Does anyone else have a problem with the statement about the goal being financial harm. I'd say that is a result... the GOAL is to steal money.
this is ~obvious~, but what it boils down to is a change in the economic realities. In the past, virus writers and other miscreants did what they did for social reasons: a sense of power, peer recognition, proof of concept, etc... Today, spammers, identity thieves, scammers, and so-on are paying cold hard cash for access to bot nets and/or comprised systems or the information which they contain. Economic forces have effectively converted one-time bullies and vandals into a new form of organized crime. Types of crimes which are evolving much faster than traditional law enforcement and lawmakers can keep up with. Sure... stealing money by any means is still stealing, but the knowledge required to catch and prosecute these kinds of criminals is not exactly common.
I think that educating non-technical family members is one of the toughest jobs in IT. Honestly, my mother has actually come to me saying she needs a new memory stick for her digital camera because she's filled hers up. Combine that with the fact that she seems constitutionally incapable of understanding such basic concepts as drag/drop copy/cut/paste no matter how many times I sit down and explain them to her, and you can see how bad it can truly become.
That's all well and good until your mom and dad have to come to live with you because they fell victim to phishing and/or identity theft and their life savings and retirement have been cleaned out.
I don't mean to offend, I'm merely pointing out that computer security is not just about protecting your PC from getting blown out by a virus anymore.
"You can instantly tell if a country has a repressive government by looking to see whether the guns at the border fences are pointing inward or outward."
I think you've hit the nail squarely on the head on this one... the pace of new technological developments is far too fast to make terribly useful predictions. They can look at big issues, but I daresay even then, they're going to be lucky to get even a small fraction of them right.
For instance, I'd say that Identity Theft is a huge problem today that wasn't on anyone's radar back then. I'm no expert in government, but it seems that the FTC would certainly be involved on some level. Dealing with current issues like that and other things such as DRM, fair use, corporate sponsored rootkits, and the like are excellent goals, but if they really want to take a pro-active role and try and get ahead of the ball on future issues, the first thing that needs to come out of this conference is a plan to hold similar ones more often.
Please cease and desist forthwith all usage of any words in the title or script of any Universal intellectual property.
We have reviewed all of your previous posts and have constructed an invoice for One Billion Zillion Trazillion Dollars for your usage of such intellectual property as "and" "the" "Ronan" "bear" etc...
Sincerely, Dowee, Cheetham, and Howe Attorneys at Law on behalf of the greedy bastards at Universal./sarcasm
Nevertheless, it was the old story... Droid meets Droid, Droid becomes Chameleon, Droid looses Chameleon, Chameleon turns into Blob, Droid gets Blob back again, Blob meets Blob, Blob goes off with Blob, and Droid looses Blob, Chameleon and droid. "How many times have we seen that story?"
OOOH, it comes with a Blu-Ray RW drive... except of course, you aren't actually allowed to burn ANYTHING to it EVER.
Okay, maybe that's a bit far from reality, but with Sony's strong support of DRM, (and you KNOW they will support any broadcast flag and macrovision stuff that comes out), wouldn't that make the blu-ray burner kind of useless?
I can see it now: * Cool! A great big DVR... Sure, but you can only fast-forward when it's not at a commercial
* I can make a Blu-Ray copies of TV shows the same way I used to use VHS tapes... Nope, people would have vast libraries of ~perfect~ ~digital~ ~copies~ of shows and the TV industry would go bankrupt
* Well, at least, I can use it to back up all my data... Well, sure, except nothing that could POSSIBLY have a copyright on it - you are free to back up anythying you created in..uh, Microsoft Paint!
* How about my mp3 files.... uh, you might have gotten those illegally, so we won't burn them
* How about video I shot myself... Nope, might have used that video camera to sneak into a theater and record the latest George Lucas: JarJar-on-ice extravaganza
* So, I bought this really expensive, neat-oh computer, that is technically ~capable~ of doing all this really cool stuff, but you've gone and crippled it all in the name of DRM so that it's utterly useless?... We wouldn't put it that way, but kinda... yeah... now go buy a PS3 before Jack Thompson gets all the good games banned.
