I consider myself a pretty calm person. I don't get riled up about much. I've never been one to throw a game controller, to punch a pillow to vent frustration. I see stupid things and I don't like them, I talk about how stupid they are, but that's as far as it goes. I'm about as easy going as they come.
And yet every time I see a story about the activities supported by the US Patent and Trade Office, I want to lift the nearest piece of electronics and dash it against a distant wall.
Right now the comments on this topic are 85% jokes. Fun.
So, how about a serious (read: overwraught) discussion. Postulate: no greater crimes will be committed against humanity than when we discover the secrets to clinical immortality.
Y2K ended up being a lot less scary than it could have been. Most of that is because we were prepared, turned a lot of systems off during the rollover, and then brought them back up under close monitoring.
The end result is that the populace, including business decision makers, hear about more date-related tech problems and think "Eh, it won't be that big of a deal. Y2K wasn't that bad, right?"
I've worked in IT, so I understand that it sucks sometimes and people have unreasonable expectations, and I know that requests for IT are either for the nebulous future or "do it right now".
That being said, I've found that good communication mitigates almost all of these problems. If you talk like a human being and treat others like human beings (which, quite frankly, it looks like you don't), people tend to respond in kind.
Communicating IT problems in a way that makes sense to non-IT people is and always has been the biggest part of this job. If you don't do it well, I imagine the profession would be very unpleasant for you.
I'm fighting very, very hard to avoid some joke about how nobody has answered this post, because the reality is that it's that exact kind of joke that makes women not want to identify themselves here.
So, ladies of slashdot: You're awesome, and I think it's awesome that you make up a significant part of our community. Thanks for putting up with the men.
Me too, but it's still a big fat step in the right direction. Also, I do like the idea of living in a country where changes can be made in favor of the people without having to trudge through the complete litigation process and wrest it from the government's hands. Obviously it wouldn't have happened if that litigation process hadn't been started, but still.
When I saw this article, I imagined Dr. Evil holding his pinky finger up and saying "Nine meeeeellion dollars!". There's much more serious fraudulent activity going on.
I like this plan, or at least most of it, but if I owned a company, I would hate the plan. Requiring a full quarter of all revenue to vanish into an escrow instead of putting that money back into the company would be crippling, even if the money earned interest. The ROI of the business would have to stay well above %25 just to stay afloat. For a short mining operation, this might be feasible for a big corporation with a lot of capital to throw around, one that can afford to fund a few years of operating costs before getting returns. The barrier to entry for anyone smaller than that would just be too great.
If businesses don't like it, then the Chamber of Commerce won't like it, which means millions of dollars of lobbying money will be used to hammer any proposal looking like this into the ground.
Sorry. I like the basic idea, though; put the burden of potential environmental damage on the business, and do it by assigning responsibility at the beginning of the process instead of trying to sift through the fallout afterward.
That means 68.8% of their test subjects got a terminal disease. Those don't sound like very good odds to me.
I know that that conclusion is erroneous, I just like the idea of these guys giving a bunch of people the vaccine and then trying to give them AIDS. For science!
Yep, you missed something. A table a little further down the page clearly declares the type of vulnerability for each OS, and XP is clearly marked "denial of service". I can understand your reaction, though. The sentence in the summary would lead you to believe it's a remote code exploit across the board.
People that take action based on this allegation alone are afraid.
Fixed that for you. The USA's policies these days are driven primary by blind, largely irrational fear. Although I suppose that could be transliterated into stupidity.
The sad truth is that we have plenty of incompetent people to perform these kinds of blunders without the need for shadow organizations to orchestrate them. Anyone in the government with a will to exact more control over the public has their arms more than full of these kinds of stories.
No! No more frickin sharks with frickin lasers jokes. We can't have a slashdot story even remotely related to lasers (or sharks) without this comment.
No personal offense to you, Mr. Sweeney. It just stopped being funny after the first 30 laser stories for me. Maybe any story with "laser" in the title should have a comment auto-posted that says:
"[insert generic reference to Austin Powers here]. You may all continue with meaningful or humorous dialogue now."
Come to think of it, we should do this with every knee-jerk comment that will inevitably be modded up to +5 Funny. Or maybe change them to +5 Tiresome and Predictable.
Slashdot Mirror
News flash: Google is not God, we don't have to timidly follow their lead.
Well, okay, they are God, but only because so many believe in them. It doesn't have to be that way.
Oh yes! Also, cue the comments about how all religions are like this.
I consider myself a pretty calm person. I don't get riled up about much. I've never been one to throw a game controller, to punch a pillow to vent frustration. I see stupid things and I don't like them, I talk about how stupid they are, but that's as far as it goes. I'm about as easy going as they come.
And yet every time I see a story about the activities supported by the US Patent and Trade Office, I want to lift the nearest piece of electronics and dash it against a distant wall.
So the purple pokeberry yields cheap solar power, too? I thought it just cured some HP and confused some pokemons.
