A variable for "marketing splash made by issuing bad marks to a given brand" appears to be given about equal weight to "legitimately wasteful or unnecessarily toxic practices", by Greenpeace. They get far more publicity for issuing a ticket to Apple for using 3 wire-inches of the wrong type of plastic in an iPod model than they would ever get for ticketing HP's stupid behemoth wasteful packaging, which has been seen by every corporate customer of HP. (I've seen strikingly similar examples of insanely wasteful packaging from both IBM and Dell, as well as HP).
Please note that I think Greenpeace is doing the world a service by calling attention to those 3 wire-inches of environmentally unsound plastic, but they need to get a little smarter about who, why and how they critique and praise. They are not doing a very good job of translating the attention that they get from issuing a ticket to Apple, into attention on the issue of the toxic compounds in question. There are zillions of tons of this stuff used in all manner of products and manufacturing processes. These compounds get into the water that we drink and the food we eat, and there is mounting evidence that some of them cause cancer and other serious health problems. Mercury and lead are no longer even controversial, decades of research confirms that even low level exposure to lead can cause serious problems, and probably knocked a bunch of IQ points off generations of exposed people. If, say, 1/4 to 1/2 of our population were 5 or 10 IQ points smarter, how much better off would the world be today? Yet we continue to allow tons of mercury to go up the stacks of coal fired power plants, and smaller amounts to be dumped in lakes and rivers as a result of manufacturing processes. Lead paint shows up on imported children's toys because the west has been willing to circumvent its own environmental policies by exporting the manufacturing to developing nations with un-enforced or non-existent environmental safeguards.
How does this Greenpeace video and press release help educate people and motivate people about these issues? Missed call: the iPhone's hazardous chemicals. Well, it really doesn't. It just gets a bunch of headlines to the effect of "Greenpeace iPhone Smackdown". Greenpeace has figured out that they can get a lot of attention by poking at Apple now and then, but they haven't figured out how to turn that to advantage. They mention a few chemicals here, including phthalates, but they don't mention that these compounds are used in FOOD Containers, which is a much more likely source of exposure to the compound (most people do not eat their iPhones) and that it has been linked to obesity and diabetes ( Obesity In Men Linked To Common Chemical Found In Plastic And Soap )and might be a serious contributor to a global health crisis. Greenpeace could be turning these waves of press attention into a serious national discussion of phthalates, additional research on the topic, and removal of these compounds from food containers, which would be a rational application of the precautionary principle. Instead, they are squandering the opportunity for a few headlines and links to their web site.
My post was sarcastic and comical. This point will be lost on many, and my karma will suffer a dent. Fortunately I've got loads to spare. Sadly, Chrisje appears to have been serious.
Sarcasm is dead. There is no possible way that Chrisje was serious. Any rational person with even a limited exposure to computers and a vague understanding of software would realize that there is no excuse for this type of wasteful packaging behavior from a technology company in this day and age. That comment is ROFLMAO comical. This is *Slashdot*. Have none of you mods ever been around *software*? All this talk of part numbers and order handling and logistics for a tiny bit of *data on paper*? You realize, don't you, that HP could modify the program that generates the data on paper to group, print, and ship rationally? You realize that other companies long, long ago solved this problem, using software? Obviously somebody at some point in their process knew this stuff was all going to the same location at the same time. That's a great place to start looking for how to prevent this particular criminal packaging stupidity. Solving this problem isn't even hard. It just takes the realization that it is a problem, and it can be solved. Chrisje undoubtedly realizes this, and produced a masterful bit of sarcasm, which went right over your heads.
If the Pope claps one hand on a tree, which falls over in the woods and lands on some bear scat, does anyone then refer to Google Bombs as Yahoo Bombs?
Compiler performance is important for development teams that have mountains of code and wish to implement continuous integration and automated builds (OS vendors for example). Apple's interest in LLVM appears to be based in part on a desire for improved compiler performance. (Obviously they're interested in LLVM for several other reasons, too.) See these starting points: experimenting with LLVM LLVM 2.0 (Google Tech Talk) LLVM Project
You don't even need to spell Alzheimer's correctly to Google your way to a reasonable and sympathetic discussion of Ronald Reagan's long decline, which began in the early 80s, and of which he was undoubtedly aware. People who knew people with Alzheimer's began speculating that he was suffering from this disease during his first term as president, and although it wasn't a discussion topic in the mainstream press, many citizens were aware of this possibility by about midway through his second term. As this article mentions, the condition remains difficult to diagnose today. Other articles I've seen indicate that a fully positive diagnosis isn't really possible without a brain biopsy (typically performed after the patient has died). Reagan's downward spiral
Look, anonymous coward, we don't exist to fill the enormous gaps in your knowledge of the world in which you live, nor to compensate for your laziness. It takes about 2 seconds for you to verify this for yourself. If you're going to snidely demand "references" whenever someone makes a statement that you are not directly familiar with, at least have the courtesy to do so using your login ID so the rest of us can filter you out.