I've played a lot of video games in my day, both online (FPSs like Half Life, CounterStrike, Halo, etc...) and offline, single-player (Diablo, Neverwinter Nights, NOLF, etc.), and I never had a problem with balancing gaming with real life. WOW was the first, last, and only MMORPG I have or will ever play. I recognized just how all consuming that particular gaming model is for me... to the point where I was letting a lot of things slip.
My only choice was to give away all my in-game stuff and cancel my account.
From my perspective, I think it was the combination of the incremental rewards with the feeling that the game was going on without me... that semi-persistent world. I know it's stupid of me, but hey, at least I realized it was a problem before I totally screwed my life up.
For their part, WOW even had a form asking why you were cancelling your account and if you selected "other" it came up with another dropdown that included "addiction" They are certainly aware of the potential for this, and they did not try to "AOL" me into staying with them.
In the end, I agree with the general sentiment that I've seen in many other slashdotters' posts: It's up to individuals to take personal responsibility.
I'll admit that sometimes I miss the game a bit, but honestly, I know better than to ever go back... or try ANY MMORPG. My normally non-addictive personality apparently has an Achillies' heel in this respect.
Your observations are right on the mark. For those of us who use our computers and screen real-estate efficiently, large screens and/or dual monitors help a lot, but indeed, the average user is exactly as you describe.
These users are the same ones who complain that the film is all used up on their digital cameras... or that their usb memory stick is all full so they have to get another one.
Sometimes I just want to pull out a megaphone and say, "PUT DOWN THE MOUSE AND STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER!!!......... THE MOUSE IS THAT LITTLE THING YOU MOVE AROUND WITH YOUR HAND TO MAKE THE CURSOR MOVE ON THE MONITOR......... THE MONITOR IS THE TELEVISION THING...... NEVERMIND ALL THAT, MOM, JUST STEP... AWAY... FROM... THE... COMPUTER!"
When I read this article, I went to code.google.com and tried it out for myself.
It seems to me that they are just indexing open source projects and presenting a rather nice interface for it. In my opinion, it seems more like a meta sourceforge that finds OSS projects from all over the web by searching for projects that make their VCS publicly available. If a closed source company has its VCS publicly accessible, then they've already done their own damage.
I've recently been searching high-and-low for a decent open-source knowledge base application that I can implement for our IT department at work. This search has been complicated by the fact that so many open source projects have a knowledge base about their products, so I get a lot of false positives in my searches. As code.google.com indexes more and more projects, I am hoping it might just be of help in that particular task, since it is indexing the project descriptions specifically.
Like any other tool, code.google.com is not evil, but its manner of usage may make it so. Do we ban hammers and kitchen knives because they can be used to injure or kill? I think not. Anyway, "code.google.com makes it easier for an attacker to find a bug or exploit" is only true for small values of "easier". Think about it... if someone has the knowledge to review source code and find the bugs and create an exploit, then they were already probably smart enough to use existing google (and other search engine) tools to find what they needed. Your average script kiddie is going to be looking for an exploit handed to them on a silver platter, not to actually have to figure out an exploit on their own.
In the end, it's still just a gui change. I, for one, turn off the fade/slide effects thing in Windows as just about the first thing I do when I set up a new account.... all those flashy animated doo-dads just make the computer feel like it's responding slowly.
In the case of these flip 3d things, I'll withhold judgement until I actually have a chance to play with it. Who knows, maybe it will provide a better way to choose active applications than the task bar, but it seems more like it will just suck down CPU/Graphics card resources without providing any real improvement in usability.
Uh-oh, next thing you know the CIAA (Cellular Industry Association of America) will subpoena the web server logs of www.instructables.com and start slapping John Doe lawsuits on anyone who read the pages. After all, those phones have been heavily subsidized by the cellular providers, and carrying their branding is part of the unwritten contract between the consumer and the provider... it's not YOUR cell phone, you're just licensed to use it./sarcasm
Seriously though, I'm not as concerned about the logo printed on the phone as I am about removing some of those annoying provider splash screens and about removing the subsidy lock so I can slap in a local SIM when travelling abroad.
With a name like "ip_freely_2000" I kind of figure you're joking. However, I gotta say that that post sounds almost word for word like what my previous boss would have said on the issue.
That strong-armed attitude is definitely very prevalent in the business world and is exactly the kind of thing that demoralizes employees.
