Sure it takes talent. Sure it takes hard work and experience. Would you rather scrap the entire field as an area of study, and let innate designers start drawing things at random, without any training? I guess they don't REALLY need to know how much weight their products will have to support. Similarly, who cares what the laws regarding flammability of fabrics are for different purposes?
Comfort/price ratio has very little to do with the study and development of ergonomics, biomechanics, and so forth. As a result of _design_research_ you can now buy a chair that will be as or more comfortable *FOR YOU* than anything previous, if you've got the money to spare. As a result of _marketing_ the price on a random chair has been jacked up to be some significant fraction of that price, because they can be. As a result of _business_finances_ companies won't buy the very expensive chairs for peons, and will resist buying the (now more expensive than they used to be) average chairs as much as possible, until every other chair in their company has been broken beyond repair or use.
In ten years, we're all going to have good chairs, because that's all that will be available. The managers will still get the best ones, but that's just corporatism for you. Still, when you get that good chair, you can thank the efforts of talented and experienced people using methodical and systematic research in ergonomics. You won't get anywhere without both, and that holds true in any field.
Finally, one last point: Teacher training and software engineering are both labour-intensive, low-overhead tasks. Designing and building furniture takes a lot of expensive tools and materials, and just isn't feasible without some sort of infrastructure.
Unfortunately, you're right about too many things. (despite my long diatribe)
I can spend five years doing biomechanics research, designing a good product that works, and building it well. That's going to end up costing about $1500/chair. OR I can take a normal $100 chair, make it look goofy, call it ergonomic, and sell it for $300, without the five year lead time. Guess which is going to make me more money? Guess which is easier? Guess which WON'T solve problems for anyone? (except my accountant, that is)
There does seem to be a lot of crap unjustifiably labelled as "ergonomic," but I think that a lot of that stems from the fact that people have been told for so long that THIS is how you sit, they've forgotten the point of all of this: To make them comfortable! People don't understand that crucial point, and don't realise that they are the best indicator of whether something works or not, so they get sold so much crap.
On the mouse side: I have an $85 trackball from logitech--very sleek and 'ergonomic', and it's saved me from having surgery on my thumb. Sometimes the things that are designed (well!) to work really do.
Just to clarify some of the points that people have been dancing around here:
1) In an area (x) times the size of Texas, we have
slightly less than three million people.
2) MOST of those people (~75%?) already have access to high speed internet connections, via ADSL or cable. (or if they're willing to pay, direct fibre connection to the CA*Net backbone)
3) This news is only interesting because it's getting high speed access to everyone else in the province. All of those people in Balzac, Beiseiker, and so on will have high speed when this is through.
That said, this is just another one of our Premier's pre-campaign sweeteners. Somehow throwing $300M at a company to do something they'd make money on anyways doesn't exactly go along with the philosophy of Mr. "cut government spending, privatise everything, and get me another %$$#& beer!" but it _does_ go along nicely with the idea of softening up the voters before officially calling an election. (especially when his strongest support has been rural)
Unfortunately, you're right. There are a lot of great chairs, workstations, and systems out there. Most companies (and even worse--universities!) would laugh if anyone at the tech level requested them, despite the fact that the techs are the ones who need them. In companies, I see the same story over and over and over; high-paid execs who get the gorgeous furniture, fast computers, and comfortable chairs, but spend most of their time on the road.
It sucks. Maybe I'll talk to my contacts and see what we can work out.
Yes, that's right--a lot of slashdot readers deserve to be lumped into the "...for dummies" category on this subject, simply because you don't know what you're talking about, and you're too damned belligerent to learn. This is your chance.
First rule of ergonomics: There are no rules. Well, no hard and fast rules. I've posted this before, but not enough people seem to realise this important fact: What works for you might not work for your neighbor. If you can code (more likely play Q3) for ten hours straight, and not suffer from it, then that's great news! Fantastic, even! Don't assume that the guy in the office who complains about his back despite putting in "only" 40-50 hours per week is just a whiner, or someone who wants a new toy.
A chair is supposed to support you. If your chair and your muscles work together with your posture, flexibility, etc. to support you painlessly, then enjoy it. This exact solution is not likely to work for most other people. The crux of ergonomics comes down to these two points:
* Everyone is different.
* The human body wasn't built to stay stationary for hours on end.
