Sounds to me like you're the kind of shitty person who it really sucks to be employed under.
Using a password cracker to test against your password databases is simply good practice. A 'good password policy' only goes so far: you can, and will, still have poor passwords. Firing someone for this is, well, amateur at best.
It's like assuming anyone who owns a gun intends to shoot someone, or anyone who owns a car is guilty of vehicular homicide. Just, no.
Now, the password lists at home situation... that I completely agree with you on, given certain circumstances (he may just be working from home - and exercising poor judgment, in which case a reprimand might suffice). But as an employer, you sure as hell better not have a way to determine this (outside of direct permission), or you're just as guilty (if not more so) of the things you'd be accusing your employer of, with no actual proof of wrongdoing.
Those passwords were given to the DA by someone, likely someone in the IT department. That illustrates a fatal lack of judgment and competence in the IT department, which was basically Childs' position to begin with.
And what does the actions of these idiots (SF IT and DA) have to do with Childs' guilt?
IMO the fact that Childs locked everyone else out could very well have been done as simple pragmatism or proper administration procedures. Maybe he pruned access lists when he noted everyone and their sister in the office had access (years ago)? Maybe nobody else ever even had access to begin with. Maybe his manager was the only other person with a password at one point, and he was an incompetent idiot who kept fucking things up, so Childs revoked it and the manager made no mention of it (or didn't even know until later)?
There are a lot of plausible (and depending on how fucked the environment is, reasonable) reasons why others would not have the passwords. As for not disclosing hte password after the fact, well... that makes sense to me, too, when you feel you've been wronged in your termination. The password is part of your position's role, and as youve been relinquished from said role, the password goes with you, IMO. Companies need to make a consensus for how to deal with this sort of thing before they go firing important people - preferably by not firing important people willy-nilly, and treating them properly.
Uh, no. The network is still very much his problem, because now they're free to fuck it up and try to blame it on him.
The network was his only proof of innocence (or lack of wrong doing), and now it has been contaminated with their access. As it's a criminal case, it's akin to passing around a murder weapon to a crowd of people before prints are taken.
Childs may not have been perfect in his practices (and IMO he wasn't close - no "bus insurance", apparently), but he doesn't appear to be the malicious, insidious type as evidenced by his performance. On the other hand, that is exactly what the city has done to him: treated him maliciously with no quarter.
IMO, at the very greatest the only thing the city should've been able to leverage against him was a civil suit. But because the city is, well, a city (ie government) they're abusing their power to bend him over the barrel.
Though, I'm glad this has come up: it's something I'll be adding to all future contracts, whether for permanent or contract employment: Caimlas shall have the permission of $organization to sniff passwords, perform intrusion detection, and other tasks which are commonly construed as hostile, provided said actions are employed within the duties of his job description.
(Or something similar.)
I just realized that something similar to that was not in any past contracts, and really needs to be in the future given the (previously perceived to be impossible) possibility of being prosecuted for performing one's job duties.
Once you're fired as a sysadmin, you're pretty much SOL if you want to find another job in the field. He probably figured - IMO correctly - that being exonerated and then to turn around and file a civil suit, winning millions, would be the only likely way to both have enough to live on at a similar comfort level again, and/or to work in the field.
It's just a shame that he probably will not get a "jury of his peers", but a bunch of idiots who know not thing one about computing. He'll be fucked.:(
I think the point is that, if we have to give them 150 billion years to have developed their shit, we have to likewise give ourselves that long to have gotten where we have. It took us a LONG time to get from eating raw meat we killed as a pack, to hunting and farming with steel/iron tools, to flight.
And what's to say our early developmental stages were not extraordinarily short, from a universal perspective? Maybe most planets out there with life have two, three, maybe four dominant species, and we were just fortunate (and hostile enough) to become the sole dominant species. Multiple dominant species would certainly hamper development, and if we developed fast, what's to say that these other species are not still hunting giant borag frogs with sticks and stones?
It's kind of funny you mention a book by Carl Sagan while mentioning that skepticism is healthy for society. Carl Sagan, more so than any other public voice in science I think, is an avowed - even religious - atheist who is not likely to accept the existence of anyone or anything greater than himself.
