I wish we could mod the comments coming from China, North Korea, and elsewhere as Troll or Flamebait, so they could be properly ignored. Unfortunately, the trolls of politics are taken seriously -- they have nuclear weapons, unlike your average slashdot troll.
That brings up a good question: how are the documents (especially bills and amendments) created, internally? Do they just have interns punching away at Word documents or have they commissioned some sort of specialized collaboration software?
Your mention of "wiki-style" gets my mind whirling with cool concepts for ways of making bills easier to share between congressmen and more open to the public.
You'd think that transparency and accountability would naturally fall out of a democracy: voters should want to know as much as possible about the candidates so as to cast the right vote.
Unfortunately, the opposite happens: voters don't care enough to demand openness, so the politicians try to keep anything damaging (and more) a secret. That's why this has to be mandated.
#1. Don't allow users to be Admins of their own machines. I know in this day and age it's harder to push this one on people, but the ultimate reality is that if the user can't infect the system then they aren't going to get very far.
I have mixed feelings on this. I've had this restriction before, and it was probably the #1 problem with getting any work done. More than once I got caught in a loop of asking for something to be installed, waiting for the approval, waiting for the installation, and then submitting subsequent requests when the IT grunts didn't set things up right. What could have taken me a few minutes took weeks instead
On the other hand, I know much more than 95% of those around me about properly administering the computer. And even then, simply having a privileged account poses a risk, even for those who know what they're doing. There has to be a way of finding a compromise here.
There was a time when I'd say "good luck with that"... but times have changed.
People seem to be more willing to accept simple, plain text limitations. I think it's because of texting and twitter: users are learning how "cool" it is to be limited by simple, short text messages.
The only exception seems to be secretaries, who are the last holdout on flowery backgrounds and colored text.
Your users will be really pissed off but the infection rate will be way down.
And there's the rub. Security is a matter of balancing convenience with restrictions... with those that make decisions pulling the balance towards convenience. Yeah, you might get pounded with viruses every now and then, but the company still has to make money. The company is willing to risk infection in order to do business.
Our job is to find ways of providing convenience within a secure environment -- a goal that is very hard to achieve.
There's two factors at work, but people only tend to focus on the first:
1) Security through obscurity 2) Security through diversity
One reason Linux doesn't get attacked is because it's "obscure" -- few people use it on the desktop. (Servers are another matter, but we're talking botnets at the moment.) If roles were reversed and Linux were used on the majority of desktops, it's possible that it would be nearly as vulnerable.
But remember that the roles will never be fully reversed. Even if only a small percentage of desktops are moved to Linux, everybody benefits. Call it the desktop of "herd immunity." Imagine if Windows, OSX and Linux each had 33% of the market. In this situation, the damage any one attack could cause is dramatically reduced, regardless of which OS is attacked. It doesn't matter which one is more secure: all benefit from the mere presence of the others.
This is, of course, ignoring the diversity within Linux itself.
The solution to everything is education. It's a shame that the best solution simply doesn't work.
It may be an impossible challenge, but our job is to design systems to be bulletproof and foolproof. My dream is of a future where any user can sit at a computer and click anything in any order, and nothing will bad can happen. Sigh. My dream is actually a pipe dream.
I don't think anybody has yet wrapped their minds around the scope of the bill, but here's my understanding:
1) Not much. In theory, a high percentage of premiums (I've heard 85%) must go directly to care, limiting profits to insurance companies. However, that doesn't prevent the cost of care from increasing to compensate.
2) Oh, there's various rules included in there to provide protections. In reality, this doesn't mean much: there's too many loopholes in any system this complex. For an example, look at the recent credit card reform, which tried to plug the loopholes that exploit the consumer. Even now the credit card companies are compensating and finding new, creative ways of imposing fees and fines within the new system.
3) Impossible to do: the wealthy can always bypass insurance completely and simply pay for any procedure they want anyway. I think the gap has been closed somewhat, but don't expect it to go away.
Private health insurance stock is going to skyrocket! Profit!
Don't forget the additional billions of dollars being poured into the health care system by the government. Not to individual citizens, mind you, but to insurers and providers. "Profit!" is pretty accurate.
This bill was never about reducing the overall cost of health care, only to make it more affordable to the 15-20% who didn't have insurance -- on the taxpayer's dime (aka the 15-20% richest). Nobody should be fooled into thinking that insurance companies won't profit mightily from this, even with the limitations and regulations that have been imposed.
However, I doubt SCOTUS will strike the bill down in its entirety. The bill is too large and has too many good things in it, and will become more popular as time goes on.
