Surprised with all the negativity. Studying cryptic machines that change the way we view technology's historical progression and after years of work crafting a working replica hardly seems worthy of scorn.
Some of us graduated with Computer Science degrees and all we studied were cryptic machines, trying desperately to craft working replicas. Does that explain it?
I think the real story here is people are still using Novell. They must be found and stopped! Oh god, the nightmares of NetBEUI and IPX/SPX... they haunt me.
The problem in IT today is that contracts give companies the power, not the end user. If you want to level the playing field, what we need is for the user to make contracts and exceptions about how their data is used, and then legally enforce it. In short, a user's union. We could design plugins to our browsers to eliminate companies from consideration that do not adhere to our privacy requests -- in effect, blackholing them. Since our private data is considered to have value, we want something back for it -- so we'd organize together to give that data out in exchange for monentary compensation.
that said... It would never work. People don't care to organize to protect their rights. They're quite happy with the current state of affairs.
What went wrong? Nobody stopped to define "Spam" before trying to make it illegal. So they made something up, called it spam, and made that illegal. And when people called them up to ask why they were still getting spam, they replied: I don't see any spam here!
Er, Nick Leeson got away with what he did because his managers were idiots. In the second case, managers failed to heed warnings that the auditing system was giving out, despite his careful attempts to hide the subterfuge. I happen to believe him that what was occurring was off-the-record permission by management to conduct his activities -- I've seen it every department that is profit-driven; marketing, sales, etc., at every company I've worked, to some degree.
Auditing doesn't prevent people from making bad choices. It just makes them responsible.
No. The amount of auditing, testing, and regulation varies widely depending upon the type of transaction (the consumer banking market is much more regulated than exotic derivatives).
It's still more audited and tested than the overwhelming majority of software, even on a bad day.
No one group of programmers programmed all these computers, there was no single set of specs for the whole network. All the components may well be "functioning exactly as they should be" (although in reality I'm sure there are a few bugs in the systems, but that's irrelevant here), but the system overall may behave in an unexpected way.
There's a bug in Internet Explorer. That must mean the entire internet is broken. No. Financial transaction systems are heavily audited, rigorously tested, and subjected to heavy regulation. They are the most hardened systems in wide use in the commercial sector. Period. That doesn't mean there aren't problems, but a problem big enough to cause a network-wide malfunction are very, very low.
What we're dealing with now are people who made bad assumptions about the economy, got cocky, and now we all are paying the price for the lack of oversight and auditing done on the decision-makers responsible. Looking for simple solutions (ie, "the computer did it") to complex problems is naive at best. This took many several thousand people, all making the same bad decisions, to bring us to where we are now. I will say it again -- this is not a technological failure, it's a failure of people. And if you ask me, we should start publishing the "bugs" -- ie, the names and faces of these people, so the rest of us know to never let them anywhere near the financial sector ever again.
It's very tightly regulated, and the source code must be independently reviewed prior to certification. They're very ugly about that kind of thing. Computer models might be a problem, but only because they were based on bad assumptions made by the designers... That is a human failing, not a machine one.
I'd just like to point out the bleedingly obvious: That people programmed these computers. They are functioning exactly as they should be. If they weren't, we'd have heard about it by now. So the problem is not the computers, or the network, but rather the people who control them. Thank you. You may now resume your regular ranting, already in progress.
This isn't about myspace, or terms of service, or teenage suicide. This is about guilt. Even when it's "only" online, we're still talking to other people. We're communicating. And communications form the basis of relationships and through relationships we can effect changes to a person's mood, behavior, life circumstances, and more. The issue is trust, and how some people abuse trust. And all of our criminal codes come down to this. I'll say it again, it's about trust. So people feel naturally betrayed and angry when trust is violated (even accidentally).
But the law is not about trust. The law is about balancing personal freedoms (which includes the right to mistrust and also to betray trust) with society's so-called "best interests", which is mostly about avoiding and minimizing harm. Anyone can throw up a terms of service, and you can't tell me most of you wouldn't wipe your bottoms with the lot of them. I also think I'd find very few people here that would say that talking is a crime; Even when the matter under discussion is about illegal things (like drugs, or underage sex) -- or things we find morally objectionable. Speech in and of itself is not a crime; Actions are criminal.
Yes, she manipulated the hell out of someone who was vulnerable. But how is that different than commercials on TV, selling us crap we don't need? How is it different than the mormons coming over every sunday to try and convert you? It's not, except for intent. And we all want to punish her, not for violating some TOS crap, but because she violated the trust relationship between a child and adult. "It's all for the children" and we rush in stupidly, blindly, reflexively, to protect them. And that is what happened here. The very thing the justice system is supposed to prevent: Linking emotive thinking to punishment.
