I don't blame them at all for installing the malware. In the case of the last cleanup I did, a web page apparently displayed a window that was made to resemble a Windows security alert. I think the solution is better computing environments, such as iOS, leaving the technical environment of a desktop PC to technical individuals who require it. Why should someone run Windows if all they do is word processing or web browsing? As Steve Jobs put it, today's PC environment will eventually be like pickup trucks. Not everyone will have one, but those who do will have specific needs that demand one.
Nobody here is a better person than anyone else just for knowing how computers work. I'm sure you wouldn't enjoy taking your car into a shop and overhearing the mechanics mocking you for not understanding some complex aspect of your automobile's combustion process.
Just because users are often naive doesn't mean it's not news with there's a new wave of a specific type of malware, which allows Slashdot's technical readers to discuss Windows security, how to better educate users, the current state of the antivirus market, and so on. Lighten up a little, sheesh.
I've had to clear a few of these off co-workers' machines this year. Running Windows 7 with the latest security patches and legitimate protection software installed, and people still get infected with this crap, so it's the users installing it and not just holes in the system being exploited. The last one I removed actually replaced the Windows shell on startup with itself, disabling web browsers, regedit, and other key system software. I felt like going on a shooting spree.
Which would lead to piracy, which would lead to severely reduced profits, which would lead to no incentive to put movies on Netflix in the first place. But hey, at least it fit the moral code of anti-DRM advocates.
In fact, Slashdot just posted a story about the right-leaning NLPC writing to the House Oversight Committee to investigate Google's relationship with Obama after the FTC dismissed its inquiry into the WiFi snooping controversy. Other Republicans were cited in the article as being very interested in investigating Google's WiFi snooping. So Republicans may actually be pretty open about instituting privacy rules.
People in that previous story criticized the NLPC for being a Republican front group. It is kind of amusing that in one article, Republicans trying to investigate a privacy breach were called biased, while in the next, Republicans are considered too biased to institute any privacy rules. Though, to be fair, the summary in this case may not have been implying that so much as just remarking about the general opposition Obama will be facing from an opposing party.
Both Republicans and Democrats voted for the Iraq War. Portraying it as Bush's war was sleight-of-hand on the part of Democrats trying to make people forget that they voted for it.
You seem to be confused about the nature of the story. There is no other side. The experts on the panel already said they didn't peer-review the ban on offshore drilling, so that is not in dispute. The White House has already admitted to the misleading nature of the report by claiming that the deception was unintentional, so the edits and their deceptive nature are not in dispute either.
Seeing the reports would be nice for the sake of information, but the point of the story is not in dispute--that the White House's edits to the report gave the impression (intentionally or not, based on which political party you lean toward) that the six-month ban had been peer-reviewed by the panel of independent experts when it had not.
Halliburton told BP that the cementing was wrong, but BP ignored them and drilled anyway. Halliburton actually tried to do the right thing here and was ignored.
Perhaps society is more civilized than you give it credit for. If anyone is most likely to practice violence against BP, it's environmental extremists, not angry ex-fishermen.
I'd love to see something utilizing LLVM. I'm not convinced the OSS community has the organizational capability. I'm also not sure GPL people would work on something BSD-licensed. Instead, they'd try to reinvent the wheel, it would go nowhere for years, and nothing would come of it.
I'm not pissed at anything. I don't know what propaganda piece you're referring to; if you mean this submission, I'm not the NLPC. You didn't derail any of the accusations the NLPC made, and since this story came out, the FCC has announced its own investigation. Expect more to come under the new Congress.
The NLPC's political leanings do mean that you should look closely to determine if this is motivated by Republicans going after a major Democratic fundraiser (Google), but if the accusations have merit, than that motivation is irrelevant. Personally, I believe the accusations have merit. Google is under investigation in numerous other countries, and it's strange for the FTC to throw up its hands and let Google off the hook just because it promises not to do it again. Other companies haven't gotten that treatment. That Obama visited Marissa Mayer's house days before the inquiry's dismissal is another red flag. When there are red flags, you investigate.
Critics of an administration will almost always come from the opposing political party, because a president's supporters often turn a blind eye to shenanigans. That doesn't mean you should rule out the accusations. Administrations are supposed to be held on the fire by their opposing parties; it vets their actions and forces them to justify their behavior, which helps keep the government from overstepping its bounds.
