies keeps the noise ratio high. It's not too likely that someone is going to be able to keep a vulnerability as their own personal in, so by making the tools commonly available, it makes the random attacks indistinguishable from the targeted attacks.
What should be and what is are two separate issues. There are at least two distinct perspectives being represented in this thread - those who are trying to define their ideal of how things should work and those who are relating how things work in the real world. Those who express how things are in the real world aren't necessarily lacking in open-mindedness, they're just victims of those who are. The world as a whole isn't very open minded.
And saying those things publicly, to people who didn't ask, sends another clear message. Something along the lines of "person who speaks mind without fear of retribution", which is often shortened to "troublemaker".
If you want to succeed, you have to understand the game you're playing. I don't agree with judging people on their appearance, but I see it happen all around me. No matter how enlightened we believe we are, we are in the minority and do not have enough influence to change the system. The unenlightened will do whatever it takes to protect the current way, because it's all they know. I know this because I am a troublemaker. I just don't let others know that before it's too late for them. =)
We know that managers in large companies will no longer pay people to invent products on the company's dime if there is no return on investment. Patent protection is a form of protecting the future income.
Small companies or individuals can always develop ideas that are within their means. However, large scale research and development has to be done by organizations that can afford to fail 99% of the time while they make more than enough money the other 1% of the time.
The short version is that it's not helping anyone other than the offender. This is the implied negative connotation that is attached to calling someone an empire-builder.
I've noticed in my own experience is that small companies can't succeed with these people, so natural selection does the work. In large companies, the damage is rarely severe enough to have a self-correcting influence. The larger the number of empire builders in the organization, the more others are encouraged to take the same approach. A subordinate padding his empire intrinsically benefits their superiors, so there is a feedback loop that encourages this kind of behavior.
Promoting efficiency helps the business, but most businesses don't have a way to measure that benefit, so there is no reward to reinforce the positive behavior. I've suggested to my boss that we get a 10% cut of the cost savings for implementing good ideas. If this were done based on the realized savings for the first year, the incentive would be ongoing to improve more processes, the savings would be ongoing, but the cost of the bonus would only be paid once. The most obvious argument against this approach is that the people who are looking for ways to line their own pockets without regards to the well being of the company would create incredibly inefficient processes that they could then fix. I recommend firing these people, but I believe my zero-weasel-tolerance policy conflicts with our HR policies.
Telling the machine what to do is a basic level of knowledge needed. This part can be taught or learned independently. In order to program in a professional sense, most people also have to develop the ability to translate from what-the-user-says-they-want into a viable representation of what-the-user-needs. Being able to program is a skill, but one with limited application. As I understand these competitions, the requirements are fairly clearly written. I'd love to get those kind of requirements in the real world. I've spent 17 years as a programmer and have yet to get them, but I still hold out hope that one day, I will see requirements that are actually actionable.
To everyone else, a computer is a tool. Nothing more. The programmer is just the interpreter who translates between users and machines.
Empire-building is the practice of raising one's own value to an organization through the amount of resources that a person controls. For example, adding headcount is one way to expand one's empire. This also has the connotation of adding for the sake of adding, rather than adding out of necessity.
Consider the choice between adding one contract programmer for a year to automate a bunch of simple tasks, or hiring 10 full time employees to do those tasks. The empire-builder takes the latter approach, even though it's more expensive in the short and long term.
I think the problem is that there aren't a lot of good ideas on how to do this. If we had a good way to identify and promote people who have a natural talent in a field, we'd all be better off. Everyone may be created equal, but we all become unequal rather quickly in various areas. This is perfectly normal, we just don't have a system that is designed to handle the fact that someone like me should spend a lot more time on programming and give up on things like basketball, where I clearly suck.
Our education system is the product of an endless series of compromises. We have a lowest-common-denominator approach to educating people. This is a good way to ensure everyone gets a base education, but it doesn't create an environment where anyone can excel. The idea is that anyone who has completed all of the pre-requisites can go on to the next level. This only holds true where each level is attainable by all. In the real world, only those who have a dedication to learning and a genuine interest in a topic are going to go beyond competance to achieve excellence. A system that holds competance as the pinnacle of existance lacks this potential.
