He didn't "steal stuff", he came in, looked around, disturbed nothing, but took photographs to prove he was there and then published them to let everyone know how easy it was to get in.
Which is still trespass, and he posted the evidence of his crime publicly. Idiot. If you want to demonstrate the ease of breaking security, then educate people responsibly and ethically. This person did neither.
You would think that someone would have done this already either for shits-n-giggles, or possibly more sinister purposes.
Most people are too concerned with paying the bills, working, and dealing with their own personal drama to waste their time on such exploits. This is why most petty criminal activity is done by those in the 13-25 age group, particularily males -- it's simply boredom. They haven't filled up their life enough yet, and want a cheap thrill.
Your metaphor alleges direct physical access and brute force. Think before you post.
My metaphor alleges nothing. On behalf of the accused, I plead innocence. As to thinking before I post, you've failed to consider the central argument I have made: The presence or absence of an access control mechanism does not relieve the person gaining entry from their ethicial and legal obligations in doing so.
it is not like "Blaming the Victim" means you do not blame the perp. Just because the criminal is wrong dose not mean that you have to ignore the stupidity of the victim if it exists. I really have a problem with people who just post crap with no thought put in whatsoever.
Then may I suggest you stop posting? You've created a straw man here. I never said "don't blame the criminal". I was advocating the reverse of that position: The liability is with the criminal. Also, I never stated one should "ignore the stupidity of the victim" -- the victim's intelligence, or lack thereof, is no reflection on the ethics or legality of what was done.
To go a step further, if you were to take a person's intelligence into account when evaluating their rights and responsibilities in society, we would find ourselves in the very unfortunate position of discovering that the majority of people are either ignorant, or stupid. The removal of their rights or responsibilities to society would do nothing to solve this social problem. It would simply mean that criminals would be smarter, but not necessarily in any better position financially or otherwise to not consider criminal activity.
Having a password clearly dictates the intent of the person is not to allow other people to use it.
Not entirely accurate: Having a password is like a key. Anyone can possess it, but it's use is still governed by the permission of the owner. One password can be used by multiple people, or not.
If a door is locked, then people know they shouldn't enter and kicking in the door would be a crime... or at least very rude.
Again, not entirely accurate: The presence or absence of an access-control mechanism provides no information on its intended use. The door could be locked because it's a bathroom that connects two bedrooms, and the person on the other side left through the other door and forgot to unlock it. There's the implication that a locked door means no entry, but it's not always or necessarily true.
What victim? It says he didn't even make any posts. This seems more like opening the unlocked front door of your house, saying "yep it's open" and then leaving without taking anything.
That's still tresspass in the real world. It's reasonable to expect that the residence was occupied and the owner could have been located prior to gaining entry, same as having 'no tresspassing' signs posted. There may be no security present to stop you, but that's not a valid argument for entering the premises.
Idealism is the virtue of the rich. The poor do what is necessary to survive. Your stolen bike may have fed someone for a week. Doesn't make it right, nor does it devalue aspiring to an idealistic society where locks are not necessary -- but realistically, so long as poverty exists, so will crime. And even if poverty didn't exist, there would still be thrill-seekers. So yes, it's impractical to be an idealist -- but we should still strive when possible to reach for idealism.
Having a security question that is easily guessable is like leaving your car door unlocked. I wouldn't be surprised if it got stolen. Simple as that.
You know, bathroom locks in most homes and apartments can be opened with a straightened paper clip. There's a reason for this: You can't accidentally open the door, but if there's an emergency (say someone has a fall, or locks themselves in to overdose on pills) the door can be easily opened.
Pointing out the flaws of the security system don't relieve the person overriding it of their ethical responsibilities to their fellow human beings. Most security exists merely to satisfy the restraint that breaking it isn't accidental, because strong security can impede a variety of legitimate activities. As one example, my cousin lives with roommates who steal her pills, so she had a lock placed on her bedroom door. However, she needed me to get into the room while she was away to get some paperwork. So I fashioned a simple lock pick and gained entry (with the owner's permission). The average person would be unable to do this, but as a security expert, I can. However, I did not do so without permission, because that would be a violation of privacy, however trivial it was for me to actually open the door (about 5 seconds).
