Re:Now if hackers could just learn to hack the gov
on
Good Bad Attitude
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· Score: 1
In Soviet Russia, the govornment hacks YOU!
That's not just to make a joke. The problem with 'hacking' the govornment is that you become corrupted by close proximity to it. In order to have any effect on it, you must become what you hate. Then you don't care enough to make a difference. Billy Gates got his first taste of hacking the govornment a few years back when he was trying to save his company from being broken up into little Baby Bells. Now he can't get enough. Now, he has enough financial power to get into the game before being corrupted, but then, he was on the Dark Side already so it's hard to see a difference. Still, he illustrates the point well enough- power corrupts.
You can hack a sewer system, too. But you're gonna come out smelling like sh*t.
Build kickass open-source software to meet the needs. Basically, it would be saying, "If I can't have the job, you can't either." If India steals your job, make the job evaporate out from under them. See? With open source, everybody wins!
That would work right up to the MRI. Then it would be slag.
Well, much as this hackles my tin foil hat side, I'll simply say I will be making a microwave gun to cook that sucker if I can't dig it out with an Xacto blade. Heebie Jeebies. 1984 is now.
"Ooh! Ooh! I know! Lets take this broken browser and break it even more! Then lets distribute it as part of our software package!"
"Why, Bob, that's be best damn idea I've heard this year! How would you like to be a vice president?"
I'm sorry, I just don't see it, George. The people who are going to go out and buy this, are going to go out an buy it so they have the collection. The entire collection. A pirated copy just wouldn't do. Yes, some people will pirate it. But it's not going to dent George's wallet, because anyone who is fanatical about SW is going to buy, and the mainstream populus is going to buy. George may have his knickers in a knot about people pirating his movie, but piracy affecting his profits is PURE PROPAGANDA.
Personally, I will not be buying it, because of that stupid CG Jabba. It breaks my suspension of disbelief, because I know that Hutts are supposed to live thousands of years. There is no explanation of Jabba being the size of a whale in Ep I and then being the size of a horse in Ep IV and then being back to the size of a whale in Ep VI. Plus, Hutts are supposed to be very snooty and regal, and Jabba would never lower himself to go and 'visit' Han Solo. Then his eyes bug out of his head when Han steps on his tail? Wow, Leia didn't get them to pop out that far when she choked his ass with a chain. Must be some heavy boots, Han. After that scene, I just can't watch anymore.It breaks the whole film. Most of the rest is forgivable, but that Jabba just sucks. I will wait 10 more years until he changes his mind, or until he dies and his kids release the originals on DVD or whatever format is cool at the time.
yep. Spend the extra dough and get 90% alcohol or better, which means less water going through your computers. Just replace the power supplies. it's too dangerous to bathe them.
Google, of all people should not be building an IE-only ANYTHING. They should know better.
I think it's a bit ironic, too, that right when Firefox is taking the net by storm, Google puts out something which could give people an excuse not to quit thier IE addiction. "Oh I tried that firefox thing, but it couldn't load my google toolbar, so I went back to Internet Exploder"
Maybe I am not normal (likely, since I read/.), but I just don't read like that. I look at a line and just know what it says, and if there are difficult concepts in it, or a word I don't know, my eyes instantly zoom in on it. When I read a novel, I might as well be watching a movie, as I hardly even see words. So while their study may have shown the norm, it wasn't all-inclusive. My reading follows none of the patterns they indicated.
I've tried Abiword a few times. It seems that the feature I need is always not there, even when there's a button or menu item for it. That's mostly what turns me off about it.
Now, between Word and OO.o, I will take OO.o. for what I consider the most important features of a document editor: the default settings make sense, and the formatting works right the first time. I have spent more time on Word screwing around with settings to get it to do what I want than I have actually writing. Even the default document settings must be fixed before you can do very much productive work. Undo often does an incomplete job of undo-ing, so often if the tweaks go awry, you must start fresh. Unsavory.
