If you're looking for tanks in the area, you want to be in the area to be able to shoot them. So you set a light out a few hundred meters to distance yourself from a tank shot.
Aside from the fact that all your lights would be out in no time, there is the distinct possibility we won't even use tanks. If somebody sees you, you might just get several MLRS cluster rounds on your light's position, which will likely also include your position. These days, we'll probably just use a drone or satellite to detect the heat signature, no need to even see.
Or after we realize your distancing trick (which won't take long) we'll just shoot our artillery in a circular pattern around the light, or just a semi-circular arc on the side opposite us.
There's just a basic reason that nobody does this. It's useless at best, suicidal at worst.
FYI, I am former artillery, and I served in an armored unit in wartime.
I'm sure the Standard Oil thing had absolutely nothing to do with the government stepping in.
Nope. Before the breakup their market share in the Northeast had already dropped quite a bit from the almost 100% they had. They weren't even a majority in other areas, as competition heated up.
Other later companies even had benefits Standard Oil didn't. Standard had already figured out the waste product Vaseline could be profitable (yes, check it, Chesebrough was a Standard Oil company). Standard didn't just dump gasoline like the others of the day, but used it to run generators and such. Later companies could sell that for cars. Standard Oil did use some anti-competitive practices to gain the monopoly, but the company was still quite innovative and well-run.
Likewise, I'm sure the Word Perfect thing had nothing to do with Microsoft's own anti-competitive behaviors.
I was a Word Perfect god back in the day, and even I realize Word Perfect totally screwed up the transition to Windows, despite what the suit says, and then screwed up the transition to 32-bit. Plus, one of WP's main advantages was all of the printer drivers, irrelevant in the Windows era. Microsoft simply had the better product, designed from the beginning to work in the GUI world. It was first made popular on the Mac in the mid 80s while Word Perfect wasn't even considering a GUI.
The robocalls were part of a pattern of legal behavior you mean?
It goes to intent. Jamming their phones may not be illegal, but jamming their computers is.
So while you keep trying to imply that all 600K members were just clicking away as fast as possible, I haven't seen anything to support that.
I haven't seen anything otherwise. People are thinking only a couple thousand, but I showed the pool available. And union members are usually pretty good at doing what they're told.
It's not reasonable to limit everyone else's rights because of some issue specific to you.
So you think your free speech includes causing physical damage? That's going too far. Even noise abatement ordinances are constitutionall acceptable.
But I'd be a whole lot less inclined to comply with your wishes if you had just done something to insult or injure me, which is more the case in this situation.
Huh? They fired a guy for cause, among other things hiring illegal aliens, something that can land the company in serious legal trouble. He wasn't a member of the union, since that union represented nobody at the company. His only known connection is wearing a T-shirt of the union.
Yes, *known*. The union has been trying to organize there, so it's likely the guy was a ringer.
It's very much a balancing act.
I agree there. And unions are still quite necessary. My main problem with unions these days is the extortion campaign many use in organizing. This incident has the classic look of the beginning of such a campaign. That is why I clearly believe the claim of intent to adversely affect their systems, which is a crime and a tort.
Yes, many companies are tech-adverse. "We do construction, not computers!" That one IT job I found for them wasn't even in the home building division, it was in the mortgage division. Companies like this are prefect for the cloud, because they don't even have the will to create a decent IT infrastructure.
I knew an admin in the federal government who set up a stock proxy. That's it. Just installed it and put it online. It was a hacker's favorite for quite a while. Don't assume that level of competence is relative to organizational size.
People equated Internet Explorer with Web browsing. That is starting to end now, no thanks to the ineffective antitrust remedies. It's ending because IE sucked for so long, much better solutions became available, enough to overcome that mindshare.
Apple bought a couple chip design firms, seriously helped Apple compete against the likes of Samsung in the mobile space.
Disney bought Pixar to revive its dying animation business and basically salvage a profitable relationship, gaining talented Pixar execs who could all-around revive Disney's creative side (I still think Pixar halfway bought Disney).
But this one was obvious. There is no logical reason for this purchase other than shrinking the choice of the consumer.
gets the most business. He who gets the most business makes good profit.
He who supplies poor value to the customer ends up not having customers.
That is usually unless some external force, such as a government, interferes. The AT&T monopoly was created by the government. Even when monopolies do develop naturally, they don't last. Standard Oil was already starting to crumble before the forced breakup (and it had done some good for the consumer, vastly lowering the cost of oil products through various efficiencies).
Capitalism is not a zero-sum game. One person getting a bigger piece of the pie does not necessarily mean every one else gets a smaller piece. The pie can grow.
