You keep believing that if it makes you happy. There are advantages and disadvantages to signed drivers. I pointed out some of each. If you can't wrap your head around this I can't help you.
The underlying operating system is FAR more dangerous because it's a piece of shit engineered to spy on the user.
Completely unrelated issue. Not disagreeing with you but it isn't related to the discussion here.
The fact that the OS is swiss cheese is far more of a problem than "the user making the wrong choice".
And allowing unsigned drivers solves this "swiss cheese" problem how exactly?
If you're gotten to the point of showing such obvious contempt for the end user then you're doing it wrong.
Actually I'm supporting the (typical) user if you bother to actually read what I wrote. There are advantages for *some* users to having Microsoft (or Apple) curate drivers and there are some meaningful disadvantages too. Whether you favor one or the other I leave to you. I can say that for many people, leaving it to the end user is a pointless exercise because they won't understand the difference.
Louisville's largest cable and internet provider says the city is giving Google Fiber an unfair advantage
Cable companies whining about unfair advantages. Cry me a river. This from the same folks that built their business by convincing municipalities to sign exclusive agreements for cable service within an area.
Says someone who has no clue about the problem. As the rest of your post shows.
You have no idea what my background is so you're not really in a position to judge. Furthermore the public facts are that there is a ton of evidence that Y2K simply wasn't as big a problem as it was made out to be. There were a few bits that definitely needed some serious fixing but the hype around the problem exceeded the reality of the problem for most companies.
I fixed about 1.5 millin lines of code written in COBOL and PL1.
Good job. Your personal experience doesn't change the facts though. Most companies had nothing close to that amount of code to fix if they had any at all and the core operations of most weren't ever at substantial risk. The only real risk to many was that their bank or Microsoft wouldn't deal with the problem adequately. As long as that happened most other problems weren't too serious.
The company would have been out of business now, if we had not fixed ist software.
That is the exception that proves the rule. Not a single company I have worked for or consulted to or worked with (which is many) would have been put out of business by Y2K. Most companies exposure to the Y2K problem was minimal. A typical restaurant or a manufacturing company simply were not in substantial danger from the problem. A few companies had serious exposure to the problem and needed substantial mitigation. Most did not.
Basically every Company whee we fixed the code for would not have survived if we had not (or if we had made majour mistakes).
Are you familiar with the concept of selection bias? You worked on some of the few companies that actually had major problems. Some unquestionably did and no one should minimize the seriousness of what they dealt with. Most however demonstrably did not have serious problems with Y2K and had minimal to no mitigation required. It wasn't clear at the time how serious Y2K would be but we we have the advantage of hindsight and data about those who did little to deal with the problem. Turns out it just wasn't as bad as we feared for the most part.
I worked with several myself that did basically nothing in regards to the problem. My primary employer just before and during Y2K was a large manufacturing concern (Fortune 500 at the time) and while they did a systemic review (which I was involved in), there was very little they needed to do and the only potential significant risks to them were things that were entirely out of their control. None of the companies I consulted with in the 5 years before and after Y2K were in any substantial danger either. I think if you were to look around objectively you'd see the same thing in most places.
You do realize that in single countries like the US they have nothing but fixed exchange rates? Texas dollars are the same as California dollars.
The US also has free movement of labor and capital within the country which is how economic imbalances get solved. If New Jersey has economic troubles, the labor and capital can (relatively) easily move to another state. If labor costs in Michigan get out of line, the business moves to Georgia and the people as well. The Federal government controls the currency and acts to help allocate it where needed. Some states effectively subsidize others. Workers can become a citizen of another state simply by moving there. A Greek citizen cannot become a French citizen nearly so easily and the EU has the single currency but they do not have the ability to move capital and labor around as easily to deal with imbalances in local economic conditions.
They also have similar problems to the Greek bailouts (for example, problems with solvency of some of the states/territories in higher debt such as Illinois or Puerto Rico).
The problems in various US states bear little resemblance to the Greek bailout unless you squint really hard and don't go any deeper than the fact that they are related to debt service. The problems in Puerto Rico are solvable if Congress and/or the Executive branch could be bothered to give the island any attention and they are much easier problems to solve than the Greek ones. Interestingly many of the problems in Puerto Rico are challenging precisely because it is not a State. If it were there would be more tools available to them.
Britain was one of the world's most prosperous, safe, and culturally advanced nations for over a thousand years.
That's no guarantee that it will remain so. The British Empire is a shadow of what it was just 100 years ago.
I'm sure they will do just fine as they watch the EU collapse under the weight of their open borders policies
If the EU collapses for any reason it won't be because of their border policies. The thing most likely to cause the EU to fail is the problem of fixed exchange rates within the currency union. In a single country like the US, capital and labor can flow relatively freely to where it is needed when there are imbalances between regions. But since the EU is comprised of sovereign countries when you get a region in financial distress (see Greece) they have the problem of effectively having fixed exchange rates between sovereign states with more limited labor and capital mobility.
