Well, if the assumption has been the water arrived here through cometary bombardment, and that modern comets and asteroids contain a fair bit of water... shouldn't we be assuming that there would have to be vast amount of water in the universe?
It sometimes people on the one hand keep saying "look at all the evidence of water", and then they turn around and say "holy cow, water".
It just seems like at this point we should expect there to be water. So I'm not sure why people still keep acting like we're the only place where you'll find it.
I'm more the mind which says "how could there not be water in vast quantities?
Governments all over the world have been hoodwinked or bribed to set up loopholes which are beneficial to corporations, and not so good for domestic economies.
Because people have been buying into the lie that somehow cutting taxes on corporations is a net benefit, when in fact it's just a way for corporations to pay less tax and skim off the time, while taking ever bigger profits.
There has been a lot of evidence that all of these tax cuts don't benefit anybody but corporations, and that trick down economics is pretty much not working as advertised.
It's time to start saying "too fucking bad" to the corporations and stop giving them special loopholes to play shell games with money.
Start handcuffing CEOs to bears, make the world a better place.
The absurd notion that we should all be competing with the lowest wage earners on the planet is absurd.
Globalization is what happens when corporations tell us we should be competing with people in Bangalore for salaries and jobs.
Globalization is basically fucking everyone else over in the name of corporate profits.
Letting massive multinational companies decide that local salaries are more than they want to pay and importing people who will take less money is a surefire way to be on a race to the bottom.
Between the lie of saying cutting taxes for corporations will make the economy better, and the lie that importing cheaper foreign labor will create new domestic jobs... the fucking corporations are basically robbing us blind, and idiot politicians are bending over backwards to ensure they have the tools to keep doing it.
The US and every other country playing this stupid game is basically gutting its own economy in favor of allowing corporations to maximize profits at the expense of the society which stupidly keeps giving them tax breaks.
And, sadly, the politicians who are bought and paid for to skew the deck in favor of corporate greed are usually direct beneficiaries, so it makes them even more wealthy and corrupt when they cede ever more to corporations.
You should absolutely blame corporations for foreigners stealing jobs, because they're the ones who have demanded the ability to bring in outside labor and change the rules.
This has nothing to do with creating American jobs, and everything to do with driving down the cost of hiring people so that billionaire douchebags can run companies at a higher profit by making sure they pay Americans less money since they now have to compete with someone from India for a lower salary.
This is the big players distorting the labor market by lobbying politicians to allow them to change the playing field.
How many US tech workers are currently under or unemployed? And how many of them have these companies considered hiring?
Instead they write a job description which is impossible, or geared to bringing in a specific foreign worker.
This whole foreign worker crap is basically big corporations forcing wages to go down by bringing in people who will work cheaper.
As I said, billionaire douchebags. And this is more or less theft on a grand scale because people keep buying into the notion that what is good for companies is good for everyone else.
I'm sorry, but Zuckerfuck and Ballmer claiming that there would be more American jobs if only they could bring in more foreign workers to replace Americans is complete and utter bullshit.
This is billionaire douchebags saying they could become even bigger billionaire douchebags of only they could get more cheap labor from overseas.
Will someone put these two clowns into the bear enclosure at the zoo and get rid of them for good?
Security is hard, and it was more profitable to push crap out the door than actually do what we promised.
Honestly, TFS makes it sound like someone slapped together something and either naively believed they'd made something secure.. or straight up lied about having made something secure.
No wifi password and default admin passwords? That's pretty pathetic for something which purports to be a security/privacy tool.
Sounds like someone wrote the marketing literature before creating the product.
No, modifying the code means you have created a derivative work and need to release those code changes to anybody using it.
Which is what the license has said for at least 20 years.
There is no provision to make changes to GPL code and not release it.
If you have an application which is only ever inside your corporate firewall, it's unlikely the people in accounting will want to see the source code. But you sure as hell can't modify it, build a product around it, and then not release those changes.
Nobody forced the company to use GPL stuff. Nobody forced them to build a product around it.
That they failed to comply with their obligations under the license is their own damned problem.
Use the GPL stuff, don't use the GPL stuff.. it's your choice. But if you choose to use the GPL stuff, you don't get to piss and moan that you don't want to live by the license.
Corporations aren't entitled to use GPL code and not adhere to the license. It's not a situation in which you can just decide how you'll interpret releasing the code.
These corporations which don't trust the GPL are entirely free to piss off and write their own code, or start with something like BSD which says "go ahead, do whatever you want with it".