"Congress and the administration are jointly responsible for the conduct of fiscal policy. So, this is not really about either political party." -- David Beers, head of S&Pâ(TM)s government debt-rating unit
If not for tea party influence, we wouldn't have gotten the pathetic effort at debt control that we did get. Both parties would have gladly continued driving us to insolvency.
The blame game you are playing is one of the reasons for the downgrade -- the desire to put politics above getting things done. Just like when your people called the tea party "terrorists."
Verhoeven wanted a brainless bug hunt movie, optioned Starship Troopers, threw ST elements on top of it, and gave it his own message. He admits he stopped reading ST a couple chapters in.
That's why the movie really doesn't work. It uses elements of a masterpiece to send the opposite message. The original was full of intelligent, effective tactics of a modern military, which is why it is on the military reading lists in the US. The movie had a bunch of idiots running to their doom with no plan, basically cannon fodder. A movie based on ST wouldn't do that.
It's an okay movie if you turn your brain off and watch it for the action and special effects. Otherwise, forget it.
Joe Haldeman, did it very well in "The Forever War
And Harry Harrison did a great spoof in Bill The Galactic Hero.
That everybody else is competent at tech. They're a company, they must have their stuff set up well. A few hundred thousand emails hit just a couple boxes, they fill up, the admins are incapable of handling it. It's that easy. Looking at their current openings, this multi-billion dollar company with over 13,000 employees has a single IT position open, a low-level web developer. They don't look too hot on IT, which is common for the construction industry.
Again, the fact that the admins are incapable does not excuse the act of the aggressor. That woman wouldn't have been raped if she had known self defense, so the rape is her fault, not the rapist's?
Verhoeven was making a movie titled "Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine." He later heard of the book Starship Troopers, read a couple chapters, and bought the rights. His writers incorporated a few superficial elements of the book, and they renamed the movie.
It's not a bad adaptation of the book because it's not an adaption of the book at all.
The robocalls are a separate issue covered under a separate law, and therefore shouldn't be used as evidence of intent either.
The robocalls are part of a clear pattern of bahavior designed to DOS the company's ability to communicate.
Then there's the notion that the simple, unsubstantiated notification that something is inconveniencing them is enough to override free speech rights
There's an old saying, the right to swing your fist ends at my nose. Your right to speak your mind ends when it materially interferes with my business. In this case they weren't even speaking their mind, since a 600,000-strong membership was just clicking a "send" button over and over and over in order to flood emails. Automated by a programming loop, or by having over half a million clickers at your disposal. Same concept.
Because of an old injury, loud noises cause me serious pain with the likelihood of further injury. You start yelling. It would not hurt most people, no damage done. I tell you it is causing me pain and injury. You refuse to stop. You are now purposely injuring me. But it's okay because it wouldn't hurt others? Am I obliged to put in ear plugs, or should I just call the police?
I can't think of a case in law where the victim's inability to absorb an attack without injury absolved the attacker of responsibility for the injury.
The court seems to have manufactured the intent in this case, which is usually the one thing missing in most corporate cases.
This is a corporate case. One multi-million dollar corporation with fat cat executives against another multi-million dollar corporation with fat cat executives. One is in the business of building homes for profit, the other is in the business of unionizing workers for profit.
I want to shit in your yogurt. You don't want me to. Let's work with each other and find an acceptable level of shit in your yogurt. I say 1/10th of the initial amount I wanted. Is that acceptable?
All the Democrats wanted to cut was projected increases, to not increase the budget by quite so much. In addition, much of the "decrease" was projected, easily killed by later terms of Congress after this issue fades away. Most Republicans were willing to go along with them. This does not lead to financial solvency, so it was not a negotiable position as far as the tea party was concerned. It was the shit in your yogurt.
Tea party types were demanding actual decreases now, as in we spend less next year than we did this year. They were demanding what is needed for financial solvency, not the usual Washington numbers game.
The union is also a corporation, with assets over $140 million and executives who are mostly one-percenters in income.
This corporation is in the game to grow itself too. Thishis attack is part of the standard campaign designed to extort the company into working with the union to force the workers to join that union under a union contract with the company.
Absent this extorted company cooperation, the union would have to organize the old fashioned way -- convince the workers the union is a good deal for them.
You look healthy but have a weak heart, I don't know it, I scare you at the Halloween party, you die.
You have a weak heart, I know it, and I want you dead for some reason that I stand to gain from. I scare you one day to kill you, you die.
Nothing changed here but the intent. One is an accident, while the other is first-degree murder. We don't intend to bring a server down. In fact, most sites can handle a good slashdotting. We even put up mirrors to alleviate the slashdotting.