If Greece was still on the drachma, their exchange rate would have adjusted in response to the economic problems. But since they effectively had a fixed exchange rate, they get the problems of a fixed exchange rate. It's not clear that the EU can manage this problem in the long term. Note the already tense and clumsy response to the Greek bailouts. If a bigger economy within the EU (say Spain or France), were to run into similar problems the problem might become too large to handle.
I'm not saying the EU will collapse but if anything causes it to, it most likely will be the failure of the monetary union rather than immigration policy.
Y2K passed off with barely a whimper because millions of software engineers around the planet took it seriously and worked their asses off for a good 6 months to make their software cope with the year ticking over to 2000.
Much of that work was frankly unnecessary. Not all the code was fixed on time and some countries spent very little on Y2K remediation (South Korea, Italyand yet they experienced very few problems. Millions of small businesses did virtually zero remediation and yet they experienced virtually zero problems. While I'm not arguing that all the remediation was useless (much was definitely necessary) the problem was definitely blown out of proportion and there is copious evidence to support that assertion.
Additional contractors were engaged almost around the clock at extortionate rates in the final months, because there was so much code to remedy.
That was because large companies were worried about liability if by some chance something should go wrong. Consulting companies made a ton of money selling Y2K remediation to credulous executives for several years before the actual year 2000 arrived. Basically they were buying expensive insurance for a problem that they didn't fully understand.
The thanks go to all the engineers who worked ridiculous hours to keep the systems you rely on from falling apart.
Those engineers got paid to work those hours. You make it sound as if it was some heroic sacrifice on their part. Never mind that it was (mostly other) software engineers that created the problem in the first place by utilizing bad programming practices over the preceding decades.
Why not let the user decide if they want to run a driver that is not signed?
Because a most users have absolutely no idea what a signed driver means and don't really want to care. There is no possibility of my non-tech savvy parents making an informed decision on the matter and users like them are far more typical than ones like you or me. Frankly I'm only surprised that it has taken Microsoft this long to get around to doing something like this.
It's not like the user is going to be asked every day. If you get a new device, you install the (presumably signed) driver from the CD or manufacturers website or MS website. If you want to run that super old piece of hardware, you can install the unsigned driver. Win-win.
You're conveniently leaving out numerous possibilities. 1) Malware, 2) naive users not knowing anything about signed drivers vs unsigned ones, 3) poorly made drivers by unscrupulous or incompetent vendors, etc. It's considerably more nuanced a problem than you are making it out to be. I wouldn't have a problem with having a (non-trivial) way to bypass the issue for the rare people who might need to use unsigned drivers.
There are legitimate concerns about the free (as in speech) software implications here but frankly for the technologically illiterate as well as for the security conscious there is an upside to forcing signed drivers. Frankly if it causes problems I would expect those affected to move to linux and I consider that to be an upside as well.
Right now Pharmaceutical Company’s only seem to be interested in manufacturing medicine that will make the big bucks, like the Blue Pill, which really serves no purpose.
For something which you claim serves no purpose they are selling a hell of a lot of those pills. Obviously it serves a purpose for some people.
Being able to achieve an erection is not more important than treating Heart Disease with little to no side effects.
Funny you should say that since Viagra was originally developed for angina and hypertension. It turned out to have little effect on heart disease but they noticed the rather marked side effects and it turned out to be a financial boon for that. They did not set out to develop a drug for erectile problems, they just stumbled across one while trying to develop drugs for heart disease.
Maybe you should acknowledge the fact that curing heart disease turns out to actually be a difficult problem to solve. Especially in light of the fact that drugs that successfully treat heart disease are hugely profitable. If you want to find a place where drug company incentives are poorly aligned with need, heart disease isn't the best place to look.
No it is not. The definition of a company is "an 'artificial person', invisible, intangible, created by or under law, with a discrete legal personality, perpetual succession and a common seal. It is not affected by the death, insanity or insolvency of an individual member."
A company is a term that refers to a variety of types of organizations. Some types of companies are explicitly not concerned with profits at all. Perhaps you've heard of non-profit companies? Those are a thing you know.
From the linked article: "In the United States, a company may be a "corporation, partnership, association, joint-stock company, trust, fund, or organized group of persons, whether incorporated or not, and (in an official capacity) any receiver, trustee in bankruptcy, or similar official, or liquidating agent, for any of the foregoing". In the US, a company is not necessarily a corporation."
That's not true. Companies and the people that run them understand more than just profit. I defy you to find a single person in a company who cannot comprehend something other than profit. To claim that profit is all they can understand is absurdly untrue. But there is a nugget of truth in what you say. What is true is that companies and some (not all) of those who run them have a strong tendency to focus on profits excessively, particularly short term profits. They do this to the detriment of all else including the long term health of the company sometimes. It's too glib to say that companies only understand profit but it is fair to say that companies tend to focus on it too hard at times and make bad decisions as a result.
