The BSA can (and often does) use a variety of tactics to bully companies into submitting to an audit. At that point, the case is about whatever was found. Perhaps a really good lawyer can thwart an audit, but more often than not the BSA gets what BSA wants. I have not found ANY cases where the BSA volunteered the identity behind a tip. That would the end of tips to BSA.
The RIAA lawsuits were filed against "John Doe" defendants with even less basis than an anonymous tip to BSA.
"Be prepared to sue that former employee, for all damages and costs your business incurred as a result of their allegation, If they made a frivolous/false claim that hurt your business, and you can show who it is, take them to court. Maybe they (and others) will think twice, before making false reports to the BSA racket people.
The BSA needs their evidence to sue you, make sure you force the BSA to divulge the identity of the person reporting. Again, you will need legal counsel to help you with this "
I don't think so. A tip can be anonymous (as long as the tipster is not interested in a reward). The accusation is BSA vs. a company, not the tipster vs. a company. Meanwhile, if the audit turns up anything (and they seldom come out of this empty-handed), the accusation has at least some merit. The entire audit process is slanted so that only a tiny percentage of victims can totally refute the BSA (this helps the BSA defend against the type of action you propose).
I have seen cases where bad employees were terminated and they subsequently unleashed the hounds of BSA. I have also seen good employees treated badly, in which case I can hardly blame them for striking back. Although the former always think of themselves as the latter, there are cases where employers really bring this down upon themselves. An employer can treat a dumb person poorly and usually get away with it. Mistreating a smart person is a bad, bad idea.
Legal counsel is essential to limit the damage inflicted by BSA. But suing the former employee (even if you can figure out who it is) will be a counterproductive use of resources. In most cases, they have nothing to lose, and will thrive on the publicity. Since you never know what might leak out during discovery, it's best not to wage that war unless you have a clear path to victory.
Although I wonder if you can call the top 10 states Republican, you can definitely say the bottom 10 are mostly Democrat. Either way, I wish they would adjust that list for the effect of indirect federal spending. For example, Connecticut is ranked 48th at 69 cents on the dollar. But it's also Santa's workshop as far as Pentagon spending is concerned. What Connecticut fails to receive in direct federal spending it receives via indirect Pentagon spending. Connecticut is where they make submarines, helicopters, jet engines, tank engines, and all sorts of avionics. Defense spending is the ultimate perpetual "stimulus" program. Other states have large federal facilities (such as NASA and military bases) that probably escape the tax ROI calculation.
My guess is you don't drive much, because you are certainly not paying attention at the gas pump.
The national average for gas tax is 48.1 center per gallon (of which 18.4 cents is federal). I don't know which state you live in, but there are zero states in which you are paying anything less than 18.4 cents. In my state, they collect property tax on motor vehicles, hefty fees for registration, the second highest gax taxes in the country, and now adding tolls. Even so, I don't mind paying for what I use, and the highway system is one of the few government programs that operates anywhere near a break-even level.
Rest assured, the highways were not paid for with "other people's money". You ARE paying for it, you might as well enjoy it.
As for relying on science to make decisions, the evidence suggests politics trumps science in Gore's mind. Al Gore Mea Culpa: Support for Corn-Based Ethanol Was a Mistake At least he admits a mistake. But look at the motivation and apply the same principle to Gore's other favorite causes with the same degree of analysis. Not that the problem is limited to Gore; politicians are always lining up behind various causes to trade government funding for votes.
What I have seen is the opposite. In many states, ID requirements are weak, and urban districts are notorious for less than robust verification of IDs. Illegal aliens have a number of ways to slip through the cracks and vote. Although the Ohio system may have been designed to facilitate fraud, the low-tech systems of other states were designed to facilitate other types of fraud. There are many ways to rig an election.
The beneficiaries of tax-and-spend policy are those who receive the spending, not those who pay the taxes. Considering how much money gets pumped into welfare and medicaid, I find it hard to believe that poor people are under-represented at the voting booth.
