overdesigned, you seem to have misspelled "well made" there. Machine tools are not consumer goods. Machine tools are not electronic toys. Machine tools are what we used to call "durable goods" because they were built to last.
Better yet. When that corporation is found breaking the law. All of them. All one person of them, including all the myriad, innocents who just happen to own ten shares of its stock get to go to prison together. Wait, that's ridiculous? Oh, so now a corporation isn't a person?
The thing is AC, that this has always been true. And will continue to be true for some time into the future. The law of Moore, familiar with that? Sounds wasteful, the gut feel of it is wrong, but it is still true.
Sort of anyway? Seems to that the networks of hackers and bad guy developers has always been sharing notes and code, and that this technique has long been used as an "intelligence amplifier" allowing a loose collection of bad guys who couldn't or at least didn't get real jobs to create some powerful malware tools. Which are often then used by someone else with slightly less coding sense and much more ambition to make some money, and to spread the idea of making money this way to others. The whole industry is a lot like multi-level marketing that way.
How often in the real world do you find yourself thinking. "Gee he's never really done this before in an applied, practical setting. That makes his skills fresher!" In my case that would be a big never.
You needed a CB radio, something you could not use for anything else. Most CB's were installed in cars. Base units cost more, as did hand held models. Buying a model for a car and using it in the home? Possible, but not for the average person. Twitter? All you need is a phone or a computer -- something many people already have.
The "entry" into Twitter is cheaper/easier, which is why it might be more widespread, but I think the comparison is valid.
Except for the fact that in some very real ways the CB radio was actually useful. Useful primarily for finding out where the police were on the interstate, so you wouldn't get a ticket for going over the new, and much hated 55 mph speed limit, useful for calling for help traveling or talking to your buddies following you in the next car. Weather and road conditions passed from truckers and motorists etc. They certainly created and highlighted a subculture many of us would like to think of as unintelligent and coarse, that is truckers, truck stop folks and the very rural, but CB communications was also very practical. No one has tweeted to me that there was a speed trap around the bend.
Amazingly, that will be my reaction as well. The ability to broadcast txt messages indiscriminately, and read the txts of others broadcast thusly. Just doesn't do anything for me.
The exhaust of automobiles is a very significant source of the terrible air quality in American cities. Americans breathe the air in those cities...... Right?
But you can, and we do all the time. The amount of effort you put into protecting them from themselves, that is the cost to all of us, should be done so as to achieve the greatest "good" to society as a whole, not to try and achieve perfection. Speed limits protect you from yourself. Seat belts. Curve signs. The ban on general ownership of machine guns and artillery etc. Building codes, electrical codes. We could just let the market take care of all that stuff as well, but it doesn't really work that way.
Simplistic. Surcharges on fuel would be a way to make the owners of bigger, heavier more polluting vehicles pay their fair share of the costs of roads and bridges, etc. The idea that all taxes should be to fund the government and that we should let the market allocate resources is a good one, but nothing is that simple.
The whole point of "the cloud" network computing, etc. Whatever we're calling it these days. Is that they want to keep charging us over and over for the same thing. They want us to rent everything from them. The computing platform, the phone, the device, the apps, as a result they can even own our data. Have fun with that if you want to a digital serf. You can opt not to use a lot of these gadgets, they're bad business models, and one can be a nerd without owning all those faddish gadgets.
Look, I'm old. For the/. crowd anyway. I still have the built in old people hatred of youth culture and constant cell phone use. Of course I'm a geek, so I'd trade a kidney for my unlimited smartphone, but hey that's not important here.
My employer gives me an unlimited cell phone. They pay for it, that's the deal. They can call me on it whenever they want. I can call Swaziland eleven times a day if I feel like doing so. That cost them X amount of dollars, both of us feel like I'm just getting paid X amount of dollars more every month. If my employer stops paying for my cell phone. It save them a few bucks, but over thousands of employees, it's absolutely no different than cutting pay by that much a month. It will cost them workers, reduce their ability to retain employees, it's a small cut in pay. Not really much of a story. Certainly not some big win for the taxpayers, more than likely not some big hit for the employees, but probably a stupid grandstanding play by the Governor.
