I've often heard the term, "where there is smoke there is fire".
This makes me wonder if there was something strange going on with the IPO. A lot of pissed off people who lost a lot of money. One one hand I can't feel sorry for people that lost money since anybody with a brain could figure out Facebook was not worth that much. On the other hand, if there were any shenanigans, I don't think people at Facebook should get away with it.
It is pretty strange to see that much high level "talent" leave. Suspicious is another word.
Having read it now there is nothing even remotely close between groping a women's crotch, which is what the article writer spoke of happening to her, and this guy being creepy.
The worst thing he did was to put an arm across the shoulders. Not what I would call sexual battery, but certainly unwanted physical contact and violating boundaries.
I think the 2 year ban was appropriate after reading what actually happened. A lifetime ban just seems excessive and effectively terminates whatever career the guy had in the industry. There is no pretense at rehabilitation there, just a death sentence.
Maybe you had to be there to fully understand the level of creepiness, but from what she describes, this man has been made a harsh example. Perhaps a bit unfairly.
The groping incident is a much better example and a reason to be having the dialogues in this thread.
Defcon just needs to enforce sensible policies that provide a deterrent against sexual harassment. Anything behavior that goes beyond sexual harassment and ventures into assault and/or battery is dealt with by the authorities with cooperation by people attending Defcon.
Moving Defcon does nothing and only provides a flimsy excuse for inexcusable behavior. That excuse being, "Las Vegas made us do it".
On that note, the single biggest improvement in that respect would actually be to move DEFCON from Las Vegas. People just behave badly there - for better or worse this isn't just a geek thing or a DEFCON thing.
That's a terrible idea. What about all the women that have to live in Las Vegas?
Sexual harassment, assault, and battery must not be tolerated anywhere in society. Las Vegas does not deserve a special exemption as being a spot where men can go, and stop comporting themselves like gentlemen. That does not mean you can't get a little crazy either. I've been completely fucking plastered and flirting with women and I can tell you I still behaved like a gentleman. In Las Vegas too. I didn't grope them and make lewd comments about how I wanted them to service me sexually.
I don't know if a lifetime ban is appropriate in this specific case because there is no article on what actually happened. It seems that the women writing the article talks about having her crotch groped. That is sexual battery and a felony.
We have laws for this stuff. While I don't support multi-year sentences for just groping a woman, I would absolutely throw the bastard in jail for 6-12 months. People don't have a real grasp on just how long that is in a prison environment. Think about something like your two week vacation, that just seems a lot longer, and then multiply it.
Where the laws don't cover it, that's where organizations can step in and remove the person for whatever time period they deem appropriate. If it was for something as serious as sexual battery then, yes, it may well be appropriate to remove that person for life.
Simply removing a conference from an environment that may enable bad behavior is a half-assed response (respectfully), and does not really address the problem in the way it deserves.
It does not matter where it is. Nobody should be able to get away with behavior like this regardless of gender, sexual orientation, etc.
Reminds me of special capitalism zones in China where it is okay to temporarily not act Communist.
I would agree with you if it were not for the apparent popularity of Japanese Tentacle Porn and a sundry list of Goatse available on the Internet.
We all joke about a wading through a throng of midgets with thousand island dressing, but perhaps there is more truth to that than we would like to admit.
Dude. This is the government. They probably spent over 10 million to get the site built, and it was done with shoddy work on an M$ platform with huge gaping security holes sprinkled everywhere. Not to mention a maintenance contract with somebody's cousin where they are getting paid several times the going rate for 1/3rd of the work.
Much like most other government websites I've ever dealt with.
Load balancing, proper site design, and competent administration can only be found in the private sector, and even then, not everywhere.
Your Proposal: Severely reduce the population of men on the planet, create something that will reduce the population of child bearing women, and this will lead to more orgasms in some sort of vague and poorly described way.
My Proposal: Nobody dies, we get highly advanced artificial pussies that can make sandwiches and fetch beer.
It's going to be a tough decision for people I think.
Now when it can kill spiders, take out the trash, lift heavy objects, and listen to "those bitches at work be crazy" for hours at a time, then yes it might be.