This union intended to take down the company's phone, voice mail and computer systems. That they're probably running a base install of Exchange on a small server doesn't matter. They shouldn't have to buy a better system or hire better admins because a 600,000-strong union has a coordinated, semi-automated email campaign aganst only a few mailboxes.
It is not a crime based on the weakness of the victim or lack thereof. It is a crime based on the intent of the action and the effect on the victim.
It's still called breaking and entering even if I don't lock my door. My lack of defensive measures does not constitute permission to take advantage of that fact.
First fact: This union did not represent one employee at that company. You would have seen, if you had read the court documents, that it is a non-representative union.
This union found out about the firing of one of their supporters who worked at the company. Despite the fact that the firing was for malfeasance (including the hiring of illegal aliens, something that could get the company in serious trouble with the law), they leveraged it into a portrayal of firing for supporting the union by wearing a T-shirt.
The people complaining had no relation to the company whatsoever. They were outsiders, part of a coordinated campaign to hinder the operations of the company through saturating its phone, voice mail and email systems.
This was individuals clicking the buttons individually to send messages with their complaints,
Over 600,000 individuals on tap to send pre-written and pre-addressed complaints with a click to a few specific email accounts. Not everything has to be automated. There's also good old-fashioned group effort.
This was nothing like a real DDoS or spam attack.
All attacks are relative. If you, by any means, flood a system with the knowledge that the flood is of sufficient strength to affect the availability of that system, and with the intent of hindering the availability of that system, then you are purposely performing a DOS. That is illegal.
That it was coordinated and occurred across state lines, federal felony charges should be certainly brought.
If they aren't repurposed at another agency, they will be sold in lots at DRMO sales. So will the racks. Servers used on secure networks may be sold, but any storage will no longer be in them.
Either way, it would have been great. No bothering with sleeping bags in the freezing cold or baking in the roasting desert either, just instantly out in a temperature-regulated suit.
It's the intent plus the effect. The intent was to impact the availability of the company's systems and thus their ability to conduct business. The effect was the same. That is illegal, and a civil tort. This cannot be equated to slashdotting because we go their to read the articles, not to purposely DDOS their systems. The law requires intent.
That it was coordinated among thousands should bring in RICO charges too. For once I'd like to see some modern union bosses go to jail for their tactics.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're looking for tanks in the area, you want to be in the area to be able to shoot them. So you set a light out a few hundred meters to distance yourself from a tank shot.
Aside from the fact that all your lights would be out in no time, there is the distinct possibility we won't even use tanks. If somebody sees you, you might just get several MLRS cluster rounds on your light's position, which will likely also include your position. These days, we'll probably just use a drone or satellite to detect the heat signature, no need to even see.
Or after we realize your distancing trick (which won't take long) we'll just shoot our artillery in a circular pattern around the light, or just a semi-circular arc on the side opposite us.
There's just a basic reason that nobody does this. It's useless at best, suicidal at worst.
FYI, I am former artillery, and I served in an armored unit in wartime.
meant something more than chucking a bunch of boards into a case?
Nope. Before the breakup their market share in the Northeast had already dropped quite a bit from the almost 100% they had. They weren't even a majority in other areas, as competition heated up.
Other later companies even had benefits Standard Oil didn't. Standard had already figured out the waste product Vaseline could be profitable (yes, check it, Chesebrough was a Standard Oil company). Standard didn't just dump gasoline like the others of the day, but used it to run generators and such. Later companies could sell that for cars. Standard Oil did use some anti-competitive practices to gain the monopoly, but the company was still quite innovative and well-run.
I was a Word Perfect god back in the day, and even I realize Word Perfect totally screwed up the transition to Windows, despite what the suit says, and then screwed up the transition to 32-bit. Plus, one of WP's main advantages was all of the printer drivers, irrelevant in the Windows era. Microsoft simply had the better product, designed from the beginning to work in the GUI world. It was first made popular on the Mac in the mid 80s while Word Perfect wasn't even considering a GUI.
It goes to intent. Jamming their phones may not be illegal, but jamming their computers is.
I haven't seen anything otherwise. People are thinking only a couple thousand, but I showed the pool available. And union members are usually pretty good at doing what they're told.
So you think your free speech includes causing physical damage? That's going too far. Even noise abatement ordinances are constitutionall acceptable.
Huh? They fired a guy for cause, among other things hiring illegal aliens, something that can land the company in serious legal trouble. He wasn't a member of the union, since that union represented nobody at the company. His only known connection is wearing a T-shirt of the union.
