I had a friend that worked for Sony Digital until recently. His former coworkers were all laid off and their satellite offices were closed with all of the work and properties folded back into their headquarters. It seemed like it had been coming for some time - they just kept getting non-committal answers about what direction they should have been going in, focusing on, or even completing. But since all the staff that was laid off locally were the people who maintained the SW MMO & TCG, this was only a matter of time.
Prepare to see "We have enacted a $1.99 monthly fee to allow us to comply with the disclosure and metering requirements in the "2011 Data Speeds Act" from the FCC.
I applaud this as an end user. The fewer idiotic plug-ins and crap I have to have installed, the better. As a programmer, between this and the vagaries around how things will be done with Windows 8, I'd be getting more and more irritated at the lack of clarity & communication from MS regarding where things are going. Training and coding isn't a cheap investment & there's not much of either that can afford to be wasted in this economy.
Personally, I never had a problem with Silverlight. Unlike Flash, it never crashed my machine into oblivion while trying to load an ad.
And that was only around for about a century or so - and yet I can still go to the store and buy it. Books have been around for almost EIGHT centuries. And not to mention the fact that this digital copy thing is almost entirely constrained to a limited set of first world countries where the wealth and infrastructure exists for this type of thing. Regardless of how many doom and gloom stories like this pop up to get clicks and start fights in the comments, paper books aren't going anywhere for a hell of a long time yet.
Or at least I'd hope not. (It's a joke, put down the pen and paper and/or your vehement email responses.)
I'd actually hope this gets someone's ass kicked in the Senate's IT office. While there may not be much interesting found on there, it's still dangerous. If some silly media loving hacking group can gain access like this, it's certainly just as easy for some other malicious government or entity to get in and do worse. But I'm sure they're still too busy worrying about how to control the rights of the citizens to worry about something as trivial as this....
The only practical (not Big Brother scary) use I can think of for this is for use in government & top secret locations. I have friends who work at defense sites or contractors & the phones they're allowed to have on site are *very* limited. If they have a camera, they're not allowed in or it has to be physically disabled (IE: broken). Period. There are not a whole lot of choices for camera-less phones anymore that have any useful capabilities, so I know that they would love this prospect. They'd be able to have an unaltered/unbroken device that is practical in today's world, yet still comply with the security demands of their job.
And that's pretty much it. I can only see it being abused in almost every other way.
To an extent, you're correct. The pictures, current location, etc. are items she put online herself and only she can be blamed for them coming back to bite her. HOWEVER, things like phone numbers, former addresses, drivers license information, income from tax returns, associations via family members, past properties owned or rented, and MUCH more is all available online from public databases. They're there for the taking by anyone who has the time and/or money to do the searches. In that case, that is information that neither she nor anyone else has any control over. Get one bit and it's easy to link to others through a myriad of ways. Can it happen to you? Yes. Is it likely? No.
But don't believe that staying off of social networking sites and the like will keep your information off the internet. That's just sticking your head in the sand.
Years of half baked products, poor reliability, hostile customer service, lazy innovation, and a general disdain for security are what your customers have had to deal with. I really don't care who is doing it to you or why - but I applaud them teaching you the hard lessons of the evolving technological age. You can't keep repeatedly flipping people the finger anymore and tell them to deal with it. Evolve or die.
And no, my loathing isn't related to just the recent PS3 debacle. It extends to experiences with consumer audio, professional theatrical projection equipment, and so on right down the line.
The fact that you're being taken out by the simplest of attacks in most cases just makes my smile grow a little more.
If anyone is qualified to tell me about a disaster, it would be the government. Nobody does/is/makes/exploits/advertises/promotes disasters like they do.
Personally, I can't wait to hear the tech support calls about why we're getting Kansas' tornado warnings here in Colorado and who will be sued over the mass chaos sure to ensue.
Or, you could actually have a spine and stand up for what's right.
This is the same as companies that determine how much it costs to fix a product versus how much it costs to pay damages to the people it can injure. It's "good" business, but it's cowardly and only hurts everyone in the long run. And someday, it will come back to bite you in the ass.
But hey, whatever works for you I guess.