I propose a different plan: Encrypt and decentralize. It's cheaper, you can put your servers most anywhere, and they'll survive anything short of global thermonuclear warfare. But of course, if that does happen... Chances are good you won't care. At least, not for long. It's great to have datacenters that can survive a nuclear fallout, but machines surviving has never been the problem... it's the people that generally don't make it. And good luck running your business without them.
An xbox 360 is not something you pop a battery and headphones into and take jogging. If Microsoft can be sued over this, who's to say that they couldn't go after every other stationary tray-loading spinning-disc-player manufacturer?
Laptops don't have this problem. A CD/DVD reader that locks the media into place to prevent contact with the heads is a common feature even on desktops. The XBox 360 is designed for home use as a game console -- something that is marketed to teenagers and children. It's not reasonable given the target market and use that casual repositioning of the device during use will cause damage to both the drive and the media. Even young adults such as myself drag the console across the floor and whatnot so the cords stretch back to where me and my friends are sitting.
No. Vista's UAC is shifting blame on the user. The warning in the manual is merely a well-intentioned courtesy reminder which calls into question the perceived intelligence and common sense of its users. They might as well have included a warning like, "Do not drop into bathtub".
You seem to be of the mind that as long as the manufacturer buries some disclaimer in the small print, it's caveat emptor. Fortunately, we do not live in a laisse faire capitalistic society and manufacturers are held to a certain level of quality and workmanship. Microsoft failed to deliver a quality product. Vista's UAC was a poor attempt to paper over their sorry asses against lawsuits when they deployed a product with a new, untested security model, and then started forcing businesses to upgrade, effectively making the early-adopters (and their data) guinea pigs. They should have the pants sued off them, not defended against by a rightfully angry mob.
Okay, on one hand, native 64 bit apps are good because they speed up data execution--in theory. On the other hand, is this really "stuff that matters"? This isn't new technology. I read slashdot so I can get news on stuff in the industry that has some kind of impact, not to hear about product feature announcements. In other news, a network admin noticed the linoleum in the corner of the slashdot server room curled slightly today. x_x
Its racketeering to sue someone for infringing on their copyright?
The suggestion was to have the infringing person(s) pay a fee in lieu of legal action. The definition of racketeering approximately is; Paying someone to not undertake an economically damaging course of action to you and/or your business. That's a nice credit score you have there. Shame if something were to happen to it...
Couldn't the RIAA use the information, once granted, to call the students and offer to "leave them alone"
Which begs the question of, why do they need to call them to announce they are doing nothing? Besides, such an action could be used in future lawsuits to demonstrate a lack of good faith effort to enforce their copyright, which would invalidate the copyright in turn. It is not in RIAA's best interests, legally, to do this. Ignorance can be bliss in the world of civil litigation.
Slashdot is rapidly deteriorating into a faux news site that's more (lame) entertainment then actual news.
No, management has simply determined a need to draw more readers to the site and so they've started creating one-off episodes that aren't part of the regular plotline to draw them in. Or as us BSG regulars call this phenomenon "Season 3". Don't worry, when the submitter's strike is over, things will improve. They already tried the webisode thing (aka Geeks in Space), and then quietly buried it.
Don't panic - everything is going according to plan.
Management called for instant everything, unlimited bandwidth, universally interoperable devices, handheld portables with infinite range and a long battery life. Then they act disppointed when, $10 billion dollars later, they still got nothin'. It's like those job advertisements asking for "5+ years Vista programming experience." Oh wait, ha ha, those don't exist either!
When someone buys the fake Viagra on the dodgy pills site, they use their credit card. It is presumably possible for the credit card companies to identify the merchants tied to these sites in the same way as they identify online casinos in order to comply with other laws regarding those. Therefore, they could block these transactions (or cut off the merchant accounts completely if thats fesable)
And how do you propose vetting a vendor to ensure they're legitimate without either making it privacy invasive or resource-intensive? This is the same problem as with background checks, and on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. If you want to win, you attack the problem at its source, not at the periphery.
NO! FALSE! Weapons-grade uranium is different from fuel-grade, and there are many types of reactors. Only a breeder reactor or hybrid type can enrich nuclear materials. And at that, you still need to centrifuge it to separate the isotopes, and then purify it to remove neutron poisoners that naturally occur as part of the nuclear process.
Slashdot Mirror
Surprised with all the negativity. Studying cryptic machines that change the way we view technology's historical progression and after years of work crafting a working replica hardly seems worthy of scorn.
Some of us graduated with Computer Science degrees and all we studied were cryptic machines, trying desperately to craft working replicas. Does that explain it?
I think the real story here is people are still using Novell. They must be found and stopped! Oh god, the nightmares of NetBEUI and IPX/SPX... they haunt me.
