“The doc asserted that Google has a lower bar for diversity candidates,” reads one question ranked highly by employees in an internal voting system. “This is hurting minority Googlers because it creates the perception that they are less qualified. What can we do to combat that perception?”
Nothing. That is the problem with affirmative action: by definition some candidates are less qualified. Which inevitably means that all members of the group are looked at skeptically, because you just don't know which ones are qualified, and which ones are not.
Affirmative action creates a hostile work environment.
Any responsible company fully funds the pensions of its workers, and those pensions are managed by an independent entity.
If you have a company that is filling the pension fund with its own stock, or just writing IOUs (which comes to the same thing), then the company doesn't actually have a pension plan, it has a lottery fund. The chances of the company still being around, in the same form, to pay out pensions in 10 or 20 or 30 years is basically zero. If the company hasn't gone under, it will have been bought or merged or divested or whatever - and the pension fund will "accidentally" fall through some legal loophole.
Investment firms are neither notable climate experts nor are they noted for their devotion to selfless ethics. Follow the money. I'll bet that they have huge positions in "green" companies and/or renewable energy, and they are hoping to drive those markets higher.
Alternatively (or maybe additionally), they may think that this will get them more publicity than standard advertising, and hence a lot of new clients who believe that your investment strategy can save you from an uninhabitable planet.
I don't get it: why does anyone care. Foreign government has an opinion, published propaganda pieces supporting it. Opinion happens to be about another government's elections.
Tell me the US government doesn't do this. Tell me just about any country on earth doesn't do this. This isn't news, it isn't even interesting. It's just the continuing progressive drumbeat, as they try to not let their "fake news" Russia stories die.
tl;dr: Hillary didn't need any help losing the election.
Also: For anyone who hasn't figured out why Trump won, and why those of us from flyover country have decided to stop humoring the progressives, read this rant. If you're from flyover country, you will nod knowingly. If you're not, maybe it will give you some insight into the foundations of the alt-right.
This is a stupid lawsuit. According to the attorneys for the plaintiff company:
"Mr Perens has made false statements, claiming them to be facts, and based on those statements employed fear-mongering tactics to intentionally hurt Open Source Security Inc's business."
Perens actually wrote: "it's my opinion that..."
Opinion, not assertion of fact. This lawsuit will be thrown out almost immediately. However, it is useful in helping the community identify a company that we should never do business with. So thanks for that, at least...
At the university where I teach, certain high level administrators keep pushing this crap, telling us to stop lecturing. Two observations:
From TFS: "In an active learning setting, you expect the students to learn about the equations before they get there."
Maybe that works at a medical school At the undergraduate level, most of the class will show up unprepared. At best, maybe they skimmed the material, certainly they have not invested enough time to understand it.
From TFS: In place of the lecture, "cases are presented"
Which sounds a lot like a lecture. Where's the "active learning"? Students are supposed to be doing stuff themselves. Having pre-prepared cases presented to them is not "active".
Programming ought to be ideal for active learning. It would be, if the majority of students were motivated enough to study materialbefore coming to class. Reality intervenes: too few bachelor's students are that mature and that organized.
The best compromise I have found is to lecture the first half of the period, and help students work on exercises during the second half. Our periods are 3-4 hours, and no one wants a lecture that long anyway. But the next administrator who comes along and tells me to stop lecturing entirely needs to catch one upside the head.
I wish Samsung would get this message as well. They make great phones, but they then load the phones with their crappy software. Just not worth the price. Give me stock Android, and let me install my own customizations.
Frankly, I wish Google would get this message too. I also don't want most of the (uninstallable) Google apps.
What crazy-ass font license does not allow derivative works?
I do some work that uses images in publications, not so much with fonts, but I expect that the license options are similar. Depending on the supplier, there can be all sorts of options. Internal use only. Public, but print-only, no Internet (then: how big is your print run?). Internet use, for a limited time. Internet use forever.
The most expensive license option is usually the one that covers products destined for resale. If it's not just a marketing expense, but something you intend to make a profit on, they want more money.
tl;dr: You absolutely must know how you intend to use something, so that you buy the appropriate license.
For most sites, an app is unnecessary. The ordinary, mobile web page works just as well, takes up a fraction of the space, and is likely to have fewer security risks (since it is sandboxed within a browser).