A well managed company has to consider things like the health of their community, the well being of their suppliers, the trust of their customers, etc. All these things sooner or later will impact profits so if company focuses excessively on near term profits then in the long term they will likely be worse off and so will all those who depend on the company - customers, suppliers, community, shareholders and employees.
Aside from the technical issues of what happened, what should a public-facing company's obligation be to discuss what happened in full detail?
There is no simple single answer to this question. It's going to be circumstance dependent. In many cases a lot of transparency will be helpful and appropriate. In other cases it probably won't matter much and in a few cases it might even be counterproductive though I expect that would be uncommon. If the problem is something like a security problem that will take time to resolve, immediate transparency might do more harm than good in some cases. But in general people are pretty forgiving if they understand the mistake was an honest one and that the company is working in good faith and transparently to fix it.
Would publicly talking about the sequence of events before and after failure help restore faith in their operations?
Generally speaking the answer is probably yes. If people can see that the company is acting in good faith to solve a problem that might shake confidence in the product then yes, transparency will probably help. Probably the canonical example of transparency working to the benefit of the company is how Johnson & Johnson handled the Tylenol tampering back in 1982. The company acted quickly, transparently and forcefully to deal with the problem and it probably saved the product and changed how such products were packaged going forward. It's one of the better examples of how to handle a major crisis. It's not hard to find examples of companies brushing things under the rug and then it blowing up in their face down the road. See GM and their ignition failures for a good example of that.
Indeed, the sample size is small, but how are they supposed to get a larger sample?
You don't. You just admit that the sample is to small to draw meaningful conclusions. The error bars here have to be enormous.
They did the logical followup, which is a mouse study that confirmed the (limited) human results.
Mice aren't humans last I checked and while mouse models are very useful you are limited in how far you can extrapolate the findings to humans. Basically this finding is something that should make scientists go "huh, that's curious - we should follow up on this once we have more data".
When I was an intern, I was often the one doing the heavy lifting because I was up on the latest technology having learned it only months or weeks prior instead of having to learn about it from a journal using decades old math skills
Please point me at any college program where they teach you the real details in how to build an actual working rocket using the latest technology. I'm sure these interns are smart people and I'm sure they did a very substantial amount on this project. I'm equally sure that the rocket would never have flown if it wasn't for some very experienced (literal) rocket scientists helping out. The "latest technology" in rocketry typically is not taught in schools. That's why this is such a great project - it allows young engineers to get involved in the real nuts and bolts of building a rocket which simply isn't something you get access to normally.
I'm an engineer and quite frankly, most of what they taught me in school counted for close to nothing in the real world. While I've been an intern as well and made real and substantial contributions, I won't pretend for a moment that I was usually the one doing the heavy lifting on the engineering. Maybe you found a project where you were well positioned to lead but that's the exception that proves the rule.
The iPhone is not only the best-selling mobile phone but also the best selling music player, the best-selling camera, the best-selling video screen and the best-selling computer of all time.
There is no "the iPhone". iPhone is a model designation that has covered a family of phones. It's just as idiotic as saying the Toyota Corolla is the best selling car because each year the product is tangibly different than the year before. The Toyota Corolla sold today bears little resemblance to the one sold even 10 years ago much less 30. If they want to specify a particular build of those products then fine. But calling the iPhone brand a single product is just stupid.
A model rocket would have no function and would just sit there on a display stand...
You seem confused. You can build a working model of something. I've built an Estes model of a Saturn V rocket that flew. Not a very accurate model but a working model all the same.
Now calling this a "model" rocket doesn't make sense unless it is modeling some other rocket. Really this is just a rocket, not a model rocket.
Couple of friggin' interns built a working rocket.
Not by themselves they didn't. They got help from experienced engineers and someone else funded it. It's kind of like US First competitions where much of the heavy lifting is actually done by real engineers and the students watch and (hopefully) learn and help out where they can. Now these interns are undoubtedly FAR more capable than a high school student and probably did quite a lot of the actual work but they also undoubtedly had a lot of help.
It's not negativity, it's just that pretending that a bunch of interns did this on their own simply isn't true. From TFA "For the past five years, interns were given the option to work on the Future Heavy rocket as a side project (outside of normal working hours). Approximately 300 people "had a hand in" building the rocket, according to ULA, while 68 interns and 22 mentors from ULA as well as 37 interns and 19 mentors from Ball Aerospace participated this year. Interns at multiple ULA facilities were able to contribute to the project"
Note the non-trivial number of "mentors" (read experienced engineers) involved in the project. I'm pretty sure they did a lot more than sit back and drink beer while the interns did all the work.
arguing that thousands of crimes remained unsolved because no one can crack into the perpetrators' phones.
