I think it's unfair to give this guy 7 years. I mean, it in no way makes me feel better that this mother f***er will be in jail for 7 years. This is why I think it's time to bring back public stonings.
...hearing that Yahoo! was prepared to fight "any legal attack issued" by the French courts, France immediately surrendered to Yahoo! and invited shareholders to establish a secondary government in Vichy.
Bush: I favor expanding the war on drugs, especially the bad ones like heroin and crack. Now, on the issue of sentencing differences between crack and powder cocaine, I have no problem. Let's face it, crack is a ghetto drug, not like coke. Oh, that tasty white powder...ahem...not that I did (or did not) use cocaine...in fact, I don't see any reason to discuss what I may or may not have done, including reports that I may or may not have sucked the GNP of Lichtenstein up my nose one evening in 1972 and may or may not have engaged in co-ed naked push-ups with three strippers from the Dallas Men's Club that evening and perhaps did or did not pay a state trooper $10,000 to maybe or maybe not keep quiet about it.
Gore: I would put drugs in a lockbox, rolling papers in my wallet, a bong in a duffel bag and a pipe in my sock.
I definitely come down on the side of "fry the f**ks who crack and steal." I'm even opposed to the hacking where the hacker claims, "I'm just trying to point out flaws," when doing so costs some company lots of money. (We can argue here about the amount it costs to learn this vs. what it would cost to actually be compromised, but that's another discussion.) This, however, is ridiculous. This reminds me of the Pope telling physicists that they should restrict their studies of cosmology to some time after the big-bang, because before that it would be blasphemous. Good luck! I would love to see them track down the thousands of people publishing exploits and prosecute them.
One thing I would think that purchased software offers over open source software is easily identifiable accountability. I know that companies I've worked for -- whose systems do not mean the difference between life and death -- shy away from open source software because there is no one to blame problems on. While open source may be more reliable, there's no credible promise that can back this up.
I'm not sure I know what you mean by "being held accountable." If you mean, can you be sued for printing false or libelous statements. Damn right. Anyone can be sued for that.
If the question means, do you have a responsibility to journalistic integrity, I would say that's your call.
David Every's next article posits that what we call monitors really aren't.
"In the old days, monitors were simply devices for displaying text, images, etc. to us. That defnition has gradually fallen by the wayside. Nowadays, a monitor is that, plus a few post-it notes, a picture of your significant other, an optional troll doll and at least 4 toys that are important to you. Most models also come with one or two fortunes from a chinese restaurant."
One point about this question continually bothers me. There are MANY 3rd party candidates. Where does one draw the line. A debate involving, say, 20 candidates would either stretch for days or not give each candidate enough time to speak and be heard.
Currently, many people are clamoring for Ralph Nader to be included in the debates. Mr. Nader is presently polling at somewhere between 2% and 5% nationally (in many polls, "not sure" and "undecided" are polling higher). There should be a lower limit a candidate must attain in order to avoid the scenario of having 20 or more candidates in a debate.
This argument is not intended to counter your second question. I find it reprehensible that any person with a ticket be denied entry.
That said, where should the limit be drawn? Currently, the rules outlined by the Commission on Presidential Debates mandates that a) the candidate must appear on enough state ballots for it to be mathematically possible that he/she can be elected outright (i.e., 270 electoral votes) and b) that he/she is polling at least 15% nationally has determined by 5 polls (ABC/Washington Post, CBS/NYTimes, NBC/Wall Street Journal, CNN/USA Today/Gallup, and Fox News/Opinion Dynamics). Should the rule allow the polling criteria to dip to 5%? Below 5%? It would need to in order for Nader to be included.
I have yet to hear a reasoned argument for a set of rules that would work better than what is currently in place. I would be interested to hear opinions.
What the f**k!?! How does getting caught and sent to prison for cracking some computers make you an expert on all things technological. Am I going to be presented by some article with Mitnick's take every time something comes up in the technical world? He hacked, he got caught, he went to jail. His story is over.
One major problem I've encountered at the companies I've worked [I'm a Java programmer of e-commerce apps] is overpromising by management. Some yutz with an MBA and no technical skills is asked by upper management when a product will be delivered. Since this person needs to justify their existence at the company, he or she generally blurts out some date. Invariably, this date matches exactly the date upper management would like the project completed by. Now, it's left to the actual people who write the f***ing software to meet this date.