I frequently solve work problems by finding patterns in data or problems that suggest to me particular types of solutions. A working solution is the goal, but in order to teach someone else how to do the same thing, they have to be capable of seeing the same kind of patterns. If there were a preset number of patterns to check, the job could be done by a script instead of a person. Getting people to see and extract the patterns is not easy to teach. However, those who already see them can be taught easily how to do the rest of the job.
Choicepoint requested my credit report. I have a copy of my credit report that has this listed. If I ever run into a problem, I think I can make a case that it's because of them.
The beauty of our horribly flawed legal system is that justice is available for the right price.
The problem can also occur because the original application is tested against the real system, not the documented API. So a bug fix to the underlying system can both be correcting a bug and create an application error.
Throwaway systems are cost effective in the short term. That makes them popular with people who look at this quarter's stock price as both a goal an duration of their attention.
They're fighting a different battle. They are trying to protect their business model through legal intimidation. Do you think they could make this work if they didn't have a ton of money to lose on the effort? Their lawsuits are costing them far more than they settle for.
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I suggest we educate users more. That includes harsh facts of life, like the fact that phishers in Romania aren't likely to be prosecuted. Also, don't expect to sue them in a civil court, so any costs incurred as a result of falling for one of these scams will be borne by the victim alone.
Alternatively, we could encourage more mob bosses to use computers. If phishers start stealing from the less nice members of our society, I think this problem would work itself out.
The people who do know how to play the game learned it by faking it. Anyone can fake it. Keep doing that until you figure out what works and what doesn't. Think of it like learning to program a computer that has bad hardware, so the results aren't always the same. Politics is a very personal game, so you have to know your audience.
Aspergers isn't a disability. Operating at a level that others cannot comprehend in a particular field sounds more like a superpower than a disability to me. People who don't understand something like to bring others down to their level, so they call people who are different disabled. Look at the natural abilities and how those affect the lives of each group. Who is really disabled?
Someone who is a great coder should work towards being a great system architect. Use the talents you have and learn enough about other areas to get by. A lot of technical people I know who have traits like Aspergers have developed a level of understanding that can't be taught. That understanding makes it easy for us to forget that there are a lot of people who know just enough to get by - they will never seek to excel in their chosen field. So when it comes to something like office politics, keep in mind that you're competing with people who are only interested in doing the bare minimum.
Ever heard someone quip about being tried by 12 people who aren't smart enough to get out of jury duty?
The people who are on juries come from the same pool of people as phishing victims. If they're not smart enough to recognize the scam when it happens to them, do you really want them deciding your fate?
Courts and laws are very slow to change. The reason phishing and ID theft are so popular is that it's hard to convict someone of a crime you don't understand.
You're not. But if your bumper is only attached by one bolt and is hitting cars in other lanes, you can expect to be held accountable. There's just no penalty when 95% of the cars have the same problem.
The majority of Americans also aren't willing to spend the time and money to fight against usurpations like roadblocks. The roadblocks are considered constitutional because the police are treating everyone equally. You need to have standing with the court to challenge a law, ie be someone who got arrested at such a roadblock.
You can't challenge a law on the grounds that it's morally wrong. Courts don't decide such things. Congress would need to pass a law saying such things are unlawful. It would take a lot of lobbying to get that to happen.
We have the best government money can buy. If we aren't willing to pay, do you think we're going to get better government?
When all you have is a right-trampling-stick, every problem looks like it needs to have its rights trampled. Government can only be used for evil, never for good. Governments exist out of necessity, not because everyone loves them. The government exists as a threat of force to help people get along. If there is anything on the net that needs to be fixed by the government, we first have to figure out how the use of force will help the problem.
What can we do to make the net safer? Go after people who commit crimes online? In the real world, only a small percentage of people are convicted for the crimes they commit. Online it's harder to prove that someone committed a crime, so there needs to be a strong incentive to go after them. Once you have them, there's another serious problem - most juries are not going to understand the case, which makes it hard to get a conviction.
