I do not work for the company that makes the product I am recommending, nor do I have any affiliation, relationship, association or any other connection to them except the one where I give them some money every year and they let me use their product in return.
I use and recommend a product called Lansweeper. The cost is very reasonable, uses WMI, and SNMP for asset scanning. It can do everything it's designed to do without an agent or you can deploy a small, non-resident agent if bandwidth considerations are critical. It stores all it's information in a standardized SQL format (can use MS free SQL express) if you don't already own SQL in your environment. It's reporting capabilities are fantastic. The interface is all web enabled and can run on it's proprietary web hosting or can use IIS.
We pay $1500 US once a year and the license allows us to run as many scanning servers as we need. There are no limits on the number of nodes that can be scanned or data that can be stored. Maint is so easy you can have a low level tech manage the thing. And because of the standardized data structure, several of our other organizations pull data from it daily. Our ticketing system (Service Now) has regular reporting and direct ties into the lansweeper database. Security is not the primary focus because it is meant to be entirely internal with no public interface. however you can limit access in a very granular way using AD security groups or individual ID. It scans MAC, Linux, switches, routers, cisco gear, VOIP, windows workstations and servers, you name it. It also has a fairly robust software management component although we don't rely on that set of features as much as we could.
We've been running it in my company for over three years now and even though we have SCCM, Service Now, Sailpoint and a number of other products that are critical for very niche requirements, everyone in the IT organization that has need to gather and maintain asset management uses this product and I do overhear them talk about it with respect, especially when you consider the cost. Not going to link to their site but you can easily google Lansweeper to get there. The company is out of Belgium I believe and I found them by asking questions in the BSA forums.
The whole global warming debate is as confusing as ever.
No. it isn't. As a scientist I can firmly conclude Global warming is happening, its caused (in part) by human activities, and we need to stop it as it contributes to an array of very devastating consequences.
FTFY - yes, global warming is happening. Yes humans contribute to the problem. I do not believe there is enough evidence to conclude we are the sole or even the major cause. To discount the evidence that we were already in a warming cycle is just as bad as to ignore the evidence that it is in part caused by increased levels of CO2.
Q: Should we be actively engaged in protecting our environment A: Yes
Q: Has mankind contributed to the degradation of our environment A: Yes
Q: Are we the largest cause of Global Warming A: Not really certain, possibly
Q: Can we do anything to halt or slow down the damage we are doing A: Yes
Q: Should we A: Yes
Well, what should we do vs what can we do becomes the biggest question. There are a number of things that reasonable people can agree upon that will have an impact. Everything from the individual effort to not deliberately contribute to polluting our environment to providing incentive's to corporations and governments to reduce and regulate appropriately. It does no long term good to punish business out of existence simply to appease one group or another. It does no good to exclaim that there is no such thing as global warming or to claim that humans have nothing to do with it or to say that there is nothing we can do about it.
But calling childish names of those that don't agree with you is even less helpful. Is it your goal to convince the opposition to change their mind and start seeing things from your point of view? If so, your efforts are woefully inadequate, assuming you would rather go with your heart and call people names. If you can't be bothered to make an effort to convince people to reconsider, then you should stop polluting the environment with your invective. I was once a very committed "denier" but I didn't stop researching and I deliberately avoid participating in the echo chambers that exist on both sides of the argument. Some very reasonable debate from considerate and passionate and knowledgeable people have contributed my change of position.
Yes, I believe there is enough evidence to conclude that the planet is warmer on average now than it has been in the last several hundred years. Yes, I believe that humans have contributed in exacerbating an natural process of warming that would have occurred without our involvement. We have made it worse by a measurable percentage. Yes I think there are things we should do to reduce the damage we are doing. No, I don't believe success will come from cap and trade, making carbon based fuel illegal or forcing our industry to move all their operations out of the country by draconian levels of regulation. I also am convinced that if we were to, today, stop all production of CO2 worldwide we wouldn't get back to "normal" levels for several decades. We need reasonable solutions that don't crush the life out of the lives we are trying to save.