You ask for a lot. It's one thing to get your vote counted, but how many unqualified voters are voting against you? Although the Ohio system appears to tolerate fraud on a grand scale, other forms of voter fraud are designed to operate at a lower level. ID requirements are incredibly weak in many states. Do you think this is really because people find it so hard to get a government-issued photo ID?
I disagree. McCain was not considered "conservative enough" for the Republican base, so their support of McCain was half-baked. McCain was a strong candidate in 2000, but by 2008 he had nothing left in the tank. With no real chance of running on Bush's track record, the RNC was left with a rebuilding strategy: Sacrifice the 2008 election. Experiment with Palin to see what happens, with the understanding that anyone with a pulse can defeat Obama in 2012. The only problem with the strategy is that the Democrats tried it against Bush and it didn't work.
Let's not forget how Bush became President in the first place. The Democrats nominated Al Gore in 2000. Everyone remembers how Florida results were within the margin of error for their stupid punch card ballots. But nobody seems to remember that Gore lost his own home state (Tennessee), which in my opinion should result in automatic disqualification. If your own state won't vote for you, go directly to epic fail.
Bush was one of the weakest candidates in modern times. In a way, he was similar to Nixon. Both were weak candidates who enjoyed the benefit of weaker opponents. Nixon defeated Humphrey in 1968 and McGovern in 1972; Bush defeated Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. Obama might fit into the same discussion, having defeated the Republican throwaway ticket of McCain/Palin in 2008. It remains to be seen if the Republicans can nominate a weak enough candidate to give Obama a second term.
It's easy to induce fanboyism; just give the subject a bag of Cheetos, Doritos, or any crunchy snack.
The most extreme fanboys are those who have received little gifts from vendors. A desk trinket or T-shirt goes a long way towards making the prospective fanboy feel "loved", "part of the team", etc. Bigger gifts work even better -- free products for home use, "training", etc. And for the truly resistant fanboy there is some extreme methods that can induce fanboyism: blackjack and strippers.
The other way to induce fanboyism is to prevent the subject from discovering alternatives. If you can make sure the prospective fanboy never drives a car other than Toyota, he or she will probably become a Toyota fanboy with no incentives whatsoever.
In humans, the degree of fanboyism (let's call it the "FB factor") is computed by the number of excuses per hour the person will make to defend the shortcomings of whatever the fanboy is addicted to.
Computing FB for prospective fanboys of Microsoft was hotly disputed until Vista provided a foolproof test case.
This looks like the work of someone who was not in the upper echelon of management, and therefore not "incentivized" to maintain confidentiality. Such people often work with information that the company considers top secret, without the compensation package (or even job security) that would cause the secrets to remain secret.
If the real issue was source code, any rogue programmer at CME (even a contractor) might be able to get a copy from a source code management system.
Many downsizing and outsourcing initiatives are accidentally leaked to employees before the plans are put into action. When the victims know who they are, all kinds of crazy things start happening. I don't know if such factors apply in this case, but anything is possible.
Very interesting. Most people who are going to do something like this don't leak anything until they leave their jobs and bring it all on a thumb drive to their new employer. If this guy followed the standard protocol, he wouldn't have been arrested.
I know a number of highly skilled people who have lost their jobs in recent years. Some due to office politics, but mostly it was a combination of downsizing and outsourcing. These folks had some serious knowledge. Management should have considered the consequences of sending these people out the door in search of employment. Let's just say I have seen some spectacular malfunctions of management strategy that I dare not mention in a public forum. Relying on a non-disclosure or non-compete agreement is not much protection when the ultimate sanction (loss of job) is already off the table. If the ex-employee goes to China, good luck with that non-compete agreement.
IT culture has deteriorated to the point where most employees have a "doomsday" thumb drive with all kinds of information that might be helpful at their next job. With nearly 20% of the work force effectively unemployed and the other 80% paranoid about their future, confidentiality is going to be a scarce commodity.