More bullshit. The military doesn't care if you have bad-credit, even has a system for helping you manage debt. They will accept people with asthma provided they can still handle the physical training, and short-sighted only gets your disqualified if you are almost blind. Plenty of military personnel wear glasses and the military will often pay for corrective surgery if you want it.
Bad credit: "Any recruit who's monthly consumer debts (not counting debts which can be deferred, such as student loans) exceeds 40 percent of his/her anticipated military pay is ineligible for enlistment."
Short-sighted: Having eye surgery can disqualify you, actually. Also, being short-sighted can disqualify you, if your vision can't be corrected to within 20/40. Even if vision can be corrected, a wide variety of common eye problems can disqualify you, including night-blindness.
Someday you will learn that you can't take your limited experiences of the world and turn them into overly broad statements of fact about entire processes and organizations.
If thats all it takes then the system is broken, not the people abusing it.
Yes, blame the victim. You didn't install triple deadbolts on your door. It's not my fault all your stuff got fenced by me. Jeez, I mean, what do you expect a criminal to do? Hey, btw -- what kind of slashdot poster are you, I didn't find any ramen to eat while you were out running errands either. I really wanted to have a snack after cleaning the place out. Ungrateful jerk...
I disagree with your hard line "no cookie" stance and instead offer the Slashdot Editor trapped in my basement a full cookie and the ability to rub his eyeball on my shoe.
Just so we're clear: The cookies are not poisoned. Eat them.
All you have to do, girlintraining is filter Idle so that it doesn't appear on your front page. It's in your preferences.
In my preferences? Well, I prefer androgynous looking girls, with a strong personality, good sense of humor, and stunning eyes. Don't care so much about smoking or race, but heavy drug use is a kill-joy. I don't see why slashdot needs to know this though, but whatever. Will the pain stop now?
The best, most talented aren't coming out of the military. The military has some stringent guidelines on physical health and background that a lot of people don't make the grade for, but nonetheless are well-suited for the work. Anyone with asthma, short-sighted, or is gay, or bad credit, etc., are all ineligible for military work. I should know -- I am one of those "cyber security" experts, and I did look into joining the military, but was ruled ineligible. The talent pool that the military can recruit from is significantly smaller than total pool size.
And as anyone in IT will tell you, overspecialization can kill your career; You need to remain flexible, continually expanding your skillset, and often find yourself in peripheral fields because a job isn't available in your field of choice. Many of us wind up taking help desk positions when five years ago we would have been network administrators, simply because of consolidation, outsourcing, and the fact that IT in general does poorly in a recessionary economy. A lot of that talent we had moved into other fields that have better job security, and they are no longer trained to current requirements. This is a side-effect of capitalism and is neither good nor bad, but it does shrink the pool size.
If the Department of Homeland Security wants more people to choose from, they need to either lower their requirements to what the job actually requires, or they need to consider liasoning with the Department of Commerce, trade, etc., and funding IT projects that will bring people back into the field and increase the pool of currently-trained and available workers, or they raise the amount they're willing to pay, offer training, etc.; Like the medical field does. The Department of Homeland Security needs to offer a career path, not just a job, in that scenario. Otherwise, what's the point?
You see guys, this is why you regularily test your backup plans and failovers. This is equivalent to building maintenance making sure the fire extinguishers aren't expired... it's basic to IT. Unfortunately, Wikipedia just reminded us that what's basic isn't always what's remembered. Someone just lost their job.
you just make one of your virtual host's names the same as the ip address
Usually, the default page (what you're talking about) where no Host field is provided lists possible domains you can navigate to, sometimes with URL translation or fuzzy-searches if the admin is anal.:) Failing to set this up is just poor form. Poor form, however, is common.
Public security research is not a threat. Vulnerable infrastructures that go unchecked are. The trend is to penalize security researchers for publishing their findings will only increase underground security research that will then just be sold to the highest bidder.