If you want to end the human race faster, design an artificial vagina that is indistinguishable from the real thing, and can make a sandwich and fetch a beer.
The whole population would not try it at the same time either. It would be over the course of several years I would think.
My point was the infrastructure could handle it. Where do people go now? I would think Las Vegas, Phoenix, Utah, etc. Anywhere they can find work or relatives. Not much different than how people move now, except there would be a lot more people doing it a shorter amount of time.
Not only is there readily available resources for transportation, but there are means to provide shelter, food, clothing, hygiene, etc. along the way to their destinations. Plenty of places available in the US for people to go as well. California has nearly 40 million people. In contrast, Texas has 25 million people. There is more than enough room in the rest of the US to accommodate 40 million people without a tremendous strain on local resources. Certainly not an insurmountable strain that would break down civilization.
There exists the infrastructure to handle not only the migration itself, but the resource requirements when they get to their destination.
All of this is assuming that everybody leaves. There does exist infrastructure and technology to transport water into California. There would be massive adjustments, most likely experienced as high prices for services and commodities.
People would not be starving en masse. California is an example where the people would be able to cope without society breaking down.
India, OTOH, already has problems just providing reliable power and is overcrowded as it is. Just where are 200 million people supposed to go? If not some other place in India, what other country would accept them? Pakistan? Maybe the more affluent Indians could relocate in another country. We could have an Indian Town someplace in the US. Not a fan of some Indian cuisine, but the northern provinces can kick some serious culinary butt.
Migration is not a solution for most places in the world when those regions become inhospitable.
California would not be as problematic. Plenty of technology to apply to the problems and more than enough qualified people to deal with the logistics. Costs would skyrocket to live in California, but then again, it costs a metric shitload to live in Hawaii compared to the Midwest. People that cannot afford to live in California already leave. My family did a few decades back when the business moved out since it was vastly cheaper for a business in another state. There is quite a bit of room in the continental US and people could spread out into other cities that already have the infrastructure to handle them.
In short, the peoples of California possess the sophistication, resources, and access to infrastructure to migrate.
What about the other places mentioned? How easy would it be for the peoples of the Upper Ganges to migrate? That's nearly 200 million people IIRC. How many of them have the resources to move at all? While moving you still need to provided shelther, food, clothing, water, etc. Where would they be going through while getting to their destination? Are those areas friendly to them? Is their destination going to be friendly to them?
What about migrations across different countries? Look how friendly the US is with immigrants. If half of Mexico was inhospitable to life and lacked the infrastructure and resources to support 100 million people, would the US culture, environmental and political climate support such a migration?
1000 years ago it would not be as complex to migrate a much smaller number of people through sparsely populated areas. There might still be some issues, but generally the migrations that populated North America had far less difficulties than moving 200 million people in India from one place to another.
Migration is a simplistic solution to resources shortages that may be coming. Unless you plan, well, well, well in advance and start early you could end up with quite a problem.
Planning is quite doubtful too given human behavior. I already forgot which state it was, but on the east coast of the US you already have a state government legislating the dismissal of scientific evidence about sea level rise since it is just too hard to deal with economically. Why would people not ignore scientific evidence about the progressive lack of water for the same reasons?
Of course, there is also a quite probable outcome... the destination for the migration simply won't want to absorb millions of extra people and could resort to violence....
I think it is a significant mis-understanding of the situation to lay blame for the mortgage fiasco on the poor and unsophisticated.
Where on earth did you get the idea that I blamed the poor and unsophisticated? From your own story the people to blame are the loan consultants and the bankers, and in your case, it sounds like there was some fraud involved.
When loan consultants started running out of speculative investors they needed somebody to come in and get loans. That's why there were shoving people into the exotic loans that probably required less paper work (thank the bankers).
You do not sound unsophisticated. I'm talking about people that would have never, ever, qualified for a mortgage in a million years if it were not for pure greed on the part of the loan consultants, and outright "professional scumbags" in the financial sector that were sucking up these worthless loans into worthless financial instruments to sell on Wall Street.
We don't need to blame people whose only crime was believing a professional telling them that they could afford a home loan and enjoy home ownership. We need to blame the professional that absolutely knew these people would be in foreclosure within 3-4 years.