And thousands of new crimes will be created by weakening the encryption. But that's basically job security for the DA and police so they want weak encryption because it ensures a steady stream of crimes for them to "solve".
if only all media companies would just say "screw it" and not post anything about the Olympics.
If they can't resist talking about Donald Trump and his douchebaggery they sure as heck won't resist talking about the Olympics and their corrupt douchebaggery. Even when they should...
If they're basing this on owning the copyright to the Olympics, this isn't going to work - owning a copyright on the name of a thing doesn't mean that you can prevent anyone from talking about your thing, just that nobody else can sell it.
It's not only a copyright but a trademark too. They Olympics and symbols relating to it are all trademarks so the primary argument would be trademark infringement though in many cases their argument would be a weak one. Often they don't have a solid legal leg to stand on but they have demonstrated in the past that they will no hesitate to sick their flesh eating lawyers on anyone who crosses them.
Basically they are trying to protect the (substantial) money they get from their "official sponsors".
You can bluster and threaten as much as you want, but reporting on the facts is perfectly legal.
That's true but the IOC and USOC don't care. They will sue you even if you did nothing illegal and I don't think this is an idle threat. They (mistakenly) think they are protecting their corporate sponsors by doing this. They sued Wizards of the Coast for using a symbol that could not possibly have been mistaken for the Olympic rings.
Commercial entities may not post about the Trials or Games on their corporate social media accounts
Good luck with that.
Apparently the letter says that any company whose primary mission isn't media is forbidden from using any pictures taken at the Olympics, sharing, and even reposting anything from the official Olympics account.
Reminds me of the time when the IOC decided the card game Legend of the Five Rings somehow infringed on their trademarks.
The bean counters would still do it without the CEO's direction, since it directly affects the company's ability to pay the employees (including said bean counters) salaries.
Company wide tax mitigation does not happen without C-suite executives being involved. Period. Virtually everything accountants do affects the financial statements and those are reviewed closely by the CEO and his direct reports if they care to keep their jobs. As such it does not happen without oversight with the head of the company leading that oversight.
And they would be under less pressure to do illegal tax dodges, since they would bear direct responsibility for those decisions instead of "just following orders.
Accountants DO bear direct responsibility for their actions and can (and occasionally do) go to jail for "illegal tax dodges". They are the first ones thrown under the bus if something shady is going on. Most tax dodges are 100% legal and there is a cottage industry in finding clever ways to legally reduce tax. The only ones who do it illegally are the ones who are too dumb to know better.
Hang the CEOs, watch the company do better as the people who actually know their jobs do them without outside interference.
If you want to see what a company looks like when you let the accounting and finance people do their jobs "without outside interference" I direct your attention to Enron. What you are proposing is a one way ticket to Fraudtown. A CEO who isn't keeping a close eye on the where the money goes in the company is not doing his/her job and should be fired.
But airplanes have been flying with Autopilot for decades, and the legal situation is quite clear - the pilot is responsible for flying the plane, and the Autopilot is just an assist that automates some of the boring stuff.
And that is exactly how it should be in automobiles as well. The driver is the responsible party. When we get to fully automated vehicles things might get a little more complicated but for now it's pretty simple who is liable. The only real question is if Tesla has some sort of contributory negligence style liability as well.
Exactly the same as Tesla's Autopilot - probably why they named it Autopilot was to remind people of that.
Problem there is that to fly a plane you need to demonstrate a high level of competency and substantial amounts of training with tests to fly even the simplest of aircraft which lack autopilot. They don't let you use autopilot until they are damn sure you know what you are doing. The only tests we give to drive are some ridiculously easy tests that most teenagers can pass and we never evaluate their driving competency ever again even though many are seriously lacking in driving competence. Trusting that drivers will understand the connection to the use of the term in aviation is wishful thinking.
Why do people want to use autopilot in the first place?
Numerous reasons. 1) Physical comfort to start. I use cruise control in my car to relieve my leg from having to be fixed in a position for an extended period of time. It can get quite uncomfortable. Discomfort can lead to distraction and distraction can lead to accidents. (insert yoda joke here) 2) Autopilot also can be useful as a safety measure precisely because people's attention routinely waivers. Computers don't get distracted as easily as we do. I challenge you to find a driver who has never accidentally veered out of their lane while distracted or had to perform an emergency stop because of some condition they failed to notice ahead. Autopilot can help ensure these situation occur less often. 3) We lack the technology to fully automate driving but we have technology to prevent some types of accidents. We put ABS and traction control and air bags, and seat belts and other technology on cars to improve safety. Technology that keeps you marginally safer is a good thing. If autopilot can prevent more accidents than would happen without it then it is a good thing to have. We're looking for a net benefit.
Slashdot Mirror
...and all of that is unadulterated bullshit.
You keep believing that if it makes you happy. There are advantages and disadvantages to signed drivers. I pointed out some of each. If you can't wrap your head around this I can't help you.
