...SCO got a LOT more money outta Microsoft for a similar stunt...
(Maybe the semiconductor industry doesn't carry the same amount of chair-throwing passion among its leadership that software does? I'm actually curious now).
A work PC is a different story, the IT staff gathers and laughs at some of the stuff we find on work computers. Although it becomes a bit less fun when you have to confront the person about it.
Different in lots of ways... for starters, company policy (usually) says that anything stored on the company equipment belongs to said company for inspection and/or disposal; I remember finding some damned weird sh!t on many a hard drive during the course of auditing boxes connected to a given LAN. But then, with some corps, mgmt demands you do that sort of thing from time to time.
Computer machinery brought in from a customer - stupid or not, they trust that you're not going to ransack their privacy (or they honestly think that the HDD is hashed and its contents unrecoverable).
I ran a computer repair shop (note that I said "ran" not "worked at"), and this practice of "stealing" porn, music and movies was practically company policy.
I hope you never apply for any sysadmin position anywhere, until/unless you lose that kind of attitude.
Seriously - that's 100% pure asshattery on your part (and I don't give a shit what files were involved, or how clueless the person storing 'em there), and may well explain why you don't "run" a shop these days.
If you can't prove yourself worthy of a position of trust, then GTFO out of this business. We have enough problems with pry-happy vendors, corporate espionage, and the incidental script kiddies - we have precious little tolerance or room for pathetic little asshats who would compromise their own professional ethics just to get his or her movie and pr0n fix.
At home, w/ friends, or at a LAN party (that is, if the others are into sharing), or elsewhere... go for it; copy your ass off with nary a peep from the likes of me. But at work? Shitting where you eat? Sibling's right, there is no statute of limitations on douchebaggery.
In all honesty? Prolly not, for one big, fat reason: How d'ya tell the diff between commercially sold "amateur" stuff and actual no-shit "hey, baby... let's bring out the {video | digital} camera tonight..." stuff.
The latter is intended to be private, and snitching copies of it is likely to bring bad mojo no matter what angle you approach it from. Sure, taking in a 'puter with a hard drive full of the stuff to [i]Geek Squad[/i] is really not something a sane person would want to do with private stuff, but most users aren't smart enough to realize this.
As far as calling it theft? Nothing is lost (in most circumstances) by making a copy. The exception would be personal, private files (photos or video), in which case you've just stolen something a bit bigger than mere bits and bytes.
All it would take is for one proven instance of your doing it to someone's personal video file (e.g. pics or vids with his ol' lady - in spite of the fact that you wouldn't know if it were or not unless you saw her bring it in). Do that, and --inadvertently or not-- odds are good that you would end up on the same governmental sex offender registries as the paedos and kiddie-porn purveyors. Try moving up the IT career chain (or doing anything else in society) with a big black mark like that... I wish you luck, pal.
Fsck that - If I want pr0n that badly, the Internet is damned full of it, as are the local smut shops, etc etc.
eBay is bad enough when it comes to the occasional scam (though I've been quite lucky with all the purchases and sales on it I'd made thus far, there are more than enough ripoff stories about...)
While someone dumb enough to, say, screw over a Russian Mafiya buywer, I can see where there would be more than enough idiots out there who would happily try (and hiding behind eGold and proxies, etc for payments... it may even be feasible )
Not like there would be much in the way of honor among theives when it comes to a near-total-anonymous thing like malware and malware kiddies...
(besides, all one would really have to do to make a killing as a seller is to dredge through securityfocus' vulns DB... the smart crims would avoid bidding on it, and the dumb ones? Well...)
If you can't get hired at MS, STFU and do something to get better at what you do.
Considering that Vista and Office 2k7 have more cruft on each than the hull of RMS Titanic currently carries, and that it is being approached by the business world with about the same passion as a priest would approach a fat naked woman with flaring gonorrhea?
I honestly wouldn't be bragging about working there if'n I were you;)
If Google opens its R&D center nearby and lures some programmers from MS, we'll see chairs flying over the border into Canada.
Actually, Google has one very ginormous datacenter at a wee place called The Dalles in Northern Oregon, well within spitting distance from Portland. It would be an awful quick move for any interested party (Not to mention that Portland already has a ton of tech giants lurking about the area, what with Intel R&D in Portland/Hillsboro, a shedload of ancillary companies that hang about and support Intel here and there, Symantec, Yahoo, and more small-to-medium high-tech than you can shake anything at).
It wouldn't take too much for the Goog (and lots of others of moderate-to-large size around these parts) to start head-hunting a bit, so as to entice the best Seattle has to move a bit southwards. In short, MSFT may want to be careful about how easily it think it can get its own way...
