"...there have been no serious legislative efforts to improve the oversight or regulation..."
A good way to get people to read the article. But the existing settlement and damages is $54 billion (as mentioned and discussed fully towards the end of the article).
Why does anyone feel the need to improve the regulation or oversight, if the punishment fits the crime already? And what's additional punishment going to do?
If the punishment for murder is life in prison, is adding another mandatory 20 years to the sentence going to fix anything?
Slashdot, you should be ashamed of yourselves! Phone records are not metadata--these are DATA. Thank you, Dianne Feinstein, for now abusing one of tech's most important words, and using it as an attempt to whitewash what happened.
Metadata would be information about how those phone records are stored, such as a database schema, OO relational diagram, etc.
This is vital to the conversation--phone logs are DATA, and that DATA is subject to abuse. This is clearly an overreach.
And what about all those neurons that *aren't* in the brain? Optic nerves? Stomach lining? These neurons have just as much to do with memory as the brain itself.
I went outside and it did not rain. Therefore, if everyone went outside it would never rain. In fact, I can point you to studies in various deserts where people go outside all the time and it never rains. Going outside is healthier, right, than staying inside, so we should all go outside.
I thought I was the only one who saw that Mitt Romney's answer to everything was to bash Obama...about entirely everything else but the question being asked.
I encourage everyone to do themselves a favor: count the number of negative things each candidate has to say and then tally it up.
Revising the word "day" to mean "period of time" is the linguistic equivalent of "not having sexual relations with that woman."
It's called equivocation, and can be used to turn any words into any other words you desire. If I'm going to pick a book for my creation myth, I'd rather it be one where the human beings aren't taught to be ashamed of sex in the first chapter.
I've been a software engineer for eighteen years, and this entire article, its opinions and attitudes, are quackery at best. This guy is surely middle-management material, but only if his aspiration is the pointy-haired boss.
The worst part? It's so beyond dumb that I have to break my habit of "live and let live," ignore it and move on, and instead leave a comment on/.
The person wants to design their own widgets, with all the benefits of 3D acceleration, without an actual 3D library.
"Hi, I'm Dr. Frankenstein. I want to create a human being from animal parts without any knowledge of anatomy whatsoever. What blood type should I use?"
As a private entity, its valuations (sold to investors) are its main cash cow. You don't have to believe what they say--that's your prerogative. If you think what they say is BS, out of touch with reality, or a "$X trillion mistake," that's what the other rating agencies are for (Fitch, Moody's, etc.).
Who gave S&P the authority? Private enterprise gave them that. They happen to be very good at gauging these things, which is why people tend to trust them.
OK, so they were manipulated (or manipulating) for mortgage pass-through securities during the 2008 credit crisis. They fell asleep at the wheel, should have been paying more attention, should have been better at figuring it out. They could have been more savvy to realize that the CDS market was getting bigger and bigger all at AIG's expense. But they weren't. That also happens to NOT be their primary market. Fannie and Freddie are supposed to be responsible for securing mortgages. S&P is all about stocks, bonds, and indices.
Think of how many times does S&P get it right compared to how many times it is off base. If there is one plane crash, does everyone decide not to fly ever again?
I'm no big fan of S&P, but at the end of the day, S&P is answerable to its investors and its clients, no one else. Certainly not Robert Reich. Who gave HIM the authority?
Actually, there is zero (0) evidence that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the works of William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Nobody even thought the idea possible until "evidence" came from a Delia Bacon (no relation) who was a total nutter.
Then people like Mark Twain started to probe into some of the "biographies" of the Bard written by people who had no concept of history or any business writing such biographies, and a conspiracy-that-was-never-a-conspiracy was born as a result. Now there are a wide range of theories from Marlowe to de Vere to UFOs to Elvis.
Two hundred years from now, people are going to claim that someone else was Walt Disney because there is no way he could have drawn every single cartoon by hand.
""Anonymity" is a nonsense commodity generated by the information age, and which has had much emo-currency invested in it by those with vested interests, but which is a complete sham."
Tell that to Mark Twain, George Eliot, and Homer. All of them had a vested interest in anonymity--resulting in their pseudonymity.
Grandfather it in like this: if you file a patent by the rules of Patent 2.0, then you can no longer sue or be sued using the Patent 1.0 system. Furthermore, you have to abandon all existing Patent 1.0 lawsuits. In exchange, any Patent 1.0 lawsuits filed against your organization are void.