The underlying operating system is FAR more dangerous because it's a piece of shit engineered to spy on the user.
Completely unrelated issue. Not disagreeing with you but it isn't related to the discussion here.
The fact that the OS is swiss cheese is far more of a problem than "the user making the wrong choice".
And allowing unsigned drivers solves this "swiss cheese" problem how exactly?
If you're gotten to the point of showing such obvious contempt for the end user then you're doing it wrong.
Actually I'm supporting the (typical) user if you bother to actually read what I wrote. There are advantages for *some* users to having Microsoft (or Apple) curate drivers and there are some meaningful disadvantages too. Whether you favor one or the other I leave to you. I can say that for many people, leaving it to the end user is a pointless exercise because they won't understand the difference.
Louisville's largest cable and internet provider says the city is giving Google Fiber an unfair advantage
Cable companies whining about unfair advantages. Cry me a river. This from the same folks that built their business by convincing municipalities to sign exclusive agreements for cable service within an area.
Says someone who has no clue about the problem. As the rest of your post shows.
You have no idea what my background is so you're not really in a position to judge. Furthermore the public facts are that there is a ton of evidence that Y2K simply wasn't as big a problem as it was made out to be. There were a few bits that definitely needed some serious fixing but the hype around the problem exceeded the reality of the problem for most companies.
I fixed about 1.5 millin lines of code written in COBOL and PL1.
Good job. Your personal experience doesn't change the facts though. Most companies had nothing close to that amount of code to fix if they had any at all and the core operations of most weren't ever at substantial risk. The only real risk to many was that their bank or Microsoft wouldn't deal with the problem adequately. As long as that happened most other problems weren't too serious.
The company would have been out of business now, if we had not fixed ist software.
That is the exception that proves the rule. Not a single company I have worked for or consulted to or worked with (which is many) would have been put out of business by Y2K. Most companies exposure to the Y2K problem was minimal. A typical restaurant or a manufacturing company simply were not in substantial danger from the problem. A few companies had serious exposure to the problem and needed substantial mitigation. Most did not.
Basically every Company whee we fixed the code for would not have survived if we had not (or if we had made majour mistakes).
Are you familiar with the concept of selection bias? You worked on some of the few companies that actually had major problems. Some unquestionably did and no one should minimize the seriousness of what they dealt with. Most however demonstrably did not have serious problems with Y2K and had minimal to no mitigation required. It wasn't clear at the time how serious Y2K would be but we we have the advantage of hindsight and data about those who did little to deal with the problem. Turns out it just wasn't as bad as we feared for the most part.
I worked with several myself that did basically nothing in regards to the problem. My primary employer just before and during Y2K was a large manufacturing concern (Fortune 500 at the time) and while they did a systemic review (which I was involved in), there was very little they needed to do and the only potential significant risks to them were things that were entirely out of their control. None of the companies I consulted with in the 5 years before and after Y2K were in any substantial danger either. I think if you were to look around objectively you'd see the same thing in most places.
You do realize that in single countries like the US they have nothing but fixed exchange rates? Texas dollars are the same as California dollars.
The US also has free movement of labor and capital within the country which is how economic imbalances get solved. If New Jersey has economic troubles, the labor and capital can (relatively) easily move to another state. If labor costs in Michigan get out of line, the business moves to Georgia and the people as well. The Federal government controls the currency and acts to help allocate it where needed. Some states effectively subsidize others. Workers can become a citizen of another state simply by moving there. A Greek citizen cannot become a French citizen nearly so easily and the EU has the single currency but they do not have the ability to move capital and labor around as easily to deal with imbalances in local economic conditions.
They also have similar problems to the Greek bailouts (for example, problems with solvency of some of the states/territories in higher debt such as Illinois or Puerto Rico).
The problems in various US states bear little resemblance to the Greek bailout unless you squint really hard and don't go any deeper than the fact that they are related to debt service. The problems in Puerto Rico are solvable if Congress and/or the Executive branch could be bothered to give the island any attention and they are much easier problems to solve than the Greek ones. Interestingly many of the problems in Puerto Rico are challenging precisely because it is not a State. If it were there would be more tools available to them.
Britain was one of the world's most prosperous, safe, and culturally advanced nations for over a thousand years.
That's no guarantee that it will remain so. The British Empire is a shadow of what it was just 100 years ago.
I'm sure they will do just fine as they watch the EU collapse under the weight of their open borders policies
If the EU collapses for any reason it won't be because of their border policies. The thing most likely to cause the EU to fail is the problem of fixed exchange rates within the currency union. In a single country like the US, capital and labor can flow relatively freely to where it is needed when there are imbalances between regions. But since the EU is comprised of sovereign countries when you get a region in financial distress (see Greece) they have the problem of effectively having fixed exchange rates between sovereign states with more limited labor and capital mobility.