When will we see some fringe group shouting and marching against "Frankenfuel"?
(seriously - I love the idea, but you and I both know it's gonna happen...)
As a (partial) tangent, what safety measures are they looking to put in place to prevent some sort of biological 'oopsie' that may have unintended (read: "Bad") consequences?
Actually to me more correct, 3 phases are likely found on the power lines. (Power lines usually have 3 main wires, plus often a fourth wire containing ground potential and grounded every couple of poles.
True for most distribution, though once it gets down to the residential poles or the 'neighborhood level' (for lack of a better term)it often drops to two wires, and sometimes maybe a third along top as a lightning catcher. Same with rural areas, IIRC.
Otherwise you're 100% correct - the 'grid' itself and most major distribution lines are 3-phase.
The two other taps have a voltage differential of 220 volt, and only a differential of 120 volts to the neutral line(the grounded line).
Yep; but it's rigged like that to allow 220V appliances (stove, washer/dryer, furnace, and other suchstuff).
The 2 live lines could be described as 180 degrees out of phase with each other, however that is not considered a different phase, but just the inverse of the same phase. So calling the system in homes "2-phase" is misleading.
Sort of - I'd have to start looking things up from here (admittedly - it's been literally over a decade since I've had to deal w/ any of it), though IIRC any two signals out of phase with each other is still considered multi-phase, useless as it may be for actual use as such.
Why the whole of USA is forcing down our collective throats one-size-fits-all 110 V, 60 Hz electricity supply? America is about choice and freedom. We want more choices in standards.
Dunno if that was tongue-in-cheek or not, but it's a bad analogy ye be usin' up there: "60Hz single-phase sine wave @ 110VAC" is a pretty flippin' open consumer product spec, by any definition of the term. Incidentally, the stuff that gets to your house is usually 2-phase @ 220VAC, which gets split at your breaker box.
What happens to it after that is all up to you so long as you own the joint.;)
'course, industry distribution standards --for North America, anyway-- range from 2-phase 220VAC to three phase 220/440/660 VAC, with lots of nice options on the side. Most decent-sized industrial sites usually get their stuff raw off the city/rural/regional grid as three-phase juice, which can be anywhere from 8.8 kV to 13,200 kV and up.
AAMOF, the only real 'standard' in electrical distribution is that you make a best effort to keep it at a 60Hz sine waveform, and that you follow standard NEC (and other) safety practices and guidelines - what you do with it after that is all up to you.
The really funny part is, I hadn't even touched on High-Cycle (180Hz) or industrial AC to DC conversion, both of which are valid and useful options for industrial application throughout North America... Oh, yeah, forgot: many other countries and regions have far differing standards entirely that they use (e.g. the 220-240VAC @ 50Hz std. household power found in much of Europe, IIRC).
Second off, don't you think that hinting at an armed insurrection over a telecoms legal issue (or much of what flies out of DC these days for that matter to be honest) is a bit extreme?
You do realize that 'taxtation without representation' was a major factor for the colonies to revolt, right?
No, it was one of many, many factors (and the taxes were proportionally far more crushing than anything today). The Declaration of Independence was a formal statement, but not an all-encompassing one. A look through the Bill of Rights will show you the major reasons why enough folks got miffed enough to take up arms in the late 18th century.
Also, what on Earth does Internet Tiering (or whatever euphemism they want to call it these days) by private companies on their own gear have to do with a rapacious and cash-starved government taxing commodities on second-class citizens (e.g. Colonists)?
Seriously - do you think it's worth taking human life over this issue?
What I don't understand is why Americans accept this bullshit.
*sigh*...
Probably because the vast majority don't even know what Net Neutrality is, let alone that this conference took place, let alone further that such words were spoken at it.
Second off, don't you think that hinting at an armed insurrection over a telecoms legal issue (or much of what flies out of DC these days for that matter to be honest) is a bit extreme?
Seriously - the schmucks who blew up the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City back in 1995 were riding the same vapors.
How about you and I ignore the hype-happy drama-hungry media/"news" broadcasts, find reliable even-handed sources for it, and use the hard info we gather to actually start, you know, talking to those who may not agree with us on a given issue, and especially those who may not know about it. Speak gently, but intelligently. Stick with logic and avoid fallacies. Ask when you don't know. Ask why they believe that they do. Explain your position in non-technical terms. Go into detail only when you have to. Be friendly about it. Refuse to shout. I'm not just speaking platitudes here... I live in Portland, Oregon (the bluest part of this here blue state), and I'm one of those Ozark-accented center-to-right-leaning nutjobs that people howl in rage about on the boards at DU (I have a blatantly pro-gun bumper sticker on the back of my vehicle, FFS). In spite of all that, I have yet to find anyone here in real life that shuns me for what I say on a given matter.