Having an atheist tell me "there is no god" or "there is no supernatural" is kind of like having trusting a restaurant owner to tell you where the best place to eat in town is.
If the US government can successfully cover up its lack of action and possible collusion with regard to the attack of aliens on our country - brown-skinned, not green-skinned, and from our southern border, not space - as they most certainly do, then I think they can cover up the significantly smaller incursion from space without much problem.
Not really. You're making the assumption that time is linear and dependent on events, places, etc. What if time is an independent, exterior force, a controlling force which might be harnessed? Or maybe there's another element to our existence we have yet to discover - another dimensoin, maybe - which could be utilized to jump through time, a specific place having an intrinsic pointer in time, allowing for a jump to that specific place?
Maybe atoms themselves have a timing mechanism, and it could be changed on an atomic level to allow for teleportation through time of specific atoms, to avoid the whole "same matter in different time" paradigm? Likewise, if time travel of matter were possible, it would likewise have to be the case that energy is transferable through time. As matter is just energy, and there is a natural forward progression of time, and we have figured out how to slow down energy, it seems plausible that sending matter back through time would be possible.
Technically, if you're traveling back in time, you'd be standing still and time would be moving around you, yes?
Eyup. If something in scifi isn't directly relating the the human condition, chances are its a fantastical representation of something we can only imagine, and that's about where it ends. It's little different than the Greek tragedies of the gods.
Eyup. It's just as likely that they don't understand the concepts of war, deceit, theft, lying, or are incredibly nieve, as it is that they're here to explore and "seek out new worlds" and all that stuff, too. They might have no inclination to explore, and are so incredibly introspective (like an idle/absent minded professor) that they don't realize what they've stumbled upon - which would also be one reason why their technology is so fantastic.
This hsa nothing to do with whether or not the death penalty is a good idea.
There are a LOT of other factors in convicting someone. All that needs to change is how DNA is looked at by the public and officials. That's a pretty steep order to how DNA testing hsa been touted as perfect for decades. But the fact remains that many, many cases are decided by irrefuteable facts: means, motive, and opportunity all fall in line, and have to do so in a very consistent manner, in order for a death penalty conviction to pass. And that's even only in cases of extreme callousness in the act of the crime. Contract killers don't even get the death penalty.
I have no doubt that they're targeting these at the education market - or markets with similar use. There are a lot of schools undergoing "one laptop, one child" type initiatives right now, trying to get a laptop to every student. It's a massive IT burden for many schools.
On the other hand, a school could buy a couple hundred of these and be "ready to go" with pretty much everything a student could actually need, and there'd be little/no maintenance required. Just issue each student a laptop and a USB key, and away they go... lose the key? Just replace it. And if the laptop gets damaged, the students' work is still on the key.
Like the other guy said, I do not bow to his guts. I'd rather kick him there.
As a sysadmin/netadmin, there is a substantial degree of responsibility involved. Not just what is given by the employer, but what is taken and assumed by the employee: it is your goddamn job to be professional and treat your environment re
An engineer wouldn't burn down the bridge he'd been working on for the past year, just because he got sacked, would he? Fuck no. He might want to do bodily harm to his boss, but his work - you know, the thing which actually speaks of his ability - is not something he'd want to destroy.
Think about it: the guy who comes along after you will think, "awesome, the guy before me did his job properly, I should get his name/number and find out why he got sacked so I can look out for it!" not "wow, the guy who got sacked before me was a real fuck-up for flooding the server room through the sprinkler system!" Which sounds more appealing?
Well, I s'pose if you're incompetent and half-ass it through life, such fantasies might be appropriate. But in my world (and the world of competent professional sysadmins), most definitely not!
I was (am?) a "good admin". I kept all the proper documentation, performed thorough, "standard practice" work, and fixed things promptly, with an eye to fixing problems before they arose.
Of course, my manager was in the throes of alcohol-imbibed early menopause, and sucked her way up from secretarial work to get where she was. Her fundamental incompatibility with humanity was not readily apparent due to me not seeing her but a dozen times in the first 3 months I worked there unless by my volition.
