I'd say the person who directed the software in what music to create would be granted a copyright on the result, at a guess, but it does get complicated.
Artists already use composition software frequently in the composition of their music, this is just a more clever algorithm that in some small way mimics some of the processes some writers go through already. And software like this is going to generate a LOT of junk that you have to sift through, refine, etc.
Having said that, once this software hits the public domain and anyone can create "original" compositions in the style of their favorite artists (or blend styles), we're going to be flooded with "creative original" music in unprecedented volumes. It could completely overwhelm our current concept of copyright. It'd be like having the million monkeys and million keyboards, and copyrighting everything they create up to the point they hit Shakespeare. Eventually, every pleasing tonal pattern that can exist will be covered under copyright by someone, somewhere.
Hell, I could devote a few thousand quad-core processors to doing nothing but creating works specifically designed not to match anything that is currently under copyright, release a few billion of the best for 1 dollar each on an MP3 jukebox server, and sue the living daylights out of anyone who releases a song that happens to coincide with too many notes of one of mine. The only thing stopping someone from doing that today is that creating original works still takes brain cells, and there aren't enough of them to work fast enough to overwhelm the copyright system. Don't think this won't happen, and it'll be sooner rather than later.
I think it will lead to one of three conclusions:
1. All such works will be declared "derivative" if it could be demonstrated that any copyrighted work was fed into the algorithm, and copyright would be split between the copyright owners of the source material. If the author recorded non-copyrighted sounds (nature, construction) and specified instruments for the computer to use, it would probably be treated as an original work.
2. All such works are granted an original copyright and within a matter of a few decades any possible combination of notes that could be produced would have been produced and copyrighted. Probably by people slashdotters will soon be calling "copyright trolls".
3. The ramifications of either (1) or (2) set in and we finally start limiting copyright to its original intent - to allow a BRIEF period where the creator of a work may profit from that work.
I'm hoping for (3), but I expect we'll end up with (1) because the various entrenched copyright companies (eg. RIAA) will simply call the lawmakers they have on permanent retainer and tell them to make it so.
(1) is actually the most compatible with current copyright law. If I write a song that incorporates elements of your songs (including chords as short as 4-5 notes) or bears significant tonal similarity to your songs, you can sue me for copyright violation in many countries. If I use a computer to create works BASED on yours, how is that not actually a derivative work (though proving it would be infinitely harder).
Yes, except some artists who "perform" onstage are lip-syncing and faking it to previously-recorded tracks, to ensure that their performances are flawless. I expect there are plenty of others who actually do it and just haven't been caught at it. Yet.
In some cases, as for example the opening to the Beijing Olympics, the performer on stage wasn't even the same person who actually recorded the original song.
It neither started nor stopped with Milli Vanilli (sp?).
So thousands of screaming fans are piling into major venues to watch someone play at stroking at a guitar and moving their lips in silence in front of a dead mic while a computer shreds in their style today.
So what's the difference? The fact that a human has sung the song once in a studio? The fact that the person who originally sung it is playing the role of marionette to their own recordings (or in some cases not even that)? You might as well put a robot out there to make sure all the dance moves are perfect, too.
I don't know what "Zophar has Manboobs" is, but it sounds like something that desperately needs a cover. Preferably thick tarpaulin, but I'd settle for a good shirt.
As of now, the box is a fileserver on its way to decommissioning or maybe being sent over to my wife's aunt's house for basic websurfing tasks, so 9.04 is fine.:)
I solved the problem by purchasing a new 785-based board with built-in ATI 4200 video. The old machine couldn't play 720p video at all in Windows (except as a series of still images), and it stuttered just the slightest in Linux every now and then, so I just gave up and bought new hardware.
I did find it surprising that the ATI-provided drivers in Windows performed so incredibly poorly in rendering 720p and 1080p, while Linux with both the open source and proprietary ATI drivers actually did an OK (if not perfect) job with both.
The 4200 can render smooth stutter-free full-screen 1080p, even over Flash, so I'm happy.
I like to think I'm a professional. I really do. And I agree that Childs appears to have lacked many of the social graces.
But, I have to admit, if I had that kind of systems access and was called into a room in a building across town from my department with a group including many strangers, told that I was being removed from my job effective immediately and transferred to another job, and then asked to divulge passwords to everyone present AND over an open conference line to who in the hell knows who else, I'd probably have assumed it was a test to see if I took security policies seriously and told them to fuck off in absolutely no uncertain terms.
Yes, he could have handled it better. But I'm not at all certain I would have.
then refused to show his employer how to access it again.
Read the articles on it again. He refused to show people who were not authorized. He was in a room full of people he did not know, with an open conference call over a speakerphone to other people he did not know, and was told to divulge passwords to all of those people.