More: if you install an app, as often as not you have just given them permission to lots of personal data. For example, it's pretty normal for every app out there to request access to your contact list. Usually this doesn't even make sense, but it helps them identify you, and gives them data to sell. And the number of people who actually check their apps security settings, and restrict them to the minimum? Near zero...
Surely any serious university will force students to change majors, if they fail the introductory courses? At my university, I view that as on of my most important functions. Saves unsuitable students years of their lives if they fail in year 1 instead of year 5 or 6.
Ok, this guy was exceptionally stupid, or maybe he got arrogant over time, whatever. But there's a lesson to be learned here: Anonymity is actually hard.
Here, and on most sites, I use my real identity. On some sites, I post under a pseudonym with its own email address. For me, it's not critical, but I still try to keep the pseudonym separate. It's a lot harder than you suppose - it's easy to mix the two identities. If privacy were a serious concern, it would be essential to always use proxies for the pseudonym, so that IP addresses wouldn't match, and to never use those (same) proxies for my normal identity. Always use a different machine, with a different hardware and browser fingerprint (or a VM).
If you haven't tried something like this, you should. And consider: it takes exactly one mistake, and you have doxxed yourself.
The viability of working from home depends a lot on the job, and on the particular phase of that job.
Taking my situation as an example: This week, I attended two physical meetings, but otherwise worked from home all week, because (aside from those two meetings), my current work is preparation that I am doing alone. This is great while it lasts, but it will stop in September, it will stop, because I'll be working with other people.
Some maybe general observations:
- Complex coordination - working out new ideas, or meeting with several people - just does not work well remotely. Face-to-face is a lot more efficient. In work-at-home phases, I still have 2-3 meetings a week.
- Even as a total introvert, I recognize that face-time with people is important. I sometimes go into the office for an afternoon "just because".
- If you are working remotely, it is essential to have appropriate messaging technology. The phone should only be used for urgent stuff, since it interrupts. I get maybe one or two calls per month. Email is king for anything non-urgent. Some sort of simple messaging fits comfortably in the middle: IRC or even SMS.
- Working from home takes a certain amount of discipline, and sometimes it still doesn't work. Yesterday morning was a disaster: I was interrupted for non-work things a zillion times, and basically lost the entire morning. The flexibility to mix in private things is nice, but sometimes it also sucks - I'll be working on the weekend to make up the lost time.
Silly question for you USAians, but...why, exactly, do so many Americans consider Russia to be an enemy? I mean, sure, there was a decades-long "cold war", but that was the USSR, and those days are (or ought to be) past. Why not treat Russia as a friend, make common cause where possible?
...brought to you by some climate activist organization. (peeks at TFA) Yep, the "Climate Accountability Institute". Fascinating: they provide no information on their sponsors. They are also not a non-profit, but only a "not for profit", which gives them a lot of leeway, and removes a lot of accountability.
"...a relatively small set of fossil fuel producers
Well, duh. If you take the top 100 companies mining/pumping/extracting fossil fuels, and blame them, the surprising thing is that you don't top 90%. Meanwhile, your hair dresser only rarely extracts crude oil, unless you count what comes out of some people's dreadlocks.
This is a seriously meaningless stat from a seriously meaningless report.
The journalist is (a) clueless about energy production and (b) a careless writer.
Just one example of the latter: "free" is not "paying other states to take it". Which is it? I'm not going to bother to look, but what crappy writing and editing.
Meanwhile: What happens when the sun doesn't shine? A big cloud rolls across that 2 square mile patch of solar cells? Something has to kick in, and fast. That something are the natural gas plants that the journalist is criticizing. The more solar power you install, the more fast-reaction generating capacity you need. So you pretty much build a watt of natural-gas generation for every watt of solar you install.
Of course, a nice, green alternative would be a pile of hydroelectric storage plants up in the mountains: Two lakes, one up and one down. When there's too much power, you pump the lower lake into the upper. When you need fast power, you drain the upper lake through turbines into the lower. It works really well, but I'm sure the eco-types would have a total fit at all the flooded valleys. So they get natural gas plants.
Free speech in Europe only exists at the whim of the governments. The European Convention on Human Rights makes this all too clear:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.... The exercise of these freedoms... may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others..."