Public security research is a threat. But it's not the researcher's fault; It's the people who wait for research like this to be published and then use it (open source intelligence gathering) to develop attacks. It's easier to target and blame the researcher for publication than to attempt to find the malignant factors, who are increasingly operating independently and lack connections to an organization. Which means, in short, they're operating under the radar. Conventional intelligence-gathering efforts depend on the fact that as the number of criminals cooperating increases, the chance of mistakes being made which expose them increase exponentially. Also, the number of communication channels between people increase geometrically, resulting in a larger signals intelligence footprint.
So basically, it's cheaper, even if it's not ethical. And ethics, as you know, are decided by those in power. So there will always be a rationalization to discredit and imprison people who come forward with security problems, simply because it's cheaper to do so than fix the underlying problems, which they are already well aware of and would prefer you not tell them that the emperor has no clothes.
Unfortunately, the logical conclusion for this kind of reactionary thinking is that eventually a backlash will build up and people will begin independently engaging in small-scale acts of sabotage in an attempt to bring attention to these problems (which has recently started to happen domestically). The government's over-reaction to these attempts by the citizens to excercise the only recourse left to them by creating harsher penalties, more survillance, and secret courts, will eventually result in larger targets being attacked and destroyed, by independent citizens or small groups.
We've been here before -- in the late 1800s, in the 1960s and 70s, and briefly again in the late 90s. It's cyclical. The problem is, each time it happens, it gets worse, and the government refuses to acknowledge this systemic failure of its domestic intelligence policies. Eventually, we're going to have another 9/11, but we won't be able to blame anyone but ourselves when angry citizens start taking out government buildings.
And the reason is we've left them with no alternative: Terrorism is, in fact, a valid way of promoting change when all other methods have failed. The strength of a democracy is the fact that we have all those other methods open to us. Close them off, like we're doing now by punishing people who have knowledge and publicly state the failings of the system and draw attention to needed repairs... And it will come to our own soil with a vengance. And we'll have nobody to blame but our ill-designed domestic policies for it.
Perhaps the intelligence community needs a better way of accepting reports of these problems and rewarding citizens for being diligent, instead of imprisoning them and invading their privacy as potential subversives. And perhaps expanding the definition of citizen to include anyone who works to secure our future, domestically or internationally. How about the concept of honorary citizen? These are the principles and actions we should be striving for -- not this goddamned police state bullshit.
I'd say it's in their best interests to ensure those sites don't all become a liability to eachother by way of their centralized cloud.
Given how most websites still use homebrew code and database interactions, and that's the most common route of infection (injected code), this only covers a small range of possible attack vectors.
since you guys beat the Russians financially I think that is debatable.
We didn't beat them financially. They imploded with a coup de etat. It was an internal affair that the US intelligence community later took credit for orchestrating. Which is part bullshit because if it hadn't have had the support of people within the former Soviet Union to begin with, it never would have succeeded. And I question that we "beat them financially" -- because we've lost in a lot of other areas. International opinion of our country, social services, and other domestic areas. There are large tracts of land in our country that resemble third-world countries economically. Our wealth distribution model is one of the most unbalanced in the world, and we have an entire generation being slaved to the lifestyles of those who are increasingly unable to contribute anything but advice and financial services and rapidly approaching retirement, which will further drain the future of our country, reducing our economic powerbase and status as a world leader.
The biggest mistake he made in his paper was the assumption that Homer still works at Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Clearly China is several seasons behind in their 'research'.
The biggest mistake we made was that we actually still have Montgomery Burns running our power plants, and people like him running our national infrastructure. Which was this guy's point: There is in fact a systemic flaw in capitalism -- adding security decreases profitability, therefore security is rarely focused on even in applications that are critical to a country's well-being. The soviets published a report in the mid 80s detailing key areas in our national infastructure that lack redundant power pathways. If about 5% of our infrastructure were destroyed in key areas, about 45% of the grid would be inoperable.
I have an idea, let them go work and provide something of actual value, or let them starve to death. win / win either way.
