-IANAL, and I have not seen the actual documents. However, if the documents show that @Home has service problems, and that they are trying to bill customers for services never rendered then we may be looking at a case that has federal whistle blower protection.
It certainly leaves @Home open to a class action law suites. Which is probally why they are irritated. If the documents have wide enough dispersement then it's no longer a trade secret. It could be used against them without suppression.
A lot of these points have been stated in part, however, I think they need to be tied together. First, it is not likley that this is a case of break-in. Hiring a goon squad to break into a compeditor is usually not the way these things happen.
In most cases a disgruntled/greedy employee has offered his services, or believes he can cash in by stealing something.
Data encryption is great, but once the theif has the goods the game is already over. You've been hurt, and there is at least a 50-50 chance that there is something left behind that is a clue to what the pass word is.
And what about the network. The network admin, or even helpdesk people, have wide control over what they can view on a network file system. You can encrypt all you want, but in mid size companies the person who is god on the file server is probally god on the CA server.
Beyond that, swiping some actual paper out of the desk is just as good. Most CEO's are old, let's face it. They REALLY LIKE paper. There's probally tons of good stuff they can get their hands on.
These are some of the key items:
* Physical security is key. If you would be alarmed to see someone in your office during the middle of the night you should lock it. Keys, Puchcode, Prox cards all work well. Digital Biometrics work best.
* If you're going to store the secret stuff get a file server just for your department. Get a specific IT person to administer it. Make sure the normal IT group doesn't have access. As the business side of the house you'll never know when an IT person is snooping your directory. You'll never know if someone in IT is PO'd with work because they don't work for you. This is what will cost you your files.
* If you impliment a corporate encryption package make sure the employee who administers the CA server is not the same person who administers the file server. Seperating the two out helps with lone wolf problems.
* Impliment rotating passcode systems such as secure ID. Even if the end user comes up with a crappy password (which they will), the would be thief will need to have the dongle in order to get in. As always, the person who administers the server should not be affiliated with the other systems.
* Assume that information theft is an internal problem (because it usually is) but make sure you protect for both internal and external sources.
I'm sure with network news that's fairly correct, but not every market delivers canned ham every night. Some markets even have news programs produced by stations that are not controlled by a big three network.
I would never trust a news program produced by a major network. Because of ad revenues you will never see:
A story that is critical of a NFL/NBA team owner(s) other than the winning losing record. i.e. bad business dealings, fraud, etc.
A story that is critical of Procter & Gamble, the worlds largest advertizer.
If anything, I think you're getting more to my point that those presenting the news should be neutral. If this is truely not supposed to be media controlled by the Man there needs to be seperation.
That all being said there are some stations do make an attempt to be neutral about the stories that are presented. They certainly aren't the most watched programs out there. But they do exist.
I'm not sure it can be said/. is more of a discussion than news when your slogan really points to the news.
There are several things/. has over old style news. Mostly this centers on an actual understanding of the technologies that are reported. And a pretty decent feedback model.
However, old skool news does have a couple things that I think are right. If you look at Television media you have anchors, reporters and (although rare these days) editorial staff.
The anchor is a very importent person. They are totally neutral about the news they report. With./ I think CmdTaco and the ilk are the anchors, the readers, posters, and submitters are the reporters, and Jon Katz is editorial.
This is all good, however there are times that those I view as the anchor is not neutral. Even if I agree with there stand on the issue it should be up to us the readers of slashdot to evaluate the facts and post our comments.
First, there are a lot of holes here to fill in. Does 24X7 mean just critical sytem outage, or does it include any questions the Gaylord Fochers of the world may have for you? Is there any front line technical support 24X7? Is this a crapy exchange based mail system, or something stable in UNIX such as Openmail?
Generally, I've found non-profs are the worst to work for IT wise. It's almost as bad as a Co-op. Limited funding is always an issue. However, this being said I can add the following:
* There are plenty of places that offer outsource support by per minute prices. On the low side you can expect $1.50/Minute. If you have a lot of simple questions you get then this can work well.
A more cost effective measure is to hire a sudo technical person for second shift. Enough to take the heat off, and to be able to do simple tests to determine if the system is really down, or if it's a client issue.