I'm currently in a job where this has happened repeatedly over the last 4 months. Invariably, my project manager (yutz with an MBA) tells the team that they're fighting for us to shift those dates. The dates never move and I and my colleagues end up working 80 hour weeks for the 2 weeks before the date. After the deadline is reached (with varying degrees of success) we are once again told by the project manager that she will work hard to sell management on more realistic dates. And then we start again...
Can you blame employees who don't want to become intimately involved with a company?
So far, every company that I've worked for has had a "downsizing" (or "reorganization" or "resource action" -- my favorite -- or whatever euphamistic label they want to attach to firing people). Given that, and the prospect that similar actions will continue, some find it pointless to become attached to people with whom they work.
Now, compound the above with the increase in hours worked per week. (Note: people in other countries may work more hours, but if you're used to working 40 hours a week and now work 50, you have less free time.) If your available free time is less, do you want to use it playing softball with the people you're already spending more time with? ("Gee, Chuck, I know you've just worked 70 hours a week for the last month, but I'm disappointed you skipped the picnic the company so generously arranged for us.")
Companies have for a long time shown less loyalty to employees than in the past. This is changing, now, because it's a "seller's market" for hi-tech employees. My feeling -- too little, too f**king late.
I too have had my fill of the arguments defending these actions. I also agree with several posts I've seen that mention the owner of the server could be help responsible. It would seem, however, that to hold the owner responsible would require a client of the system to sue the owner. Another poster made the analogy of one's car being stolen from a mechanic's garage. The police won't arrest the mechanic, but the person can sue the mechanic. Same should be permissable.
...those annoying packages I remember getting at the beginning of every school year. They usually had deodorant, shampoo, razors and several credit card offers, offers for record companies (12 CD's for $0.01!), etc. Sounds like the same game.
Hmm...not sure I would go THAT far. I don't think the overseas company claimed to know Java. At least, their claim was no stronger than what any domestic firm would try (e.g., "Sure, we can do that").
First, note the subject line -- I'm not claiming what I write is a universal truth, simply what I've seen.
That said...
A company (very large and well known) that I worked at as a consultant simply loved to use overseas consultants and to hire these consultants as full time workers when possible. I attribute this mostly to large corporations viewing each IT worker the same. That is, if developer A demands $70K/year and developer B demands $40K/year, get developer B. Since (in their mind) every programmer is the same, the only relevant difference is salary.
For this reason, they adored the overseas consultants. They farmed out a web based app to an overseas firm (app written in Java and none of the overseas consultants had ever used Java). The reason -- spending $20/hr/consultant versus $120/hr/consultant. This, of course, backfired since they were left with a product that didn't work, required several domestic consultants to fix and many more overseas consultants to write in the first place.
I love that they're claiming the benefit of this to companies is it allows them to 'reeducate' people. I think you've finally found big brother when he's not afraid to use Orwell's own ideas.
It will be interesting to see when this finally gets trashed by the courts. Notice that right now they're only going after illegal activities. (If this keeps people from posting bogus earnings reports or other false, damaging information, I'm okay with that.) What you can easily see happening is someone getting p.o.ed about an Oracle product, writing something like my subject line and then getting 'reeducated' via a lawsuit.
Further, it is possible with the portal invention disclosed here to collect a small sample of human skin flakes shed by subjects passing therethrough, from which a human DNA sample can be extracted for purposes of DNA typing of individuals. One embodiment of the presently-disclosed invention may be used to detect trace biological signals emitted by the human body, which signals can be keyed to the subject's state of health, thereby allowing any of a wide variety of diseases to be diagnosed without direct physical contact. -- From the patent
Then, it's a simple matter of making easily identifiable symbols for people to wear so we know who has what. Thank you, science.
Last line is great! As a programmer, I'm distressed when I hear other programmers going nuts about people who can't program. [If you want a really good example of this crap, check out any talkback on zdnet. Yeah, most of the posters seem to have only slightly more knowledge than non-programmers, but they're very loud.]
I also agree with the idea that, "this is working for me now." Even as a programmer, OS programming doesn't interest me that much. I don't want to spend a lot of time monkeying with my OS if I don't have to. I want to pull it out of a box, install it and forget about it.
The utopian viewpoint here seems almost quaint. I've gone to plenty of shows where the musicians in question were able to support themselves by selling their CDs (this is all pre-napster), but had trouble attracting more than 20 people in some locations. The bad part about having musicians rely on touring to make money is that the major label groups have an immediate advantage (see the article notes about distribution, geographic fan distribution, etc.)