Sir, this idea of them retraining into a new position as automation eliminates old jobs is based on the idea that there's a new job waiting for them. Maybe you haven't heard, but we're in a global recession. The US, UK, and Japan have been particularily ill-effected. Such automation efforts need to be made when the unemployment level is more reasonable, which is optimally about 5%, maybe as high as 7%, because workforce mobility explains most of it then; That is, people between jobs, who are able to find jobs, and do so in a reasonable timeframe. In an economy where GDP is negative and unemployment and inflation is rising, the sensible solution is to funnel public funding into infrastructure projects that create new jobs, not reduce costs. For every dollar spent, regardless of profession, that dollar moves on to the next person to be spent, and so on. This movement of money is what drives an economy upwards, and is what is needed now.
It's a good idea, but it's an idea that needs to be implimented at a better time.
And as to your nightmare scenario of a future 1984, please remember that the vast majority of people on this planet are not even on the net and unless and until we alter the economic framework on which we distribute wealth this ain't gonna change anytime soon!
Yeah, about that wealth distribution so how are those unemployment checks working out for you? Buy anything that wasn't made in China lately?
Well, my public throw-away email is raindropsbear something gmail...you-know-the-rest. Minneapolis is pretty open, and the suburbs of St. Louis Park, Uptown, and the 'nicer' parts of north minneapolis (read: any where the 5 doesn't run) are pretty gay-friendly. Naturally north-east minneapolis is friendlier too -- a younger, mostly college crowd. The rural parts of this state though are full of asshats though. Stay out of out-state if you're gay. Not to say there aren't haters in the heart of loring park -- I got a shout-out from a passerby of "dykes!" while kissing my girlfriend not a stone's throw from there during Pride.
Well, my public throw-away email is raindropsbear something gmail...you-know-the-rest. Dunno where Andersonville is, but I'm sure I'll be finding out soon.;)
Slashdot Mirror
If you can't play nice with your toys and share, mom will take them off you.
"Buy land. They've stopped making it." -- Mark Twain.
Addendum: They're deleting it now too.
He didn't "steal stuff", he came in, looked around, disturbed nothing, but took photographs to prove he was there and then published them to let everyone know how easy it was to get in.
Which is still trespass, and he posted the evidence of his crime publicly. Idiot. If you want to demonstrate the ease of breaking security, then educate people responsibly and ethically. This person did neither.
You would think that someone would have done this already either for shits-n-giggles, or possibly more sinister purposes.
Most people are too concerned with paying the bills, working, and dealing with their own personal drama to waste their time on such exploits. This is why most petty criminal activity is done by those in the 13-25 age group, particularily males -- it's simply boredom. They haven't filled up their life enough yet, and want a cheap thrill.
Your metaphor alleges direct physical access and brute force. Think before you post.
My metaphor alleges nothing. On behalf of the accused, I plead innocence. As to thinking before I post, you've failed to consider the central argument I have made: The presence or absence of an access control mechanism does not relieve the person gaining entry from their ethicial and legal obligations in doing so.
it is not like "Blaming the Victim" means you do not blame the perp. Just because the criminal is wrong dose not mean that you have to ignore the stupidity of the victim if it exists. I really have a problem with people who just post crap with no thought put in whatsoever.
Then may I suggest you stop posting? You've created a straw man here. I never said "don't blame the criminal". I was advocating the reverse of that position: The liability is with the criminal. Also, I never stated one should "ignore the stupidity of the victim" -- the victim's intelligence, or lack thereof, is no reflection on the ethics or legality of what was done.
To go a step further, if you were to take a person's intelligence into account when evaluating their rights and responsibilities in society, we would find ourselves in the very unfortunate position of discovering that the majority of people are either ignorant, or stupid. The removal of their rights or responsibilities to society would do nothing to solve this social problem. It would simply mean that criminals would be smarter, but not necessarily in any better position financially or otherwise to not consider criminal activity.
Having a password clearly dictates the intent of the person is not to allow other people to use it.
Not entirely accurate: Having a password is like a key. Anyone can possess it, but it's use is still governed by the permission of the owner. One password can be used by multiple people, or not.
If a door is locked, then people know they shouldn't enter and kicking in the door would be a crime... or at least very rude.