So, this makes me wonder if they are sort of stuck between stupid hardware companies and the GPL. They may not be able to publish changes to the open source products without violating their NDAs with the manufactures of assorted chips/etc they use.
You know, that's a self-inflicted problem, and not deserving of sympathy.
Either you run closed source stuff and write your own stuff, or you comply with the GPL.
It's a bummer if a small company got themselves into a predicament. But, nobody cares.
I know you're not defending them, but honestly if a company decided it wanted to steal someone else's code and not play by the rules of the GPL, that's their own damned problem.
From the sounds of it, they knew damned well they were not compliant.
They'll do a hell of a lot more if the corporation can face punishment than if all they have to do is say "aww, shucks, we're not actually sorry".
Because without penalties, you can pretty much guarantee they will do the barest minimum they can justify... and that will range between "nothing at all" and "not very much".
Really, the availability of programmers isn't the main problem.
Corporations bear no liability for writing crap security, which means they have no penalty for doing so. They might try a small amount of security to look good, but at the end of the day they simply don't need to care.
So the security of these things is as inherently insecure as anything is which is doing on a "meh, whatever" level of effort.
Marketing wants the product out the door, management wants to do it as cheaply as possible, and sales is already trying to figure out who all they're going to sell your data to.
As long as they have no penalty, you should assume they're too lazy or incompetent to have any real security in place.
I just simply don't buy devices which want to connect to the internet. Because I simply don't trust them.
Well, I'll tell you what... you buy any fucking piece of technology you like.
Me? I think the trend to have this Internet of Stuff is mostly garbage products by people who think the world operates on a smart phone... and that the 'security' on those products is incompetently written by people who don't care.
I think until we get smart and apply data protection and security laws which says corporations have a legal responsibility to both protect your data and your security... you should assume both your privacy and your security are in the hands of some asshole in marketing, and that the asshole in marketing doesn't give a crap about anything but his bonus.
And your thermostat? Your TV? Your TV? Your fridge?
Sorry, but I've pretty much decided that the overwhelming majority of things (like anything which isn't a computer) have no damned need to be connected to the internet.
They don't have cables plugged into them, they don't know the wifi passwords, and they never will.
I have zero interest in an internet connected toaster or thermostat, so I'm simply not buying the damned things.
A couple we know was telling us about these awesome new locks they got they can unlock their house with an app on their phone. I just bit my tongue until they asked a very specific question which made me respond "if you can open it from your phone who else can?"
Essentially you have put the security of your home in the hands of a 3rd party. You might choose to trust that, but I don't.
This was after I told her about the creepy "Hello Barbie" which wants to upload the conversations little girls have with their dolls to the internet so it can talk back to them.
They'd immediately recognized they didn't want their grandchildren with one of those, but for some reason the lock thing didn't occur to them.
Pretty much I just assume the people who write the "security" for consumer products are incompetent, lazy, or indifferent -- the net result is pretty much the same. You should simply expect the security is non-existent.
suggesting that manufacturers are giving short shrift to security considerations during design and testing
Well, that gets a big frickin' DUH.
Until companies bear legal liability for writing shitty security code, this is exactly what will happen.
The Internet of Stuff is lots of hype, and little security.
The overwhelming majority of consumer products which want to connect to the internet have absolutely crap security, because companies want to get products out the door and don't care if they have lousy security.
The solution is to treat the Internet of Stuff as exactly what it is... a marketing term, driving products geared towards analytics and ad revenue, implemented by companies who don't give a crap about your security.
Just don't buy it if you want security.
I am completely un-surprised by this. In fact, I expected it.
Honestly, the "Internet Association" is a frickin' industry group.
So whatever the hell they're saying is good is what their members have said is good.
Let's not for a moment think this is anything except what it is... an organization which is a mouth piece for the corporations which pay for its existence.
Let's not get all stupid and start acting like it's an independent, autonomous organization which believes in anything but the profits of its members.
It's a fucking lobby organization that happens to be already in favor of a different definition of "net neutrality".
Seems there are many who forbid any period of transition with a zero tolerance policy for any mishaps regardless of how many lives might be saved.
Until you can prove the lives saved will outweigh any "mishaps", you're just blindly assuming the technology is a net benefit. In this case "mishap" could include major traffic accident resulting in death, so let's not downplay that to sound like it's just a technical glitch with no harm.
And, really, if we're trading the independence of the old or disabled against the lives of others, I'm afraid we have to come down on the side of lives trumps independence.
So you'll excuse some of us for saying "unless you have evidence this is very very safe, don't just tell us there's bound to be a few deaths until you work the kinks out".
