That's what I'm thinking too. I'm not sure we need an AI for replica dinosaurs. The real thing was pretty dumb, and I'm not sure I'd trust my kids going to a museum which had implemented true "T-Rex simulating AI" in it's exhibits. I think a few simple algorithms will work fine.
A few years ago my brother, another geek, emailed me a challenge to see which of us was laziest. He said he would put off all his work till the last minute and not clean up his house or run and play with the kids for a full week.
One of these days I'll get around to replying to his email.
About once in every three times that I boot into Windows 98, my keyboard gets locked out. Don't want to drop my internet connection and lose any time needed to re-boot, so I just do without it for a while. I've gotten good at websurfing using nothing but a mouse, but cutting and pasting single letters to form google search strings can be a pain. A sniff on my keyboard would be pretty pointless even if I was surfing/accessing exactly the kind of nasty data the sniffer was looking for.
Right now, he is focused on building incredibly realistic museum pieces that would seem a lot like residents at a zoo. Aibo already chases an orange ball, and some robots can react to facial expressions. Dilworth expects that his dinobots will be even more lifelike.
And he's looking at charging 100,000 bucks to buy one or lease one for 2,000 a month. After growing up in an era of T-Rexes with foam skin that looks like someone picked at it and pulled chunks out of it at my local natural history museum, I'd be happy to see something more realistic, even if it's smaller. And I bet his robots wouldn't cost much more than those foam and girder monsters.
I'm seeing a lot of responses which mention things like "computers are just a tool" and "educators are failing, not the computers." I have a different opinion than most, I believe. I am married, and have three small children. The oldest is Kindergarten age this year. My wife and I have had long discussions and done considerable research as to the role of computers in our children's educations. We're still not sure how we want to handle it. Of course the net is going to be a big part of thier life, and if we want to be responsible parents we can't simply ignore it or let them discover it completely on their own. It's not safe out there for a five-year old who just learned to read and write.
A lot of the arguement seems to parallel the "dumbing down" of textbooks arguement. Remember the textbooks which always used things like muffin pans to represent the number 12, or rows and rows of apples to represent apples? There was a large fuss among the mathematical community over those books. They argued that if you take a child who learned using that type of paradigm and moved them into the real world where they have to deal with numbers, that their reasoning skills wouldn't translate. They'd have to carry around a lot of little muffin pans to be able to do math. I think this arguement was mostly bunk, but I have noticed a tendancy in most of these "learning games" for the child to learn to win the game instead of learn what the game was supposed to teach.
Case in point. There is a game my five year old played for a while. It is part of a Sesame Street themed learning activity set. Kind of a parody on Alice in Wonderland, there is a group of cards with more or less hearts than the number on the card designates. You are supposed to remove the extra hearts, or add extra hearts to make the numbers and the number of hearts match. Once they match up, then the card says "Thank You" and steps aside to make room for the next card which requires modification. Well, my daughter didn't know that they wanted you to use subtraction to figure this out, so she just randomly plucked hearts off. If she ended up being right, the card would say "Thank You" and hop away. If she was wrong, she would just randomly put hearts on the card until she got it right. The entire goal of the game failed miserably because it was all about playing the game instead of understanding the game's mechanics(which is where the lesson really was).
I've seen a lot of games like that one targeted at children. All I can do is sit beside her and take a pencil and paper and show her how the math models the situation she is faced with and how doing the math gives her a faster correct answer than experimentation.
I guess I'm really just a rarity. I recently took the kids to the local science museum becuase they had an exhibit they called "Engineer It!" The exhibit had a lot of different components, from plugging together different pieces of boat hulls with different shapes to find the "fastest" boat design, to building bridges and buildings that can stand up to earthquakes. The major problem I had with that exhibit was the "tab A into slot B" mentality. There were full-color diagrams, or tutorials on how to solve each problem you were faced with. Even the pieces of the boats were color-coded to help you find the right pieces to make your boat. If you can match a red bow to a red stern, then you win. Computers aren't that bad, but in both instances the emphasis is on the results, not the process. In the final analysis, it's the analysis that's important, not the final results.
Instead of the news about ProcessTree shutting down being related news, it's directly mentioned in the article.
"As soon as you offer any kind of incentive, you will invite cheating," said Armin Lenz, a former executive at a commercial distributed computing company who is familiar with the need for security in online projects. "Be it stats, money or giveaways -- it is just human nature to try to get things the easy way."
