In his Manifesto he was complaining about how much less money he was making in Texas compared to California.
It shouldn't matter where you live...Taxes should be relatively uniform.
There are plenty of people who "Fight the power" either peaceably or through violence. They usually do it in a way where they face the consequences of their actions afterwards though.
Terrorism has proven an effective method of promoting political change when all other methods of recourse have failed. When we have designated "protest zones" that are enclosed in razor wire and have dozens of cameras trained on them, teargas innocent bystanders, and injure the general public who have come to observe a largely peaceful event, then whether the right to freedom of assembly and protest exists on paper or not is irrelevant because it no longer exists in practice.
Acts of terrorism are also often acts of desperation. It's not dissimilar psychologically from the people that lept from the burning remains of the twin towers. It was an act of empowerment, and actually psychologically healthy: Rather than wait for the flames to consume them or be crushed by the burning building, they chose to take their life into their own hands. In this case, the inability of a citizen, or even a large group of citizens, political action committees, and high-level congressional reviews, have been unable to repeal a law which is causing harm to a small set of people who have found no redress through any other channels.
I am not advocating terrorism, merely stating that our overarching protection of the security of the state may be a contributing factor to it becoming imperiled. Or put more directly, it is our over-reaction to a perceived threat that has in fact created a more dire threat: When the people become disillusioned and feel their vote does not count, their voice does not matter, and that the government has become too powerful to be subject to the will of the people, they will (in increasing numbers) take up arms against it. Violence is an option of last resort. Our founding fathers warned of exactly this when they wrote the declaration of independence. In the following passage, they describe the threat of terrorism to any government that no longer listens to its citizens and who's laws become unduly burdensome;
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. [emphasis mine]
This was both a statement about freedom, and a warning of what can happen should the government abuse its powers and leave no recourse for its citizens for peaceful redress of their greviances. Again, I do not support this man's actions, but of all the organizations of our government, the IRS and the military/law enforcement branches are the two that are least subject to civil recourse, and thus the most maligned and attacked by its own citizens.
Yeah this poor guy could only afford a nice house and a plane. Just imagine, without that terrible law, he could have been able to afford a two engine plane and a slightly nicer house!
Since when does the amount someone makes define their entitlement to legal protections? Whether he makes $100 a year, or $100 million a year, the same laws and treatment should occur -- that is one of the cornerstones of democracy. "All men are created equal."
I've read articles where kids with behavioral disorders, social anxiety, general nerdiness, etc were encouraged to use this as a means of driving more appropriate/better behaviors. Like if a shy kid talked to a classmate, he gave himself 10 points, etc. Then they worked with the therapist to track the whole thing - basically making life your RPG.
Agree. They do that for people with autism-spectrum disorders too. There's entire classes of neurological and psychological disorders that regular computer interaction can treat. If playing video games improves a person's quality of life, there's no reason to degrade it. Everybody has their own coping strategies that are unique to them and if it works then that is what is important, not some moralistic concept of "better" behaviors like going outside or excercising. In medicine, you choose the treatment with the highest efficacy and lowest risk of side-effects (do no harm). People are going to bitch about video games being used as crutches or substitutes for more socially acceptable behavior. Those people should be ignored.
Having been there, I really must recommend wiring your own house. It's a great way to learn a lot and in the end you get what you wanted where you wanted.
Yes, but bring a tall, lightly-built friend who can reach blindly behind things filled with spider webs and dust. They'll usually work for chinese food and out of a strong desire to play Warcraft 3 with you after.:) OH -- HEY ONYX! I hardly recognized you there! *waves*
I often find myself agreeing with your posts but not this one. While I do agree that the PCI (Payment Card Industry) needs some major overhaul, people are still responsible for their crimes. Yes, I do blame criminals for being criminals.
It's a joint responsibility: Most crimes are crimes of opportunity. There are bad people in the world, and they need to be accounted for in the design of any system, especially a system that handles so much money. Blame the criminal, but also blame the institution for making it such an easy crime -- we all pay for their insecure system design in higher costs.
I hope that he has to serve the full sentence, and doesn't get out on parole. Credit card fraud is not fun. I can only hope that more people convicted of credit card fraud receive sentences like this.
Yeah, blame the criminals for exploiting a system designed to dispense cash based solely on a 4 digit number; That makes sense. Credit card fraud wouldn't happen nearly to the degree it does if financial institutions had designed the system to be more resiliant to attack. And by more resiliant, I mean doing something other than coating the cash in BBQ sauce and waving it in front of the hungry and unemployed masses while chanting "Hell no, we won't upgrade!"