OpenOffice, OTOH, starts up with reasonable settings, and the formatting tools work correctly and are well-placed. Not that it's perfect. I very much miss grammar checking, and I find it odd that it doesn't have it. I wouldn't think it would be any harder than coding AI for chess games, and there are people who do that for fun. Also, the auto-complete functionality is counter-intuitive. That needs to be revamped. I usually must disable it in order to save my sanity. Far easier to spell-check at the end. Still, there's not too much that's broken about it. That's where my vote goes.
Yes, I agree. By "The People," I mean the individual persons who make up this country. I'm not against any other "folks." I am against anything not "folks",such as corporations, and only where those corporations are attempting to restrict the freedom of "The People" for material/influential gain. Yes, some individuals fall into that category, such as those who build billion dollar software corporations on the backs of the other pioneering individuals who wrote and distributed their software freely because it was The Right Thing To Do. But I am saying I am against them selling their freedom and the freedom of others to make a buck, not against them personally.
The thrust of your comment seems to be that nobody on the side of "The People" could in all good conscience advocate adherence to current patent and copyright laws. I'm strongly on the side of intellectual property reform, but there are many reasons why reasonable people disagree about intellectual property laws.
Personally, that is exactly what I believe. No person who is on the side of "The People" could advocate either the patent system or copyright laws in their current form. The bottom line is, they do not work for the people. IMHO. I don't think our opinions are opposed to each other at all, and I am not trying to bait you. But I do feel that any politician who strives to increase the tyranny of big business whatsoever, and particularly by removing and restricting the freedom of the people they are being paid to represent, ought not to be able to sleep at night. The bottom line is that the govornment doesn't get elected by businesses. Even though businesses are generally considered a legal entity(another issue I have issue with), no "business entity" has the right to vote. When "Microsoft" goes into a voting booth and casts a ballot, we as a nation are done. Therefore, no politition should consider the desires of big business when it comes to these kinds of issues, unless it's an issue that does not concern individual people at all. Nothing comes to mind.
Anytime a decision is made about such issues, it should be considered in the following light: Anyone who trades freedom for security deserves neither. That's a paraphrase, from Thomas Jefferson I believe, but that was the gist of it. Whether 10 jobs are at stake or 10,000 does not matter. People will find other jobs. Companies will adjust to new paradigms, or go under. That is the nature of free enterprise. You can't just go around nilly willy restricting the freedom this great nation is based upon just because a few people
might lose their jobs. There's always work. If not, move. There's always work somewhere. Always. If one business fails, more will emerge in its place. Most of the things I can think of which are wrong with this country revolve around laws which restrict our freedom, often for the sake of buisiness. For example, seat belts. Not wearing a seatbelt endangers noone but yourself. It should be your right to take that risk, the same as if you hang glide or jump from a plane. Yet, because insurance companies desired it, now, in the U.S. of all places, the police spend their time rounding up the troublemakers who refuse to have their personal freedom restricted. Another example: why on earth should I need a license to cut a dog's hair? I can see making doctors be licensed, since what they do affects a person's life. But dog grooming? I consider that an infringement on my liberty. I have no desire to take up that profession, but if I did, there should be no licensing involved.
We must all keep vigil to ensure our freedom. Whether you work at Redhat or IBM or Microsoft, you cannot lose sight of the necessity of preserving freedom, especially when it becomes easy to be blinded by the lure of the dollar. Many cry out, how will programmers make a living without IP? I say, musicians should be paid to sing. Not paid for recording something and then living off the sales for 40 years. A programmer should be paid to program. When someone has a need, they should hire a programmer to fill it. When the job is done, that program should be released into the public domain. As long as there are new processors and devices, there will be a need for people to code it. Now, an artist gets paid for his art. It's tangible. It's a piece of canvas. But where it is digital, such as graphic artists, they should get paid for the act of creation, but not continually forever on account of half a day's button-clicking. Once it's done, it's done. Look at the porn industry one more time. It's the cornerstone of internet industry, yet more porn gets copied than anything else I know of. The industry is not suf
Way back in the good ol days, Congress decided Americans didn't need to drink alcohol anymore and forbade it. Actually changed the Constitution! Did that stop it from happening? No. Eventually, they amended the Constitution again to repeal their stupidity. The American people had spoken. They were going to have their booze no matter what the govornment decided was best for them.
