...only because there is the general assumption that both spouses are the biological parents of that child, and/or that any step parents have adopted said child.
...property inheritance...
Now here you have a point; however, any two human beings can jointly own property, thus erasing that question almost entirely (yes, this includes bank accounts).
While I personally believe it is unconstitutional since its clearly joining church and state...
I agree with this bit entirely.
Then again, marriage has always been a jointly-faceted aspect of both religion and secular rule - it was founded in early human societies to establish inheritance, lineage (hence the whole "taking his name" thing), property ownership, etc. It was considered a religious thing because religions generally outlasted kings, so it had the relative staying power to act as an authority on the subject. This is sort of why most progressive folks in the 1970's and 1980's had condemned marriage as a "curse of the breeders." Now it's just a means of sticking it to the Man, and at the same time gleaning the benefits and validation that marriage does bring to the table.
Personally? I think that sure, let the marriage laws change to include any two or more parties of any sex or combination thereof (yes, including polygamy, polyandry, whatever), but the divorce laws should change too: Jettison "no-fault" divorce. Barring proven abuse or actual crime, such things as alimony and the allocation thereof based on income should remain in place... for life. Nullify any and all attempts at a pre-nup contract. Barring (again) proven abuse or actual crime, ban both parties from re-marrying in the eyes of the state (or at least have the state not recognize any subsequent marriages). Sleep together all you want, shack-up all you want, do it in any combination thereof - but if you really want to get married, go in knowing that it is for life, and not just only as long as you and your spouse "love" each other (yes, those scare quotes go for hetero couples too.)
I bet modifying divorce laws in such a way would stop marriage from being treated as a political football, turn off a ton of people clamoring for it to be made into such, and instead make into what it was originally intended to be: a life-long bonding of two human beings for the purpose of building a family. Additionally, it would at least start to make people stop and fucking think before popping the question, and perhaps even make them become absolutely certain before they do get married. I further bet that most folks would condemn the idea right away - with the progressives at the head of the charge.
It's amazing the vitriol I'm seeing here considering that all OKC has done is factually inform people of a situation and make a recommendation that they're under no obligation or compulsion to follow.
It's not that simple. I could post something that says "I just discovered that the proprietor of $locaBuisness thinks that purple wigs are hateful. I say we harass and hound and blackball him until his business closes and he is forced to begs on the street for a living. Of course, you're under no compulsion or obligation to do it (but if you were a truly caring and compassionate human being, you'd do just that.)"
It's one thing to post an opinion. It's another to demand that people totally blackball someone into penury just because their opinion on a political subject differs.
Consider this: What makes the guy at OKCupid any different from Sen. Joe McCarthy?
...neither of them stack up to "Leisure Suit Larry". Funny thing is, I know of more women who bought that particular game then men, mostly because it was funnier than hell.
But then, the ladies in question weren't overly-sensitive professional victims, either.
The moment you start "cleaning up" the design and atmosphere of a game, you open the door to censorship, even if self-imposed.
While ordinarily clearing such things out of a given game is, on the surface, a laudable goal, there's one great big problem: There is no objective definition and delineation of terms like "mysogyny", "racism", or "homophobia". I have seen people called "racist" point-blank because they disagreed with the president's policies, or called "homophobic" because they believe homosexual activity to be a moral wrong (though not a crime, or cause to hate someone, or etc).
Given this, first, okay, you clear out the obvious stuff. But then some loudmouthed political action group starts squealing about things which kinda-sorta-might-count, but likely don't. Next thing you know, you're having to nerf the game entirely, and are stuck with an ever-decreasing list of genres, or wildly inaccurate ones just to satisfy the perpetually-offended.
Screw it - let the market decide: If a game is truly offensive, word will get out and it won't be bought, leading to its failure. No one is forcing anyone to buy a given game, FFS.
Author Comment FTFA (bottom of page - emphasis mine):
"We haven’t identified the initial attack vector. We have no reason to suspect that the attack isn’t via http. I’d be very interested to hear from any affected sys admins if they identify how the attackers gain access."