He refused and was fired. Let's be clear about this - he was fired for following documented policy as to the disclosure of passwords. This testimony is in the public record, and has not been disputed by the City. He might have been an asshole about it, which is regrettable, but he was also doing what he was hired and directed to do. Following documented procedure as to the security of a critical system.
Once he's fired, his obligations to the City are done, but he's probably still under an NDA not to give out "sensitive information" like passwords, under threat of criminal prosecution. So now he has nothing saying he must give out the passwords, and possible jail time saying he shouldn't.
But the City went after him with the force of law and public opinion, arrested him, and demanded that the divulge the passwords. Which he could only do to an authorized person under policy. Except he's no longer employed there, and does not have access to know who is authorized. So if he divulges the information improperly, he's subject to prosecution, but he's already subject to prosecution because he pissed off the City by following their own rules.
What would you do?
In his case, he offered to give the passwords to the only person he knew was authorized to receive them - the Mayor. The Mayor accepted the passwords, and then, to use your words:
Sounds like this guy didn't document how he secured the system
This may be the one thing he actually is guilty of.
On the other hand, there's no reason that he couldn't have remembered them and just given them up.
But there are. If you look on the city's IT site, you will find the IT policy. Around page 23, IIRC, you'll see the rules under which you can divulge passwords. There are three specific rules that are important:
1. Don't do it over the telephone. 2. Don't ever tell your boss any password. 3. Don't ever divulge any password in the presence of anyone unknown to you.
They dragged him in a meeting room at the police station where he was doing some wiring work, filled the room with people he didn't know, initiated a conference call over a speakerphone, told him he was being transferred, and asked him to recite the passwords.
Umm, what did he do wrong by saying "NO"? He was, at that time, still an employee. He was bound by policy not to divulge the information under those circumstances.
Then he was fired.
At that point, he had no obligation to give the passwords up any more, and was probably bound by a nondisclosure agreement that would be violated if he HAD given them up. So his logical course would then be to go home and do his best to forget the passwords. His employer shitcanned him because he tried to follow their rules and they didn't like it.
There is no rule in the City IT policy that says you need to give up a password when asked. However, there was one that any "system" passwords (as opposed to "user" passwords) needed to be in a central secure database, and it's up for discussion as to whether he did in fact violate that policy. If he did, then there was an obligation to disclose it, but then the question becomes, to whom?
He offered to divulge the passwords to the only person he KNEW was authorized to receive them - an elected official. The Mayor agreed to accept the passwords, and he gave them up. They Mayor, as an elected official, is then authorized to hand the passwords off to anyone else he chooses.
Then the passwords didn't work because the people the Mayor gave them to apparently didn't understand how the network was configured.
If the City is still unable to access the network, they need to acknowledge that Childs was following THEIR rules when he refused to cooperate, apologize, release him with back pay, and ask nicely for him to come back for a short-term consulting gig so he can teach his successor how to run the network. At which point, the successor changes all the passwords, Childs loses all access to the network, and gets a nice letter of recommendation stating that his ethical standards at protecting information he is charged with protecting are so high that he's willing to go to jail rather than violate them.
Sorry, but even though he is not employed there, he still has access to sensitive information. I'm sure he was under several covenants signed as a condition of employment and continuing for some period after employment.
Otherwise, he could literally go to the Chinese, passwords in hand, and sell that information to them.0000000001 seconds after calling his boss and saying "I quit!"
I know most jobs I've worked have confidentiality agreements that require that I keep company information confidential even after my employment is terminated (for any cause), and I can be sued if I violated those covenants.
Once he was no longer a part of the infrastructure, his only known authentication of someone who can get the information is an elected official. The Mayor could have directed him to give the information to a designee, but the Mayor decided to get the information personally. Unfortunately, the people the Mayor brought in didn't actually know how to use the passwords, but Childs disclosed what he was asked to disclose to the only person he clearly knew retained authorization to it.
I can't personally think of another way he could have ethically fulfilled his responsibility to the city while following the procedures (which you can find on the Web, by the way) he was required to follow.
Someone in room: "you're being transferred, so give me the passwords in front of your boss, several other people you don't know, and anyone who might be on the other side of the open speakerphone".
(context: Separate city rules prohibit divulging passwords to your direct boss, AND prohibit divulging them in the presence of unknown persons, AND prohibit divulging them on a telephone line)
In that context, Childs was absolutely correct to say "no, that would be a violation of a policy that I signed a document saying I would uphold, and open me to criminal charges."
Or, if he was somewhat less diplomatic: "fuck off, you aren't authorized to ask me that information"
According to the policy, he was supposed to have the passwords in a global, heavily-protected database. Whether he did or did not is open for debate. I don't know. And that could be a source of trouble to him.
