Yep - should've been a bit more clear: I'm stuck with 5.1 here, and a corporate policy that demands that particular product for the time being. I'm pushing through paperwork and policy requests that will eventually let me use Bacula, but that's going to take awhile, unfortunately.
The relevant issue here though is that you wouldn't bet on the chances of the retro group versus those moving ahead through technological self-improvement -- the outcome is a forgone conclusion. So the parent's point holds: you can't afford to reject Mankind's self-evolution, or in time you will become extinct.
Actually, I haven't said which group I would throw my own personal lot in with... until now. I'd happily hang out with the unmodified folks, truth be known. That way me and my progeny aren't subject to geneticists' mistakes, collapses of society/civilization (where mechanical parts becomes scarce-to-non-existant), and I (as well as my descendants) would be far better positioned to adapt to whatever comes at us from the natural world overall - mostly because modifications usually mean specialization. Evolution proves abundantly what happens to species lines that become too specialized to adapt, no?
A entire population will not, and cannot be affected by a programmatical virus.
A little while back, a vast majority of the networked MSSQL server population was bit, and bit hard... by one rapid programmatical virus (Blaster). Fortunately, it wasn't a deadly one. While not all MSSQL servers were hit, it certainly affected the product as a whole, no? All of this came about because Microsoft hadn't anticipated that anyone would put an SQL box onto a live Internet connection, and had institutionally forgotten that they left a root-level default account and password on the thing listening on an open port.
Now replace "MSSQL" with "Acme Brain Communicators" or whatever... and give the Blaster code a bit of a modification, enough to permanently incapacitate the victim...
I believe that like now, to catch a computer virus and let it do any damage one has to be either very reckless or a computer illiterate.
How many MSSQL admins/MCSE's/MSDBA's at the time even knew about the default account (IIRC it was documented, but only indirectly and was buried)? Sometimes things just blindside the users (sucks to use proprietary code, ne? But even with FOSS, how many sysadmins are going to read every line of code in every product that he or she uses?)
I for one welcome a future where stupidity and computer illiteracy is deadly.
Nice thought, but the problems arise when you consider that bystanders stand a chance of catching trouble too. It's like saying "I for one... where drunk driving is deadly" in some ways. For example, when Blaster hit (there are lots of other examples, but this one happens to be the most blatant), it created a HUGE DDoS that caused large chunks of the 'net to sag under the load. Why should I, a *nix user, be forced to pay in slowdowns for some idiot flaw in a competitor's product that I have never used or will ever use? Same way w/ this hypothetical cyborg virus thingy... some of those 'borgs are going to be operating sensitive or damned large equipment. Some may be performing surgery at the time. Others may be fine-tuning, oh, a nuclear/fusion reactor when they get bit... any of those scenarios are going to be rather painful to not only the victim, but anybody else who happens to be in the way. Not exactly poetic justice, is it?
You seem to have failed to grasp the point made in the post to which you are replying. It's an evolving definition.
Quite the contrary: I realize that anyone can stretch the definition to fit whatever encompasses their particular situation. But - everyone will have their own definition, and it is likely that this definition will exclude individuals who might have otherwise fit.
Once upon a not-so-distant past, individuals were considered by then-respectable authorities to be "sub-human" (that is, not quite a member of the full human race) because of the color of their skin, their culture, the way they prayed (or who they prayed to), and a whole host of other cosmetic reasons. I have no reason to believe that humanity, being what it is, will refuse to do so in the future, especially since differences will likely be far more fundamental (and very real) than the flimsy pseudo-scientific ones pointed at in the past.
Right now, nearly any random man can mate with any random woman, and are almost statistically certain to have normal, genetically healthy children. If I, a (mostly) caucasian male in North America, mated with any random woman from any continent, culture, region, religion, what-have-you, I could readily expect with 99% statistical certainty that the resulting children would be born without defects or problem caused by the intermixing of genetic lineage between her and myself.
Now fast-forward 10,000 years... think we could still do the same? If not, then what happens and what definitions apply? Sure, each grouping could still readily call themselves "human", but the genetic ties would have likely differentiated enough to cause problems - maybe. Then again, maybe not, if there is some sort of standard that everyone adheres to. We simply do not know, which is why I asked in the first place.