The problem in IT today is that contracts give companies the power, not the end user. If you want to level the playing field, what we need is for the user to make contracts and exceptions about how their data is used, and then legally enforce it. In short, a user's union. We could design plugins to our browsers to eliminate companies from consideration that do not adhere to our privacy requests -- in effect, blackholing them. Since our private data is considered to have value, we want something back for it -- so we'd organize together to give that data out in exchange for monentary compensation.
that said... It would never work. People don't care to organize to protect their rights. They're quite happy with the current state of affairs.
We just need to somehow convince people that data is like a young blonde, attractive, girl. I'll even give you a sample police report:
Yesterday evening at 5:04pm, a young and attractive blonde female database was pushed into a UDP connection, which fled the scene shortly after...
What went wrong? Nobody stopped to define "Spam" before trying to make it illegal. So they made something up, called it spam, and made that illegal. And when people called them up to ask why they were still getting spam, they replied: I don't see any spam here!
Er, Nick Leeson got away with what he did because his managers were idiots. In the second case, managers failed to heed warnings that the auditing system was giving out, despite his careful attempts to hide the subterfuge. I happen to believe him that what was occurring was off-the-record permission by management to conduct his activities -- I've seen it every department that is profit-driven; marketing, sales, etc., at every company I've worked, to some degree.
Auditing doesn't prevent people from making bad choices. It just makes them responsible.
No. The amount of auditing, testing, and regulation varies widely depending upon the type of transaction (the consumer banking market is much more regulated than exotic derivatives).
It's still more audited and tested than the overwhelming majority of software, even on a bad day.
No one group of programmers programmed all these computers, there was no single set of specs for the whole network. All the components may well be "functioning exactly as they should be" (although in reality I'm sure there are a few bugs in the systems, but that's irrelevant here), but the system overall may behave in an unexpected way.
There's a bug in Internet Explorer. That must mean the entire internet is broken. No. Financial transaction systems are heavily audited, rigorously tested, and subjected to heavy regulation. They are the most hardened systems in wide use in the commercial sector. Period. That doesn't mean there aren't problems, but a problem big enough to cause a network-wide malfunction are very, very low.
What we're dealing with now are people who made bad assumptions about the economy, got cocky, and now we all are paying the price for the lack of oversight and auditing done on the decision-makers responsible. Looking for simple solutions (ie, "the computer did it") to complex problems is naive at best. This took many several thousand people, all making the same bad decisions, to bring us to where we are now. I will say it again -- this is not a technological failure, it's a failure of people. And if you ask me, we should start publishing the "bugs" -- ie, the names and faces of these people, so the rest of us know to never let them anywhere near the financial sector ever again.
But that would just be too easy.
the systems are designed to have transactional integrity. it doesn't prevent someone from making idiot trading decisions.
It's very tightly regulated, and the source code must be independently reviewed prior to certification. They're very ugly about that kind of thing. Computer models might be a problem, but only because they were based on bad assumptions made by the designers... That is a human failing, not a machine one.
I'd just like to point out the bleedingly obvious: That people programmed these computers. They are functioning exactly as they should be. If they weren't, we'd have heard about it by now. So the problem is not the computers, or the network, but rather the people who control them. Thank you. You may now resume your regular ranting, already in progress.
This isn't about myspace, or terms of service, or teenage suicide. This is about guilt. Even when it's "only" online, we're still talking to other people. We're communicating. And communications form the basis of relationships and through relationships we can effect changes to a person's mood, behavior, life circumstances, and more. The issue is trust, and how some people abuse trust. And all of our criminal codes come down to this. I'll say it again, it's about trust. So people feel naturally betrayed and angry when trust is violated (even accidentally).
But the law is not about trust. The law is about balancing personal freedoms (which includes the right to mistrust and also to betray trust) with society's so-called "best interests", which is mostly about avoiding and minimizing harm. Anyone can throw up a terms of service, and you can't tell me most of you wouldn't wipe your bottoms with the lot of them. I also think I'd find very few people here that would say that talking is a crime; Even when the matter under discussion is about illegal things (like drugs, or underage sex) -- or things we find morally objectionable. Speech in and of itself is not a crime; Actions are criminal.
Yes, she manipulated the hell out of someone who was vulnerable. But how is that different than commercials on TV, selling us crap we don't need? How is it different than the mormons coming over every sunday to try and convert you? It's not, except for intent. And we all want to punish her, not for violating some TOS crap, but because she violated the trust relationship between a child and adult. "It's all for the children" and we rush in stupidly, blindly, reflexively, to protect them. And that is what happened here. The very thing the justice system is supposed to prevent: Linking emotive thinking to punishment.