Armin Lenz was one of the founders of ProcessTree. In this article they call him a former executive. Voila, two news pieces in one, Seti@Home trying to stop cheaters and ProcessTree gone. Now ProcessTree needs to update their website to reflect their closing. But at least they did a good thing as one of their last gestures. The full text of the press release, Acrobat reader required, is here.
In their recent paper, "Uncheatable Distributed Computations," Mr. Golle and Mr. Mironov explain how to verify that the work has been done, by inserting special checkpoints, or "ringers," into a unit of distributed data. If the data is returned to the sender without the purposely planted material among the results, the organization knows the data was not processed and the user is trying to cheat.
I think this is probably the easiest way to keep the users honest. Instead of having each unit processed twice, by two different people and diffing the results to hopefully catch a cheater, they simply add a little overhead to each unit and have a little section of the unit that they check for upon completion. Essentially each unit will have a section of the results which matches up with known info about that unit. If it comes back without that section matching the original key section, then it can be assumed false.
Of course, there is a caveat to this. If J. Random Hacker is a true follower of Discordia and finds out how/where these "authentication" blocks are stored in the unit, he can fake those as well. I think these authentication blocks of unprocessed code should be generated pseudo-randomly with different positions in the unit and lengths each time. Hopefully they will be able to avoid detection by jerks who wish to falsify data. Now why someone would want to mess with a project like this one anyway is beyond my comprehension, but that's another question entirely.
I really can't spoil that much anyway, since you can't beat the expansion without defeating Baal, which is kinda assumed since he's the only prime evil left after defeating Diablo. Who didn't see that one coming?
GAAAH I didn't see that coming(sob) I thought they might introduce new evils, maybe Mephistopheles, maybe Lucifer, but Baal! I'm completely gobsmacked. Curse you for ruining my enjoyment of the game before I even get to play it! Curse you I say. You know, I was(note the past tense) a staunch CowboyNeal voter. Now I've had it, I'm never voting CowboyNeal again(sob). I've been betrayed!
Thank you. I've always been bad at remembering who sang what. In this case I was glad that I remembered the name of the band at all, even if I did misspell it. The new album looks cool and the reviews are good, when I get home I'll sample some of the tracks.
?!? I misspelled the name of the band and two people have commented on it. The first one was polite and even pointed me to their new album which I may check out. What "research" need I have done pray tell? It was a simple case of me mis-remembering how the band spells their name.
If we consider your comment on the Win95 cd and Cyborg_Monkey's comment on the CD, then two people have flamed me for my comment on how I place no value on it except for the value I place on having that video available.
I see no need to justify my position on Win95 to you. Even on my Windows partition on my home system I don't use Win95. I've moved on and it's just taking up space in my CD binder now. I would have thrown it away except for the fact that I like watching that video occasionally. For me that CD is worthless except for the video. Note that I said "the only reason I keep that CD around." Note the use of the first person here. Not every Slashdot reader bashes Microsoft at every opportunity, even though they give us plenty of reasons. Quit reading between the lines, it makes you look like an idiot when you do it wrong.
See, this is really funny. My wife loves Everquest, but not for the "normal" woman reasons of being online with a bunch of people and chatting a lot. She likes to hack and slash stuff. I prefer Black and White. She is bored by Black and White. The Heroes of Might and Magic series is the only games we both really enjoy. It seems to have that balance of complex gameplay that I enjoy and the action she enjoys.
No, actually, "open-minded" people simply agree to accept the consequenses if there does happen to be a moral standard mandated by "heaven"(not in quotes to question the credibility of such a thing, but to allow for the variety of choices. Pick a religion/higher power/philosophy/etc and insert to taste).
All agnostics/athiests agree to burn in hell if they are wrong about their beliefs.
All diests/thiests agree to moulder away to dust, without having experimented with the full range of what they could have done without moral barriers while they were alive, if they are wrong about the existance of a higher power.
"Wherever there is life, there will be Pizza Hut pizza," the Dallas-based pizza chain's chief marketing officer Randy Gier said in a statement. "If space tourism is going to be a reality, Pizza Hut pizza will make the trip even better."