In a general sense, GP may be right. But then, while Neanderthals were considered on a technical level to be human, I'm willing to bet that you'll find few folks today who would look upon them as being 'fully' human. Try this simple thought experiment: If you were transported back in time and presented with two potential mates, One Cro-Magnon and the other Neanderthal, which would you choose? Why?
I suspect that future people will likely group themselves off in similar fashion, and for similar reasons. Over the long-view of time (we're talking lots of millennia now), these differences may become great enough to actually form separate and biologically incompatible species. So which will be the actual humans, and which will have a prefix or suffix appended to the title?
"Will we remain human?" isn't really an interesting question, because we will always consider "human" whatever happens to be accepted as normal at the time.
Okay... which "human"? The heavily genetically modified humans, the heavily mechanically modified humans, or the ones who decided to not bother with any of it? As long as the brain remains mostly untouched, or unmodified, we're good to go? Or do we just settle on saying "anything with a soul"? Coming up from below (eventually) is something else to blur the lines even more: Artificial Intelligence. The day we get a self-aware and sentient artificial program going, all bets are off.
I wouldn't even want to touch the questions of reproductive compatibility... and racism/bigotry might (this go 'round) have fundamental points of biological and/or mechanical logic to generate fear and hatred - not just blather based on appearance, culture, and sheer ignorance.
A far better question though is... "Can we afford not to upgrade?", once a particular replacement has become very popular and widely accepted and inexpensive. Because to say "No" to upgrades on the basis of some rather retro urge to remain "natural" is a recipe for being left behind.
Do that for long enough and you've destined your family for extinction.
I beg to disagree - all it would take is for one new strain of virus (biological or programmatical), and suddenly the affected population could well be toast; it could be that only the unmodified folks survive. Then again, that wide and serious diversity could be humanity's redundancy and saving grace as well.
Dunno who to feel sorry for in all of this, save the kids themselves, and even then just a little. The teachers are going to get fired + sued into oblivion, while the idiots responsible for initiating such a dumb plan will likely remain unscathed (or will stan if it goes like I think it does up an appropriate scapegoat). The parents are going to look at this situation and not likely think "time to explain to the sprogs that sometimes people do dumb things - they'll be okay otherwise"... many of them are instead going to think "JACKPOT!" and milk victimhood for all its worth while putting some lawyer onto their speed-dial.
Screw the mod points: A pox on all their damned houses, if it goes like I think it does.
I personally don't know or care what the outcome will be, but I am sure that we can eventually create organic computers. For example, your left finger nail could in fact be a small computer.
Woe betide the first stupid mofo who tries to overclock his fingernails... ain't no amount of anti-fungal creme or pill that's gonna clean that out.
Who knows what's the best way to manage a hive mind?
I'm sure some corporation would be rather eager to see if they happen to know, if the likes of Sony, Microsoft, et al are any indicator. Or, even worse... someone w/ the scruples and ideology of the RIAA.
Contact lenses, hearing aids, artificial limbs... tattoos, botox, piercings, breast augmentation... we've been modifying the crap out of ourselves ever since we invented clothing.
While I doubt we'll end up in some Ghost In The Shell - like world anytime soon, the urge to improve ourselves to the point of modification and beyond is a part of our own adaptability.
Indeed - I see it as a major step towards Dell selling Linux on a larger scale.
OTOH, I sincerely hope this isn't going to become a pattern, where MSFT makes bank every time an OEM moved towards Linux. Something about it just seems plain wrong, and looks like an admission of guilt towards a contention that probably does not exist (the assertion of MSFT somehow owning IP to Linux or OS tech).
Either way, the fact that such speculation is obvious and rather persistant is a good indication that maybe it does need to be re-assessed (not necessarily by the/. crowd, but certainly by Novell...)
Or maybe the editorial staff on slashdot is showing their bias by posting what's blatantly unfounded speculation with no original source, thus trying to reinforce that such speculation is "rather persistant".
So let's remove any possibility of bias:
Novell pays MSFT a shedload of money, ostensibly to get MSFT to help w/ Win32/64 app interoperability and sell a few SuSE licenses.
Ballmer almost immediately starts mouthing on about Linux and how it allegedly "infringes intellectual property".
Novell's response wasn't (at least IMHO) much more than a weak 'do not...'
Ballmer continues bull-horning the original point unabated, pointing at SuSE and claiming the money was to help insure against vague future threats of lawsuits by MSFT.