Outside of Fortune 500 companies, I'd love to know which businesses can afford to upgrade this stuff on a yearly basis as well. I currently work for a broadcasting & print graphics group and previously worked for a national movie/tv/newspaper company. Stuff like this gets expensed out and depreciated on multi-year cycles. That includes not only the hardware, but the software on them. Because of restrictions involving proprietary software, we're currently standardized on Windows Vista with Office 2007, Acrobat 8, and CS4 products. The only upgrades that occur prior to that happen when a new employee or workstation is required, and they wind up being a guinea pig.
Many of the businesses I interact with bitch about upgrading Windows and Office on a consistent basis, and that's not even every year. They're sure as hell not going to upgrade CSx suites every year with their even higher costs.
How about all the school teachers and admin folk just worry about TEACHING? The only difference between this search & delete against the students' will and an actual cyberbully is that you're doing it there and in person and telling them they have no choice. Way to go rolemodels!
I'm sure the dolphins will all be happy to learn that they're being downgraded from "dolphin" to "human" status and being legislated by government. I, for one, will be encouraging the dolphins to rebel against this travesty of being called "equal" to a lesser species.
Three more dolphins enter from above. Snorky comes through double doors in rear and slides forward to the podium.
Bart: It's approaching the podium!
Mel: Surely it cannot speak!
Snorky: [in high child's voice] Snorky... talk... man...
[clears throat and reverts to deep male voice]
I'm sorry, let me start over. Eons ago, dolphins
lived on the land.
Moe: What did he say!
Carl: He said years ago dolphins lived on the land.
Moe: [surprised] What?
Snorky: Then your ancestors drove us into the sea, where we suffered for millions of years.
Marge: But you seemed so happy in the ocean. All that playful leaping...
Snorky: We were trying to get out! It's cold, it's wet, every morning I wake up phlegmy.
Lisa: Plus all that sewage we keep dumping.
Snorky: [gasps] That was you?
Homer: It was her alright. [holds up Lisa] Take the one who wronged you!
Snorky: I, King Snorky, hereby banish all humans to the sea!
If it was effective, drunk driving deaths would no longer - as you put it - still be killing about a 9/11 worth of Americans every couple months since the 1960's.
Slashdot Mirror
I had a friend that worked for Sony Digital until recently. His former coworkers were all laid off and their satellite offices were closed with all of the work and properties folded back into their headquarters. It seemed like it had been coming for some time - they just kept getting non-committal answers about what direction they should have been going in, focusing on, or even completing. But since all the staff that was laid off locally were the people who maintained the SW MMO & TCG, this was only a matter of time.
Prepare to see "We have enacted a $1.99 monthly fee to allow us to comply with the disclosure and metering requirements in the "2011 Data Speeds Act" from the FCC.
Sounds great! Why aren't WIRED carriers included?
Um...because TFA and the bill are talking specifically about 4G wireless networks, not your home provider.
I applaud this as an end user. The fewer idiotic plug-ins and crap I have to have installed, the better. As a programmer, between this and the vagaries around how things will be done with Windows 8, I'd be getting more and more irritated at the lack of clarity & communication from MS regarding where things are going. Training and coding isn't a cheap investment & there's not much of either that can afford to be wasted in this economy. Personally, I never had a problem with Silverlight. Unlike Flash, it never crashed my machine into oblivion while trying to load an ad.
And that was only around for about a century or so - and yet I can still go to the store and buy it. Books have been around for almost EIGHT centuries. And not to mention the fact that this digital copy thing is almost entirely constrained to a limited set of first world countries where the wealth and infrastructure exists for this type of thing. Regardless of how many doom and gloom stories like this pop up to get clicks and start fights in the comments, paper books aren't going anywhere for a hell of a long time yet.
Or at least I'd hope not. (It's a joke, put down the pen and paper and/or your vehement email responses.) I'd actually hope this gets someone's ass kicked in the Senate's IT office. While there may not be much interesting found on there, it's still dangerous. If some silly media loving hacking group can gain access like this, it's certainly just as easy for some other malicious government or entity to get in and do worse. But I'm sure they're still too busy worrying about how to control the rights of the citizens to worry about something as trivial as this....
The only practical (not Big Brother scary) use I can think of for this is for use in government & top secret locations. I have friends who work at defense sites or contractors & the phones they're allowed to have on site are *very* limited. If they have a camera, they're not allowed in or it has to be physically disabled (IE: broken). Period. There are not a whole lot of choices for camera-less phones anymore that have any useful capabilities, so I know that they would love this prospect. They'd be able to have an unaltered/unbroken device that is practical in today's world, yet still comply with the security demands of their job. And that's pretty much it. I can only see it being abused in almost every other way.