Which President are you referring to? Disclaimer: I'm not taking any sides between Democrats and Republicans. They both screw us and give to their preferred 1%'s.
All of the damage was set in motion long before our current President took office.
What caused the housing bubble was no more than insatiable greed for ever growing profits from someplace.
It was not enough that you could sell a mortgage to another company within a couple of weeks at most with some properly filed paper work. We needed it faster.
It was too hard to go to court and actually fight with home owners when disputes arose over mortgages. No. No. No. We needed deeds of trust and laws to bypass due process and just kick people out of their homes without any way to defend themselves.
It was not enough to make origination fees off normal home buyers and package up their loans in huge instruments and sell them. We needed new loans that made speculative investors take interest and start buying more houses than ever before.
If was not enough to make huge amounts of money off the speculative investors. We needed to fuel the ever growing beast as fast as fucking possible for as long as fucking possible.
What did we get? Poor unsophisticated people with bad credit, low income, and no chance in hell of paying off a mortgage that was going to have monthly payments increase 50%-100% within 24-36 months.
All of those speculative investors that had short term goals for properties within the next 3-5 years? They're screwed proper.
All of those average home owners who were lured in by cheap home equity loans with people whispering in their ears that there was no bubble? Totally fucked.
It tanked a year after I quit. I kid you not... the executive that gave us the most hell about stuff, and broke everyone one of his own rules, could not get a new job anywhere. For awhile he worked at 7-11 in the same city I was in.
Who knows what he is doing now, but he was burned in my industry.
Their attacks on our Freedom will succeed as long as we let them, and sadly, it looks like we are going to let them. My point about this technology is that it will not be embraced by corporations and ISPs because it is wholly incompatible with their own business goals.
The whole idea of Freenet and Darknets in general is a wonderful idea. Make no mistake however that it will not be popular as far as governments and corporations are concerned, and it will not have anything close to carrier level support and buy-in from content owning corporations.
You will not see Time Warner or Sony creating a Freenet presence online.
His idea is beautiful. It turns the entire Internet into one big efficient CDN. I would love to see a network designed from the ground up for anonymity, privacy, and efficient means to mass distribute data.
I think we both know we are only going to get a layer on top of an existing infrastructure, and an infrastructure that is becoming increasingly hostile.
she announced that henceforth the food in Yahoo's URLs Cafe will be free, just like at Google;
That goes a long way to creating a happy work place right there.
15 years ago I worked in a place where it took you 10-12 minutes to get past security, walk through the building, across a large area, go up an elevator, get in your car, go through two more security checkpoints, just to get on the main street. Half your lunch break was spent in transit, and you were only allowed 45 minutes.
You were not allowed to eat at your desks, and no break room was provided. Well, it did exist, but it was more like a closet hallway with a two seat mini table. Not set up to allow dozens of people to eat lunch.
There was a 3rd option.... the cafe at the bottom of the building where the owner realized he had a captive audience and made airport food prices seem cheap in comparison.
Yeah... something like this at Yahoo would seem like paradise to me.
This guy belongs in Star Trek, and I don't say that in a derogatory way.
It's worse than magnet links, because he is proposing that the entire Internet (or most of it) work just like that.
The problem is not the technology, it is the societies trying to implement it. Magnet links sound great in theory, but are progressively (extremely) dangerous in practice. You would have to be crazy to using public peer-to-peer networks at this point with Big Content doing its best to shove Freedom's face into the ground to lock down the Internet.
Public methods right now, even with encryption, are like throwing huge raves with underage drinking and drugs in abundance, and seeing a couple dozen narcs, cops, and private investigators mingling with the people.
We could implement his ideas, but the only safe way to do so would be to create an inherently anonymous infrastructure. Not a trivial task.
....And that might undermine many current business models in the software and digital content industries
Really? Maybe?
These are the same people working World Wide to change laws so that they don't have to adapt. It's pretty clear how they deal with anybody attempting to undermine them in any way.
I love the idea in theory, but it goes against the omnipresent need to control content with an iron fist. Incompatible would be an understatement.
From what I've read, the new Total Recall movie doesn't even happen on Mars.
