"Legislation shows that people have a hard time differentiating what's a serious offence and what isn't"
Despite the fact that I thought we were patched and secured, the Nimda worm hit our servers. Oops - missed one of those MS security bulletins. My bad.
The cost in real dollars (not "gartner dollars" or "TCO dollars) to clean it up was around $25,000. For one small manufacturing company.
If a naughty kid threw a rock through our window and did $100 of damage, the police would yell at him and call his parents to pick him up. If he threw a bottle of gasoline through the window and did $25k of damage, he would be prosecuted for a felony.
So exactly how is this Nimda bomb not a "serious offense"?
That's your problem, not Microsoft's. Again, I don't like Microsoft's licensing policies, and I am this week investigating how to replace some of our M$ software with Linux and StarOffice. But if you lose the title to your car, you will have a hell of a time selling it, even if everyone and their brother "knows" it is yours.
"Your missing something. If I sell my refrigerator, I sure as hell don't need to provide the original sales receipt, packaging, and users manual. By your logic, it might be stolen, so I can't sell it"
Your refrigerator cannot be duplicated by the thousands at essentially zero cost. If it could... well, Poul Andersen and Larry Niven, among others, have written stories about what would happen in that case. But in the physical world as it exists today, the reality is that entities that sell intellectual property-based products will take stronger measures to protect their right not to be pirated.
Also, please note that if you lose the title to your car, you will have a devil of a time selling it, even if you have the car in your possession.
"To take an example from another arena: if I write to one of the media syndicates and get permission to use a Peanuts cartoon in some publication I'm working on, I can't then grant others access to use that cartoon, because I don't own it. "
No, but you can sell your entire publication, including your archive of past editions containing the Peanuts cartoon, to another publisher. Generally speaking (IANAL) as long as the new owner abides by the original license (e.g. pay UFS for each back issue sold) they can't prevent this transfer.
"Unfortunately Microsoft wanted me to show them the original receipt (which I don't have anymore). They also demand that when you sell Microsofot software, you must include *all* the original packaging including the box. Basically they stop all non-shrinkwrapped auctions of Microsoft software, and make the seller prove it's legit. Bastard jerks. They deserve all the piracy they get after this."
I am no big fan of Micro$oft, but I have a hard time seeing what is wrong with what you describe. Propriatary software is NOT free as in beer. While IMHO (IANAL) it is (or should be)perfectly legal for the original purchaser to re-sell his product (or license), it is also perfectly reasonable for the producer to enforce his right not to be pirated. If you don't have the original box, jewel case, and receipt, you very probably DON'T have a legal copy to sell.
I have been keeping PC software boxes and disks since 1983 (160k floppies anyone?). When we are darn sure we don't need that product anymore, we destroy it all, or sell it all in the original box. No box - no license.
'quick - who is the house member from your district?'
"But that's just the point -- people generally don't know these things off the top of their head. And even if you did, can you recite the postal address by heart? That's much less likely"
Quick - what is your doctor's name? Your dentist's? Your spouse?
Yet in the long run, your congressional representative can help you/hurt you far more than your doctor. So perhaps it might be good to keep track of those things?
"The letters all have to be sent to the same politician. If you scattershot 100K letters to their individual representatives (Senate and House), it wouldn't do that much good."
Good point, but if you are writing on a specific issue, you want to send the letter to your representatives (Senate and House) and to the member sponsering the bill (Hollings in the case of Son of DMCA). That way your representatives know where you stand, and the sponsor gets the full picture.
sPh
Because no one here exerts any effort..
on
Slashdot in Politics?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Congresspeople and other politicans pay attention to three things: (1) manually typed, manually signed letters from registered voters with reasonable arguments and tone (2) contributions of $$$ (the more the better, but any amount gets attention) (3) contributions of manhours.
I suggested when the Dimitri issue broke that if 100,000 slashdotters typed out a letter to their Congressional representatives (quick - who is the house member from your district?) and mailed it in, then Congress would begin to pay attention to the debate.
The typical response was "I don't know where a manual typewriter exists {hint - your public library} and if I can't e-mail my letter I won't bother. And send in $50??? You have to be joking!".
So exactly why would you expect any politician to take anything said here seriously?