20:15 U no taek stuffs for free if not getz for free.
...
20:17 U no wantz neibor stuff! No wief, no gurlz, no menz, no animulz, NO BUKKITZ! DEY NOT UR BUKKITZ, K? dey da LOLrus' bukkits.
After 68 years in prison, how many eons in hell will he get for this?
Moderators, please get a grip. sjf is wrong, but if you look at their history, and consider the simplicity of the incorrect factual statement they made, they probably are not Trolling. Overrated, sure, but Troll is pretty harsh.
" What they're describing sounds like malware intended to run up the traffic rankings of a site. If so, why was it gathering pictures too? Poorly coded? It wastes more bandwidth to pull the entire rendering of the page, than just the HTML and JS. While conserving bandwidth isn't high on the priority list, to keep from being noticed, and to keep their efficiency up, the virus writer would do what they could to keep their impact low."
They don't care about wasting bandwidth, really. Perhaps the traffic monitor they were trying to spoof was smart enough to tell full page loads apart from the previous generation of fake traffic generators.
Well, modern malware is typically modular, and does all of these things, and more. If a new function desired by the botmaster comes along, it just fetches a new module or updates itself.
Malware is sometimes used to set up web sites. You might have heard the term "phishing". Sometimes these sites are fake bank sites used in scams to lure people to give up their credit card and other identity information. Long before phishing, compromised boxes were often used to host ftp or web servers to distribute pirated software or pornography.
The odds are good that the system in question was Windows based. However, that doesn't really change too much. Any p0wn3d box leads to the same situation. You really can't prove what happened on the box, to any high degree of confidence. The user could be innocent.
Firing people based on things that happened on an infected PC is the modern equivalent of shouting burn the witch!
The truth is that this can happen. The truth is that so many corporate desktop and laptop systems are p0wn3d by th3m that it isn't even funny.
The truth is that event logging on these networks and systems are insufficiently detailed as to demonstrate conclusively which actually happened. Any logging that does take place on a system probably can't show you wether the user was responsible, or if an automated program pretending to be the user was responsible. Any corporation that gives a users a typical Windows system and then holds that user responsible when something untoward happens on that system ought to be opening themselves up to a lawsuit.
The truth is that even the the lawyers who advised not to talk about the reasons for dismissal don't recognize this. They prohibit discussion of the details regarding the dismissal of the employee for reasons entirely unrelated to the issue of being entirely unable to conclusively substantiate any accusations which would be made. (It's standard dismissal policy at all of the Fortune 500 to not give any reason). In general, employees, managers, lawyers and judges are completely unprepared to assess the details which would expose the fact that nobody can actually prove that this unfortunate person was probably the victim of some botmaster's prank. People should be surprised that this doesn't happen more often.
That said, there are things one can look at to determine what was *likely* to have happened on that box, and one can assess to some degree what things were relatively more likely than others. If the box was running malware, though, the most likely outcome is that one cannot demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the user was guilty. However, one can, in some cases, demonstrate innocence, by showing, for example, that a given download occurred when the user was away from the keyboard.
It's important to note that the converse is not true. The malware can easily mimic user behavior by performing user style tasks only when the user is logged in. Malware may, for example, have incentive to operate only when a real user is logged in, because certain operations in certain environments are unlikely to succeed if the user is not logged in (being stopped, and identified as likely malware behavior by a 3rd party heuristic detection system, for example.) Malware often does change its behavior based on instructions from the outside, based on the day or the time, based on all sorts of things, and may not behave the same in an isolated test lab as it does "in the wild" so it can be difficult or impossible to demonstrate the full capability of a given strain, even if you have a copy of it.
I suppose you would need to be at least smart enough not to brag about a 162 IQ. You might want to re-test. And have your blood lead and mercury levels checked.