If you try to get around the second point by putting someone in a situation where they don't move (computing comes to mind--no more typewriter carriages to move by hand, no more coffee breaks, lunches at one's desk...) for hours on end, then you're going to have to do more to tweak that person's environment to work with the specifics of their body. In other words, Ergonomic solutions becomes more individual and unique as the stress on the body increases.
Now let's restress the second point: The human body doesn't like to be at rest.
One of the solutions to muscular stress problems is to give people highly adjustable workstations. The problems here are that (A) people aren't very good at adjusting things so they feel good (surprising but true!), and (B) the perfect solution only works for a while for a given person. Sooner or later, something has to give, and it does. So, we refine the idea: Give people a chair which adjusts to their body without their conscious input, and continues to adjust as they move. This is the idea behind this chair, and several others. Haworth came up with the slogan, "the best posture is the next posture" for their Taz chair, implying that movement is the best solution to (potential) problems caused by sitting all day.
Is it the ultimate solution? No. Is any chair, workstation, or even exercise regime? No. There is no single solution, just a steadily advancing body of knowledge to help those who are suffering a hell of a lot.
And to the idiot who suggested that all of the money going into this field (the research is apparently all done by marketing staff!!!) could be better spent on food, clothing, shelter, and so forth; You might consider the amount of money that goes into computer games, or any computer research for that matter. How much food could we raise for the price of John Carmack's (I think that's him--that ID guy) Ferarri? When you lambaste a company that designs a better chair, it makes me wonder if you just hate to see people not in pain.
You're a fucking idiot. Try talking to someone who's in decent shape, gets exercise and has a life away from the computer, but still has to undergo surgery for their back/wrist/arm problems.
You don't like the chair? Fine! Don't buy the damned thing! Just fuck off and leave those who WOULD alone.
This message brought to you by my third and fourth lumbar vertebrae.
Then you're lucky. Very lucky. And also built slightly differently than everyone else.
I was pretty happy with a good chair in front of a crappy old desk for a while. When they moved me,
I did well enough in a broken office chair at a
similar desk. With a really good chair in a designed corner workstation, I barely survived, and now with a chair that's slightly too low (and not adjustable) with a high desk, I'm becoming crippled.
Other people could go through the same setup and have the opposite reaction. The problem with the field of ergonomics is that there is no single solution.
WHY should your precious little country be first
in the list? If you're going to rank countries,
where do the UK, Australia, France, Canada, and
Finland fit into your list? Even if you are the
biggest single country to use tripwire (which I
doubt), if you're going to put one country first
then you'd better rank everyone in order of use.
I've never heard anything so pathetic--whining
because your country came near the bottom of an
alphabetised list! Grow up.
Fair enough--if you get pinging, you need a higher
octane gas (or a tuneup). But, for almost every
properly tuned car out there, regular 87 octane gas
is perfectly acceptable, and anything higher than
that is _less_ efficient in their car. Probably more
than 90% of the litres of premium gas are wasted
money.
The _idea_ behind rambus memory is a good one--
there are some very impressive bits of technology
that could (and should) be developed.
HOWEVER; Rambus the _company_ has dropped the
ball. Rather than develop the technology, they
have behaved in the finest tradition for the year
2000, and tried to make money by whinging,
whining, and ultimately suing everyone doing
better than them. They behave like children, and
I've been gleefully watching them get spanked.
Maybe I'll form a company to create electronic
dictionaries. Rather than collecting any words
though, I'll just sue Oxford (and Webster, but
definitely not the American Heritage group:-) for
copyright/patent infringement. MUCH easier than
real work.
By this statement, we mean to describe a means of item selection via the combined use of a cursor movement device (the "pointer") and an electromechanical switch (the "selector"). The intent is that a computer operator may move a spatial positioning indicator (the "cursor") freely around on an electronic display, by use of the pointer. Several user-configurable pictographs ("icons") may be placed on this display, each one symbolising a function or application on the device attached to the display (the "computer").
When the cursor's position coincides with that of one of the icons, the selector may be engaged to activate the function assigned to that icon.
---
There. I've just created a patent framework for using a mouse (trackball, light-pen, etc.)
Hee, hee! Nothing ever is going to make DVDs hard
to get in the US (the rest of America is a different issue). The US is the Big Consumer
Market.
Region coding provides nothing more than the
ability to _restrict_ who gets what and when. It's
a restrictive technology, and if it gets bypassed,
it bypasses arbitrary (or more specifically,
marketing-based) restrictions.
