I have to admit my bubble was burst a little bit at how clearly unimpressive the room looked in those photos. The fact it took until now for them to get dedicated meeting space is laughable but should be of little surprise to us (a jab both at the importance they place on security and an office space joke for those of us who know how solid gold real-estate meeting rooms can become.) However, now that they've done so why is it that archaic?
Picture #4 is clearly their engineering conference room as defined in the article and without getting into specifics I expected more.
P.S. The fact it's
often standing-room-only in a real crisis speaks to how cheap they went IMHO and little about chair throwing since "he" would never show up to one of these;) I wonder if they have sales-dedicated and presentation rooms (probably) and what they look like.... hmmmm.
I think the mistake we're using here is that we're assuming most folks consume their news like we do. Sorry to generalize but I believe most of us seek to become informed and thoroughly review and critique what we read. However, most people are satisfied with tidbits and in fact want nothing more. For example, the macob are satisfied with a headline like "Multiple Car Accident Kills 50" and a thumb of the pile up... the noseies like "Brad Wears Ugly Glasses For the First Time" and a thumb... etc. Yes those are terrible headlines and hyperbole to make my point. Imagine a search engine unlike Google which provides summaries of multiple sources offering these tidbits in a single page without the source's ads? Oh wait http://www.ask.com/ and perhaps others although I'm stating soley that they have such a type of offering and not that they do so violating any rules.
I'm against most tactics that appear to be an organization seeking to squash an alternative or new and unknown element they think is encroaching on their bottom line and this move smells of it but feel it's a rare case of smoke without an actual fire. Just wanted to throw that out there while I seek more info on this tidbit.
Besides the shadiness which I completely agree is there I'm disappointed with Geek Squad. Granted coming in and quickly wiping systems regardless of the issue is what I've heard is their approach (not passing judgement either since the model works for general consumers) but didn't anybody from the tech to dispatch question whether they should be doing this? During my time consulting I certainly scrutinized all aspects of the tasks assigned to me since blindly following instructions in technology can lead to so many problems. Wonder what their liability, if any, is here as well since they should have known better than to wipe such a system.
Sorry you feel that way but it's awfully presumptious for you to think you know why someone would use "M$." I do so simply because of the abbreviation and character recognition as it makes it easier to read especially when there's many mentions. If G# was the acceptable abbreviation for Google I would use that one too. Nothing in that post is bashing M$ or in any way related to what you are inferring I'm trying to say by its usage by the way. Also...
Not meaning to stray offtopic, but why do people still find the need to try to stray offtopic?
Not meaning to stray offtopic, but why do grammar, language and other nazis still troll around trying to teach us feeble minds how to properly conduct ourselves online?
Granted Google has not yet shown us they're capacity for evil (tm) the way M$ has over the years but give them a chance... they're still young. Bottom line is that the same arguments I've seen here for why it's not a big deal (ex. do this, do that or don't use them) are the very ones used for why M$'s monopoly is not so bad (ex. use Linux, do this, do that) Problem is M$'s stanglehold at this time makes those options less "adaptable" for the masses. If we knew then what we know now we would have prevent M$ from even getting there.
But Google can do no evil, right, therefore despite this company being at that very point where we can do something before the ignorant masses consume their products in such quantities to the point where, like M$, change is difficult, we shouldn't worry about the same thing happening here, right? Yeah... right. Unfortunatley I see another monopoly coming but this time on personal information products which may not restrict our freedom of choice in the same sense as the M$ one does (eg. our ability to choose alternate technologies) but will be so valuable and so entrenched in everything that it'll be just as difficult to move away from.
We realistically could see most people, companies and even the governments depending on Google the way we did on Blackberries. It took the RIM injunction scare of 2006 to open some eyes up since even emergency services were depending on Blackberries (sigh.) Think beyond this on Google product, their 700MHz band bidding and every isolated move they've made in the past 5 years or so. Look at all of it holistically and as much as I like them and their products I don't like where it potentially leaves us in the future.
Bear in mind the construction value to these innovations, too. For example, aesthetics is normally the primary driver in new office constructions and cabling has to work around it. Not a big deal except in situations like the Empire State Building where the ceiling heights are already low, Washington DC's codes restricting building heights, and other extenuating but not too uncommon scenarios where architects have to push the limits to "create space." This leaves us with very little room to work with just about everywhere, some areas that are sheet rocked over or otherwise completely inaccessible and other cabling challenges necessitating expensive EMT conduit. The tighter the space the more aesthetics drive the effort leaving little functional room thus increasing EMT conduit and other cabling costs. Granted some of it's needed anyway to protect cabling but others are to address the propensity for fibre to be pushed passed its restrictive bend limits. When dealing with spaces where the square footage is in the 5 figure area the savings are in the 6 figures!
Also, it allows us now to even consider fibre in these tight spaces as until now our basic approach has been to only consider fibre when the connection point distances warrant it.
It was only September 18th when the U of A student tasering incident article http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/18/1239237 went up and I recall how the posts supported the use of tasers and even at that particularly unwarranted situation. I remember it vividly as it prompted me to post http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=301041&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20656011 not only about the topic but my fellow Slashdotters belligerent responses. Now I'm seeing some dramatic changes from you folks with respect to the usage of tasers so I'm wondering what happened. Interesting which posts just 2 months ago were modded up there versus now in this thread.
Seriously, though, I've never seen such a reversal here in such a short period of time without good reason so I'm stumped!