"There is a muich simpler way......
start ---> windows update ---> product updates "
Followed by: ERP system crash. Custom-coded warehouse system crash. Intranet apps don't load. And that's just the normal course of business, not even taking into account that Microsoft might salt product updates to make competing products less stable (can you say Novell?).
In a production environment, you test before you deploy.
"Why can't the guy talk about politics if he wants to? While I don't think that he's officially speaking for the Free Software Foundation with this article, and speaking only for himself, everything that he's about has to do with wider politics and society in general"
I hope so. During World War I, that "right" was taken away (ref. Alien & Sedition Act) and numerous people who said things the government didn't like were jailed. I wonder how close to that point we are today?
"Guys...we are at war. The normal rules do not count in war. In times of war the needs of the many outweigh privacy arguments."
That is what happened during the (US) Civil War. After the war ended, the balance between government and Constitutional rights was restored to (more or less) what it had been before.
Then came the Great War (WWI). Again the "normal rules" were "suspended". But after that war the normal balance was never really restored, and the beginnings of the National Security State were first seen. And so on through WWII, Korean War, and Cold War.
I have always been a pretty strict constitutional libertarian, willing to accept some risks to live in a free society. Obviously such a position will be hard to defend now (in fact, I wonder if I am taking some risk by writing this).
So I think that the idea of Constitutional freedom will be greatly reduced in the United States in the next few years, and will never be restored. Nor do I think that anyone will object too much about it. But let's not forget what we will lose in the process.
I also congratulate you guys for staying focused on getting your jobs done under very difficult circumstances. I would estimate my own productivity was 25% of normal that day, along with most people I was working with.
"Although this is a funny story - it has appeared many, many times in "greatest hits of support" joke list over the past five years"
And both of them have actually happened to me in the last 3 months (note that I am not the original poster). So its possible the guy was in fact sincere.
"All these people have something in common: they don't think like a computer."
This reminds me of economists, who have spent 30 years building theories of human behaviour based on utility maximization and rational choice. When they finally realize that real humans are neither utility maximizers nor particularly rational, rather than change their theories they get mad at the humans for not behaving the way they "should"!
"My workplace uses a hodge-podge of formats including "special" ASCII text files, Framemaker, HTML and Microsoft Word. Needless to say, it's a mess"
The question I would ask is, Is that because the tools are inadequate? Or because human thinking and creative processes are a mess?
I have worked in highly structured engineering shops where everything is done according to procedure and every document stored in a structured manner (basically using procedures laid down in 1920!). These shops excel at delivering well-scoped projects in understood knowledge realms (the mythical bridge) on-time and on-budget. They do not do so well at handling projects in poorly understood knowledge realms, or projects where the environment and/or requirements changed rapidly.
I have also worked in loose, no-standards, anything goes engineering shops without any structured document/knowledge processes. I wouldn't hire one of these shops to build a bridge on time, but in fast-changing environments they do much better than the first type.
Conclusion: Be sure you understand what type of shop you are supporting before tying everything down with highly structured processes.
"I think you read his response backwards. He meant to say keep mail for only 3 months unless you have messages for which it would be advantageous legally to keep them longer"
Strangely enough, no. People say lots of things in e-mail that they (a) did not intend to say (b) did not realize they had said (c) were not authorized to say (d) wish they hadn't said.
If you go through your mailbox and delete a bunch of stuff the night before the lawyer arrives to take your deposition, you are probably guilty of a whole bunch of crimes.
But, if your company has a documented, published, _enforced_ procedure for deleting ALL e-mail more than 3 months old, then they (and you) can at least attempt to argue in court that e-mail is not intended to be an 'official company record'. You probably won't succeed, but at least you won't have committed any crime.
But keep just one of those puppies past 3 months, and it's hello county jail.
sPh
Re:Very few mergers succeed. Combine two weaklings
on
HP Buys Compaq
·
· Score: 2
"When two company's with the same product combine, they often can make more money than if they were seperate"
Yes, that's the synergy theory of mergers. Events since 1970 or so have shown that it rarely happens. Usually, all the best people in the acquired organization leave immediately under their own power, the customers get confused during the transition and stop buying, no one can figure out which staff is 'needed' and which is 'duplicate', arbitrary, unpleasant, and ineffective decisions get made, profitability falls, more layoffs and cuts follow, morale heads south of the Antarctic, and the whole organization sputters and chokes for 3-5 years. If it survives.
sPh
Very few mergers succeed. Combine two weaklings..
on
HP Buys Compaq
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Very few mergers succeed, even when there does appear to be some legitimate synergy or corporate fit. On paper it made a lot of sense to combine Chrylser and Daimler. In practice, the two cultures were so different that they seem bent on destroying each other rather than making the combined company better.