When I first started at that previous employer, I had a different boss... one who gave me room to do what needed doing. The result: I would regularly put in 60 to 80 hours per week (on salary). When the new boss (the one who I said sounded like your post) came in, he made it very clear that he was very much against comp time, telecommuting, and flex time. He wanted everyone there the same times... roughly for the reasons you mentioned. I went from 60 to 80 hours a week to watching that clock. I was in at 9:30 and out at 5:30 every day. If there was an emergency that required extra hours, my attitude and thus my performance were most definitely negatively affected.
If management treats their employees like children and creates an environment of monitoring and restrictions, they will find that morale and productivity decrease over-all. That kind of environment will not attract creative, energetic people, it will drive them away. Even in non-creative jobs, a bit of online shopping or visits to the DMV site or aonline bank sites keep people from having to take time off (cough, cough, I'm sick today) to take care of personal tasks that can't be done off-hours.
I think you make an excellent point. To refine a bit:
It is very likely that Google COULD implement some special case filtering, but as you point out, it could cost a lot of time and resources. I think they are actually concerned that caving in would set a precident that would just snowball.
At the same time, Google has proved time and again that they are very capable of scaling their applications, so I bet they could work out something... it's just a hell of a lot easier to not get the ball moving in that direction to begin with.
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone else have a problem with the statement about the goal being financial harm. I'd say that is a result... the GOAL is to steal money.
this is ~obvious~, but what it boils down to is a change in the economic realities. In the past, virus writers and other miscreants did what they did for social reasons: a sense of power, peer recognition, proof of concept, etc... Today, spammers, identity thieves, scammers, and so-on are paying cold hard cash for access to bot nets and/or comprised systems or the information which they contain. Economic forces have effectively converted one-time bullies and vandals into a new form of organized crime. Types of crimes which are evolving much faster than traditional law enforcement and lawmakers can keep up with. Sure... stealing money by any means is still stealing, but the knowledge required to catch and prosecute these kinds of criminals is not exactly common.
I think that educating non-technical family members is one of the toughest jobs in IT. Honestly, my mother has actually come to me saying she needs a new memory stick for her digital camera because she's filled hers up. Combine that with the fact that she seems constitutionally incapable of understanding such basic concepts as drag/drop copy/cut/paste no matter how many times I sit down and explain them to her, and you can see how bad it can truly become.
Good Luck.
That's all well and good until your mom and dad have to come to live with you because they fell victim to phishing and/or identity theft and their life savings and retirement have been cleaned out.
I don't mean to offend, I'm merely pointing out that computer security is not just about protecting your PC from getting blown out by a virus anymore.
Hmmm, I think Myth Busters might have covered that one, but this fan thing.... I wonder if it's too silly, even for them.
That reminds me of something I heard once:
"You can instantly tell if a country has a repressive government by looking to see whether the guns at the border fences are pointing inward or outward."
I think you've hit the nail squarely on the head on this one... the pace of new technological developments is far too fast to make terribly useful predictions. They can look at big issues, but I daresay even then, they're going to be lucky to get even a small fraction of them right.
For instance, I'd say that Identity Theft is a huge problem today that wasn't on anyone's radar back then. I'm no expert in government, but it seems that the FTC would certainly be involved on some level. Dealing with current issues like that and other things such as DRM, fair use, corporate sponsored rootkits, and the like are excellent goals, but if they really want to take a pro-active role and try and get ahead of the ball on future issues, the first thing that needs to come out of this conference is a plan to hold similar ones more often.
Dear Ronanbear,
/sarcasm
Please cease and desist forthwith all usage of any words in the title or script of any Universal intellectual property.
We have reviewed all of your previous posts and have constructed an invoice for One Billion Zillion Trazillion Dollars for your usage of such intellectual property as "and" "the" "Ronan" "bear" etc...
Sincerely,
Dowee, Cheetham, and Howe
Attorneys at Law
on behalf of the greedy bastards at Universal.
Nevertheless, it was the old story...
Droid meets Droid,
Droid becomes Chameleon,
Droid looses Chameleon,
Chameleon turns into Blob,
Droid gets Blob back again,
Blob meets Blob,
Blob goes off with Blob,
and Droid looses Blob, Chameleon and droid.
"How many times have we seen that story?"