I probably should have been clearer so my apologies. I don't believe in uncrackable codes and suspect the unearthly resources required to break this are only available to the NSA. However, our goal should be to break it and disseminate it as only theorizing about it does little to actually prevent its usage. I know it's far-fetched and historically we don't go there but that's my point. We theorize and often even prove something without taking the action required to affect actual change (ex. RFID security issues with HID)
That's in fact the best way to defeat such backhanded efforts if they were intentional and not due to incompetence which thanks to chaos theory happened to create a seemingly planned back door. Offer the skeleton key freely to the masses disseminating it as much as possible thereby making the encryption scheme worthless. Without people using it it would do the NSA little good.
(v) take any actions or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that contains any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information; I'd consider that detrimental interference. Also, there's this one
(vii) upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, or promotional materials, that are in the nature of "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation that Linden Lab considers in its sole discretion to be of such nature;
There are others that I believe apply to the utilization of a bot, potential exploits through bots (ex. spamming) or both. Also, what they're extrapulating from the empirical evidence is off IMHO as well.
SL-bot observed pairs of normal avatars as they interacted. It found that users are, on average, six times more likely to shift position when someone comes to within 1.2 m. That backs up the idea that people also value their virtual personal space, say the researchers.
I'm sure it had nothing to do with being courteous, putting the new character into view to inspect or anything else. Yeah, they wanted their "personal virtual space"... sure. Sounds like another misread on cause and effect at the expense of opening a pandora's box.
Remember the uproar from the PIII chip serial numbers? How about the GPS tracking enabled in phones? We didn't even know what they had planned but the fact they existed and could potentially be used to track us was enough to foster consumer action that eventually made it possible to at least disable them. Granted in those cases the fact we had no way of disabling it was an important aspect but my point is that we had issue with it in principle. Unfortunately over the years I've noticed a decrease in healthy paranoia... or is it just me?
Google IMHO started to break this healthy paranoia by putting out a product that will index your email on their systems for an undisclosed purpose... and we ate it right up because woohoo it's a ton of storage and Google does no evil! This IMHO is but another probe to see how much they can get away with. I see it much like M$ and what they can get away with antitrust-wise, the RIAA and legal process, etc.
Besides privacy concerns, do we now need antitrust-like legislation regarding how much information about a person's life a single non-governmental agency can hold? This is not nearly as obscure as a PII serial number in terms of how dangerous, easily misused, etc. yet instead of being in an uproar we're "questioning" it. Replace Google with almost any other company (except Apple due to Jobs' reality suspension field) and I'd bet the "questioning" would be more like an uproar.
Beware the wolves in sheep's clothing... and, no, I'm no one's fanboy as in my role I have to be platform agnostic.
I look at the situation as follows. When you take, say, shared office space in business centers they also offer shared communal services such as printers, faxes, etc. It is reasonable to assume they did NOT put in a refrigerator that would accommodate every tenants needs. It is in fact understood that not every tenant will want to use it and it makes no sense to initially put in 100 fridges.
However, if that fridge then gets overloaded with food making it difficult for tenants to use, cleaning crews to deal with, etc. they can't go in there and start clandestine fridge raids where food is thrown out because dairy spoils faster and wouldn't last anyway, junk food isn't good for you so it's in your best interest, etc. Unfortunately in that scenario tenants can leave but for you folks stuck with only Comcast I'm sorry to read this latest development:(
They appear to function based on the belief that their members have solely benevolent motives behind their participation. What are they smoking and can I have some? Anyway, I'm not entirely sure if that would be considered a committee, subcomittee, etc. and therefore cannot speak authoritatively regarding what the next course of action is. However, these are smart people and anyone who's done those maze puzzles knows that after 1st grade you can tell where there's a dead end without having to draw a line all the way to it. My point is that this does not grind to a halt but it does suck to see these continuous roadblocks. Read up on the fun here http://publicaa.ansi.org/sites/apdl/Documents/Standards%20Activities/International%20Standardization/ISO/ISOIECDirectivesPart1.PDFformat.pdf and note page 11 section 1.7.4.
Now onto the two most important matters IMHO
1. Making an educated decision in the best interest of everyone on this planet for this and all standards
2. Ensuring a full investigation is made into whether M$ did have something to do with the dramatic and last minute influx of P class members.
It truly is all about money IMHO but even beyond those good points already mentioned. There's also this perception that a young person would be more likely to come up with something radically new which could be incredibly profitable or cost-reducing. I certainly don't agree with it and my technology staff is diverse in every respect including age as those gentelemen and women have a wealth of knowledge and experience (I'm the head of IT and not a business-person per se.)
However, in America it's about the stock market, patent trolling, gambling and thousands of other ways to make maximum profit from minimal effort. Most Americans would rather play the lottery every day in hopes of making it big (regardless of how unlikely it is) than save or invest the same small amounts over time. We truly do think 10 minutes ahead and rotating in young staff is like being a new lottery ticket to them while ensuring at least the bottom line is reduced (which of course it's not.)
The heart of the problem IMHO is all about measurement. Many business people still measure a web presence's success solely on 1990s approaches such as number of hits. I could go through a ton of inaccurate if not completely incorrect ways to do measurement at the business level which are still in practice today and staff utilization is certainly one of them. But, it's virtually a lost cause as it's always translated into "that will cost more (insert resource here) and what we have is good enough." Even as overly litigous as we are here in America I believe suits like this are healthy and great to see. Too bad it came out of California as it's already notorious in business as heavily favoring employees over employers...