* Being on call is one of the bains of the exempt employee status. It's not uncommon to only be offered comp time. On the other hand, it's not uncommon for an email admin in a 24X7 enviroment to get in the high 50K range as starting pay.
The problem with the wage comparison charts is that they rarely look at the pay ranges for people who work the long 24X7 hours.
Work based compensation is okay, but it doesn't factor in the stuff you can't do because you were tied to the pager.
* You should have the higher ups compare how much you're getting VS how much it would cost to outsource. Compare that to how much value the service you're offering is.
* Finally, if all else fails. It's a good IT market right now. Get a consulting job. Consultants are usually exempt for pager duty, and often you can tell your pimp upfront that you expect time and a half for all after hours works.
Gov't really does it to itself. They can't do the projects internally because they can't justify the head count. These big projects are rare. And let's face it, cities aren't in the habit of laying off people.
So they sub-contract. Generally, they have to take the lowest bid. No one wants to end up on Dateline saying they spent an extra 11 million. This means we don't always get the best solution. Man, and if they try to import in a tested European or Asian system. The shit hit the fan, cause it's gott'a be made in the f*cking USA. Dispite the fact that most of the US's mass transit system is shit. (But I digress)
It's not uncommon to read about a city scraping an entire project and starting over again. We saw a lot of this in the late 80's when cities were big on hooking modems onto water meters, etc, etc.
This is not to say big business doesn't do this as well. I've seen plenty of business men take the aditude that they don't want to be a development house. We'll buy something off the shelf. If it doesn't work, we'll buy something else.
The concept of throwing away your vote is the biggest lie to ever be put upon the American People. Case in point, the current Govener of Minnesota is Jesse Ventura. Dispite the fact that the polls showed him as having very few votes he ended up taking the race.
This is not to say I agree with Ventura's views, however, it does show that youth of America, who typically don't vote, aren't taking this shit anymore. The baby boom generation sold out. The political system is based on large donations.
This election isn't going to change anything. It will either be the pot smoker who's boring and lies, or the pot smoker who's shifty and dumb. Both think it's fine to kill retards under capital punishment, both like guns. GW, who's grandfather was one of the first supporters of planned parenthood, and his father GW Sr. spent the majority of his political life as pro-choice, will pander to the religious right. Gore is of course pro-choice. There's the only difference I can see.
This year it's about matching funds. The reform party was out foxed by the religious right. Perhaps even by the Republican party if you think they were that sneaky.
As much as I dislike GW (go Nader) I have to say that his comments about the Internet where so short that it slipped by most people. Let's face it, debte number two was boring. I'd be suprised if most people were still watching after the first 45 minutes.
And when you think about it, how can you expect GW to have a concept of the internet, or computers for that matter. He's like any other "manager" who's been promoted based on the Peter principal. Computers ain't his gig.
The question is will your certificate you pay for from a certificate authority work with the SSL module you install. I know for a fact that you can get comercial certificates to work with mod_ssl under apache. An example of a comercial site that uses comcerial certs with Apache and mod_ssl is www.qwest.net (Formally www.uswest.net).
One thing that may make you happy is when you think about the stock options in a company the 90:1 rule usually applies. i.e. 90% of the stock options were owned by 1% of the company. In Microsofts case, that's probally, Bill, Steve, and a dozen board members. So when you think about those bending over and taking some Capital Gains action from the IRS at least feel happy that it's comming mostly from those who deserve it.
On the other hand I'm willing to bet that there is some pretty creative accounting going on for the Gates Tax Return.
"Uncompromising integrity means staying true to what we believe. We adhere to honesty, fairness and "doing the right thing" without compromise, even when circumstances make it difficult.
Constant respect for people means we treat others with dignity, as we would like to be treated ourselves. Constant respect applies to every individual we interact with around the world.
Each of us is expected to demonstrate these key beliefs in our work as Motorolans."
Okay, so we know the big company doesn't even play by their own rules. And while it's not really effecting the those who buy cell phones and cheeze two way radios from Circuit City, it is importent to remember that if you don't nip these problems in the bud they could become your problem.
Alright, so what are we to do? Well, I think it's time to flood some e-mail in the direction of Big M. I susgest you email ethicsline@motorola.com. Be polite, point to the URL if you like, and remind motorola that while there is nothing illegal about these business practices there is also nothing ethical about them. You may also say you fear they strong arm tactics may eventually trickle down to consumer level products. Furthermore, you could say until you see a change you'll be supporting nice socialized EU companies like Nokia.