We should be expending our efforts in trying to convince the opposition rather than shutting them down. We should be expending our efforts in researching and implementing reasonable solutions rather than lining the pockets of our "evangelists" and "prophets". I'm an example of the success that can be had by being reasonable, fair and adult in our efforts. It does work. Don't believe it, go back and read some of my previous posts.
I work in the financial lending industry and I can promise you that if we slacked off on security and user credit info is leaked or stolen, it won't matter that the breach came by way of social engineering, brute force password attacks or swarms of pigeons waving flaming torches, everyone in the department gets sanctioned. Some will get reprimands, some will get demotions and some will get fired.
If it comes to a choice of losing your job or inconveniencing a user with a password change every 30, 60 or 90 days, guess who has to learn a new password. And you can bet that if someone in the department notices a breach, they will report it and go on a witch hunt to find the "lazy S.O. B." that had both the responsibility and the authority to fix it.
I read the FA and I find their conclusions don't match my experience. I know, anecdotal evidence isn't evidence but reports like this, done this way will not effect change in either a positive or negative way.
and what did your giant attention span gain you in this situation? oh, you agree with the "opinion" without RTFA and determining that the end result will most likely not be a "garish ecological disaster." Next time, try fact. All the self-esteem building with none of that messy confusion.
Once we have AI and it starts playing "Civilization", we will become the next smartest thing on the planet. Expect our betters to treat us about the same as we treat our primate cousins. Some of us will be left to roam in the wild, some will be harvested for lab experiments, some will be put in zoos and the rest will be hunted for our teeth which will be ground up into an aphrodisiac for the robots.
By getting this out there now, it can be written off as "old news" come election time. Savvy news media types know that the best time to expose the skeletons is months in advance. Savvy politicians know this too so expect more of these types of stories being "leaked" to the sympathetic press teams in the next few months. Meanwhile, the opposition is gnashing their teeth and hoping that they are able to reserve most the things that could discredit Hillary until the very last moment.
Another thought occurs to me as well; it seems that every time something like this happens to a liberal candidate, the majority of comments are along the lines of "oh it doesn't really matter because all politicians do this". As if it's expected. I recall the Earth shattering k-boom that rocked the planet when it was revealed that Sarah Pallin used gmail when she was Governor. The amount of ZOMGICANTBELIEVEITHOWSTUPIDANDILLEGALANDIMMORALANDJUSTPLAINDOWNRIGHTBAD that is. Yes, they all do it. Some of them do it for the purposes of obscuring and avoiding exposure. Some of them do it because they are lazy and/or stupid. I'm not proposing that Hillary needs to be put in the public square and become the target of rotten fruit. Just keep this in mind the next time a Republican is exposed and treat the occasion with the same level of contempt.
Is alcohol a drug? Yes Is nicotine a drug? Yes Is pot a drug? Yes Is meth a drug? Yes Is coke a drug? Yes Is a lollipop a drug? No
I don't need the government to tell me. I believe pot should have the same legal standing and requisite controls as booze. So, I support the notion that legalization of pot should happen. But your analogy doesn't work. Also, you state that you 'believe' it is still legal to beat women in some states. I don't 'believe' that to be true. Regardless, that has little bearing on the subject at hand. Notice, in my response to your comment, I have not attacked your character or in any regard attempted to insult you. Make a counter to my opinion without being insulting and I'll consider it. Note: Not AC
Every time you trot out this known falsehood you sound like an idiot. They were political organizations that were required to do more work to prove that they were following the law and not taking advantage of hype in one area or another. The groups targeted were both left and right leaning groups and the leftists groups were the only ones denied anything. Stop lying or being misinformed. I'm so sick of people who can't see that they are being manipulated by political entities against their own self interest acting as the mouthpiece for their overlords. I'm not saying it's an issue that affects one political party more than another, but currently conservatives seem to be the ones more full of stupid. No one should be proud to be ignorant. We have enough real issues to deal with that this kind of childish distraction just gets in the way of getting things most Americans already agree on done.
Small issue with your "known falsehood"... The IRS Inspector General reported that in fact, the IRS DID target conservative groups to a greater extent than non-conservative. This report is what started the whole noise machine in the first place.