I really hope the SEC comes down hard on this. Using an SPV (special-purpose vehicle) as a "single investor" is breaking the spirit of the law, if not the letter of the law. This deal makes Goldman Sachs an insider trading infinite fraud machine with the power to print as much money as they want and defraud as many investors as they can. As usual, you are doomed if you can't get on the investment bandwagon and get some of that "good old privately traded Facebook stock", and doubly doomed if you are one of the investors who actually does buy the stock, only to be killed by Goldman's credit default swaps when the bubble pops and you find out that the stock is worthless. In no universe should it be legal, but you know Goldman, they're Too Big to Fail. Get ready for the taxpayer to foot the bill (again).
The comments here on Slashdot are far, far more useful than the original article, which I found to be rather trite and derivative ("don't do X. don't do ~X").
What are Mr. Peter Wayner's credentials? Sounds like he hasn't touched a single line of code in his life--even the examples won't compile and don't do the same thing that he says they do.
What Stock Exchange regulators? And just how, exactly?
Normally a company has a simple profit and loss summary. With banks, it's an entirely different matter. Banks have the power to move things off their balance sheet completely--poof! That's the whole point of most structured products, including credit derivatives.
Until the Wall Street reform bill got passed, nobody had the power to do anything about the situation at all. Now it's ostensibly fixed, but that takes time before the new regulators can even get a handle on what's been going on for the last 2-3 years. It's still easy peasy when most financial instruments can be traded over the counter (i.e., not through an exchange), without rules (especially for the big banks, who have special immunity) and don't have to be recorded.
It's only a matter of time before Goldman is the next Enron, only far, far worse. They may even get away with it.
Slashdot Mirror
"...there have been no serious legislative efforts to improve the oversight or regulation..."
A good way to get people to read the article. But the existing settlement and damages is $54 billion (as mentioned and discussed fully towards the end of the article).
Why does anyone feel the need to improve the regulation or oversight, if the punishment fits the crime already? And what's additional punishment going to do?
If the punishment for murder is life in prison, is adding another mandatory 20 years to the sentence going to fix anything?
...which makes it not so scary anymore.
Apparently (slides 15-16), anyone who uses encryption is automatically suspicious and will be recorded.
Slashdot, you should be ashamed of yourselves! Phone records are not metadata--these are DATA. Thank you, Dianne Feinstein, for now abusing one of tech's most important words, and using it as an attempt to whitewash what happened.
Metadata would be information about how those phone records are stored, such as a database schema, OO relational diagram, etc.
This is vital to the conversation--phone logs are DATA, and that DATA is subject to abuse. This is clearly an overreach.
If only we had some sort of "Affordable Health Care Act" that would require insurance to not exclude people based on prior conditions.
I bet we could even get the President of the U.S. in on it--we could even name it after him! I bet he cares!
And what about all those neurons that *aren't* in the brain? Optic nerves? Stomach lining? These neurons have just as much to do with memory as the brain itself.
"One more victory like that and we're really finished."
Maybe he should have sued California for allowing ANY exemptions or deductions at all...
And ./ readers finally realize that it's the Chinese glyph for "made you look."
It opens up the possibility of interstellar travel in a big, big way.
I went outside and it did not rain. Therefore, if everyone went outside it would never rain. In fact, I can point you to studies in various deserts where people go outside all the time and it never rains. Going outside is healthier, right, than staying inside, so we should all go outside.
Paid for by the Arrogant Cyclists Network
...in my mouth, of course...
I thought I was the only one who saw that Mitt Romney's answer to everything was to bash Obama...about entirely everything else but the question being asked.
I encourage everyone to do themselves a favor: count the number of negative things each candidate has to say and then tally it up.
Revising the word "day" to mean "period of time" is the linguistic equivalent of "not having sexual relations with that woman."
It's called equivocation, and can be used to turn any words into any other words you desire. If I'm going to pick a book for my creation myth, I'd rather it be one where the human beings aren't taught to be ashamed of sex in the first chapter.
I've been a software engineer for eighteen years, and this entire article, its opinions and attitudes, are quackery at best. This guy is surely middle-management material, but only if his aspiration is the pointy-haired boss.
The worst part? It's so beyond dumb that I have to break my habit of "live and let live," ignore it and move on, and instead leave a comment on /.
Google actually hired that guy?
+1 to the above post!