At the upper levels of management, there are golden parachutes for a terminated CEO, CFO, CIO, etc. In return for enough cash to sit back and carefully choose their next job, the quid pro quo is that secrets remain secret. At that level, the problem is acknowledged and solved with money. But there are a lot of secrets at all levels of management these days, and employers seem to be surprised when things leak.
Everything he said about energy is spot-on. Although reasonable people may disagree, nuclear is the closest thing we have to an economical non-fossil source of energy. But the cost of safety is high, and the cost of failure is even higher.
Ironically, Bill is the reason why people are skeptical about the safety of process automation software when in fact properly designed software will react more swiftly and reliably than humans. Any time there is a publicly disclosed problem with a nuke plant, the late night comedians respond with batch of Microsoft jokes.
TFA does not mention citizenship. Maybe a link of a link of a link does, but I never saw it.
In any event, mentioned H1-B because I have direct knowledge of a case where the employer was shocked...SHOCKED! to discover they had no recourse when an H1-B returned to his home country and brought proprietary information to a competitor.
Although anyone can leave the country and take trade secrets with them, you have to wonder about the wisdom of giving such secrets to people who have the means, motive, and method to exit the country and leave all of those nifty "trade secret" agreements in the dust.
Naturalized citizen or not, this guy had no problem getting a job with a Chinese manufacturer in China.
You don't have to be a xenophobe to understand risk and plan for contingencies.
Returning home, outside US jurisdiction? Just wondering.
Gotta love those non-compete agreements. The employer can harass you to the end of the earth for simply trying to get a job after being laid off (even if you have no access to "secrets" at all). Meanwhile, if you take a boatload of top-secret material offshore, all they can do is shrug their shoulders and have the legal department send a few nastygrams.
I understand the standards of proof are lower in civil court, but even those standards are not being met in my opinion. Then again, I know about things like assuming a static IP address on a DHCP network, routers with a tendency to spontaneously reset to factory default that includes open Wifi, etc.
It would be interesting to see what happens to a defendant who drives all over town, downloads 100 files from various open networks, walks into court, and says, "Before you get too excited about the plaintiff's evidence against me, I just downloaded 100 files from other people's networks all over town. How should THEIR cases be handled, and what makes you so sure that such actions are not a factor in THIS case?"
GAO contracts usually have a "most favored customer" clause, meaning that any better offer to another customer is automatically offered to the federal government. I wonder that such terms apply in this case.
If the insiders really wanted to systematically exploit the voting system, I don't think they would be dumb enough to rely on MS Access like Diebold did. The project would be a big budget extravaganza, managed by $POPULAR_MGMT_CONSULTING_FIRM. The complexity would be enormous, and there would be some sort of bizarre "national security" black box requirements that would be where all the dirty stuff lived.
Never attribute to malice that which can be just as easily explained by stupidity. Idiots outnumber evildoers by a wide margin.
The voting machine software I have seen looks like somebody drafted a half-baked specification, sent it to the offshore bargain bin and waited to see what they produced. Idiots.
I guess it comes down to your definition of "all". Some of the parts you mentioned could be stripped and sold as scrap. Others could be sent off to a used parts warehouse. I don't know what anyone could do with those ugly seats, but I'm not sure this particular 747 was a passenger plane. If it was cargo plane (as some 747s are), the interior would be almost entirely bare.
Perhaps their definition of "using it all" simply means they did not send anything to a landfill.
To me, the purchase price of $40k means it was thoroughly scavenged before the sale. I think there is more than $40k of scrap value in a fully equipped 747.
Slashdot Mirror
The BSA can (and often does) use a variety of tactics to bully companies into submitting to an audit. At that point, the case is about whatever was found. Perhaps a really good lawyer can thwart an audit, but more often than not the BSA gets what BSA wants. I have not found ANY cases where the BSA volunteered the identity behind a tip. That would the end of tips to BSA.