I don't know if I could handle Pizza Hut pizza after experiencing about 7g worth of acceleration. Hell, I can barely stomach the stuff on earth with my ass comfortably in my recliner. God help us if Papa John's starts to deliver to orbit.
and it was a damn cool video(probably the only worthwile bits of code on my Win95 cd, god knows it's the only reason I keep that CD around). I'd only have a problem with it if they do it poorly. The Duke selling beer was a poor commercial, they tried to take him out of his time frame and put him into our world. But what Wheezer did was completely the opposite, they immersed themselves in the Happy Days time frame and didn't try to change the scenes/characters too much. As such it was a nice piece of nostalgia with a modern twist. But I don't think it will work if they follow the mindset that produced the "Duke selling Coors" commercial.
The tone of the article suggests that it is self-evident that these behaviors are wrong. Any woman with a g-string is evil and any man who looks at her needs help. I think we're going to find, as geeks find their influence in society growing with the technology they are affiliated with, a clash between the geek morality and the "traditional" morality.
Anyone who has read the Jargon File section on J. Random Hacker probably saw a lot of themselves in it. Geeks/hackers often have looser morals than the mainstream. This is not necessarially a bad thing, but just like Linux and Microsoft are going head to head because of different ideologies, we're going to see a clash over moralities soon. Geek culture is going to either have to adapt or conquer. Mainstream culture, at least in the US(about the only place Puritan values are considered anything but laughable) is going to clash with geek culture. It's already happening in the schools as more and more "geek" kids get in trouble for following the natural curiosity that is, in my opinion, the defining charastic of a geek. Similarially the geek curiosity makes us want to experiment with different moralities, especially where sex is involved. With a open mind, free of moral paradigms, pornography becomes a non-issue. Behavior is what is important. Individual responsibility and personal growth are far more important than some outdated feelings of "obligations" to current moral standars and the paradigms they represent.
I'm not even sure I'd call Windows "standardized." I think "homogenized" might be a better choice. Forced compliance, be it forced at gunpoint or with market pressures, will rarely be better than a democratically elected standard. The product which comes out of an open RFC process is often far superior to a product designed around some archaic API.
The business model for commercial software has a proven track record and is a key engine of economic growth for many countries.
I'd just like to point out that the RIAA and MPAA both had proven business models until the Internet came into play. Now thier business models are threatened. Business models need to grow and change. The marketplace isn't static, and people who think the same model will work forever are in for a rude awakening. I won't argue the "rightness" or "wrongness" of the Open Source versus Closed Source models, but the consumers will decide and whoever has a business model which is more agreeable to the consumer(and stacking the deck by FUDding the competition or running ad campaigns to sway consumer opinion is perfectly legal) in the long run will come out on top. Period.
The Diamond product is pretty cool. A 60-Gig mp3 jukebox in the dashboard! Drool! Now the real question, where can I get a ethernet card for my '82 Pinto?
I didn't really want to bring this into it, but I work for Sprint. I can tell you, first-hand, how difficult it is to keep a handle on how things are organized/scheduled. Hell, I've been trying for two weeks now to get someone to send me a fscking copy of AIX 4.3.3 to do a server install. Fifteen calls, a dozen emails and an escalation later, I'm no closer.
If they have informants, then their informants are very, very, very good at what they do. If I'm scheduled to test a phone line I could show up early/late, do it from home, ask someone else to do it if I'm really busy. I could notice that someone had logged into a box that no one was supposed to be using. I could check activity logs(now we have to have informants/conspirators with high security/admin access to the switches). Any number of things could cause the informants info to be inaccurate and the conspiracy uncovered. And they also have to know when Joe Random reporter makes his own "test calls"(as someone affiliated with the article did) and have people inside AT&T as well(since they had similar issues/investigations).
Occam's razor seems to be eminently suited to this story.
EXACTLY!!! God why couldn't it have been said before? From the article.
"We've run our tests, we've spent time and resources on this, and we haven't seen any indication of call diversion," says Scott Collins, of Sprint subsidiary Central Telephone's department of regulatory affairs. Last November, at the direction of the Nevada Public Utilities Commission (PUC), the phone company ran three days of test calls from five different Las Vegas hotels: the Sahara, Travel Lodge, Vagabond, Motel 6, and Four Queens. Of 205 calls, all but 23 went through, and none were diverted to competitors. (Further investigation of the 23 incomplete calls turned up innocent explanations.) Testing by AT&T in 1997 produced similar results.