The person wants to design their own widgets, with all the benefits of 3D acceleration, without an actual 3D library.
"Hi, I'm Dr. Frankenstein. I want to create a human being from animal parts without any knowledge of anatomy whatsoever. What blood type should I use?"
Yay Kessler Syndrome! Thanks High School students for your contribution!
So that instead of bribing politicians to get our way, we bribe the corporations directly...
S&P is a ratings agency.
As a private entity, its valuations (sold to investors) are its main cash cow. You don't have to believe what they say--that's your prerogative. If you think what they say is BS, out of touch with reality, or a "$X trillion mistake," that's what the other rating agencies are for (Fitch, Moody's, etc.).
Who gave S&P the authority? Private enterprise gave them that. They happen to be very good at gauging these things, which is why people tend to trust them.
OK, so they were manipulated (or manipulating) for mortgage pass-through securities during the 2008 credit crisis. They fell asleep at the wheel, should have been paying more attention, should have been better at figuring it out. They could have been more savvy to realize that the CDS market was getting bigger and bigger all at AIG's expense. But they weren't. That also happens to NOT be their primary market. Fannie and Freddie are supposed to be responsible for securing mortgages. S&P is all about stocks, bonds, and indices.
Think of how many times does S&P get it right compared to how many times it is off base. If there is one plane crash, does everyone decide not to fly ever again?
I'm no big fan of S&P, but at the end of the day, S&P is answerable to its investors and its clients, no one else. Certainly not Robert Reich. Who gave HIM the authority?
Actually, there is zero (0) evidence that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the works of William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Nobody even thought the idea possible until "evidence" came from a Delia Bacon (no relation) who was a total nutter.
Then people like Mark Twain started to probe into some of the "biographies" of the Bard written by people who had no concept of history or any business writing such biographies, and a conspiracy-that-was-never-a-conspiracy was born as a result. Now there are a wide range of theories from Marlowe to de Vere to UFOs to Elvis.
Two hundred years from now, people are going to claim that someone else was Walt Disney because there is no way he could have drawn every single cartoon by hand.
""Anonymity" is a nonsense commodity generated by the information age, and which has had much emo-currency invested in it by those with vested interests, but which is a complete sham."
Tell that to Mark Twain, George Eliot, and Homer. All of them had a vested interest in anonymity--resulting in their pseudonymity.
--Ear Phantom
Grandfather it in like this: if you file a patent by the rules of Patent 2.0, then you can no longer sue or be sued using the Patent 1.0 system. Furthermore, you have to abandon all existing Patent 1.0 lawsuits. In exchange, any Patent 1.0 lawsuits filed against your organization are void.
How much would that level the playing field?
I really hope the SEC comes down hard on this. Using an SPV (special-purpose vehicle) as a "single investor" is breaking the spirit of the law, if not the letter of the law. This deal makes Goldman Sachs an insider trading infinite fraud machine with the power to print as much money as they want and defraud as many investors as they can. As usual, you are doomed if you can't get on the investment bandwagon and get some of that "good old privately traded Facebook stock", and doubly doomed if you are one of the investors who actually does buy the stock, only to be killed by Goldman's credit default swaps when the bubble pops and you find out that the stock is worthless. In no universe should it be legal, but you know Goldman, they're Too Big to Fail. Get ready for the taxpayer to foot the bill (again).
I hope everyone here appreciates the irony of a Disney movie with a protagonist who wants to give away IP for free.
Thank you, Firefox, for blocking them.
The comments here on Slashdot are far, far more useful than the original article, which I found to be rather trite and derivative ("don't do X. don't do ~X").
What are Mr. Peter Wayner's credentials? Sounds like he hasn't touched a single line of code in his life--even the examples won't compile and don't do the same thing that he says they do.
What Stock Exchange regulators? And just how, exactly?
Normally a company has a simple profit and loss summary. With banks, it's an entirely different matter. Banks have the power to move things off their balance sheet completely--poof! That's the whole point of most structured products, including credit derivatives.
Until the Wall Street reform bill got passed, nobody had the power to do anything about the situation at all. Now it's ostensibly fixed, but that takes time before the new regulators can even get a handle on what's been going on for the last 2-3 years. It's still easy peasy when most financial instruments can be traded over the counter (i.e., not through an exchange), without rules (especially for the big banks, who have special immunity) and don't have to be recorded.
It's only a matter of time before Goldman is the next Enron, only far, far worse. They may even get away with it.