I work in the medical field also and have personally seen it happen. We had someone who was in a position of IT power and had been with the organization awhile. He was caught looking at things he shouldn't have been and was immediately fired. This was a guy whose job security - before this incident - seemed rock solid, no previous incidents (to my knowledge which admittedly might not be perfect in this matter). Just one day there and the next day gone. He wasn't even allowed to clear out his office right then. They had him come back another day and - under a careful eye to make sure he only took his own stuff - let him clear out his office.
The more power (and access to information counts as "power") you have, the steeper the penalties should be for abusing that power. If the NSA is going to have access to nearly everything whenever they want (something I think they shouldn't have), they should have STRICT penalties for misusing said access. They should have systems that double-check access and the first time you search for something you shouldn't, you're FIRED!
I've worked almost daily with direct access to my company's HR database for years. I needed said access to write queries for web applications. Had I wanted to, I could have easily looked up anyone's salary, birth dates, SSN's, home addresses, etc. I never have, though. Partly because I'd be fired if found out (and I'm awful at keeping secrets), but partly because I know that accessing that information for that reason would be wrong.
So long as a show doesn't stagnate (I'm looking at you Simpsons), I see no reason why a particular time limit needs to be put on a show. I'm a big Doctor Who fan that that's been around for 50 years now. (Granted, I haven't seen many of the classic Doctor Who episodes yet. I began watching last year with Doctor Nine and worked forward. Eventually I'll go back and watch the classics.)
I've felt that feeling to a much smaller degree when I found out that my identity was stolen and a credit card was opened in my name. We go about our lives confident that some things are safe. When we leave the house/apartment in the morning, we're confident that everything will be there when we get back. When we walk down the street, we're confident that our body won't be violated by some random stranger. When we go about our daily lives, we're confident that someone isn't - at that moment - opening lines of credit that will financially ruin us.
We're confident about all this because the alternative is living in terror of assaults from all angles at every second and there's no way a sane mind could deal with this.
So we convince ourselves that we (and our belongings, credit, loved ones, etc) are safe.
And then something like this happens which shatters our illusion of safety. Mine was a bit abstract (your credit score isn't exactly a physical entity) and was caught early so the impact wasn't as big. The author's impact was worse because his body safety illusion was shattered, his concept of having the freedom to move as he pleased was destroyed, and the safety of his personal effects was violated. Rape victims probably feel something similar. We don't really have a word that accurately describes it because it isn't a feeling we feel often enough.
Oh and if you think you don't have an illusion of safety because you've read stories like this and know it can happen - you're wrong. Even though you read the stories, part of your brain rationalizes away the terror of the situation as "things that happen to other people" and you maintain your internal safety illusion until something like this happens.
So he's guilty of the crime of "flying while Muslim"?
Oh wait... He's Hindu.
So he's guilty of the crime of "flying while having a name that someone thinks sounds Muslim."
Airport Security: Just when you think they've gone as low as they can go, they dig deep and go lower! Congrats TSA (and other agencies since home searching isn't something the TSA does) for continually coming in below our already lowered our expectations.
how can the hotel possibly win when the reviewer is stating facts?
Easy:
1) Sue the guest for $95,000 2) Guest realizes that fighting a lawsuit would be horribly expensive and time consuming. 3) Guest settles with hotel in a secret, but highly weighted towards the hotel deal. 4) Hotel wins!
Of course, that's what the hotel is HOPING will happen. Here's hoping the guest fights back, wins, and the judge orders the hotel to pay him $$$ for the guests' trouble and the stupidity of it all.
I'd agree that they drastically hurt their case by running the honeypot, but I'd take issue with calling putting stuff online "placing it in the public domain." There seems to be a mistaken notion that a lot of people have that things on the Internet are automatically public domain for anyone to use in anyway they like. This is completely false. You can't just use Google Images, find a photo you like, and place it in an ad campaign/blog post/whatever. You can't just take some text that someone wrote and republish all of it in a book. Copyright DOES exist online. It doesn't go away just because the method used for conveying the item is digital versus print.