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Wiki_Berry
Can anyone think of a historical (as in pre-internet :) ) example of something similar?
Christians.
Thank you. You made my day.
That reply was awesome. Thanks. Related:
http://xkcd.com/406/
Right now the comments on this topic are 85% jokes. Fun.
So, how about a serious (read: overwraught) discussion. Postulate: no greater crimes will be committed against humanity than when we discover the secrets to clinical immortality.
As opposed to heterosexual behavior? I hear the fluids transferred are remarkably similar.
See "bigbrother".
Y2K ended up being a lot less scary than it could have been. Most of that is because we were prepared, turned a lot of systems off during the rollover, and then brought them back up under close monitoring.
The end result is that the populace, including business decision makers, hear about more date-related tech problems and think "Eh, it won't be that big of a deal. Y2K wasn't that bad, right?"
And now, an obligatory XKCD reference: http://xkcd.com/607/
A little bitter, are we?
I've worked in IT, so I understand that it sucks sometimes and people have unreasonable expectations, and I know that requests for IT are either for the nebulous future or "do it right now".
That being said, I've found that good communication mitigates almost all of these problems. If you talk like a human being and treat others like human beings (which, quite frankly, it looks like you don't), people tend to respond in kind.
Communicating IT problems in a way that makes sense to non-IT people is and always has been the biggest part of this job. If you don't do it well, I imagine the profession would be very unpleasant for you.
I'm fighting very, very hard to avoid some joke about how nobody has answered this post, because the reality is that it's that exact kind of joke that makes women not want to identify themselves here.
So, ladies of slashdot: You're awesome, and I think it's awesome that you make up a significant part of our community. Thanks for putting up with the men.
Me too, but it's still a big fat step in the right direction. Also, I do like the idea of living in a country where changes can be made in favor of the people without having to trudge through the complete litigation process and wrest it from the government's hands. Obviously it wouldn't have happened if that litigation process hadn't been started, but still.
When I saw this article, I imagined Dr. Evil holding his pinky finger up and saying "Nine meeeeellion dollars!". There's much more serious fraudulent activity going on.
I like this plan, or at least most of it, but if I owned a company, I would hate the plan. Requiring a full quarter of all revenue to vanish into an escrow instead of putting that money back into the company would be crippling, even if the money earned interest. The ROI of the business would have to stay well above %25 just to stay afloat. For a short mining operation, this might be feasible for a big corporation with a lot of capital to throw around, one that can afford to fund a few years of operating costs before getting returns. The barrier to entry for anyone smaller than that would just be too great.
If businesses don't like it, then the Chamber of Commerce won't like it, which means millions of dollars of lobbying money will be used to hammer any proposal looking like this into the ground.
Sorry. I like the basic idea, though; put the burden of potential environmental damage on the business, and do it by assigning responsibility at the beginning of the process instead of trying to sift through the fallout afterward.
"Events like this should have the capitalists and free market supporters up in arms. But it doesn't. Why?"
They're too busy checking how their telecom company stocks are doing.
The defendants are given three months to comply, if not, they will face penalties of 5,000 euros ($7,500) per person, per day.
Per person, per day? So in other words, if two of the three guys gets "laid off", they are reducing the grievousness of the offense by two thirds.
At first glance I read "affordably aggravating ISP connections". As in respectably annoying without breaking the bank.
That means 68.8% of their test subjects got a terminal disease. Those don't sound like very good odds to me.
I know that that conclusion is erroneous, I just like the idea of these guys giving a bunch of people the vaccine and then trying to give them AIDS. For science!
Carbon nanotubes can't be mass produced economically.
Sorry if I missed something.
Yep, you missed something. A table a little further down the page clearly declares the type of vulnerability for each OS, and XP is clearly marked "denial of service". I can understand your reaction, though. The sentence in the summary would lead you to believe it's a remote code exploit across the board.
I think editor was just digging for shark comments on this one.
People that take action based on this allegation alone are afraid.
Fixed that for you. The USA's policies these days are driven primary by blind, largely irrational fear. Although I suppose that could be transliterated into stupidity.
The sad truth is that we have plenty of incompetent people to perform these kinds of blunders without the need for shadow organizations to orchestrate them. Anyone in the government with a will to exact more control over the public has their arms more than full of these kinds of stories.
No! No more frickin sharks with frickin lasers jokes. We can't have a slashdot story even remotely related to lasers (or sharks) without this comment.
No personal offense to you, Mr. Sweeney. It just stopped being funny after the first 30 laser stories for me. Maybe any story with "laser" in the title should have a comment auto-posted that says:
"[insert generic reference to Austin Powers here]. You may all continue with meaningful or humorous dialogue now."
Come to think of it, we should do this with every knee-jerk comment that will inevitably be modded up to +5 Funny. Or maybe change them to +5 Tiresome and Predictable.
No, that's fair; not everyone is going to immediately recognize it.
This is referring to a famous scene from the Shakespearean play Hamlet. Google the phrase "I knew him, Horatio" and see what you get.