And just last month Intel made an even wilder claim--it got a court order to keep an ex-employee from sending emails (he had sent six over a period of two years) criticizing the company to current Intel employees. Intel claimed that Ken Hamidi, against whom they got the injunction, was "trespassing" on their equipment. -- From the CNet article
If Intel wins that one, can we shut down spammers using the same argument?
I found one of the greatest parts -- this is when I could parse the syntax of the chats -- in the 'ping of death' (or whatever it was called). Notice that j4n3 gave d1ck the code, d1ck writes a shell to execute the code and then puts his name on it!
That for me was very telling. It really seems like an attempt to gain notoreity of some sort even if it's just in this insular community. I'm sure most of us have written countless shell scripts, batch files and simple utilities, but didn't feel the need to claim authorship. This guy wraps cut and paste code snippets with an if/fi and feels he needs respect.
Note, too, how much time is spent attacking other kiddies (DoS attacks, password sniffing, and the whole bit about ripping each other off getting credit card numbers). Perhaps there would be a way to get them to do more of this and they could leave the rest of the world alone. Ah, here's to hoping.
I'm not sure I understand the appended editorial. If I'm a songwriter and I only want paying customers to listen to my songs, this helps me do that. Sure, you can still record it once you've paid for it and distribute freely, but that will always be with us. The complaint seems ludicrous -- "keep encryption good (but not too good) so us smart folks can still break it. That way we can laugh at you!"
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I think it's unfair to give this guy 7 years. I mean, it in no way makes me feel better that this mother f***er will be in jail for 7 years. This is why I think it's time to bring back public stonings.
...hearing that Yahoo! was prepared to fight "any legal attack issued" by the French courts, France immediately surrendered to Yahoo! and invited shareholders to establish a secondary government in Vichy.
Gore: I would put drugs in a lockbox, rolling papers in my wallet, a bong in a duffel bag and a pipe in my sock.
I definitely come down on the side of "fry the f**ks who crack and steal." I'm even opposed to the hacking where the hacker claims, "I'm just trying to point out flaws," when doing so costs some company lots of money. (We can argue here about the amount it costs to learn this vs. what it would cost to actually be compromised, but that's another discussion.) This, however, is ridiculous. This reminds me of the Pope telling physicists that they should restrict their studies of cosmology to some time after the big-bang, because before that it would be blasphemous. Good luck! I would love to see them track down the thousands of people publishing exploits and prosecute them.
Are hospitals willing to take the risk?
If the question means, do you have a responsibility to journalistic integrity, I would say that's your call.
"In the old days, monitors were simply devices for displaying text, images, etc. to us. That defnition has gradually fallen by the wayside. Nowadays, a monitor is that, plus a few post-it notes, a picture of your significant other, an optional troll doll and at least 4 toys that are important to you. Most models also come with one or two fortunes from a chinese restaurant."
Currently, many people are clamoring for Ralph Nader to be included in the debates. Mr. Nader is presently polling at somewhere between 2% and 5% nationally (in many polls, "not sure" and "undecided" are polling higher). There should be a lower limit a candidate must attain in order to avoid the scenario of having 20 or more candidates in a debate.
This argument is not intended to counter your second question. I find it reprehensible that any person with a ticket be denied entry.
That said, where should the limit be drawn? Currently, the rules outlined by the Commission on Presidential Debates mandates that a) the candidate must appear on enough state ballots for it to be mathematically possible that he/she can be elected outright (i.e., 270 electoral votes) and b) that he/she is polling at least 15% nationally has determined by 5 polls (ABC/Washington Post, CBS/NYTimes, NBC/Wall Street Journal, CNN/USA Today/Gallup, and Fox News/Opinion Dynamics). Should the rule allow the polling criteria to dip to 5%? Below 5%? It would need to in order for Nader to be included.
I have yet to hear a reasoned argument for a set of rules that would work better than what is currently in place. I would be interested to hear opinions.
What the f**k!?! How does getting caught and sent to prison for cracking some computers make you an expert on all things technological. Am I going to be presented by some article with Mitnick's take every time something comes up in the technical world? He hacked, he got caught, he went to jail. His story is over.