That last bit lets the government restrict your freedom of expression any way it damned well pleases. For example, here in Switzerland, it is illegal to insult the rulers of other countries. So it is illegal for me to state my true opinion of Mr. Erdogan in Turkey. It is illegal to question any aspect of the official history of the Holocaust: there was a professor a few years ago who wanted to use modern forensic techniques to re-analyze some old data, and he nearly went to jail. Extreme political parties are made illegal, whether or not they're violent; heck, ordinary activities with extreme political taint are banned. There was a music concert recently in Switzerland, populated by hard-right bands singing hard-right songs. They only managed the concert by lying to the authorities about which bands would be performing. FWIW, there were zero problems with violence, heck, they had parking wardens and people out after the concert cleaning up the trash.
This is, of course, in direct conflict with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which simply states
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Someone needs to take this to the European Court of Human Rights, but no one will. Certainly, the politicians find it convenient to be able to quash any speech they dislike. That will last until the worm turns: at the moment, it's the progressives prohibiting hard-right speech, but the pendulum is swinging, and probably in less than ten years it will be the alt-right in power, happily prohibiting hard-left speech.
...that most pet owners have no idea how to care for their animals. They buy a pet, like they buy a sofa or chair: it's supposed to be there when they want it, and otherwise it is neglected. My cat is better trained than most dogs I meet. She sits and lies down on command, she comes when called. She does silly tricks.
Dogs in particular require a lot of interaction, a lot of training and a lot of care. They are pack animals, which means that - if they are going to get their share of the kill - they have to eat as much as they can, as fast as they can. People who bought a dog, thinking it was a kind of furry sofa, have no clue. So of course their dogs are overweight. "But he's always hungry" - no shit, Sherlock, that's how dogs are.
Of course there's no perfect security. You know, if a burglar wants to get into you house badly enough, he'll get in. So why bother locking your door? In fact, just leave your front door open... Oh, change all of your PINs to 1234 and your passwords to "password" while you're at it. After all, if there's no perfect security, why have any security.
The point of TFS is finding a service that is as secure as reasonably possible, while still being useful.
I'm looking around as well, and what I read about ProtonMail is pretty convincing. They offer free or paid accounts, promise no logging, and they're located in Switzerland.
This may be true, and he didn't accept the bribes; he may be saying this after accepting the bribes; he may be saying this as a publicity stunt; he may be saying this to deflect attention away from the backdoors already installed for the Russian government; he may be saying this because......we have no fricking idea. How deep down the rabbit hole do you want to chase your favorite conspiracy theory?
Granted, it's hard to be prepared for all eventualities, but it sure would be nice if he had a recording of the meeting, and the words exchanged.
Portable phones, sure - the military had radios, so why not?
Only, they would hardly have been cell phones in any sense. The transistor wasn't invented until the late 1940s, and wasn't really mass produced until the early 1960s. So you'd have been holding a huge case full of vacuum tubes up to your ear, not exactly comfortable. Heck, remember how huge the early cell phones of the 1970s were, and that's already with integrated circuits. Even a purely transistor-based phone would have been huge.
Far from a saint? Sure, Kim Dotcom is pretty much scum. That doesn't mean that he doesn't deserve justice.
The US has overreached in this case. They somehow convinced New Zealand to go along with it. They both got caught doing illegal stuff, which ought to have ended the case then and there.
Instead, they have adopted a strategy seems to be one of seizing assets, and then running up Dotcom's legal bills, in hopes that he simply won't be able to defend himself any longer. Whatever this is, "justice" isn't the term that springs to mind.
"the problem is not the framework (or standard), it's the blind trust in it and the misconception that it's going to make you deliver higher quality."
This. Almost always, frameworks like ISO 9000 or ITIL are the bright idea of someone in management. The people who actually ought to live this stuff have it imposed on them. In fact, the processes turn into stacks of paper sitting in a closet, ignored except when re-certification time rolls around.
It's important to have processes that work for you and your organization. The most important thing about a process is that it is actually used. External standards and processes may provide some food for thought, but - by themselves - all they do is generate paper and consultant fees.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there doubt? Actually, yes. Was it him? Did he do it intentionally? Is he sane?
All three of those questions deserve to be answered carefully, in front of a judge. There is actually some reasonable doubt about the second two.