Really guys, naming your protest after female anatomy does nothing to help the cause. It is immature and reeks of disorganization. There are far better ways to undermine censorship. You have to attack the authority of the censors. Make them appear weak, useless, and strip their credibility. Expose them at every corner as being partial, biased, and at the same time abjectly failing to do their jobs. They are government so this shouldn't be any real kind of challenge now should it?
I look forward to seeing pictures of these censorship advocates having sex with their mistresses, getting wasted in public, allegations of bribery, and all other unseemly manner of behavior. Because if there's one thing the public can't stand for, it's being prohibited from doing the very things these authority types reserve for themselves. They already believe themselves to be morally superior to you so I ask again -- what real challenge is there here?
Artists who sample should always give the original artist credit... This is a childish attempt to explain, or rather justify, a wrong AFTER the fact.
What about paraphrasing? A hobby of mine is collecting quotes. I paraphrase some of those quotes from time to time in my personal correspondence. See, the problem here is where do we draw the line? We have intellectual property on one end saying it's wrong to plagarize ideas, let alone what is manifest from them. On the other you have scientists, researchers, programmers, etc., that benefit enormously from the free exchange of their work. And old saying; "Stealing from one is plagarism, stealing from many is research."
It IS a childish attempt to justify what was done. But that doesn't mean the point is invalid. My generation doesn't respect artificial boundaries imposed by intellectual property. And I can point the finger firmly at RIAA's overly-aggressive enforcement tactics as the de facto reason for that. We live in a world super-saturated in information, and we have a strong innate desire to share that information. We post details of our innermost thoughts and daily activities online where our friends, family, coworkers, even random strangers, can see. Do you really think that if we value our own privacy so little we're going to respect the access barriers imposed by faceless corporations and over-zealous government officials?
We are seeing tectonic plates smashing together here -- intellectual property versus my generation's seemingly insatiable appetite for self-disclosure and publication. It's a mess of international law, court judgements, congressional hearings, and everything else. But eventually, intellectual property will die. It will do so at glacial speed, but it will die, because fundamentally the benefits to society being able to freely access and exchange information massively outweigh the benefits from ceding control to interested parties. That isn't to say in some select cases the practice won't continue... But the list of reasons will grow shorter, and the laws that gave the institution a form and purpose will melt away.
Well, to hell with the green movement... get me another 250 amp breaker box to my house! It's go time, you little bastards. I'm going to put some energy executive's nephew through college!
Slashdot, goddamnit, you should be required to put the following text on articles like this --
WARNING: This story reads like an advertisement.
Because it is. If you were being fair and unbiased, you'd post links to all the other vendors' offerings and comparing them to the iTampon, so we could have a discussion about the state of the art, rather than one vendor's offerings. Boo. Hiss. Shaaaaaame.:\
When WeirdStuff had satellite solar panels (when they were still at Syncamore Drive in Milpitas)... or 4 platter 8 inch 20MB Hard Disk with spindle motor running off AC...
I think I'm going to have a drink everytime someone mentions something made before I was born on this thread...
I suppose some people could think it was "magic", since embedded data in an image isn't something that is immediately obvious to a normal user.
Try saying "metadata" to the average computer user. It's like watching a BSOD on someone's face; And that's exactly the problem here -- devices shipping with privacy-compromising features enabled by default. Joe Average doesn't even know it's possible, let alone that his iPhone is serrepticiously leaking a bunch of personal information everytime he posts a photo he snapped with it to some internet site. I can see it now -- "Hey, check out this cute girl's panties I snapped in class..." Oops. Oh, the bitter irony to be had there -- you're busted violating someone else's privacy because you didn't know your own was being violated by your cell phone. Brilliant.
If a system has been rooted, nothing short of booting to another OS from a known clean media, mounting the disk read only, and scanning, is guaranteed to detect a root kit.
Oh ye of little faith... You forgot to clear the microcode, the firmware, test the TPM, disconnect all the peripherals, and inspect the major components to ensure they aren't stamped with "Made in China," or "Endorsed by the RIAA".
After all, there's no way that their malware tool could have spotted it, or the update could have checksummed the files before patching them.
Well, actually no. Most rootkits either modify the permissions or patch critical system files that cannot be easily replaced, as this one does. It's designed to be stealthy -- so if you scan it, it will return a byte-for-byte copy of the original, which is kept elsewhere, while the operating system loads the infected one at boot.