Slashdot Mirror
A variable for "marketing splash made by issuing bad marks to a given brand" appears to be given about equal weight to "legitimately wasteful or unnecessarily toxic practices", by Greenpeace. They get far more publicity for issuing a ticket to Apple for using 3 wire-inches of the wrong type of plastic in an iPod model than they would ever get for ticketing HP's stupid behemoth wasteful packaging, which has been seen by every corporate customer of HP. (I've seen strikingly similar examples of insanely wasteful packaging from both IBM and Dell, as well as HP).
Please note that I think Greenpeace is doing the world a service by calling attention to those 3 wire-inches of environmentally unsound plastic, but they need to get a little smarter about who, why and how they critique and praise. They are not doing a very good job of translating the attention that they get from issuing a ticket to Apple, into attention on the issue of the toxic compounds in question. There are zillions of tons of this stuff used in all manner of products and manufacturing processes. These compounds get into the water that we drink and the food we eat, and there is mounting evidence that some of them cause cancer and other serious health problems. Mercury and lead are no longer even controversial, decades of research confirms that even low level exposure to lead can cause serious problems, and probably knocked a bunch of IQ points off generations of exposed people. If, say, 1/4 to 1/2 of our population were 5 or 10 IQ points smarter, how much better off would the world be today? Yet we continue to allow tons of mercury to go up the stacks of coal fired power plants, and smaller amounts to be dumped in lakes and rivers as a result of manufacturing processes. Lead paint shows up on imported children's toys because the west has been willing to circumvent its own environmental policies by exporting the manufacturing to developing nations with un-enforced or non-existent environmental safeguards.
How does this Greenpeace video and press release help educate people and motivate people about these issues? Missed call: the iPhone's hazardous chemicals. Well, it really doesn't. It just gets a bunch of headlines to the effect of "Greenpeace iPhone Smackdown". Greenpeace has figured out that they can get a lot of attention by poking at Apple now and then, but they haven't figured out how to turn that to advantage. They mention a few chemicals here, including phthalates, but they don't mention that these compounds are used in FOOD Containers, which is a much more likely source of exposure to the compound (most people do not eat their iPhones) and that it has been linked to obesity and diabetes ( Obesity In Men Linked To Common Chemical Found In Plastic And Soap )and might be a serious contributor to a global health crisis. Greenpeace could be turning these waves of press attention into a serious national discussion of phthalates, additional research on the topic, and removal of these compounds from food containers, which would be a rational application of the precautionary principle. Instead, they are squandering the opportunity for a few headlines and links to their web site.
My post was sarcastic and comical. This point will be lost on many, and my karma will suffer a dent. Fortunately I've got loads to spare. Sadly, Chrisje appears to have been serious.
Sarcasm is dead. There is no possible way that Chrisje was serious. Any rational person with even a limited exposure to computers and a vague understanding of software would realize that there is no excuse for this type of wasteful packaging behavior from a technology company in this day and age. That comment is ROFLMAO comical. This is *Slashdot*. Have none of you mods ever been around *software*? All this talk of part numbers and order handling and logistics for a tiny bit of *data on paper*? You realize, don't you, that HP could modify the program that generates the data on paper to group, print, and ship rationally? You realize that other companies long, long ago solved this problem, using software? Obviously somebody at some point in their process knew this stuff was all going to the same location at the same time. That's a great place to start looking for how to prevent this particular criminal packaging stupidity. Solving this problem isn't even hard. It just takes the realization that it is a problem, and it can be solved. Chrisje undoubtedly realizes this, and produced a masterful bit of sarcasm, which went right over your heads.
Periodic power outages help, too.
Dude. You got a +5 for pointing out that the moderation pool is full of easy marks. Hats off to you.
Damn. If you blow your wad that easily, you're gonna needs some sort of numbing cream.
If the Pope claps one hand on a tree, which falls over in the woods and lands on some bear scat, does anyone then refer to Google Bombs as Yahoo Bombs?
Apple is a software company. The MacBook or iPhone you get with your copy of OSX is just part of the packaging.
They are not even getting a banana for their efforts.
Previous discussions were cited in this very discussion thread a few minutes ago!