The RIAA lawsuits were filed against "John Doe" defendants with even less basis than an anonymous tip to BSA.
"Be prepared to sue that former employee, for all damages and costs your business incurred as a result of their allegation, If they made a frivolous/false claim that hurt your business, and you can show who it is, take them to court. Maybe they (and others) will think twice, before making false reports to the BSA racket people.
The BSA needs their evidence to sue you, make sure you force the BSA to divulge the identity of the person reporting. Again, you will need legal counsel to help you with this "
I don't think so. A tip can be anonymous (as long as the tipster is not interested in a reward). The accusation is BSA vs. a company, not the tipster vs. a company. Meanwhile, if the audit turns up anything (and they seldom come out of this empty-handed), the accusation has at least some merit. The entire audit process is slanted so that only a tiny percentage of victims can totally refute the BSA (this helps the BSA defend against the type of action you propose).
I have seen cases where bad employees were terminated and they subsequently unleashed the hounds of BSA. I have also seen good employees treated badly, in which case I can hardly blame them for striking back. Although the former always think of themselves as the latter, there are cases where employers really bring this down upon themselves. An employer can treat a dumb person poorly and usually get away with it. Mistreating a smart person is a bad, bad idea.
Legal counsel is essential to limit the damage inflicted by BSA. But suing the former employee (even if you can figure out who it is) will be a counterproductive use of resources. In most cases, they have nothing to lose, and will thrive on the publicity. Since you never know what might leak out during discovery, it's best not to wage that war unless you have a clear path to victory.
Although I wonder if you can call the top 10 states Republican, you can definitely say the bottom 10 are mostly Democrat. Either way, I wish they would adjust that list for the effect of indirect federal spending. For example, Connecticut is ranked 48th at 69 cents on the dollar. But it's also Santa's workshop as far as Pentagon spending is concerned. What Connecticut fails to receive in direct federal spending it receives via indirect Pentagon spending. Connecticut is where they make submarines, helicopters, jet engines, tank engines, and all sorts of avionics. Defense spending is the ultimate perpetual "stimulus" program. Other states have large federal facilities (such as NASA and military bases) that probably escape the tax ROI calculation.
My guess is you don't drive much, because you are certainly not paying attention at the gas pump.
The national average for gas tax is 48.1 center per gallon (of which 18.4 cents is federal). I don't know which state you live in, but there are zero states in which you are paying anything less than 18.4 cents. In my state, they collect property tax on motor vehicles, hefty fees for registration, the second highest gax taxes in the country, and now adding tolls. Even so, I don't mind paying for what I use, and the highway system is one of the few government programs that operates anywhere near a break-even level.
Rest assured, the highways were not paid for with "other people's money". You ARE paying for it, you might as well enjoy it.
But they elected him to the Senate, right?
As for relying on science to make decisions, the evidence suggests politics trumps science in Gore's mind. Al Gore Mea Culpa: Support for Corn-Based Ethanol Was a Mistake At least he admits a mistake. But look at the motivation and apply the same principle to Gore's other favorite causes with the same degree of analysis. Not that the problem is limited to Gore; politicians are always lining up behind various causes to trade government funding for votes.
What I have seen is the opposite. In many states, ID requirements are weak, and urban districts are notorious for less than robust verification of IDs. Illegal aliens have a number of ways to slip through the cracks and vote. Although the Ohio system may have been designed to facilitate fraud, the low-tech systems of other states were designed to facilitate other types of fraud. There are many ways to rig an election.
The beneficiaries of tax-and-spend policy are those who receive the spending, not those who pay the taxes. Considering how much money gets pumped into welfare and medicaid, I find it hard to believe that poor people are under-represented at the voting booth.