There's NOTHING (nothing, nothing, nothing!!!) in
region codes that helps the consumer, or anyone
at all except for the company's bankroll.
Damn! Now where are all of those moderation points
I had the other day? This article would go up up
up if I had the power right now.
In this context, the FCC uses the phrase "is
consistent with..." Careful reading shows that
this ruling (tentatively) _allows_ such copy
protection to be put into place, it does not
_require_ such things.
The article seemed to be missing that subtle (like
a brick!) point.
READ THIS SENTENCE AGAIN! (and again...)
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 4
From the suck article:
"But the decisions are no less legally binding for being silly..."
This is why the article is right. This is what the point is: Being morally right, being technically correct, having half a clue; none of these things will overcome determination, money, big business, and organisation. In othwr words, You're not going to win just because you're right!"
This is the way the world works. Deal with it, or get dirty and change it--really change it--but don't bother ranting and vandalising web sites.
You don't know what to think of it? I do--it stinks.
Can they do this? Sure. Is this common? Absolutely--it's been done for decades in the real world. Fast food chains are particularly bad for setting prices differently in different areas of a city. We call this "DEMOGRAPHIC PRICING," and the only think that Amazon has done differently is increasing the level of detail/granularity on which they can apply it. Instead of getting people based on their home or work district (and hence, their approximate income, job type, general lifestyle, etc.) they can do it by specific individual attributes.
It could be used for good purposes, but in this case as in most, there's no profit in good behaviour. It's sleazy and wrong, and should encourage us customers to research _every_ purchase we make over some 'throwaway' threshold.
Eventually this will jump up and bite the companies back. Continual comparison shopping and distrust of retailers means no brand/store loyalty, no sense of responsibility, and no loss when the companies die.
Well, well. TRUSTe is at it again. How many times do they have to behave immorally, unethically, or just simply irresponsibly before companies stop touting "TRUSTe certified!!!" Apparently too damned many times.
This is the same company that said, "oh, sure they're violating their own policies, but um...we can't do anything about that. We only check to see if companies are violating their own policies and, um....can we get back to you on that?"
They're sleazy, irresponsible, and incompetent.
I hope everyone else is doing the same as me--Every time I see a company asking for registration or some sort of personal information, and I see that TRUSTe cockroach on the web page, I send them a polite email saying that I don't do any business (shopping or anything else) with a company that uses TRUSTe.
Games are getting better? Definitely! Well, mostly definitely. However, games are getting less and less diverse, and that's not a good thing. Old genres fade into oblivion, and new ones fail to take their places. The FPS is definitely here to stay for a good while, but it shouldn't end up being the only game you can buy! (or download, or...)
"Or are you another pathetic little twerp with no skills?"
Oh great. Another one. The biggest downfall of the open source movement is going to be shitheads with the attitude of, "If you're not a programmer then shut the fuck up and be happy with whatever we decide to give you."
Not all of us are programmers, and not all of us have the time to spare from our lives to be heavily involved with a multi-year development project. The point remains that adding all sorts of bells and whistles to mozilla is damaging to the project for two reasons:
1) It's putting the cart before the horse. There still isn't a general, feature-complete, stable and fully functional _browser_ to come from the project. Build a solid core. Then extend. Not the other way around.
2) Take a look at the comments from all of those pathetic little twerps with no skills. (i.e. the users) The biggest reason that people are watching and waiting for mozilla is to get a small, fast, streamlined browser. If it weren't for the huge footprint and feature bloat of Netscape 4.x, most people probably wouldn't give a rat's ass about Mozilla.
Now grow up, and brush that chip off your shoulder.
"While it is true that these so called "grey hat" hackers are doing something completely ethically questionable by creating these scripts, it's shifting the blame away from the truly responsible parties. It's akin to asking a robber "why did you tell every criminal in the city my house is unlocked?" The reply, in the analogy and in computer security, is to ask "but why is your house unlocked?"
Bit of a false analogy. I'm not leaving my house unlocked. I'm still getting people breaking into it. (or trying, at any rate) A better analogy would be if I bought a lock for my house, and the 'grey hats' were to manufacture lock picking tools with extensive instructions. Most sites have accomplished 'reasonable' security precautions. I'm not sure that checking for patches twice a week is reasonable.
On the other hand, I'm grateful to the 'grey hats' because I've been bludgeoning my own systems with their tools, fixing any cracks I can find.