According to the charges, he did not surrender the passwords to a group of people, many of whom were unknown to him, and many others of whom were clearly not authorized to possess that information, many of whom worked for different departments in different capacities, in the presence of an open microphone on a speakerphone with participants of unknown identity and number. In the context of that meeting, it would be a clear violation of the policy the city maintains to disclose those passwords, as the disclosure would have simultaneously violated at least two lines in the "forbidden" list, as followed (clear violations in bold):
Here is a list of things to avoid: Giving your password over the phone to ANYONE.
Sending a password in an e-mail message. Telling your boss your password. Talking about a password in front of others.
Hinting at the format of a password (e.g., “my family name”).
Writing in your password on questionnaires or security forms.
Sharing your password with family members.
Telling your co-workers your passwordwhile on vacation.
Maybe he didn't put the passwords in the global database, and maybe he deserves punishment for that.
But as to that meeting, it appears that he did his job.
Data AND tethering for $15 a month with a 3GB cap? I have several people who would be very interested in this, if you have details. My father in law is paying $60 a month to Verizon and barely uses 500MB a month. He'd probably gladly buy a secondhand smartphone for dedicated modem use.
Hell, I'd likely buy that myself. My company pays that much just to activate tethering on my existing data plan on my non-3G Blackberry. I'd love to get 3G speeds on the road.
The cheapest monthly plan I see for data is DataConnect, for $20, and it has a 10MB monthly cap plus 1.9 cents a KB after that.
I'm talking about the US market, of course, other markets may vary.
If the backup drive was repurposed, it probably didn't contain any backups at all for that three hours. In other words, he wiped his only backup to complete a data transfer, and Murphy caught him at it and made sure the now-unprotected original got tossed into the bit bucket.
In retrospect, not a smart thing to do, but how many people run with no backups AT ALL, and what are the odds of losing your primary drive during a 3 hour window?
Maybe I'll try it again. When I booted to 9.10 with it I just got a black screen, and I messed around for a couple of hours trying to load the open source driver and get it set up manually. No dice.
Mine is the All-in-Wonder variant, and I don't expect TV support (though that would have been nice!) but I couldn't even get it running in basic 2D.
Oddly enough, it works fine running off the CD, so I suspect it's the 3D driver. It isn't recognized at all by the ATI proprietary driver and attempting to load that manually, umm, didn't go well.
After nuking it a few times and trying different things, I finally loaded 9.04 and it worked like a charm.
I've been with AT&T for a while, and you go into any AT&T store and look around at anything resembling a smartphone, and every last one of them supports tethering. It's a simple monthly add-on. There are even things that in no way resemble smartphones that do tethering just fine.
All smartphones except, of course, for the iPhone.
Can someone please explain the logic behind this? Why would AT&T offer tethering on Samsung, Nokia, RIM/Blackberry (just to name the ones I have used personally over the years), and not the iPhone? What logical reason is there for this? They'll gladly take your money on every other platform and offer you tethering.
Yes, they still offer it as an option over part of their laptop line.
Inspiron, Vostro, Precision, and Latitude all seem to have at least a few Linux choices. But not all of them, and there are certainly a number of lines that no longer have Linux as a choice. They also plaster "we recommend Windows" all over the place.
I have little doubt that Redmond threatened to drop them a tier if they dared mention Linux in public ever again.
And if you purchase an OEM Linux system, those drivers will be preinstalled for you along with the hardware they support. Well, at least if you have a decent OEM.
I have a friend who purchased a couple of Dell Mini 10 units with Ubuntu, and they worked fine - all the drivers and everything were preinstalled and ready to go.
A lot of it depends on the hardware. Sound is problematic, I think, especially in Ubuntu/Mint because they just went to a far more complex sound infrastructure that a few people have had problems with. But I've moved plenty of Linux distros to completely dissimilar hardware without any serious problems. That's not to say it will always work perfectly under all circumstances. But with a little planning ahead, you can make this a complete non-issue. Remember, with Linux, your OS and apps are separate from your settings. This really makes reinstalls easy.
I have two hard drives in my computer: 1. I keep the operating system and swap on a small (20GB) drive. I have a spare 20GB drive installed in the computer and not normally powered up. 2. I have a separate (1TB) hard drive I use for my \home partition, where all of my settings and data are kept.
When I decide to upgrade to a newer version of Linux, I simply open the case, move the cables from the 20GB drive I'm using to the spare 20GB drive, and install Linux on that drive. During setup, I specify that I want to manually configure the hard drives, and tell it to use (BUT NOT FORMAT) my existing \home directory, and use (AND FORMAT) the 20GB drive as \ and swap. I set up the same username and password that already exists on \home from my previous install, wait a little while for the install to complete, boot to the new Linux, install any proprietary drivers I might need, and finally start up my package manager and install all the software I use that didn't come with the distro. Finally, I install the couple of commercial Linux packages I own from install packages I keep on \home.