Anyone who read the article and saw this and still believes it's a conspiracy instead of just plain crappy/overloaded service has got to be a serious paranoid.
Jeebus on a pogo stick! 23/205 failed? That's a crazy nuts percentage! And it's not just Sprint either. Now they may have vulnerabilities to people like Mitnick, but that's different than simple overload.
Pimp: Some jerk is buying/threatening/hacking the telco so they'll redirect my calls to some other pimp! Wah!
Telco: We've spent time and resources on these complaints and we haven't found any foul play. Most test calls go through fine and the ones which don't look like ordinary errors.
Kevin Mitnick: The Telcos are so freaking stupid it's not funny. I blackmailed some poor schmoe into giving me some info that should have been protected, then called some other fool and pretended I was an employee to get more "secret" data. I cracked the system and used it to steal services from other people or to hide my real location.
The Mob: Yea, we tried to set up a phone-redirect-to-our-pimps scam. Our guys got busted and spent years in jail. The enforcer we sent to horn in on some local pimp's business got busted and died in jail.
My analysis? Pure sensationalism in it's style, but has some valid points.
Any large company is going to be vulnerable to these kinds of exploits. It's just impossible for the right hand to always know what the left hand is doing. What Mitnick says may well be true.
I have no doubt that prostitution is big business in Vegas, but just because one or two pimps aren't getting the kind of business they used to doesn't imply a conspiracy. Maybe jons got smarter and started using the net to look up hoes?
As far as the conspiracy? I would be very suprised if they privy enough to Sprint's info to avoid detection. Not doing something illegal when the boss is looking is a lot harder if you don't know when the boss is looking. As we've already established, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, how is a third party supposed to be on top of test schedules and investigations?
The fact that the administration is being tight-lipped about the details suggests they're trying to cover their asses.
Of course. That's why we should outlaw public access to cryptographic technology and repeal the fifth ammendment. Only people with something to hide wouldn't fully disclose everything to everyone.
That having been said, I would be as curious as the next guy as to the actual crime committed, but I don't agree with forcing them to release info unless some charges are pressed or an investigation started. And the implication that they have something to hide because they haven't already offered full disclosure is nauseating.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what I'm thinking too. I'm not sure we need an AI for replica dinosaurs. The real thing was pretty dumb, and I'm not sure I'd trust my kids going to a museum which had implemented true "T-Rex simulating AI" in it's exhibits. I think a few simple algorithms will work fine.
Steven
A few years ago my brother, another geek, emailed me a challenge to see which of us was laziest. He said he would put off all his work till the last minute and not clean up his house or run and play with the kids for a full week.
One of these days I'll get around to replying to his email.
Steven
About once in every three times that I boot into Windows 98, my keyboard gets locked out. Don't want to drop my internet connection and lose any time needed to re-boot, so I just do without it for a while. I've gotten good at websurfing using nothing but a mouse, but cutting and pasting single letters to form google search strings can be a pain. A sniff on my keyboard would be pretty pointless even if I was surfing/accessing exactly the kind of nasty data the sniffer was looking for.
Steven
Right now, he is focused on building incredibly realistic museum pieces that would seem a lot like residents at a zoo. Aibo already chases an orange ball, and some robots can react to facial expressions. Dilworth expects that his dinobots will be even more lifelike.
And he's looking at charging 100,000 bucks to buy one or lease one for 2,000 a month. After growing up in an era of T-Rexes with foam skin that looks like someone picked at it and pulled chunks out of it at my local natural history museum, I'd be happy to see something more realistic, even if it's smaller. And I bet his robots wouldn't cost much more than those foam and girder monsters.
Steven
I'm seeing a lot of responses which mention things like "computers are just a tool" and "educators are failing, not the computers." I have a different opinion than most, I believe. I am married, and have three small children. The oldest is Kindergarten age this year. My wife and I have had long discussions and done considerable research as to the role of computers in our children's educations. We're still not sure how we want to handle it. Of course the net is going to be a big part of thier life, and if we want to be responsible parents we can't simply ignore it or let them discover it completely on their own. It's not safe out there for a five-year old who just learned to read and write.