When the DeCCS fiasco surfaced, I emailed the CBC about it. Partly as a result of my actions, the story made the national evening news here in Canada! They interviewed Matt Skala fairly extensively, and I was on the news for about five seconds. When all was said and done, we exposed Mattel's misbehaviour to an audience of consumers orders of magnitude larger than/.
THAT is the way to get attention. Take it to the streets, to the public, and to the consumers.
On the one hand, you're right--calling them names won't do much good, other than letting them know that they're getting to us.
On the other hand, just because they can cause damage doesn't make them bright studies. A 14 year old with an AK-47 can cause a lot of damage. It doesn't take much knowledge to pull the trigger. If you dig through the story on rootprompt.org about the hack they suffered, you'll find that some of these exploits are being pulled off by kids who don't understand how (or what it means) to mount a hard drive under Unix! Download an exploit and a rootkit, and you're in business--no brainpower needed.
"One of the most widely used arguments for hacking and cracking is that they want to find the flaws and security holes in a system. That's great and fine IF that is what they are actually doing."
I know this isn't your point, but I still have to call bullshit on anyone who claims this as a validation for cracking.
It's not an argument. It's not a validation. It's not a justification. It's an excuse for a bunch of juvenile delinquents to violate and destroy other people's property without any moral qualms.
If most systems were buildings, they'd have triple locks, security scans, and a receptionist. Lets face it--most computers on the internet are amply secure to prevent people from walking in either accidentally or with just a quick word. Anyone who breaks into our systems is the moral equivalent of an armed bank robber. Any 'security checking' excuses are only so much BS.
"they should be shot for polluting the gene pool with their stupidity. IMHO"
I disagree. If they're trying to get _behind_ the firewall, then they are de facto trying to make the firewall transparent to their scan. I guess it depends on how you interpret "fly stealthily beneath the radar of firewalls and intrusion detection systems." I say that means they're planning on getting behind firewalls.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. I just can't agree.
Sure it takes talent. Sure it takes hard work and experience. Would you rather scrap the entire field as an area of study, and let innate designers start drawing things at random, without any training? I guess they don't REALLY need to know how much weight their products will have to support. Similarly, who cares what the laws regarding flammability of fabrics are for different purposes?
Comfort/price ratio has very little to do with the study and development of ergonomics, biomechanics, and so forth. As a result of _design_research_ you can now buy a chair that will be as or more comfortable *FOR YOU* than anything previous, if you've got the money to spare. As a result of _marketing_ the price on a random chair has been jacked up to be some significant fraction of that price, because they can be. As a result of _business_finances_ companies won't buy the very expensive chairs for peons, and will resist buying the (now more expensive than they used to be) average chairs as much as possible, until every other chair in their company has been broken beyond repair or use.
In ten years, we're all going to have good chairs, because that's all that will be available. The managers will still get the best ones, but that's just corporatism for you. Still, when you get that good chair, you can thank the efforts of talented and experienced people using methodical and systematic research in ergonomics. You won't get anywhere without both, and that holds true in any field.
Finally, one last point: Teacher training and software engineering are both labour-intensive, low-overhead tasks. Designing and building furniture takes a lot of expensive tools and materials, and just isn't feasible without some sort of infrastructure.
Unfortunately, you're right about too many things. (despite my long diatribe)
I can spend five years doing biomechanics research, designing a good product that works, and building it well. That's going to end up costing about $1500/chair. OR I can take a normal $100 chair, make it look goofy, call it ergonomic, and sell it for $300, without the five year lead time. Guess which is going to make me more money? Guess which is easier? Guess which WON'T solve problems for anyone? (except my accountant, that is)
There does seem to be a lot of crap unjustifiably labelled as "ergonomic," but I think that a lot of that stems from the fact that people have been told for so long that THIS is how you sit, they've forgotten the point of all of this: To make them comfortable! People don't understand that crucial point, and don't realise that they are the best indicator of whether something works or not, so they get sold so much crap.
On the mouse side: I have an $85 trackball from logitech--very sleek and 'ergonomic', and it's saved me from having surgery on my thumb. Sometimes the things that are designed (well!) to work really do.
Just to clarify some of the points that people have been dancing around here:
1) In an area (x) times the size of Texas, we have
slightly less than three million people.