In other words, they don't even know if it's the effing kernel at this point -all they know is that 2,000 some-odd websites have been bit, and they all use the absolute most common kernel version for webservers on the planet (2.6.x).
Hell, for all we know it could be some commonly-shared crappy PHP script getting popped.:/
Actually, the Romans technically held out until the Fall of Constantinople, which was a lot further along than 700 years.;)
Also, considering the world and its mores at that time, the Romans were rather polite indeed. Usually a conquered people would see all the teen/adult males killed, the women dragged off to slavery (if not killed along with everyone else), and everything of value plundered. See also a huge chunk of Exodus and the conquest of Canaan (the Hebrews weren't exactly choir boys when it was they who had the strength and power, no?)
But, no - the Romans (usually) settled for taking a percent as slaves and then proceeding to absorb their culture, religion, and the better parts of what was left. Then they built roads, utilities, entertainment, and a whole shitload of things that were pretty effing amazing - for the time. Yup - they were brutal as fuck at times (see also Caesar's conquest of Gaul), but if the conquered people submitted, it usually went way the hell easier on them than it would at the hands of any other civilization at the time (save for the Greeks, but then the Romans pretty much absorbed most Greek philosophy, mathematics, religion, laws, etc etc...)
States someone who obviously has never set foot on a sailboat.
Sailing is akin to standing in a cold shower and ripping up hundred dollar bills.
Many of us who have owned boats know that BOAT = "Break Out Another Thousand [dollars]"
On the other hand, commercial shipping companies know this too, and diesel/electric ships ain't cheap either (let one sit still for more than a couple hours, and it's like standing in a 'septic tank while ripping up million-dollar bills' (the latter part almost literally).
Sail is tougher not necessarily because of expense, but because winds are gonna be a bitch to predict reliably enough for commerce and timetables.
Kinda proves what AC was saying in a way; I only skimmed it, but it not hit not only the Greek cities, but slammed everyone who depended on them... along, well, trade routes.
I could see, say, a Chinese civil war causing massive shockwaves along logistic lines that pretty much slam the EU and US almost instantly, Russia shortly after, and everyone else in turn after that. If there are no redundancies in place, the whole house collapses globally.
And yeah - we're fast becoming that interconnected, if we're not already.
...maybe they just had shitty email prioritization and crappy (read: default) alerting configs on their gear? Given that the typical admin in a large corp gets bombarded with a jillion emails daily (ranging from fluff to drop-dead serious, because vendors rarely know the difference), I can see warnings get buried in the pile pretty easily. Mind you this is not to excuse not acting on the warnings, but instead is posited as a way to explain why the warnings got missed in the first place.
All that said, any security admin who doesn't make alerting and prioritization thereof his first priority really shouldn't be employed as a security admin.
How is it "an otherwise legal use of the product"? The Windows operating system and the Google Play Store application are copyrighted.
So is nearly every book in my little home library**, but I'll be damned if any publisher or author will tell me what shelf those books go on, or what books I can set any given book next to. Put it this way: If I want to set my Isaac Asimov novels next to my Robert Heinlein novels, I will. Any publisher who objects? Screw 'em; no court will enforce such a demand on me by either party.
For relevance, I can safely say that no software house will be able to successfully litigate against someone who successfully multi-boots any computing device they paid for. Therefore, by default it's quite legal.
** I have a few books of late 19th Century vintage, so it's safe to assume those to be public domain by now.
True indeed... though it's kind of funny that all this ink and hot air is being wasted over "naming" rights.
Hell, if "naming" something were permanent and enforceable, we'd all still be living on Terra right now instead of Earth... and outside of SciFi novels, well, that ain't happening.
Tomorrow morning I could hereby re-name North America "Peanut Butter Sandwich", and if I could convince enough of my fellow inhabitants to do the same, we'd be living in USPBS. Instead, we live on a continent named by some obscure cartographer back in the 16th Century who was giving props to some dude who saw part of it and went home.
'course the real fun begins when you get more than one language involved. Just ask the Germans/Allegmainoise(sp?)/Deutschlaender/etc...