Good thing you didn't read the whole thing and only brushed past the synopsis. Glad you came to give your boring opinion. Sorry, I should have phrased that better. Thanks for telling us you are bored.
1. Net neutrality, yes 2. Health care, no 3. Educational Standards, no 4. Minimum Wage, maybe, sometimes 5. Who to hire, no (unless not a legal resident)
See, it's possible to have a nuanced opinion about social, economical and other issues without being an ideological opinion bot. People (read you) that appear to only be able to see in black and white are often wrong a great deal of the time. Those (read me:D) that see each issue both in conjunction with unrelated issues and as stand alone and are able to evaluate and reach conclusion regarding that issue tend to be right more often.
If you respond, I'll be more interested in how you parse my reply in order to understand what I'm saying than I probably will be with your short FU.
"Stuff that matters". Just because it doesn't matter to you, we should all capitulate to your demands? FFS, don't click the link and downvote the story. No more issue. See, there are little sliders up in the top right of the story section. Move those back and forth and stories that get downvoted disappear.
If that doesn't work, go find stories that you think meet the criteria and post them. Apparently, the/. mods give less than a fuck and any kind of story can make it to the main page (at least that seems to be what you are implying).
Disliking the fact that a story is posted that you don't want to read, reading the synopsis, commenting on the need to eleminate these types of stories and doing so as AC? sheesh, the hubris.
These kids get picked on in school and they are ill equipped to figure out how to handle it. So, they dump their teenage angst by being bullies themselves. As others have already stated, this was no "hack". It was a DDoS and it will likely never compel the affected companies to modify their "security". And their actions gain no sympathy amongst the end users. Few people are likely to take their new consoles back to the store and trade them in for (insert non-electronic somethingsomething here). And the attacked companies are not going to violate the 80/20 rule to increase capacity.
I don't own a console and currently am not playing any games that would have been affected if there are PC versions in the target list. But, this kind of attack irritates me anyway and I think I would enjoy seeing a few of these worthless turds being skull fucked by a horde of hedgehogs, or forcing them to watch something on the Lifetime channel.
Yep. The obvious "fix" that nobody seems to be taking very seriously yet is making it much more difficult to get permission to hire an H1-B worker.
Corporations are ALWAYS going to push for a plentiful supply of these as a cost savings measure, but it's ultimately the government who issues them. It's about time they start putting pressure on companies to PROVE they're unable to hire from the talent pool of American citizens before qualifying to go the H1-B route.
You are correct in that the reason nobody is seriously talking about making it more difficult is that most of the lobbying taking place is focused on making it easier. The major contract placement companies overseas will in many cases, hold the applicants passport and the company they end up working for will hold the visa. The worker is compelled to do the job and keep their mouth shut at all cost. If the worker is fired or they quit of their own volition, the company reports to the contracting agency and the agency recalls the worker. This could be a devastating blow for the worker so they will do whatever it takes to keep the job. Doing whatever it takes usually translates to "work for peanuts".
In addition, many of these workers are often housed by the contracting company or in some cases directly by the employer. This makes the worker even more dependent. Sometimes the living conditions are cramped to an obscene degree. I personally have witnessed this. 18 "IT" workers were all housed in a 4 bedroom home, just off campus of a large banking corporation in the upper mid-west. I had to go pick these guys up every day for a couple weeks while I was getting my visa processed to go do a migration at our branches in England.
The end result for these workers is that they become indentured after a fashion. Much like the coal and other miners back in the late 1800s to early 1900s. Miners lived in what were essentially settlements owned by the company. Want to buy flour to make bread? Only place to get it was the company store. The store only traded in credit "chits". At the end of the pay period, the miner got his chits and there was usually just not enough pay to cover all the debt. If you still owed the company credit, you could not leave the area and so, back to the mine you went. This created a never ending cycle of indentured servitude (slavery, if you will).