I've seen 3D printing in comercial industry for over 5 years now. The tech is of course neat, but I question if it would reach the level of interest needed to actually hit those prices.
It's not like this is 95, and the average computer was $2000+. People are used to paying under a grand for a computer setup. It seems like buying a printer that is twice the cost of the computer itself isn't going to fly. Get it down to $500, then we'll talk.
1) Any name brand name computer came with a Windows License.
2) If you actually read the license agreement for MS Office (95 and 97) an employee is allowed to install a copy of office on their personal PC for the purpsoses of work.
While people might think they are actually pirating Office, most are in fact not.
MS loses most of their money from fake product. I've seen the stuff put out in Singapore and Hong Kong. The CD's and pressed and silk screened. The inserts are on a four color proccess. You can go into any shopping district and pick up what looks like REAL MS product for pennies on the dollar. You'll find tons of shops in asia that don't even pretent to have the real thing. Just tons of CD packs with all sorts of prirate software. 1 CD for $10SG ($5US) 3 for $25SG ($12.50US). This stuff makes its way back to the US and is sold at computer shows, ham fests, and the like.
In many countries service is Subcontracted. Even in the US this is true in many cases. To further the problem dealers are given pretty sweeping powers for having parts reassigned to a different machine. Where there is some under the table cash there is a way.
A while ago I worked for an American Company that was rolling out new servers to all their locations world wide. One of these servers was a rather high end IBM RS/6000 Unix box. Since the company in question sends items to russia by the Metric Ton getting it there wasn't a problem. What was the problem was when the computer was uncrated we found that the computer had been replaced with some large rocks while it went through customs.
Even if your package had made it into customers you'd have a 50-50 chance of ever seeing it again. You're friend is screwed. You're better off wiring US cash and letting them buy it locally.
I'm not talking about a proff lifting a single finger. I'm talking about the comp sci program having enough money that it could afford infrastructure items. A dozen IT staff, wiring contractor, and a dozen racks of computers.
As far as the prof is concerned I'm sure there are plenty of good ones out there. But for every one of them, there are five guys teaching ADA.
For a small university it's a good deal. At least when you compare it to larger institutions that take in huge ammounts of cash for sports.
If I was going to a school because of a well rated Comp Sci program this would scare me off. I think the school should be self supporting in that regaurd.
I think a better question is where all the money in a large school goes. For instance a large group CALC I class being taught by the non-english speaking TA who's getting 50 bucks. Hmm, 200 students in a class, 300 bucks a head. I'm just saying...
You aren't paying anything on CD-R's. You are paying it if you were to buy a Music CD-R. If you go to Best Buy or or Circuit City you'll find they have "Music CD-Rs". These are usually 2-3 times as much as a normal data grade CD-R. They have some pre-pressed data in them that indicated that they are Music CD-Rs. Although your computer CDR burner doesn't care which one you use a stand alone CD-Recorder (such as the ones sold buy Phillips, or Pioneer) will only work with the "Music CDR's".
This is old news. They've been testing random price drops for over a year now. They simply test to see at what price sells the best. From there they can maximize volume to profit levels.
They've done it with books, VHS movies, and now DVD's. It's not a big deal.
The US gov't does not, and never has, collected any "taxes" that are distributed to artists as royalties. Period, end of story.
Makers of Music Minidisc, DAT Music Tapes, and Music CD-R discs for sale in the US do throw money into the music indrusty, but it's the same corporate channels that already existed for music royalties.
>>Intel wasn't able to stop AMD and Cyrix from using MMX, even though intel claimed that it was something that was necessary to protect their business.
Well, that's not really true. Intel has a broad cross licesense with National Semiconductor and IBM. Both or those companies can clone and market any intel chip. So, Cryix, AMD etc. had IBM and National make their chips. This is also how VIA gets away with making some of thier chipsets for US consumption.
Slashdot Mirror
"Hold up...does this mean CPHack is legal in the US?"
No, the program itself is not legal. However, the result from the program would be protected. (IANAL)
-IANAL, and I have not seen the actual documents. However, if the documents show that @Home has service problems, and that they are trying to bill customers for services never rendered then we may be looking at a case that has federal whistle blower protection.