Sites refusing him a platform are within their rights, but are skipping the "innocent until proven guilty" bit. Unethical, IMHO.
“The doc asserted that Google has a lower bar for diversity candidates,” reads one question ranked highly by employees in an internal voting system. “This is hurting minority Googlers because it creates the perception that they are less qualified. What can we do to combat that perception?”
Nothing. That is the problem with affirmative action: by definition some candidates are less qualified. Which inevitably means that all members of the group are looked at skeptically, because you just don't know which ones are qualified, and which ones are not.
Affirmative action creates a hostile work environment.
Any responsible company fully funds the pensions of its workers, and those pensions are managed by an independent entity.
If you have a company that is filling the pension fund with its own stock, or just writing IOUs (which comes to the same thing), then the company doesn't actually have a pension plan, it has a lottery fund. The chances of the company still being around, in the same form, to pay out pensions in 10 or 20 or 30 years is basically zero. If the company hasn't gone under, it will have been bought or merged or divested or whatever - and the pension fund will "accidentally" fall through some legal loophole.
Investment firms are neither notable climate experts nor are they noted for their devotion to selfless ethics. Follow the money. I'll bet that they have huge positions in "green" companies and/or renewable energy, and they are hoping to drive those markets higher.
Alternatively (or maybe additionally), they may think that this will get them more publicity than standard advertising, and hence a lot of new clients who believe that your investment strategy can save you from an uninhabitable planet.
I don't get it: why does anyone care. Foreign government has an opinion, published propaganda pieces supporting it. Opinion happens to be about another government's elections.
Tell me the US government doesn't do this. Tell me just about any country on earth doesn't do this. This isn't news, it isn't even interesting. It's just the continuing progressive drumbeat, as they try to not let their "fake news" Russia stories die.
tl;dr: Hillary didn't need any help losing the election.
Also: For anyone who hasn't figured out why Trump won, and why those of us from flyover country have decided to stop humoring the progressives, read this rant. If you're from flyover country, you will nod knowingly. If you're not, maybe it will give you some insight into the foundations of the alt-right.
This is a stupid lawsuit. According to the attorneys for the plaintiff company:
"Mr Perens has made false statements, claiming them to be facts, and based on those statements employed fear-mongering tactics to intentionally hurt Open Source Security Inc's business."
Perens actually wrote: "it's my opinion that..."
Opinion, not assertion of fact. This lawsuit will be thrown out almost immediately. However, it is useful in helping the community identify a company that we should never do business with. So thanks for that, at least...
At the university where I teach, certain high level administrators keep pushing this crap, telling us to stop lecturing. Two observations:
From TFS: "In an active learning setting, you expect the students to learn about the equations before they get there."
Maybe that works at a medical school At the undergraduate level, most of the class will show up unprepared. At best, maybe they skimmed the material, certainly they have not invested enough time to understand it.
From TFS: In place of the lecture, "cases are presented"
Which sounds a lot like a lecture. Where's the "active learning"? Students are supposed to be doing stuff themselves. Having pre-prepared cases presented to them is not "active".
Programming ought to be ideal for active learning. It would be, if the majority of students were motivated enough to study materialbefore coming to class. Reality intervenes: too few bachelor's students are that mature and that organized.
The best compromise I have found is to lecture the first half of the period, and help students work on exercises during the second half. Our periods are 3-4 hours, and no one wants a lecture that long anyway. But the next administrator who comes along and tells me to stop lecturing entirely needs to catch one upside the head.
I wish Samsung would get this message as well. They make great phones, but they then load the phones with their crappy software. Just not worth the price. Give me stock Android, and let me install my own customizations.
Frankly, I wish Google would get this message too. I also don't want most of the (uninstallable) Google apps.
What crazy-ass font license does not allow derivative works?
I do some work that uses images in publications, not so much with fonts, but I expect that the license options are similar. Depending on the supplier, there can be all sorts of options. Internal use only. Public, but print-only, no Internet (then: how big is your print run?). Internet use, for a limited time. Internet use forever.
The most expensive license option is usually the one that covers products destined for resale. If it's not just a marketing expense, but something you intend to make a profit on, they want more money.
tl;dr: You absolutely must know how you intend to use something, so that you buy the appropriate license.
For most sites, an app is unnecessary. The ordinary, mobile web page works just as well, takes up a fraction of the space, and is likely to have fewer security risks (since it is sandboxed within a browser).