Are you even reading my posts or just skimming? Again, it's not due to a lack of trust rather their positioning. If you read the entire back and forth on wp-hackers for the past few days you'll see the tonality of their positioning. This is about not patronizing those who take bullheaded approaches to customer issues. It's about not aligning yourself with products that are beginning to go down any slippery slope (stability, support, whatever.) What's worse is that they're not even sure what they want the info for so it's a huge blow to their customer base for absolutely no reason. So again, it's not about the info being gathered itself or trusting what they, M$ or anyone does with any info. I know that's an awefully fun convo for certain types to jump onto so they can get some weird fulfillment from pointing out others hypocracy but you're doing it in the wrong post.
Now speaking of tone, up to this point you've been accusatory and made points that although valid have nothing to do with what I've written. Not once did I say or even allude to the business decision being about trust or lack thereof. The only point I made about trust is that generally it's a good business practice to assume your customers don't trust you and do what you can to win that trust. They're doing just the opposite which is a virtual slap in the face inevitably turning off customers, supporters and other key folks. It's their project and they can do what they want. They've asked us to take it or leave it (fork it, or whatever other than support them) so I'm doing just that.
I think you missed my point as it has nothing to do with paranoia. It's a business decision based on the factors I listed. All orgs should consider that it's best to assume your customers don't trust you and do your best to win that trust. The way I see it they gave everyone the middle finger and said change it yourselves or go elsewhere. Then Matt went ahead and actually wrote it (in wp-hackers) solidifying my understanding of their position. So, why would I want to give a vendor my business when that's their approach/philosophy/etc? What else will be done that they say the same for? Change this one piece now... another next quater... then monthly... does it stop? It's not a good business decision to go down such a path and can use our development dollars in better places. Perhaps if WP was truly a cut above all else and we had no viable alternative we'd eat it like we do M$, Oracle, Apple and a whole slew of others' crap. However they're not and that was part of my point as well.
I have been doing research in the space for several months before today however it was really Matt Mullenweg's comments and therefore the product's positioning that changed everything for me. Justifying the gathering of information without full disclosure and an immediately evident way to disable it because "it does no harm" and "could be useful [to them] in the future" (9/23, 6:09 pm) is irresponsible at best.
A couple of other comments and what I extrapulated from them include:
9/23, 3:35 pm - I would also recommend disabling the updates in Mac OS X, Firefox, Windows, Thunderbird, Adobe Photoshop, and any other third-party applications you have. As all of those are tied to your personal IP and not your server IP they have far more implications for privacy. - Don't compare Wordpress to those products. Most have issues with their privacy policies already but when measured up against alternatives and everything they bring to bear (features or lack thereof, stability, support, etc.) most are willing to deal. Wordpress is no where near that position of leverage and are already acting like it.
9/23, 6:41 pm - If you don't trust wordpress.org, I suggest you do one of the following:
1. Use different software.
2. Fork WordPress.
3. Install one of the aforementioned plugins.
That's just a small exerpt from a few hours of dialogue and part of the large amounts of substantiation for not going with their product. In fact, Mr. Mullenweg in that second post above left me no choice but to do so from a business perspective as only option #3 allows us to choose Wordpress and it's not exactly an ideal solution. We'd like to reduce the additional layers software needs to function to our specifications and whereas a truly turnkey solution may be impossible, this is a step in the opposite direction.
Nevertheless, the business decision is based on their positioning and my take on where this seems to be going. It may be just fine for consumer bloggers but too risky for our organization to jump on board at this time.
P.S. I agree with much of/. summaries of late being flamebait and therefore normally don't go much past the initial posting and FA (e.g. sans commentary.) Seeing that you were already awarded points based on what you and I both agree is obvious due diligence when considering new products is not surprising;)
I love it when little guys act high and mighty. Yes, they're "little" as compared to say Apple or MS who can pull stunts like this and the general populous just acquiesces. I include myself in that statement as, at times, it still makes business sense to go with a product even if you don't agree with all aspects of what it does. This, however, IMHO is not one of those cases.
Ironically, I was considering global site licenses of this product for our public relations agency. Thanks for dropping out of the running!
I searched but found no statistics on tasers. Nevertheless, it'd be an unfair comparison as we have no way of tracking their numbers, usage and other critical details since tasers are relatively new in comparison. In terms of their adoption I have no idea for sure but doubt it was because they're less lethal. A baton alone is highly unlikely to be lethal when used properly; you don't hit someone in the knee and they die. A taser on the other hand can kill even when used as intended. If used properly there is almost zero chance for death in standard take-down maneauvers with a baton. A taser on the other hand can kill even at low voltage, regardless of physical condition, location of strike, etc. It's literally a crap shoot that you'll kill the person and we're still studying the long-term effects it has on some people. To me it's just another one of those cases where we're working in absolutes... it's not immediately harming me long-term so I guess it's ok. The little research that has gone into it is government-funded and thus biases IMHO. Quotes like "None of the taser victims had serious long-term effects, whereas 50% of those with bullet wounds did." are hilarious... who compares tasers to guns? http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0140673601059505
I was making a point about law enforcement devices themselves and thus it's under the assumption they're being used properly. That's also why chokeholds are irrelevant to my point. If a cop or any person actually wants to kill someone they can and will irrespective of the device. However, why would we want devices in law enforcement that are guaranteed to introduce a probability of death, usable by any person, require almost no effort... it's scary to me as it's almost like a compromise between a baton and a gun but that everyone can quickly and easily use. This especially makes sense in light of research studies (e.g. they're often compared that way.) The problem is law enforcement is often under too much pressure and this "apparent" easy way out is being misued.