Saying Microsoft is responsible for ensuring compatability with 3rd party software is ludicrious. This is like potholes -- while the government has a responsibility to patch the roads up so they remain drivable, cars are nonetheless designed with shocks and drivers are expected to watch for road hazards and avoid them as much as possible as well. It is a joint responsibility. Microsoft is not the sole responsible party here: The user shares the responsibility of ensuring the system has not been compromised.
Could I go out on a limb here and ask why error handling is considered a black art, requiring truckloads of books to understand? I've done well following a few basic rules;
1. Know exactly what the system call does before you use it. 2. Check the return value of every one. 3. Check the permissions when you access a resource. 4. Blocking calls are a necessary evil. Putting them in the main loop is not. 5. Always check a pointer before you use it. 5a....even if it is a return from a system call that never fails. 6. Build your project in pieces -- and try to cause as many different failure conditions as possible. 6a. Anything that could require new equipment if failure testing kills it? Use someone else's. 7. No matter how good your code is, that el cheapo power supply is waiting. And it is hungry.
Half the techies I work with can't remember unplugging and plugging it back in. You really think the general user remembers that much?
I've been using computers since not long after I could read and write. I've done several years of tech support, field work, net/sys admin work, and deployment. I can say with confidence, yes -- the average user remembers that much. What they don't think of is that wires can come loose, expansion cards can be jostled from their seats, and ports can fail because after several hundred plug/unplug cycles those little surface-mounted USB and firewire ports come loose. But it still looks the same. Average users don't think of things like that.
As to techies not remembering that... Well, just because you work in this industry doesn't mean you do well in it. *shrug* I consider 'techie' a title you earn like any other and I don't call someone that unless they've proven themselves. You shouldn't either -- we all benefit from a meritocratic culture.
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In his Manifesto he was complaining about how much less money he was making in Texas compared to California.
It shouldn't matter where you live...Taxes should be relatively uniform.
There are plenty of people who "Fight the power" either peaceably or through violence. They usually do it in a way where they face the consequences of their actions afterwards though.
Terrorism has proven an effective method of promoting political change when all other methods of recourse have failed. When we have designated "protest zones" that are enclosed in razor wire and have dozens of cameras trained on them, teargas innocent bystanders, and injure the general public who have come to observe a largely peaceful event, then whether the right to freedom of assembly and protest exists on paper or not is irrelevant because it no longer exists in practice.
Acts of terrorism are also often acts of desperation. It's not dissimilar psychologically from the people that lept from the burning remains of the twin towers. It was an act of empowerment, and actually psychologically healthy: Rather than wait for the flames to consume them or be crushed by the burning building, they chose to take their life into their own hands. In this case, the inability of a citizen, or even a large group of citizens, political action committees, and high-level congressional reviews, have been unable to repeal a law which is causing harm to a small set of people who have found no redress through any other channels.
I am not advocating terrorism, merely stating that our overarching protection of the security of the state may be a contributing factor to it becoming imperiled. Or put more directly, it is our over-reaction to a perceived threat that has in fact created a more dire threat: When the people become disillusioned and feel their vote does not count, their voice does not matter, and that the government has become too powerful to be subject to the will of the people, they will (in increasing numbers) take up arms against it. Violence is an option of last resort. Our founding fathers warned of exactly this when they wrote the declaration of independence. In the following passage, they describe the threat of terrorism to any government that no longer listens to its citizens and who's laws become unduly burdensome;
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. [emphasis mine]
This was both a statement about freedom, and a warning of what can happen should the government abuse its powers and leave no recourse for its citizens for peaceful redress of their greviances. Again, I do not support this man's actions, but of all the organizations of our government, the IRS and the military/law enforcement branches are the two that are least subject to civil recourse, and thus the most maligned and attacked by its own citizens.
Yeah this poor guy could only afford a nice house and a plane. Just imagine, without that terrible law, he could have been able to afford a two engine plane and a slightly nicer house!
Since when does the amount someone makes define their entitlement to legal protections? Whether he makes $100 a year, or $100 million a year, the same laws and treatment should occur -- that is one of the cornerstones of democracy. "All men are created equal."
I've read articles where kids with behavioral disorders, social anxiety, general nerdiness, etc were encouraged to use this as a means of driving more appropriate/better behaviors. Like if a shy kid talked to a classmate, he gave himself 10 points, etc. Then they worked with the therapist to track the whole thing - basically making life your RPG.