In this case? If the corps are all hungry to start hacking at network neutrality, then pick the most egregious corp and boycott them; explain to others (on and off-line) what you are doing and why they should follow. It is one of the reasons that Verizon will never get a dime of my money, in spite of FIOS in my neighborhood. If it is important enough to us all, they will likely listen, maybe even follow suit.
That's how change has happened in the past. Why not see if it can work this time too?
Not to take away the philosophical aspect you'd posted, but from TFA:
Hatshepsut's tomb, for example, was found looted and without any mummified female, possibly because her son and successor, Tuthmosis III, tried to wipe out all traces of her memory after she died in about 1482 BC.
...seems that her kid was hell-bent on making sure she wasn't remembered at all (considering the story on the relationship between the two, I could see where the guy would get all butt-hurt about his mom's successes, and the fact that she ruled for decades after he was old enough to have taken on the job (which was traditionally a male slot after all), and...
That she managed to have her name survive in spite of her own son's best efforts is pretty damned incredible, IMHO.
/P
PS:...no jokes in these threads centering on Iron Maiden's Powerslave yet? WTF?
Yes, you're prolly gonna burn in hell for that one.
OTOH, (damn your hide...) this is one of the few times when I really wish they had a special occasion mod limit of "6". Damned near bit my tongue in half in trying not to wake up my part of the cube farm this morning.
...that's actually easy to do: you could fit a Beowulf cluster of 'em in a shoebox (or better yet, convert an old ATX case to hold a couple dozen or so).
Said students perhaps shouldn't be pirating music then, hmm? There's lots of ways to get DRM-free music (often of high quality too) for cheap or free legally.
...and if you get hit in spite of not pirating? The wonders of DHCP coupled with the notoriously insecure networks that most colleges run* tend to make it drop-easy for innocents to get snagged by this dragnet of theirs.
Given that a typical college student has zero cash to spare for a settlement, let alone to fight back and proclaim their innocence if they do get accidentally snagged? It's a disaster waiting to happen, and woe betide any Uni who not only finds that an innocent student was hit, but that said student fights back... because now (IIRC) the RIAA and UW may wind up on the wrong end of a lawsuit. (Unless the Uni would be willing to help defend any provable innocent students who accidentally get targeted).
* yes, I said notoriously insecure. When one can literally sit across the street from a major university in Utah (I won't mention which) with a Pringles Can rig and get full Internet access in no time flat, it can't be secure... and odds are VERY good that they aren't alone in having such gaping holes in their network.
You sure as hell wont be seeing it. It'll be shown to a couple of high profile professional auditors who will give it the green or red light, and that's that. At NO point will the public see it.
Not even with a FIOA - like request? I'm sure New York has to have some sort of public records transparency law.
Sorry Steve, Bill - but some of us want to see what these things actually do when we use 'em to cast a vote.
Meanwhile, I'm damned sure that somebody in Diebold went all Ballmer on the furniture... though I can't wait to see their source code ; I'm sure it's gonna be worth some huge laughs @ your nearest code-monkey pit, punctuated with lots of sounds along the lines of: "WTF were these asshats THINKING!?".
Slashdot Mirror
(Maybe the semiconductor industry doesn't carry the same amount of chair-throwing passion among its leadership that software does? I'm actually curious now).
"din't mean it guv! was kiddin' is all..."
Different in lots of ways... for starters, company policy (usually) says that anything stored on the company equipment belongs to said company for inspection and/or disposal; I remember finding some damned weird sh!t on many a hard drive during the course of auditing boxes connected to a given LAN. But then, with some corps, mgmt demands you do that sort of thing from time to time.
Computer machinery brought in from a customer - stupid or not, they trust that you're not going to ransack their privacy (or they honestly think that the HDD is hashed and its contents unrecoverable).
I hope you never apply for any sysadmin position anywhere, until/unless you lose that kind of attitude.
Seriously - that's 100% pure asshattery on your part (and I don't give a shit what files were involved, or how clueless the person storing 'em there), and may well explain why you don't "run" a shop these days.
If you can't prove yourself worthy of a position of trust, then GTFO out of this business. We have enough problems with pry-happy vendors, corporate espionage, and the incidental script kiddies - we have precious little tolerance or room for pathetic little asshats who would compromise their own professional ethics just to get his or her movie and pr0n fix.
At home, w/ friends, or at a LAN party (that is, if the others are into sharing), or elsewhere... go for it; copy your ass off with nary a peep from the likes of me. But at work? Shitting where you eat? Sibling's right, there is no statute of limitations on douchebaggery.