Again, not entirely accurate: The presence or absence of an access-control mechanism provides no information on its intended use. The door could be locked because it's a bathroom that connects two bedrooms, and the person on the other side left through the other door and forgot to unlock it. There's the implication that a locked door means no entry, but it's not always or necessarily true.
What victim? It says he didn't even make any posts. This seems more like opening the unlocked front door of your house, saying "yep it's open" and then leaving without taking anything.
That's still tresspass in the real world. It's reasonable to expect that the residence was occupied and the owner could have been located prior to gaining entry, same as having 'no tresspassing' signs posted. There may be no security present to stop you, but that's not a valid argument for entering the premises.
or are you an Idealist trying to get justice?
Idealism is the virtue of the rich. The poor do what is necessary to survive. Your stolen bike may have fed someone for a week. Doesn't make it right, nor does it devalue aspiring to an idealistic society where locks are not necessary -- but realistically, so long as poverty exists, so will crime. And even if poverty didn't exist, there would still be thrill-seekers. So yes, it's impractical to be an idealist -- but we should still strive when possible to reach for idealism.
Having a security question that is easily guessable is like leaving your car door unlocked. I wouldn't be surprised if it got stolen. Simple as that.
You know, bathroom locks in most homes and apartments can be opened with a straightened paper clip. There's a reason for this: You can't accidentally open the door, but if there's an emergency (say someone has a fall, or locks themselves in to overdose on pills) the door can be easily opened.
Pointing out the flaws of the security system don't relieve the person overriding it of their ethical responsibilities to their fellow human beings. Most security exists merely to satisfy the restraint that breaking it isn't accidental, because strong security can impede a variety of legitimate activities. As one example, my cousin lives with roommates who steal her pills, so she had a lock placed on her bedroom door. However, she needed me to get into the room while she was away to get some paperwork. So I fashioned a simple lock pick and gained entry (with the owner's permission). The average person would be unable to do this, but as a security expert, I can. However, I did not do so without permission, because that would be a violation of privacy, however trivial it was for me to actually open the door (about 5 seconds).
More bullshit. The military doesn't care if you have bad-credit, even has a system for helping you manage debt. They will accept people with asthma provided they can still handle the physical training, and short-sighted only gets your disqualified if you are almost blind. Plenty of military personnel wear glasses and the military will often pay for corrective surgery if you want it.
Enlistment standards.
Bad credit: "Any recruit who's monthly consumer debts (not counting debts which can be deferred, such as student loans) exceeds 40 percent of his/her anticipated military pay is ineligible for enlistment."
Asthma: Disqualifying.
Short-sighted: Having eye surgery can disqualify you, actually. Also, being short-sighted can disqualify you, if your vision can't be corrected to within 20/40. Even if vision can be corrected, a wide variety of common eye problems can disqualify you, including night-blindness.
Someday you will learn that you can't take your limited experiences of the world and turn them into overly broad statements of fact about entire processes and organizations.
Hugs and kisses.
If thats all it takes then the system is broken, not the people abusing it.
Yes, blame the victim. You didn't install triple deadbolts on your door. It's not my fault all your stuff got fenced by me. Jeez, I mean, what do you expect a criminal to do? Hey, btw -- what kind of slashdot poster are you, I didn't find any ramen to eat while you were out running errands either. I really wanted to have a snack after cleaning the place out. Ungrateful jerk...
I disagree with your hard line "no cookie" stance and instead offer the Slashdot Editor trapped in my basement a full cookie and the ability to rub his eyeball on my shoe.
Just so we're clear: The cookies are not poisoned. Eat them.
All you have to do, girlintraining is filter Idle so that it doesn't appear on your front page. It's in your preferences.
In my preferences? Well, I prefer androgynous looking girls, with a strong personality, good sense of humor, and stunning eyes. Don't care so much about smoking or race, but heavy drug use is a kill-joy. I don't see why slashdot needs to know this though, but whatever. Will the pain stop now?
How in the name of Shub Internet did this make front page? Bad slashdot editors. Bad! No cookie for you.