What do you do with the murderers? I believe pharmaceutical companies would pay good money for subjects who are already off the books in the hands of private "law" enforcement professionals.
The lawyers don't even need to be incompetant. There is almost no way anyone could win such a case. However, it would cost the company thousands of dollars each time to have a lawyer go in and argue that the infringement was done by an individual who asserted that they had legal rights to copy the image. Even when you win a lawsuit, you're out the money it took to hire the lawyer to fight it. This is the expense they're trying to avoid.
Corporate lawyers are supposed to protect the companies, and management is supposed to decide how to spend the company's money most effectively. The cost of implementing a retarded policy is very small. Management looks at the cost of paying a lawyer to fight something the company doesn't care about and the cost of the stupid policy and implements the stupid policy because it's more cost effective.
There is no need to worry about if they can defend themselves legally because all of the actions are motivated purely by money. Any form of risk, no matter how small is bad because it can cost money. It's really that simple.
Recycling is a good thing when it's voluntary. Even with the deposit on the containers, it can still be voluntary. Leaving your empty can on a bench where somebody picks it up is a cooperative solution to avoid litter. However, once someone passes a law to force everyone to do it, someone will find a way to collect all the unredeemed deposit money and put it in their own pocket. I would bet that making a federal law to require everyone to do the same thing would turn a working system like Michigan's into a cesspool of corruption in short order.
Unfortunately, that's the trend that's applying to more and more aspects of our lives. Fear of being sued is the driver for this behavior. As a result, we have people who are being paid barely over minimum wage being asked to use their judgement. What's worse is that there is no penalty for errantly refusing to provide the service. This is the inevitable result of focusing on money and forgetting about the customer.
I remember that from when I lived in California. It's a container tax. It imposes upon the consumer to bring the containers to recycling centers where it takes about half an hour and they give you some fraction of the "deposit" since they measure on weight. There are plenty of places you can give up your containers for free since most people don't want to go through the hassle.
The reason all states don't have it is because it's a scam. When coke used to be in glass bottles, we used to take those back to the grocery store and get the deposit back. That system worked fine. The only reason the government got involved was to get their cut of the money.
In fact, many would argue that McDonalds doesn't sell any beef products.
The full specifications would only support this conclusion. Right now, we only think they're making burgers out of lizards and squirrels. The specs would tell us in what percentages and how they're spiced. It's probably better that we don't have that information.
Giving the tools to the script kiddies keeps the noise ratio high. It's not too likely that someone is going to be able to keep a vulnerability as their own personal in, so by making the tools commonly available, it makes the random attacks indistinguishable from the targeted attacks.
What should be and what is are two separate issues. There are at least two distinct perspectives being represented in this thread - those who are trying to define their ideal of how things should work and those who are relating how things work in the real world. Those who express how things are in the real world aren't necessarily lacking in open-mindedness, they're just victims of those who are. The world as a whole isn't very open minded.
And saying those things publicly, to people who didn't ask, sends another clear message. Something along the lines of "person who speaks mind without fear of retribution", which is often shortened to "troublemaker".
If you want to succeed, you have to understand the game you're playing. I don't agree with judging people on their appearance, but I see it happen all around me. No matter how enlightened we believe we are, we are in the minority and do not have enough influence to change the system. The unenlightened will do whatever it takes to protect the current way, because it's all they know. I know this because I am a troublemaker. I just don't let others know that before it's too late for them. =)
There are good paychecks out in the real world for people who have the ability to do things like this and the integrity to know better.
It sounds like a funny way to get back at someone, but don't expect it to get you much respect from anyone who signs the checks.
Software development managers? =)
We know that managers in large companies will no longer pay people to invent products on the company's dime if there is no return on investment. Patent protection is a form of protecting the future income.
Small companies or individuals can always develop ideas that are within their means. However, large scale research and development has to be done by organizations that can afford to fail 99% of the time while they make more than enough money the other 1% of the time.