Agree. They do that for people with autism-spectrum disorders too. There's entire classes of neurological and psychological disorders that regular computer interaction can treat. If playing video games improves a person's quality of life, there's no reason to degrade it. Everybody has their own coping strategies that are unique to them and if it works then that is what is important, not some moralistic concept of "better" behaviors like going outside or excercising. In medicine, you choose the treatment with the highest efficacy and lowest risk of side-effects (do no harm). People are going to bitch about video games being used as crutches or substitutes for more socially acceptable behavior. Those people should be ignored.
Having been there, I really must recommend wiring your own house. It's a great way to learn a lot and in the end you get what you wanted where you wanted.
Yes, but bring a tall, lightly-built friend who can reach blindly behind things filled with spider webs and dust. They'll usually work for chinese food and out of a strong desire to play Warcraft 3 with you after. :) OH -- HEY ONYX! I hardly recognized you there! *waves*
I use a PS2 to watch 720p and 1080i video and it can do AC3. I can play from DVD or USB stick. I can buy those for, what $50 on eBay?
I often find myself agreeing with your posts but not this one. While I do agree that the PCI (Payment Card Industry) needs some major overhaul, people are still responsible for their crimes. Yes, I do blame criminals for being criminals.
It's a joint responsibility: Most crimes are crimes of opportunity. There are bad people in the world, and they need to be accounted for in the design of any system, especially a system that handles so much money. Blame the criminal, but also blame the institution for making it such an easy crime -- we all pay for their insecure system design in higher costs.
I hope that he has to serve the full sentence, and doesn't get out on parole. Credit card fraud is not fun. I can only hope that more people convicted of credit card fraud receive sentences like this.
Yeah, blame the criminals for exploiting a system designed to dispense cash based solely on a 4 digit number; That makes sense. Credit card fraud wouldn't happen nearly to the degree it does if financial institutions had designed the system to be more resiliant to attack. And by more resiliant, I mean doing something other than coating the cash in BBQ sauce and waving it in front of the hungry and unemployed masses while chanting "Hell no, we won't upgrade!"
And lesson we've all learned today, class? Don't crap in your own backyard.
Really guys, naming your protest after female anatomy does nothing to help the cause. It is immature and reeks of disorganization. There are far better ways to undermine censorship. You have to attack the authority of the censors. Make them appear weak, useless, and strip their credibility. Expose them at every corner as being partial, biased, and at the same time abjectly failing to do their jobs. They are government so this shouldn't be any real kind of challenge now should it?
I look forward to seeing pictures of these censorship advocates having sex with their mistresses, getting wasted in public, allegations of bribery, and all other unseemly manner of behavior. Because if there's one thing the public can't stand for, it's being prohibited from doing the very things these authority types reserve for themselves. They already believe themselves to be morally superior to you so I ask again -- what real challenge is there here?
Yeah, but this was 1974, when overly-trusting users used commands to do USEFUL things, rather than cause mischief (or shove adverts in front of you)!
If you remember 1974, you weren't there, maaan!
Sounds like the worst security system ever.
*cough* Diebold. *cough*
Listen to us complaining that we don't have flying cars yet. :P
It's because we're afraid of being diddled by a german scientist with a foot fetish.
Artists who sample should always give the original artist credit... This is a childish attempt to explain, or rather justify, a wrong AFTER the fact.
What about paraphrasing? A hobby of mine is collecting quotes. I paraphrase some of those quotes from time to time in my personal correspondence. See, the problem here is where do we draw the line? We have intellectual property on one end saying it's wrong to plagarize ideas, let alone what is manifest from them. On the other you have scientists, researchers, programmers, etc., that benefit enormously from the free exchange of their work. And old saying; "Stealing from one is plagarism, stealing from many is research."
It IS a childish attempt to justify what was done. But that doesn't mean the point is invalid. My generation doesn't respect artificial boundaries imposed by intellectual property. And I can point the finger firmly at RIAA's overly-aggressive enforcement tactics as the de facto reason for that. We live in a world super-saturated in information, and we have a strong innate desire to share that information. We post details of our innermost thoughts and daily activities online where our friends, family, coworkers, even random strangers, can see. Do you really think that if we value our own privacy so little we're going to respect the access barriers imposed by faceless corporations and over-zealous government officials?