Yes, *known*. The union has been trying to organize there, so it's likely the guy was a ringer.
I agree there. And unions are still quite necessary. My main problem with unions these days is the extortion campaign many use in organizing. This incident has the classic look of the beginning of such a campaign. That is why I clearly believe the claim of intent to adversely affect their systems, which is a crime and a tort.
Yes, many companies are tech-adverse. "We do construction, not computers!" That one IT job I found for them wasn't even in the home building division, it was in the mortgage division. Companies like this are prefect for the cloud, because they don't even have the will to create a decent IT infrastructure.
I knew an admin in the federal government who set up a stock proxy. That's it. Just installed it and put it online. It was a hacker's favorite for quite a while. Don't assume that level of competence is relative to organizational size.
Standard oil had massive inertia, pretty much owned the market for oil products. And this wasn't just in the consumer space -- all of it.
Word Perfect once had lock-in. I think only lawyers use Word Perfect anymore.
People equated Standard Oil with oil.
People equated Internet Explorer with Web browsing. That is starting to end now, no thanks to the ineffective antitrust remedies. It's ending because IE sucked for so long, much better solutions became available, enough to overcome that mindshare.
When they're for good reasons.
Apple bought a couple chip design firms, seriously helped Apple compete against the likes of Samsung in the mobile space.
Disney bought Pixar to revive its dying animation business and basically salvage a profitable relationship, gaining talented Pixar execs who could all-around revive Disney's creative side (I still think Pixar halfway bought Disney).
But this one was obvious. There is no logical reason for this purchase other than shrinking the choice of the consumer.
gets the most business. He who gets the most business makes good profit.
He who supplies poor value to the customer ends up not having customers.
That is usually unless some external force, such as a government, interferes. The AT&T monopoly was created by the government. Even when monopolies do develop naturally, they don't last. Standard Oil was already starting to crumble before the forced breakup (and it had done some good for the consumer, vastly lowering the cost of oil products through various efficiencies).
Capitalism is not a zero-sum game. One person getting a bigger piece of the pie does not necessarily mean every one else gets a smaller piece. The pie can grow.
"Congress and the administration are jointly responsible for the conduct of fiscal policy. So, this is not really about either political party." -- David Beers, head of S&Pâ(TM)s government debt-rating unit
If not for tea party influence, we wouldn't have gotten the pathetic effort at debt control that we did get. Both parties would have gladly continued driving us to insolvency.
The blame game you are playing is one of the reasons for the downgrade -- the desire to put politics above getting things done. Just like when your people called the tea party "terrorists."
Verhoeven wanted a brainless bug hunt movie, optioned Starship Troopers, threw ST elements on top of it, and gave it his own message. He admits he stopped reading ST a couple chapters in.
That's why the movie really doesn't work. It uses elements of a masterpiece to send the opposite message. The original was full of intelligent, effective tactics of a modern military, which is why it is on the military reading lists in the US. The movie had a bunch of idiots running to their doom with no plan, basically cannon fodder. A movie based on ST wouldn't do that.
It's an okay movie if you turn your brain off and watch it for the action and special effects. Otherwise, forget it.
And Harry Harrison did a great spoof in Bill The Galactic Hero.
That everybody else is competent at tech. They're a company, they must have their stuff set up well. A few hundred thousand emails hit just a couple boxes, they fill up, the admins are incapable of handling it. It's that easy. Looking at their current openings, this multi-billion dollar company with over 13,000 employees has a single IT position open, a low-level web developer. They don't look too hot on IT, which is common for the construction industry.
Again, the fact that the admins are incapable does not excuse the act of the aggressor. That woman wouldn't have been raped if she had known self defense, so the rape is her fault, not the rapist's?
Verhoeven was making a movie titled "Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine." He later heard of the book Starship Troopers, read a couple chapters, and bought the rights. His writers incorporated a few superficial elements of the book, and they renamed the movie.
It's not a bad adaptation of the book because it's not an adaption of the book at all.
The robocalls are part of a clear pattern of bahavior designed to DOS the company's ability to communicate.
There's an old saying, the right to swing your fist ends at my nose. Your right to speak your mind ends when it materially interferes with my business. In this case they weren't even speaking their mind, since a 600,000-strong membership was just clicking a "send" button over and over and over in order to flood emails. Automated by a programming loop, or by having over half a million clickers at your disposal. Same concept.
Because of an old injury, loud noises cause me serious pain with the likelihood of further injury. You start yelling. It would not hurt most people, no damage done. I tell you it is causing me pain and injury. You refuse to stop. You are now purposely injuring me. But it's okay because it wouldn't hurt others? Am I obliged to put in ear plugs, or should I just call the police?