If Greece was still on the drachma, their exchange rate would have adjusted in response to the economic problems. But since they effectively had a fixed exchange rate, they get the problems of a fixed exchange rate. It's not clear that the EU can manage this problem in the long term. Note the already tense and clumsy response to the Greek bailouts. If a bigger economy within the EU (say Spain or France), were to run into similar problems the problem might become too large to handle.
I'm not saying the EU will collapse but if anything causes it to, it most likely will be the failure of the monetary union rather than immigration policy.
Y2K passed off with barely a whimper because millions of software engineers around the planet took it seriously and worked their asses off for a good 6 months to make their software cope with the year ticking over to 2000.
Much of that work was frankly unnecessary. Not all the code was fixed on time and some countries spent very little on Y2K remediation (South Korea, Italyand yet they experienced very few problems. Millions of small businesses did virtually zero remediation and yet they experienced virtually zero problems. While I'm not arguing that all the remediation was useless (much was definitely necessary) the problem was definitely blown out of proportion and there is copious evidence to support that assertion.
Additional contractors were engaged almost around the clock at extortionate rates in the final months, because there was so much code to remedy.
That was because large companies were worried about liability if by some chance something should go wrong. Consulting companies made a ton of money selling Y2K remediation to credulous executives for several years before the actual year 2000 arrived. Basically they were buying expensive insurance for a problem that they didn't fully understand.
The thanks go to all the engineers who worked ridiculous hours to keep the systems you rely on from falling apart.
Those engineers got paid to work those hours. You make it sound as if it was some heroic sacrifice on their part. Never mind that it was (mostly other) software engineers that created the problem in the first place by utilizing bad programming practices over the preceding decades.
Why not let the user decide if they want to run a driver that is not signed?
Because a most users have absolutely no idea what a signed driver means and don't really want to care. There is no possibility of my non-tech savvy parents making an informed decision on the matter and users like them are far more typical than ones like you or me. Frankly I'm only surprised that it has taken Microsoft this long to get around to doing something like this.
It's not like the user is going to be asked every day. If you get a new device, you install the (presumably signed) driver from the CD or manufacturers website or MS website. If you want to run that super old piece of hardware, you can install the unsigned driver. Win-win.
You're conveniently leaving out numerous possibilities. 1) Malware, 2) naive users not knowing anything about signed drivers vs unsigned ones, 3) poorly made drivers by unscrupulous or incompetent vendors, etc. It's considerably more nuanced a problem than you are making it out to be. I wouldn't have a problem with having a (non-trivial) way to bypass the issue for the rare people who might need to use unsigned drivers.
There are legitimate concerns about the free (as in speech) software implications here but frankly for the technologically illiterate as well as for the security conscious there is an upside to forcing signed drivers. Frankly if it causes problems I would expect those affected to move to linux and I consider that to be an upside as well.
Right now Pharmaceutical Company’s only seem to be interested in manufacturing medicine that will make the big bucks, like the Blue Pill, which really serves no purpose.
For something which you claim serves no purpose they are selling a hell of a lot of those pills. Obviously it serves a purpose for some people.
Being able to achieve an erection is not more important than treating Heart Disease with little to no side effects.
Funny you should say that since Viagra was originally developed for angina and hypertension. It turned out to have little effect on heart disease but they noticed the rather marked side effects and it turned out to be a financial boon for that. They did not set out to develop a drug for erectile problems, they just stumbled across one while trying to develop drugs for heart disease.
Maybe you should acknowledge the fact that curing heart disease turns out to actually be a difficult problem to solve. Especially in light of the fact that drugs that successfully treat heart disease are hugely profitable. If you want to find a place where drug company incentives are poorly aligned with need, heart disease isn't the best place to look.
Actually, that is the definition of a company.
No it is not. The definition of a company is "an 'artificial person', invisible, intangible, created by or under law, with a discrete legal personality, perpetual succession and a common seal. It is not affected by the death, insanity or insolvency of an individual member."
A company is a term that refers to a variety of types of organizations. Some types of companies are explicitly not concerned with profits at all. Perhaps you've heard of non-profit companies? Those are a thing you know.
From the linked article: "In the United States, a company may be a "corporation, partnership, association, joint-stock company, trust, fund, or organized group of persons, whether incorporated or not, and (in an official capacity) any receiver, trustee in bankruptcy, or similar official, or liquidating agent, for any of the foregoing". In the US, a company is not necessarily a corporation."
The companies understand one thing: profit.
That's not true. Companies and the people that run them understand more than just profit. I defy you to find a single person in a company who cannot comprehend something other than profit. To claim that profit is all they can understand is absurdly untrue. But there is a nugget of truth in what you say. What is true is that companies and some (not all) of those who run them have a strong tendency to focus on profits excessively, particularly short term profits. They do this to the detriment of all else including the long term health of the company sometimes. It's too glib to say that companies only understand profit but it is fair to say that companies tend to focus on it too hard at times and make bad decisions as a result.