To an extent, you're correct. The pictures, current location, etc. are items she put online herself and only she can be blamed for them coming back to bite her. HOWEVER, things like phone numbers, former addresses, drivers license information, income from tax returns, associations via family members, past properties owned or rented, and MUCH more is all available online from public databases. They're there for the taking by anyone who has the time and/or money to do the searches. In that case, that is information that neither she nor anyone else has any control over. Get one bit and it's easy to link to others through a myriad of ways. Can it happen to you? Yes. Is it likely? No. But don't believe that staying off of social networking sites and the like will keep your information off the internet. That's just sticking your head in the sand.
Years of half baked products, poor reliability, hostile customer service, lazy innovation, and a general disdain for security are what your customers have had to deal with. I really don't care who is doing it to you or why - but I applaud them teaching you the hard lessons of the evolving technological age. You can't keep repeatedly flipping people the finger anymore and tell them to deal with it. Evolve or die. And no, my loathing isn't related to just the recent PS3 debacle. It extends to experiences with consumer audio, professional theatrical projection equipment, and so on right down the line. The fact that you're being taken out by the simplest of attacks in most cases just makes my smile grow a little more.
Seconded. Bravo for the business equivalent of "proof or it didn't happen" as far as Sony's claim of having everything fixed.
If anyone is qualified to tell me about a disaster, it would be the government. Nobody does/is/makes/exploits/advertises/promotes disasters like they do. Personally, I can't wait to hear the tech support calls about why we're getting Kansas' tornado warnings here in Colorado and who will be sued over the mass chaos sure to ensue.
Or, you could actually have a spine and stand up for what's right. This is the same as companies that determine how much it costs to fix a product versus how much it costs to pay damages to the people it can injure. It's "good" business, but it's cowardly and only hurts everyone in the long run. And someday, it will come back to bite you in the ass. But hey, whatever works for you I guess.
Outside of Fortune 500 companies, I'd love to know which businesses can afford to upgrade this stuff on a yearly basis as well. I currently work for a broadcasting & print graphics group and previously worked for a national movie/tv/newspaper company. Stuff like this gets expensed out and depreciated on multi-year cycles. That includes not only the hardware, but the software on them. Because of restrictions involving proprietary software, we're currently standardized on Windows Vista with Office 2007, Acrobat 8, and CS4 products. The only upgrades that occur prior to that happen when a new employee or workstation is required, and they wind up being a guinea pig. Many of the businesses I interact with bitch about upgrading Windows and Office on a consistent basis, and that's not even every year. They're sure as hell not going to upgrade CSx suites every year with their even higher costs.
How about all the school teachers and admin folk just worry about TEACHING? The only difference between this search & delete against the students' will and an actual cyberbully is that you're doing it there and in person and telling them they have no choice. Way to go rolemodels!
I'm sure the dolphins will all be happy to learn that they're being downgraded from "dolphin" to "human" status and being legislated by government. I, for one, will be encouraging the dolphins to rebel against this travesty of being called "equal" to a lesser species. Three more dolphins enter from above. Snorky comes through double doors in rear and slides forward to the podium. Bart: It's approaching the podium! Mel: Surely it cannot speak! Snorky: [in high child's voice] Snorky ... talk ... man ...
[clears throat and reverts to deep male voice]
I'm sorry, let me start over. Eons ago, dolphins
lived on the land.
Moe: What did he say!
Carl: He said years ago dolphins lived on the land.
Moe: [surprised] What?
Snorky: Then your ancestors drove us into the sea, where we suffered for millions of years.
Marge: But you seemed so happy in the ocean. All that playful leaping ...
Snorky: We were trying to get out! It's cold, it's wet, every morning I wake up phlegmy.
Lisa: Plus all that sewage we keep dumping.
Snorky: [gasps] That was you?
Homer: It was her alright. [holds up Lisa] Take the one who wronged you!
Snorky: I, King Snorky, hereby banish all humans to the sea!
If it was effective, drunk driving deaths would no longer - as you put it - still be killing about a 9/11 worth of Americans every couple months since the 1960's.