As for Google, well, Slashdot's comment section has become very partisan since the release of Android, and the company seems to do no wrong. When a CEO says your privacy doesn't matter, that right there should be the last straw, but apparently, that is not enough of a lapse in ethics. I believe Google takes advantage of the idea of "open source" to attract the technical crowd, which is not the most objective of crowds when it comes to things they are emotionally attached to. Google is seen as some kind of ally against Microsoft and now Apple, but at what cost?
This is the biggest internet company in the world with perhaps the biggest storehouse of personal information in the world. They should be held accountable for how they treat that data. They should be afraid of making any misstep. It guarantees that they respect their power and the information they're using for their business. Our personal information is a part of us. It's our lives. When that isn't respected any longer, you're not a customer any more. You're a unit in a marketing chart.
Actually, federal law prohibits the unauthorized publication or use of messages intercepted over radio networks. Contrary to popular opinion on Slashdot, "wardriving" is illegal for this reason (among others) in many areas. There is a reasonable expectation of privacy, just as you wouldn't consider having an unlocked door to be an invitation for people to stroll into your living room and take pictures of your stuff.
As for claiming that people can't claim ignorance about Wi-Fi technology...what planet are you living on? You seriously think people are aware of how Wi-Fi works and that they didn't simply go down and buy a cheap Linksys router from Wal-mart and hooked it up according to the little brochure of instructions given to them by their ISPs, unaware that they're broadcasting personal information into the streets? You think they equate the mysterious computer network in their homes to television and radio or that they expect it to have enough range to reach out past the walls of their house?
That's where your analogy to "shouting" falls apart. People shouting are intentionally broadcasting information. People with unencrypted networks are not intentionally broadcasting information and are most likely unaware that they are. Just because they don't know they're doing it doesn't make it okay to exploit that fact. That a major corporation is driving vans around doing just that, and that people are defending said company, is simply amazing. If this was Microsoft or Apple, the tone of the comments would be totally different. Microsoft collecting people's emails and passwords would be a huge scandal around here.
I get that this is Slashdot which means defending everything Google does, but they deserve to be punished as a deterrent and to remind them to be that much more careful handling personal information next time, regardless of how they acquire it. Sometimes, it feels as if people excuse Google's behavior simply because Google uses Linux or works on open source projects or puts out an image that it's an "open" company (okay, so where's the source code for the search engine then?) in order to attract the Slashdot-browsing technical crowd.
I mean, we're talking 600 gigabytes of data here, collected over the span of three years. For three years, they didn't notice they were collecting emails and passwords? If their engineers were so neglectful that they incorrectly configured their data scanners, and their database admins didn't notice they were collecting much more data than they were looking for, then Google should be punished for that incompetence alone. They're handling personal information here. How about a little incentive for them to pay attention?
You guys attack other companies for doing much less than what Google gets away with constantly. By "you guys," I mean the contingent of defenders that have begun to sprung up in every one of these articles, automatically getting +5 Insightful, drowning out criticism of Google. This is a company whose CEO said that only people who have something to hide care about privacy. When is the other shoe going to drop? Why is it okay to have Google browsers running Google searches and browsing Google email while chatting via Google Talk and taking calls on Google phones, archiving and indexing all your information for advertisers? But Microsoft and Apple, they're evil monopolies in their markets and must be stopped!
I have a real problem with a technically-minded company like Google "accidentally" logging that kind of information. Even if it was an accident, they need to be punished for that through fines or something (as other companies have been punished for their privacy breaches), and the FTC's ending of its inquiry solely based on Google's promise to do better next time was bullshit.
You have to hold companies with this much power and information accountable. Basically, you have to keep them in line and remind them to be on their toes at all times.
Well, that settles it, guys. Wikipedia says they're "right-leaning," so we can dismiss all the accusations outright. No investigation needed. Whew! For a second there, I was worried Google might be viewed in a critical light.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't blame them at all for installing the malware. In the case of the last cleanup I did, a web page apparently displayed a window that was made to resemble a Windows security alert. I think the solution is better computing environments, such as iOS, leaving the technical environment of a desktop PC to technical individuals who require it. Why should someone run Windows if all they do is word processing or web browsing? As Steve Jobs put it, today's PC environment will eventually be like pickup trucks. Not everyone will have one, but those who do will have specific needs that demand one.