What we are seeing now with our over-zealous attempt to hasten the processing of illegal immigrants and H1B visa applications is a modern day version of the same old game. One mistake that seems to be ignored in this process is the long term, unintended consequences of making 5m quasi citizens. The stick has been removed from the equation for these people/workers. They will rightfully demand higher wages (minimum wage) and the employer can no longer hold deportation over their head as an incentive. The theory is that the company leadership/owners will just knuckle under and start paying higher wages. I submit that they will not. Instead, I suspect they will begin replacing these newly emancipated former wage slaves with newly minted illegal immigrants and the process will simply continue unabated. The last couple of paragraphs have not been strictly on topic but because immigration reform and H1B visa issues have somehow become combined in the public eye, it seemed appropriate to bring it into the conversation.
My thoughts on how to reform immigration and in some degree lessen the impact on the plight of the American worker would not provide for an all inclusive solution. But, perhaps someone else would be willing to take up a challenge to participate in the discussion as well. First, we MUST reduce the red tape required for legal processing of normal immigration requests and requests for citizenship. Note that I am not saying reduce the requirements. From personal experience (my wife is a naturalized citizen) the process is rife with what appears to be a woeful lack of competence on the part of the vast number of government employees that by
Thing is, while he might have done that before (I don't know and I'm not taking sides as I'm not an Elmer) why would he behave like that now? (Bouncing from one advisor to another, I mean.) The extent of his power can't be longer than 2 years because of the 2 terms rule and it's incredibly unlikely to be any less than 2 years, even if he sat on his ass and did absolutely nothing.
That's a good and reasoned question. I speculate that he knows no other way. He has for so long been in ballistic mode that it has now become natural and provides the path of least resistance. I watched his speech last night and I couldn't help but reach the conclusion that he was out of his depth. Although he fails at speaking extemporaneously, he is normally fairly good at delivering his messages when properly prepared. Last night was as controlled a situation as he is likely to find and his delivery, pacing, tonal quality and lack of any deference spoke to me about a man at the end of his limits.
I've always believed him to be a pretty darn good grifter but he let himself literally get carried away by the overwhelming and indomitable forces of Hollywood and Beltway exuberance.
I think he ran for president for the same reason anyone interested in power and influence would, because he craves power and influence. What he does not seem willing to acknowledge is the responsibility part. He rebounds from adviser to adviser telling him what to think and say and because of his lack of experience and talent he just does what he's told because he believes it keeps him in power and grants him influence.
I would venture that the vast majority of his "policies" and ideas are simple gleanings from overheard conversations at Hollywood cocktail parties. He has the depth of character one would expect from excessive education paired with inadequate intelligence. When people say he is a stuffed suit, that's in part because of what they observe and in part what they hear him say. It doesn't have anything to do with the color of his skin but entirely with the content of his character; a character that is woefully lacking and ill suited to the task.
To dismiss reservations about him with a simple "various nutballs like yourself" is to reduce the weight of your own argument in opposition. When you disregard the opinion of others in such a way, you lower the threshold for your argument and make your job easier. So, make an effort.
I agree. However, the same thing could be accomplished with a simple SQL script to null the fields containing personally identifying information in each record.
Not a conspiracy nut here but I do suspect there are additional motives for purging the data outside of a purely altruistic one.
I agree, but I think they may be taking this into account. For one, having a detailed mapping of somewhat technically engaged populace gives them just a little more information in regards to determining what segments of the population to randomly select for enhanced census. I know they are supposed to try to hit everyone but with just the right emphasis on how hard to try in certain areas, the results can be skewed enough to matter.
Take the extreme positions out of the argument and both of you start making sense.
No, not all speed zone decisions are made based entirely or even in part on revenue generation possibilities.
No, not all speed zone decisions are made based entirely or even in part on traffic safety considerations.
The problem then becomes, as a driver, which are which? How do I know? How can I find out?
So, I use a radar detector in my daily drive to and from work. Ordinarily, I drive the same speed as everyone else but if I'm the only one on the road, I drive the speed limit. I believe this type of behavior is both civil and safe. And if you don't like the way I drive, you are free to slow the fuck down or speed the fuck up.
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I do not work for the company that makes the product I am recommending, nor do I have any affiliation, relationship, association or any other connection to them except the one where I give them some money every year and they let me use their product in return.