Actually, the NRA exists to promote the rights of gun manufacturers to have huge profits. And huge profits means selling more guns to more people. Since any limitation on this means less guns sold/lower profits, the NRA is against all gun control (no matter how reasonable it may be). They claim to be for gun owners' rights because that gets gun owners behind them and it makes them look like a "for the people" organization and not a "for big business" organization. In other words, it's a PR spin tactic.
If we need to rely on the NRA to protect us from the US Government then the situation is worse than I thought (and I already think it's very bad).
Exactly. I'd be willing to bet that I could make a meal using beans, spinach, etc that would be much more filling that a McDonald's burger, be much more healthy, and would be close to the same price per serving.
It's more a problem of the geese could wind up colliding with an airplane during takeoff/landing and causing a crash. (Killing the goose, obviously, as well as injuring/killing people.) The geese, of course, don't know this. They just see "patch of grass for us to eat on and poop on." By keeping the geese away, they are actually PROTECTING the geese (notice they aren't shooting or poisoning them) as well as airplane passengers/crew.
Furthermore, what point is there in destroying evidence to a crime (which I'm sure they would love to claim these leaks are) when said evidence could be used for the government's purposes?
Of course, the answer here is that the purpose was to intimidate. "If you EVER even THINK of releasing stuff like that again, we'll be back and it won't be the COMPUTER that gets smashed to bits!"
I completely agree except for a little bit with #1. I wouldn't propose to eliminate fines for unauthorized sharing, but noncommercial unauthorized sharing should have fines limited to a small multiple of the retail value of the works. For example, if you share out a thousand songs, you can currently be sued for $750,000 - $150,000,000. That's enough to permanently bankrupt you for life. If you limited it to ten times the retail value of a digital song ($0.99), then your fine would be $9,900. That's still a penalty that will hurt, but not one that will bankrupt the average person for life. (Just make it difficult financially for a bit.) It would serve as an incentive NOT to engage in unauthorized file sharing (the purpose of the fines) without ruining people financially (NOT the purpose) or giving companies a huge weapon to threaten you with if you don't settle on THEIR terms. You can keep the $750 - $150,000 fines for commercial infringement (e.g. companies selling bootleg DVDs of movies).
I agree. My only compromise would be that companies would be against decades' worth of content suddenly reverting to public domain (and we would be against allowing items from the 1970's remain copyrighted for nearly 100 years while items produced today went public domain in 30 years). Therefore, there should be a phase in period to allow companies to adjust. Let's start at the earliest decade affected (the 1930's if memory serves) and move forward freeing up a decade's worth of material every 5 years. In 45 years we would have caught up to present day which should be plenty of time for companies to adjust. About the oldest popularly licensed work I can think of is Star Wars - toys, etc produced - and that would remain copyrighted for 25 years. If you can't adjust to a new copyright schema in 25 years, you deserve to go out of business.
The credit agency did remove it and my credit file is now frozen so nobody can access it (without me thawing it first). Credit agencies don't like freezes, though, because it means they can't sell access to your file to credit card agencies for those "you're pre-approved" letters. After this happened to me I did some research and found that there was going to be a law allowing anyone to freeze their credit file whenever they wanted to for no charge and the credit agencies fought (and defeated) it. Instead, they tout "fraud alerts" which are actually just voluntary checks. (Companies don't NEED to abide by fraud alerts.)
As for the credit card company, the card application was submitted online with the wrong mother's maiden name. After they submitted it, they immediately changed the address on the account and then (before the card was activated) tried to get a $5,000 cash advance on it (denied, thankfully). When I challenged them on all this, they told me that perhaps my wife opened the account without telling me (under my name, of course) because it was a woman who called for the cash advance. (The only reason I got the card was that the thieves paid for rush delivery so the card wound up being sent before the address change was processed. A stroke of luck for me.)
I was lucky in that I caught it early before any actual damage was done. Had the card gone to the thieves, I'd have found out about it when the collection agencies were beating down my door over the $10,000+ credit card debt that "I" ran up and I'd have had a much harder time rebuilding my credit.
In politics, it seems like perception is everything. Politicians don't care about substance, but they care about looking like they care about substance. They don't actually want to do anything for fear of what they did negatively impacting their PR but they also don't want to be seen as do-nothings. In other words, in politics, it's all about the spin.