Now, we have a similar situation. The People either do not care about patent and/or copyright violations, or are actively against them. The only people who advocate our current patent and copyright catastrophies are those trying to make a quick buck. (I throw both patents and copyrights out there, because those running linux kernels right now who read slashdot know there are patent violations in the kernel, yet are using it anyway, and I'd say 99% of us will continue to do so until they pry the keyboards from our cold dead fingers, no matter who thinks they own it. And for copyrights, go ahead and delete all that porn on your harddrives, because odds are very good you do not own the rights to have it. No? Didn't think so. Same goes for most music, ebooks, whatever.)
The point is, the People have spoken on this issue. They have said, "Copyrights and patents have the sole purpose of protecting the little guy from the big guy. Not the big guy from the next big guy and not the big guy from the little guy. It's purpose is not to help big companies enforce a monopoly on consumers."
Any politician who advocates persecution of fileswapping or using patents by the people(that's the purpose of having a patent system at all) does not deserve his office. Don't vote for them. Because they are not listening to what the People are saying.
If someone independently produces some code that does the same thing described in someone else's patent, is that not reverse engineering? If something can't be reverse engineered(such as the infamous 1-click amazon patent), how could it possibly hold up in court as a valid patent? Any patent like that should be declared invalid in court, I would think, if the defense attorney is any good. I am against software patents anyway, but even allowing for software patents, there has to be some sort of novelty and complexity to qualify something for patentability. I know the USPTO has totally hosed the issue, but most software patents should not hold up in court, given a good patent attorney. Patenting things like the 1-click would be like patenting kung-fu moves. Any schmoe can make his body do that move, it's just not novel. If a patent can't be reverse engineered, it really doesn't qualify as complex enough to warrant a patent. If someone independently develops the same idea, doesn't that exempt them from liability to the patent? If not, it should.
If he put a key capture on the computer, to get the guy's passwords etc. your analogy would be good. But for what he did, I'd say the equivalent would be putting a camera outside the ladies room, which is a totally different thing. Spying in the workplace is part of working in the IT industry. It's what we do. Beware of anyone who says or thinks differently, you do not want them protecting your IT assets. He could have used different methods. There are monitoring suites available which can tell you what programs are running on what machines on your network and for how long, and what websites are accessed. He should have went with a different option. But what he did falls well within the scope of his job description.
Any government computers I have ever heard of require you to give consent to be monitored BEFORE you are authorized to use them. It's usually part of the IT policy which must be signed as part of employee indoctrination. Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you, but not for a government position.
That, sir, is crap. His employer hired him to perform the mystical art of sysadmining. as far as the employer is concerned, its a black box situation. Much like when a lawyer goes to trial for you. You may know what his strategy is, buy you do not have the experience or knowledge to dictate which laws or previous cases will be referenced. It's not your area of expertise. If his job description included dectecting and reporting computer misuse, then he was fired for doing his job. Frankly, everyone involved in firing him should be fired, because whistleblowers must be protected from this, ESPECIALLY in the government.
Anyone who can use the words "airport" and "express" in the same sentence, obviously hasn't been to one in a few years.
Re:He's holding it wrong! (UI ideas)
on
3D Mouse
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· Score: 2, Insightful
How about using cameras to track the glove movement? Use reflective tape of various colors for the software to track, then it knows also where your fingers are and really does know the attitude of your hand. You could really manipulate things. Digitally, as it were. (get it? aw, nevermind)
I'm sure someone would try to scream patent, but the fact is, there is prior art all the way back to the PDP-6 at MIT back in '66 or so for using cameras in similar ways, albeit for robotics. David Silver was his name. So three cameras, positioned around the work area, could give very acurate posisitional data and allow a person to manipulate objects in very cool ways.