Like magic all of my applications perform EXACTLY like they did before I did the reinstall.
Then I test the crap out of everything. If my computer doesn't like the new version for some reason, I swap cables back and I'm back to my old Linux install just like nothing happened.
It seems kinda scary the first time, but seriously, it's really easy.
Your application settings are all in \home, separate from the operating system. That, to me, is the biggest difference between Linux and Windows. Linux separates data and applications very cleanly, and everything about you is stored in \home. Windows makes it hard to get it looking like it did before the reinstall. You have to get registry settings backed up and restored or reconstruct application settings after you are done installing, you have to move tons of data around, applications often write their settings or data in their own program directories. It's just a mess.
The beauty of this setup is that if the new install goes badly, the old 20GB drive (or the old hardware) is there with my old Linux install on it. So I can always revert back to that if something goes awry. If I've recently suffered a major hardware outage and I don't want to reinstall, I will sometimes duplicate the first 20GB drive to the spare using dd, then boot to the spare to see how well the OS will survive the hardware change. If all goes well, I'm set. If not, I know I have to set aside an hour or two and do a complete reinstall.
You can very easily do this with only one hard drive, I just like the "spare drive" concept because I have a known working (but older) version of Linux always on tap in case I bork the current one. I've never had to fall back on it, but it's nice to have it there. You could always carve out 2 20GB partitions and do exactly the same thing, I suppose.
I have had the same \home directory since 2004. It's been used successfully by Corel Linux, SuSE, Xandros, Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu, and three versions of Linux Mint (my current OS). It's run on 5 completely separate computers. I've used dd to copy it from its original home on a 100GB hard drive to a 500GB drive and to its current 1TB drive, but there are still application settings and documents in it that date back to 2004.
Installing the OS and base applications is almost always faster than dealing with a badly borked driver, and you get that "fresh, clean OS" feeling. Except it looks exactly like it did before.
I had several machines with older-but-still-decent video cards (ATI Radeon 9600, as an example, and a friend has an nVidia card with the same issues) that worked just fine in anything prior to 9.10, but ATI and nVidia both deprecated support for them in the latest binary, and there is some dependency reason why the older binaries won't work in the kernel that 9.10 uses. So you can have the latest Ubuntu, or you can have 3D support for video cards that ATI no longer chooses to support in their proprietary driver. Choose one.
I tried installing the binary manually, and, well, let's just say I dusted off and nuked it from orbit after the attempt.
This, of course, is the risk of using binary drivers rather than compilable source, and one of the major reasons so many Linux zealots hate them so much. With source, you can almost always make older hardware compatible with your shiny new kernel. With a binary, you can't support it after the manufacturer has decided not to.
That's true, though adrenaline might change that a bit ("well, if I push a little harder, maybe it will disengage the cruise. Try it again. No, OK, time to panic-brake. What, the brakes won't fully engage? Crap!")
In any case, something caused those brakes to go toasty. Though it could just be poor maintenance.
So, given my thoughts above about my initial instinct (must be a screwed up cruise control), it is possible that a few pumps on the brakes to try and disengage the cruise might have caused enough of a vacuum failure to make the brakes go all toasty.
Then the "safety features making things unsafe" parade began. Couldn't get it out of gear due to safety interlock, couldn't shut it down due to 3-second-push rule on emergency engine shutdown, not really a whole lot else you can do but steer and hope the brakes cool off and the vacuum builds back up in time (and, of course, if you're like most mortals your feet will be on the brakes making sure they stay toasty).
The more I think about things like this, the less I want a fancy car like a Lexus. Of course, that went without saying before this anyway.
As I understand it, when the go pedal is mashed to full-tilt-boogie mode, that steals vacuum from the braking system, and you may not be able to mean it enough to very rapidly overcome the kind of overpowered engine they tend to put in fancy cars like the Lexus.
I could try it in my car, but I drive a 90HP Jetta Diesel, so the test is going to be pretty irrelevant. Plus the clutch has 90,000 miles on it, so I'm not about to put that kind of stress on that clutch (grin). Not to mention finding a place where such a test could be done safely.
But, yeah, the start/stop button is the real humdinger. Assuming you have managed somehow to cook off your brakes, not being able to shut down a runaway engine is a scary concept.
I like my clutch, and my ignition key. They make me feel like a driver, and not a passenger who happens to be sitting behind the big wheel thingy.
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I'd say the person who directed the software in what music to create would be granted a copyright on the result, at a guess, but it does get complicated.
Artists already use composition software frequently in the composition of their music, this is just a more clever algorithm that in some small way mimics some of the processes some writers go through already. And software like this is going to generate a LOT of junk that you have to sift through, refine, etc.