More: if you install an app, as often as not you have just given them permission to lots of personal data. For example, it's pretty normal for every app out there to request access to your contact list. Usually this doesn't even make sense, but it helps them identify you, and gives them data to sell. And the number of people who actually check their apps security settings, and restrict them to the minimum? Near zero...
Surely any serious university will force students to change majors, if they fail the introductory courses? At my university, I view that as on of my most important functions. Saves unsuitable students years of their lives if they fail in year 1 instead of year 5 or 6.
Ok, this guy was exceptionally stupid, or maybe he got arrogant over time, whatever. But there's a lesson to be learned here: Anonymity is actually hard.
Here, and on most sites, I use my real identity. On some sites, I post under a pseudonym with its own email address. For me, it's not critical, but I still try to keep the pseudonym separate. It's a lot harder than you suppose - it's easy to mix the two identities. If privacy were a serious concern, it would be essential to always use proxies for the pseudonym, so that IP addresses wouldn't match, and to never use those (same) proxies for my normal identity. Always use a different machine, with a different hardware and browser fingerprint (or a VM).
If you haven't tried something like this, you should. And consider: it takes exactly one mistake, and you have doxxed yourself.
The viability of working from home depends a lot on the job, and on the particular phase of that job.
Taking my situation as an example: This week, I attended two physical meetings, but otherwise worked from home all week, because (aside from those two meetings), my current work is preparation that I am doing alone. This is great while it lasts, but it will stop in September, it will stop, because I'll be working with other people.
Some maybe general observations:
- Complex coordination - working out new ideas, or meeting with several people - just does not work well remotely. Face-to-face is a lot more efficient. In work-at-home phases, I still have 2-3 meetings a week.
- Even as a total introvert, I recognize that face-time with people is important. I sometimes go into the office for an afternoon "just because".
- If you are working remotely, it is essential to have appropriate messaging technology. The phone should only be used for urgent stuff, since it interrupts. I get maybe one or two calls per month. Email is king for anything non-urgent. Some sort of simple messaging fits comfortably in the middle: IRC or even SMS.
- Working from home takes a certain amount of discipline, and sometimes it still doesn't work. Yesterday morning was a disaster: I was interrupted for non-work things a zillion times, and basically lost the entire morning. The flexibility to mix in private things is nice, but sometimes it also sucks - I'll be working on the weekend to make up the lost time.
Silly question for you USAians, but...why, exactly, do so many Americans consider Russia to be an enemy? I mean, sure, there was a decades-long "cold war", but that was the USSR, and those days are (or ought to be) past. Why not treat Russia as a friend, make common cause where possible?
...brought to you by some climate activist organization. (peeks at TFA) Yep, the "Climate Accountability Institute". Fascinating: they provide no information on their sponsors. They are also not a non-profit, but only a "not for profit", which gives them a lot of leeway, and removes a lot of accountability.
"...a relatively small set of fossil fuel producers
Well, duh. If you take the top 100 companies mining/pumping/extracting fossil fuels, and blame them, the surprising thing is that you don't top 90%. Meanwhile, your hair dresser only rarely extracts crude oil, unless you count what comes out of some people's dreadlocks.
This is a seriously meaningless stat from a seriously meaningless report.
"Kaspersky Lab cannot be trusted to protect critical infrastructure"
Whereas the US government is totally trustworthy. /sarc
The journalist is (a) clueless about energy production and (b) a careless writer.
Just one example of the latter: "free" is not "paying other states to take it". Which is it? I'm not going to bother to look, but what crappy writing and editing.
Meanwhile: What happens when the sun doesn't shine? A big cloud rolls across that 2 square mile patch of solar cells? Something has to kick in, and fast. That something are the natural gas plants that the journalist is criticizing. The more solar power you install, the more fast-reaction generating capacity you need. So you pretty much build a watt of natural-gas generation for every watt of solar you install.
Of course, a nice, green alternative would be a pile of hydroelectric storage plants up in the mountains: Two lakes, one up and one down. When there's too much power, you pump the lower lake into the upper. When you need fast power, you drain the upper lake through turbines into the lower. It works really well, but I'm sure the eco-types would have a total fit at all the flooded valleys. So they get natural gas plants.