Now Carly is going to take two companies, each weakened by current economic conditions, and combine them. Where exactly is the synergy? Two manufacturing organizations, neither the lowest cost nor highest quality in their market, and both in thrall to Intel? That's a good combination.
And so on down the line. Synergy is vastly overrated when it EXISTS, and I have a hard time seeing any hear. Doubling the size of the Titanic would only have caused it to sink twice as fast!
"I mean with the mass production of cars and trucks; how much do we even need rail?"
During the 1970's, shippers in North America tried to switch everything over to trucks.
Sometime in the 1980's, two things happened: (a) railroads improved their efficiency (b) someone did some simple division and realized that for shipments over x miles (I forget exactly, but it is around 500), transport by rail has about 1/20 the cost of transport by truck.
So since 1990, about 90% of long distance, inter-city tranport again moves by rail (not to mention coal and the Panama Canal bypass, which are separate issues).
Most of the small sidetracks and short lines are gone, though, giving the impression that there is less rail than in the past. In terms of tonnage, not true.
The problem being that while the railroads were and still are vital to the economic development of North America, by some measures no railroad in NA has ever earned a return on investment. Even the best-managed roads today (e.g. Norfolk Southern) are barely turning an operating profit. And the harder they try, the more money they lose.
Which, come to think of it, sounds pretty much like the situation in the data communications business right at the moment. The only difference being that since investors are a lot faster to pull the trigger on businesses that they perceive as having poor future returns, the telecomm companies will probably never get the chance to establish themselves that the railroads had 1860-1920.
So what happens when all the money pulls out, and all the telecomm providers (except the RBOCs) collapse?
"Obviously this wouldn't be feasible unless, at the least, diodes and relays capable of handling millions of volts and lots of amps (does static electricity have amperes?) are developed."
Unfortunately, I have seen the heaviest electrical equipment you can imagine (765kV distribution gear with ceramic insulators 2m high) blown into fragments by lightning strikes. There isn't much call for ultra-high voltage, ultra-high frequency (which is what lightning is) stuff in the normal world, so very little is known about how to handle that kind of energy.
Beside, if you just want to get rid of the strike, plain old lightning rods and lightning busters (grounded towers with hundreds of small points to dissipate the charge) do a pretty good job. Usually!
"Sheeze, why not just define it as 1.498e20 atoms of carbon (or whatever number), and be done with it."
No problemo - as soon as you figure out a practical method for counting out those atoms on the floor of your typical machine shop. 'Oops - dropped another one. Someone blow the oil off it NO NOT THAT HARD - damm, out the window'.
"Ahh, but Atlantis is supposed to be Númenor, so
Isengard is != Atlantis."
Not disagreeing, but are can you cite a reference for that?
Anyway, what I ment but didn't express well is that if, per the Appendices, the Shire is in England, and neither the moon nor the constellations are much different from our time, then tLOtR can't have happened more than about 10,000 years ago. That implies that the mountain chain running down the spine of Italy must be a remnent of the Misty Mountains. Isengard would be about at the southern tip of Itay (which checks with the amount of time it took to walk there from Rivendell).
BUT, if this totally bogus speculation on my part is correct, there is a whole lot of land missing south and southast of Italy, including most of Gondor. That would have had to have sunk at some point in the not-too-distant past. The sinking of Atlantis seems a logical event to cause this.
"b) The Hobbit was originally written by Tolkein for his children. The storytelling style is very much in the mode of a children's fairy tale. It is a ripping good yarn and well worth the time for adults, but its distinctly juvenile style can seem a little "cute" at times. "
Actually, it was written when his children were quite young. He said later in life that if he knew at that time what he learned later about children, he wouldn't have "dumbed down" The Hobbit.