So this politician is just fearing that the spin will "go wrong" since that's what politicians care about. Meanwhile, the rest of us don't care about the spin. We care about the misuse of powers that caused something bad to happen.
But if you steal someone's identity and open a card account in their name, the cops will claim it's not in their jurisdiction, the feds won't care because your loss wasn't big enough, the credit card company won't care because they just declare it fraud and close the account (but won't give you information because "if you go and shoot the person, we're liable"* ), and the credit agencies don't care because it doesn't matter to them if your credit file is messed up.
Not that I'm bitter or anything.
* Yes, I was told that by the credit card company. Let's just say that credit card won't ever be "in my wallet."
Not if said contract has loopholes to allow the private party out of it if it doesn't like the contract. As other posters pointed out, Yahoo's terms included banning content promoting self-harm. So I could pay for a 5 year contract with Yahoo, start a site promoting cutting yourself with a razor blade (NOT something I'd ever do or promote - just to clarify) and Yahoo would be within their rights to pull down my site.
Hulu is what happens when the cable companies try to get into the Internet streaming business but don't want the Internet streaming business to get so popular that their cable TV revenues are impacted.
As for Comedy Central, if they had a Roku app, I'd love it. I'll often miss The Daily Show and Colbert Report and would enjoy just streaming the past week's worth of shows one after another to catch up. That being said, my temporary solution would involve a tablet/phone and the PlayTo app. It streams videos from your tablet/phone to a PlayTo app on your Roku box. Very useful for those shows that are available online, but that won't otherwise play on your TV.
Wouldn't that be a vaccine against death? A cure for death would make dead people come back to life.... Oh, great. You just started the Zombie Apocalypse.
Effort for end-user to update their copy of your application to the newest: web app, none. native app, some to none (depending upon preferences set in app store application). Winner, web app.
This alone is a big plus in the web app category. If you discover a big bug/security hole in your app and make a fix, for a native app you need to submit this fix, wait for it to be approved, and then wait for your user base to upgrade. This means that many users will continue to use your buggy/vulnerable app for awhile both putting them at risk and hurting your image.
If you discover a big bug/security hole in your web app, though, and make a fix, it is fixed. Everyone immediately sees the fixed version and (hopefully) will notice how much better it is.
Plus, with a web app, you have one code base across Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, etc. One code base means less chance that the port to platform X resulted in a horrible bug and it means that all of your resources can go to making that one code base as good as possible. Which means less bugs/vulnerabilities to fix in the first place.
Yup, I've heard this happening in conventions or online communities where female geeks are told they aren't "real geeks" because they aren't guys. (Other reasons are given because the self-proclaimed "real geeks" don't want to admit to being sexist, but it all boils down to "ewwww girls" attitude.) A vegan friend of mine online has been harassed by people who claim she's not a "real vegan" because she doesn't follow X, Y, or Z and only by following all of this can you be a "real vegan." And then there's the political arena where you can't be a "real" member of the party without following EVERYTHING that the party stands for TO THE EXACT DEGREE that they stand for it. Any variation or independent thought means you are a traitor to the party and should be shunned.
Sadly, I think this is a basic fact of human nature (forming groups then protecting those groups from perceived "outsiders") which the anonymity/pseudo-anonymity of the Internet helps to push to extremes.
This doesn't seem limited to the online world either. I've heard of many instances of female geeks being harassed at conventions and other areas for not being "real geeks." Apparently, in the minds of some self-proclaimed "real geeks", one cannot be a woman and a geek at the same time... any women that claim to be geeks are pretending, likely to try to seduce a "real geek." (Yes, these people have actually claimed this!) Now, I'm not female and have never gone to a convention, so I haven't seen this personally, but it's been documented by many, many people.
I think part of the problem is "Eternal September" thinking. If you view anyone new as being "unwelcome noobs who will just water down the community", you encourage action against them to protect the community. If, instead, you realize that having more people in a community can increase diversity and make the community stronger, you encourage new folks to join. Yes, things will change but things always change. Anything that doesn't change stagnates and dies. (And aren't we geeks always railing against industries like the recording industry who fight against progress at all costs? Do we really want to be like them?!!!)