And so, I got sacked - because I didn't follow directions to her satisfaction (er, what directions?!), I "didn't fit the organization's culture, and for a dozen other manufactured (and false) reasons which could be neither supported or disproved but by her or my word, before the first 6 months were up.
Rumor has it they're still using 14-year-old hardware in production with shoddy backup procedures (ie, nobody checks them) and they leave servers logged in as Administrator which are accessible to anyone walking by. In an organization with extensive requirements for personal liability, data privacy/collection restrictions, and so forth... Urg.
Apparently you've never heard of right-to-work states. Granted, California isn't one of them, but...
Try this on for size: getting verbal agreement to have relocation costs covered to move to bumfuck nowhere. Getting there, and being told that it's actually only 1500$ you'll get, and you've got to agree to stay for 2 years. And then, after you've been there for 5 months and you've spent a lot of overtime fixing the mistakes from the previous guy, are sacked - without notice or compensation, and told you still have to repay the moving reimbursement - because you "do not fit the organization" (ie personal issues your direct manager has with you).
And this would likely have done nothing to fix the problem. The routers he (apparently) maintained likely had little, or no, account synchronicity with normal system accounts.
I suspect that, ironically, this problem could've been completely avoided if they'd offered him a severance package. I don't really understand why companies take the "fired" route with technical employees who, more often than not, have a lot of the functionality of the operation on top of their shoulders (directly or indirectly). "We're either going to fire you, or lay you off with a severance package and put no-rehire in your file. Your choice," doesn't really seem like much of a choice to me.
When you fire someone who has system- or network- level passwords, you're effectively playing Russian roulette. It's not like firing a nurse, a clerk, or someone else who has one or two passwords to deal with, at best. You're essentially firing the gatekeeper. A manager is foolish (at best) to not at least keep a level of control over all systems he is responsible for, and not doing so is a shortcoming of the manager. (Then again, this guy's unwillingness to fork over passwords may have been the reason why he was fired. And now subsequently prosecuted.)
Sure, he could've been overall good at his job and not have psychological issues with power and trust - but someone who's got the proclivity and drive for for technical micro-management (ie many high-end tech jobs) isn't likely to fit that description, especially with how little concern employers have for their employees these days.
My guess is the manager didn't have a flippin' clue what this guy was doing at work, and they had communication problems due to a (very substantial) technical divide. The guy came into work one day and found himself fired, just like that. (I suspect he didn't detect the warning signs, being a typical technically-inclined and focused, pedantic geek.)
Look at it this way: when you fire someone who effectively has access to everything and don't at least have access to the passwords yourself, you are putting yourself at substantial risk of not being able to reacquire said passwords. Likewise, he could plant some sort of timebomb which destroys everything using one of those passwords, after a certain period of inactivity on his accounts (or some other scheme).
IMO, they should not EXPECT him to disclose a single damn thing once they fire him. That's just silly talk, and he shouldn't be prosecuted for it, either. They should offer to PAY him for the passwords, or hire him back on to "fix the problem" - the problem being, of course, that there was not effective communication between him and his manager. Since it was his manager who fired him before this absolutely-critical information was conveyed, it's pretty clear where the fault for this fuck-up lies, and IMO this guy is getting pulled behind the wagon. There were a lot of ways to "make this right" before he was fired, and the manager failed to do all of them.
There have always been intelligent, motivated individuals involved in criminal activities. It's just that they're usually not as visible as people who do this kind of thing are: they hide behind the incompetents and don't get caught.
They're members of organized crime, or they're the ones who pull off thefts which people either don't actually know about (electronic/accounting) or people who get away with crimes such as burglary. They're not noticed because someone, somewhere is getting caught, so we assume the ratio of criminals to those caught is roughly 1:1. (How many serial killers do you suppose we've got in larger cities who nobody knows about because they're good enough to not get caught?)
There are just as many amoral intelligent people as moral intelligent people, and to suppose otherwise is kind of pretentious - to assume that intelligent people are innately "better" or "superior". Though, I do suppose intelligent people are more able to figure out the benefit vs. penalty a bit better than someone who is not, resulting in a lower "intelligent person" crime rate.