Except that, according the the article, Viacom sent employees to Kinkos to avoid exactly this. Viacom is trying pretty hard to make Youtube's job impossible.
The point is that it's nearly impossible to determine if the person who uploaded the files was authorized. Youtube (apparently) has evidence that they purposefully tried to obscure the source of the upload, making the files look like they were pirated.
Youtube is simply pointing out the contradictions and hypocrisy in all this.
For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom.
It seems that Viacom purposefully uploaded these files to invalidate the whole concept of YouTube. "See how much of our stuff is uploaded! They can't filter it out! They have to be shut down!"
It's almost like dumping a much of random nails in the street and then suing the government for not cleaning the streets properly.
And the obvious reply is... who uses cash anymore?
In the end, what one person sees as easy and common another person sees as hard or an inconvenience.
Even though I don't see myself using smartphone banking in the near future, I do see the value of having it as an option.
Don't get checks? Nothing to see here, move along! Already go to the bank or an ATM? Look! Ponies! Don't have convenient access to a bank? Don't worry: there's an app for that!
In the Bush days? You're wrong - even now, Bush is still responsible for everything happening. Unless it's good. Depending on who you ask, of course.
(Yes, this is an exaggerated statement, but I am trying to make a point.)
Even now I hear some Democrats blame the economy on "eight years of failed policy" -- just like during the election cycle.
It's easy to blame Bush: he's an accepted target by most people. Yeah, you might make a few Republicans angry, but most people are used to it and move on. And those same Republicans would be angered no matter what is said, so there's no downside.
Me? I vote for people that truly believe "the buck stops here." Wish me luck.
Even in the USA... how popular will this be, really?
I got about ten checks last year. Five were from a place that had the option for direct deposit (but it took a while for it to kick in). The rest were birthday/christmas presents (so it's only 2 trips to the bank).
Anybody getting a serious number of checks won't bother with this service (taking them to the bank is much easier). Only a small percentage will fall in-between, where they get enough checks to make it a feature worth having and not too many to make it cumbersome.
When I was a teen we sent back and forth nude pictures of ourself with my girlfriend.... 15-16 year old is perfectly capable to understand sex.
That's nice that you were a willing participant, but many are not (numbers are hard to find on this, for obvious reasons).
The peer pressure on teenage girls is intense, and wanting to feel accepted by their boyfriend is a significant motivating factor in sending these pictures. For them, it's not about sex itself.
I think prosecuting the girls sending the pictures is absurd, but for different reasons than you. To me, it's akin to throwing all teenage girls that have had sex in jail. It's not about any age of consent, but it's about prosecuting the victim, not the criminals.
Yes, I've generalized here. It's impossible to know which and how many people were "pressured into sexting," just like it can be hard to say whether someone was physically abused or raped (the victims often defend the perpetrator). I think it's reasonable to say that more girls are victims than boys and that teenagers are more susceptible than adults.
Even if you accept the legal fiction that people under a certain age are incapable of consent, the age of consent differs from the age of majority in many places.
I'm fed up with people thinking that consent is a matter of age. It's not, and many use it as a straw man.
The reality is that many people feel they must do whatever is necessary to please others. So many girls are raped because a guy says, "do it for me" or other pressures.
Likewise, many girls enjoy sexting, but many are also pressured into it. For these girls, having that picture out there, spreading around the school is a nightmare. Now add a prosecution on top if it.
The "age of consent" is a great concept, inasmuch as it tries to codify that fact that it's easier to manipulate those that are younger into doing (and even claiming to want to do) what would normally be considered rape. Unfortunately, age is only one (rather unreliable) factor.
Maybe so but there are a lot of parents that don't want naked pictures of their perfect child floating around the school
I doubt many kids are happy if pictures of them are "floating around the school" -- nude or not. At that point, it becomes a matter of privacy, not of sexuality.
The sexual part just makes the issue worse as it encourages the pictures to spread and creates additional emotional trauma when it spreads beyond where it was intended.
I've been amazed at how much younger actors can appear in a movie than in real life. Watch some candid shots of actors at the Oscars; for some of them, the apparent age difference to the last film they shot is quite dramatic.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish we could mod the comments coming from China, North Korea, and elsewhere as Troll or Flamebait, so they could be properly ignored. Unfortunately, the trolls of politics are taken seriously -- they have nuclear weapons, unlike your average slashdot troll.
That brings up a good question: how are the documents (especially bills and amendments) created, internally? Do they just have interns punching away at Word documents or have they commissioned some sort of specialized collaboration software?