Since when did Dungeons and Dragons have nuclear missles? Is that a 4th edition thing?
Yeah, it's called otiluke's flaming nuclear hellball. But it can only be used by lawful evil.
I propose a different plan: Encrypt and decentralize. It's cheaper, you can put your servers most anywhere, and they'll survive anything short of global thermonuclear warfare. But of course, if that does happen... Chances are good you won't care. At least, not for long. It's great to have datacenters that can survive a nuclear fallout, but machines surviving has never been the problem... it's the people that generally don't make it. And good luck running your business without them.
An xbox 360 is not something you pop a battery and headphones into and take jogging. If Microsoft can be sued over this, who's to say that they couldn't go after every other stationary tray-loading spinning-disc-player manufacturer?
Laptops don't have this problem. A CD/DVD reader that locks the media into place to prevent contact with the heads is a common feature even on desktops. The XBox 360 is designed for home use as a game console -- something that is marketed to teenagers and children. It's not reasonable given the target market and use that casual repositioning of the device during use will cause damage to both the drive and the media. Even young adults such as myself drag the console across the floor and whatnot so the cords stretch back to where me and my friends are sitting.
No. Vista's UAC is shifting blame on the user. The warning in the manual is merely a well-intentioned courtesy reminder which calls into question the perceived intelligence and common sense of its users. They might as well have included a warning like, "Do not drop into bathtub".
You seem to be of the mind that as long as the manufacturer buries some disclaimer in the small print, it's caveat emptor. Fortunately, we do not live in a laisse faire capitalistic society and manufacturers are held to a certain level of quality and workmanship. Microsoft failed to deliver a quality product. Vista's UAC was a poor attempt to paper over their sorry asses against lawsuits when they deployed a product with a new, untested security model, and then started forcing businesses to upgrade, effectively making the early-adopters (and their data) guinea pigs. They should have the pants sued off them, not defended against by a rightfully angry mob.
A million. One to make the countersuit, 999,998 to download the suit
Your statement has an obi-wan bug. Please recompile.
Okay, on one hand, native 64 bit apps are good because they speed up data execution--in theory. On the other hand, is this really "stuff that matters"? This isn't new technology. I read slashdot so I can get news on stuff in the industry that has some kind of impact, not to hear about product feature announcements. In other news, a network admin noticed the linoleum in the corner of the slashdot server room curled slightly today. x_x
Its racketeering to sue someone for infringing on their copyright?
The suggestion was to have the infringing person(s) pay a fee in lieu of legal action. The definition of racketeering approximately is; Paying someone to not undertake an economically damaging course of action to you and/or your business. That's a nice credit score you have there. Shame if something were to happen to it...
Sounds more like a pragmatic solution and better than criminalizing your potential customers via dubious legal processes, such as this one.
...Or legalized racketeering.
Couldn't the RIAA use the information, once granted, to call the students and offer to "leave them alone"
Which begs the question of, why do they need to call them to announce they are doing nothing? Besides, such an action could be used in future lawsuits to demonstrate a lack of good faith effort to enforce their copyright, which would invalidate the copyright in turn. It is not in RIAA's best interests, legally, to do this. Ignorance can be bliss in the world of civil litigation.
I'm Sparticus!
Slashdot is rapidly deteriorating into a faux news site that's more (lame) entertainment then actual news.
No, management has simply determined a need to draw more readers to the site and so they've started creating one-off episodes that aren't part of the regular plotline to draw them in. Or as us BSG regulars call this phenomenon "Season 3". Don't worry, when the submitter's strike is over, things will improve. They already tried the webisode thing (aka Geeks in Space), and then quietly buried it.
Don't panic - everything is going according to plan.
Management called for instant everything, unlimited bandwidth, universally interoperable devices, handheld portables with infinite range and a long battery life. Then they act disppointed when, $10 billion dollars later, they still got nothin'. It's like those job advertisements asking for "5+ years Vista programming experience." Oh wait, ha ha, those don't exist either!
When someone buys the fake Viagra on the dodgy pills site, they use their credit card. It is presumably possible for the credit card companies to identify the merchants tied to these sites in the same way as they identify online casinos in order to comply with other laws regarding those. Therefore, they could block these transactions (or cut off the merchant accounts completely if thats fesable)
And how do you propose vetting a vendor to ensure they're legitimate without either making it privacy invasive or resource-intensive? This is the same problem as with background checks, and on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. If you want to win, you attack the problem at its source, not at the periphery.
NO! FALSE! Weapons-grade uranium is different from fuel-grade, and there are many types of reactors. Only a breeder reactor or hybrid type can enrich nuclear materials. And at that, you still need to centrifuge it to separate the isotopes, and then purify it to remove neutron poisoners that naturally occur as part of the nuclear process.