Who needs all the wires? Keep 'em
Also, as to why to do it? It's the hack! Look at the Altair. Why'd people assemble them? After completion, it was basically a box with blinkenlights and switches. So why did people do it? They did it because it was fun. It was about the challenge and the sweat and frustration and joy and... well if you don't understand, then it's not for you. Move along, there's nothing to see here.
Frankly, I feel that eventually, "personal computing" should mean the computing done by your clothing, with visual output sent wirelessly to your visors and audio to your earphones. Input needs to be totally redesigned. I personally think of something like a fat wand with buttons for "keyboard" input, and you just point and touch where the image is projected from your visors. a camera in the visor could track the wand, and since the camera is stationary with respect to the image in the visor, the two could easily be syncronized with a "hold the wand until the tip touches the red dot and press a button."(x3) Then you wouldn't have to try and use some crazy scheme of eye-ball tracking.
Anyway, The Idea of a "PC" will probably be phased out in favor of this, and perhaps a "Home" computer, one computer wired into the home with multiple terminals, some wireless, some hardwired, scattered throughout. Running Linux or BSD, of course:)
Obviously, you have never been to Japan, where you might order in a chinese restaurant, "Flied Lice." I want to end with a "YOU FAIL IT!" but instead i will simply say: nice try though
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In Soviet Russia, the govornment hacks YOU!
That's not just to make a joke. The problem with 'hacking' the govornment is that you become corrupted by close proximity to it. In order to have any effect on it, you must become what you hate. Then you don't care enough to make a difference. Billy Gates got his first taste of hacking the govornment a few years back when he was trying to save his company from being broken up into little Baby Bells. Now he can't get enough. Now, he has enough financial power to get into the game before being corrupted, but then, he was on the Dark Side already so it's hard to see a difference. Still, he illustrates the point well enough- power corrupts.
You can hack a sewer system, too. But you're gonna come out smelling like sh*t.
Build kickass open-source software to meet the needs. Basically, it would be saying, "If I can't have the job, you can't either." If India steals your job, make the job evaporate out from under them. See? With open source, everybody wins!
That would work right up to the MRI. Then it would be slag.
Well, much as this hackles my tin foil hat side, I'll simply say I will be making a microwave gun to cook that sucker if I can't dig it out with an Xacto blade. Heebie Jeebies. 1984 is now.
"Ooh! Ooh! I know! Lets take this broken browser and break it even more! Then lets distribute it as part of our software package!"
"Why, Bob, that's be best damn idea I've heard this year! How would you like to be a vice president?"
I'm sorry, I just don't see it, George. The people who are going to go out and buy this, are going to go out an buy it so they have the collection. The entire collection. A pirated copy just wouldn't do. Yes, some people will pirate it. But it's not going to dent George's wallet, because anyone who is fanatical about SW is going to buy, and the mainstream populus is going to buy. George may have his knickers in a knot about people pirating his movie, but piracy affecting his profits is PURE PROPAGANDA.
Personally, I will not be buying it, because of that stupid CG Jabba. It breaks my suspension of disbelief, because I know that Hutts are supposed to live thousands of years. There is no explanation of Jabba being the size of a whale in Ep I and then being the size of a horse in Ep IV and then being back to the size of a whale in Ep VI. Plus, Hutts are supposed to be very snooty and regal, and Jabba would never lower himself to go and 'visit' Han Solo. Then his eyes bug out of his head when Han steps on his tail? Wow, Leia didn't get them to pop out that far when she choked his ass with a chain. Must be some heavy boots, Han. After that scene, I just can't watch anymore.It breaks the whole film. Most of the rest is forgivable, but that Jabba just sucks.