Too bad opera borrowed Tabbed Browsing from NetCaptor... (www.netcaptor.com)
OOOH, it comes with a Blu-Ray RW drive... except of course, you aren't actually allowed to burn ANYTHING to it EVER.
... We wouldn't put it that way, but kinda ... yeah... now go buy a PS3 before Jack Thompson gets all the good games banned.
Okay, maybe that's a bit far from reality, but with Sony's strong support of DRM, (and you KNOW they will support any broadcast flag and macrovision stuff that comes out), wouldn't that make the blu-ray burner kind of useless?
I can see it now:
* Cool! A great big DVR... Sure, but you can only fast-forward when it's not at a commercial
* I can make a Blu-Ray copies of TV shows the same way I used to use VHS tapes... Nope, people would have vast libraries of ~perfect~ ~digital~ ~copies~ of shows and the TV industry would go bankrupt
* Well, at least, I can use it to back up all my data... Well, sure, except nothing that could POSSIBLY have a copyright on it - you are free to back up anythying you created in..uh, Microsoft Paint!
* How about my mp3 files.... uh, you might have gotten those illegally, so we won't burn them
* How about video I shot myself... Nope, might have used that video camera to sneak into a theater and record the latest George Lucas: JarJar-on-ice extravaganza
* So, I bought this really expensive, neat-oh computer, that is technically ~capable~ of doing all this really cool stuff, but you've gone and crippled it all in the name of DRM so that it's utterly useless?
I've played a lot of video games in my day, both online (FPSs like Half Life, CounterStrike, Halo, etc...) and offline, single-player (Diablo, Neverwinter Nights, NOLF, etc.), and I never had a problem with balancing gaming with real life. WOW was the first, last, and only MMORPG I have or will ever play. I recognized just how all consuming that particular gaming model is for me... to the point where I was letting a lot of things slip.
My only choice was to give away all my in-game stuff and cancel my account.
From my perspective, I think it was the combination of the incremental rewards with the feeling that the game was going on without me... that semi-persistent world. I know it's stupid of me, but hey, at least I realized it was a problem before I totally screwed my life up.
For their part, WOW even had a form asking why you were cancelling your account and if you selected "other" it came up with another dropdown that included "addiction" They are certainly aware of the potential for this, and they did not try to "AOL" me into staying with them.
In the end, I agree with the general sentiment that I've seen in many other slashdotters' posts: It's up to individuals to take personal responsibility.
I'll admit that sometimes I miss the game a bit, but honestly, I know better than to ever go back... or try ANY MMORPG. My normally non-addictive personality apparently has an Achillies' heel in this respect.
I agree with you, but I do wonder if there might be more to it than that - I certainly HOPE that there is more to it than that.
BRAVO!
... ... THE MOUSE IS THAT LITTLE THING YOU MOVE AROUND WITH YOUR HAND TO MAKE THE CURSOR MOVE ON THE MONITOR... ... ... THE MONITOR IS THE TELEVISION THING ... ... NEVERMIND ALL THAT, MOM, JUST STEP... AWAY... FROM... THE... COMPUTER!"
Your observations are right on the mark. For those of us who use our computers and screen real-estate efficiently, large screens and/or dual monitors help a lot, but indeed, the average user is exactly as you describe.
These users are the same ones who complain that the film is all used up on their digital cameras... or that their usb memory stick is all full so they have to get another one.
Sometimes I just want to pull out a megaphone and say, "PUT DOWN THE MOUSE AND STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER!!!...
That was quite possibly the funniest post I've seen on Slashdot all week. My sides are still hurting. Thank you.
I agree - very nice summation.
Those Chinese zombies are probably not even being comprimized by Chinese attackers - it's probably just good ol' American Malware.
Anyone remember the simpler days when the worst the internet had to offer was a really nasty usenet flame war?
~sigh~
When I read this article, I went to code.google.com and tried it out for myself.
It seems to me that they are just indexing open source projects and presenting a rather nice interface for it. In my opinion, it seems more like a meta sourceforge that finds OSS projects from all over the web by searching for projects that make their VCS publicly available. If a closed source company has its VCS publicly accessible, then they've already done their own damage.