The best, most talented aren't coming out of the military. The military has some stringent guidelines on physical health and background that a lot of people don't make the grade for, but nonetheless are well-suited for the work. Anyone with asthma, short-sighted, or is gay, or bad credit, etc., are all ineligible for military work. I should know -- I am one of those "cyber security" experts, and I did look into joining the military, but was ruled ineligible. The talent pool that the military can recruit from is significantly smaller than total pool size.
And as anyone in IT will tell you, overspecialization can kill your career; You need to remain flexible, continually expanding your skillset, and often find yourself in peripheral fields because a job isn't available in your field of choice. Many of us wind up taking help desk positions when five years ago we would have been network administrators, simply because of consolidation, outsourcing, and the fact that IT in general does poorly in a recessionary economy. A lot of that talent we had moved into other fields that have better job security, and they are no longer trained to current requirements. This is a side-effect of capitalism and is neither good nor bad, but it does shrink the pool size.
If the Department of Homeland Security wants more people to choose from, they need to either lower their requirements to what the job actually requires, or they need to consider liasoning with the Department of Commerce, trade, etc., and funding IT projects that will bring people back into the field and increase the pool of currently-trained and available workers, or they raise the amount they're willing to pay, offer training, etc.; Like the medical field does. The Department of Homeland Security needs to offer a career path, not just a job, in that scenario. Otherwise, what's the point?
You see guys, this is why you regularily test your backup plans and failovers. This is equivalent to building maintenance making sure the fire extinguishers aren't expired... it's basic to IT. Unfortunately, Wikipedia just reminded us that what's basic isn't always what's remembered. Someone just lost their job.
Imperialist America strikes again!
We outsourced imperialism awhile ago. We're mostly consultants now for other countries. Didn't you get the memo? /not joking
you just make one of your virtual host's names the same as the ip address
Usually, the default page (what you're talking about) where no Host field is provided lists possible domains you can navigate to, sometimes with URL translation or fuzzy-searches if the admin is anal. :) Failing to set this up is just poor form.
Poor form, however, is common.
Public security research is not a threat. Vulnerable infrastructures that go unchecked are. The trend is to penalize security researchers for publishing their findings will only increase underground security research that will then just be sold to the highest bidder.
Public security research is a threat. But it's not the researcher's fault; It's the people who wait for research like this to be published and then use it (open source intelligence gathering) to develop attacks. It's easier to target and blame the researcher for publication than to attempt to find the malignant factors, who are increasingly operating independently and lack connections to an organization. Which means, in short, they're operating under the radar. Conventional intelligence-gathering efforts depend on the fact that as the number of criminals cooperating increases, the chance of mistakes being made which expose them increase exponentially. Also, the number of communication channels between people increase geometrically, resulting in a larger signals intelligence footprint.
So basically, it's cheaper, even if it's not ethical. And ethics, as you know, are decided by those in power. So there will always be a rationalization to discredit and imprison people who come forward with security problems, simply because it's cheaper to do so than fix the underlying problems, which they are already well aware of and would prefer you not tell them that the emperor has no clothes.
Unfortunately, the logical conclusion for this kind of reactionary thinking is that eventually a backlash will build up and people will begin independently engaging in small-scale acts of sabotage in an attempt to bring attention to these problems (which has recently started to happen domestically). The government's over-reaction to these attempts by the citizens to excercise the only recourse left to them by creating harsher penalties, more survillance, and secret courts, will eventually result in larger targets being attacked and destroyed, by independent citizens or small groups.
We've been here before -- in the late 1800s, in the 1960s and 70s, and briefly again in the late 90s. It's cyclical. The problem is, each time it happens, it gets worse, and the government refuses to acknowledge this systemic failure of its domestic intelligence policies. Eventually, we're going to have another 9/11, but we won't be able to blame anyone but ourselves when angry citizens start taking out government buildings.
And the reason is we've left them with no alternative: Terrorism is, in fact, a valid way of promoting change when all other methods have failed. The strength of a democracy is the fact that we have all those other methods open to us. Close them off, like we're doing now by punishing people who have knowledge and publicly state the failings of the system and draw attention to needed repairs... And it will come to our own soil with a vengance. And we'll have nobody to blame but our ill-designed domestic policies for it.