Unless you direct a baton strike to the head it's HIGHLY unlikely you'll die from it. A taser on the other hand because of the electrochemical nature of our bodies introduces the possibility of DEATH each time it's used.
Also, a baton would NOT be used on say an extremely frail person since it's immediately evident the damage would be far worse than on a "normal" human body. You can throttle the force used and use a number of other things to control the situation. ANY amount of electricity on the other hand has the potential to stop your heart and when coupled with an arythmia or a number of other IMPOSSIBLE to see conditions it's LETHAL.
Some of your responses are as frightening as the rent-a-cops' actions themselves. Anyway, I believe the problem started when there was no "reasonable period of verbal instruction from the authoritative parties" asking that he leave the premises. They immediately resorted to physical violence after shutting off the mic by grabbing him that way and thus THEY escalated the matter from there. He MUST be verbally instructed to leave and given the opportunity to do so. I'm sorry but EVERY ONE OF YOU would be pissed if you did nothing wrong and were treated that way. Want to argue that he DID do something wrong? Fine. Then you'd be pissed if you were loitering or jaywalking (which is technically illegal) and was treated that way from the start.
Also scary... I wonder how many of you would have looked at this video COMPLETELY differently IF it was:
1. NOT a guy rather a girl... and how about an attractive girl?
2. NOT an annoying hyperactive person rather someone more even-tempered... and how about a soft-spoken person?
3. NOT presented in such a tabloid fashion rather substantive and less controversial... and how about if it was presented alongside another aid-like person carrying the book and other materials?
I wanted to provide a link to that minister who was tasered recently while attempting to participate/protest Petraeus' testimony to Congress but "taser" is such a hot topic I can't find it. Point is that it was a similar circumstance but because he was a "man of the cloth," older and somewhat soft-spoken it was an "outrage."
What that kid is and did makes him ANNOYING but not a THREAT. We may want to TAZE anything that's ANNOYING much like that which is a THREAT but it doesn't make it right and is quite scary to see "authority" fumbling with.
I don't get it. Youtube is somewhat held harmless (TBD) by claiming they simply have a repository of videos controlled by the masses for which they're happy to take down content that violates DMCA once "alerted" by the copyright holder. Their position, I thought, was that they don't deal with the content granularly and its too vast to hold them responsible.
To date Youtube has provided somewhat simple features such as ranking and searching however if they're now doing work above and beyond that by inserting ads on popular videos, measuring impressions and then being compensated does that not imply a more intimate relationship with the content? Does that not then increase their liability with respect to not hosting content that violates DMCA?
Also, am I the only one who thinks the only truly "good" Youtube content includes some degree of DMCA violation? Unless you make your own movie (which 99.9% of the time will completely suck) some portion such as the music will belong to someone else.
Granted there's plenty of changes needed in the US legal system but I'm wondering why you would have so long to respond to the judgement. Why don't we have tight deadlines? IMHO you sould have 24 hours to "reply" to the judgement with intent to appeal or accept. Whether you're ready with all the details of the appeal is irrelevant as the courts just need to know if this should remain on the radar. What we appear to end up with without a short deadline is an indeterminable amount of time to come up with a reason to appeal. If it's isn't clear at the time of judgement exactly why you warrant an appeal then we shouldn't allow people the time to come up with one. IANAL but wasn't the intention of the appeal process to provide, as needed, an opportunity to re-examine a case and not as a standard part of the judicial system whereas everyone gets at least 2 shots so long as you can conjure up some new angle?
Companies only care about their bottom line. Brand identity and other priorities are all directly related to their profitability and thus everything comes down to the bottom line.
Looking at an extreme example such as our children's welfare, the USCPSC (http://www.cpsc.gov/) deals with product safety but does have a focus on children. If it wasn't for this commission the toy industry would be in far worse shape with respect to safety than it already is. Mattel isn't the only company using cheap Chinese labor with little to no QA to keep their profit margins up. They, too, have a team of actuarial dorks showing them how their bottom line is dramatically improved using this model and risking the occasional big hit (http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml07/07257 .html.) The USCPSC keeps them in check to ensure even cost-prohibitive measures are taken when it comes to protecting consumers. Then again, we are talking about injury, death and mitigating a $700 billion/year loss in the US attributed to defective products so I do recongnize it's an extreme example. However, it illustrates that even when the stakes are high companies still only care about the bottom line so don't expect software companies to be any better.
The NIST put together a report in 2002 outlining the cost of software errors to the US economy and recommending some next steps (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/n02-1 0.htm.) They estimated a third could be elminated through improved QA. Companies compared the cost of improving QA to the anticipated reduction of product-defect related expenditures and when the numbers weren't there they passed.
Granted, a commission would only be a start and apply solely to US companies. However, you can bet that consumers will remain at least as ignorant about their software as they are about the chemical composition of the toys their kids are chewing on. You can also bet that software companies will remain at least as irresponsible as their toy industry counterparts. Seems to me a third-party is the only way however it has to be legitimate, centralized, credible and well communicated. I think the MoAB, MoKB and other LMH projects showed how these principles could work even if a number of fixes came from the community and not the companies themselves.
Until then I say responsible disclosure is the way to go with full disclosure after 30 days if it's not fixed or at least officially communicated to the public by the developers. If you drive over a failing bridge as part of your commute would you want the city to withold this information for fear terrorists will exploit it? Sure, you say "close it" but that's like saying a company should "recall the software" until it's fixed. You say "don't use the bridge" but that's like saying a company should stop using the software. Sometimes these are options... sometimes they're not... but if you're not for disclosure it's like saying the city should keep quiet until they're ready to fix it.