I'm willing to bet that paying for these employees cell phones was seen as more valuable to the employees than it actually cost the state, therefore it was cheaper than paying however much more cash they would see as the same benefit, over time, and large enough numbers the quality of the workforce in question will decrease by the fifty-some dollars a month per person the state is saving. So basically the whole story is a big fat "yawn" hidden pay cut. Not your rights online, not a sea change, just dumb grandstanding by an aging dork.
One of the really amusing things here. In most of the business world, I would assume being the next Steve Case would be an awesome thing. I don't know much he ended up with, but if he's rolling around on a pile of millions of dollars it's due to terribly money management, not lack of income. Also what has Facebook ever done for me? Do you know how many times I had to say thank you Steve Case for the free floppy disk? (Those things were not cheap, once upon a time.)
Are you trying to suggest that there's nothing at all special about the brilliant, almost groundbreaking, even better than Geo-Cities, or AOL, or powow uhm... It's like IRC on steroids!
So, what you're saying is there's nothing at all terribly innovative that Facebook is selling? That the only thing driving it's success is that finally, a generation or so into this, the "average" non-geeky consumer has come to understand a bit about the potential of the information age? And instead they all chose to play farmville and post ugly baby pictures?
Check. The thing that drives facebook is simply that "everyone and their grandmother" all decided to use it suddenly. That makes it briefly very useful. Sure they can extend that, or maintain it for a long time. But as soon as a better networking tool comes along. With no doubt an automagical way to import your profile information, photos and friends, all while winning five megabannanas for jungleville 3D. Then Facebook will be... Friendster/myspace/geocities/whatever other icon of forgotten internet community you'd like to bring up.
1: Duh.
2: The whole notion of gambling is basically an exploit of the defective software that many people seem to be carrying in their brain. Maybe wecan start a class action lawsuit on behalf of all those who've lost their life's savings in casinos?
No. Those regimes were oppressive, evil, utterly without merit or redeeming features. However they were also run by people more competent than the TSA. See, our own version of the secret police is not only built to be without regard for you essential constitutional liberties. The agency is built to be so absolutely incompetent, without any potential useful benefit to society it can cause brain damage if you just try and understand how useless the entire apparatus is. The department of homeland security was seen commenting on the (Really really tiny.) 4.2 or so Earthquake in central Indiana the other day. Wait, go back, read that last sentence for comprehension. Done yet? Yes the Indiana Department of Homeland Security can officially comment on, and protect us from Earthquakes. So.. Why ask the USGS, or anyone who might have had some kinda clue about what's actually going on?
There are some other posts that partially capture this thought. Really being able to type. Good keyboarding skills. This is nifty to have if you're a programmer, it's nifty to have if you're a writer, or have to create a lot of documentation, or various kinds of code. It isn't essential. It's not a measure of how good you are at any of those things. If you can achieve the accuracy you need, and you type fast enough that you don't find yourself taking shortcuts, using text-speak, giving all your variables names like S1 and A2 because you haven't the hand speed to call them something descriptive. Then it's not a big deal. My coworker using some kind of bizarre sliding two hand eight-finger method two type that doesn't reliably use the same fingers to hit the same keys, and yet somehow she can type at very least faster than she can compose documentation or work instructions, and can even spell. (I Can't spell very well unless I can at least lay my hands on a desk and pretend to type the words.) I would expect anyone who is competent at any profession that requires spending a lot of time driving a keyboard to be at least a reasonably competent typist.
I think this attack just shows the difference that good engineering can make. Most worms out there are relatively unsophisticated, or are developed by people with limited means to pull off quick scams.
Stuxnet shows what a truly determined adversary can do. One who knows your internal processes. One who understands your industry-specific software - the stuff nobody outside the industry ever touches. One who has a large team of talented programmers, carefully designing and building the attack. One who has access to government resources - the ability to tap communications lines, inject traffic, etc. One who is funded strategically - they don't want to hold your business for ransom for $1M, they want your $100B company to collapse so that one they favor can take over, or whatever.
The software out there that runs on intranets around the world is some of the most insecure stuff you'll ever see. It rarely gets subjected to serious attack, and the vulnerabilities aren't evident to the average corporate IT guy who is just doing basic due-diligence. Your average PHB doesn't want to pay for testing that will actually uncover serious flaws - they want the system to look good to their customers and have the right bells and whistles - and pricetag.
We'll see more of these attacks in the future - count on it...