I use and recommend a product called Lansweeper. The cost is very reasonable, uses WMI, and SNMP for asset scanning. It can do everything it's designed to do without an agent or you can deploy a small, non-resident agent if bandwidth considerations are critical. It stores all it's information in a standardized SQL format (can use MS free SQL express) if you don't already own SQL in your environment. It's reporting capabilities are fantastic. The interface is all web enabled and can run on it's proprietary web hosting or can use IIS.
We pay $1500 US once a year and the license allows us to run as many scanning servers as we need. There are no limits on the number of nodes that can be scanned or data that can be stored. Maint is so easy you can have a low level tech manage the thing. And because of the standardized data structure, several of our other organizations pull data from it daily. Our ticketing system (Service Now) has regular reporting and direct ties into the lansweeper database. Security is not the primary focus because it is meant to be entirely internal with no public interface. however you can limit access in a very granular way using AD security groups or individual ID. It scans MAC, Linux, switches, routers, cisco gear, VOIP, windows workstations and servers, you name it. It also has a fairly robust software management component although we don't rely on that set of features as much as we could.
We've been running it in my company for over three years now and even though we have SCCM, Service Now, Sailpoint and a number of other products that are critical for very niche requirements, everyone in the IT organization that has need to gather and maintain asset management uses this product and I do overhear them talk about it with respect, especially when you consider the cost. Not going to link to their site but you can easily google Lansweeper to get there. The company is out of Belgium I believe and I found them by asking questions in the BSA forums.
The whole global warming debate is as confusing as ever.
No. it isn't. As a scientist I can firmly conclude Global warming is happening, its caused (in part) by human activities, and we need to stop it as it contributes to an array of very devastating consequences.
FTFY - yes, global warming is happening. Yes humans contribute to the problem. I do not believe there is enough evidence to conclude we are the sole or even the major cause. To discount the evidence that we were already in a warming cycle is just as bad as to ignore the evidence that it is in part caused by increased levels of CO2.
Q: Should we be actively engaged in protecting our environment
A: Yes
Q: Has mankind contributed to the degradation of our environment
A: Yes
Q: Are we the largest cause of Global Warming
A: Not really certain, possibly
Q: Can we do anything to halt or slow down the damage we are doing
A: Yes
Q: Should we
A: Yes
Well, what should we do vs what can we do becomes the biggest question. There are a number of things that reasonable people can agree upon that will have an impact. Everything from the individual effort to not deliberately contribute to polluting our environment to providing incentive's to corporations and governments to reduce and regulate appropriately. It does no long term good to punish business out of existence simply to appease one group or another. It does no good to exclaim that there is no such thing as global warming or to claim that humans have nothing to do with it or to say that there is nothing we can do about it.
But calling childish names of those that don't agree with you is even less helpful. Is it your goal to convince the opposition to change their mind and start seeing things from your point of view? If so, your efforts are woefully inadequate, assuming you would rather go with your heart and call people names. If you can't be bothered to make an effort to convince people to reconsider, then you should stop polluting the environment with your invective. I was once a very committed "denier" but I didn't stop researching and I deliberately avoid participating in the echo chambers that exist on both sides of the argument. Some very reasonable debate from considerate and passionate and knowledgeable people have contributed my change of position.
Yes, I believe there is enough evidence to conclude that the planet is warmer on average now than it has been in the last several hundred years. Yes, I believe that humans have contributed in exacerbating an natural process of warming that would have occurred without our involvement. We have made it worse by a measurable percentage. Yes I think there are things we should do to reduce the damage we are doing. No, I don't believe success will come from cap and trade, making carbon based fuel illegal or forcing our industry to move all their operations out of the country by draconian levels of regulation. I also am convinced that if we were to, today, stop all production of CO2 worldwide we wouldn't get back to "normal" levels for several decades. We need reasonable solutions that don't crush the life out of the lives we are trying to save.
We should be expending our efforts in trying to convince the opposition rather than shutting them down. We should be expending our efforts in researching and implementing reasonable solutions rather than lining the pockets of our "evangelists" and "prophets". I'm an example of the success that can be had by being reasonable, fair and adult in our efforts. It does work. Don't believe it, go back and read some of my previous posts.