Slashdot Mirror
Picture #4 is clearly their engineering conference room as defined in the article and without getting into specifics I expected more.
P.S. The fact it's often standing-room-only in a real crisis speaks to how cheap they went IMHO and little about chair throwing since "he" would never show up to one of these
I think the mistake we're using here is that we're assuming most folks consume their news like we do. Sorry to generalize but I believe most of us seek to become informed and thoroughly review and critique what we read. However, most people are satisfied with tidbits and in fact want nothing more. For example, the macob are satisfied with a headline like "Multiple Car Accident Kills 50" and a thumb of the pile up... the noseies like "Brad Wears Ugly Glasses For the First Time" and a thumb... etc. Yes those are terrible headlines and hyperbole to make my point. Imagine a search engine unlike Google which provides summaries of multiple sources offering these tidbits in a single page without the source's ads? Oh wait http://www.ask.com/ and perhaps others although I'm stating soley that they have such a type of offering and not that they do so violating any rules.
I'm against most tactics that appear to be an organization seeking to squash an alternative or new and unknown element they think is encroaching on their bottom line and this move smells of it but feel it's a rare case of smoke without an actual fire. Just wanted to throw that out there while I seek more info on this tidbit.
Besides the shadiness which I completely agree is there I'm disappointed with Geek Squad. Granted coming in and quickly wiping systems regardless of the issue is what I've heard is their approach (not passing judgement either since the model works for general consumers) but didn't anybody from the tech to dispatch question whether they should be doing this? During my time consulting I certainly scrutinized all aspects of the tasks assigned to me since blindly following instructions in technology can lead to so many problems. Wonder what their liability, if any, is here as well since they should have known better than to wipe such a system.
Sorry you feel that way but it's awfully presumptious for you to think you know why someone would use "M$." I do so simply because of the abbreviation and character recognition as it makes it easier to read especially when there's many mentions. If G# was the acceptable abbreviation for Google I would use that one too. Nothing in that post is bashing M$ or in any way related to what you are inferring I'm trying to say by its usage by the way. Also...
;)
Not meaning to stray offtopic, but why do people still find the need to try to stray offtopic?
Not meaning to stray offtopic, but why do grammar, language and other nazis still troll around trying to teach us feeble minds how to properly conduct ourselves online?
Sorry but you asked for it
Granted Google has not yet shown us they're capacity for evil (tm) the way M$ has over the years but give them a chance... they're still young. Bottom line is that the same arguments I've seen here for why it's not a big deal (ex. do this, do that or don't use them) are the very ones used for why M$'s monopoly is not so bad (ex. use Linux, do this, do that) Problem is M$'s stanglehold at this time makes those options less "adaptable" for the masses. If we knew then what we know now we would have prevent M$ from even getting there.
But Google can do no evil, right, therefore despite this company being at that very point where we can do something before the ignorant masses consume their products in such quantities to the point where, like M$, change is difficult, we shouldn't worry about the same thing happening here, right? Yeah... right. Unfortunatley I see another monopoly coming but this time on personal information products which may not restrict our freedom of choice in the same sense as the M$ one does (eg. our ability to choose alternate technologies) but will be so valuable and so entrenched in everything that it'll be just as difficult to move away from.
We realistically could see most people, companies and even the governments depending on Google the way we did on Blackberries. It took the RIM injunction scare of 2006 to open some eyes up since even emergency services were depending on Blackberries (sigh.) Think beyond this on Google product, their 700MHz band bidding and every isolated move they've made in the past 5 years or so. Look at all of it holistically and as much as I like them and their products I don't like where it potentially leaves us in the future.
Beware of wolves in sheeps clothing. This is Google http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhu9ORveuo4&feature=related and shit I'm not going to Candy Mountain.
Bear in mind the construction value to these innovations, too. For example, aesthetics is normally the primary driver in new office constructions and cabling has to work around it. Not a big deal except in situations like the Empire State Building where the ceiling heights are already low, Washington DC's codes restricting building heights, and other extenuating but not too uncommon scenarios where architects have to push the limits to "create space." This leaves us with very little room to work with just about everywhere, some areas that are sheet rocked over or otherwise completely inaccessible and other cabling challenges necessitating expensive EMT conduit. The tighter the space the more aesthetics drive the effort leaving little functional room thus increasing EMT conduit and other cabling costs. Granted some of it's needed anyway to protect cabling but others are to address the propensity for fibre to be pushed passed its restrictive bend limits. When dealing with spaces where the square footage is in the 5 figure area the savings are in the 6 figures!
Also, it allows us now to even consider fibre in these tight spaces as until now our basic approach has been to only consider fibre when the connection point distances warrant it.
It was only September 18th when the U of A student tasering incident article http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/18/1239237 went up and I recall how the posts supported the use of tasers and even at that particularly unwarranted situation. I remember it vividly as it prompted me to post http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=301041&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20656011 not only about the topic but my fellow Slashdotters belligerent responses. Now I'm seeing some dramatic changes from you folks with respect to the usage of tasers so I'm wondering what happened. Interesting which posts just 2 months ago were modded up there versus now in this thread.
Seriously, though, I've never seen such a reversal here in such a short period of time without good reason so I'm stumped!