Now, compare that to the majority of the other partnerships MSFT has had in the computer industry... first big example: MSFT & IBM. The pattern usually resolves to MSFT=wins big, Partner(s)=at best manages to survive but not really thrive from the partnership, or at worst they lose their butts.
It's like posting another story on Jack Thompson and violent video games and concluding that "the fact that such speculation is obvious and rather persistant is a good indication that maybe it does need to be re-assessed by the gaming industry". Sorry, if you have a crackpot theory it's still a crackpot theory even if you repeat it often enough.
Dude - that may not be the best strawman I've ever seen, but it is still a strawman. Thompson v. [pretty much Game Industry member] is based on a series of blatant accusations by an obviously unbalanced egomaniac who goes out of his way to abuse the legal system in order to get his way. The MSFT and Novell deal is among the latest in a number of provable "deals" that MSFT makes whenever they really want to twist the knife into someone or something.
It is pretty hard to deny MSFT's history of partnerships with people they clearly want to harm or destroy. Ballmer has gone out of his way to indicate his intentions w/ Linux with that crack about intellectual property infringement.
What part of this refuses to remain an 800-lb elephant in the room for you? I suppose the day MSFT serves Red Hat or Canonical a summons of law suit for patent or copyright infringement might suffice (while naming SuSE as a licensee of stated IP), but I prefer to be wary of Redmond long before I end up getting blindsided by it (I make a majority share of my income from Linux and UNIX administration, which means that yeah... it does affect me).
Maybe, maybe not, but if anything looks and smells like an 800-lb elephant in the living room, the Novell/MSFT deal has to rank up there pretty high.
Dunno why Love just up and left... could be a better opportunity, could've been retirement, could've been disgust at the company culture... could be that he was sick and tired of having to go to Salt Lake City once a year for Brainshare and put up with the local 3.2% beer. Who knows?
Either way, the fact that such speculation is obvious and rather persistant is a good indication that maybe it does need to be re-assessed (not necessarily by the/. crowd, but certainly by Novell...)
Not 100% sure if it's fallout from the Novell/MSFT deal or not, but maybe it'll finally get Hoviespan's attention that you simply do not make deals with The Devil and expect everyone to be happy with it?
I can grok the 'foot-in-the-door' theory of getting enough interoperability w/ Windows to make Windows no longer matter (or at least ease customers out of the Windows-only lock-in), but man... he HAD to have seen the 'Plays for Sure' fiasco and figure out that the only real winner in any MSFT-3rdparty deal is MSFT, even if MSFT has to screw the partner(s) to do it.
It doesn't really take a group to do it... all it takes is for one man with enough charisma and a knack for media publicity and framing the debate, and the rest falls (more or less) into place.
While I don't expect the RNC to agree with him (esp. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)), framing the effort as a means of insuring the little guy his fair share, and going public with lists of those politicians who are in the **AA's pocket is plenty to get things moving with his peers in the DNC, one would hope. I suspect there would be resistance from those who hang with the Hollywood crowd, there is potential to get folks from both sides of the aisle on board.
I won't say that he has a perfect chance of doing it, but until he at least puts forth the effort, this whole "let's release the debate transcripts as creative commons" thing is nothing but hot air, and a naked grab for geek attention IMHO.
...how come, as a member of Congress right now, he doesn't introduce and fight for a few bills to reform copyright law so as to bolster Fair Use, and to curb the cartels such as the **AA?
While he's at it, he can do a little politicking to remove software patents, or at least reform it to the point where patent trolls cannot possibly profit (or insanely huge corporations cannot lock out competition with it)?
It's fine and dandy to talk about wanting CC applied to debates, but he's in a position to make far more fundamental changes in his current Congressional position. Let's see him prove he's more than just a typical politician who likes to mouth a few buzzwords for attention here and there.
I'm thinking it was most likely an officer playing politics... though God help him if he's ever found out, if the document is actually listed as "Confidential" (an actual security level).
IMHO, I believe that (more likely) it was leaked out and had no confidentiality to it, save for Wired's hyperbole. Word would have to get out to every grunt, swabbie, jarhead, and wingnut eventually... information spread down that far, and that uniformly, is hardly "confidential". Nor would it be expected to remain that way - after all, mothers and wives in WWII found out awful fast about censorship in letters home when they opened the occasional one that looked a whole lot like swiss cheese from all the names, places, etc. literally chopped out of the thing.