A well managed company has to consider things like the health of their community, the well being of their suppliers, the trust of their customers, etc. All these things sooner or later will impact profits so if company focuses excessively on near term profits then in the long term they will likely be worse off and so will all those who depend on the company - customers, suppliers, community, shareholders and employees.
Aside from the technical issues of what happened, what should a public-facing company's obligation be to discuss what happened in full detail?
There is no simple single answer to this question. It's going to be circumstance dependent. In many cases a lot of transparency will be helpful and appropriate. In other cases it probably won't matter much and in a few cases it might even be counterproductive though I expect that would be uncommon. If the problem is something like a security problem that will take time to resolve, immediate transparency might do more harm than good in some cases. But in general people are pretty forgiving if they understand the mistake was an honest one and that the company is working in good faith and transparently to fix it.
Would publicly talking about the sequence of events before and after failure help restore faith in their operations?
Generally speaking the answer is probably yes. If people can see that the company is acting in good faith to solve a problem that might shake confidence in the product then yes, transparency will probably help. Probably the canonical example of transparency working to the benefit of the company is how Johnson & Johnson handled the Tylenol tampering back in 1982. The company acted quickly, transparently and forcefully to deal with the problem and it probably saved the product and changed how such products were packaged going forward. It's one of the better examples of how to handle a major crisis. It's not hard to find examples of companies brushing things under the rug and then it blowing up in their face down the road. See GM and their ignition failures for a good example of that.
Indeed, the sample size is small, but how are they supposed to get a larger sample?
You don't. You just admit that the sample is to small to draw meaningful conclusions. The error bars here have to be enormous.
They did the logical followup, which is a mouse study that confirmed the (limited) human results.
Mice aren't humans last I checked and while mouse models are very useful you are limited in how far you can extrapolate the findings to humans. Basically this finding is something that should make scientists go "huh, that's curious - we should follow up on this once we have more data".
When I was an intern, I was often the one doing the heavy lifting because I was up on the latest technology having learned it only months or weeks prior instead of having to learn about it from a journal using decades old math skills
Please point me at any college program where they teach you the real details in how to build an actual working rocket using the latest technology. I'm sure these interns are smart people and I'm sure they did a very substantial amount on this project. I'm equally sure that the rocket would never have flown if it wasn't for some very experienced (literal) rocket scientists helping out. The "latest technology" in rocketry typically is not taught in schools. That's why this is such a great project - it allows young engineers to get involved in the real nuts and bolts of building a rocket which simply isn't something you get access to normally.
I'm an engineer and quite frankly, most of what they taught me in school counted for close to nothing in the real world. While I've been an intern as well and made real and substantial contributions, I won't pretend for a moment that I was usually the one doing the heavy lifting on the engineering. Maybe you found a project where you were well positioned to lead but that's the exception that proves the rule.
The iPhone is not only the best-selling mobile phone but also the best selling music player, the best-selling camera, the best-selling video screen and the best-selling computer of all time.
There is no "the iPhone". iPhone is a model designation that has covered a family of phones. It's just as idiotic as saying the Toyota Corolla is the best selling car because each year the product is tangibly different than the year before. The Toyota Corolla sold today bears little resemblance to the one sold even 10 years ago much less 30. If they want to specify a particular build of those products then fine. But calling the iPhone brand a single product is just stupid.
A model rocket would have no function and would just sit there on a display stand...
You seem confused. You can build a working model of something. I've built an Estes model of a Saturn V rocket that flew. Not a very accurate model but a working model all the same.
Now calling this a "model" rocket doesn't make sense unless it is modeling some other rocket. Really this is just a rocket, not a model rocket.
Couple of friggin' interns built a working rocket.
Not by themselves they didn't. They got help from experienced engineers and someone else funded it. It's kind of like US First competitions where much of the heavy lifting is actually done by real engineers and the students watch and (hopefully) learn and help out where they can. Now these interns are undoubtedly FAR more capable than a high school student and probably did quite a lot of the actual work but they also undoubtedly had a lot of help.
It's not negativity, it's just that pretending that a bunch of interns did this on their own simply isn't true. From TFA "For the past five years, interns were given the option to work on the Future Heavy rocket as a side project (outside of normal working hours). Approximately 300 people "had a hand in" building the rocket, according to ULA, while 68 interns and 22 mentors from ULA as well as 37 interns and 19 mentors from Ball Aerospace participated this year. Interns at multiple ULA facilities were able to contribute to the project"
Note the non-trivial number of "mentors" (read experienced engineers) involved in the project. I'm pretty sure they did a lot more than sit back and drink beer while the interns did all the work.
arguing that thousands of crimes remained unsolved because no one can crack into the perpetrators' phones.