A lot of the arguement seems to parallel the "dumbing down" of textbooks arguement. Remember the textbooks which always used things like muffin pans to represent the number 12, or rows and rows of apples to represent apples? There was a large fuss among the mathematical community over those books. They argued that if you take a child who learned using that type of paradigm and moved them into the real world where they have to deal with numbers, that their reasoning skills wouldn't translate. They'd have to carry around a lot of little muffin pans to be able to do math. I think this arguement was mostly bunk, but I have noticed a tendancy in most of these "learning games" for the child to learn to win the game instead of learn what the game was supposed to teach.
Case in point. There is a game my five year old played for a while. It is part of a Sesame Street themed learning activity set. Kind of a parody on Alice in Wonderland, there is a group of cards with more or less hearts than the number on the card designates. You are supposed to remove the extra hearts, or add extra hearts to make the numbers and the number of hearts match. Once they match up, then the card says "Thank You" and steps aside to make room for the next card which requires modification. Well, my daughter didn't know that they wanted you to use subtraction to figure this out, so she just randomly plucked hearts off. If she ended up being right, the card would say "Thank You" and hop away. If she was wrong, she would just randomly put hearts on the card until she got it right. The entire goal of the game failed miserably because it was all about playing the game instead of understanding the game's mechanics(which is where the lesson really was).
I've seen a lot of games like that one targeted at children. All I can do is sit beside her and take a pencil and paper and show her how the math models the situation she is faced with and how doing the math gives her a faster correct answer than experimentation.
I guess I'm really just a rarity. I recently took the kids to the local science museum becuase they had an exhibit they called "Engineer It!" The exhibit had a lot of different components, from plugging together different pieces of boat hulls with different shapes to find the "fastest" boat design, to building bridges and buildings that can stand up to earthquakes. The major problem I had with that exhibit was the "tab A into slot B" mentality. There were full-color diagrams, or tutorials on how to solve each problem you were faced with. Even the pieces of the boats were color-coded to help you find the right pieces to make your boat. If you can match a red bow to a red stern, then you win. Computers aren't that bad, but in both instances the emphasis is on the results, not the process. In the final analysis, it's the analysis that's important, not the final results.
Steven
Instead of the news about ProcessTree shutting down being related news, it's directly mentioned in the article.
"As soon as you offer any kind of incentive, you will invite cheating," said Armin Lenz, a former executive at a commercial distributed computing company who is familiar with the need for security in online projects. "Be it stats, money or giveaways -- it is just human nature to try to get things the easy way."
Armin Lenz was one of the founders of ProcessTree. In this article they call him a former executive. Voila, two news pieces in one, Seti@Home trying to stop cheaters and ProcessTree gone. Now ProcessTree needs to update their website to reflect their closing. But at least they did a good thing as one of their last gestures. The full text of the press release, Acrobat reader required, is here.
Steven
In their recent paper, "Uncheatable Distributed Computations," Mr. Golle and Mr. Mironov explain how to verify that the work has been done, by inserting special checkpoints, or "ringers," into a unit of distributed data. If the data is returned to the sender without the purposely planted material among the results, the organization knows the data was not processed and the user is trying to cheat.
I think this is probably the easiest way to keep the users honest. Instead of having each unit processed twice, by two different people and diffing the results to hopefully catch a cheater, they simply add a little overhead to each unit and have a little section of the unit that they check for upon completion. Essentially each unit will have a section of the results which matches up with known info about that unit. If it comes back without that section matching the original key section, then it can be assumed false.
Of course, there is a caveat to this. If J. Random Hacker is a true follower of Discordia and finds out how/where these "authentication" blocks are stored in the unit, he can fake those as well. I think these authentication blocks of unprocessed code should be generated pseudo-randomly with different positions in the unit and lengths each time. Hopefully they will be able to avoid detection by jerks who wish to falsify data. Now why someone would want to mess with a project like this one anyway is beyond my comprehension, but that's another question entirely.
Steven
I really can't spoil that much anyway, since you can't beat the expansion without defeating Baal, which is kinda assumed since he's the only prime evil left after defeating Diablo. Who didn't see that one coming?
GAAAH I didn't see that coming(sob) I thought they might introduce new evils, maybe Mephistopheles, maybe Lucifer, but Baal! I'm completely gobsmacked. Curse you for ruining my enjoyment of the game before I even get to play it! Curse you I say. You know, I was(note the past tense) a staunch CowboyNeal voter. Now I've had it, I'm never voting CowboyNeal again(sob). I've been betrayed!