You ask for a lot. It's one thing to get your vote counted, but how many unqualified voters are voting against you? Although the Ohio system appears to tolerate fraud on a grand scale, other forms of voter fraud are designed to operate at a lower level. ID requirements are incredibly weak in many states. Do you think this is really because people find it so hard to get a government-issued photo ID?
I disagree. McCain was not considered "conservative enough" for the Republican base, so their support of McCain was half-baked. McCain was a strong candidate in 2000, but by 2008 he had nothing left in the tank. With no real chance of running on Bush's track record, the RNC was left with a rebuilding strategy: Sacrifice the 2008 election. Experiment with Palin to see what happens, with the understanding that anyone with a pulse can defeat Obama in 2012. The only problem with the strategy is that the Democrats tried it against Bush and it didn't work.
Let's not forget how Bush became President in the first place. The Democrats nominated Al Gore in 2000. Everyone remembers how Florida results were within the margin of error for their stupid punch card ballots. But nobody seems to remember that Gore lost his own home state (Tennessee), which in my opinion should result in automatic disqualification. If your own state won't vote for you, go directly to epic fail.
Bush was one of the weakest candidates in modern times. In a way, he was similar to Nixon. Both were weak candidates who enjoyed the benefit of weaker opponents. Nixon defeated Humphrey in 1968 and McGovern in 1972; Bush defeated Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. Obama might fit into the same discussion, having defeated the Republican throwaway ticket of McCain/Palin in 2008. It remains to be seen if the Republicans can nominate a weak enough candidate to give Obama a second term.
It's easy to induce fanboyism; just give the subject a bag of Cheetos, Doritos, or any crunchy snack.
The most extreme fanboys are those who have received little gifts from vendors. A desk trinket or T-shirt goes a long way towards making the prospective fanboy feel "loved", "part of the team", etc. Bigger gifts work even better -- free products for home use, "training", etc. And for the truly resistant fanboy there is some extreme methods that can induce fanboyism: blackjack and strippers.
The other way to induce fanboyism is to prevent the subject from discovering alternatives. If you can make sure the prospective fanboy never drives a car other than Toyota, he or she will probably become a Toyota fanboy with no incentives whatsoever.
In humans, the degree of fanboyism (let's call it the "FB factor") is computed by the number of excuses per hour the person will make to defend the shortcomings of whatever the fanboy is addicted to.
Computing FB for prospective fanboys of Microsoft was hotly disputed until Vista provided a foolproof test case.
This looks like the work of someone who was not in the upper echelon of management, and therefore not "incentivized" to maintain confidentiality. Such people often work with information that the company considers top secret, without the compensation package (or even job security) that would cause the secrets to remain secret.
If the real issue was source code, any rogue programmer at CME (even a contractor) might be able to get a copy from a source code management system.
Many downsizing and outsourcing initiatives are accidentally leaked to employees before the plans are put into action. When the victims know who they are, all kinds of crazy things start happening. I don't know if such factors apply in this case, but anything is possible.
Very interesting. Most people who are going to do something like this don't leak anything until they leave their jobs and bring it all on a thumb drive to their new employer. If this guy followed the standard protocol, he wouldn't have been arrested.
I know a number of highly skilled people who have lost their jobs in recent years. Some due to office politics, but mostly it was a combination of downsizing and outsourcing. These folks had some serious knowledge. Management should have considered the consequences of sending these people out the door in search of employment. Let's just say I have seen some spectacular malfunctions of management strategy that I dare not mention in a public forum. Relying on a non-disclosure or non-compete agreement is not much protection when the ultimate sanction (loss of job) is already off the table. If the ex-employee goes to China, good luck with that non-compete agreement.
IT culture has deteriorated to the point where most employees have a "doomsday" thumb drive with all kinds of information that might be helpful at their next job. With nearly 20% of the work force effectively unemployed and the other 80% paranoid about their future, confidentiality is going to be a scarce commodity.