Having said that, once this software hits the public domain and anyone can create "original" compositions in the style of their favorite artists (or blend styles), we're going to be flooded with "creative original" music in unprecedented volumes. It could completely overwhelm our current concept of copyright. It'd be like having the million monkeys and million keyboards, and copyrighting everything they create up to the point they hit Shakespeare. Eventually, every pleasing tonal pattern that can exist will be covered under copyright by someone, somewhere.
Hell, I could devote a few thousand quad-core processors to doing nothing but creating works specifically designed not to match anything that is currently under copyright, release a few billion of the best for 1 dollar each on an MP3 jukebox server, and sue the living daylights out of anyone who releases a song that happens to coincide with too many notes of one of mine. The only thing stopping someone from doing that today is that creating original works still takes brain cells, and there aren't enough of them to work fast enough to overwhelm the copyright system. Don't think this won't happen, and it'll be sooner rather than later.
I think it will lead to one of three conclusions:
1. All such works will be declared "derivative" if it could be demonstrated that any copyrighted work was fed into the algorithm, and copyright would be split between the copyright owners of the source material. If the author recorded non-copyrighted sounds (nature, construction) and specified instruments for the computer to use, it would probably be treated as an original work.
2. All such works are granted an original copyright and within a matter of a few decades any possible combination of notes that could be produced would have been produced and copyrighted. Probably by people slashdotters will soon be calling "copyright trolls".
3. The ramifications of either (1) or (2) set in and we finally start limiting copyright to its original intent - to allow a BRIEF period where the creator of a work may profit from that work.
I'm hoping for (3), but I expect we'll end up with (1) because the various entrenched copyright companies (eg. RIAA) will simply call the lawmakers they have on permanent retainer and tell them to make it so.
(1) is actually the most compatible with current copyright law. If I write a song that incorporates elements of your songs (including chords as short as 4-5 notes) or bears significant tonal similarity to your songs, you can sue me for copyright violation in many countries. If I use a computer to create works BASED on yours, how is that not actually a derivative work (though proving it would be infinitely harder).
Yes, except some artists who "perform" onstage are lip-syncing and faking it to previously-recorded tracks, to ensure that their performances are flawless. I expect there are plenty of others who actually do it and just haven't been caught at it. Yet.
In some cases, as for example the opening to the Beijing Olympics, the performer on stage wasn't even the same person who actually recorded the original song.
It neither started nor stopped with Milli Vanilli (sp?).
So thousands of screaming fans are piling into major venues to watch someone play at stroking at a guitar and moving their lips in silence in front of a dead mic while a computer shreds in their style today.
So what's the difference? The fact that a human has sung the song once in a studio? The fact that the person who originally sung it is playing the role of marionette to their own recordings (or in some cases not even that)? You might as well put a robot out there to make sure all the dance moves are perfect, too.
I don't know what "Zophar has Manboobs" is, but it sounds like something that desperately needs a cover. Preferably thick tarpaulin, but I'd settle for a good shirt.
Could be.
As of now, the box is a fileserver on its way to decommissioning or maybe being sent over to my wife's aunt's house for basic websurfing tasks, so 9.04 is fine. :)
I solved the problem by purchasing a new 785-based board with built-in ATI 4200 video. The old machine couldn't play 720p video at all in Windows (except as a series of still images), and it stuttered just the slightest in Linux every now and then, so I just gave up and bought new hardware.
I did find it surprising that the ATI-provided drivers in Windows performed so incredibly poorly in rendering 720p and 1080p, while Linux with both the open source and proprietary ATI drivers actually did an OK (if not perfect) job with both.
The 4200 can render smooth stutter-free full-screen 1080p, even over Flash, so I'm happy.
I like to think I'm a professional. I really do. And I agree that Childs appears to have lacked many of the social graces.
But, I have to admit, if I had that kind of systems access and was called into a room in a building across town from my department with a group including many strangers, told that I was being removed from my job effective immediately and transferred to another job, and then asked to divulge passwords to everyone present AND over an open conference line to who in the hell knows who else, I'd probably have assumed it was a test to see if I took security policies seriously and told them to fuck off in absolutely no uncertain terms.
Yes, he could have handled it better. But I'm not at all certain I would have.
then refused to show his employer how to access it again.
Read the articles on it again. He refused to show people who were not authorized. He was in a room full of people he did not know, with an open conference call over a speakerphone to other people he did not know, and was told to divulge passwords to all of those people.
He refused and was fired. Let's be clear about this - he was fired for following documented policy as to the disclosure of passwords. This testimony is in the public record, and has not been disputed by the City. He might have been an asshole about it, which is regrettable, but he was also doing what he was hired and directed to do. Following documented procedure as to the security of a critical system.
Once he's fired, his obligations to the City are done, but he's probably still under an NDA not to give out "sensitive information" like passwords, under threat of criminal prosecution. So now he has nothing saying he must give out the passwords, and possible jail time saying he shouldn't.