Since there are no statistics, and the companies selling these are motivated by their own profit... taking them at their word seems stupid. You think we should just simply let Google say "it's safe, trust us"?
People get complacent, and start reading books, watching a movie, or browsing the net while driving, because it's so boring and they never have to do anything anyway
Honestly, have you looked around at other drivers?
I see so many people with their face glued to their phone that I assume they're doing all this and more. I know damned well I've seen bad driver shows in which idiots watch TV on their cell phone while driving.
I'm forced to conclude that at least 1/3 of all drivers are barely aware of their surroundings while driving.
I could stand at an intersection for an hour and see a huge amount of drivers with their face looking down at their phone. How the police can't seem to do this I have no idea.
Please, 30 years ago Chrysler was making shitty, bio-degradable K-cars and other feats of engineering crap on the assumption people would just keep buying them.
Hyundai surpassed Honda a few years ago in terms of reliability.
But I still see front-wheel drive American cars with the hump in the back seat where a drive shaft used to go, or a live-rear axle in a front-wheel drive so that the car can flail about as much as possible when going over uneven terrain.
Everything you describe I can tell you about a Dodge or Pontiac which had the same damned problems.
What they need to do to put a stop to this is start putting people in jail for it and make people realize they cannot fake a call to 911 anonymously
Well, is that even true?
I've come to the conclusion that caller ID is completely worthless, because people just change it to anything they want.. because corporations fought to get exemptions to spoof caller ID because their business depends on it.
I question if it is true that you can't call 911 anonymously. Because it would appear it happens all the damned time and finding the people who do it isn't easy, and because of the sheer amount of fraudulent phone calls I see which have their caller ID spoofed.
Does the technology even exist to ensure that you can't do this anonymously? I'm doubtful of that.
Given that there was actually a bombing at the Boston Marathon, how is this clickbait?
The proximity to a place which has already had one terrorism incident pretty much means "what the hell else would you expect the police to do but treat it seriously?"
You think a police department which has already lived through his kind of thing is simply going to say "nahh, we don't believe it"?
I don't think you understand what clickbait actually means. The author isn't just dropping the name of that to get more ads... he's explicitly saying that's one of the reasons why there was no choice but for the police to take this seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if the assumption has been the water arrived here through cometary bombardment, and that modern comets and asteroids contain a fair bit of water ... shouldn't we be assuming that there would have to be vast amount of water in the universe?
It sometimes people on the one hand keep saying "look at all the evidence of water", and then they turn around and say "holy cow, water".
It just seems like at this point we should expect there to be water. So I'm not sure why people still keep acting like we're the only place where you'll find it.
I'm more the mind which says "how could there not be water in vast quantities?
Governments all over the world have been hoodwinked or bribed to set up loopholes which are beneficial to corporations, and not so good for domestic economies.
Because people have been buying into the lie that somehow cutting taxes on corporations is a net benefit, when in fact it's just a way for corporations to pay less tax and skim off the time, while taking ever bigger profits.
There has been a lot of evidence that all of these tax cuts don't benefit anybody but corporations, and that trick down economics is pretty much not working as advertised.
It's time to start saying "too fucking bad" to the corporations and stop giving them special loopholes to play shell games with money.
Start handcuffing CEOs to bears, make the world a better place.
The absurd notion that we should all be competing with the lowest wage earners on the planet is absurd.
Globalization is what happens when corporations tell us we should be competing with people in Bangalore for salaries and jobs.
Globalization is basically fucking everyone else over in the name of corporate profits.
Letting massive multinational companies decide that local salaries are more than they want to pay and importing people who will take less money is a surefire way to be on a race to the bottom.
Between the lie of saying cutting taxes for corporations will make the economy better, and the lie that importing cheaper foreign labor will create new domestic jobs ... the fucking corporations are basically robbing us blind, and idiot politicians are bending over backwards to ensure they have the tools to keep doing it.
The US and every other country playing this stupid game is basically gutting its own economy in favor of allowing corporations to maximize profits at the expense of the society which stupidly keeps giving them tax breaks.
And, sadly, the politicians who are bought and paid for to skew the deck in favor of corporate greed are usually direct beneficiaries, so it makes them even more wealthy and corrupt when they cede ever more to corporations.
You should absolutely blame corporations for foreigners stealing jobs, because they're the ones who have demanded the ability to bring in outside labor and change the rules.
This has nothing to do with creating American jobs, and everything to do with driving down the cost of hiring people so that billionaire douchebags can run companies at a higher profit by making sure they pay Americans less money since they now have to compete with someone from India for a lower salary.