...yes, when you join-up, you literally take an oath to defend the "United States Constitution" "against all ememies, foreign and domestic" (literally).
However, you also swear to adhere to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which during your tenure as a soldier, sailor, or airman, specificaly denies you a whole shedload of rights that a civilian commonly enjoys. IIRC, only the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments are still yours to exercise (almost) fully. The rest are either restricted heavily, or gone entirely for you. You basically suborn yourself (and are protected by) the UCMJ.
To make it even worse, even years and/or decades after you get out of the military... if a crime or fatality springing from gross negligence happened during your enlistment or commission, or was due to something you did or did not do, and there's strong evidence that you might be at fault? the US Military has the perfect right to recall you to active duty for long enough to get court marshalled for it. As an example: If I had ever screwed up on one of the aircraft I worked on nearly 16+ years ago, and it leads to a pilot or bystanders or etc. getting killed? Well, they get to drag me back into the USAF and make me testify (and possibly face liability or charges) before a board of inquiry. In such a case, it would prolly be done to determine whether or not it happened due to gross negligence or if it was something that couldn't have been helped, or...? Pretty good incentive for making sure you do your job right and document the crap out of your work, isn't it? It gave me some very tight work habits that carry through to this day.
As to your original topic... while yes it is censorship, it also managed to teach such things as discretion, tact, and consideration. Between the reminders and instruction, and reading real-life cases concerning how certain inmates at Leavenworth got there? It was enough to sober up even the rebellious kid that I was at the time. I don't think there were too many other areas in life back then that could've given such lessons in such a stark, certain, and very easy-to-grok format.
Could be that someday, somebody is going to cobble together a P2P-style redundant agent that coulod convert a botnet into a big-assed torrent server.
I mean, what better place (from an objective POV) to park warez and illicit data (e.g. certain types of illegal pr0n), than on some unsuspecting schlep's machinery?
The mobsters then charge admittance by way of proxies (conceptual term, not 'w.x.y.z:8080') and advertise by way of spam?
The author, if I read this correctly, assumes that the risk is constant... but compare the profit from spammers (who can make payments more directly, as noted), and extortionists (who stand a good --not perfect, but good-- chance of having that payment traced/tracked. Sure, it'll go to some money-handling service in Russia or whatnot, but that wouldn't put it completely out of the realm of trackability.
They still want the money somehow, and getting it bears higher risk with extortion than by simply grabbing dough under-the-table from spammers.
I suspect (okay, hope?) that spamming will begin to lose its profit motive as well, as users become computer-literate enough en masse to ignore emailed pitches... making the reward not really worth the effort. Even the dumbest user can get ripped off only so many times before they either a) go broke, or b) figure out that maybe they should stop buying stuff from spammers.
No offense, but simply because you're allowed to thrive doesn't mean you have the foggiest idea what you're doing with respect to keeping your machines clean.
None taken - my own evaluation of proficiency is judged by the results of my work as audited on a periodic semi-random basis. Because of the nature of my specific duties, I cannot simply hand off localized email filtering duties to "the email guys", hand off local IOS patching and vigilance to "the network guys", the Oracle and MySQL patches to "the DB guys", and etc. In fact, if anything goes splat in the lab security-wise and spreads to the corp network? I daresay that I'm more responsible for the results than the average schlep who could simply (and credibly so) shift the blame to "the network guy", or the "desktop support guy", or "...". If/when it falls on my head, I had better be prepared to prove that I showed due diligence before, during, and after.
Maybe that's what gives your theory of 'incompetence == corporate position material' an anchor... that with such specialization and little direct responsibility (aside from the most bleeding obvious of blunders), it is drop-easy for someone in a big company to credibly shift blame when in truth it should rightly fall in his lap. Couple this with the subtle and often chain-reaction-like nature of malware and other types of compromise, and *poof* - there you go.
It then gets boiled down to a pass-the-blame game consisting of: "the email filters should've been updated", "No, the firewall should've stopped it outbound", "No - the workstations should've been patched!"... Typical corporate culture prevents anyone from daring to say "I fucked up..."
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BUT - on a desktop, or laptop? Nuh-uh. I'm kinda greedy about functionality and performance in those cases.