You're being sarcastic, right? I hope to god you are.
Look at 'affirmative action' changes made throughout the world, and you will see social/economic/governmental collapse following soon afterward. It's a bad idea.
Now, skill/ability-based quotas I could agree with. Currently, there is nothing in place to prevent someone of "color" (any color) or gender from getting into a field, if they so desire and have the ability to do so.
Mandatory ratios which preference females in IT and other related fields would be a godsend for contractors and the self-employed IT folks. That's the only benefit I can see, and it's not much of one for the industry, particularly here in the US.
Hard science fields, well.. that'd kinda fuck things up quickly.
If you've got a shitload of mostly-unused land, you could use them for solar focusing to increase solar power output of a panel. Or if you're in a canyon you can put them on the canyon ridge (if you also own the ridge) for a similar use...
Is apple primarily riding to fortune on brand image? Absolutely!
Is brand image the sole thing propping up Apple?
Uh, no.
Apple would be nowhere right now if it was not for a series of very good software engineering, UI design, and hardware design decisions. Yes, the sale of those items was made possible through good marketing ("brand image"), but brand image is not the only thing pushing them forward in an industry dominated by 'brand image' power brokers like Microsoft; quality is a large part of it.
OS X is good technology; very good technology. For the most part, it does "just work" (on Apple hw), and it's why a lot of people have started buying Macs instead of PCs, if they can afford it.
Apple does have a choice. They can take their current route - to preserve their high profit margin - or they could leave Pystar be, or maybe even license the right to use OS X on their systems. Because as it stands, Apple is pricing themselves out of most major profit markets (early adopters and geeks in general, businesses) moreso than their technology is limiting uptake.
Of course, that'd result in growing pains and a lot of problems for Apple, so they've decided not to do so.
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It's the vapors and odors from all the goddamn hippies, I'd bet.
Sounds to me like you're the kind of shitty person who it really sucks to be employed under.
Using a password cracker to test against your password databases is simply good practice. A 'good password policy' only goes so far: you can, and will, still have poor passwords. Firing someone for this is, well, amateur at best.
It's like assuming anyone who owns a gun intends to shoot someone, or anyone who owns a car is guilty of vehicular homicide. Just, no.
Now, the password lists at home situation... that I completely agree with you on, given certain circumstances (he may just be working from home - and exercising poor judgment, in which case a reprimand might suffice). But as an employer, you sure as hell better not have a way to determine this (outside of direct permission), or you're just as guilty (if not more so) of the things you'd be accusing your employer of, with no actual proof of wrongdoing.
Nonsense, as evidenced by the chain of events.
Those passwords were given to the DA by someone, likely someone in the IT department. That illustrates a fatal lack of judgment and competence in the IT department, which was basically Childs' position to begin with.
And what does the actions of these idiots (SF IT and DA) have to do with Childs' guilt?
IMO the fact that Childs locked everyone else out could very well have been done as simple pragmatism or proper administration procedures. Maybe he pruned access lists when he noted everyone and their sister in the office had access (years ago)? Maybe nobody else ever even had access to begin with. Maybe his manager was the only other person with a password at one point, and he was an incompetent idiot who kept fucking things up, so Childs revoked it and the manager made no mention of it (or didn't even know until later)?
There are a lot of plausible (and depending on how fucked the environment is, reasonable) reasons why others would not have the passwords. As for not disclosing hte password after the fact, well... that makes sense to me, too, when you feel you've been wronged in your termination. The password is part of your position's role, and as youve been relinquished from said role, the password goes with you, IMO. Companies need to make a consensus for how to deal with this sort of thing before they go firing important people - preferably by not firing important people willy-nilly, and treating them properly.
Uh, no. The network is still very much his problem, because now they're free to fuck it up and try to blame it on him.
The network was his only proof of innocence (or lack of wrong doing), and now it has been contaminated with their access. As it's a criminal case, it's akin to passing around a murder weapon to a crowd of people before prints are taken.