This is the big players distorting the labor market by lobbying politicians to allow them to change the playing field.
How many US tech workers are currently under or unemployed? And how many of them have these companies considered hiring?
Instead they write a job description which is impossible, or geared to bringing in a specific foreign worker.
This whole foreign worker crap is basically big corporations forcing wages to go down by bringing in people who will work cheaper.
As I said, billionaire douchebags. And this is more or less theft on a grand scale because people keep buying into the notion that what is good for companies is good for everyone else.
I'm sorry, but Zuckerfuck and Ballmer claiming that there would be more American jobs if only they could bring in more foreign workers to replace Americans is complete and utter bullshit.
This is billionaire douchebags saying they could become even bigger billionaire douchebags of only they could get more cheap labor from overseas.
Will someone put these two clowns into the bear enclosure at the zoo and get rid of them for good?
Security is hard, and it was more profitable to push crap out the door than actually do what we promised.
Honestly, TFS makes it sound like someone slapped together something and either naively believed they'd made something secure .. or straight up lied about having made something secure.
No wifi password and default admin passwords? That's pretty pathetic for something which purports to be a security/privacy tool.
Sounds like someone wrote the marketing literature before creating the product.
Honestly, Microsoft has let the domain for Hotmail expire. In fact, they've done it more than once.
Never underestimate the human capacity to fuck something up.
I am GRoot.
Temba, his arms wide. ;-)
No, modifying the code means you have created a derivative work and need to release those code changes to anybody using it.
Which is what the license has said for at least 20 years.
There is no provision to make changes to GPL code and not release it.
If you have an application which is only ever inside your corporate firewall, it's unlikely the people in accounting will want to see the source code. But you sure as hell can't modify it, build a product around it, and then not release those changes.
Your understanding is wrong.
Sorry, but what?
Nobody forced the company to use GPL stuff. Nobody forced them to build a product around it.
That they failed to comply with their obligations under the license is their own damned problem.
Use the GPL stuff, don't use the GPL stuff .. it's your choice. But if you choose to use the GPL stuff, you don't get to piss and moan that you don't want to live by the license.
Corporations aren't entitled to use GPL code and not adhere to the license. It's not a situation in which you can just decide how you'll interpret releasing the code.
These corporations which don't trust the GPL are entirely free to piss off and write their own code, or start with something like BSD which says "go ahead, do whatever you want with it".
Dude, this isn't binaries which have different checksums. This is binaries which don't in any way correspond to the code they provided.
This is a case of any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
They're either grossly inept, or knew damned well what they were doing.
You know, that's a self-inflicted problem, and not deserving of sympathy.
Either you run closed source stuff and write your own stuff, or you comply with the GPL.
It's a bummer if a small company got themselves into a predicament. But, nobody cares.
I know you're not defending them, but honestly if a company decided it wanted to steal someone else's code and not play by the rules of the GPL, that's their own damned problem.
From the sounds of it, they knew damned well they were not compliant.
And in what way is this not how I'd expect?
Sleazy corporation skirts around rules, film at 11.
They'll do a hell of a lot more if the corporation can face punishment than if all they have to do is say "aww, shucks, we're not actually sorry".
Because without penalties, you can pretty much guarantee they will do the barest minimum they can justify ... and that will range between "nothing at all" and "not very much".
Really, the availability of programmers isn't the main problem.
Corporations bear no liability for writing crap security, which means they have no penalty for doing so. They might try a small amount of security to look good, but at the end of the day they simply don't need to care.
So the security of these things is as inherently insecure as anything is which is doing on a "meh, whatever" level of effort.
Marketing wants the product out the door, management wants to do it as cheaply as possible, and sales is already trying to figure out who all they're going to sell your data to.
As long as they have no penalty, you should assume they're too lazy or incompetent to have any real security in place.
I just simply don't buy devices which want to connect to the internet. Because I simply don't trust them.
Well, I'll tell you what ... you buy any fucking piece of technology you like.
Me? I think the trend to have this Internet of Stuff is mostly garbage products by people who think the world operates on a smart phone ... and that the 'security' on those products is incompetently written by people who don't care.
I think until we get smart and apply data protection and security laws which says corporations have a legal responsibility to both protect your data and your security ... you should assume both your privacy and your security are in the hands of some asshole in marketing, and that the asshole in marketing doesn't give a crap about anything but his bonus.
Because, that's pretty much what it is.
And your thermostat? Your TV? Your TV? Your fridge?