Usually a bored IT tech looking for a company paid vacation.
Funny, but almost true: If you truly want a vacation paid for by the company, you make certain that the course is in another city, and that you have to be there to take it.
Otherwise, an online course simply means that you take the course while being constantly interrupted by users, managers, and other people who think you don't mind being interrupted for "just a second".
Are you kidding? The very first thing I do when I see a Linux GUI is CTRL+ALT+F1 (or F2, F3... anything to get a normal tty). In any other *nix, I immediately pop open a terminal and do all my work there.
For those who know why, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not (*cough*MCSA types*cough*), no explanation will suffice.
I've been a Microsoft user myself, since about age 4 (now 30) - so I know Windows backward and forward, and knew DOS pretty well for a time. I'd like to branch out, and a top-notch training course in Linux for free seems appealing.
I strongly suggest doing this. I've lost track of the sysadmin job candidates that I've had to turn down because the vast majority of our environment is not Windows, and a string of Microsoft-centric accomplishments with occasional dabbling in Linux is a non-starter.
Only one of the past seven positions I've held over the years was a strictly Windows-centric shop, and only one other tried to be (until I showed them a better way, eventually leading to a 50/50 mix of Windows+Linux, which cut down our EA costs greatly.)
Thing is, over time, you'll find more and more that shops are not drinking the koolaid anymore, and are balancing out their stable with a wide mix of stuff. No sense in limiting yourself, is there?
Shit, there's been an intro to Linux course out for free for, like, 14 years now: it was written to be self-guided. I know this because, well, I wrote it.
(...I'm kind of amazed it's still available online, though seeing it in.doc format is kinda funny. Tried to find the original Slashdot announcement, but the search engine on the site sucks.)
Most of what you wrote is typical shill-chow, but I want to stomp this one tidbit in the bud:
The issue us geeks need to use muscle memory to relearn something and we used to laugh at those who could not adopt to change. Now the joke is on us.
Now this is funny, because I find myself learning new GUIs on a very regular basis (the latest? This month is all about learning VMWare vCloud Automation Center. A few months ago, it was all about Cisco UCS Manager.)
I also know the Metro GUI very well - and I've discovered something: I really, really detest computing-by-easter-egg.
Mind you, it's 500x worse with having to use that stupid wasteful GUI on a server. (Yes, I know all about the mantra of "OMG use PowerShell and Core!!!111!!" but we both know that's bullshit, nobody does it on any serious scale, and it completely guts the Microsoftie argument of "OMG you have to use a command prompt in Leenux!!111!!" - but I digress.)
Point is, many of us who detest that abortion of a UI have already had to work with it, we know it, and we think it still sucks in spite of knowing it.
If some of the ordinary user crowd loves it, hey - well and good. Thing is, the majority does not, and for good reason.
Maybe in the UK, the topics of abortion and politics can be separated, but in the US it definitely can't be.
I may be wrong on this, but in the US, HIPAA would rule the day on such a case, no? That would mean that 200k Pounds Sterling would be a wee drop in the bucket compared to the fine such an organization would face here should it face a data leak of that magnitude.
Remove the mission statement of the place... this is confidential patient information, and should be safeguarded as such. If the place demands to be treated as a health facility (even if social), then it has to take the responsibilities along with the benefits.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider this: What makes the guy at OKCupid any different from Sen. Joe McCarthy?
The coercive power of the state for a start.
...and economic coercion is harmless? Given the results, I'd disagree. A blacklist is a blacklist. ;)
Now suppose I later decide not to hire you when you apply for a job at the company I run.
Unless you "run" Mozilla, your argument is meaningless.
It actually does - if the property is jointly owned and the beneficiary/contract names the surviving member, it's solved.
Otherwise, depending on state law, the usual rules apply (which means in some states, some jackass relative can bung-up/contest the process, etc...)
The state gives preferential treatment to married couples when it comes to taxes...
...Not as much as you might think.
...child visitation...