And thousands of new crimes will be created by weakening the encryption. But that's basically job security for the DA and police so they want weak encryption because it ensures a steady stream of crimes for them to "solve".
if only all media companies would just say "screw it" and not post anything about the Olympics.
If they can't resist talking about Donald Trump and his douchebaggery they sure as heck won't resist talking about the Olympics and their corrupt douchebaggery. Even when they should...
If they're basing this on owning the copyright to the Olympics, this isn't going to work - owning a copyright on the name of a thing doesn't mean that you can prevent anyone from talking about your thing, just that nobody else can sell it.
It's not only a copyright but a trademark too. They Olympics and symbols relating to it are all trademarks so the primary argument would be trademark infringement though in many cases their argument would be a weak one. Often they don't have a solid legal leg to stand on but they have demonstrated in the past that they will no hesitate to sick their flesh eating lawyers on anyone who crosses them.
Basically they are trying to protect the (substantial) money they get from their "official sponsors".
You can bluster and threaten as much as you want, but reporting on the facts is perfectly legal.
That's true but the IOC and USOC don't care. They will sue you even if you did nothing illegal and I don't think this is an idle threat. They (mistakenly) think they are protecting their corporate sponsors by doing this. They sued Wizards of the Coast for using a symbol that could not possibly have been mistaken for the Olympic rings.
Commercial entities may not post about the Trials or Games on their corporate social media accounts
Good luck with that.
Apparently the letter says that any company whose primary mission isn't media is forbidden from using any pictures taken at the Olympics, sharing, and even reposting anything from the official Olympics account.
Reminds me of the time when the IOC decided the card game Legend of the Five Rings somehow infringed on their trademarks.
This from the same crowd that refuses to ban Russia in the face of clear evidence of a state sponsored doping program.
The bean counters would still do it without the CEO's direction, since it directly affects the company's ability to pay the employees (including said bean counters) salaries.
Company wide tax mitigation does not happen without C-suite executives being involved. Period. Virtually everything accountants do affects the financial statements and those are reviewed closely by the CEO and his direct reports if they care to keep their jobs. As such it does not happen without oversight with the head of the company leading that oversight.
And they would be under less pressure to do illegal tax dodges, since they would bear direct responsibility for those decisions instead of "just following orders.
Accountants DO bear direct responsibility for their actions and can (and occasionally do) go to jail for "illegal tax dodges". They are the first ones thrown under the bus if something shady is going on. Most tax dodges are 100% legal and there is a cottage industry in finding clever ways to legally reduce tax. The only ones who do it illegally are the ones who are too dumb to know better.
Hang the CEOs, watch the company do better as the people who actually know their jobs do them without outside interference.
If you want to see what a company looks like when you let the accounting and finance people do their jobs "without outside interference" I direct your attention to Enron. What you are proposing is a one way ticket to Fraudtown. A CEO who isn't keeping a close eye on the where the money goes in the company is not doing his/her job and should be fired.
But airplanes have been flying with Autopilot for decades, and the legal situation is quite clear - the pilot is responsible for flying the plane, and the Autopilot is just an assist that automates some of the boring stuff.
And that is exactly how it should be in automobiles as well. The driver is the responsible party. When we get to fully automated vehicles things might get a little more complicated but for now it's pretty simple who is liable. The only real question is if Tesla has some sort of contributory negligence style liability as well.
Exactly the same as Tesla's Autopilot - probably why they named it Autopilot was to remind people of that.
Problem there is that to fly a plane you need to demonstrate a high level of competency and substantial amounts of training with tests to fly even the simplest of aircraft which lack autopilot. They don't let you use autopilot until they are damn sure you know what you are doing. The only tests we give to drive are some ridiculously easy tests that most teenagers can pass and we never evaluate their driving competency ever again even though many are seriously lacking in driving competence. Trusting that drivers will understand the connection to the use of the term in aviation is wishful thinking.
No, the regulations are still strict in Flint. It's just that they aren't being met there and in many other places.
You missed the invisible sarcasm tag...
Why do people want to use autopilot in the first place?
Numerous reasons.
1) Physical comfort to start. I use cruise control in my car to relieve my leg from having to be fixed in a position for an extended period of time. It can get quite uncomfortable. Discomfort can lead to distraction and distraction can lead to accidents. (insert yoda joke here)
2) Autopilot also can be useful as a safety measure precisely because people's attention routinely waivers. Computers don't get distracted as easily as we do. I challenge you to find a driver who has never accidentally veered out of their lane while distracted or had to perform an emergency stop because of some condition they failed to notice ahead. Autopilot can help ensure these situation occur less often.
3) We lack the technology to fully automate driving but we have technology to prevent some types of accidents. We put ABS and traction control and air bags, and seat belts and other technology on cars to improve safety. Technology that keeps you marginally safer is a good thing. If autopilot can prevent more accidents than would happen without it then it is a good thing to have. We're looking for a net benefit.