Your mention of "wiki-style" gets my mind whirling with cool concepts for ways of making bills easier to share between congressmen and more open to the public.
You'd think that transparency and accountability would naturally fall out of a democracy: voters should want to know as much as possible about the candidates so as to cast the right vote.
Unfortunately, the opposite happens: voters don't care enough to demand openness, so the politicians try to keep anything damaging (and more) a secret. That's why this has to be mandated.
#1. Don't allow users to be Admins of their own machines. I know in this day and age it's harder to push this one on people, but the ultimate reality is that if the user can't infect the system then they aren't going to get very far.
I have mixed feelings on this. I've had this restriction before, and it was probably the #1 problem with getting any work done. More than once I got caught in a loop of asking for something to be installed, waiting for the approval, waiting for the installation, and then submitting subsequent requests when the IT grunts didn't set things up right. What could have taken me a few minutes took weeks instead
On the other hand, I know much more than 95% of those around me about properly administering the computer. And even then, simply having a privileged account poses a risk, even for those who know what they're doing. There has to be a way of finding a compromise here.
There was a time when I'd say "good luck with that" ... but times have changed.
People seem to be more willing to accept simple, plain text limitations. I think it's because of texting and twitter: users are learning how "cool" it is to be limited by simple, short text messages.
The only exception seems to be secretaries, who are the last holdout on flowery backgrounds and colored text.
Your users will be really pissed off but the infection rate will be way down.
And there's the rub. Security is a matter of balancing convenience with restrictions ... with those that make decisions pulling the balance towards convenience. Yeah, you might get pounded with viruses every now and then, but the company still has to make money. The company is willing to risk infection in order to do business.
Our job is to find ways of providing convenience within a secure environment -- a goal that is very hard to achieve.
There's two factors at work, but people only tend to focus on the first:
1) Security through obscurity
2) Security through diversity
One reason Linux doesn't get attacked is because it's "obscure" -- few people use it on the desktop. (Servers are another matter, but we're talking botnets at the moment.) If roles were reversed and Linux were used on the majority of desktops, it's possible that it would be nearly as vulnerable.
But remember that the roles will never be fully reversed. Even if only a small percentage of desktops are moved to Linux, everybody benefits. Call it the desktop of "herd immunity." Imagine if Windows, OSX and Linux each had 33% of the market. In this situation, the damage any one attack could cause is dramatically reduced, regardless of which OS is attacked. It doesn't matter which one is more secure: all benefit from the mere presence of the others.
This is, of course, ignoring the diversity within Linux itself.
The solution to everything is education. It's a shame that the best solution simply doesn't work.
It may be an impossible challenge, but our job is to design systems to be bulletproof and foolproof. My dream is of a future where any user can sit at a computer and click anything in any order, and nothing will bad can happen. Sigh. My dream is actually a pipe dream.
I don't think anybody has yet wrapped their minds around the scope of the bill, but here's my understanding:
1) Not much. In theory, a high percentage of premiums (I've heard 85%) must go directly to care, limiting profits to insurance companies. However, that doesn't prevent the cost of care from increasing to compensate.
2) Oh, there's various rules included in there to provide protections. In reality, this doesn't mean much: there's too many loopholes in any system this complex. For an example, look at the recent credit card reform, which tried to plug the loopholes that exploit the consumer. Even now the credit card companies are compensating and finding new, creative ways of imposing fees and fines within the new system.
3) Impossible to do: the wealthy can always bypass insurance completely and simply pay for any procedure they want anyway. I think the gap has been closed somewhat, but don't expect it to go away.
Private health insurance stock is going to skyrocket! Profit!
Don't forget the additional billions of dollars being poured into the health care system by the government. Not to individual citizens, mind you, but to insurers and providers. "Profit!" is pretty accurate.
This bill was never about reducing the overall cost of health care, only to make it more affordable to the 15-20% who didn't have insurance -- on the taxpayer's dime (aka the 15-20% richest). Nobody should be fooled into thinking that insurance companies won't profit mightily from this, even with the limitations and regulations that have been imposed.
However, I doubt SCOTUS will strike the bill down in its entirety. The bill is too large and has too many good things in it, and will become more popular as time goes on.
Where would he go? Most other first-world countries have a more socialist health care system than this bill creates.
Interesting.
So, what's the difference between a victim-less crime and a crime-less victim?
Except that, according the the article, Viacom sent employees to Kinkos to avoid exactly this. Viacom is trying pretty hard to make Youtube's job impossible.