I work in the financial lending industry and I can promise you that if we slacked off on security and user credit info is leaked or stolen, it won't matter that the breach came by way of social engineering, brute force password attacks or swarms of pigeons waving flaming torches, everyone in the department gets sanctioned. Some will get reprimands, some will get demotions and some will get fired.
If it comes to a choice of losing your job or inconveniencing a user with a password change every 30, 60 or 90 days, guess who has to learn a new password. And you can bet that if someone in the department notices a breach, they will report it and go on a witch hunt to find the "lazy S.O. B." that had both the responsibility and the authority to fix it.
I read the FA and I find their conclusions don't match my experience. I know, anecdotal evidence isn't evidence but reports like this, done this way will not effect change in either a positive or negative way.
Well, at least now that you read the article you went from 'disaster' to 'disrupt'. Thank you for so eloquently making my point.
and what did your giant attention span gain you in this situation? oh, you agree with the "opinion" without RTFA and determining that the end result will most likely not be a "garish ecological disaster." Next time, try fact. All the self-esteem building with none of that messy confusion.
You lost me at "I'm sure". Everything after this is opinion, humble or not. I hate to be that guy but please, RTFA
Once we have AI and it starts playing "Civilization", we will become the next smartest thing on the planet. Expect our betters to treat us about the same as we treat our primate cousins. Some of us will be left to roam in the wild, some will be harvested for lab experiments, some will be put in zoos and the rest will be hunted for our teeth which will be ground up into an aphrodisiac for the robots.
By getting this out there now, it can be written off as "old news" come election time. Savvy news media types know that the best time to expose the skeletons is months in advance. Savvy politicians know this too so expect more of these types of stories being "leaked" to the sympathetic press teams in the next few months. Meanwhile, the opposition is gnashing their teeth and hoping that they are able to reserve most the things that could discredit Hillary until the very last moment.
Another thought occurs to me as well; it seems that every time something like this happens to a liberal candidate, the majority of comments are along the lines of "oh it doesn't really matter because all politicians do this". As if it's expected. I recall the Earth shattering k-boom that rocked the planet when it was revealed that Sarah Pallin used gmail when she was Governor. The amount of ZOMGICANTBELIEVEITHOWSTUPIDANDILLEGALANDIMMORALANDJUSTPLAINDOWNRIGHTBAD that is. Yes, they all do it. Some of them do it for the purposes of obscuring and avoiding exposure. Some of them do it because they are lazy and/or stupid. I'm not proposing that Hillary needs to be put in the public square and become the target of rotten fruit. Just keep this in mind the next time a Republican is exposed and treat the occasion with the same level of contempt.
Had AC said 'sugar' I would have had to modify my statement. You are technically correct but that is a distinction without a difference. And, splenda.
Is alcohol a drug? Yes
Is nicotine a drug? Yes
Is pot a drug? Yes
Is meth a drug? Yes
Is coke a drug? Yes
Is a lollipop a drug? No
I don't need the government to tell me. I believe pot should have the same legal standing and requisite controls as booze. So, I support the notion that legalization of pot should happen. But your analogy doesn't work. Also, you state that you 'believe' it is still legal to beat women in some states. I don't 'believe' that to be true. Regardless, that has little bearing on the subject at hand. Notice, in my response to your comment, I have not attacked your character or in any regard attempted to insult you. Make a counter to my opinion without being insulting and I'll consider it. Note: Not AC
Every time you trot out this known falsehood you sound like an idiot. They were political organizations that were required to do more work to prove that they were following the law and not taking advantage of hype in one area or another. The groups targeted were both left and right leaning groups and the leftists groups were the only ones denied anything. Stop lying or being misinformed. I'm so sick of people who can't see that they are being manipulated by political entities against their own self interest acting as the mouthpiece for their overlords. I'm not saying it's an issue that affects one political party more than another, but currently conservatives seem to be the ones more full of stupid. No one should be proud to be ignorant. We have enough real issues to deal with that this kind of childish distraction just gets in the way of getting things most Americans already agree on done.
Small issue with your "known falsehood"... The IRS Inspector General reported that in fact, the IRS DID target conservative groups to a greater extent than non-conservative. This report is what started the whole noise machine in the first place.