2) MOST of those people (~75%?) already have access to high speed internet connections, via ADSL or cable. (or if they're willing to pay, direct fibre connection to the CA*Net backbone)
3) This news is only interesting because it's getting high speed access to everyone else in the province. All of those people in Balzac, Beiseiker, and so on will have high speed when this is through.
That said, this is just another one of our Premier's pre-campaign sweeteners. Somehow throwing $300M at a company to do something they'd make money on anyways doesn't exactly go along with the philosophy of Mr. "cut government spending, privatise everything, and get me another %$$#& beer!" but it _does_ go along nicely with the idea of softening up the voters before officially calling an election. (especially when his strongest support has been rural)
Yikes! I shiver when I hear stories like that!
:-)
"THIS is how you WILL sit today!!!"
Sounds kinda like, "THIS is where you WILL go today!" doesn't it?
At any rate, check out my long, hopefully informative rant, and take a copy of it to your HR people if necessary.
Unfortunately, you're right. There are a lot of great chairs, workstations, and systems out there. Most companies (and even worse--universities!) would laugh if anyone at the tech level requested them, despite the fact that the techs are the ones who need them. In companies, I see the same story over and over and over; high-paid execs who get the gorgeous furniture, fast computers, and comfortable chairs, but spend most of their time on the road.
It sucks. Maybe I'll talk to my contacts and see what we can work out.
Yes, that's right--a lot of slashdot readers deserve to be lumped into the "...for dummies" category on this subject, simply because you don't know what you're talking about, and you're too damned belligerent to learn. This is your chance.
First rule of ergonomics: There are no rules. Well, no hard and fast rules. I've posted this before, but not enough people seem to realise this important fact: What works for you might not work for your neighbor. If you can code (more likely play Q3) for ten hours straight, and not suffer from it, then that's great news! Fantastic, even! Don't assume that the guy in the office who complains about his back despite putting in "only" 40-50 hours per week is just a whiner, or someone who wants a new toy.
A chair is supposed to support you. If your chair and your muscles work together with your posture, flexibility, etc. to support you painlessly, then enjoy it. This exact solution is not likely to work for most other people. The crux of ergonomics comes down to these two points:
* Everyone is different.
* The human body wasn't built to stay stationary for hours on end.
If you try to get around the second point by putting someone in a situation where they don't move (computing comes to mind--no more typewriter carriages to move by hand, no more coffee breaks, lunches at one's desk...) for hours on end, then you're going to have to do more to tweak that person's environment to work with the specifics of their body. In other words, Ergonomic solutions becomes more individual and unique as the stress on the body increases.
Now let's restress the second point: The human body doesn't like to be at rest.
One of the solutions to muscular stress problems is to give people highly adjustable workstations. The problems here are that (A) people aren't very good at adjusting things so they feel good (surprising but true!), and (B) the perfect solution only works for a while for a given person. Sooner or later, something has to give, and it does. So, we refine the idea: Give people a chair which adjusts to their body without their conscious input, and continues to adjust as they move. This is the idea behind this chair, and several others. Haworth came up with the slogan, "the best posture is the next posture" for their Taz chair, implying that movement is the best solution to (potential) problems caused by sitting all day.
Is it the ultimate solution? No. Is any chair, workstation, or even exercise regime? No. There is no single solution, just a steadily advancing body of knowledge to help those who are suffering a hell of a lot.
And to the idiot who suggested that all of the money going into this field (the research is apparently all done by marketing staff!!!) could be better spent on food, clothing, shelter, and so forth; You might consider the amount of money that goes into computer games, or any computer research for that matter. How much food could we raise for the price of John Carmack's (I think that's him--that ID guy) Ferarri? When you lambaste a company that designs a better chair, it makes me wonder if you just hate to see people not in pain.
You're a fucking idiot. Try talking to someone who's in decent shape, gets exercise and has a life away from the computer, but still has to undergo surgery for their back/wrist/arm problems.
You don't like the chair? Fine! Don't buy the damned thing! Just fuck off and leave those who WOULD alone.
This message brought to you by my third and fourth lumbar vertebrae.
Then you're lucky. Very lucky. And also built slightly differently than everyone else.
I was pretty happy with a good chair in front of a crappy old desk for a while. When they moved me,
I did well enough in a broken office chair at a
similar desk. With a really good chair in a designed corner workstation, I barely survived, and now with a chair that's slightly too low (and not adjustable) with a high desk, I'm becoming crippled.