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The Angels have the Enterprise!
I work in the medical field also and have personally seen it happen. We had someone who was in a position of IT power and had been with the organization awhile. He was caught looking at things he shouldn't have been and was immediately fired. This was a guy whose job security - before this incident - seemed rock solid, no previous incidents (to my knowledge which admittedly might not be perfect in this matter). Just one day there and the next day gone. He wasn't even allowed to clear out his office right then. They had him come back another day and - under a careful eye to make sure he only took his own stuff - let him clear out his office.
The more power (and access to information counts as "power") you have, the steeper the penalties should be for abusing that power. If the NSA is going to have access to nearly everything whenever they want (something I think they shouldn't have), they should have STRICT penalties for misusing said access. They should have systems that double-check access and the first time you search for something you shouldn't, you're FIRED!
I've worked almost daily with direct access to my company's HR database for years. I needed said access to write queries for web applications. Had I wanted to, I could have easily looked up anyone's salary, birth dates, SSN's, home addresses, etc. I never have, though. Partly because I'd be fired if found out (and I'm awful at keeping secrets), but partly because I know that accessing that information for that reason would be wrong.
So long as a show doesn't stagnate (I'm looking at you Simpsons), I see no reason why a particular time limit needs to be put on a show. I'm a big Doctor Who fan that that's been around for 50 years now. (Granted, I haven't seen many of the classic Doctor Who episodes yet. I began watching last year with Doctor Nine and worked forward. Eventually I'll go back and watch the classics.)
I've felt that feeling to a much smaller degree when I found out that my identity was stolen and a credit card was opened in my name. We go about our lives confident that some things are safe. When we leave the house/apartment in the morning, we're confident that everything will be there when we get back. When we walk down the street, we're confident that our body won't be violated by some random stranger. When we go about our daily lives, we're confident that someone isn't - at that moment - opening lines of credit that will financially ruin us.
We're confident about all this because the alternative is living in terror of assaults from all angles at every second and there's no way a sane mind could deal with this.
So we convince ourselves that we (and our belongings, credit, loved ones, etc) are safe.
And then something like this happens which shatters our illusion of safety. Mine was a bit abstract (your credit score isn't exactly a physical entity) and was caught early so the impact wasn't as big. The author's impact was worse because his body safety illusion was shattered, his concept of having the freedom to move as he pleased was destroyed, and the safety of his personal effects was violated. Rape victims probably feel something similar. We don't really have a word that accurately describes it because it isn't a feeling we feel often enough.
Oh and if you think you don't have an illusion of safety because you've read stories like this and know it can happen - you're wrong. Even though you read the stories, part of your brain rationalizes away the terror of the situation as "things that happen to other people" and you maintain your internal safety illusion until something like this happens.
So he's guilty of the crime of "flying while Muslim"?
Oh wait... He's Hindu.
So he's guilty of the crime of "flying while having a name that someone thinks sounds Muslim."
Airport Security: Just when you think they've gone as low as they can go, they dig deep and go lower! Congrats TSA (and other agencies since home searching isn't something the TSA does) for continually coming in below our already lowered our expectations.
Easy:
1) Sue the guest for $95,000
2) Guest realizes that fighting a lawsuit would be horribly expensive and time consuming.
3) Guest settles with hotel in a secret, but highly weighted towards the hotel deal.
4) Hotel wins!
Of course, that's what the hotel is HOPING will happen. Here's hoping the guest fights back, wins, and the judge orders the hotel to pay him $$$ for the guests' trouble and the stupidity of it all.
But what abou----
FOREVER!
I'd agree that they drastically hurt their case by running the honeypot, but I'd take issue with calling putting stuff online "placing it in the public domain." There seems to be a mistaken notion that a lot of people have that things on the Internet are automatically public domain for anyone to use in anyway they like. This is completely false. You can't just use Google Images, find a photo you like, and place it in an ad campaign/blog post/whatever. You can't just take some text that someone wrote and republish all of it in a book. Copyright DOES exist online. It doesn't go away just because the method used for conveying the item is digital versus print.