I will wait 10 more years until he changes his mind, or until he dies and his kids release the originals on DVD or whatever format is cool at the time.
yep. Spend the extra dough and get 90% alcohol or better, which means less water going through your computers. Just replace the power supplies. it's too dangerous to bathe them.
Google, of all people should not be building an IE-only ANYTHING. They should know better.
I think it's a bit ironic, too, that right when Firefox is taking the net by storm, Google puts out something which could give people an excuse not to quit thier IE addiction. "Oh I tried that firefox thing, but it couldn't load my google toolbar, so I went back to Internet Exploder"
When I see a "Boot from USB storage device" in the Bios boot menu, then I'll believe floppies are gone.
Maybe I am not normal (likely, since I read /.), but I just don't read like that. I look at a line and just know what it says, and if there are difficult concepts in it, or a word I don't know, my eyes instantly zoom in on it. When I read a novel, I might as well be watching a movie, as I hardly even see words. So while their study may have shown the norm, it wasn't all-inclusive. My reading follows none of the patterns they indicated.
I've tried Abiword a few times. It seems that the feature I need is always not there, even when there's a button or menu item for it. That's mostly what turns me off about it.
Now, between Word and OO.o, I will take OO.o. for what I consider the most important features of a document editor: the default settings make sense, and the formatting works right the first time. I have spent more time on Word screwing around with settings to get it to do what I want than I have actually writing. Even the default document settings must be fixed before you can do very much productive work. Undo often does an incomplete job of undo-ing, so often if the tweaks go awry, you must start fresh. Unsavory.
OpenOffice, OTOH, starts up with reasonable settings, and the formatting tools work correctly and are well-placed. Not that it's perfect. I very much miss grammar checking, and I find it odd that it doesn't have it. I wouldn't think it would be any harder than coding AI for chess games, and there are people who do that for fun. Also, the auto-complete functionality is counter-intuitive. That needs to be revamped. I usually must disable it in order to save my sanity. Far easier to spell-check at the end. Still, there's not too much that's broken about it. That's where my vote goes.
Yes, I agree. By "The People," I mean the individual persons who make up this country. I'm not against any other "folks." I am against anything not "folks" ,such as corporations, and only where those corporations are attempting to restrict the freedom of "The People" for material/influential gain. Yes, some individuals fall into that category, such as those who build billion dollar software corporations on the backs of the other pioneering individuals who wrote and distributed their software freely because it was The Right Thing To Do. But I am saying I am against them selling their freedom and the freedom of others to make a buck, not against them personally.
Personally, that is exactly what I believe. No person who is on the side of "The People" could advocate either the patent system or copyright laws in their current form. The bottom line is, they do not work for the people. IMHO. I don't think our opinions are opposed to each other at all, and I am not trying to bait you. But I do feel that any politician who strives to increase the tyranny of big business whatsoever, and particularly by removing and restricting the freedom of the people they are being paid to represent, ought not to be able to sleep at night. The bottom line is that the govornment doesn't get elected by businesses. Even though businesses are generally considered a legal entity(another issue I have issue with), no "business entity" has the right to vote. When "Microsoft" goes into a voting booth and casts a ballot, we as a nation are done. Therefore, no politition should consider the desires of big business when it comes to these kinds of issues, unless it's an issue that does not concern individual people at all. Nothing comes to mind.
Way back in the good ol days, Congress decided Americans didn't need to drink alcohol anymore and forbade it. Actually changed the Constitution! Did that stop it from happening? No. Eventually, they amended the Constitution again to repeal their stupidity. The American people had spoken. They were going to have their booze no matter what the govornment decided was best for them.