Free speech in Europe only exists at the whim of the governments. The European Convention on Human Rights makes this all too clear:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. ... The exercise of these freedoms ... may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others ..."
That last bit lets the government restrict your freedom of expression any way it damned well pleases. For example, here in Switzerland, it is illegal to insult the rulers of other countries. So it is illegal for me to state my true opinion of Mr. Erdogan in Turkey. It is illegal to question any aspect of the official history of the Holocaust: there was a professor a few years ago who wanted to use modern forensic techniques to re-analyze some old data, and he nearly went to jail. Extreme political parties are made illegal, whether or not they're violent; heck, ordinary activities with extreme political taint are banned. There was a music concert recently in Switzerland, populated by hard-right bands singing hard-right songs. They only managed the concert by lying to the authorities about which bands would be performing. FWIW, there were zero problems with violence, heck, they had parking wardens and people out after the concert cleaning up the trash.
This is, of course, in direct conflict with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which simply states
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Someone needs to take this to the European Court of Human Rights, but no one will. Certainly, the politicians find it convenient to be able to quash any speech they dislike. That will last until the worm turns: at the moment, it's the progressives prohibiting hard-right speech, but the pendulum is swinging, and probably in less than ten years it will be the alt-right in power, happily prohibiting hard-left speech.
...that most pet owners have no idea how to care for their animals. They buy a pet, like they buy a sofa or chair: it's supposed to be there when they want it, and otherwise it is neglected. My cat is better trained than most dogs I meet. She sits and lies down on command, she comes when called. She does silly tricks.
Dogs in particular require a lot of interaction, a lot of training and a lot of care. They are pack animals, which means that - if they are going to get their share of the kill - they have to eat as much as they can, as fast as they can. People who bought a dog, thinking it was a kind of furry sofa, have no clue. So of course their dogs are overweight. "But he's always hungry" - no shit, Sherlock, that's how dogs are.
Don't be obtuse.
Of course there's no perfect security. You know, if a burglar wants to get into you house badly enough, he'll get in. So why bother locking your door? In fact, just leave your front door open... Oh, change all of your PINs to 1234 and your passwords to "password" while you're at it. After all, if there's no perfect security, why have any security.
The point of TFS is finding a service that is as secure as reasonably possible, while still being useful.
I'm looking around as well, and what I read about ProtonMail is pretty convincing. They offer free or paid accounts, promise no logging, and they're located in Switzerland.
This may be true, and he didn't accept the bribes; he may be saying this after accepting the bribes; he may be saying this as a publicity stunt; he may be saying this to deflect attention away from the backdoors already installed for the Russian government; he may be saying this because... ...we have no fricking idea. How deep down the rabbit hole do you want to chase your favorite conspiracy theory?
Granted, it's hard to be prepared for all eventualities, but it sure would be nice if he had a recording of the meeting, and the words exchanged.
Portable phones, sure - the military had radios, so why not?
Only, they would hardly have been cell phones in any sense. The transistor wasn't invented until the late 1940s, and wasn't really mass produced until the early 1960s. So you'd have been holding a huge case full of vacuum tubes up to your ear, not exactly comfortable. Heck, remember how huge the early cell phones of the 1970s were, and that's already with integrated circuits. Even a purely transistor-based phone would have been huge.
Far from a saint? Sure, Kim Dotcom is pretty much scum. That doesn't mean that he doesn't deserve justice.
The US has overreached in this case. They somehow convinced New Zealand to go along with it. They both got caught doing illegal stuff, which ought to have ended the case then and there.
Instead, they have adopted a strategy seems to be one of seizing assets, and then running up Dotcom's legal bills, in hopes that he simply won't be able to defend himself any longer. Whatever this is, "justice" isn't the term that springs to mind.
"the problem is not the framework (or standard), it's the blind trust in it and the misconception that it's going to make you deliver higher quality."
This. Almost always, frameworks like ISO 9000 or ITIL are the bright idea of someone in management. The people who actually ought to live this stuff have it imposed on them. In fact, the processes turn into stacks of paper sitting in a closet, ignored except when re-certification time rolls around.
It's important to have processes that work for you and your organization. The most important thing about a process is that it is actually used. External standards and processes may provide some food for thought, but - by themselves - all they do is generate paper and consultant fees.