Compiler performance is important for development teams that have mountains of code and wish to implement continuous integration and automated builds (OS vendors for example). Apple's interest in LLVM appears to be based in part on a desire for improved compiler performance. (Obviously they're interested in LLVM for several other reasons, too.) See these starting points:
experimenting with LLVM
LLVM 2.0 (Google Tech Talk)
LLVM Project
Obviously you don't have an iPhone, yet.
No, because statements like this are part of the cultural background and presumed to be common knowledge.
You don't even need to spell Alzheimer's correctly to Google your way to a reasonable and sympathetic discussion of Ronald Reagan's long decline, which began in the early 80s, and of which he was undoubtedly aware. People who knew people with Alzheimer's began speculating that he was suffering from this disease during his first term as president, and although it wasn't a discussion topic in the mainstream press, many citizens were aware of this possibility by about midway through his second term. As this article mentions, the condition remains difficult to diagnose today. Other articles I've seen indicate that a fully positive diagnosis isn't really possible without a brain biopsy (typically performed after the patient has died). Reagan's downward spiral
Look, anonymous coward, we don't exist to fill the enormous gaps in your knowledge of the world in which you live, nor to compensate for your laziness. It takes about 2 seconds for you to verify this for yourself. If you're going to snidely demand "references" whenever someone makes a statement that you are not directly familiar with, at least have the courtesy to do so using your login ID so the rest of us can filter you out.
Anonytard.
Uhm... are we supposed to think that a dismissive wave of the hand "by fictionpuss (1136565)" is a valid critique?
Moderators, please get a grip. sjf is wrong, but if you look at their history, and consider the simplicity of the incorrect factual statement they made, they probably are not Trolling. Overrated, sure, but Troll is pretty harsh.
News of Mr. Sarcasm's death has been greatly exaggerated.
Well, modern malware is typically modular, and does all of these things, and more. If a new function desired by the botmaster comes along, it just fetches a new module or updates itself.
Malware is sometimes used to set up web sites. You might have heard the term "phishing". Sometimes these sites are fake bank sites used in scams to lure people to give up their credit card and other identity information. Long before phishing, compromised boxes were often used to host ftp or web servers to distribute pirated software or pornography.
The odds are good that the system in question was Windows based. However, that doesn't really change too much. Any p0wn3d box leads to the same situation. You really can't prove what happened on the box, to any high degree of confidence. The user could be innocent.
Firing people based on things that happened on an infected PC is the modern equivalent of shouting burn the witch!
The truth is that this can happen. The truth is that so many corporate desktop and laptop systems are p0wn3d by th3m that it isn't even funny.
The truth is that event logging on these networks and systems are insufficiently detailed as to demonstrate conclusively which actually happened. Any logging that does take place on a system probably can't show you wether the user was responsible, or if an automated program pretending to be the user was responsible. Any corporation that gives a users a typical Windows system and then holds that user responsible when something untoward happens on that system ought to be opening themselves up to a lawsuit.
The truth is that even the the lawyers who advised not to talk about the reasons for dismissal don't recognize this. They prohibit discussion of the details regarding the dismissal of the employee for reasons entirely unrelated to the issue of being entirely unable to conclusively substantiate any accusations which would be made. (It's standard dismissal policy at all of the Fortune 500 to not give any reason). In general, employees, managers, lawyers and judges are completely unprepared to assess the details which would expose the fact that nobody can actually prove that this unfortunate person was probably the victim of some botmaster's prank. People should be surprised that this doesn't happen more often.
That said, there are things one can look at to determine what was *likely* to have happened on that box, and one can assess to some degree what things were relatively more likely than others. If the box was running malware, though, the most likely outcome is that one cannot demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the user was guilty. However, one can, in some cases, demonstrate innocence, by showing, for example, that a given download occurred when the user was away from the keyboard.
It's important to note that the converse is not true. The malware can easily mimic user behavior by performing user style tasks only when the user is logged in. Malware may, for example, have incentive to operate only when a real user is logged in, because certain operations in certain environments are unlikely to succeed if the user is not logged in (being stopped, and identified as likely malware behavior by a 3rd party heuristic detection system, for example.) Malware often does change its behavior based on instructions from the outside, based on the day or the time, based on all sorts of things, and may not behave the same in an isolated test lab as it does "in the wild" so it can be difficult or impossible to demonstrate the full capability of a given strain, even if you have a copy of it.
Yeah, it wasn't my best work.
I suppose you would need to be at least smart enough not to brag about a 162 IQ. You might want to re-test. And have your blood lead and mercury levels checked.