WTF!?
Then it ain't Total Recall. If I can't see a mutant 3-titted Martian hooker in cheap biodome light, then I just don't see the point in watching that movie...
The answer to all of this is encryption and strong contractual agreements.
"Cloud" is a fucked up retarded marketing term. It is not any different, or more special, than any other group of servers that have load balancing, virtualization, redundancy, hot fail overs, redundancy across multiple data servers, etc. Why people give it special significance is beyond me. Heck, i'm running my own mini-cloud at home and in a several datacenters then.
There is nothing inherently wrong with SaaS. It can be vastly cheaper to pay a 3rd party corporation to host something for you, and benefit from their platform coding costs being distributed across hundreds of businesses.
For businesses, it can be a very smart choice. Strong contractual agreements with a reputable company and offsite backups of your data, or rsync'd copies of your data to your own backup, can greatly mitigate whatever concerns that there are.
If you are hosting your data elsewhere, ENCRYPT IT. Not rocket science here. Same thing at home. Government wants to come in and take it? Sure. It will take lawyers and extensive jail time to get the keys from me.
There are a plethora of online backup solutions now that have encryption setups where they have no way of turning over the keys to the government.
The "cloud" is perfectly fine and as long as you are using it correctly with the appropriate safeguards.
Of course, I would never personally store plain text data in the "cloud" that can be data mined. They can lick my balls first. I might possibly make an exception for a service that had very strong contractual language that prevented them from doing so, but that is still unlikely.
Slashdot Mirror
I've often heard the term, "where there is smoke there is fire".
This makes me wonder if there was something strange going on with the IPO. A lot of pissed off people who lost a lot of money. One one hand I can't feel sorry for people that lost money since anybody with a brain could figure out Facebook was not worth that much. On the other hand, if there were any shenanigans, I don't think people at Facebook should get away with it.
It is pretty strange to see that much high level "talent" leave. Suspicious is another word.
Okaayyyy.....
Having read it now there is nothing even remotely close between groping a women's crotch, which is what the article writer spoke of happening to her, and this guy being creepy.
The worst thing he did was to put an arm across the shoulders. Not what I would call sexual battery, but certainly unwanted physical contact and violating boundaries.
I think the 2 year ban was appropriate after reading what actually happened. A lifetime ban just seems excessive and effectively terminates whatever career the guy had in the industry. There is no pretense at rehabilitation there, just a death sentence.
Maybe you had to be there to fully understand the level of creepiness, but from what she describes, this man has been made a harsh example. Perhaps a bit unfairly.
The groping incident is a much better example and a reason to be having the dialogues in this thread.
Kind of my point.
For everybody saying, "WTF", there is somebody else saying, "Ohhhh Myyyy".
No.
Defcon just needs to enforce sensible policies that provide a deterrent against sexual harassment. Anything behavior that goes beyond sexual harassment and ventures into assault and/or battery is dealt with by the authorities with cooperation by people attending Defcon.
Moving Defcon does nothing and only provides a flimsy excuse for inexcusable behavior. That excuse being, "Las Vegas made us do it".
On that note, the single biggest improvement in that respect would actually be to move DEFCON from Las Vegas. People just behave badly there - for better or worse this isn't just a geek thing or a DEFCON thing.
That's a terrible idea. What about all the women that have to live in Las Vegas?
Sexual harassment, assault, and battery must not be tolerated anywhere in society. Las Vegas does not deserve a special exemption as being a spot where men can go, and stop comporting themselves like gentlemen. That does not mean you can't get a little crazy either. I've been completely fucking plastered and flirting with women and I can tell you I still behaved like a gentleman. In Las Vegas too. I didn't grope them and make lewd comments about how I wanted them to service me sexually.
I don't know if a lifetime ban is appropriate in this specific case because there is no article on what actually happened. It seems that the women writing the article talks about having her crotch groped. That is sexual battery and a felony.
We have laws for this stuff. While I don't support multi-year sentences for just groping a woman, I would absolutely throw the bastard in jail for 6-12 months. People don't have a real grasp on just how long that is in a prison environment. Think about something like your two week vacation, that just seems a lot longer, and then multiply it.