...only because there is the general assumption that both spouses are the biological parents of that child, and/or that any step parents have adopted said child.
...property inheritance...
Now here you have a point; however, any two human beings can jointly own property, thus erasing that question almost entirely (yes, this includes bank accounts).
While I personally believe it is unconstitutional since its clearly joining church and state...
I agree with this bit entirely.
Then again, marriage has always been a jointly-faceted aspect of both religion and secular rule - it was founded in early human societies to establish inheritance, lineage (hence the whole "taking his name" thing), property ownership, etc. It was considered a religious thing because religions generally outlasted kings, so it had the relative staying power to act as an authority on the subject. This is sort of why most progressive folks in the 1970's and 1980's had condemned marriage as a "curse of the breeders." Now it's just a means of sticking it to the Man, and at the same time gleaning the benefits and validation that marriage does bring to the table.
Personally? I think that sure, let the marriage laws change to include any two or more parties of any sex or combination thereof (yes, including polygamy, polyandry, whatever), but the divorce laws should change too: Jettison "no-fault" divorce. Barring proven abuse or actual crime, such things as alimony and the allocation thereof based on income should remain in place... for life. Nullify any and all attempts at a pre-nup contract. Barring (again) proven abuse or actual crime, ban both parties from re-marrying in the eyes of the state (or at least have the state not recognize any subsequent marriages). Sleep together all you want, shack-up all you want, do it in any combination thereof - but if you really want to get married, go in knowing that it is for life, and not just only as long as you and your spouse "love" each other (yes, those scare quotes go for hetero couples too.)
I bet modifying divorce laws in such a way would stop marriage from being treated as a political football, turn off a ton of people clamoring for it to be made into such, and instead make into what it was originally intended to be: a life-long bonding of two human beings for the purpose of building a family. Additionally, it would at least start to make people stop and fucking think before popping the question, and perhaps even make them become absolutely certain before they do get married. I further bet that most folks would condemn the idea right away - with the progressives at the head of the charge.
It's amazing the vitriol I'm seeing here considering that all OKC has done is factually inform people of a situation and make a recommendation that they're under no obligation or compulsion to follow.
It's not that simple. I could post something that says "I just discovered that the proprietor of $locaBuisness thinks that purple wigs are hateful. I say we harass and hound and blackball him until his business closes and he is forced to begs on the street for a living. Of course, you're under no compulsion or obligation to do it (but if you were a truly caring and compassionate human being, you'd do just that.)"
It's one thing to post an opinion. It's another to demand that people totally blackball someone into penury just because their opinion on a political subject differs.
Consider this: What makes the guy at OKCupid any different from Sen. Joe McCarthy?
...neither of them stack up to "Leisure Suit Larry". Funny thing is, I know of more women who bought that particular game then men, mostly because it was funnier than hell.
But then, the ladies in question weren't overly-sensitive professional victims, either.
Seriously - would anyone have even bothered with titles like DOAX or Duke Nuke'Em if it didn't have the content it had?
They both sold like effing mad... I'll leave it up to the reader to decide why they think that is.
Down that path lies perdition. I'll explain:
The moment you start "cleaning up" the design and atmosphere of a game, you open the door to censorship, even if self-imposed.
While ordinarily clearing such things out of a given game is, on the surface, a laudable goal, there's one great big problem: There is no objective definition and delineation of terms like "mysogyny", "racism", or "homophobia". I have seen people called "racist" point-blank because they disagreed with the president's policies, or called "homophobic" because they believe homosexual activity to be a moral wrong (though not a crime, or cause to hate someone, or etc).
Given this, first, okay, you clear out the obvious stuff. But then some loudmouthed political action group starts squealing about things which kinda-sorta-might-count, but likely don't. Next thing you know, you're having to nerf the game entirely, and are stuck with an ever-decreasing list of genres, or wildly inaccurate ones just to satisfy the perpetually-offended.
Screw it - let the market decide: If a game is truly offensive, word will get out and it won't be bought, leading to its failure. No one is forcing anyone to buy a given game, FFS.