I can't think of a case in law where the victim's inability to absorb an attack without injury absolved the attacker of responsibility for the injury.
This is a corporate case. One multi-million dollar corporation with fat cat executives against another multi-million dollar corporation with fat cat executives. One is in the business of building homes for profit, the other is in the business of unionizing workers for profit.
That's what we base crime on now?
You whack me in the head and kill me. You shouldn't be subject to a murder charge on the idea that I should have had a stronger head?
I want to shit in your yogurt. You don't want me to. Let's work with each other and find an acceptable level of shit in your yogurt. I say 1/10th of the initial amount I wanted. Is that acceptable?
All the Democrats wanted to cut was projected increases, to not increase the budget by quite so much. In addition, much of the "decrease" was projected, easily killed by later terms of Congress after this issue fades away. Most Republicans were willing to go along with them. This does not lead to financial solvency, so it was not a negotiable position as far as the tea party was concerned. It was the shit in your yogurt.
Tea party types were demanding actual decreases now, as in we spend less next year than we did this year. They were demanding what is needed for financial solvency, not the usual Washington numbers game.
The court cited it and found so. In addition, they persisted once notified of the effects of their campaign.
Supreme Court precedent says that an illegal act does not receive First Amendment protection, specifically in a union extortion RICO context.
I have no double standard. Show me a corporate executive doing RICO stuff and I'll support him going to jail.
The union is also a corporation, with assets over $140 million and executives who are mostly one-percenters in income.
This corporation is in the game to grow itself too. Thishis attack is part of the standard campaign designed to extort the company into working with the union to force the workers to join that union under a union contract with the company.
Absent this extorted company cooperation, the union would have to organize the old fashioned way -- convince the workers the union is a good deal for them.
Another analogy:
You look healthy but have a weak heart, I don't know it, I scare you at the Halloween party, you die.
You have a weak heart, I know it, and I want you dead for some reason that I stand to gain from. I scare you one day to kill you, you die.
Nothing changed here but the intent. One is an accident, while the other is first-degree murder. We don't intend to bring a server down. In fact, most sites can handle a good slashdotting. We even put up mirrors to alleviate the slashdotting.
This union intended to take down the company's phone, voice mail and computer systems. That they're probably running a base install of Exchange on a small server doesn't matter. They shouldn't have to buy a better system or hire better admins because a 600,000-strong union has a coordinated, semi-automated email campaign aganst only a few mailboxes.
It is not a crime based on the weakness of the victim or lack thereof. It is a crime based on the intent of the action and the effect on the victim.
It's still called breaking and entering even if I don't lock my door. My lack of defensive measures does not constitute permission to take advantage of that fact.
But you're right, the rest will go GSA.
First fact: This union did not represent one employee at that company. You would have seen, if you had read the court documents, that it is a non-representative union.
This union found out about the firing of one of their supporters who worked at the company. Despite the fact that the firing was for malfeasance (including the hiring of illegal aliens, something that could get the company in serious trouble with the law), they leveraged it into a portrayal of firing for supporting the union by wearing a T-shirt.
The people complaining had no relation to the company whatsoever. They were outsiders, part of a coordinated campaign to hinder the operations of the company through saturating its phone, voice mail and email systems.
Over 600,000 individuals on tap to send pre-written and pre-addressed complaints with a click to a few specific email accounts. Not everything has to be automated. There's also good old-fashioned group effort.
All attacks are relative. If you, by any means, flood a system with the knowledge that the flood is of sufficient strength to affect the availability of that system, and with the intent of hindering the availability of that system, then you are purposely performing a DOS. That is illegal.
That it was coordinated and occurred across state lines, federal felony charges should be certainly brought.
Leave them online and keep sinking money into their operations although they are not needed.
He's doing a good thing here. We have plenty of other datacenters throughout the world.
If they aren't repurposed at another agency, they will be sold in lots at DRMO sales. So will the racks. Servers used on secure networks may be sold, but any storage will no longer be in them.
Either way, it would have been great. No bothering with sleeping bags in the freezing cold or baking in the roasting desert either, just instantly out in a temperature-regulated suit.
It's the intent plus the effect. The intent was to impact the availability of the company's systems and thus their ability to conduct business. The effect was the same. That is illegal, and a civil tort. This cannot be equated to slashdotting because we go their to read the articles, not to purposely DDOS their systems. The law requires intent.
That it was coordinated among thousands should bring in RICO charges too. For once I'd like to see some modern union bosses go to jail for their tactics.