Steven
Thank you. I've always been bad at remembering who sang what. In this case I was glad that I remembered the name of the band at all, even if I did misspell it. The new album looks cool and the reviews are good, when I get home I'll sample some of the tracks.
Steven
?!? I misspelled the name of the band and two people have commented on it. The first one was polite and even pointed me to their new album which I may check out. What "research" need I have done pray tell? It was a simple case of me mis-remembering how the band spells their name.
If we consider your comment on the Win95 cd and Cyborg_Monkey's comment on the CD, then two people have flamed me for my comment on how I place no value on it except for the value I place on having that video available.
I see no need to justify my position on Win95 to you. Even on my Windows partition on my home system I don't use Win95. I've moved on and it's just taking up space in my CD binder now. I would have thrown it away except for the fact that I like watching that video occasionally. For me that CD is worthless except for the video. Note that I said "the only reason I keep that CD around." Note the use of the first person here. Not every Slashdot reader bashes Microsoft at every opportunity, even though they give us plenty of reasons. Quit reading between the lines, it makes you look like an idiot when you do it wrong.
Steven
FOAD
Steven
See, this is really funny. My wife loves Everquest, but not for the "normal" woman reasons of being online with a bunch of people and chatting a lot. She likes to hack and slash stuff. I prefer Black and White. She is bored by Black and White. The Heroes of Might and Magic series is the only games we both really enjoy. It seems to have that balance of complex gameplay that I enjoy and the action she enjoys.
Steven
No, actually, "open-minded" people simply agree to accept the consequenses if there does happen to be a moral standard mandated by "heaven"(not in quotes to question the credibility of such a thing, but to allow for the variety of choices. Pick a religion/higher power/philosophy/etc and insert to taste).
All agnostics/athiests agree to burn in hell if they are wrong about their beliefs.
All diests/thiests agree to moulder away to dust, without having experimented with the full range of what they could have done without moral barriers while they were alive, if they are wrong about the existance of a higher power.
Perhaps this is the way it should be.
Steven
"Wherever there is life, there will be Pizza Hut pizza," the Dallas-based pizza chain's chief marketing officer Randy Gier said in a statement. "If space tourism is going to be a reality, Pizza Hut pizza will make the trip even better."
I don't know if I could handle Pizza Hut pizza after experiencing about 7g worth of acceleration. Hell, I can barely stomach the stuff on earth with my ass comfortably in my recliner. God help us if Papa John's starts to deliver to orbit.
Steven
and it was a damn cool video(probably the only worthwile bits of code on my Win95 cd, god knows it's the only reason I keep that CD around). I'd only have a problem with it if they do it poorly. The Duke selling beer was a poor commercial, they tried to take him out of his time frame and put him into our world. But what Wheezer did was completely the opposite, they immersed themselves in the Happy Days time frame and didn't try to change the scenes/characters too much. As such it was a nice piece of nostalgia with a modern twist. But I don't think it will work if they follow the mindset that produced the "Duke selling Coors" commercial.
Steven
The tone of the article suggests that it is self-evident that these behaviors are wrong. Any woman with a g-string is evil and any man who looks at her needs help. I think we're going to find, as geeks find their influence in society growing with the technology they are affiliated with, a clash between the geek morality and the "traditional" morality.
Anyone who has read the Jargon File section on J. Random Hacker probably saw a lot of themselves in it. Geeks/hackers often have looser morals than the mainstream. This is not necessarially a bad thing, but just like Linux and Microsoft are going head to head because of different ideologies, we're going to see a clash over moralities soon. Geek culture is going to either have to adapt or conquer. Mainstream culture, at least in the US(about the only place Puritan values are considered anything but laughable) is going to clash with geek culture. It's already happening in the schools as more and more "geek" kids get in trouble for following the natural curiosity that is, in my opinion, the defining charastic of a geek. Similarially the geek curiosity makes us want to experiment with different moralities, especially where sex is involved. With a open mind, free of moral paradigms, pornography becomes a non-issue. Behavior is what is important. Individual responsibility and personal growth are far more important than some outdated feelings of "obligations" to current moral standars and the paradigms they represent.
Stay tuned, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Steven
I'm not even sure I'd call Windows "standardized." I think "homogenized" might be a better choice. Forced compliance, be it forced at gunpoint or with market pressures, will rarely be better than a democratically elected standard. The product which comes out of an open RFC process is often far superior to a product designed around some archaic API.