At the upper levels of management, there are golden parachutes for a terminated CEO, CFO, CIO, etc. In return for enough cash to sit back and carefully choose their next job, the quid pro quo is that secrets remain secret. At that level, the problem is acknowledged and solved with money. But there are a lot of secrets at all levels of management these days, and employers seem to be surprised when things leak.
Everything he said about energy is spot-on. Although reasonable people may disagree, nuclear is the closest thing we have to an economical non-fossil source of energy. But the cost of safety is high, and the cost of failure is even higher.
Ironically, Bill is the reason why people are skeptical about the safety of process automation software when in fact properly designed software will react more swiftly and reliably than humans. Any time there is a publicly disclosed problem with a nuke plant, the late night comedians respond with batch of Microsoft jokes.
I wish that were true. The telcos have a lot more influence over government than citizens do.
I can think of some interesting vigilante options, but that discussion can wait until the tactics are needed.
Spare me the xenophobia crap.
TFA does not mention citizenship. Maybe a link of a link of a link does, but I never saw it.
In any event, mentioned H1-B because I have direct knowledge of a case where the employer was shocked...SHOCKED! to discover they had no recourse when an H1-B returned to his home country and brought proprietary information to a competitor.
Although anyone can leave the country and take trade secrets with them, you have to wonder about the wisdom of giving such secrets to people who have the means, motive, and method to exit the country and leave all of those nifty "trade secret" agreements in the dust.
Naturalized citizen or not, this guy had no problem getting a job with a Chinese manufacturer in China.
You don't have to be a xenophobe to understand risk and plan for contingencies.
Returning home, outside US jurisdiction? Just wondering.
Gotta love those non-compete agreements. The employer can harass you to the end of the earth for simply trying to get a job after being laid off (even if you have no access to "secrets" at all). Meanwhile, if you take a boatload of top-secret material offshore, all they can do is shrug their shoulders and have the legal department send a few nastygrams.
I understand the standards of proof are lower in civil court, but even those standards are not being met in my opinion. Then again, I know about things like assuming a static IP address on a DHCP network, routers with a tendency to spontaneously reset to factory default that includes open Wifi, etc.
It would be interesting to see what happens to a defendant who drives all over town, downloads 100 files from various open networks, walks into court, and says, "Before you get too excited about the plaintiff's evidence against me, I just downloaded 100 files from other people's networks all over town. How should THEIR cases be handled, and what makes you so sure that such actions are not a factor in THIS case?"
Farmville may be worth more than EA but only because Farmville's worth is measured in these stupid coins that you can't use for anything.
wget
It's not a paywall because you are allowed through before agreeing to pay.
I suggest: Bullywall, extortionwall, sleazewall
I guess they heard how dumb it was to have a paywall -- so they set up something even dumber!
GAO contracts usually have a "most favored customer" clause, meaning that any better offer to another customer is automatically offered to the federal government. I wonder that such terms apply in this case.
If the insiders really wanted to systematically exploit the voting system, I don't think they would be dumb enough to rely on MS Access like Diebold did. The project would be a big budget extravaganza, managed by $POPULAR_MGMT_CONSULTING_FIRM. The complexity would be enormous, and there would be some sort of bizarre "national security" black box requirements that would be where all the dirty stuff lived.
Never attribute to malice that which can be just as easily explained by stupidity. Idiots outnumber evildoers by a wide margin.
The voting machine software I have seen looks like somebody drafted a half-baked specification, sent it to the offshore bargain bin and waited to see what they produced. Idiots.
I guess it comes down to your definition of "all". Some of the parts you mentioned could be stripped and sold as scrap. Others could be sent off to a used parts warehouse. I don't know what anyone could do with those ugly seats, but I'm not sure this particular 747 was a passenger plane. If it was cargo plane (as some 747s are), the interior would be almost entirely bare.
Perhaps their definition of "using it all" simply means they did not send anything to a landfill.
To me, the purchase price of $40k means it was thoroughly scavenged before the sale. I think there is more than $40k of scrap value in a fully equipped 747.