Perhaps the intelligence community needs a better way of accepting reports of these problems and rewarding citizens for being diligent, instead of imprisoning them and invading their privacy as potential subversives. And perhaps expanding the definition of citizen to include anyone who works to secure our future, domestically or internationally. How about the concept of honorary citizen? These are the principles and actions we should be striving for -- not this goddamned police state bullshit.
I'd say it's in their best interests to ensure those sites don't all become a liability to eachother by way of their centralized cloud.
Given how most websites still use homebrew code and database interactions, and that's the most common route of infection (injected code), this only covers a small range of possible attack vectors.
since you guys beat the Russians financially I think that is debatable.
We didn't beat them financially. They imploded with a coup de etat. It was an internal affair that the US intelligence community later took credit for orchestrating. Which is part bullshit because if it hadn't have had the support of people within the former Soviet Union to begin with, it never would have succeeded. And I question that we "beat them financially" -- because we've lost in a lot of other areas. International opinion of our country, social services, and other domestic areas. There are large tracts of land in our country that resemble third-world countries economically. Our wealth distribution model is one of the most unbalanced in the world, and we have an entire generation being slaved to the lifestyles of those who are increasingly unable to contribute anything but advice and financial services and rapidly approaching retirement, which will further drain the future of our country, reducing our economic powerbase and status as a world leader.
We won? Hardly.
The biggest mistake he made in his paper was the assumption that Homer still works at Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Clearly China is several seasons behind in their 'research'.
The biggest mistake we made was that we actually still have Montgomery Burns running our power plants, and people like him running our national infrastructure. Which was this guy's point: There is in fact a systemic flaw in capitalism -- adding security decreases profitability, therefore security is rarely focused on even in applications that are critical to a country's well-being. The soviets published a report in the mid 80s detailing key areas in our national infastructure that lack redundant power pathways. If about 5% of our infrastructure were destroyed in key areas, about 45% of the grid would be inoperable.
That's simply unacceptable.
I have an idea, let them go work and provide something of actual value, or let them starve to death. win / win either way.
Sir, this idea of them retraining into a new position as automation eliminates old jobs is based on the idea that there's a new job waiting for them. Maybe you haven't heard, but we're in a global recession. The US, UK, and Japan have been particularily ill-effected. Such automation efforts need to be made when the unemployment level is more reasonable, which is optimally about 5%, maybe as high as 7%, because workforce mobility explains most of it then; That is, people between jobs, who are able to find jobs, and do so in a reasonable timeframe. In an economy where GDP is negative and unemployment and inflation is rising, the sensible solution is to funnel public funding into infrastructure projects that create new jobs, not reduce costs. For every dollar spent, regardless of profession, that dollar moves on to the next person to be spent, and so on. This movement of money is what drives an economy upwards, and is what is needed now.
It's a good idea, but it's an idea that needs to be implimented at a better time.
And as to your nightmare scenario of a future 1984, please remember that the vast majority of people on this planet are not even on the net and unless and until we alter the economic framework on which we distribute wealth this ain't gonna change anytime soon!
Yeah, about that wealth distribution so how are those unemployment checks working out for you? Buy anything that wasn't made in China lately?
Well, my public throw-away email is raindropsbear something gmail...you-know-the-rest. Minneapolis is pretty open, and the suburbs of St. Louis Park, Uptown, and the 'nicer' parts of north minneapolis (read: any where the 5 doesn't run) are pretty gay-friendly. Naturally north-east minneapolis is friendlier too -- a younger, mostly college crowd. The rural parts of this state though are full of asshats though. Stay out of out-state if you're gay. Not to say there aren't haters in the heart of loring park -- I got a shout-out from a passerby of "dykes!" while kissing my girlfriend not a stone's throw from there during Pride.
Well, my public throw-away email is raindropsbear something gmail...you-know-the-rest. Dunno where Andersonville is, but I'm sure I'll be finding out soon. ;)