Slashdot Mirror
"Legislation shows that people have a hard time differentiating what's a serious offence and what isn't"
Despite the fact that I thought we were patched and secured, the Nimda worm hit our servers. Oops - missed one of those MS security bulletins. My bad.
The cost in real dollars (not "gartner dollars" or "TCO dollars) to clean it up was around $25,000. For one small manufacturing company.
If a naughty kid threw a rock through our window and did $100 of damage, the police would yell at him and call his parents to pick him up. If he threw a bottle of gasoline through the window and did $25k of damage, he would be prosecuted for a felony.
So exactly how is this Nimda bomb not a "serious offense"?
sPh
"Yes: we don't all live in warehouses"
That's your problem, not Microsoft's. Again, I don't like Microsoft's licensing policies, and I am this week investigating how to replace some of our M$ software with Linux and StarOffice. But if you lose the title to your car, you will have a hell of a time selling it, even if everyone and their brother "knows" it is yours.
sPh
"Your missing something. If I sell my refrigerator, I sure as hell don't need to provide the original sales receipt, packaging, and users manual. By your logic, it might be stolen, so I can't sell it"
Your refrigerator cannot be duplicated by the thousands at essentially zero cost. If it could... well, Poul Andersen and Larry Niven, among others, have written stories about what would happen in that case. But in the physical world as it exists today, the reality is that entities that sell intellectual property-based products will take stronger measures to protect their right not to be pirated.
Also, please note that if you lose the title to your car, you will have a devil of a time selling it, even if you have the car in your possession.
sPh
"To take an example from another arena: if I write to one of the media syndicates and get permission to use a Peanuts cartoon in some publication I'm working on, I can't then grant others access to use that cartoon, because I don't own it. "
No, but you can sell your entire publication, including your archive of past editions containing the Peanuts cartoon, to another publisher. Generally speaking (IANAL) as long as the new owner abides by the original license (e.g. pay UFS for each back issue sold) they can't prevent this transfer.
sPh
"Unfortunately Microsoft wanted me to show them the original receipt (which I don't have anymore). They also demand that when you sell Microsofot software, you must include *all* the original packaging including the box. Basically they stop all non-shrinkwrapped auctions of Microsoft software, and make the seller prove it's legit. Bastard jerks. They deserve all the piracy they get after this."
I am no big fan of Micro$oft, but I have a hard time seeing what is wrong with what you describe. Propriatary software is NOT free as in beer. While IMHO (IANAL) it is (or should be)perfectly legal for the original purchaser to re-sell his product (or license), it is also perfectly reasonable for the producer to enforce his right not to be pirated. If you don't have the original box, jewel case, and receipt, you very probably DON'T have a legal copy to sell.
I have been keeping PC software boxes and disks since 1983 (160k floppies anyone?). When we are darn sure we don't need that product anymore, we destroy it all, or sell it all in the original box. No box - no license.
Or am I missing something?
sPh
'quick - who is the house member from your district?'
"But that's just the point -- people generally don't know these things off the top of their head. And even if you did, can you recite the postal address by heart? That's much less likely"
Quick - what is your doctor's name? Your dentist's? Your spouse?
Yet in the long run, your congressional representative can help you/hurt you far more than your doctor. So perhaps it might be good to keep track of those things?
sPh
"The letters all have to be sent to the same politician. If you scattershot 100K letters to their individual representatives (Senate and House), it wouldn't do that much good."
Good point, but if you are writing on a specific issue, you want to send the letter to your representatives (Senate and House) and to the member sponsering the bill (Hollings in the case of Son of DMCA). That way your representatives know where you stand, and the sponsor gets the full picture.
sPh
Congresspeople and other politicans pay attention to three things: (1) manually typed, manually signed letters from registered voters with reasonable arguments and tone (2) contributions of $$$ (the more the better, but any amount gets attention) (3) contributions of manhours.
I suggested when the Dimitri issue broke that if 100,000 slashdotters typed out a letter to their Congressional representatives (quick - who is the house member from your district?) and mailed it in, then Congress would begin to pay attention to the debate.
The typical response was "I don't know where a manual typewriter exists {hint - your public library} and if I can't e-mail my letter I won't bother. And send in $50??? You have to be joking!".