Where the laws don't cover it, that's where organizations can step in and remove the person for whatever time period they deem appropriate. If it was for something as serious as sexual battery then, yes, it may well be appropriate to remove that person for life.
Simply removing a conference from an environment that may enable bad behavior is a half-assed response (respectfully), and does not really address the problem in the way it deserves.
It does not matter where it is. Nobody should be able to get away with behavior like this regardless of gender, sexual orientation, etc.
Reminds me of special capitalism zones in China where it is okay to temporarily not act Communist.
I would agree with you if it were not for the apparent popularity of Japanese Tentacle Porn and a sundry list of Goatse available on the Internet.
We all joke about a wading through a throng of midgets with thousand island dressing, but perhaps there is more truth to that than we would like to admit.
It reads like Time Cube to me.
Yes, but it is missing that all important ingredient.. the background wallpaper that makes your brain hurt.
Dude. This is the government. They probably spent over 10 million to get the site built, and it was done with shoddy work on an M$ platform with huge gaping security holes sprinkled everywhere. Not to mention a maintenance contract with somebody's cousin where they are getting paid several times the going rate for 1/3rd of the work.
Much like most other government websites I've ever dealt with.
Load balancing, proper site design, and competent administration can only be found in the private sector, and even then, not everywhere.
Okay, let me get this straight:
Your Proposal: Severely reduce the population of men on the planet, create something that will reduce the population of child bearing women, and this will lead to more orgasms in some sort of vague and poorly described way.
My Proposal: Nobody dies, we get highly advanced artificial pussies that can make sandwiches and fetch beer.
It's going to be a tough decision for people I think.
Not really.
Now when it can kill spiders, take out the trash, lift heavy objects, and listen to "those bitches at work be crazy" for hours at a time, then yes it might be.
If you want to end the human race faster, design an artificial vagina that is indistinguishable from the real thing, and can make a sandwich and fetch a beer.
Offtopic!?
Man, I certainly hope that holds true....
Individual people leave California every day.
The whole population would not try it at the same time either. It would be over the course of several years I would think.
My point was the infrastructure could handle it. Where do people go now? I would think Las Vegas, Phoenix, Utah, etc. Anywhere they can find work or relatives. Not much different than how people move now, except there would be a lot more people doing it a shorter amount of time.
Not only is there readily available resources for transportation, but there are means to provide shelter, food, clothing, hygiene, etc. along the way to their destinations. Plenty of places available in the US for people to go as well. California has nearly 40 million people. In contrast, Texas has 25 million people. There is more than enough room in the rest of the US to accommodate 40 million people without a tremendous strain on local resources. Certainly not an insurmountable strain that would break down civilization.
There exists the infrastructure to handle not only the migration itself, but the resource requirements when they get to their destination.
All of this is assuming that everybody leaves. There does exist infrastructure and technology to transport water into California. There would be massive adjustments, most likely experienced as high prices for services and commodities.
People would not be starving en masse. California is an example where the people would be able to cope without society breaking down.
India, OTOH, already has problems just providing reliable power and is overcrowded as it is. Just where are 200 million people supposed to go? If not some other place in India, what other country would accept them? Pakistan? Maybe the more affluent Indians could relocate in another country. We could have an Indian Town someplace in the US. Not a fan of some Indian cuisine, but the northern provinces can kick some serious culinary butt.
Migration is not a solution for most places in the world when those regions become inhospitable.
Yeah, except for the limited edition "Antonio Banderas" power wands that are some places.....
Anyone got anything more elaborate?
No, Dr. Evil. So how much do we blackmail the US for and what do we do about Austin Powers?
You're being a little simplistic yourself.
Did people migrate in the past? Absolutely.
Is it as easy to do so today? Not even remotely.
California would not be as problematic. Plenty of technology to apply to the problems and more than enough qualified people to deal with the logistics. Costs would skyrocket to live in California, but then again, it costs a metric shitload to live in Hawaii compared to the Midwest. People that cannot afford to live in California already leave. My family did a few decades back when the business moved out since it was vastly cheaper for a business in another state. There is quite a bit of room in the continental US and people could spread out into other cities that already have the infrastructure to handle them.