This, is why stuff that is important should NOT be connected to the internet. OR allowed to come into contact with jump drives or PCs or anything else that has been exposed to the internet. This is simple. This is stupid. This seems like an old guy railing about the dangers of new technology. This is absolutely true, and will continue to be true. Further examples will be provided by reality for the remainder of your lives. I will continue to be right. This advice will continue to be ignored because it is inconvienent or stupid or old fuddy duddy thinking whatever.
No, really, I use it frequently. Not just to post inane l33tspeak to the interwebs either. I mean I really do use the thing as part of my daily life. I deal with a few hundred part numbers, many of them are long numbers, sprinkled with letters in there.. My left hand hit the caps lock and my right hand jumps to the numpad and I'm pecking out E5-FU7-Z009A001 etc for a few lines... Natural, easy. The way the keyboard has been used for... Well decades, getting rid of the caps lock is even dumber than adding "windows" keys and whatever other crap we added to go from 101 to 10-Whatever we're at now. Key combinations are more suited for those extra functions.
Thanks. You're a genius. Well, okay I don't know that but that's the perfect post I wanted to come here and write. The execution of idea in terms of computer code is no different than the execution of an idea in its physical form. Sure, the guys in the tool-room (Programmers) can screw it up and make it so it does NOT work, and does NOT make the company or individual money. But if the idea is bad, no amount of polish, perfection, brilliant hardware or software will make it go. A stupid, or worthless product won't get anywhere no matter how well made it is. Subaru anyone? (That's a joke, but they are really ugly, lame cars, made pretty well.) Programmers, electricians, toolmakers, designers, engineers. All of these people think the world revolves around them, and everyone else is an idiot. (I'm sure there are other examples, similar high value added, complex skill set professions without which the world wouldn't continue to operate.) That's all well and good, and it's fun to do when you're doing it, however it's not true. The people who make a business go forward are the people who conceive the idea, make the product, and get someone to buy the damn thing. See, it has to sell, everything else is irrelevant. Really.
Gee stereotype an entire nationality, all the wile differentiating them from "us" which I'm assuming here means you're a fellow American. That's usually a sign of a coherent or terribly positive argument. Also in this case your "us" is largely composed of relatives of your "them" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.svg
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overdesigned, you seem to have misspelled "well made" there. Machine tools are not consumer goods. Machine tools are not electronic toys. Machine tools are what we used to call "durable goods" because they were built to last.
So you're saying that the stupid txt broadcast company with the fadish technology and the fail whale... Wait, how is this even news?
Wait, you don't think oil companies could be profitable without government tax breaks?
Better yet. When that corporation is found breaking the law. All of them. All one person of them, including all the myriad, innocents who just happen to own ten shares of its stock get to go to prison together. Wait, that's ridiculous? Oh, so now a corporation isn't a person?
You need. 1: Good material for an axle. 2: Somewhere to go. 3 Something to pull the cart usually.
The thing is AC, that this has always been true. And will continue to be true for some time into the future. The law of Moore, familiar with that? Sounds wasteful, the gut feel of it is wrong, but it is still true.
Sort of anyway? Seems to that the networks of hackers and bad guy developers has always been sharing notes and code, and that this technique has long been used as an "intelligence amplifier" allowing a loose collection of bad guys who couldn't or at least didn't get real jobs to create some powerful malware tools. Which are often then used by someone else with slightly less coding sense and much more ambition to make some money, and to spread the idea of making money this way to others. The whole industry is a lot like multi-level marketing that way.
How often in the real world do you find yourself thinking. "Gee he's never really done this before in an applied, practical setting. That makes his skills fresher!" In my case that would be a big never.
You needed a CB radio, something you could not use for anything else. Most CB's were installed in cars. Base units cost more, as did hand held models. Buying a model for a car and using it in the home? Possible, but not for the average person. Twitter? All you need is a phone or a computer -- something many people already have. The "entry" into Twitter is cheaper/easier, which is why it might be more widespread, but I think the comparison is valid.
Except for the fact that in some very real ways the CB radio was actually useful. Useful primarily for finding out where the police were on the interstate, so you wouldn't get a ticket for going over the new, and much hated 55 mph speed limit, useful for calling for help traveling or talking to your buddies following you in the next car. Weather and road conditions passed from truckers and motorists etc. They certainly created and highlighted a subculture many of us would like to think of as unintelligent and coarse, that is truckers, truck stop folks and the very rural, but CB communications was also very practical. No one has tweeted to me that there was a speed trap around the bend.