Nobody here is a better person than anyone else just for knowing how computers work. I'm sure you wouldn't enjoy taking your car into a shop and overhearing the mechanics mocking you for not understanding some complex aspect of your automobile's combustion process.
Just because users are often naive doesn't mean it's not news with there's a new wave of a specific type of malware, which allows Slashdot's technical readers to discuss Windows security, how to better educate users, the current state of the antivirus market, and so on. Lighten up a little, sheesh.
I've had to clear a few of these off co-workers' machines this year. Running Windows 7 with the latest security patches and legitimate protection software installed, and people still get infected with this crap, so it's the users installing it and not just holes in the system being exploited. The last one I removed actually replaced the Windows shell on startup with itself, disabling web browsers, regedit, and other key system software. I felt like going on a shooting spree.
Which would lead to piracy, which would lead to severely reduced profits, which would lead to no incentive to put movies on Netflix in the first place. But hey, at least it fit the moral code of anti-DRM advocates.
Especially when that article summary is written by someone with a vested interest in the case, coloring their whole account of events.
In fact, Slashdot just posted a story about the right-leaning NLPC writing to the House Oversight Committee to investigate Google's relationship with Obama after the FTC dismissed its inquiry into the WiFi snooping controversy. Other Republicans were cited in the article as being very interested in investigating Google's WiFi snooping. So Republicans may actually be pretty open about instituting privacy rules.
People in that previous story criticized the NLPC for being a Republican front group. It is kind of amusing that in one article, Republicans trying to investigate a privacy breach were called biased, while in the next, Republicans are considered too biased to institute any privacy rules. Though, to be fair, the summary in this case may not have been implying that so much as just remarking about the general opposition Obama will be facing from an opposing party.
Both Republicans and Democrats voted for the Iraq War. Portraying it as Bush's war was sleight-of-hand on the part of Democrats trying to make people forget that they voted for it.
They're just trying to get rid of all the unsold hardware they have lying around in warehouses.
You seem to be confused about the nature of the story. There is no other side. The experts on the panel already said they didn't peer-review the ban on offshore drilling, so that is not in dispute. The White House has already admitted to the misleading nature of the report by claiming that the deception was unintentional, so the edits and their deceptive nature are not in dispute either.
Seeing the reports would be nice for the sake of information, but the point of the story is not in dispute--that the White House's edits to the report gave the impression (intentionally or not, based on which political party you lean toward) that the six-month ban had been peer-reviewed by the panel of independent experts when it had not.
Huh? Halliburton's role is that they did the cementing. They warned BP that the cementing was wrong, and BP drilled anyway.
Halliburton told BP that the cementing was wrong, but BP ignored them and drilled anyway. Halliburton actually tried to do the right thing here and was ignored.
They'll simply ignore it and shout more loudly through their bullhorns. Volume is an excellent distractor.
Perhaps society is more civilized than you give it credit for. If anyone is most likely to practice violence against BP, it's environmental extremists, not angry ex-fishermen.
The misrepresentation is the ideology part. The ends don't justify the means.
I'd love to see something utilizing LLVM. I'm not convinced the OSS community has the organizational capability. I'm also not sure GPL people would work on something BSD-licensed. Instead, they'd try to reinvent the wheel, it would go nowhere for years, and nothing would come of it.
I'm not pissed at anything. I don't know what propaganda piece you're referring to; if you mean this submission, I'm not the NLPC. You didn't derail any of the accusations the NLPC made, and since this story came out, the FCC has announced its own investigation. Expect more to come under the new Congress.
The NLPC's political leanings do mean that you should look closely to determine if this is motivated by Republicans going after a major Democratic fundraiser (Google), but if the accusations have merit, than that motivation is irrelevant. Personally, I believe the accusations have merit. Google is under investigation in numerous other countries, and it's strange for the FTC to throw up its hands and let Google off the hook just because it promises not to do it again. Other companies haven't gotten that treatment. That Obama visited Marissa Mayer's house days before the inquiry's dismissal is another red flag. When there are red flags, you investigate.
Critics of an administration will almost always come from the opposing political party, because a president's supporters often turn a blind eye to shenanigans. That doesn't mean you should rule out the accusations. Administrations are supposed to be held on the fire by their opposing parties; it vets their actions and forces them to justify their behavior, which helps keep the government from overstepping its bounds.