I probably should have been clearer so my apologies. I don't believe in uncrackable codes and suspect the unearthly resources required to break this are only available to the NSA. However, our goal should be to break it and disseminate it as only theorizing about it does little to actually prevent its usage. I know it's far-fetched and historically we don't go there but that's my point. We theorize and often even prove something without taking the action required to affect actual change (ex. RFID security issues with HID)
That's in fact the best way to defeat such backhanded efforts if they were intentional and not due to incompetence which thanks to chaos theory happened to create a seemingly planned back door. Offer the skeleton key freely to the masses disseminating it as much as possible thereby making the encryption scheme worthless. Without people using it it would do the NSA little good.
(v) take any actions or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that contains any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information; I'd consider that detrimental interference. Also, there's this one
(vii) upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, or promotional materials, that are in the nature of "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation that Linden Lab considers in its sole discretion to be of such nature;
There are others that I believe apply to the utilization of a bot, potential exploits through bots (ex. spamming) or both. Also, what they're extrapulating from the empirical evidence is off IMHO as well.
SL-bot observed pairs of normal avatars as they interacted. It found that users are, on average, six times more likely to shift position when someone comes to within 1.2 m. That backs up the idea that people also value their virtual personal space, say the researchers.
I'm sure it had nothing to do with being courteous, putting the new character into view to inspect or anything else. Yeah, they wanted their "personal virtual space"... sure. Sounds like another misread on cause and effect at the expense of opening a pandora's box.
Remember the uproar from the PIII chip serial numbers? How about the GPS tracking enabled in phones? We didn't even know what they had planned but the fact they existed and could potentially be used to track us was enough to foster consumer action that eventually made it possible to at least disable them. Granted in those cases the fact we had no way of disabling it was an important aspect but my point is that we had issue with it in principle. Unfortunately over the years I've noticed a decrease in healthy paranoia... or is it just me?
Google IMHO started to break this healthy paranoia by putting out a product that will index your email on their systems for an undisclosed purpose... and we ate it right up because woohoo it's a ton of storage and Google does no evil! This IMHO is but another probe to see how much they can get away with. I see it much like M$ and what they can get away with antitrust-wise, the RIAA and legal process, etc.
Besides privacy concerns, do we now need antitrust-like legislation regarding how much information about a person's life a single non-governmental agency can hold? This is not nearly as obscure as a PII serial number in terms of how dangerous, easily misused, etc. yet instead of being in an uproar we're "questioning" it. Replace Google with almost any other company (except Apple due to Jobs' reality suspension field) and I'd bet the "questioning" would be more like an uproar.
Beware the wolves in sheep's clothing... and, no, I'm no one's fanboy as in my role I have to be platform agnostic.
I look at the situation as follows. When you take, say, shared office space in business centers they also offer shared communal services such as printers, faxes, etc. It is reasonable to assume they did NOT put in a refrigerator that would accommodate every tenants needs. It is in fact understood that not every tenant will want to use it and it makes no sense to initially put in 100 fridges.
:(
However, if that fridge then gets overloaded with food making it difficult for tenants to use, cleaning crews to deal with, etc. they can't go in there and start clandestine fridge raids where food is thrown out because dairy spoils faster and wouldn't last anyway, junk food isn't good for you so it's in your best interest, etc. Unfortunately in that scenario tenants can leave but for you folks stuck with only Comcast I'm sorry to read this latest development
They appear to function based on the belief that their members have solely benevolent motives behind their participation. What are they smoking and can I have some? Anyway, I'm not entirely sure if that would be considered a committee, subcomittee, etc. and therefore cannot speak authoritatively regarding what the next course of action is. However, these are smart people and anyone who's done those maze puzzles knows that after 1st grade you can tell where there's a dead end without having to draw a line all the way to it. My point is that this does not grind to a halt but it does suck to see these continuous roadblocks. Read up on the fun here http://publicaa.ansi.org/sites/apdl/Documents/Standards%20Activities/International%20Standardization/ISO/ISOIECDirectivesPart1.PDFformat.pdf and note page 11 section 1.7.4.
Now onto the two most important matters IMHO
1. Making an educated decision in the best interest of everyone on this planet for this and all standards
2. Ensuring a full investigation is made into whether M$ did have something to do with the dramatic and last minute influx of P class members.
It truly is all about money IMHO but even beyond those good points already mentioned. There's also this perception that a young person would be more likely to come up with something radically new which could be incredibly profitable or cost-reducing. I certainly don't agree with it and my technology staff is diverse in every respect including age as those gentelemen and women have a wealth of knowledge and experience (I'm the head of IT and not a business-person per se.)
However, in America it's about the stock market, patent trolling, gambling and thousands of other ways to make maximum profit from minimal effort. Most Americans would rather play the lottery every day in hopes of making it big (regardless of how unlikely it is) than save or invest the same small amounts over time. We truly do think 10 minutes ahead and rotating in young staff is like being a new lottery ticket to them while ensuring at least the bottom line is reduced (which of course it's not.)
The heart of the problem IMHO is all about measurement. Many business people still measure a web presence's success solely on 1990s approaches such as number of hits. I could go through a ton of inaccurate if not completely incorrect ways to do measurement at the business level which are still in practice today and staff utilization is certainly one of them. But, it's virtually a lost cause as it's always translated into "that will cost more (insert resource here) and what we have is good enough." Even as overly litigous as we are here in America I believe suits like this are healthy and great to see. Too bad it came out of California as it's already notorious in business as heavily favoring employees over employers...