But the City went after him with the force of law and public opinion, arrested him, and demanded that the divulge the passwords. Which he could only do to an authorized person under policy. Except he's no longer employed there, and does not have access to know who is authorized. So if he divulges the information improperly, he's subject to prosecution, but he's already subject to prosecution because he pissed off the City by following their own rules.
What would you do?
In his case, he offered to give the passwords to the only person he knew was authorized to receive them - the Mayor. The Mayor accepted the passwords, and then, to use your words:
Sounds like this guy didn't document how he secured the system
This may be the one thing he actually is guilty of.
On the other hand, there's no reason that he couldn't have remembered them and just given them up.
But there are. If you look on the city's IT site, you will find the IT policy. Around page 23, IIRC, you'll see the rules under which you can divulge passwords. There are three specific rules that are important:
1. Don't do it over the telephone.
2. Don't ever tell your boss any password.
3. Don't ever divulge any password in the presence of anyone unknown to you.
They dragged him in a meeting room at the police station where he was doing some wiring work, filled the room with people he didn't know, initiated a conference call over a speakerphone, told him he was being transferred, and asked him to recite the passwords.
Umm, what did he do wrong by saying "NO"? He was, at that time, still an employee. He was bound by policy not to divulge the information under those circumstances.
Then he was fired.
At that point, he had no obligation to give the passwords up any more, and was probably bound by a nondisclosure agreement that would be violated if he HAD given them up. So his logical course would then be to go home and do his best to forget the passwords. His employer shitcanned him because he tried to follow their rules and they didn't like it.
There is no rule in the City IT policy that says you need to give up a password when asked. However, there was one that any "system" passwords (as opposed to "user" passwords) needed to be in a central secure database, and it's up for discussion as to whether he did in fact violate that policy. If he did, then there was an obligation to disclose it, but then the question becomes, to whom?
He offered to divulge the passwords to the only person he KNEW was authorized to receive them - an elected official. The Mayor agreed to accept the passwords, and he gave them up. They Mayor, as an elected official, is then authorized to hand the passwords off to anyone else he chooses.
Then the passwords didn't work because the people the Mayor gave them to apparently didn't understand how the network was configured.
If the City is still unable to access the network, they need to acknowledge that Childs was following THEIR rules when he refused to cooperate, apologize, release him with back pay, and ask nicely for him to come back for a short-term consulting gig so he can teach his successor how to run the network. At which point, the successor changes all the passwords, Childs loses all access to the network, and gets a nice letter of recommendation stating that his ethical standards at protecting information he is charged with protecting are so high that he's willing to go to jail rather than violate them.
Except the fact that he was on a speakerphone was one of the reasons he REFUSED to divulge the passwords.
Asshat stuff like following procedures he's signed documents that he will follow landed him in jail.
Seriously people, don't do your job ethically and follow the rules of your employment. You will be punished.
Yes, it is.
Sorry, but even though he is not employed there, he still has access to sensitive information. I'm sure he was under several covenants signed as a condition of employment and continuing for some period after employment.
Otherwise, he could literally go to the Chinese, passwords in hand, and sell that information to them .0000000001 seconds after calling his boss and saying "I quit!"
I know most jobs I've worked have confidentiality agreements that require that I keep company information confidential even after my employment is terminated (for any cause), and I can be sued if I violated those covenants.
Once he was no longer a part of the infrastructure, his only known authentication of someone who can get the information is an elected official. The Mayor could have directed him to give the information to a designee, but the Mayor decided to get the information personally. Unfortunately, the people the Mayor brought in didn't actually know how to use the passwords, but Childs disclosed what he was asked to disclose to the only person he clearly knew retained authorization to it.
I can't personally think of another way he could have ethically fulfilled his responsibility to the city while following the procedures (which you can find on the Web, by the way) he was required to follow.
No, it was more like this
Someone in room: "you're being transferred, so give me the passwords in front of your boss, several other people you don't know, and anyone who might be on the other side of the open speakerphone".
(context: Separate city rules prohibit divulging passwords to your direct boss, AND prohibit divulging them in the presence of unknown persons, AND prohibit divulging them on a telephone line)
In that context, Childs was absolutely correct to say "no, that would be a violation of a policy that I signed a document saying I would uphold, and open me to criminal charges."
Or, if he was somewhat less diplomatic: "fuck off, you aren't authorized to ask me that information"
Here is the relevant policy, refer to the section starting on page 32...
http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/dtis/coit/Policies_Forms/CCISDA_security.pdf
According to the policy, he was supposed to have the passwords in a global, heavily-protected database. Whether he did or did not is open for debate. I don't know. And that could be a source of trouble to him.
