The uranium-weaponization machinery in Iran was only more "mission critical" than a city's civilian power grid. And yet, Israelis/Americans managed to infect it anyway.
It is entirely possible to update from a local source.
From where would that local source obtain the files? The answer is: from the outside.
Whether you are connected to that outside via wires or sneakernet is not even relevant — all such connections are corruptible... A human being may be harder to corrupt, but not impossible. A dedicated adversary — and Russia certainly is one such — can do it.
I've never been to a power-generating station, so my speculations are very general...
Given: you wish to use computers to better manage the power-generation and distribution. Computers run software — either your own, or, more likely, commercial.
Software requires perpetual maintenance — fixing bugs and improving. Most of today's software vendors — both external and internal to enterprises — publish updates online. Voila, your computers need access to the Internet to get it. It may not be direct access — you may be able to limit it only to certain subnets and protocols. But their need to such access is still legitimate.
Even if you lock it all down and update only via a CD or a flash-card, you are still vulnerable. A hostile state can seduce, bribe, or blackmail whoever is supposed to carry the media. Russian prostitutes are the best in the world claims Vladimir Putin — while a hitherto unfuckable geek is getting the "girlfriend experience" of his life, her KGB-colleague can examine and subtly alter the files.
You can not eliminate such risk — you can only mitigate it...
if a government official requires that a private utility (e.g. Cable company) makes concessions to the local community as a condition of having access to that community, how exactly is that ineptitude?
If the would-be ISP walks away as a result, the community is left without that ISP's service. Or, as probably happens too, the company says, Ok, we'll do that — and then some, but in exchange you make sure, no one else ever gets to offer their service in your town. Which, obviously, is also quite damaging to the community. Hence ineptitude. And corruption.
I'd call that doing a good job instead of merely taking the shitty deal the utility likely laid on the table to begin with.
The requirements for everybody ought to be the same and clearly spelled-out. In a country with separation of powers, such requirements can not be left to the executive to formulate.
If there were high prices and lack of competition in 5 or 10% of locales, then simple corruption and ineptitude would be a reasonable explanation
Why must my methodology differ?
when the problem exists everywhere, you need to look for systemic structural problems.
Indeed it is a system problem. And, according to the article I cited, that problem is the local governments mistreating commercial ISPs. The companies need the governments' cooperation to lay cables, and the local mayors, town councils et al consider it a golden opportunity — to extract favors. The favors are either for themselves (corruption) or for their cities (ineptitude)...
Now, you didn't include the requested citation(s) in your reply. Was that an accident you can promptly rectify, or are you taking back your earlier claim:
99% of the cost of providing service is the trenching
Since 99% of the cost of providing service is the trenching, this will make the market far more competitive.
Citation, please...
Imagine how competitive the package delivery business would be if FedEx, UPS, and USPS each had to build their own network of roads?
Kinda hard to imagine... But I don't think, the conclusion you are trying to project is all that obvious. At any rate, there is a LOT more to package delivery, than roads. There is nothing else to ISP beyond running and maintaining cables (and routers), so your analogy is not valid.
A single network of publicly owned roads fixes that problem, and allows competition to thrive.
I'm comparing resisting the perfectly reasonable request from the US government to help it access data on one cell phone used by a dead terrorist, with agreeing to aid mass-surveillance by the Russian and Chinese governments.
Yes, when arguing with folks promoting the concepts like "transgender", one has to be extremely careful defining the terms. Otherwise they'll have you suckered from the get go by, for example, implying that "sex" means something different from "gender". And so on...
So if accuracy isn't the issue, why not set IMDB ages to 0 on request? Make everyone who asks born on 1/1/2000.
Because that will make accuracy an issue, will it not?
Why go out of your way to dig up details on people who have told you they don't want the information published?
How about, because information wants to be free?
The particular data is not secret, it is public knowledge — IMDB didn't obtain it by "stealing" it from anywhere it should not have had access to. Maybe, it is impolite of IMDB to publish it, but any laws prohibiting such publishing ought to be resisted as a matter of principle.
Yes, you did. Here is the question for the third time:
Would you — or anyone else unable to afford the overly expensive breast-cancer tests — be better off, if their greedy inventors have not been born?
I reject completely the notion that there has been a human being born in the last 200,000 that was a "self-made man"
You can keep claiming this bullshit to your heart's content, but it is not germane to the point I made.
Which is, that anyone selling something for a price you deem too high, is not, in fact, evil. Or, if he is, the level of evil thus displayed is nowhere near that of the good old post-rape murder. Having lost this point, you attempted to switch the topic — and I foolishly allowed you to do that, even if temporarily,
It's not a simple stat which is irrefutable and easy to determine.
Yes, it is.
Some people don't know their birth date.
Some people calculate age differently
Sure. But this has nothing to do with the topic. The accuracy of IMDB's data is not in question, is it?
Besides, why is it even important? Why not just respect people's wishes?