You clearly don't understand the lifecycle of a production OS.
...nor does he understand the concept of back-porting patches, apparently.
It gets worse (or IMHO, less competent):
Author Comment FTFA (bottom of page - emphasis mine):
"We haven’t identified the initial attack vector. We have no reason to suspect that the attack isn’t via http. I’d be very interested to hear from any affected sys admins if they identify how the attackers gain access."
In other words, they don't even know if it's the effing kernel at this point -all they know is that 2,000 some-odd websites have been bit, and they all use the absolute most common kernel version for webservers on the planet (2.6.x).
Hell, for all we know it could be some commonly-shared crappy PHP script getting popped. :/
Actually, the Romans technically held out until the Fall of Constantinople, which was a lot further along than 700 years. ;)
Also, considering the world and its mores at that time, the Romans were rather polite indeed. Usually a conquered people would see all the teen/adult males killed, the women dragged off to slavery (if not killed along with everyone else), and everything of value plundered. See also a huge chunk of Exodus and the conquest of Canaan (the Hebrews weren't exactly choir boys when it was they who had the strength and power, no?)
But, no - the Romans (usually) settled for taking a percent as slaves and then proceeding to absorb their culture, religion, and the better parts of what was left. Then they built roads, utilities, entertainment, and a whole shitload of things that were pretty effing amazing - for the time. Yup - they were brutal as fuck at times (see also Caesar's conquest of Gaul), but if the conquered people submitted, it usually went way the hell easier on them than it would at the hands of any other civilization at the time (save for the Greeks, but then the Romans pretty much absorbed most Greek philosophy, mathematics, religion, laws, etc etc...)
States someone who obviously has never set foot on a sailboat.
Sailing is akin to standing in a cold shower and ripping up hundred dollar bills.
Many of us who have owned boats know that BOAT = "Break Out Another Thousand [dollars]"
On the other hand, commercial shipping companies know this too, and diesel/electric ships ain't cheap either (let one sit still for more than a couple hours, and it's like standing in a 'septic tank while ripping up million-dollar bills' (the latter part almost literally).
Sail is tougher not necessarily because of expense, but because winds are gonna be a bitch to predict reliably enough for commerce and timetables.
Kinda proves what AC was saying in a way; I only skimmed it, but it not hit not only the Greek cities, but slammed everyone who depended on them... along, well, trade routes.
I could see, say, a Chinese civil war causing massive shockwaves along logistic lines that pretty much slam the EU and US almost instantly, Russia shortly after, and everyone else in turn after that. If there are no redundancies in place, the whole house collapses globally.
And yeah - we're fast becoming that interconnected, if we're not already.
...maybe they just had shitty email prioritization and crappy (read: default) alerting configs on their gear? Given that the typical admin in a large corp gets bombarded with a jillion emails daily (ranging from fluff to drop-dead serious, because vendors rarely know the difference), I can see warnings get buried in the pile pretty easily. Mind you this is not to excuse not acting on the warnings, but instead is posited as a way to explain why the warnings got missed in the first place.
All that said, any security admin who doesn't make alerting and prioritization thereof his first priority really shouldn't be employed as a security admin.
What kind of job do you do that requires a meatloaf peeler?
Among others, Oracle ASM disk management.
How is it "an otherwise legal use of the product"? The Windows operating system and the Google Play Store application are copyrighted.
So is nearly every book in my little home library**, but I'll be damned if any publisher or author will tell me what shelf those books go on, or what books I can set any given book next to. Put it this way: If I want to set my Isaac Asimov novels next to my Robert Heinlein novels, I will. Any publisher who objects? Screw 'em; no court will enforce such a demand on me by either party.
For relevance, I can safely say that no software house will be able to successfully litigate against someone who successfully multi-boots any computing device they paid for. Therefore, by default it's quite legal.
** I have a few books of late 19th Century vintage, so it's safe to assume those to be public domain by now.
and someone to take their money willingly.
True indeed... though it's kind of funny that all this ink and hot air is being wasted over "naming" rights.