Other people could go through the same setup and have the opposite reaction. The problem with the field of ergonomics is that there is no single solution.
Enjoy your back.
WHY should your precious little country be first
in the list? If you're going to rank countries,
where do the UK, Australia, France, Canada, and
Finland fit into your list? Even if you are the
biggest single country to use tripwire (which I
doubt), if you're going to put one country first
then you'd better rank everyone in order of use.
I've never heard anything so pathetic--whining
because your country came near the bottom of an
alphabetised list! Grow up.
Fair enough--if you get pinging, you need a higher
octane gas (or a tuneup). But, for almost every
properly tuned car out there, regular 87 octane gas
is perfectly acceptable, and anything higher than
that is _less_ efficient in their car. Probably more
than 90% of the litres of premium gas are wasted
money.
The _idea_ behind rambus memory is a good one--
:-) for
there are some very impressive bits of technology
that could (and should) be developed.
HOWEVER; Rambus the _company_ has dropped the
ball. Rather than develop the technology, they
have behaved in the finest tradition for the year
2000, and tried to make money by whinging,
whining, and ultimately suing everyone doing
better than them. They behave like children, and
I've been gleefully watching them get spanked.
Maybe I'll form a company to create electronic
dictionaries. Rather than collecting any words
though, I'll just sue Oxford (and Webster, but
definitely not the American Heritage group
copyright/patent infringement. MUCH easier than
real work.
By this statement, we mean to describe a means of item selection via the combined use of a cursor movement device (the "pointer") and an electromechanical switch (the "selector"). The intent is that a computer operator may move a spatial positioning indicator (the "cursor") freely around on an electronic display, by use of the pointer. Several user-configurable pictographs ("icons") may be placed on this display, each one symbolising a function or application on the device attached to the display (the "computer").
When the cursor's position coincides with that of one of the icons, the selector may be engaged to activate the function assigned to that icon.
---
There. I've just created a patent framework for using a mouse (trackball, light-pen, etc.)
Hee, hee! Nothing ever is going to make DVDs hard
to get in the US (the rest of America is a different issue). The US is the Big Consumer
Market.
Region coding provides nothing more than the
ability to _restrict_ who gets what and when. It's
a restrictive technology, and if it gets bypassed,
it bypasses arbitrary (or more specifically,
marketing-based) restrictions.
There's NOTHING (nothing, nothing, nothing!!!) in
region codes that helps the consumer, or anyone
at all except for the company's bankroll.
Damn! Now where are all of those moderation points
I had the other day? This article would go up up
up if I had the power right now.
In this context, the FCC uses the phrase "is
consistent with..." Careful reading shows that
this ruling (tentatively) _allows_ such copy
protection to be put into place, it does not
_require_ such things.
The article seemed to be missing that subtle (like
a brick!) point.
From the suck article:
"But the decisions are no less legally binding for being silly..."
This is why the article is right. This is what the point is: Being morally right, being technically correct, having half a clue; none of these things will overcome determination, money, big business, and organisation. In othwr words, You're not going to win just because you're right!"
This is the way the world works. Deal with it, or get dirty and change it--really change it--but don't bother ranting and vandalising web sites.
Agreed. This was decidedly full o' stuff.
You don't know what to think of it? I do--it stinks.
Can they do this? Sure. Is this common? Absolutely--it's been done for decades in the real world. Fast food chains are particularly bad for setting prices differently in different areas of a city. We call this "DEMOGRAPHIC PRICING," and the only think that Amazon has done differently is increasing the level of detail/granularity on which they can apply it. Instead of getting people based on their home or work district (and hence, their approximate income, job type, general lifestyle, etc.) they can do it by specific individual attributes.
It could be used for good purposes, but in this case as in most, there's no profit in good behaviour. It's sleazy and wrong, and should encourage us customers to research _every_ purchase we make over some 'throwaway' threshold.
Eventually this will jump up and bite the companies back. Continual comparison shopping and distrust of retailers means no brand/store loyalty, no sense of responsibility, and no loss when the companies die.
Well, well. TRUSTe is at it again. How many times do they have to behave immorally, unethically, or just simply irresponsibly before companies stop touting "TRUSTe certified!!!" Apparently too damned many times.
This is the same company that said, "oh, sure they're violating their own policies, but um...we can't do anything about that. We only check to see if companies are violating their own policies and, um....can we get back to you on that?"
They're sleazy, irresponsible, and incompetent.