Amazingly, that will be my reaction as well. The ability to broadcast txt messages indiscriminately, and read the txts of others broadcast thusly. Just doesn't do anything for me.
The exhaust of automobiles is a very significant source of the terrible air quality in American cities. Americans breathe the air in those cities...... Right?
But you can, and we do all the time. The amount of effort you put into protecting them from themselves, that is the cost to all of us, should be done so as to achieve the greatest "good" to society as a whole, not to try and achieve perfection. Speed limits protect you from yourself. Seat belts. Curve signs. The ban on general ownership of machine guns and artillery etc. Building codes, electrical codes. We could just let the market take care of all that stuff as well, but it doesn't really work that way.
Simplistic. Surcharges on fuel would be a way to make the owners of bigger, heavier more polluting vehicles pay their fair share of the costs of roads and bridges, etc. The idea that all taxes should be to fund the government and that we should let the market allocate resources is a good one, but nothing is that simple.
Get off my lawn.
My employer gives me an unlimited cell phone. They pay for it, that's the deal. They can call me on it whenever they want. I can call Swaziland eleven times a day if I feel like doing so. That cost them X amount of dollars, both of us feel like I'm just getting paid X amount of dollars more every month. If my employer stops paying for my cell phone. It save them a few bucks, but over thousands of employees, it's absolutely no different than cutting pay by that much a month. It will cost them workers, reduce their ability to retain employees, it's a small cut in pay. Not really much of a story. Certainly not some big win for the taxpayers, more than likely not some big hit for the employees, but probably a stupid grandstanding play by the Governor.
I'm willing to bet that paying for these employees cell phones was seen as more valuable to the employees than it actually cost the state, therefore it was cheaper than paying however much more cash they would see as the same benefit, over time, and large enough numbers the quality of the workforce in question will decrease by the fifty-some dollars a month per person the state is saving. So basically the whole story is a big fat "yawn" hidden pay cut. Not your rights online, not a sea change, just dumb grandstanding by an aging dork.
One of the really amusing things here. In most of the business world, I would assume being the next Steve Case would be an awesome thing. I don't know much he ended up with, but if he's rolling around on a pile of millions of dollars it's due to terribly money management, not lack of income. Also what has Facebook ever done for me? Do you know how many times I had to say thank you Steve Case for the free floppy disk? (Those things were not cheap, once upon a time.)
Are you trying to suggest that there's nothing at all special about the brilliant, almost groundbreaking, even better than Geo-Cities, or AOL, or powow uhm... It's like IRC on steroids!
So, what you're saying is there's nothing at all terribly innovative that Facebook is selling? That the only thing driving it's success is that finally, a generation or so into this, the "average" non-geeky consumer has come to understand a bit about the potential of the information age? And instead they all chose to play farmville and post ugly baby pictures?
Check. The thing that drives facebook is simply that "everyone and their grandmother" all decided to use it suddenly. That makes it briefly very useful. Sure they can extend that, or maintain it for a long time. But as soon as a better networking tool comes along. With no doubt an automagical way to import your profile information, photos and friends, all while winning five megabannanas for jungleville 3D. Then Facebook will be... Friendster/myspace/geocities/whatever other icon of forgotten internet community you'd like to bring up.
1: Duh.
2: The whole notion of gambling is basically an exploit of the defective software that many people seem to be carrying in their brain. Maybe wecan start a class action lawsuit on behalf of all those who've lost their life's savings in casinos?
No. Those regimes were oppressive, evil, utterly without merit or redeeming features. However they were also run by people more competent than the TSA. See, our own version of the secret police is not only built to be without regard for you essential constitutional liberties. The agency is built to be so absolutely incompetent, without any potential useful benefit to society it can cause brain damage if you just try and understand how useless the entire apparatus is. The department of homeland security was seen commenting on the (Really really tiny.) 4.2 or so Earthquake in central Indiana the other day. Wait, go back, read that last sentence for comprehension. Done yet? Yes the Indiana Department of Homeland Security can officially comment on, and protect us from Earthquakes. So.. Why ask the USGS, or anyone who might have had some kinda clue about what's actually going on?