According to the charges, he did not surrender the passwords to a group of people, many of whom were unknown to him, and many others of whom were clearly not authorized to possess that information, many of whom worked for different departments in different capacities, in the presence of an open microphone on a speakerphone with participants of unknown identity and number. In the context of that meeting, it would be a clear violation of the policy the city maintains to disclose those passwords, as the disclosure would have simultaneously violated at least two lines in the "forbidden" list, as followed (clear violations in bold):
Here is a list of things to avoid: .
Giving your password over the phone to ANYONE.
Sending a password in an e-mail message.
Telling your boss your password
Talking about a password in front of others.
Hinting at the format of a password (e.g., “my family name”).
Writing in your password on questionnaires or security forms.
Sharing your password with family members.
Telling your co-workers your passwordwhile on vacation.
Maybe he didn't put the passwords in the global database, and maybe he deserves punishment for that.
But as to that meeting, it appears that he did his job.
Data AND tethering for $15 a month with a 3GB cap? I have several people who would be very interested in this, if you have details. My father in law is paying $60 a month to Verizon and barely uses 500MB a month. He'd probably gladly buy a secondhand smartphone for dedicated modem use.
Hell, I'd likely buy that myself. My company pays that much just to activate tethering on my existing data plan on my non-3G Blackberry. I'd love to get 3G speeds on the road.
The cheapest monthly plan I see for data is DataConnect, for $20, and it has a 10MB monthly cap plus 1.9 cents a KB after that.
I'm talking about the US market, of course, other markets may vary.
If the backup drive was repurposed, it probably didn't contain any backups at all for that three hours. In other words, he wiped his only backup to complete a data transfer, and Murphy caught him at it and made sure the now-unprotected original got tossed into the bit bucket.
In retrospect, not a smart thing to do, but how many people run with no backups AT ALL, and what are the odds of losing your primary drive during a 3 hour window?
Maybe I'll try it again. When I booted to 9.10 with it I just got a black screen, and I messed around for a couple of hours trying to load the open source driver and get it set up manually. No dice.
Mine is the All-in-Wonder variant, and I don't expect TV support (though that would have been nice!) but I couldn't even get it running in basic 2D.
Oddly enough, it works fine running off the CD, so I suspect it's the 3D driver. It isn't recognized at all by the ATI proprietary driver and attempting to load that manually, umm, didn't go well.
After nuking it a few times and trying different things, I finally loaded 9.04 and it worked like a charm.
No, Firefox has its own help system. Press F1 for help in Firefox, and it will open a new tab pointing to a help page on support.mozilla.com.
Go ahead, try it. It's safe.
I've been with AT&T for a while, and you go into any AT&T store and look around at anything resembling a smartphone, and every last one of them supports tethering. It's a simple monthly add-on. There are even things that in no way resemble smartphones that do tethering just fine.
All smartphones except, of course, for the iPhone.
Can someone please explain the logic behind this? Why would AT&T offer tethering on Samsung, Nokia, RIM/Blackberry (just to name the ones I have used personally over the years), and not the iPhone? What logical reason is there for this? They'll gladly take your money on every other platform and offer you tethering.
Sadly, the 9600 is the bastard child RV350.
Yes, they still offer it as an option over part of their laptop line.
Inspiron, Vostro, Precision, and Latitude all seem to have at least a few Linux choices. But not all of them, and there are certainly a number of lines that no longer have Linux as a choice. They also plaster "we recommend Windows" all over the place.
I have little doubt that Redmond threatened to drop them a tier if they dared mention Linux in public ever again.
And if you purchase an OEM Linux system, those drivers will be preinstalled for you along with the hardware they support. Well, at least if you have a decent OEM.
I have a friend who purchased a couple of Dell Mini 10 units with Ubuntu, and they worked fine - all the drivers and everything were preinstalled and ready to go.
A lot of it depends on the hardware. Sound is problematic, I think, especially in Ubuntu/Mint because they just went to a far more complex sound infrastructure that a few people have had problems with. But I've moved plenty of Linux distros to completely dissimilar hardware without any serious problems. That's not to say it will always work perfectly under all circumstances. But with a little planning ahead, you can make this a complete non-issue. Remember, with Linux, your OS and apps are separate from your settings. This really makes reinstalls easy.
I have two hard drives in my computer:
1. I keep the operating system and swap on a small (20GB) drive. I have a spare 20GB drive installed in the computer and not normally powered up.
2. I have a separate (1TB) hard drive I use for my \home partition, where all of my settings and data are kept.
When I decide to upgrade to a newer version of Linux, I simply open the case, move the cables from the 20GB drive I'm using to the spare 20GB drive, and install Linux on that drive. During setup, I specify that I want to manually configure the hard drives, and tell it to use (BUT NOT FORMAT) my existing \home directory, and use (AND FORMAT) the 20GB drive as \ and swap. I set up the same username and password that already exists on \home from my previous install, wait a little while for the install to complete, boot to the new Linux, install any proprietary drivers I might need, and finally start up my package manager and install all the software I use that didn't come with the distro. Finally, I install the couple of commercial Linux packages I own from install packages I keep on \home.