Hell, if "naming" something were permanent and enforceable, we'd all still be living on Terra right now instead of Earth... and outside of SciFi novels, well, that ain't happening.
Tomorrow morning I could hereby re-name North America "Peanut Butter Sandwich", and if I could convince enough of my fellow inhabitants to do the same, we'd be living in USPBS. Instead, we live on a continent named by some obscure cartographer back in the 16th Century who was giving props to some dude who saw part of it and went home.
'course the real fun begins when you get more than one language involved. Just ask the Germans/Allegmainoise(sp?)/Deutschlaender/etc...
Wow - butthurt much?
Usually a bored IT tech looking for a company paid vacation.
Funny, but almost true: If you truly want a vacation paid for by the company, you make certain that the course is in another city, and that you have to be there to take it.
Otherwise, an online course simply means that you take the course while being constantly interrupted by users, managers, and other people who think you don't mind being interrupted for "just a second".
As long as I never see or need to use the command line, it doesn't matter what operating system I use.
...until it breaks, that is. But then, you could always *pay* someone who knows the command line to fix it for you...
Are you kidding? The very first thing I do when I see a Linux GUI is CTRL+ALT+F1 (or F2, F3... anything to get a normal tty). In any other *nix, I immediately pop open a terminal and do all my work there.
For those who know why, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not (*cough*MCSA types*cough*), no explanation will suffice.
I've been a Microsoft user myself, since about age 4 (now 30) - so I know Windows backward and forward, and knew DOS pretty well for a time. I'd like to branch out, and a top-notch training course in Linux for free seems appealing.
I strongly suggest doing this. I've lost track of the sysadmin job candidates that I've had to turn down because the vast majority of our environment is not Windows, and a string of Microsoft-centric accomplishments with occasional dabbling in Linux is a non-starter.
Only one of the past seven positions I've held over the years was a strictly Windows-centric shop, and only one other tried to be (until I showed them a better way, eventually leading to a 50/50 mix of Windows+Linux, which cut down our EA costs greatly.)
Thing is, over time, you'll find more and more that shops are not drinking the koolaid anymore, and are balancing out their stable with a wide mix of stuff. No sense in limiting yourself, is there?
Shit, there's been an intro to Linux course out for free for, like, 14 years now: it was written to be self-guided. I know this because, well, I wrote it.
(original announcement )
(...I'm kind of amazed it's still available online, though seeing it in .doc format is kinda funny. Tried to find the original Slashdot announcement, but the search engine on the site sucks.)
Most of what you wrote is typical shill-chow, but I want to stomp this one tidbit in the bud:
The issue us geeks need to use muscle memory to relearn something and we used to laugh at those who could not adopt to change. Now the joke is on us.
Now this is funny, because I find myself learning new GUIs on a very regular basis (the latest? This month is all about learning VMWare vCloud Automation Center. A few months ago, it was all about Cisco UCS Manager.)
I also know the Metro GUI very well - and I've discovered something: I really, really detest computing-by-easter-egg.
Mind you, it's 500x worse with having to use that stupid wasteful GUI on a server. (Yes, I know all about the mantra of "OMG use PowerShell and Core!!!111!!" but we both know that's bullshit, nobody does it on any serious scale, and it completely guts the Microsoftie argument of "OMG you have to use a command prompt in Leenux!!111!!" - but I digress.)
Point is, many of us who detest that abortion of a UI have already had to work with it, we know it, and we think it still sucks in spite of knowing it.
If some of the ordinary user crowd loves it, hey - well and good. Thing is, the majority does not, and for good reason.
Maybe in the UK, the topics of abortion and politics can be separated, but in the US it definitely can't be.
I may be wrong on this, but in the US, HIPAA would rule the day on such a case, no? That would mean that 200k Pounds Sterling would be a wee drop in the bucket compared to the fine such an organization would face here should it face a data leak of that magnitude.
Remove the mission statement of the place... this is confidential patient information, and should be safeguarded as such. If the place demands to be treated as a health facility (even if social), then it has to take the responsibilities along with the benefits.