The latter is intended to be private, and snitching copies of it is likely to bring bad mojo no matter what angle you approach it from. Sure, taking in a 'puter with a hard drive full of the stuff to [i]Geek Squad[/i] is really not something a sane person would want to do with private stuff, but most users aren't smart enough to realize this.
As far as calling it theft? Nothing is lost (in most circumstances) by making a copy. The exception would be personal, private files (photos or video), in which case you've just stolen something a bit bigger than mere bits and bytes.
All it would take is for one proven instance of your doing it to someone's personal video file (e.g. pics or vids with his ol' lady - in spite of the fact that you wouldn't know if it were or not unless you saw her bring it in). Do that, and --inadvertently or not-- odds are good that you would end up on the same governmental sex offender registries as the paedos and kiddie-porn purveyors. Try moving up the IT career chain (or doing anything else in society) with a big black mark like that... I wish you luck, pal.
Fsck that - If I want pr0n that badly, the Internet is damned full of it, as are the local smut shops, etc etc.
Suddenly, I'm not so sure I'm gonna be able to get any sleep tonight for some odd reason...
Just because one can make a profit off of it doesn't make it any more secure.
And you really cant compare enigma to current technology.I beg to differ - it was:
Cripes, man... if Enigma/Colossus wasn't relevant in concept, then what is!?
While someone dumb enough to, say, screw over a Russian Mafiya buywer, I can see where there would be more than enough idiots out there who would happily try (and hiding behind eGold and proxies, etc for payments... it may even be feasible )
Not like there would be much in the way of honor among theives when it comes to a near-total-anonymous thing like malware and malware kiddies...
(besides, all one would really have to do to make a killing as a seller is to dredge through securityfocus' vulns DB... the smart crims would avoid bidding on it, and the dumb ones? Well...)
Considering that Vista and Office 2k7 have more cruft on each than the hull of RMS Titanic currently carries, and that it is being approached by the business world with about the same passion as a priest would approach a fat naked woman with flaring gonorrhea?
I honestly wouldn't be bragging about working there if'n I were you ;)
(I do *nix for a living - deal).
Actually, Google has one very ginormous datacenter at a wee place called The Dalles in Northern Oregon, well within spitting distance from Portland. It would be an awful quick move for any interested party (Not to mention that Portland already has a ton of tech giants lurking about the area, what with Intel R&D in Portland/Hillsboro, a shedload of ancillary companies that hang about and support Intel here and there, Symantec, Yahoo, and more small-to-medium high-tech than you can shake anything at).
It wouldn't take too much for the Goog (and lots of others of moderate-to-large size around these parts) to start head-hunting a bit, so as to entice the best Seattle has to move a bit southwards. In short, MSFT may want to be careful about how easily it think it can get its own way...
(I was mixing polyphase with split phase.)
(seriously - I love the idea, but you and I both know it's gonna happen...)
As a (partial) tangent, what safety measures are they looking to put in place to prevent some sort of biological 'oopsie' that may have unintended (read: "Bad") consequences?
True for most distribution, though once it gets down to the residential poles or the 'neighborhood level' (for lack of a better term)it often drops to two wires, and sometimes maybe a third along top as a lightning catcher. Same with rural areas, IIRC.
Otherwise you're 100% correct - the 'grid' itself and most major distribution lines are 3-phase.
The two other taps have a voltage differential of 220 volt, and only a differential of 120 volts to the neutral line(the grounded line).Yep; but it's rigged like that to allow 220V appliances (stove, washer/dryer, furnace, and other suchstuff).
The 2 live lines could be described as 180 degrees out of phase with each other, however that is not considered a different phase, but just the inverse of the same phase. So calling the system in homes "2-phase" is misleading.Sort of - I'd have to start looking things up from here (admittedly - it's been literally over a decade since I've had to deal w/ any of it), though IIRC any two signals out of phase with each other is still considered multi-phase, useless as it may be for actual use as such.
Dunno if that was tongue-in-cheek or not, but it's a bad analogy ye be usin' up there: "60Hz single-phase sine wave @ 110VAC" is a pretty flippin' open consumer product spec, by any definition of the term. Incidentally, the stuff that gets to your house is usually 2-phase @ 220VAC, which gets split at your breaker box.
What happens to it after that is all up to you so long as you own the joint. ;)
'course, industry distribution standards --for North America, anyway-- range from 2-phase 220VAC to three phase 220/440/660 VAC, with lots of nice options on the side. Most decent-sized industrial sites usually get their stuff raw off the city/rural/regional grid as three-phase juice, which can be anywhere from 8.8 kV to 13,200 kV and up.