Actually, I haven't said which group I would throw my own personal lot in with... until now. I'd happily hang out with the unmodified folks, truth be known. That way me and my progeny aren't subject to geneticists' mistakes, collapses of society/civilization (where mechanical parts becomes scarce-to-non-existant), and I (as well as my descendants) would be far better positioned to adapt to whatever comes at us from the natural world overall - mostly because modifications usually mean specialization. Evolution proves abundantly what happens to species lines that become too specialized to adapt, no?
A little while back, a vast majority of the networked MSSQL server population was bit, and bit hard... by one rapid programmatical virus (Blaster). Fortunately, it wasn't a deadly one. While not all MSSQL servers were hit, it certainly affected the product as a whole, no? All of this came about because Microsoft hadn't anticipated that anyone would put an SQL box onto a live Internet connection, and had institutionally forgotten that they left a root-level default account and password on the thing listening on an open port.
Now replace "MSSQL" with "Acme Brain Communicators" or whatever... and give the Blaster code a bit of a modification, enough to permanently incapacitate the victim...
I believe that like now, to catch a computer virus and let it do any damage one has to be either very reckless or a computer illiterate.How many MSSQL admins/MCSE's/MSDBA's at the time even knew about the default account (IIRC it was documented, but only indirectly and was buried)? Sometimes things just blindside the users (sucks to use proprietary code, ne? But even with FOSS, how many sysadmins are going to read every line of code in every product that he or she uses?)
I for one welcome a future where stupidity and computer illiteracy is deadly.Nice thought, but the problems arise when you consider that bystanders stand a chance of catching trouble too. It's like saying "I for one ... where drunk driving is deadly" in some ways. For example, when Blaster hit (there are lots of other examples, but this one happens to be the most blatant), it created a HUGE DDoS that caused large chunks of the 'net to sag under the load. Why should I, a *nix user, be forced to pay in slowdowns for some idiot flaw in a competitor's product that I have never used or will ever use? Same way w/ this hypothetical cyborg virus thingy... some of those 'borgs are going to be operating sensitive or damned large equipment. Some may be performing surgery at the time. Others may be fine-tuning, oh, a nuclear/fusion reactor when they get bit... any of those scenarios are going to be rather painful to not only the victim, but anybody else who happens to be in the way. Not exactly poetic justice, is it?
You seem to have failed to grasp the point made in the post to which you are replying. It's an evolving definition.
Quite the contrary: I realize that anyone can stretch the definition to fit whatever encompasses their particular situation. But - everyone will have their own definition, and it is likely that this definition will exclude individuals who might have otherwise fit.
Once upon a not-so-distant past, individuals were considered by then-respectable authorities to be "sub-human" (that is, not quite a member of the full human race) because of the color of their skin, their culture, the way they prayed (or who they prayed to), and a whole host of other cosmetic reasons. I have no reason to believe that humanity, being what it is, will refuse to do so in the future, especially since differences will likely be far more fundamental (and very real) than the flimsy pseudo-scientific ones pointed at in the past.
Right now, nearly any random man can mate with any random woman, and are almost statistically certain to have normal, genetically healthy children. If I, a (mostly) caucasian male in North America, mated with any random woman from any continent, culture, region, religion, what-have-you, I could readily expect with 99% statistical certainty that the resulting children would be born without defects or problem caused by the intermixing of genetic lineage between her and myself.
Now fast-forward 10,000 years... think we could still do the same? If not, then what happens and what definitions apply? Sure, each grouping could still readily call themselves "human", but the genetic ties would have likely differentiated enough to cause problems - maybe. Then again, maybe not, if there is some sort of standard that everyone adheres to. We simply do not know, which is why I asked in the first place.
In a general sense, GP may be right. But then, while Neanderthals were considered on a technical level to be human, I'm willing to bet that you'll find few folks today who would look upon them as being 'fully' human. Try this simple thought experiment: If you were transported back in time and presented with two potential mates, One Cro-Magnon and the other Neanderthal, which would you choose? Why?
I suspect that future people will likely group themselves off in similar fashion, and for similar reasons. Over the long-view of time (we're talking lots of millennia now), these differences may become great enough to actually form separate and biologically incompatible species. So which will be the actual humans, and which will have a prefix or suffix appended to the title?
Okay... which "human"? The heavily genetically modified humans, the heavily mechanically modified humans, or the ones who decided to not bother with any of it? As long as the brain remains mostly untouched, or unmodified, we're good to go? Or do we just settle on saying "anything with a soul"? Coming up from below (eventually) is something else to blur the lines even more: Artificial Intelligence. The day we get a self-aware and sentient artificial program going, all bets are off.