You can only respect "people's wishes" to a point. When a grown man wishes to use a women's bathroom claiming to be a female, or enroll in elementary school claiming to be 20 years younger than he really is, politeness ought to yield to the comfort and safety of others.
But, yes, I am willing to be polite at other situations — as long as we call these people's delusions, what they really are.
You dodged the question pertinent to the discussion twice — proceeding to serenade the ridiculous, failed, and, most importantly, off-topic "You did not build that" sentiment.
Basically they want to decouple a person's physical age from how they live, somewhat like how transgender people differentiate between the physical state of their bodies and the gender they live as.
Oh, wow, yet another way for people to deny basic facts about themselves...
Should we not stop humoring such delusions? Whether the sufferers need active treatment may be subject to debate, but they certainly should not be further enabled...
I think every member of a society should balance personal motives such as profit, against the greater good.
Maybe, people should do this. But legally requiring it is a road to ruin.
Painful as it may be to boys and girls of the Che Guevara/Bernie Sanders persuasion to hear, there is no system with better quality of life than Capitalism, under which greedy sociopaths find it deeply rewarding to develop and make available to us the ever-better communication, transportation, medical, and other technologies.
Of course, you and Karl Marx both see these people straight through — had it been profitable for them to produce crushed glass, they would've produced just that. But no one wants to pay for crushed glass, so they produce what we want instead.
and then pursuing anyone who develops a lower cost variant, particularly when the "test" as it were is simply identifying pre-existing and non-made-made genes
For some reason, these tests simply did not exist, until these nasty people invented them. So, I ask you again, would the world have been a better place, if these greedy bastards have never been born? And, if you think it would have, why don't you just ignore their existence and not get tested?
not allowing them to game the system to our detriment and to their gain.
Given that you and I lose precisely nothing by ignoring their (overpriced) offerings compared to them not being available at all, it is, quite obviously, not your detriment, that worries you, but, indeed, their gain.
Stop counting other people's money and make your own. Then tell us about your charitable instincts.
How about trying to keep breast cancer tests as expensive as possible for personal profit?
Everything you do at work, for example, is "for personal profit". Would fewer or more women die, if the profiteer you are denouncing did not exist — and, consequently, his test was not available at any cost?
A murdering rapist is a totally batshit crazy insane individual.
Do you have statistics for the insanity defense being used in such cases? I'm afraid, it is not as common as you believe. Such criminals really are evil — not insane.
And I can offer other examples, which a patent troll, however pissed off a judge may get at them, does not come close to matching...
They've always suspected body-armor — if you have one, you must be up to no good. And laptops always took extra scrutiny of their own — easy to conceal a bomb in one.
Now it is going to be double-trouble for anyone traveling with it...
Slashdot Mirror
Citation needed.
Please, cite the law, that requires companies to hire based on any sorts of quotas.
That's bullshit. It ought to value their software's reliability and performance instead. Nothing else.
If that means, hiring more (or less) Asians/Blacks/Whites/Purples — so be it.
The uranium-weaponization machinery in Iran was only more "mission critical" than a city's civilian power grid. And yet, Israelis/Americans managed to infect it anyway.
From where would that local source obtain the files? The answer is: from the outside.
Whether you are connected to that outside via wires or sneakernet is not even relevant — all such connections are corruptible... A human being may be harder to corrupt, but not impossible. A dedicated adversary — and Russia certainly is one such — can do it.
Easy — to sabotage Trump's agenda with just the kind of accusations we are discussing.
And it worked too.
I've never been to a power-generating station, so my speculations are very general...
Given: you wish to use computers to better manage the power-generation and distribution. Computers run software — either your own, or, more likely, commercial.
Software requires perpetual maintenance — fixing bugs and improving. Most of today's software vendors — both external and internal to enterprises — publish updates online. Voila, your computers need access to the Internet to get it. It may not be direct access — you may be able to limit it only to certain subnets and protocols. But their need to such access is still legitimate.
Even if you lock it all down and update only via a CD or a flash-card, you are still vulnerable. A hostile state can seduce, bribe, or blackmail whoever is supposed to carry the media. Russian prostitutes are the best in the world claims Vladimir Putin — while a hitherto unfuckable geek is getting the "girlfriend experience" of his life, her KGB-colleague can examine and subtly alter the files.
You can not eliminate such risk — you can only mitigate it...
If the would-be ISP walks away as a result, the community is left without that ISP's service. Or, as probably happens too, the company says, Ok, we'll do that — and then some, but in exchange you make sure, no one else ever gets to offer their service in your town. Which, obviously, is also quite damaging to the community. Hence ineptitude. And corruption.
The requirements for everybody ought to be the same and clearly spelled-out. In a country with separation of powers, such requirements can not be left to the executive to formulate.
I'm flabbergasted, I even need to explain this...
Why must my methodology differ?