Are you even reading my posts or just skimming? Again, it's not due to a lack of trust rather their positioning. If you read the entire back and forth on wp-hackers for the past few days you'll see the tonality of their positioning. This is about not patronizing those who take bullheaded approaches to customer issues. It's about not aligning yourself with products that are beginning to go down any slippery slope (stability, support, whatever.) What's worse is that they're not even sure what they want the info for so it's a huge blow to their customer base for absolutely no reason. So again, it's not about the info being gathered itself or trusting what they, M$ or anyone does with any info. I know that's an awefully fun convo for certain types to jump onto so they can get some weird fulfillment from pointing out others hypocracy but you're doing it in the wrong post.
Now speaking of tone, up to this point you've been accusatory and made points that although valid have nothing to do with what I've written. Not once did I say or even allude to the business decision being about trust or lack thereof. The only point I made about trust is that generally it's a good business practice to assume your customers don't trust you and do what you can to win that trust. They're doing just the opposite which is a virtual slap in the face inevitably turning off customers, supporters and other key folks. It's their project and they can do what they want. They've asked us to take it or leave it (fork it, or whatever other than support them) so I'm doing just that.
I think you missed my point as it has nothing to do with paranoia. It's a business decision based on the factors I listed. All orgs should consider that it's best to assume your customers don't trust you and do your best to win that trust. The way I see it they gave everyone the middle finger and said change it yourselves or go elsewhere. Then Matt went ahead and actually wrote it (in wp-hackers) solidifying my understanding of their position. So, why would I want to give a vendor my business when that's their approach/philosophy/etc? What else will be done that they say the same for? Change this one piece now... another next quater... then monthly... does it stop? It's not a good business decision to go down such a path and can use our development dollars in better places. Perhaps if WP was truly a cut above all else and we had no viable alternative we'd eat it like we do M$, Oracle, Apple and a whole slew of others' crap. However they're not and that was part of my point as well.
I have been doing research in the space for several months before today however it was really Matt Mullenweg's comments and therefore the product's positioning that changed everything for me. Justifying the gathering of information without full disclosure and an immediately evident way to disable it because "it does no harm" and "could be useful [to them] in the future" (9/23, 6:09 pm) is irresponsible at best.
/. summaries of late being flamebait and therefore normally don't go much past the initial posting and FA (e.g. sans commentary.) Seeing that you were already awarded points based on what you and I both agree is obvious due diligence when considering new products is not surprising ;)
A couple of other comments and what I extrapulated from them include: 9/23, 3:35 pm - I would also recommend disabling the updates in Mac OS X, Firefox, Windows, Thunderbird, Adobe Photoshop, and any other third-party applications you have. As all of those are tied to your personal IP and not your server IP they have far more implications for privacy. - Don't compare Wordpress to those products. Most have issues with their privacy policies already but when measured up against alternatives and everything they bring to bear (features or lack thereof, stability, support, etc.) most are willing to deal. Wordpress is no where near that position of leverage and are already acting like it.
9/23, 6:41 pm - If you don't trust wordpress.org, I suggest you do one of the following: 1. Use different software. 2. Fork WordPress. 3. Install one of the aforementioned plugins.
That's just a small exerpt from a few hours of dialogue and part of the large amounts of substantiation for not going with their product. In fact, Mr. Mullenweg in that second post above left me no choice but to do so from a business perspective as only option #3 allows us to choose Wordpress and it's not exactly an ideal solution. We'd like to reduce the additional layers software needs to function to our specifications and whereas a truly turnkey solution may be impossible, this is a step in the opposite direction.
Nevertheless, the business decision is based on their positioning and my take on where this seems to be going. It may be just fine for consumer bloggers but too risky for our organization to jump on board at this time.
P.S. I agree with much of
I love it when little guys act high and mighty. Yes, they're "little" as compared to say Apple or MS who can pull stunts like this and the general populous just acquiesces. I include myself in that statement as, at times, it still makes business sense to go with a product even if you don't agree with all aspects of what it does. This, however, IMHO is not one of those cases.
Ironically, I was considering global site licenses of this product for our public relations agency. Thanks for dropping out of the running!
I searched but found no statistics on tasers. Nevertheless, it'd be an unfair comparison as we have no way of tracking their numbers, usage and other critical details since tasers are relatively new in comparison. In terms of their adoption I have no idea for sure but doubt it was because they're less lethal. A baton alone is highly unlikely to be lethal when used properly; you don't hit someone in the knee and they die. A taser on the other hand can kill even when used as intended. If used properly there is almost zero chance for death in standard take-down maneauvers with a baton. A taser on the other hand can kill even at low voltage, regardless of physical condition, location of strike, etc. It's literally a crap shoot that you'll kill the person and we're still studying the long-term effects it has on some people. To me it's just another one of those cases where we're working in absolutes... it's not immediately harming me long-term so I guess it's ok. The little research that has gone into it is government-funded and thus biases IMHO. Quotes like "None of the taser victims had serious long-term effects, whereas 50% of those with bullet wounds did." are hilarious... who compares tasers to guns? http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0140673601059505
I was making a point about law enforcement devices themselves and thus it's under the assumption they're being used properly. That's also why chokeholds are irrelevant to my point. If a cop or any person actually wants to kill someone they can and will irrespective of the device. However, why would we want devices in law enforcement that are guaranteed to introduce a probability of death, usable by any person, require almost no effort... it's scary to me as it's almost like a compromise between a baton and a gun but that everyone can quickly and easily use. This especially makes sense in light of research studies (e.g. they're often compared that way.) The problem is law enforcement is often under too much pressure and this "apparent" easy way out is being misued.
Sorry to scare you with the caps.
Unless you direct a baton strike to the head it's HIGHLY unlikely you'll die from it. A taser on the other hand because of the electrochemical nature of our bodies introduces the possibility of DEATH each time it's used.