We are seeing tectonic plates smashing together here -- intellectual property versus my generation's seemingly insatiable appetite for self-disclosure and publication. It's a mess of international law, court judgements, congressional hearings, and everything else. But eventually, intellectual property will die. It will do so at glacial speed, but it will die, because fundamentally the benefits to society being able to freely access and exchange information massively outweigh the benefits from ceding control to interested parties. That isn't to say in some select cases the practice won't continue... But the list of reasons will grow shorter, and the laws that gave the institution a form and purpose will melt away.
Tag article with: pleasedontfeedthetrolls, kthxbye. :\
P.S. this is the only sexist technology that I fully endorse. Just want that clear.
Well, to hell with the green movement... get me another 250 amp breaker box to my house! It's go time, you little bastards. I'm going to put some energy executive's nephew through college!
Slashdot, goddamnit, you should be required to put the following text on articles like this --
WARNING: This story reads like an advertisement.
Because it is. If you were being fair and unbiased, you'd post links to all the other vendors' offerings and comparing them to the iTampon, so we could have a discussion about the state of the art, rather than one vendor's offerings. Boo. Hiss. Shaaaaaame. :\
Good plan. I'll join you :-)
This ends well...
When WeirdStuff had satellite solar panels (when they were still at Syncamore Drive in Milpitas) ... or 4 platter 8 inch 20MB Hard Disk with spindle motor running off AC ...
I think I'm going to have a drink everytime someone mentions something made before I was born on this thread...
Oh great, slides of the family vacation. Fine. I'm going to the kitchen.. I'll be back glassy eyed and with a bowl of popcorn in a few!
I suppose some people could think it was "magic", since embedded data in an image isn't something that is immediately obvious to a normal user.
Try saying "metadata" to the average computer user. It's like watching a BSOD on someone's face; And that's exactly the problem here -- devices shipping with privacy-compromising features enabled by default. Joe Average doesn't even know it's possible, let alone that his iPhone is serrepticiously leaking a bunch of personal information everytime he posts a photo he snapped with it to some internet site. I can see it now -- "Hey, check out this cute girl's panties I snapped in class..." Oops. Oh, the bitter irony to be had there -- you're busted violating someone else's privacy because you didn't know your own was being violated by your cell phone. Brilliant.
If a system has been rooted, nothing short of booting to another OS from a known clean media, mounting the disk read only, and scanning, is guaranteed to detect a root kit.
Oh ye of little faith... You forgot to clear the microcode, the firmware, test the TPM, disconnect all the peripherals, and inspect the major components to ensure they aren't stamped with "Made in China," or "Endorsed by the RIAA".
After all, there's no way that their malware tool could have spotted it, or the update could have checksummed the files before patching them.
Well, actually no. Most rootkits either modify the permissions or patch critical system files that cannot be easily replaced, as this one does. It's designed to be stealthy -- so if you scan it, it will return a byte-for-byte copy of the original, which is kept elsewhere, while the operating system loads the infected one at boot.
Saying Microsoft is responsible for ensuring compatability with 3rd party software is ludicrious. This is like potholes -- while the government has a responsibility to patch the roads up so they remain drivable, cars are nonetheless designed with shocks and drivers are expected to watch for road hazards and avoid them as much as possible as well. It is a joint responsibility. Microsoft is not the sole responsible party here: The user shares the responsibility of ensuring the system has not been compromised.
Could I go out on a limb here and ask why error handling is considered a black art, requiring truckloads of books to understand? I've done well following a few basic rules;
1. Know exactly what the system call does before you use it. ...even if it is a return from a system call that never fails.
2. Check the return value of every one.
3. Check the permissions when you access a resource.
4. Blocking calls are a necessary evil. Putting them in the main loop is not.
5. Always check a pointer before you use it.
5a.
6. Build your project in pieces -- and try to cause as many different failure conditions as possible.
6a. Anything that could require new equipment if failure testing kills it? Use someone else's.
7. No matter how good your code is, that el cheapo power supply is waiting. And it is hungry.
Half the techies I work with can't remember unplugging and plugging it back in. You really think the general user remembers that much?
I've been using computers since not long after I could read and write. I've done several years of tech support, field work, net/sys admin work, and deployment. I can say with confidence, yes -- the average user remembers that much. What they don't think of is that wires can come loose, expansion cards can be jostled from their seats, and ports can fail because after several hundred plug/unplug cycles those little surface-mounted USB and firewire ports come loose. But it still looks the same. Average users don't think of things like that.
As to techies not remembering that... Well, just because you work in this industry doesn't mean you do well in it. *shrug* I consider 'techie' a title you earn like any other and I don't call someone that unless they've proven themselves. You shouldn't either -- we all benefit from a meritocratic culture.