I wouldn't even want to touch the questions of reproductive compatibility... and racism/bigotry might (this go 'round) have fundamental points of biological and/or mechanical logic to generate fear and hatred - not just blather based on appearance, culture, and sheer ignorance.
A far better question though isDo that for long enough and you've destined your family for extinction.
I beg to disagree - all it would take is for one new strain of virus (biological or programmatical), and suddenly the affected population could well be toast; it could be that only the unmodified folks survive. Then again, that wide and serious diversity could be humanity's redundancy and saving grace as well.
Screw the mod points: A pox on all their damned houses, if it goes like I think it does.
Woe betide the first stupid mofo who tries to overclock his fingernails... ain't no amount of anti-fungal creme or pill that's gonna clean that out.
I'm sure some corporation would be rather eager to see if they happen to know, if the likes of Sony, Microsoft, et al are any indicator. Or, even worse... someone w/ the scruples and ideology of the RIAA.
Teeth? You can get that done right now ;)
While I doubt we'll end up in some Ghost In The Shell - like world anytime soon, the urge to improve ourselves to the point of modification and beyond is a part of our own adaptability.
OTOH, I sincerely hope this isn't going to become a pattern, where MSFT makes bank every time an OEM moved towards Linux. Something about it just seems plain wrong, and looks like an admission of guilt towards a contention that probably does not exist (the assertion of MSFT somehow owning IP to Linux or OS tech).
(PS to all the indignant: I used to live in Salt Lake City...)
So let's remove any possibility of bias:
Now, compare that to the majority of the other partnerships MSFT has had in the computer industry... first big example: MSFT & IBM. The pattern usually resolves to MSFT=wins big, Partner(s)=at best manages to survive but not really thrive from the partnership, or at worst they lose their butts.
It's like posting another story on Jack Thompson and violent video games and concluding that "the fact that such speculation is obvious and rather persistant is a good indication that maybe it does need to be re-assessed by the gaming industry". Sorry, if you have a crackpot theory it's still a crackpot theory even if you repeat it often enough.Dude - that may not be the best strawman I've ever seen, but it is still a strawman. Thompson v. [pretty much Game Industry member] is based on a series of blatant accusations by an obviously unbalanced egomaniac who goes out of his way to abuse the legal system in order to get his way. The MSFT and Novell deal is among the latest in a number of provable "deals" that MSFT makes whenever they really want to twist the knife into someone or something.
It is pretty hard to deny MSFT's history of partnerships with people they clearly want to harm or destroy. Ballmer has gone out of his way to indicate his intentions w/ Linux with that crack about intellectual property infringement.
What part of this refuses to remain an 800-lb elephant in the room for you? I suppose the day MSFT serves Red Hat or Canonical a summons of law suit for patent or copyright infringement might suffice (while naming SuSE as a licensee of stated IP), but I prefer to be wary of Redmond long before I end up getting blindsided by it (I make a majority share of my income from Linux and UNIX administration, which means that yeah... it does affect me).
Dunno why Love just up and left... could be a better opportunity, could've been retirement, could've been disgust at the company culture... could be that he was sick and tired of having to go to Salt Lake City once a year for Brainshare and put up with the local 3.2% beer. Who knows?
Either way, the fact that such speculation is obvious and rather persistant is a good indication that maybe it does need to be re-assessed (not necessarily by the /. crowd, but certainly by Novell...)
I can grok the 'foot-in-the-door' theory of getting enough interoperability w/ Windows to make Windows no longer matter (or at least ease customers out of the Windows-only lock-in), but man... he HAD to have seen the 'Plays for Sure' fiasco and figure out that the only real winner in any MSFT-3rdparty deal is MSFT, even if MSFT has to screw the partner(s) to do it.
While I don't expect the RNC to agree with him (esp. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)), framing the effort as a means of insuring the little guy his fair share, and going public with lists of those politicians who are in the **AA's pocket is plenty to get things moving with his peers in the DNC, one would hope. I suspect there would be resistance from those who hang with the Hollywood crowd, there is potential to get folks from both sides of the aisle on board.