The point is that it's nearly impossible to determine if the person who uploaded the files was authorized. Youtube (apparently) has evidence that they purposefully tried to obscure the source of the upload, making the files look like they were pirated.
Youtube is simply pointing out the contradictions and hypocrisy in all this.
I think it's worse than that:
For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom.
It seems that Viacom purposefully uploaded these files to invalidate the whole concept of YouTube. "See how much of our stuff is uploaded! They can't filter it out! They have to be shut down!"
It's almost like dumping a much of random nails in the street and then suing the government for not cleaning the streets properly.
This article is definitely worth reading.
And the obvious reply is ... who uses cash anymore?
In the end, what one person sees as easy and common another person sees as hard or an inconvenience.
Even though I don't see myself using smartphone banking in the near future, I do see the value of having it as an option.
Don't get checks? Nothing to see here, move along!
Already go to the bank or an ATM? Look! Ponies!
Don't have convenient access to a bank? Don't worry: there's an app for that!
I had a similar realization once. The way I explain it:
Antivirus == Washing your hands
Software Patches == Regular doctor visits
On the other hand:
Shady porn sites == Cheep hookers
Clicking random links == Sharing needles
A few easy prevention techniques plus avoiding the "seedier" places go a long way.
In the Bush days? You're wrong - even now, Bush is still responsible for everything happening. Unless it's good. Depending on who you ask, of course.
(Yes, this is an exaggerated statement, but I am trying to make a point.)
Even now I hear some Democrats blame the economy on "eight years of failed policy" -- just like during the election cycle.
It's easy to blame Bush: he's an accepted target by most people. Yeah, you might make a few Republicans angry, but most people are used to it and move on. And those same Republicans would be angered no matter what is said, so there's no downside.
Me? I vote for people that truly believe "the buck stops here." Wish me luck.
Even in the USA ... how popular will this be, really?
I got about ten checks last year. Five were from a place that had the option for direct deposit (but it took a while for it to kick in). The rest were birthday/christmas presents (so it's only 2 trips to the bank).
Anybody getting a serious number of checks won't bother with this service (taking them to the bank is much easier). Only a small percentage will fall in-between, where they get enough checks to make it a feature worth having and not too many to make it cumbersome.
When I was a teen we sent back and forth nude pictures of ourself with my girlfriend.... 15-16 year old is perfectly capable to understand sex.
That's nice that you were a willing participant, but many are not (numbers are hard to find on this, for obvious reasons).
The peer pressure on teenage girls is intense, and wanting to feel accepted by their boyfriend is a significant motivating factor in sending these pictures. For them, it's not about sex itself.
I think prosecuting the girls sending the pictures is absurd, but for different reasons than you. To me, it's akin to throwing all teenage girls that have had sex in jail. It's not about any age of consent, but it's about prosecuting the victim, not the criminals.
Yes, I've generalized here. It's impossible to know which and how many people were "pressured into sexting," just like it can be hard to say whether someone was physically abused or raped (the victims often defend the perpetrator). I think it's reasonable to say that more girls are victims than boys and that teenagers are more susceptible than adults.
Even if you accept the legal fiction that people under a certain age are incapable of consent, the age of consent differs from the age of majority in many places.
I'm fed up with people thinking that consent is a matter of age. It's not, and many use it as a straw man.
The reality is that many people feel they must do whatever is necessary to please others. So many girls are raped because a guy says, "do it for me" or other pressures.
Likewise, many girls enjoy sexting, but many are also pressured into it. For these girls, having that picture out there, spreading around the school is a nightmare. Now add a prosecution on top if it.
The "age of consent" is a great concept, inasmuch as it tries to codify that fact that it's easier to manipulate those that are younger into doing (and even claiming to want to do) what would normally be considered rape. Unfortunately, age is only one (rather unreliable) factor.
For the same reason that it's not illegal for police officers to be in possession of confiscated narcotics.
Now, had the officials been discovered with a cache of pictures they'd kept private, we'd have a completely different situation.
Maybe so but there are a lot of parents that don't want naked pictures of their perfect child floating around the school
I doubt many kids are happy if pictures of them are "floating around the school" -- nude or not. At that point, it becomes a matter of privacy, not of sexuality.
The sexual part just makes the issue worse as it encourages the pictures to spread and creates additional emotional trauma when it spreads beyond where it was intended.
Or the classic True, False, and FileNotFound.
I've been amazed at how much younger actors can appear in a movie than in real life. Watch some candid shots of actors at the Oscars; for some of them, the apparent age difference to the last film they shot is quite dramatic.