Actually, the NRA exists to promote the rights of gun manufacturers to have huge profits. And huge profits means selling more guns to more people. Since any limitation on this means less guns sold/lower profits, the NRA is against all gun control (no matter how reasonable it may be). They claim to be for gun owners' rights because that gets gun owners behind them and it makes them look like a "for the people" organization and not a "for big business" organization. In other words, it's a PR spin tactic.
If we need to rely on the NRA to protect us from the US Government then the situation is worse than I thought (and I already think it's very bad).
Exactly. I'd be willing to bet that I could make a meal using beans, spinach, etc that would be much more filling that a McDonald's burger, be much more healthy, and would be close to the same price per serving.
It's more a problem of the geese could wind up colliding with an airplane during takeoff/landing and causing a crash. (Killing the goose, obviously, as well as injuring/killing people.) The geese, of course, don't know this. They just see "patch of grass for us to eat on and poop on." By keeping the geese away, they are actually PROTECTING the geese (notice they aren't shooting or poisoning them) as well as airplane passengers/crew.
Furthermore, what point is there in destroying evidence to a crime (which I'm sure they would love to claim these leaks are) when said evidence could be used for the government's purposes?
Of course, the answer here is that the purpose was to intimidate. "If you EVER even THINK of releasing stuff like that again, we'll be back and it won't be the COMPUTER that gets smashed to bits!"
I completely agree except for a little bit with #1. I wouldn't propose to eliminate fines for unauthorized sharing, but noncommercial unauthorized sharing should have fines limited to a small multiple of the retail value of the works. For example, if you share out a thousand songs, you can currently be sued for $750,000 - $150,000,000. That's enough to permanently bankrupt you for life. If you limited it to ten times the retail value of a digital song ($0.99), then your fine would be $9,900. That's still a penalty that will hurt, but not one that will bankrupt the average person for life. (Just make it difficult financially for a bit.) It would serve as an incentive NOT to engage in unauthorized file sharing (the purpose of the fines) without ruining people financially (NOT the purpose) or giving companies a huge weapon to threaten you with if you don't settle on THEIR terms. You can keep the $750 - $150,000 fines for commercial infringement (e.g. companies selling bootleg DVDs of movies).
I agree. My only compromise would be that companies would be against decades' worth of content suddenly reverting to public domain (and we would be against allowing items from the 1970's remain copyrighted for nearly 100 years while items produced today went public domain in 30 years). Therefore, there should be a phase in period to allow companies to adjust. Let's start at the earliest decade affected (the 1930's if memory serves) and move forward freeing up a decade's worth of material every 5 years. In 45 years we would have caught up to present day which should be plenty of time for companies to adjust. About the oldest popularly licensed work I can think of is Star Wars - toys, etc produced - and that would remain copyrighted for 25 years. If you can't adjust to a new copyright schema in 25 years, you deserve to go out of business.
The credit agency did remove it and my credit file is now frozen so nobody can access it (without me thawing it first). Credit agencies don't like freezes, though, because it means they can't sell access to your file to credit card agencies for those "you're pre-approved" letters. After this happened to me I did some research and found that there was going to be a law allowing anyone to freeze their credit file whenever they wanted to for no charge and the credit agencies fought (and defeated) it. Instead, they tout "fraud alerts" which are actually just voluntary checks. (Companies don't NEED to abide by fraud alerts.)
As for the credit card company, the card application was submitted online with the wrong mother's maiden name. After they submitted it, they immediately changed the address on the account and then (before the card was activated) tried to get a $5,000 cash advance on it (denied, thankfully). When I challenged them on all this, they told me that perhaps my wife opened the account without telling me (under my name, of course) because it was a woman who called for the cash advance. (The only reason I got the card was that the thieves paid for rush delivery so the card wound up being sent before the address change was processed. A stroke of luck for me.)
I was lucky in that I caught it early before any actual damage was done. Had the card gone to the thieves, I'd have found out about it when the collection agencies were beating down my door over the $10,000+ credit card debt that "I" ran up and I'd have had a much harder time rebuilding my credit.
In politics, it seems like perception is everything. Politicians don't care about substance, but they care about looking like they care about substance. They don't actually want to do anything for fear of what they did negatively impacting their PR but they also don't want to be seen as do-nothings. In other words, in politics, it's all about the spin.