I won't say that he has a perfect chance of doing it, but until he at least puts forth the effort, this whole "let's release the debate transcripts as creative commons" thing is nothing but hot air, and a naked grab for geek attention IMHO.
While he's at it, he can do a little politicking to remove software patents, or at least reform it to the point where patent trolls cannot possibly profit (or insanely huge corporations cannot lock out competition with it)?
It's fine and dandy to talk about wanting CC applied to debates, but he's in a position to make far more fundamental changes in his current Congressional position. Let's see him prove he's more than just a typical politician who likes to mouth a few buzzwords for attention here and there.
IMHO, I believe that (more likely) it was leaked out and had no confidentiality to it, save for Wired's hyperbole. Word would have to get out to every grunt, swabbie, jarhead, and wingnut eventually... information spread down that far, and that uniformly, is hardly "confidential". Nor would it be expected to remain that way - after all, mothers and wives in WWII found out awful fast about censorship in letters home when they opened the occasional one that looked a whole lot like swiss cheese from all the names, places, etc. literally chopped out of the thing.
However, you also swear to adhere to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which during your tenure as a soldier, sailor, or airman, specificaly denies you a whole shedload of rights that a civilian commonly enjoys. IIRC, only the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments are still yours to exercise (almost) fully. The rest are either restricted heavily, or gone entirely for you. You basically suborn yourself (and are protected by) the UCMJ.
To make it even worse, even years and/or decades after you get out of the military... if a crime or fatality springing from gross negligence happened during your enlistment or commission, or was due to something you did or did not do, and there's strong evidence that you might be at fault? the US Military has the perfect right to recall you to active duty for long enough to get court marshalled for it. As an example: If I had ever screwed up on one of the aircraft I worked on nearly 16+ years ago, and it leads to a pilot or bystanders or etc. getting killed? Well, they get to drag me back into the USAF and make me testify (and possibly face liability or charges) before a board of inquiry. In such a case, it would prolly be done to determine whether or not it happened due to gross negligence or if it was something that couldn't have been helped, or...? Pretty good incentive for making sure you do your job right and document the crap out of your work, isn't it? It gave me some very tight work habits that carry through to this day.
As to your original topic... while yes it is censorship, it also managed to teach such things as discretion, tact, and consideration. Between the reminders and instruction, and reading real-life cases concerning how certain inmates at Leavenworth got there? It was enough to sober up even the rebellious kid that I was at the time. I don't think there were too many other areas in life back then that could've given such lessons in such a stark, certain, and very easy-to-grok format.
I mean, what better place (from an objective POV) to park warez and illicit data (e.g. certain types of illegal pr0n), than on some unsuspecting schlep's machinery?
The mobsters then charge admittance by way of proxies (conceptual term, not 'w.x.y.z:8080') and advertise by way of spam?
They still want the money somehow, and getting it bears higher risk with extortion than by simply grabbing dough under-the-table from spammers.
I suspect (okay, hope?) that spamming will begin to lose its profit motive as well, as users become computer-literate enough en masse to ignore emailed pitches... making the reward not really worth the effort. Even the dumbest user can get ripped off only so many times before they either a) go broke, or b) figure out that maybe they should stop buying stuff from spammers.
None taken - my own evaluation of proficiency is judged by the results of my work as audited on a periodic semi-random basis. Because of the nature of my specific duties, I cannot simply hand off localized email filtering duties to "the email guys", hand off local IOS patching and vigilance to "the network guys", the Oracle and MySQL patches to "the DB guys", and etc. In fact, if anything goes splat in the lab security-wise and spreads to the corp network? I daresay that I'm more responsible for the results than the average schlep who could simply (and credibly so) shift the blame to "the network guy", or the "desktop support guy", or "...". If/when it falls on my head, I had better be prepared to prove that I showed due diligence before, during, and after.
Maybe that's what gives your theory of 'incompetence == corporate position material' an anchor... that with such specialization and little direct responsibility (aside from the most bleeding obvious of blunders), it is drop-easy for someone in a big company to credibly shift blame when in truth it should rightly fall in his lap. Couple this with the subtle and often chain-reaction-like nature of malware and other types of compromise, and *poof* - there you go.
It then gets boiled down to a pass-the-blame game consisting of: "the email filters should've been updated", "No, the firewall should've stopped it outbound", "No - the workstations should've been patched!"... Typical corporate culture prevents anyone from daring to say "I fucked up..."