Also, a baton would NOT be used on say an extremely frail person since it's immediately evident the damage would be far worse than on a "normal" human body. You can throttle the force used and use a number of other things to control the situation. ANY amount of electricity on the other hand has the potential to stop your heart and when coupled with an arythmia or a number of other IMPOSSIBLE to see conditions it's LETHAL.
Some of your responses are as frightening as the rent-a-cops' actions themselves. Anyway, I believe the problem started when there was no "reasonable period of verbal instruction from the authoritative parties" asking that he leave the premises. They immediately resorted to physical violence after shutting off the mic by grabbing him that way and thus THEY escalated the matter from there. He MUST be verbally instructed to leave and given the opportunity to do so. I'm sorry but EVERY ONE OF YOU would be pissed if you did nothing wrong and were treated that way. Want to argue that he DID do something wrong? Fine. Then you'd be pissed if you were loitering or jaywalking (which is technically illegal) and was treated that way from the start.
Also scary... I wonder how many of you would have looked at this video COMPLETELY differently IF it was:
1. NOT a guy rather a girl... and how about an attractive girl?
2. NOT an annoying hyperactive person rather someone more even-tempered... and how about a soft-spoken person?
3. NOT presented in such a tabloid fashion rather substantive and less controversial... and how about if it was presented alongside another aid-like person carrying the book and other materials?
I wanted to provide a link to that minister who was tasered recently while attempting to participate/protest Petraeus' testimony to Congress but "taser" is such a hot topic I can't find it. Point is that it was a similar circumstance but because he was a "man of the cloth," older and somewhat soft-spoken it was an "outrage."
What that kid is and did makes him ANNOYING but not a THREAT. We may want to TAZE anything that's ANNOYING much like that which is a THREAT but it doesn't make it right and is quite scary to see "authority" fumbling with.
I don't get it. Youtube is somewhat held harmless (TBD) by claiming they simply have a repository of videos controlled by the masses for which they're happy to take down content that violates DMCA once "alerted" by the copyright holder. Their position, I thought, was that they don't deal with the content granularly and its too vast to hold them responsible.
To date Youtube has provided somewhat simple features such as ranking and searching however if they're now doing work above and beyond that by inserting ads on popular videos, measuring impressions and then being compensated does that not imply a more intimate relationship with the content? Does that not then increase their liability with respect to not hosting content that violates DMCA?
Also, am I the only one who thinks the only truly "good" Youtube content includes some degree of DMCA violation? Unless you make your own movie (which 99.9% of the time will completely suck) some portion such as the music will belong to someone else.
Granted there's plenty of changes needed in the US legal system but I'm wondering why you would have so long to respond to the judgement. Why don't we have tight deadlines? IMHO you sould have 24 hours to "reply" to the judgement with intent to appeal or accept. Whether you're ready with all the details of the appeal is irrelevant as the courts just need to know if this should remain on the radar. What we appear to end up with without a short deadline is an indeterminable amount of time to come up with a reason to appeal. If it's isn't clear at the time of judgement exactly why you warrant an appeal then we shouldn't allow people the time to come up with one. IANAL but wasn't the intention of the appeal process to provide, as needed, an opportunity to re-examine a case and not as a standard part of the judicial system whereas everyone gets at least 2 shots so long as you can conjure up some new angle?
Companies only care about their bottom line. Brand identity and other priorities are all directly related to their profitability and thus everything comes down to the bottom line.
7 .html.) The USCPSC keeps them in check to ensure even cost-prohibitive measures are taken when it comes to protecting consumers. Then again, we are talking about injury, death and mitigating a $700 billion/year loss in the US attributed to defective products so I do recongnize it's an extreme example. However, it illustrates that even when the stakes are high companies still only care about the bottom line so don't expect software companies to be any better.
1 0.htm.) They estimated a third could be elminated through improved QA. Companies compared the cost of improving QA to the anticipated reduction of product-defect related expenditures and when the numbers weren't there they passed.
Looking at an extreme example such as our children's welfare, the USCPSC (http://www.cpsc.gov/) deals with product safety but does have a focus on children. If it wasn't for this commission the toy industry would be in far worse shape with respect to safety than it already is. Mattel isn't the only company using cheap Chinese labor with little to no QA to keep their profit margins up. They, too, have a team of actuarial dorks showing them how their bottom line is dramatically improved using this model and risking the occasional big hit (http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml07/0725
The NIST put together a report in 2002 outlining the cost of software errors to the US economy and recommending some next steps (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/n02-
Granted, a commission would only be a start and apply solely to US companies. However, you can bet that consumers will remain at least as ignorant about their software as they are about the chemical composition of the toys their kids are chewing on. You can also bet that software companies will remain at least as irresponsible as their toy industry counterparts. Seems to me a third-party is the only way however it has to be legitimate, centralized, credible and well communicated. I think the MoAB, MoKB and other LMH projects showed how these principles could work even if a number of fixes came from the community and not the companies themselves.
Until then I say responsible disclosure is the way to go with full disclosure after 30 days if it's not fixed or at least officially communicated to the public by the developers. If you drive over a failing bridge as part of your commute would you want the city to withold this information for fear terrorists will exploit it? Sure, you say "close it" but that's like saying a company should "recall the software" until it's fixed. You say "don't use the bridge" but that's like saying a company should stop using the software. Sometimes these are options... sometimes they're not... but if you're not for disclosure it's like saying the city should keep quiet until they're ready to fix it.