In short, the peoples of California possess the sophistication, resources, and access to infrastructure to migrate.
What about the other places mentioned? How easy would it be for the peoples of the Upper Ganges to migrate? That's nearly 200 million people IIRC. How many of them have the resources to move at all? While moving you still need to provided shelther, food, clothing, water, etc. Where would they be going through while getting to their destination? Are those areas friendly to them? Is their destination going to be friendly to them?
What about migrations across different countries? Look how friendly the US is with immigrants. If half of Mexico was inhospitable to life and lacked the infrastructure and resources to support 100 million people, would the US culture, environmental and political climate support such a migration?
1000 years ago it would not be as complex to migrate a much smaller number of people through sparsely populated areas. There might still be some issues, but generally the migrations that populated North America had far less difficulties than moving 200 million people in India from one place to another.
Migration is a simplistic solution to resources shortages that may be coming. Unless you plan, well, well, well in advance and start early you could end up with quite a problem.
Planning is quite doubtful too given human behavior. I already forgot which state it was, but on the east coast of the US you already have a state government legislating the dismissal of scientific evidence about sea level rise since it is just too hard to deal with economically. Why would people not ignore scientific evidence about the progressive lack of water for the same reasons?
Of course, there is also a quite probable outcome... the destination for the migration simply won't want to absorb millions of extra people and could resort to violence....
There is another option.
Go with a provider that has some backbone and won't just shut someone down on some specious and dubious copyright claims.
He is a business already paying fees, why not just give those fees to a place like Free Speech hosting?
I think it is a significant mis-understanding of the situation to lay blame for the mortgage fiasco on the poor and unsophisticated.
Where on earth did you get the idea that I blamed the poor and unsophisticated? From your own story the people to blame are the loan consultants and the bankers, and in your case, it sounds like there was some fraud involved.
When loan consultants started running out of speculative investors they needed somebody to come in and get loans. That's why there were shoving people into the exotic loans that probably required less paper work (thank the bankers).
You do not sound unsophisticated. I'm talking about people that would have never, ever, qualified for a mortgage in a million years if it were not for pure greed on the part of the loan consultants, and outright "professional scumbags" in the financial sector that were sucking up these worthless loans into worthless financial instruments to sell on Wall Street.
We don't need to blame people whose only crime was believing a professional telling them that they could afford a home loan and enjoy home ownership. We need to blame the professional that absolutely knew these people would be in foreclosure within 3-4 years.
Which President are you referring to? Disclaimer: I'm not taking any sides between Democrats and Republicans. They both screw us and give to their preferred 1%'s.
All of the damage was set in motion long before our current President took office.
What caused the housing bubble was no more than insatiable greed for ever growing profits from someplace.
It was not enough that you could sell a mortgage to another company within a couple of weeks at most with some properly filed paper work. We needed it faster.
It was too hard to go to court and actually fight with home owners when disputes arose over mortgages. No. No. No. We needed deeds of trust and laws to bypass due process and just kick people out of their homes without any way to defend themselves.
It was not enough to make origination fees off normal home buyers and package up their loans in huge instruments and sell them. We needed new loans that made speculative investors take interest and start buying more houses than ever before.
If was not enough to make huge amounts of money off the speculative investors. We needed to fuel the ever growing beast as fast as fucking possible for as long as fucking possible .
What did we get? Poor unsophisticated people with bad credit, low income, and no chance in hell of paying off a mortgage that was going to have monthly payments increase 50%-100% within 24-36 months.
All of those speculative investors that had short term goals for properties within the next 3-5 years? They're screwed proper.
All of those average home owners who were lured in by cheap home equity loans with people whispering in their ears that there was no bubble? Totally fucked.
Guess what?
YOU CAN'T BLAME THIS ON JUST *ONE* PRESIDENT.
Nice try though.
Doubtful.
It tanked a year after I quit. I kid you not... the executive that gave us the most hell about stuff, and broke everyone one of his own rules, could not get a new job anywhere. For awhile he worked at 7-11 in the same city I was in.
Who knows what he is doing now, but he was burned in my industry.