So exactly why would you expect any politician to take anything said here seriously?
sPh
"There is a muich simpler way......
start ---> windows update ---> product updates "
Followed by: ERP system crash. Custom-coded warehouse system crash. Intranet apps don't load. And that's just the normal course of business, not even taking into account that Microsoft might salt product updates to make competing products less stable (can you say Novell?).
In a production environment, you test before you deploy.
sPh
"Why can't the guy talk about politics if he wants to? While I don't think that he's officially speaking for the Free Software Foundation with this article, and speaking only for himself, everything that he's about has to do with wider politics and society in general"
I hope so. During World War I, that "right" was taken away (ref. Alien & Sedition Act) and numerous people who said things the government didn't like were jailed. I wonder how close to that point we are today?
sPh
"Guys...we are at war. The normal rules do not count in war. In times of war the needs of the many outweigh privacy arguments."
That is what happened during the (US) Civil War. After the war ended, the balance between government and Constitutional rights was restored to (more or less) what it had been before.
Then came the Great War (WWI). Again the "normal rules" were "suspended". But after that war the normal balance was never really restored, and the beginnings of the National Security State were first seen. And so on through WWII, Korean War, and Cold War.
I have always been a pretty strict constitutional libertarian, willing to accept some risks to live in a free society. Obviously such a position will be hard to defend now (in fact, I wonder if I am taking some risk by writing this).
So I think that the idea of Constitutional freedom will be greatly reduced in the United States in the next few years, and will never be restored. Nor do I think that anyone will object too much about it. But let's not forget what we will lose in the process.
sPh
I also congratulate you guys for staying focused on getting your jobs done under very difficult circumstances. I would estimate my own productivity was 25% of normal that day, along with most people I was working with.
sPh
"Although this is a funny story - it has appeared many, many times in "greatest hits of support" joke list over the past five years"
And both of them have actually happened to me in the last 3 months (note that I am not the original poster). So its possible the guy was in fact sincere.
sPh
"All these people have something in common: they don't think like a computer."
This reminds me of economists, who have spent 30 years building theories of human behaviour based on utility maximization and rational choice. When they finally realize that real humans are neither utility maximizers nor particularly rational, rather than change their theories they get mad at the humans for not behaving the way they "should"!
sPh
I am all in favor of tools like this. But it sure sounds like a reinvention of Quarterdesk DesqView!
sPh
"My workplace uses a hodge-podge of formats including "special" ASCII text files, Framemaker, HTML and Microsoft Word. Needless to say, it's a mess"
The question I would ask is, Is that because the tools are inadequate? Or because human thinking and creative processes are a mess?
I have worked in highly structured engineering shops where everything is done according to procedure and every document stored in a structured manner (basically using procedures laid down in 1920!). These shops excel at delivering well-scoped projects in understood knowledge realms (the mythical bridge) on-time and on-budget. They do not do so well at handling projects in poorly understood knowledge realms, or projects where the environment and/or requirements changed rapidly.
I have also worked in loose, no-standards, anything goes engineering shops without any structured document/knowledge processes. I wouldn't hire one of these shops to build a bridge on time, but in fast-changing environments they do much better than the first type.
Conclusion: Be sure you understand what type of shop you are supporting before tying everything down with highly structured processes.
sPh
"I think you read his response backwards. He meant to say keep mail for only 3 months unless you have messages for which it would be advantageous legally to keep them longer"
Strangely enough, no. People say lots of things in e-mail that they (a) did not intend to say (b) did not realize they had said (c) were not authorized to say (d) wish they hadn't said.
If you go through your mailbox and delete a bunch of stuff the night before the lawyer arrives to take your deposition, you are probably guilty of a whole bunch of crimes.
But, if your company has a documented, published, _enforced_ procedure for deleting ALL e-mail more than 3 months old, then they (and you) can at least attempt to argue in court that e-mail is not intended to be an 'official company record'. You probably won't succeed, but at least you won't have committed any crime.