I hope everyone else is doing the same as me--Every time I see a company asking for registration or some sort of personal information, and I see that TRUSTe cockroach on the web page, I send them a polite email saying that I don't do any business (shopping or anything else) with a company that uses TRUSTe.
Games are getting better? Definitely! Well, mostly definitely. However, games are getting less and less diverse, and that's not a good thing. Old genres fade into oblivion, and new ones fail to take their places. The FPS is definitely here to stay for a good while, but it shouldn't end up being the only game you can buy! (or download, or...)
"Or are you another pathetic little twerp with no skills?"
Oh great. Another one. The biggest downfall of
the open source movement is going to be shitheads
with the attitude of, "If you're not a programmer
then shut the fuck up and be happy with whatever
we decide to give you."
Not all of us are programmers, and not all of us
have the time to spare from our lives to be
heavily involved with a multi-year development
project. The point remains that adding all sorts
of bells and whistles to mozilla is damaging to
the project for two reasons:
1) It's putting the cart before the horse. There
still isn't a general, feature-complete, stable
and fully functional _browser_ to come from the
project. Build a solid core. Then extend. Not the
other way around.
2) Take a look at the comments from all of those
pathetic little twerps with no skills. (i.e. the
users) The biggest reason that people are watching
and waiting for mozilla is to get a small, fast,
streamlined browser. If it weren't for the huge
footprint and feature bloat of Netscape 4.x,
most people probably wouldn't give a rat's ass
about Mozilla.
Now grow up, and brush that chip off your
shoulder.
"While it is true that these so called "grey hat" hackers are doing something completely ethically questionable by creating these scripts, it's shifting the blame away from the truly responsible parties. It's akin to asking a robber "why did you tell every criminal in the city my house is unlocked?" The reply, in the analogy and in computer security, is to ask "but why is your house unlocked?"
Bit of a false analogy. I'm not leaving my house unlocked. I'm still getting people breaking into it. (or trying, at any rate) A better analogy would be if I bought a lock for my house, and the 'grey hats' were to manufacture lock picking tools with extensive instructions. Most sites have accomplished 'reasonable' security precautions. I'm not sure that checking for patches twice a week is reasonable.
On the other hand, I'm grateful to the 'grey hats' because I've been bludgeoning my own systems with their tools, fixing any cracks I can find.
Agreed entirely.
/.
When the DeCCS fiasco surfaced, I emailed the CBC
about it. Partly as a result of my actions, the
story made the national evening news here in
Canada! They interviewed Matt Skala fairly
extensively, and I was on the news for about five
seconds. When all was said and done, we exposed
Mattel's misbehaviour to an audience of consumers
orders of magnitude larger than
THAT is the way to get attention. Take it to the
streets, to the public, and to the consumers.
Bit of a mixed response here.
On the one hand, you're right--calling them names won't do much good, other than letting them know that they're getting to us.
On the other hand, just because they can cause damage doesn't make them bright studies. A 14 year old with an AK-47 can cause a lot of damage. It doesn't take much knowledge to pull the trigger. If you dig through the story on rootprompt.org about the hack they suffered, you'll find that some of these exploits are being pulled off by kids who don't understand how (or what it means) to mount a hard drive under Unix! Download an exploit and a rootkit, and you're in business--no brainpower needed.
"One of the most widely used arguments for hacking and cracking is that they want to find the flaws and security holes in a system. That's great and fine IF that is what they are actually doing."
I know this isn't your point, but I still have to call bullshit on anyone who claims this as a validation for cracking.
It's not an argument. It's not a validation. It's not a justification. It's an excuse for a bunch of juvenile delinquents to violate and destroy other people's property without any moral qualms.
If most systems were buildings, they'd have triple locks, security scans, and a receptionist. Lets face it--most computers on the internet are amply secure to prevent people from walking in either accidentally or with just a quick word. Anyone who breaks into our systems is the moral equivalent of an armed bank robber. Any 'security checking' excuses are only so much BS.
"they should be shot for polluting the gene pool with their stupidity. IMHO"
Agreed. Let's lock up the vermin.
I disagree. If they're trying to get _behind_ the firewall, then they are de facto trying to make the firewall transparent to their scan. I guess it depends on how you interpret "fly stealthily beneath the radar of firewalls and intrusion detection systems." I say that means they're planning on getting behind firewalls.
Good distinction, though. It's an important one.