Like magic all of my applications perform EXACTLY like they did before I did the reinstall.
Then I test the crap out of everything. If my computer doesn't like the new version for some reason, I swap cables back and I'm back to my old Linux install just like nothing happened.
It seems kinda scary the first time, but seriously, it's really easy.
Your application settings are all in \home, separate from the operating system. That, to me, is the biggest difference between Linux and Windows. Linux separates data and applications very cleanly, and everything about you is stored in \home. Windows makes it hard to get it looking like it did before the reinstall. You have to get registry settings backed up and restored or reconstruct application settings after you are done installing, you have to move tons of data around, applications often write their settings or data in their own program directories. It's just a mess.
The beauty of this setup is that if the new install goes badly, the old 20GB drive (or the old hardware) is there with my old Linux install on it. So I can always revert back to that if something goes awry. If I've recently suffered a major hardware outage and I don't want to reinstall, I will sometimes duplicate the first 20GB drive to the spare using dd, then boot to the spare to see how well the OS will survive the hardware change. If all goes well, I'm set. If not, I know I have to set aside an hour or two and do a complete reinstall.
You can very easily do this with only one hard drive, I just like the "spare drive" concept because I have a known working (but older) version of Linux always on tap in case I bork the current one. I've never had to fall back on it, but it's nice to have it there. You could always carve out 2 20GB partitions and do exactly the same thing, I suppose.
I have had the same \home directory since 2004. It's been used successfully by Corel Linux, SuSE, Xandros, Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu, and three versions of Linux Mint (my current OS). It's run on 5 completely separate computers. I've used dd to copy it from its original home on a 100GB hard drive to a 500GB drive and to its current 1TB drive, but there are still application settings and documents in it that date back to 2004.
Installing the OS and base applications is almost always faster than dealing with a badly borked driver, and you get that "fresh, clean OS" feeling. Except it looks exactly like it did before.
Try it again in 9.04 or 8.10.
I had several machines with older-but-still-decent video cards (ATI Radeon 9600, as an example, and a friend has an nVidia card with the same issues) that worked just fine in anything prior to 9.10, but ATI and nVidia both deprecated support for them in the latest binary, and there is some dependency reason why the older binaries won't work in the kernel that 9.10 uses. So you can have the latest Ubuntu, or you can have 3D support for video cards that ATI no longer chooses to support in their proprietary driver. Choose one.
I tried installing the binary manually, and, well, let's just say I dusted off and nuked it from orbit after the attempt.
This, of course, is the risk of using binary drivers rather than compilable source, and one of the major reasons so many Linux zealots hate them so much. With source, you can almost always make older hardware compatible with your shiny new kernel. With a binary, you can't support it after the manufacturer has decided not to.
That's true, though adrenaline might change that a bit ("well, if I push a little harder, maybe it will disengage the cruise. Try it again. No, OK, time to panic-brake. What, the brakes won't fully engage? Crap!")
In any case, something caused those brakes to go toasty. Though it could just be poor maintenance.
So, given my thoughts above about my initial instinct (must be a screwed up cruise control), it is possible that a few pumps on the brakes to try and disengage the cruise might have caused enough of a vacuum failure to make the brakes go all toasty.
Then the "safety features making things unsafe" parade began. Couldn't get it out of gear due to safety interlock, couldn't shut it down due to 3-second-push rule on emergency engine shutdown, not really a whole lot else you can do but steer and hope the brakes cool off and the vacuum builds back up in time (and, of course, if you're like most mortals your feet will be on the brakes making sure they stay toasty).
The more I think about things like this, the less I want a fancy car like a Lexus. Of course, that went without saying before this anyway.
You Lie!
Or you didn't put enough amps behind those volts. :)
As I understand it, when the go pedal is mashed to full-tilt-boogie mode, that steals vacuum from the braking system, and you may not be able to mean it enough to very rapidly overcome the kind of overpowered engine they tend to put in fancy cars like the Lexus.
I could try it in my car, but I drive a 90HP Jetta Diesel, so the test is going to be pretty irrelevant. Plus the clutch has 90,000 miles on it, so I'm not about to put that kind of stress on that clutch (grin). Not to mention finding a place where such a test could be done safely.
But, yeah, the start/stop button is the real humdinger. Assuming you have managed somehow to cook off your brakes, not being able to shut down a runaway engine is a scary concept.
I like my clutch, and my ignition key. They make me feel like a driver, and not a passenger who happens to be sitting behind the big wheel thingy.