It certainly leaves @Home open to a class action law suites. Which is probally why they are irritated. If the documents have wide enough dispersement then it's no longer a trade secret. It could be used against them without suppression.
A lot of these points have been stated in part, however, I think they need to be tied together. First, it is not likley that this is a case of break-in. Hiring a goon squad to break into a compeditor is usually not the way these things happen.
In most cases a disgruntled/greedy employee has offered his services, or believes he can cash in by stealing something.
Data encryption is great, but once the theif has the goods the game is already over. You've been hurt, and there is at least a 50-50 chance that there is something left behind that is a clue to what the pass word is.
And what about the network. The network admin, or even helpdesk people, have wide control over what they can view on a network file system. You can encrypt all you want, but in mid size companies the person who is god on the file server is probally god on the CA server.
Beyond that, swiping some actual paper out of the desk is just as good. Most CEO's are old, let's face it. They REALLY LIKE paper. There's probally tons of good stuff they can get their hands on.
These are some of the key items:
* Physical security is key. If you would be alarmed to see someone in your office during the middle of the night you should lock it. Keys, Puchcode, Prox cards all work well. Digital Biometrics work best.
* If you're going to store the secret stuff get a file server just for your department. Get a specific IT person to administer it. Make sure the normal IT group doesn't have access. As the business side of the house you'll never know when an IT person is snooping your directory. You'll never know if someone in IT is PO'd with work because they don't work for you. This is what will cost you your files.
* If you impliment a corporate encryption package make sure the employee who administers the CA server is not the same person who administers the file server. Seperating the two out helps with lone wolf problems.
* Impliment rotating passcode systems such as secure ID. Even if the end user comes up with a crappy password (which they will), the would be thief will need to have the dongle in order to get in. As always, the person who administers the server should not be affiliated with the other systems.
* Assume that information theft is an internal problem (because it usually is) but make sure you protect for both internal and external sources.
I'm sure with network news that's fairly correct, but not every market delivers canned ham every night. Some markets even have news programs produced by stations that are not controlled by a big three network.
I would never trust a news program produced by a major network. Because of ad revenues you will never see:
A story that is critical of a NFL/NBA team owner(s) other than the winning losing record. i.e. bad business dealings, fraud, etc.
A story that is critical of Procter & Gamble, the worlds largest advertizer.
If anything, I think you're getting more to my point that those presenting the news should be neutral. If this is truely not supposed to be media controlled by the Man there needs to be seperation.
That all being said there are some stations do make an attempt to be neutral about the stories that are presented. They certainly aren't the most watched programs out there. But they do exist.
I'm not sure it can be said /. is more of a discussion than news when your slogan really points to the news.
/. has over old style news. Mostly this centers on an actual understanding of the technologies that are reported. And a pretty decent feedback model.
./ I think CmdTaco and the ilk are the anchors, the readers, posters, and submitters are the reporters, and Jon Katz is editorial.
There are several things
However, old skool news does have a couple things that I think are right. If you look at Television media you have anchors, reporters and (although rare these days) editorial staff.
The anchor is a very importent person. They are totally neutral about the news they report. With
This is all good, however there are times that those I view as the anchor is not neutral. Even if I agree with there stand on the issue it should be up to us the readers of slashdot to evaluate the facts and post our comments.
First, there are a lot of holes here to fill in. Does 24X7 mean just critical sytem outage, or does it include any questions the Gaylord Fochers of the world may have for you? Is there any front line technical support 24X7? Is this a crapy exchange based mail system, or something stable in UNIX such as Openmail?
Generally, I've found non-profs are the worst to work for IT wise. It's almost as bad as a Co-op. Limited funding is always an issue. However, this being said I can add the following:
* There are plenty of places that offer outsource support by per minute prices. On the low side you can expect $1.50/Minute. If you have a lot of simple questions you get then this can work well.
A more cost effective measure is to hire a sudo technical person for second shift. Enough to take the heat off, and to be able to do simple tests to determine if the system is really down, or if it's a client issue.
* Being on call is one of the bains of the exempt employee status. It's not uncommon to only be offered comp time. On the other hand, it's not uncommon for an email admin in a 24X7 enviroment to get in the high 50K range as starting pay.