I'm currently in a job where this has happened repeatedly over the last 4 months. Invariably, my project manager (yutz with an MBA) tells the team that they're fighting for us to shift those dates. The dates never move and I and my colleagues end up working 80 hour weeks for the 2 weeks before the date. After the deadline is reached (with varying degrees of success) we are once again told by the project manager that she will work hard to sell management on more realistic dates. And then we start again...
Somebody is already working on streaming 3-D pr0n, I'm certain.
The article reports that the number of employees who quit the field exceeds the number of new jobs created per year.
So far, every company that I've worked for has had a "downsizing" (or "reorganization" or "resource action" -- my favorite -- or whatever euphamistic label they want to attach to firing people). Given that, and the prospect that similar actions will continue, some find it pointless to become attached to people with whom they work.
Now, compound the above with the increase in hours worked per week. (Note: people in other countries may work more hours, but if you're used to working 40 hours a week and now work 50, you have less free time.) If your available free time is less, do you want to use it playing softball with the people you're already spending more time with? ("Gee, Chuck, I know you've just worked 70 hours a week for the last month, but I'm disappointed you skipped the picnic the company so generously arranged for us.")
Companies have for a long time shown less loyalty to employees than in the past. This is changing, now, because it's a "seller's market" for hi-tech employees. My feeling -- too little, too f**king late.
I too have had my fill of the arguments defending these actions. I also agree with several posts I've seen that mention the owner of the server could be help responsible. It would seem, however, that to hold the owner responsible would require a client of the system to sue the owner. Another poster made the analogy of one's car being stolen from a mechanic's garage. The police won't arrest the mechanic, but the person can sue the mechanic. Same should be permissable.
...those annoying packages I remember getting at the beginning of every school year. They usually had deodorant, shampoo, razors and several credit card offers, offers for record companies (12 CD's for $0.01!), etc. Sounds like the same game.
5 hours of Muzak!?! Kill me now.
Hmm...not sure I would go THAT far. I don't think the overseas company claimed to know Java. At least, their claim was no stronger than what any domestic firm would try (e.g., "Sure, we can do that").
That said...
A company (very large and well known) that I worked at as a consultant simply loved to use overseas consultants and to hire these consultants as full time workers when possible. I attribute this mostly to large corporations viewing each IT worker the same. That is, if developer A demands $70K/year and developer B demands $40K/year, get developer B. Since (in their mind) every programmer is the same, the only relevant difference is salary.
For this reason, they adored the overseas consultants. They farmed out a web based app to an overseas firm (app written in Java and none of the overseas consultants had ever used Java). The reason -- spending $20/hr/consultant versus $120/hr/consultant. This, of course, backfired since they were left with a product that didn't work, required several domestic consultants to fix and many more overseas consultants to write in the first place.
It will be interesting to see when this finally gets trashed by the courts. Notice that right now they're only going after illegal activities. (If this keeps people from posting bogus earnings reports or other false, damaging information, I'm okay with that.) What you can easily see happening is someone getting p.o.ed about an Oracle product, writing something like my subject line and then getting 'reeducated' via a lawsuit.
Then, it's a simple matter of making easily identifiable symbols for people to wear so we know who has what. Thank you, science.
I also agree with the idea that, "this is working for me now." Even as a programmer, OS programming doesn't interest me that much. I don't want to spend a lot of time monkeying with my OS if I don't have to. I want to pull it out of a box, install it and forget about it.
If Intel wins that one, can we shut down spammers using the same argument?
I found one of the greatest parts -- this is when I could parse the syntax of the chats -- in the 'ping of death' (or whatever it was called). Notice that j4n3 gave d1ck the code, d1ck writes a shell to execute the code and then puts his name on it!
That for me was very telling. It really seems like an attempt to gain notoreity of some sort even if it's just in this insular community. I'm sure most of us have written countless shell scripts, batch files and simple utilities, but didn't feel the need to claim authorship. This guy wraps cut and paste code snippets with an if/fi and feels he needs respect.
Note, too, how much time is spent attacking other kiddies (DoS attacks, password sniffing, and the whole bit about ripping each other off getting credit card numbers). Perhaps there would be a way to get them to do more of this and they could leave the rest of the world alone. Ah, here's to hoping.
I'm not sure I understand the appended editorial. If I'm a songwriter and I only want paying customers to listen to my songs, this helps me do that. Sure, you can still record it once you've paid for it and distribute freely, but that will always be with us. The complaint seems ludicrous -- "keep encryption good (but not too good) so us smart folks can still break it. That way we can laugh at you!"