So this politician is just fearing that the spin will "go wrong" since that's what politicians care about. Meanwhile, the rest of us don't care about the spin. We care about the misuse of powers that caused something bad to happen.
... AND I pressed Submit before re-reading my post. (When will I learn?!!!)
Should have been: "But if someone steals your identity..." to keep the pronouns straight the whole way through.
But if you steal someone's identity and open a card account in their name, the cops will claim it's not in their jurisdiction, the feds won't care because your loss wasn't big enough, the credit card company won't care because they just declare it fraud and close the account (but won't give you information because "if you go and shoot the person, we're liable"* ), and the credit agencies don't care because it doesn't matter to them if your credit file is messed up.
Not that I'm bitter or anything.
* Yes, I was told that by the credit card company. Let's just say that credit card won't ever be "in my wallet."
Not if said contract has loopholes to allow the private party out of it if it doesn't like the contract. As other posters pointed out, Yahoo's terms included banning content promoting self-harm. So I could pay for a 5 year contract with Yahoo, start a site promoting cutting yourself with a razor blade (NOT something I'd ever do or promote - just to clarify) and Yahoo would be within their rights to pull down my site.
Hulu is what happens when the cable companies try to get into the Internet streaming business but don't want the Internet streaming business to get so popular that their cable TV revenues are impacted.
As for Comedy Central, if they had a Roku app, I'd love it. I'll often miss The Daily Show and Colbert Report and would enjoy just streaming the past week's worth of shows one after another to catch up. That being said, my temporary solution would involve a tablet/phone and the PlayTo app. It streams videos from your tablet/phone to a PlayTo app on your Roku box. Very useful for those shows that are available online, but that won't otherwise play on your TV.
Wouldn't that be a vaccine against death? A cure for death would make dead people come back to life.... Oh, great. You just started the Zombie Apocalypse.
This alone is a big plus in the web app category. If you discover a big bug/security hole in your app and make a fix, for a native app you need to submit this fix, wait for it to be approved, and then wait for your user base to upgrade. This means that many users will continue to use your buggy/vulnerable app for awhile both putting them at risk and hurting your image.
If you discover a big bug/security hole in your web app, though, and make a fix, it is fixed. Everyone immediately sees the fixed version and (hopefully) will notice how much better it is.
Plus, with a web app, you have one code base across Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, etc. One code base means less chance that the port to platform X resulted in a horrible bug and it means that all of your resources can go to making that one code base as good as possible. Which means less bugs/vulnerabilities to fix in the first place.
Yup, I've heard this happening in conventions or online communities where female geeks are told they aren't "real geeks" because they aren't guys. (Other reasons are given because the self-proclaimed "real geeks" don't want to admit to being sexist, but it all boils down to "ewwww girls" attitude.) A vegan friend of mine online has been harassed by people who claim she's not a "real vegan" because she doesn't follow X, Y, or Z and only by following all of this can you be a "real vegan." And then there's the political arena where you can't be a "real" member of the party without following EVERYTHING that the party stands for TO THE EXACT DEGREE that they stand for it. Any variation or independent thought means you are a traitor to the party and should be shunned.
Sadly, I think this is a basic fact of human nature (forming groups then protecting those groups from perceived "outsiders") which the anonymity/pseudo-anonymity of the Internet helps to push to extremes.
This doesn't seem limited to the online world either. I've heard of many instances of female geeks being harassed at conventions and other areas for not being "real geeks." Apparently, in the minds of some self-proclaimed "real geeks", one cannot be a woman and a geek at the same time... any women that claim to be geeks are pretending, likely to try to seduce a "real geek." (Yes, these people have actually claimed this!) Now, I'm not female and have never gone to a convention, so I haven't seen this personally, but it's been documented by many, many people.
I think part of the problem is "Eternal September" thinking. If you view anyone new as being "unwelcome noobs who will just water down the community", you encourage action against them to protect the community. If, instead, you realize that having more people in a community can increase diversity and make the community stronger, you encourage new folks to join. Yes, things will change but things always change. Anything that doesn't change stagnates and dies. (And aren't we geeks always railing against industries like the recording industry who fight against progress at all costs? Do we really want to be like them?!!!)