I've recently been searching high-and-low for a decent open-source knowledge base application that I can implement for our IT department at work. This search has been complicated by the fact that so many open source projects have a knowledge base about their products, so I get a lot of false positives in my searches. As code.google.com indexes more and more projects, I am hoping it might just be of help in that particular task, since it is indexing the project descriptions specifically.
Like any other tool, code.google.com is not evil, but its manner of usage may make it so. Do we ban hammers and kitchen knives because they can be used to injure or kill? I think not. Anyway, "code.google.com makes it easier for an attacker to find a bug or exploit" is only true for small values of "easier". Think about it... if someone has the knowledge to review source code and find the bugs and create an exploit, then they were already probably smart enough to use existing google (and other search engine) tools to find what they needed. Your average script kiddie is going to be looking for an exploit handed to them on a silver platter, not to actually have to figure out an exploit on their own.
Just my $0.02
In the end, it's still just a gui change. I, for one, turn off the fade/slide effects thing in Windows as just about the first thing I do when I set up a new account .... all those flashy animated doo-dads just make the computer feel like it's responding slowly.
In the case of these flip 3d things, I'll withhold judgement until I actually have a chance to play with it. Who knows, maybe it will provide a better way to choose active applications than the task bar, but it seems more like it will just suck down CPU/Graphics card resources without providing any real improvement in usability.
I'm not a congenital Microsoft basher (and I'm not accusing you of it either), but DAMN, that was funny.
Wow, that was some incredibly revealing reading. I wish I had some mod points to throw your way.
Uh-oh, next thing you know the CIAA (Cellular Industry Association of America) will subpoena the web server logs of www.instructables.com and start slapping John Doe lawsuits on anyone who read the pages. After all, those phones have been heavily subsidized by the cellular providers, and carrying their branding is part of the unwritten contract between the consumer and the provider... it's not YOUR cell phone, you're just licensed to use it. /sarcasm
Seriously though, I'm not as concerned about the logo printed on the phone as I am about removing some of those annoying provider splash screens and about removing the subsidy lock so I can slap in a local SIM when travelling abroad.
First, their original slogan:
"You got questions? We've got answers."
Then, due to lack of actual answer content:
"You got questions? Uh, we've got Batteries."
Now, SpeemCo marketing division presents the new 2007 Radio Shack slogan:
"You've got mail! You're Fired!"
Now, if we can just find a clip of the AOL "you got mail" guy and Donald trump, we could have the beginnings for a techno song... hmmmm I gotta go.
With a name like "ip_freely_2000" I kind of figure you're joking. However, I gotta say that that post sounds almost word for word like what my previous boss would have said on the issue.
That strong-armed attitude is definitely very prevalent in the business world and is exactly the kind of thing that demoralizes employees.
When I first started at that previous employer, I had a different boss... one who gave me room to do what needed doing. The result: I would regularly put in 60 to 80 hours per week (on salary). When the new boss (the one who I said sounded like your post) came in, he made it very clear that he was very much against comp time, telecommuting, and flex time. He wanted everyone there the same times... roughly for the reasons you mentioned. I went from 60 to 80 hours a week to watching that clock. I was in at 9:30 and out at 5:30 every day. If there was an emergency that required extra hours, my attitude and thus my performance were most definitely negatively affected.
If management treats their employees like children and creates an environment of monitoring and restrictions, they will find that morale and productivity decrease over-all. That kind of environment will not attract creative, energetic people, it will drive them away. Even in non-creative jobs, a bit of online shopping or visits to the DMV site or aonline bank sites keep people from having to take time off (cough, cough, I'm sick today) to take care of personal tasks that can't be done off-hours.
" With your software's name are "crack" and "keygen", you *might* need to take a good long look at your licensing and pricing model."
:)
Uh oh, careful there, in today's climate, you might get sued for suggesting such evil information.
I think you make an excellent point. To refine a bit:
It is very likely that Google COULD implement some special case filtering, but as you point out, it could cost a lot of time and resources. I think they are actually concerned that caving in would set a precident that would just snowball.
At the same time, Google has proved time and again that they are very capable of scaling their applications, so I bet they could work out something... it's just a hell of a lot easier to not get the ball moving in that direction to begin with.
I couldn't agree more... The current fight against net neutrality is a case of the carriers wanting it both ways.
Greed, it's all about greed. (And I say this as someone who doe not normally have any major anti-corporate leanings)