AAMOF, the only real 'standard' in electrical distribution is that you make a best effort to keep it at a 60Hz sine waveform, and that you follow standard NEC (and other) safety practices and guidelines - what you do with it after that is all up to you.
The really funny part is, I hadn't even touched on High-Cycle (180Hz) or industrial AC to DC conversion, both of which are valid and useful options for industrial application throughout North America... Oh, yeah, forgot: many other countries and regions have far differing standards entirely that they use (e.g. the 220-240VAC @ 50Hz std. household power found in much of Europe, IIRC).
You do realize that 'taxtation without representation' was a major factor for the colonies to revolt, right?
No, it was one of many, many factors (and the taxes were proportionally far more crushing than anything today). The Declaration of Independence was a formal statement, but not an all-encompassing one. A look through the Bill of Rights will show you the major reasons why enough folks got miffed enough to take up arms in the late 18th century.
Also, what on Earth does Internet Tiering (or whatever euphemism they want to call it these days) by private companies on their own gear have to do with a rapacious and cash-starved government taxing commodities on second-class citizens (e.g. Colonists)?
Seriously - do you think it's worth taking human life over this issue?
*sigh*...
Probably because the vast majority don't even know what Net Neutrality is, let alone that this conference took place, let alone further that such words were spoken at it.
Second off, don't you think that hinting at an armed insurrection over a telecoms legal issue (or much of what flies out of DC these days for that matter to be honest) is a bit extreme?
Seriously - the schmucks who blew up the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City back in 1995 were riding the same vapors.
How about you and I ignore the hype-happy drama-hungry media/"news" broadcasts, find reliable even-handed sources for it, and use the hard info we gather to actually start, you know, talking to those who may not agree with us on a given issue, and especially those who may not know about it. Speak gently, but intelligently. Stick with logic and avoid fallacies. Ask when you don't know. Ask why they believe that they do. Explain your position in non-technical terms. Go into detail only when you have to. Be friendly about it. Refuse to shout. I'm not just speaking platitudes here... I live in Portland, Oregon (the bluest part of this here blue state), and I'm one of those Ozark-accented center-to-right-leaning nutjobs that people howl in rage about on the boards at DU (I have a blatantly pro-gun bumper sticker on the back of my vehicle, FFS). In spite of all that, I have yet to find anyone here in real life that shuns me for what I say on a given matter.
In this case? If the corps are all hungry to start hacking at network neutrality, then pick the most egregious corp and boycott them; explain to others (on and off-line) what you are doing and why they should follow. It is one of the reasons that Verizon will never get a dime of my money, in spite of FIOS in my neighborhood. If it is important enough to us all, they will likely listen, maybe even follow suit.
That's how change has happened in the past. Why not see if it can work this time too?
That she managed to have her name survive in spite of her own son's best efforts is pretty damned incredible, IMHO.
PS: ...no jokes in these threads centering on Iron Maiden's Powerslave yet? WTF?
Sure! You just have to plug it into one of the MSFT-recommended expansion packs...
Bad News: It runs WinCE.
Yes, you're prolly gonna burn in hell for that one.
OTOH, (damn your hide...) this is one of the few times when I really wish they had a special occasion mod limit of "6". Damned near bit my tongue in half in trying not to wake up my part of the cube farm this morning.
Given that a typical college student has zero cash to spare for a settlement, let alone to fight back and proclaim their innocence if they do get accidentally snagged? It's a disaster waiting to happen, and woe betide any Uni who not only finds that an innocent student was hit, but that said student fights back... because now (IIRC) the RIAA and UW may wind up on the wrong end of a lawsuit. (Unless the Uni would be willing to help defend any provable innocent students who accidentally get targeted).
* yes, I said notoriously insecure. When one can literally sit across the street from a major university in Utah (I won't mention which) with a Pringles Can rig and get full Internet access in no time flat, it can't be secure... and odds are VERY good that they aren't alone in having such gaping holes in their network.
Not even with a FIOA - like request? I'm sure New York has to have some sort of public records transparency law.
http://www.gamingjunky.com/article/2007/4/19/nin-- -q1-to-year-zero/
http://www.9inchnails.com/articles/pretty-quake-ma chine.php
Sorry Steve, Bill - but some of us want to see what these things actually do when we use 'em to cast a vote.
Meanwhile, I'm damned sure that somebody in Diebold went all Ballmer on the furniture... though I can't wait to see their source code ; I'm sure it's gonna be worth some huge laughs @ your nearest code-monkey pit, punctuated with lots of sounds along the lines of: "WTF were these asshats THINKING!?".