There are some other posts that partially capture this thought. Really being able to type. Good keyboarding skills. This is nifty to have if you're a programmer, it's nifty to have if you're a writer, or have to create a lot of documentation, or various kinds of code. It isn't essential. It's not a measure of how good you are at any of those things. If you can achieve the accuracy you need, and you type fast enough that you don't find yourself taking shortcuts, using text-speak, giving all your variables names like S1 and A2 because you haven't the hand speed to call them something descriptive. Then it's not a big deal.
My coworker using some kind of bizarre sliding two hand eight-finger method two type that doesn't reliably use the same fingers to hit the same keys, and yet somehow she can type at very least faster than she can compose documentation or work instructions, and can even spell. (I Can't spell very well unless I can at least lay my hands on a desk and pretend to type the words.) I would expect anyone who is competent at any profession that requires spending a lot of time driving a keyboard to be at least a reasonably competent typist.
I think this attack just shows the difference that good engineering can make. Most worms out there are relatively unsophisticated, or are developed by people with limited means to pull off quick scams.
Stuxnet shows what a truly determined adversary can do. One who knows your internal processes. One who understands your industry-specific software - the stuff nobody outside the industry ever touches. One who has a large team of talented programmers, carefully designing and building the attack. One who has access to government resources - the ability to tap communications lines, inject traffic, etc. One who is funded strategically - they don't want to hold your business for ransom for $1M, they want your $100B company to collapse so that one they favor can take over, or whatever.
The software out there that runs on intranets around the world is some of the most insecure stuff you'll ever see. It rarely gets subjected to serious attack, and the vulnerabilities aren't evident to the average corporate IT guy who is just doing basic due-diligence. Your average PHB doesn't want to pay for testing that will actually uncover serious flaws - they want the system to look good to their customers and have the right bells and whistles - and pricetag.
We'll see more of these attacks in the future - count on it...
This, is why stuff that is important should NOT be connected to the internet. OR allowed to come into contact with jump drives or PCs or anything else that has been exposed to the internet. This is simple. This is stupid. This seems like an old guy railing about the dangers of new technology. This is absolutely true, and will continue to be true. Further examples will be provided by reality for the remainder of your lives. I will continue to be right. This advice will continue to be ignored because it is inconvienent or stupid or old fuddy duddy thinking whatever.
No, really, I use it frequently. Not just to post inane l33tspeak to the interwebs either. I mean I really do use the thing as part of my daily life. I deal with a few hundred part numbers, many of them are long numbers, sprinkled with letters in there.. My left hand hit the caps lock and my right hand jumps to the numpad and I'm pecking out E5-FU7-Z009A001 etc for a few lines... Natural, easy. The way the keyboard has been used for... Well decades, getting rid of the caps lock is even dumber than adding "windows" keys and whatever other crap we added to go from 101 to 10-Whatever we're at now. Key combinations are more suited for those extra functions.
Thanks. You're a genius. Well, okay I don't know that but that's the perfect post I wanted to come here and write. The execution of idea in terms of computer code is no different than the execution of an idea in its physical form. Sure, the guys in the tool-room (Programmers) can screw it up and make it so it does NOT work, and does NOT make the company or individual money. But if the idea is bad, no amount of polish, perfection, brilliant hardware or software will make it go. A stupid, or worthless product won't get anywhere no matter how well made it is. Subaru anyone? (That's a joke, but they are really ugly, lame cars, made pretty well.) Programmers, electricians, toolmakers, designers, engineers. All of these people think the world revolves around them, and everyone else is an idiot. (I'm sure there are other examples, similar high value added, complex skill set professions without which the world wouldn't continue to operate.) That's all well and good, and it's fun to do when you're doing it, however it's not true. The people who make a business go forward are the people who conceive the idea, make the product, and get someone to buy the damn thing. See, it has to sell, everything else is irrelevant. Really.
Gee stereotype an entire nationality, all the wile differentiating them from "us" which I'm assuming here means you're a fellow American. That's usually a sign of a coherent or terribly positive argument. Also in this case your "us" is largely composed of relatives of your "them" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.svg
My favorite saying! If violence isn't the solution to all your problems. It's because you're not using enough.