Good thing you didn't read the whole thing and only brushed past the synopsis. Glad you came to give your boring opinion. Sorry, I should have phrased that better. Thanks for telling us you are bored.
1. Net neutrality, yes
2. Health care, no
3. Educational Standards, no
4. Minimum Wage, maybe, sometimes
5. Who to hire, no (unless not a legal resident)
See, it's possible to have a nuanced opinion about social, economical and other issues without being an ideological opinion bot. People (read you) that appear to only be able to see in black and white are often wrong a great deal of the time. Those (read me :D) that see each issue both in conjunction with unrelated issues and as stand alone and are able to evaluate and reach conclusion regarding that issue tend to be right more often.
If you respond, I'll be more interested in how you parse my reply in order to understand what I'm saying than I probably will be with your short FU.
"Stuff that matters". Just because it doesn't matter to you, we should all capitulate to your demands? FFS, don't click the link and downvote the story. No more issue. See, there are little sliders up in the top right of the story section. Move those back and forth and stories that get downvoted disappear.
If that doesn't work, go find stories that you think meet the criteria and post them. Apparently, the /. mods give less than a fuck and any kind of story can make it to the main page (at least that seems to be what you are implying).
Disliking the fact that a story is posted that you don't want to read, reading the synopsis, commenting on the need to eleminate these types of stories and doing so as AC? sheesh, the hubris.
These kids get picked on in school and they are ill equipped to figure out how to handle it. So, they dump their teenage angst by being bullies themselves. As others have already stated, this was no "hack". It was a DDoS and it will likely never compel the affected companies to modify their "security". And their actions gain no sympathy amongst the end users. Few people are likely to take their new consoles back to the store and trade them in for (insert non-electronic somethingsomething here). And the attacked companies are not going to violate the 80/20 rule to increase capacity.
I don't own a console and currently am not playing any games that would have been affected if there are PC versions in the target list. But, this kind of attack irritates me anyway and I think I would enjoy seeing a few of these worthless turds being skull fucked by a horde of hedgehogs, or forcing them to watch something on the Lifetime channel.
Yep. The obvious "fix" that nobody seems to be taking very seriously yet is making it much more difficult to get permission to hire an H1-B worker.
Corporations are ALWAYS going to push for a plentiful supply of these as a cost savings measure, but it's ultimately the government who issues them. It's about time they start putting pressure on companies to PROVE they're unable to hire from the talent pool of American citizens before qualifying to go the H1-B route.
You are correct in that the reason nobody is seriously talking about making it more difficult is that most of the lobbying taking place is focused on making it easier. The major contract placement companies overseas will in many cases, hold the applicants passport and the company they end up working for will hold the visa. The worker is compelled to do the job and keep their mouth shut at all cost. If the worker is fired or they quit of their own volition, the company reports to the contracting agency and the agency recalls the worker. This could be a devastating blow for the worker so they will do whatever it takes to keep the job. Doing whatever it takes usually translates to "work for peanuts".
In addition, many of these workers are often housed by the contracting company or in some cases directly by the employer. This makes the worker even more dependent. Sometimes the living conditions are cramped to an obscene degree. I personally have witnessed this. 18 "IT" workers were all housed in a 4 bedroom home, just off campus of a large banking corporation in the upper mid-west. I had to go pick these guys up every day for a couple weeks while I was getting my visa processed to go do a migration at our branches in England.
The end result for these workers is that they become indentured after a fashion. Much like the coal and other miners back in the late 1800s to early 1900s. Miners lived in what were essentially settlements owned by the company. Want to buy flour to make bread? Only place to get it was the company store. The store only traded in credit "chits". At the end of the pay period, the miner got his chits and there was usually just not enough pay to cover all the debt. If you still owed the company credit, you could not leave the area and so, back to the mine you went. This created a never ending cycle of indentured servitude (slavery, if you will).