You misunderstand me.
Their attacks on our Freedom will succeed as long as we let them, and sadly, it looks like we are going to let them. My point about this technology is that it will not be embraced by corporations and ISPs because it is wholly incompatible with their own business goals.
The whole idea of Freenet and Darknets in general is a wonderful idea. Make no mistake however that it will not be popular as far as governments and corporations are concerned, and it will not have anything close to carrier level support and buy-in from content owning corporations.
You will not see Time Warner or Sony creating a Freenet presence online.
His idea is beautiful. It turns the entire Internet into one big efficient CDN. I would love to see a network designed from the ground up for anonymity, privacy, and efficient means to mass distribute data.
I think we both know we are only going to get a layer on top of an existing infrastructure, and an infrastructure that is becoming increasingly hostile.
she announced that henceforth the food in Yahoo's URLs Cafe will be free, just like at Google;
That goes a long way to creating a happy work place right there.
15 years ago I worked in a place where it took you 10-12 minutes to get past security, walk through the building, across a large area, go up an elevator, get in your car, go through two more security checkpoints, just to get on the main street. Half your lunch break was spent in transit, and you were only allowed 45 minutes.
You were not allowed to eat at your desks, and no break room was provided. Well, it did exist, but it was more like a closet hallway with a two seat mini table. Not set up to allow dozens of people to eat lunch.
There was a 3rd option.... the cafe at the bottom of the building where the owner realized he had a captive audience and made airport food prices seem cheap in comparison.
Yeah... something like this at Yahoo would seem like paradise to me.
This guy belongs in Star Trek, and I don't say that in a derogatory way.
It's worse than magnet links, because he is proposing that the entire Internet (or most of it) work just like that.
The problem is not the technology, it is the societies trying to implement it. Magnet links sound great in theory, but are progressively (extremely) dangerous in practice. You would have to be crazy to using public peer-to-peer networks at this point with Big Content doing its best to shove Freedom's face into the ground to lock down the Internet.
Public methods right now, even with encryption, are like throwing huge raves with underage drinking and drugs in abundance, and seeing a couple dozen narcs, cops, and private investigators mingling with the people.
We could implement his ideas, but the only safe way to do so would be to create an inherently anonymous infrastructure. Not a trivial task.
....And that might undermine many current business models in the software and digital content industries
Really? Maybe?
These are the same people working World Wide to change laws so that they don't have to adapt. It's pretty clear how they deal with anybody attempting to undermine them in any way.
I love the idea in theory, but it goes against the omnipresent need to control content with an iron fist. Incompatible would be an understatement.
Twiggy was getting jiggy with the babes though....
From what I've read, the new Total Recall movie doesn't even happen on Mars.
WTF!?
Then it ain't Total Recall. If I can't see a mutant 3-titted Martian hooker in cheap biodome light, then I just don't see the point in watching that movie...
The answer to all of this is encryption and strong contractual agreements.
"Cloud" is a fucked up retarded marketing term. It is not any different, or more special, than any other group of servers that have load balancing, virtualization, redundancy, hot fail overs, redundancy across multiple data servers, etc. Why people give it special significance is beyond me. Heck, i'm running my own mini-cloud at home and in a several datacenters then.
There is nothing inherently wrong with SaaS. It can be vastly cheaper to pay a 3rd party corporation to host something for you, and benefit from their platform coding costs being distributed across hundreds of businesses.
For businesses, it can be a very smart choice. Strong contractual agreements with a reputable company and offsite backups of your data, or rsync'd copies of your data to your own backup, can greatly mitigate whatever concerns that there are.
If you are hosting your data elsewhere, ENCRYPT IT. Not rocket science here. Same thing at home. Government wants to come in and take it? Sure. It will take lawyers and extensive jail time to get the keys from me.
There are a plethora of online backup solutions now that have encryption setups where they have no way of turning over the keys to the government.
The "cloud" is perfectly fine and as long as you are using it correctly with the appropriate safeguards.
Of course, I would never personally store plain text data in the "cloud" that can be data mined. They can lick my balls first. I might possibly make an exception for a service that had very strong contractual language that prevented them from doing so, but that is still unlikely.