As for Google, well, Slashdot's comment section has become very partisan since the release of Android, and the company seems to do no wrong. When a CEO says your privacy doesn't matter, that right there should be the last straw, but apparently, that is not enough of a lapse in ethics. I believe Google takes advantage of the idea of "open source" to attract the technical crowd, which is not the most objective of crowds when it comes to things they are emotionally attached to. Google is seen as some kind of ally against Microsoft and now Apple, but at what cost?
This is the biggest internet company in the world with perhaps the biggest storehouse of personal information in the world. They should be held accountable for how they treat that data. They should be afraid of making any misstep. It guarantees that they respect their power and the information they're using for their business. Our personal information is a part of us. It's our lives. When that isn't respected any longer, you're not a customer any more. You're a unit in a marketing chart.
Actually, federal law prohibits the unauthorized publication or use of messages intercepted over radio networks. Contrary to popular opinion on Slashdot, "wardriving" is illegal for this reason (among others) in many areas. There is a reasonable expectation of privacy, just as you wouldn't consider having an unlocked door to be an invitation for people to stroll into your living room and take pictures of your stuff.
As for claiming that people can't claim ignorance about Wi-Fi technology...what planet are you living on? You seriously think people are aware of how Wi-Fi works and that they didn't simply go down and buy a cheap Linksys router from Wal-mart and hooked it up according to the little brochure of instructions given to them by their ISPs, unaware that they're broadcasting personal information into the streets? You think they equate the mysterious computer network in their homes to television and radio or that they expect it to have enough range to reach out past the walls of their house?
That's where your analogy to "shouting" falls apart. People shouting are intentionally broadcasting information. People with unencrypted networks are not intentionally broadcasting information and are most likely unaware that they are. Just because they don't know they're doing it doesn't make it okay to exploit that fact. That a major corporation is driving vans around doing just that, and that people are defending said company, is simply amazing. If this was Microsoft or Apple, the tone of the comments would be totally different. Microsoft collecting people's emails and passwords would be a huge scandal around here.
I get that this is Slashdot which means defending everything Google does, but they deserve to be punished as a deterrent and to remind them to be that much more careful handling personal information next time, regardless of how they acquire it. Sometimes, it feels as if people excuse Google's behavior simply because Google uses Linux or works on open source projects or puts out an image that it's an "open" company (okay, so where's the source code for the search engine then?) in order to attract the Slashdot-browsing technical crowd.
I mean, we're talking 600 gigabytes of data here, collected over the span of three years. For three years, they didn't notice they were collecting emails and passwords? If their engineers were so neglectful that they incorrectly configured their data scanners, and their database admins didn't notice they were collecting much more data than they were looking for, then Google should be punished for that incompetence alone. They're handling personal information here. How about a little incentive for them to pay attention?
You guys attack other companies for doing much less than what Google gets away with constantly. By "you guys," I mean the contingent of defenders that have begun to sprung up in every one of these articles, automatically getting +5 Insightful, drowning out criticism of Google. This is a company whose CEO said that only people who have something to hide care about privacy. When is the other shoe going to drop? Why is it okay to have Google browsers running Google searches and browsing Google email while chatting via Google Talk and taking calls on Google phones, archiving and indexing all your information for advertisers? But Microsoft and Apple, they're evil monopolies in their markets and must be stopped!
Come on.
How many times?
How many times is this bogus argument going to get trotted out?
Having an open Wi-Fi is not any more an open invitation than having an unlocked door is an invitation for strangers to walk into your house.
That's a big problem for Google, then. They need to start thinking about this shit.
Actually, the Communications Act prohibits the use of public radio waves in that way.
I have a real problem with a technically-minded company like Google "accidentally" logging that kind of information. Even if it was an accident, they need to be punished for that through fines or something (as other companies have been punished for their privacy breaches), and the FTC's ending of its inquiry solely based on Google's promise to do better next time was bullshit.
You have to hold companies with this much power and information accountable. Basically, you have to keep them in line and remind them to be on their toes at all times.
WP7 doesn't even have a sockets API. You're expected to use HTTP for everything.
Why should they have to? The government buys specific vendors' products all the time, from Microsoft to Lockheed Martin.
Enterprise apps can be distributed without the app store.
Yeah, but Republicans smoke cigars in dimly-lit conference rooms. That is classy as fuck.
Well, that settles it, guys. Wikipedia says they're "right-leaning," so we can dismiss all the accusations outright. No investigation needed. Whew! For a second there, I was worried Google might be viewed in a critical light.