Sorry, but I've pretty much decided that the overwhelming majority of things (like anything which isn't a computer) have no damned need to be connected to the internet.
They don't have cables plugged into them, they don't know the wifi passwords, and they never will.
I have zero interest in an internet connected toaster or thermostat, so I'm simply not buying the damned things.
A couple we know was telling us about these awesome new locks they got they can unlock their house with an app on their phone. I just bit my tongue until they asked a very specific question which made me respond "if you can open it from your phone who else can?"
Essentially you have put the security of your home in the hands of a 3rd party. You might choose to trust that, but I don't.
This was after I told her about the creepy "Hello Barbie" which wants to upload the conversations little girls have with their dolls to the internet so it can talk back to them.
They'd immediately recognized they didn't want their grandchildren with one of those, but for some reason the lock thing didn't occur to them.
Pretty much I just assume the people who write the "security" for consumer products are incompetent, lazy, or indifferent -- the net result is pretty much the same. You should simply expect the security is non-existent.
Well, that gets a big frickin' DUH.
Until companies bear legal liability for writing shitty security code, this is exactly what will happen.
The Internet of Stuff is lots of hype, and little security.
The overwhelming majority of consumer products which want to connect to the internet have absolutely crap security, because companies want to get products out the door and don't care if they have lousy security.
The solution is to treat the Internet of Stuff as exactly what it is ... a marketing term, driving products geared towards analytics and ad revenue, implemented by companies who don't give a crap about your security.
Just don't buy it if you want security.
I am completely un-surprised by this. In fact, I expected it.
Honestly, the "Internet Association" is a frickin' industry group.
So whatever the hell they're saying is good is what their members have said is good.
Let's not for a moment think this is anything except what it is ... an organization which is a mouth piece for the corporations which pay for its existence.
Let's not get all stupid and start acting like it's an independent, autonomous organization which believes in anything but the profits of its members.
It's a fucking lobby organization that happens to be already in favor of a different definition of "net neutrality".
In other words, paid fucking shills.
Until you can prove the lives saved will outweigh any "mishaps", you're just blindly assuming the technology is a net benefit. In this case "mishap" could include major traffic accident resulting in death, so let's not downplay that to sound like it's just a technical glitch with no harm.
And, really, if we're trading the independence of the old or disabled against the lives of others, I'm afraid we have to come down on the side of lives trumps independence.
So you'll excuse some of us for saying "unless you have evidence this is very very safe, don't just tell us there's bound to be a few deaths until you work the kinks out".
Since there are no statistics, and the companies selling these are motivated by their own profit ... taking them at their word seems stupid. You think we should just simply let Google say "it's safe, trust us"?
Sorry, but no.
Honestly, have you looked around at other drivers?
I see so many people with their face glued to their phone that I assume they're doing all this and more. I know damned well I've seen bad driver shows in which idiots watch TV on their cell phone while driving.
I'm forced to conclude that at least 1/3 of all drivers are barely aware of their surroundings while driving.
I could stand at an intersection for an hour and see a huge amount of drivers with their face looking down at their phone. How the police can't seem to do this I have no idea.
Please, 30 years ago Chrysler was making shitty, bio-degradable K-cars and other feats of engineering crap on the assumption people would just keep buying them.
Hyundai surpassed Honda a few years ago in terms of reliability.
But I still see front-wheel drive American cars with the hump in the back seat where a drive shaft used to go, or a live-rear axle in a front-wheel drive so that the car can flail about as much as possible when going over uneven terrain.
Everything you describe I can tell you about a Dodge or Pontiac which had the same damned problems.
Well, is that even true?
I've come to the conclusion that caller ID is completely worthless, because people just change it to anything they want .. because corporations fought to get exemptions to spoof caller ID because their business depends on it.
I question if it is true that you can't call 911 anonymously. Because it would appear it happens all the damned time and finding the people who do it isn't easy, and because of the sheer amount of fraudulent phone calls I see which have their caller ID spoofed.
Does the technology even exist to ensure that you can't do this anonymously? I'm doubtful of that.
Clickbait? Really?
Given that there was actually a bombing at the Boston Marathon, how is this clickbait?
The proximity to a place which has already had one terrorism incident pretty much means "what the hell else would you expect the police to do but treat it seriously?"
You think a police department which has already lived through his kind of thing is simply going to say "nahh, we don't believe it"?
I don't think you understand what clickbait actually means. The author isn't just dropping the name of that to get more ads ... he's explicitly saying that's one of the reasons why there was no choice but for the police to take this seriously.