What we are seeing now with our over-zealous attempt to hasten the processing of illegal immigrants and H1B visa applications is a modern day version of the same old game. One mistake that seems to be ignored in this process is the long term, unintended consequences of making 5m quasi citizens. The stick has been removed from the equation for these people/workers. They will rightfully demand higher wages (minimum wage) and the employer can no longer hold deportation over their head as an incentive. The theory is that the company leadership/owners will just knuckle under and start paying higher wages. I submit that they will not. Instead, I suspect they will begin replacing these newly emancipated former wage slaves with newly minted illegal immigrants and the process will simply continue unabated. The last couple of paragraphs have not been strictly on topic but because immigration reform and H1B visa issues have somehow become combined in the public eye, it seemed appropriate to bring it into the conversation.
My thoughts on how to reform immigration and in some degree lessen the impact on the plight of the American worker would not provide for an all inclusive solution. But, perhaps someone else would be willing to take up a challenge to participate in the discussion as well. First, we MUST reduce the red tape required for legal processing of normal immigration requests and requests for citizenship. Note that I am not saying reduce the requirements. From personal experience (my wife is a naturalized citizen) the process is rife with what appears to be a woeful lack of competence on the part of the vast number of government employees that by
Thing is, while he might have done that before (I don't know and I'm not taking sides as I'm not an Elmer) why would he behave like that now? (Bouncing from one advisor to another, I mean.) The extent of his power can't be longer than 2 years because of the 2 terms rule and it's incredibly unlikely to be any less than 2 years, even if he sat on his ass and did absolutely nothing.
That's a good and reasoned question. I speculate that he knows no other way. He has for so long been in ballistic mode that it has now become natural and provides the path of least resistance. I watched his speech last night and I couldn't help but reach the conclusion that he was out of his depth. Although he fails at speaking extemporaneously, he is normally fairly good at delivering his messages when properly prepared. Last night was as controlled a situation as he is likely to find and his delivery, pacing, tonal quality and lack of any deference spoke to me about a man at the end of his limits.
I've always believed him to be a pretty darn good grifter but he let himself literally get carried away by the overwhelming and indomitable forces of Hollywood and Beltway exuberance.
I think he ran for president for the same reason anyone interested in power and influence would, because he craves power and influence. What he does not seem willing to acknowledge is the responsibility part. He rebounds from adviser to adviser telling him what to think and say and because of his lack of experience and talent he just does what he's told because he believes it keeps him in power and grants him influence.
I would venture that the vast majority of his "policies" and ideas are simple gleanings from overheard conversations at Hollywood cocktail parties. He has the depth of character one would expect from excessive education paired with inadequate intelligence. When people say he is a stuffed suit, that's in part because of what they observe and in part what they hear him say. It doesn't have anything to do with the color of his skin but entirely with the content of his character; a character that is woefully lacking and ill suited to the task.
To dismiss reservations about him with a simple "various nutballs like yourself" is to reduce the weight of your own argument in opposition. When you disregard the opinion of others in such a way, you lower the threshold for your argument and make your job easier. So, make an effort.
I agree. However, the same thing could be accomplished with a simple SQL script to null the fields containing personally identifying information in each record.
Not a conspiracy nut here but I do suspect there are additional motives for purging the data outside of a purely altruistic one.
I'll sacrifice some karma just to ask you to please stop.
And no, I'm not a sock puppet either.
Don't worry, I get your poetry, you just aren't very good at it.
If that has to be explained to you, then your are likely one of the demographics they are interested in for "random selection"
I agree, but I think they may be taking this into account. For one, having a detailed mapping of somewhat technically engaged populace gives them just a little more information in regards to determining what segments of the population to randomly select for enhanced census. I know they are supposed to try to hit everyone but with just the right emphasis on how hard to try in certain areas, the results can be skewed enough to matter.
Take the extreme positions out of the argument and both of you start making sense.
No, not all speed zone decisions are made based entirely or even in part on revenue generation possibilities.
No, not all speed zone decisions are made based entirely or even in part on traffic safety considerations.
The problem then becomes, as a driver, which are which? How do I know? How can I find out?
So, I use a radar detector in my daily drive to and from work. Ordinarily, I drive the same speed as everyone else but if I'm the only one on the road, I drive the speed limit. I believe this type of behavior is both civil and safe. And if you don't like the way I drive, you are free to slow the fuck down or speed the fuck up.