Now, we have a similar situation. The People either do not care about patent and/or copyright violations, or are actively against them. The only people who advocate our current patent and copyright catastrophies are those trying to make a quick buck. (I throw both patents and copyrights out there, because those running linux kernels right now who read slashdot know there are patent violations in the kernel, yet are using it anyway, and I'd say 99% of us will continue to do so until they pry the keyboards from our cold dead fingers, no matter who thinks they own it. And for copyrights, go ahead and delete all that porn on your harddrives, because odds are very good you do not own the rights to have it. No? Didn't think so. Same goes for most music, ebooks, whatever.)
The point is, the People have spoken on this issue. They have said, "Copyrights and patents have the sole purpose of protecting the little guy from the big guy. Not the big guy from the next big guy and not the big guy from the little guy. It's purpose is not to help big companies enforce a monopoly on consumers."
Any politician who advocates persecution of fileswapping or using patents by the people(that's the purpose of having a patent system at all) does not deserve his office. Don't vote for them. Because they are not listening to what the People are saying.
I just got finished compiling kde, and ouch, not going to do it again soon.
License, or I will type license AGAIN! . bored now. That's it. You are banned. [00:01] *** ChanServ sets mode +b for #linux, SCOsAlEz
If someone independently produces some code that does the same thing described in someone else's patent, is that not reverse engineering? If something can't be reverse engineered(such as the infamous 1-click amazon patent), how could it possibly hold up in court as a valid patent? Any patent like that should be declared invalid in court, I would think, if the defense attorney is any good. I am against software patents anyway, but even allowing for software patents, there has to be some sort of novelty and complexity to qualify something for patentability. I know the USPTO has totally hosed the issue, but most software patents should not hold up in court, given a good patent attorney. Patenting things like the 1-click would be like patenting kung-fu moves. Any schmoe can make his body do that move, it's just not novel. If a patent can't be reverse engineered, it really doesn't qualify as complex enough to warrant a patent. If someone independently develops the same idea, doesn't that exempt them from liability to the patent? If not, it should.
You are right. Companies don't need Lone Rangers.
He, on the other hand, works for the government. Big Brother. The rules are much different.
If he put a key capture on the computer, to get the guy's passwords etc. your analogy would be good. But for what he did, I'd say the equivalent would be putting a camera outside the ladies room, which is a totally different thing. Spying in the workplace is part of working in the IT industry. It's what we do. Beware of anyone who says or thinks differently, you do not want them protecting your IT assets. He could have used different methods. There are monitoring suites available which can tell you what programs are running on what machines on your network and for how long, and what websites are accessed. He should have went with a different option. But what he did falls well within the scope of his job description.
Any government computers I have ever heard of require you to give consent to be monitored BEFORE you are authorized to use them. It's usually part of the IT policy which must be signed as part of employee indoctrination. Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you, but not for a government position.
That, sir, is crap. His employer hired him to perform the mystical art of sysadmining. as far as the employer is concerned, its a black box situation. Much like when a lawyer goes to trial for you. You may know what his strategy is, buy you do not have the experience or knowledge to dictate which laws or previous cases will be referenced. It's not your area of expertise. If his job description included dectecting and reporting computer misuse, then he was fired for doing his job. Frankly, everyone involved in firing him should be fired, because whistleblowers must be protected from this, ESPECIALLY in the government.
Is that UNIX Systems Laboratories or Un-Savory Lawyers?
Who needs all the wires? Keep 'em
Also, as to why to do it? It's the hack! Look at the Altair. Why'd people assemble them? After completion, it was basically a box with blinkenlights and switches. So why did people do it? They did it because it was fun. It was about the challenge and the sweat and frustration and joy and... well if you don't understand, then it's not for you. Move along, there's nothing to see here.
Anyway, The Idea of a "PC" will probably be phased out in favor of this, and perhaps a "Home" computer, one computer wired into the home with multiple terminals, some wireless, some hardwired, scattered throughout. Running Linux or BSD, of course:)
Obviously, you have never been to Japan, where you might order in a chinese restaurant, "Flied Lice." I want to end with a "YOU FAIL IT!" but instead i will simply say: nice try though