Indeed it is a system problem. And, according to the article I cited, that problem is the local governments mistreating commercial ISPs. The companies need the governments' cooperation to lay cables, and the local mayors, town councils et al consider it a golden opportunity — to extract favors. The favors are either for themselves (corruption) or for their cities (ineptitude)...
Now, you didn't include the requested citation(s) in your reply. Was that an accident you can promptly rectify, or are you taking back your earlier claim:
?
Citation, please...
Kinda hard to imagine... But I don't think, the conclusion you are trying to project is all that obvious. At any rate, there is a LOT more to package delivery, than roads. There is nothing else to ISP beyond running and maintaining cables (and routers), so your analogy is not valid.
The real hurdle to ISP-propagation is the local governments' corruption and ineptitude. Giving them more power will only make things worse.
Did you just explain, why Oligarchy is better than Democracy?
I'm comparing resisting the perfectly reasonable request from the US government to help it access data on one cell phone used by a dead terrorist, with agreeing to aid mass-surveillance by the Russian and Chinese governments.
This was your third dodging of the question. Enough is enough.
Once again, fuck you, Socialist asshole...
Yes, when arguing with folks promoting the concepts like "transgender", one has to be extremely careful defining the terms. Otherwise they'll have you suckered from the get go by, for example, implying that "sex" means something different from "gender". And so on...
Because that will make accuracy an issue, will it not?
How about, because information wants to be free?
The particular data is not secret, it is public knowledge — IMDB didn't obtain it by "stealing" it from anywhere it should not have had access to. Maybe, it is impolite of IMDB to publish it, but any laws prohibiting such publishing ought to be resisted as a matter of principle.
Yes, you did. Here is the question for the third time:
You can keep claiming this bullshit to your heart's content, but it is not germane to the point I made.
Which is, that anyone selling something for a price you deem too high, is not, in fact, evil. Or, if he is, the level of evil thus displayed is nowhere near that of the good old post-rape murder. Having lost this point, you attempted to switch the topic — and I foolishly allowed you to do that, even if temporarily,
Yes, it is.
Sure. But this has nothing to do with the topic. The accuracy of IMDB's data is not in question, is it?
You can only respect "people's wishes" to a point. When a grown man wishes to use a women's bathroom claiming to be a female, or enroll in elementary school claiming to be 20 years younger than he really is, politeness ought to yield to the comfort and safety of others.
But, yes, I am willing to be polite at other situations — as long as we call these people's delusions, what they really are.
You dodged the question pertinent to the discussion twice — proceeding to serenade the ridiculous, failed, and, most importantly, off-topic "You did not build that" sentiment.
And you pick at me for not arguing nicely?
Something a loser would claim to sooth himself...
Fuck you, Socialist asshole.
Had it been American authorities, Apple would've put up a heroic fight. But helping Russian (and Chinese) efforts to keep tabs on their citizens and enable dragnets by foreign governments — well, that's just complying with local laws, nothing to see here.
Oh, wow, yet another way for people to deny basic facts about themselves...
Should we not stop humoring such delusions? Whether the sufferers need active treatment may be subject to debate, but they certainly should not be further enabled...
Maybe, people should do this. But legally requiring it is a road to ruin.
Painful as it may be to boys and girls of the Che Guevara/Bernie Sanders persuasion to hear, there is no system with better quality of life than Capitalism, under which greedy sociopaths find it deeply rewarding to develop and make available to us the ever-better communication, transportation, medical, and other technologies.
Of course, you and Karl Marx both see these people straight through — had it been profitable for them to produce crushed glass, they would've produced just that. But no one wants to pay for crushed glass, so they produce what we want instead.
See also "benevolence of the butcher".
For some reason, these tests simply did not exist, until these nasty people invented them. So, I ask you again, would the world have been a better place, if these greedy bastards have never been born? And, if you think it would have, why don't you just ignore their existence and not get tested?
Given that you and I lose precisely nothing by ignoring their (overpriced) offerings compared to them not being available at all, it is, quite obviously, not your detriment, that worries you, but, indeed, their gain.
Stop counting other people's money and make your own. Then tell us about your charitable instincts.
Everything you do at work, for example, is "for personal profit". Would fewer or more women die, if the profiteer you are denouncing did not exist — and, consequently, his test was not available at any cost?
Messed up indeed...
Do you have statistics for the insanity defense being used in such cases? I'm afraid, it is not as common as you believe. Such criminals really are evil — not insane.
And I can offer other examples, which a patent troll, however pissed off a judge may get at them, does not come close to matching...
Not to deny that abuse of the patent-system is wrong, but things like murdering a girl after raping her seem evil of considerably higher purity.
Citations?
He-he, as long as you don't know, what else you are missing... Yes, I suppose, ignorance is bliss.
They've always suspected body-armor — if you have one, you must be up to no good. And laptops always took extra scrutiny of their own — easy to conceal a bomb in one.
Now it is going to be double-trouble for anyone traveling with it...