The problem with the wage comparison charts is that they rarely look at the pay ranges for people who work the long 24X7 hours.
Work based compensation is okay, but it doesn't factor in the stuff you can't do because you were tied to the pager.
* You should have the higher ups compare how much you're getting VS how much it would cost to outsource. Compare that to how much value the service you're offering is.
* Finally, if all else fails. It's a good IT market right now. Get a consulting job. Consultants are usually exempt for pager duty, and often you can tell your pimp upfront that you expect time and a half for all after hours works.
Gov't really does it to itself. They can't do the projects internally because they can't justify the head count. These big projects are rare. And let's face it, cities aren't in the habit of laying off people.
So they sub-contract. Generally, they have to take the lowest bid. No one wants to end up on Dateline saying they spent an extra 11 million. This means we don't always get the best solution. Man, and if they try to import in a tested European or Asian system. The shit hit the fan, cause it's gott'a be made in the f*cking USA. Dispite the fact that most of the US's mass transit system is shit. (But I digress)
It's not uncommon to read about a city scraping an entire project and starting over again. We saw a lot of this in the late 80's when cities were big on hooking modems onto water meters, etc, etc.
This is not to say big business doesn't do this as well. I've seen plenty of business men take the aditude that they don't want to be a development house. We'll buy something off the shelf. If it doesn't work, we'll buy something else.
The concept of throwing away your vote is the biggest lie to ever be put upon the American People. Case in point, the current Govener of Minnesota is Jesse Ventura. Dispite the fact that the polls showed him as having very few votes he ended up taking the race.
This is not to say I agree with Ventura's views, however, it does show that youth of America, who typically don't vote, aren't taking this shit anymore. The baby boom generation sold out. The political system is based on large donations.
This election isn't going to change anything. It will either be the pot smoker who's boring and lies, or the pot smoker who's shifty and dumb. Both think it's fine to kill retards under capital punishment, both like guns. GW, who's grandfather was one of the first supporters of planned parenthood, and his father GW Sr. spent the majority of his political life as pro-choice, will pander to the religious right. Gore is of course pro-choice. There's the only difference I can see.
This year it's about matching funds. The reform party was out foxed by the religious right. Perhaps even by the Republican party if you think they were that sneaky.
As much as I dislike GW (go Nader) I have to say that his comments about the Internet where so short that it slipped by most people. Let's face it, debte number two was boring. I'd be suprised if most people were still watching after the first 45 minutes.
And when you think about it, how can you expect GW to have a concept of the internet, or computers for that matter. He's like any other "manager" who's been promoted based on the Peter principal. Computers ain't his gig.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Plus it's a neat way to get your foot int he door and pollute some code.
The question is will your certificate you pay for from a certificate authority work with the SSL module you install. I know for a fact that you can get comercial certificates to work with mod_ssl under apache. An example of a comercial site that uses comcerial certs with Apache and mod_ssl is www.qwest.net (Formally www.uswest.net).
One thing that may make you happy is when you think about the stock options in a company the 90:1 rule usually applies. i.e. 90% of the stock options were owned by 1% of the company. In Microsofts case, that's probally, Bill, Steve, and a dozen board members. So when you think about those bending over and taking some Capital Gains action from the IRS at least feel happy that it's comming mostly from those who deserve it.
On the other hand I'm willing to bet that there is some pretty creative accounting going on for the Gates Tax Return.
From Motorola's Code of Conduct:
"Uncompromising integrity means staying true to what we believe. We adhere to honesty, fairness and "doing the right thing" without compromise, even when circumstances make it difficult.
Constant respect for people means we treat others with dignity, as we would like to be treated ourselves. Constant respect applies to every individual we interact with around the world.
Each of us is expected to demonstrate these key beliefs in our work as Motorolans."
Okay, so we know the big company doesn't even play by their own rules. And while it's not really effecting the those who buy cell phones and cheeze two way radios from Circuit City, it is importent to remember that if you don't nip these problems in the bud they could become your problem.
Alright, so what are we to do? Well, I think it's time to flood some e-mail in the direction of Big M. I susgest you email ethicsline@motorola.com. Be polite, point to the URL if you like, and remind motorola that while there is nothing illegal about these business practices there is also nothing ethical about them. You may also say you fear they strong arm tactics may eventually trickle down to consumer level products. Furthermore, you could say until you see a change you'll be supporting nice socialized EU companies like Nokia.