But keep just one of those puppies past 3 months, and it's hello county jail.
sPh
"When two company's with the same product combine, they often can make more money than if they were seperate"
Yes, that's the synergy theory of mergers. Events since 1970 or so have shown that it rarely happens. Usually, all the best people in the acquired organization leave immediately under their own power, the customers get confused during the transition and stop buying, no one can figure out which staff is 'needed' and which is 'duplicate', arbitrary, unpleasant, and ineffective decisions get made, profitability falls, more layoffs and cuts follow, morale heads south of the Antarctic, and the whole organization sputters and chokes for 3-5 years. If it survives.
sPh
Very few mergers succeed, even when there does appear to be some legitimate synergy or corporate fit. On paper it made a lot of sense to combine Chrylser and Daimler. In practice, the two cultures were so different that they seem bent on destroying each other rather than making the combined company better.
Now Carly is going to take two companies, each weakened by current economic conditions, and combine them. Where exactly is the synergy? Two manufacturing organizations, neither the lowest cost nor highest quality in their market, and both in thrall to Intel? That's a good combination.
And so on down the line. Synergy is vastly overrated when it EXISTS, and I have a hard time seeing any hear. Doubling the size of the Titanic would only have caused it to sink twice as fast!
sPh
"I mean with the mass production of cars and trucks; how much do we even need rail?"
During the 1970's, shippers in North America tried to switch everything over to trucks.
Sometime in the 1980's, two things happened: (a) railroads improved their efficiency (b) someone did some simple division and realized that for shipments over x miles (I forget exactly, but it is around 500), transport by rail has about 1/20 the cost of transport by truck.
So since 1990, about 90% of long distance, inter-city tranport again moves by rail (not to mention coal and the Panama Canal bypass, which are separate issues).
Most of the small sidetracks and short lines are gone, though, giving the impression that there is less rail than in the past. In terms of tonnage, not true.
sPh
The problem being that while the railroads were and still are vital to the economic development of North America, by some measures no railroad in NA has ever earned a return on investment. Even the best-managed roads today (e.g. Norfolk Southern) are barely turning an operating profit. And the harder they try, the more money they lose.
Which, come to think of it, sounds pretty much like the situation in the data communications business right at the moment. The only difference being that since investors are a lot faster to pull the trigger on businesses that they perceive as having poor future returns, the telecomm companies will probably never get the chance to establish themselves that the railroads had 1860-1920.
So what happens when all the money pulls out, and all the telecomm providers (except the RBOCs) collapse?
sPh
"Obviously this wouldn't be feasible unless, at the least, diodes and relays capable of handling millions of volts and lots of amps (does static electricity have amperes?) are developed."
Unfortunately, I have seen the heaviest electrical equipment you can imagine (765kV distribution gear with ceramic insulators 2m high) blown into fragments by lightning strikes. There isn't much call for ultra-high voltage, ultra-high frequency (which is what lightning is) stuff in the normal world, so very little is known about how to handle that kind of energy.
Beside, if you just want to get rid of the strike, plain old lightning rods and lightning busters (grounded towers with hundreds of small points to dissipate the charge) do a pretty good job. Usually!
sPh
"Sheeze, why not just define it as 1.498e20 atoms of carbon (or whatever number), and be done with it."
No problemo - as soon as you figure out a practical method for counting out those atoms on the floor of your typical machine shop. 'Oops - dropped another one. Someone blow the oil off it NO NOT THAT HARD - damm, out the window'.
sPh
"Ahh, but Atlantis is supposed to be Númenor, so
Isengard is != Atlantis."
Not disagreeing, but are can you cite a reference for that?
Anyway, what I ment but didn't express well is that if, per the Appendices, the Shire is in England, and neither the moon nor the constellations are much different from our time, then tLOtR can't have happened more than about 10,000 years ago. That implies that the mountain chain running down the spine of Italy must be a remnent of the Misty Mountains. Isengard would be about at the southern tip of Itay (which checks with the amount of time it took to walk there from Rivendell).
BUT, if this totally bogus speculation on my part is correct, there is a whole lot of land missing south and southast of Italy, including most of Gondor. That would have had to have sunk at some point in the not-too-distant past. The sinking of Atlantis seems a logical event to cause this.
sPh
"b) The Hobbit was originally written by Tolkein for his children. The storytelling style is very much in the mode of a children's fairy tale. It is a ripping good yarn and well worth the time for adults, but its distinctly juvenile style can seem a little "cute" at times. "
Actually, it was written when his children were quite young. He said later in life that if he knew at that time what he learned later about children, he wouldn't have "dumbed down" The Hobbit.
sPh