Childs may not have been perfect in his practices (and IMO he wasn't close - no "bus insurance", apparently), but he doesn't appear to be the malicious, insidious type as evidenced by his performance. On the other hand, that is exactly what the city has done to him: treated him maliciously with no quarter.
IMO, at the very greatest the only thing the city should've been able to leverage against him was a civil suit. But because the city is, well, a city (ie government) they're abusing their power to bend him over the barrel.
Though, I'm glad this has come up: it's something I'll be adding to all future contracts, whether for permanent or contract employment: Caimlas shall have the permission of $organization to sniff passwords, perform intrusion detection, and other tasks which are commonly construed as hostile, provided said actions are employed within the duties of his job description.
(Or something similar.)
I just realized that something similar to that was not in any past contracts, and really needs to be in the future given the (previously perceived to be impossible) possibility of being prosecuted for performing one's job duties.
Once you're fired as a sysadmin, you're pretty much SOL if you want to find another job in the field. He probably figured - IMO correctly - that being exonerated and then to turn around and file a civil suit, winning millions, would be the only likely way to both have enough to live on at a similar comfort level again, and/or to work in the field.
It's just a shame that he probably will not get a "jury of his peers", but a bunch of idiots who know not thing one about computing. He'll be fucked. :(
I think the point is that, if we have to give them 150 billion years to have developed their shit, we have to likewise give ourselves that long to have gotten where we have. It took us a LONG time to get from eating raw meat we killed as a pack, to hunting and farming with steel/iron tools, to flight.
And what's to say our early developmental stages were not extraordinarily short, from a universal perspective? Maybe most planets out there with life have two, three, maybe four dominant species, and we were just fortunate (and hostile enough) to become the sole dominant species. Multiple dominant species would certainly hamper development, and if we developed fast, what's to say that these other species are not still hunting giant borag frogs with sticks and stones?
It's kind of funny you mention a book by Carl Sagan while mentioning that skepticism is healthy for society. Carl Sagan, more so than any other public voice in science I think, is an avowed - even religious - atheist who is not likely to accept the existence of anyone or anything greater than himself.
Having an atheist tell me "there is no god" or "there is no supernatural" is kind of like having trusting a restaurant owner to tell you where the best place to eat in town is.
If the US government can successfully cover up its lack of action and possible collusion with regard to the attack of aliens on our country - brown-skinned, not green-skinned, and from our southern border, not space - as they most certainly do, then I think they can cover up the significantly smaller incursion from space without much problem.
Not really. You're making the assumption that time is linear and dependent on events, places, etc.
What if time is an independent, exterior force, a controlling force which might be harnessed? Or maybe there's another element to our existence we have yet to discover - another dimensoin, maybe - which could be utilized to jump through time, a specific place having an intrinsic pointer in time, allowing for a jump to that specific place?
Maybe atoms themselves have a timing mechanism, and it could be changed on an atomic level to allow for teleportation through time of specific atoms, to avoid the whole "same matter in different time" paradigm? Likewise, if time travel of matter were possible, it would likewise have to be the case that energy is transferable through time. As matter is just energy, and there is a natural forward progression of time, and we have figured out how to slow down energy, it seems plausible that sending matter back through time would be possible.
Technically, if you're traveling back in time, you'd be standing still and time would be moving around you, yes?
And what is "space"?
Wait, what comes next?
"Obama for Change in 2008" I'm guessing.
Why would they reveal themselves to us?
Working off the assumption that they're anything like us - ie, intelligent, sentient beings with similar motivations - it's pretty simple.
Gods need followers just like followers need gods.
Eyup. If something in scifi isn't directly relating the the human condition, chances are its a fantastical representation of something we can only imagine, and that's about where it ends. It's little different than the Greek tragedies of the gods.
Eyup. It's just as likely that they don't understand the concepts of war, deceit, theft, lying, or are incredibly nieve, as it is that they're here to explore and "seek out new worlds" and all that stuff, too. They might have no inclination to explore, and are so incredibly introspective (like an idle/absent minded professor) that they don't realize what they've stumbled upon - which would also be one reason why their technology is so fantastic.
This hsa nothing to do with whether or not the death penalty is a good idea.