I've seen 3D printing in comercial industry for over 5 years now. The tech is of course neat, but I question if it would reach the level of interest needed to actually hit those prices.
It's not like this is 95, and the average computer was $2000+. People are used to paying under a grand for a computer setup. It seems like buying a printer that is twice the cost of the computer itself isn't going to fly. Get it down to $500, then we'll talk.
It should also be noted the only reason we knew who planted the bomb on the plane in Lockerbie Scottland was because we monitored this traffic.
1) Any name brand name computer came with a Windows License.
2) If you actually read the license agreement for MS Office (95 and 97) an employee is allowed to install a copy of office on their personal PC for the purpsoses of work.
While people might think they are actually pirating Office, most are in fact not.
MS loses most of their money from fake product. I've seen the stuff put out in Singapore and Hong Kong. The CD's and pressed and silk screened. The inserts are on a four color proccess. You can go into any shopping district and pick up what looks like REAL MS product for pennies on the dollar. You'll find tons of shops in asia that don't even pretent to have the real thing. Just tons of CD packs with all sorts of prirate software. 1 CD for $10SG ($5US) 3 for $25SG ($12.50US). This stuff makes its way back to the US and is sold at computer shows, ham fests, and the like.
In many countries service is Subcontracted. Even in the US this is true in many cases. To further the problem dealers are given pretty sweeping powers for having parts reassigned to a different machine. Where there is some under the table cash there is a way.
A while ago I worked for an American Company that was rolling out new servers to all their locations world wide. One of these servers was a rather high end IBM RS/6000 Unix box. Since the company in question sends items to russia by the Metric Ton getting it there wasn't a problem. What was the problem was when the computer was uncrated we found that the computer had been replaced with some large rocks while it went through customs.
Even if your package had made it into customers you'd have a 50-50 chance of ever seeing it again. You're friend is screwed. You're better off wiring US cash and letting them buy it locally.
I'm not talking about a proff lifting a single finger. I'm talking about the comp sci program having enough money that it could afford infrastructure items. A dozen IT staff, wiring contractor, and a dozen racks of computers.
As far as the prof is concerned I'm sure there are plenty of good ones out there. But for every one of them, there are five guys teaching ADA.
For a small university it's a good deal. At least when you compare it to larger institutions that take in huge ammounts of cash for sports.
If I was going to a school because of a well rated Comp Sci program this would scare me off. I think the school should be self supporting in that regaurd.
I think a better question is where all the money in a large school goes. For instance a large group CALC I class being taught by the non-english speaking TA who's getting 50 bucks. Hmm, 200 students in a class, 300 bucks a head. I'm just saying...
You aren't paying anything on CD-R's. You are paying it if you were to buy a Music CD-R. If you go to Best Buy or or Circuit City you'll find they have "Music CD-Rs". These are usually 2-3 times as much as a normal data grade CD-R. They have some pre-pressed data in them that indicated that they are Music CD-Rs. Although your computer CDR burner doesn't care which one you use a stand alone CD-Recorder (such as the ones sold buy Phillips, or Pioneer) will only work with the "Music CDR's".
This is old news. They've been testing random price drops for over a year now. They simply test to see at what price sells the best. From there they can maximize volume to profit levels.
They've done it with books, VHS movies, and now DVD's. It's not a big deal.
The US gov't does not, and never has, collected any "taxes" that are distributed to artists as royalties. Period, end of story.
Makers of Music Minidisc, DAT Music Tapes, and Music CD-R discs for sale in the US do throw money into the music indrusty, but it's the same corporate channels that already existed for music royalties.
>>Intel wasn't able to stop AMD and Cyrix from using MMX, even though intel claimed that it was something that was necessary to protect their business.
Well, that's not really true. Intel has a broad cross licesense with National Semiconductor and IBM. Both or those companies can clone and market any intel chip. So, Cryix, AMD etc. had IBM and National make their chips. This is also how VIA gets away with making some of thier chipsets for US consumption.
This is true, but I also content that it isolates the programmer from the Shrink Wrap License. Thus removing liability.