The short version is that it's not helping anyone other than the offender. This is the implied negative connotation that is attached to calling someone an empire-builder.
I've noticed in my own experience is that small companies can't succeed with these people, so natural selection does the work. In large companies, the damage is rarely severe enough to have a self-correcting influence. The larger the number of empire builders in the organization, the more others are encouraged to take the same approach. A subordinate padding his empire intrinsically benefits their superiors, so there is a feedback loop that encourages this kind of behavior.
Promoting efficiency helps the business, but most businesses don't have a way to measure that benefit, so there is no reward to reinforce the positive behavior. I've suggested to my boss that we get a 10% cut of the cost savings for implementing good ideas. If this were done based on the realized savings for the first year, the incentive would be ongoing to improve more processes, the savings would be ongoing, but the cost of the bonus would only be paid once. The most obvious argument against this approach is that the people who are looking for ways to line their own pockets without regards to the well being of the company would create incredibly inefficient processes that they could then fix. I recommend firing these people, but I believe my zero-weasel-tolerance policy conflicts with our HR policies.
Telling the machine what to do is a basic level of knowledge needed. This part can be taught or learned independently. In order to program in a professional sense, most people also have to develop the ability to translate from what-the-user-says-they-want into a viable representation of what-the-user-needs. Being able to program is a skill, but one with limited application. As I understand these competitions, the requirements are fairly clearly written. I'd love to get those kind of requirements in the real world. I've spent 17 years as a programmer and have yet to get them, but I still hold out hope that one day, I will see requirements that are actually actionable.
To everyone else, a computer is a tool. Nothing more. The programmer is just the interpreter who translates between users and machines.
Empire-building is the practice of raising one's own value to an organization through the amount of resources that a person controls. For example, adding headcount is one way to expand one's empire. This also has the connotation of adding for the sake of adding, rather than adding out of necessity.
Consider the choice between adding one contract programmer for a year to automate a bunch of simple tasks, or hiring 10 full time employees to do those tasks. The empire-builder takes the latter approach, even though it's more expensive in the short and long term.
I think the problem is that there aren't a lot of good ideas on how to do this. If we had a good way to identify and promote people who have a natural talent in a field, we'd all be better off. Everyone may be created equal, but we all become unequal rather quickly in various areas. This is perfectly normal, we just don't have a system that is designed to handle the fact that someone like me should spend a lot more time on programming and give up on things like basketball, where I clearly suck.
Our education system is the product of an endless series of compromises. We have a lowest-common-denominator approach to educating people. This is a good way to ensure everyone gets a base education, but it doesn't create an environment where anyone can excel. The idea is that anyone who has completed all of the pre-requisites can go on to the next level. This only holds true where each level is attainable by all. In the real world, only those who have a dedication to learning and a genuine interest in a topic are going to go beyond competance to achieve excellence. A system that holds competance as the pinnacle of existance lacks this potential.
I frequently solve work problems by finding patterns in data or problems that suggest to me particular types of solutions. A working solution is the goal, but in order to teach someone else how to do the same thing, they have to be capable of seeing the same kind of patterns. If there were a preset number of patterns to check, the job could be done by a script instead of a person. Getting people to see and extract the patterns is not easy to teach. However, those who already see them can be taught easily how to do the rest of the job.
Sue all of them.
Choicepoint requested my credit report. I have a copy of my credit report that has this listed. If I ever run into a problem, I think I can make a case that it's because of them.
The beauty of our horribly flawed legal system is that justice is available for the right price.
The problem can also occur because the original application is tested against the real system, not the documented API. So a bug fix to the underlying system can both be correcting a bug and create an application error.
Throwaway systems are cost effective in the short term. That makes them popular with people who look at this quarter's stock price as both a goal an duration of their attention.
They're fighting a different battle. They are trying to protect their business model through legal intimidation. Do you think they could make this work if they didn't have a ton of money to lose on the effort? Their lawsuits are costing them far more than they settle for.