Steven
Not Bart!
Nancy Cartwright, voice of Bart Simpson, is a Scientologist! I found her name on a list of Scientologist celebrities at this page Sob, sob...
Steven
The business model for commercial software has a proven track record and is a key engine of economic growth for many countries.
I'd just like to point out that the RIAA and MPAA both had proven business models until the Internet came into play. Now thier business models are threatened. Business models need to grow and change. The marketplace isn't static, and people who think the same model will work forever are in for a rude awakening. I won't argue the "rightness" or "wrongness" of the Open Source versus Closed Source models, but the consumers will decide and whoever has a business model which is more agreeable to the consumer(and stacking the deck by FUDding the competition or running ad campaigns to sway consumer opinion is perfectly legal) in the long run will come out on top. Period.
Steven
The Diamond product is pretty cool. A 60-Gig mp3 jukebox in the dashboard! Drool! Now the real question, where can I get a ethernet card for my '82 Pinto?
Steven
I didn't really want to bring this into it, but I work for Sprint. I can tell you, first-hand, how difficult it is to keep a handle on how things are organized/scheduled. Hell, I've been trying for two weeks now to get someone to send me a fscking copy of AIX 4.3.3 to do a server install. Fifteen calls, a dozen emails and an escalation later, I'm no closer.
If they have informants, then their informants are very, very, very good at what they do. If I'm scheduled to test a phone line I could show up early/late, do it from home, ask someone else to do it if I'm really busy. I could notice that someone had logged into a box that no one was supposed to be using. I could check activity logs(now we have to have informants/conspirators with high security/admin access to the switches). Any number of things could cause the informants info to be inaccurate and the conspiracy uncovered. And they also have to know when Joe Random reporter makes his own "test calls"(as someone affiliated with the article did) and have people inside AT&T as well(since they had similar issues/investigations).
Occam's razor seems to be eminently suited to this story.
Steven
Anyone who read the article and saw this and still believes it's a conspiracy instead of just plain crappy/overloaded service has got to be a serious paranoid.
Jeebus on a pogo stick! 23/205 failed? That's a crazy nuts percentage! And it's not just Sprint either. Now they may have vulnerabilities to people like Mitnick, but that's different than simple overload.
Steven
Here's a synopsis of the article.
Pimp: Some jerk is buying/threatening/hacking the telco so they'll redirect my calls to some other pimp! Wah!
Telco: We've spent time and resources on these complaints and we haven't found any foul play. Most test calls go through fine and the ones which don't look like ordinary errors.
Kevin Mitnick: The Telcos are so freaking stupid it's not funny. I blackmailed some poor schmoe into giving me some info that should have been protected, then called some other fool and pretended I was an employee to get more "secret" data. I cracked the system and used it to steal services from other people or to hide my real location.
The Mob: Yea, we tried to set up a phone-redirect-to-our-pimps scam. Our guys got busted and spent years in jail. The enforcer we sent to horn in on some local pimp's business got busted and died in jail.
My analysis? Pure sensationalism in it's style, but has some valid points.
Any large company is going to be vulnerable to these kinds of exploits. It's just impossible for the right hand to always know what the left hand is doing. What Mitnick says may well be true.
I have no doubt that prostitution is big business in Vegas, but just because one or two pimps aren't getting the kind of business they used to doesn't imply a conspiracy. Maybe jons got smarter and started using the net to look up hoes?
As far as the conspiracy? I would be very suprised if they privy enough to Sprint's info to avoid detection. Not doing something illegal when the boss is looking is a lot harder if you don't know when the boss is looking. As we've already established, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, how is a third party supposed to be on top of test schedules and investigations?
Steven
or did we just DDoS a security website? You would think they'd have some process in place to stop things like this.
Steven
The fact that the administration is being tight-lipped about the details suggests they're trying to cover their asses.
Of course. That's why we should outlaw public access to cryptographic technology and repeal the fifth ammendment. Only people with something to hide wouldn't fully disclose everything to everyone.
That having been said, I would be as curious as the next guy as to the actual crime committed, but I don't agree with forcing them to release info unless some charges are pressed or an investigation started. And the implication that they have something to hide because they haven't already offered full disclosure is nauseating.
Steven