There are a LOT of other factors in convicting someone. All that needs to change is how DNA is looked at by the public and officials. That's a pretty steep order to how DNA testing hsa been touted as perfect for decades. But the fact remains that many, many cases are decided by irrefuteable facts: means, motive, and opportunity all fall in line, and have to do so in a very consistent manner, in order for a death penalty conviction to pass. And that's even only in cases of extreme callousness in the act of the crime. Contract killers don't even get the death penalty.
The burden for the death penalty is very high.
I have no doubt that they're targeting these at the education market - or markets with similar use. There are a lot of schools undergoing "one laptop, one child" type initiatives right now, trying to get a laptop to every student. It's a massive IT burden for many schools.
On the other hand, a school could buy a couple hundred of these and be "ready to go" with pretty much everything a student could actually need, and there'd be little/no maintenance required. Just issue each student a laptop and a USB key, and away they go... lose the key? Just replace it. And if the laptop gets damaged, the students' work is still on the key.
Like the other guy said, I do not bow to his guts. I'd rather kick him there.
As a sysadmin/netadmin, there is a substantial degree of responsibility involved. Not just what is given by the employer, but what is taken and assumed by the employee: it is your goddamn job to be professional and treat your environment re
An engineer wouldn't burn down the bridge he'd been working on for the past year, just because he got sacked, would he? Fuck no. He might want to do bodily harm to his boss, but his work - you know, the thing which actually speaks of his ability - is not something he'd want to destroy.
Think about it: the guy who comes along after you will think, "awesome, the guy before me did his job properly, I should get his name/number and find out why he got sacked so I can look out for it!" not "wow, the guy who got sacked before me was a real fuck-up for flooding the server room through the sprinkler system!" Which sounds more appealing?
Well, I s'pose if you're incompetent and half-ass it through life, such fantasies might be appropriate. But in my world (and the world of competent professional sysadmins), most definitely not!
I was (am?) a "good admin". I kept all the proper documentation, performed thorough, "standard practice" work, and fixed things promptly, with an eye to fixing problems before they arose.
Of course, my manager was in the throes of alcohol-imbibed early menopause, and sucked her way up from secretarial work to get where she was. Her fundamental incompatibility with humanity was not readily apparent due to me not seeing her but a dozen times in the first 3 months I worked there unless by my volition.
And so, I got sacked - because I didn't follow directions to her satisfaction (er, what directions?!), I "didn't fit the organization's culture, and for a dozen other manufactured (and false) reasons which could be neither supported or disproved but by her or my word, before the first 6 months were up.
Rumor has it they're still using 14-year-old hardware in production with shoddy backup procedures (ie, nobody checks them) and they leave servers logged in as Administrator which are accessible to anyone walking by. In an organization with extensive requirements for personal liability, data privacy/collection restrictions, and so forth... Urg.
Apparently you've never heard of right-to-work states. Granted, California isn't one of them, but...
Try this on for size: getting verbal agreement to have relocation costs covered to move to bumfuck nowhere. Getting there, and being told that it's actually only 1500$ you'll get, and you've got to agree to stay for 2 years. And then, after you've been there for 5 months and you've spent a lot of overtime fixing the mistakes from the previous guy, are sacked - without notice or compensation, and told you still have to repay the moving reimbursement - because you "do not fit the organization" (ie personal issues your direct manager has with you).
That's so much fun.
And this would likely have done nothing to fix the problem. The routers he (apparently) maintained likely had little, or no, account synchronicity with normal system accounts.
I suspect that, ironically, this problem could've been completely avoided if they'd offered him a severance package. I don't really understand why companies take the "fired" route with technical employees who, more often than not, have a lot of the functionality of the operation on top of their shoulders (directly or indirectly). "We're either going to fire you, or lay you off with a severance package and put no-rehire in your file. Your choice," doesn't really seem like much of a choice to me.
When you fire someone who has system- or network- level passwords, you're effectively playing Russian roulette. It's not like firing a nurse, a clerk, or someone else who has one or two passwords to deal with, at best. You're essentially firing the gatekeeper. A manager is foolish (at best) to not at least keep a level of control over all systems he is responsible for, and not doing so is a shortcoming of the manager. (Then again, this guy's unwillingness to fork over passwords may have been the reason why he was fired. And now subsequently prosecuted.)
Sure, he could've been overall good at his job and not have psychological issues with power and trust - but someone who's got the proclivity and drive for for technical micro-management (ie many high-end tech jobs) isn't likely to fit that description, especially with how little concern employers have for their employees these days.
My guess is the manager didn't have a flippin' clue what this guy was doing at work, and they had communication problems due to a (very substantial) technical divide. The guy came into work one day and found himself fired, just like that. (I suspect he didn't detect the warning signs, being a typical technically-inclined and focused, pedantic geek.)
Look at it this way: when you fire someone who effectively has access to everything and don't at least have access to the passwords yourself, you are putting yourself at substantial risk of not being able to reacquire said passwords. Likewise, he could plant some sort of timebomb which destroys everything using one of those passwords, after a certain period of inactivity on his accounts (or some other scheme).
IMO, they should not EXPECT him to disclose a single damn thing once they fire him. That's just silly talk, and he shouldn't be prosecuted for it, either. They should offer to PAY him for the passwords, or hire him back on to "fix the problem" - the problem being, of course, that there was not effective communication between him and his manager. Since it was his manager who fired him before this absolutely-critical information was conveyed, it's pretty clear where the fault for this fuck-up lies, and IMO this guy is getting pulled behind the wagon. There were a lot of ways to "make this right" before he was fired, and the manager failed to do all of them.
There have always been intelligent, motivated individuals involved in criminal activities. It's just that they're usually not as visible as people who do this kind of thing are: they hide behind the incompetents and don't get caught.
They're members of organized crime, or they're the ones who pull off thefts which people either don't actually know about (electronic/accounting) or people who get away with crimes such as burglary. They're not noticed because someone, somewhere is getting caught, so we assume the ratio of criminals to those caught is roughly 1:1. (How many serial killers do you suppose we've got in larger cities who nobody knows about because they're good enough to not get caught?)
There are just as many amoral intelligent people as moral intelligent people, and to suppose otherwise is kind of pretentious - to assume that intelligent people are innately "better" or "superior". Though, I do suppose intelligent people are more able to figure out the benefit vs. penalty a bit better than someone who is not, resulting in a lower "intelligent person" crime rate.
You're being sarcastic, right? I hope to god you are.
Look at 'affirmative action' changes made throughout the world, and you will see social/economic/governmental collapse following soon afterward. It's a bad idea.
Now, skill/ability-based quotas I could agree with. Currently, there is nothing in place to prevent someone of "color" (any color) or gender from getting into a field, if they so desire and have the ability to do so.
Mandatory ratios which preference females in IT and other related fields would be a godsend for contractors and the self-employed IT folks. That's the only benefit I can see, and it's not much of one for the industry, particularly here in the US.
Hard science fields, well.. that'd kinda fuck things up quickly.
If you've got a shitload of mostly-unused land, you could use them for solar focusing to increase solar power output of a panel. Or if you're in a canyon you can put them on the canyon ridge (if you also own the ridge) for a similar use...
Ehh...
Is apple primarily riding to fortune on brand image? Absolutely!
Is brand image the sole thing propping up Apple?
Uh, no.
Apple would be nowhere right now if it was not for a series of very good software engineering, UI design, and hardware design decisions. Yes, the sale of those items was made possible through good marketing ("brand image"), but brand image is not the only thing pushing them forward in an industry dominated by 'brand image' power brokers like Microsoft; quality is a large part of it.
OS X is good technology; very good technology. For the most part, it does "just work" (on Apple hw), and it's why a lot of people have started buying Macs instead of PCs, if they can afford it.
Apple does have a choice. They can take their current route - to preserve their high profit margin - or they could leave Pystar be, or maybe even license the right to use OS X on their systems. Because as it stands, Apple is pricing themselves out of most major profit markets (early adopters and geeks in general, businesses) moreso than their technology is limiting uptake.
Of course, that'd result in growing pains and a lot of problems for Apple, so they've decided not to do so.