My assumption is that a few hundred posts on some message boards, if left alone will burn themselves out UNLESS there is some basis in fact to the posts.
Surely all of us have been on USENET, etc. long enough to know how flame wars work. When there is no real basis, they eventally run out of fuel and self-extinguish.
I would lend credence to these statements based on the fact the Juniper has chosen to sue. It's called deductive reasoning and it goes like this:
1) Juniper has chosen to sue some users on a message board. 2) It's not a particulary popular message board, as such things go 3) #2 makes me wonder why you're picking on 11 users on a fairly minor message board 4) Since the comments were not particulary inflammatory (I think I've said worse stuff to my Mom), that makes me thing that their must indeed be some basis in fact which Juniper wishes to surpress.
JUNIPER - UR PWNED! Your lawsuit has attracted attention to the very thing you are trying to sweep under the carpet. I think it's probably time for ANOTHER change of top management at Juniper.
First off, all that means is we get something new to hack. Those that will be pirates will continue to pirate. All this is going to do is really pi$$ people off when the go to watch their movie and the stupid thing won't play. I've already stopped buying music because of the RIAA.
I urge all of you to join in boycotting the RIAA and MPAA.
I'm unable to find a site that lists the MPAA members, however, there is a partial list on the MPAA's own site that includes Buena Vista Pictures Distribution (A Disney Company), Sony (big surprise there), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer or MGM, Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, Universal Studios, and Warner Brothers.
I'd like to suggest that for the companies that have other products that you boycott the entire product line. For example, don't buy that Sony Televison set. Don't go the Universal Studios theme park. You get the idea...
If they do the same kind of ridiculous copy protection with movies, I'll be boycotting them too. Frankly, I'd urge all of you to hit them where it hurts the worst. STOP BUYING THEIR STUPID PRODUCTS!!! If their crap quit selling, perhaps they'd get the message. You cannot continually pi$$ on your customer base and expect to remain profitable. Best Case - it works and they go out of business and all their music becomes public domain. Worst Case - it works and they remove their heads from their butts.
Who has no bias? Seriously, we all have them. It's just that when we get together the more extreme ones tend to cancel each other out and we end up with something kinda sensible in the middle.
I'd be interested in seeing who they get to do the editing before I make any judgements. I know that I'm often frustrated with Wikipedia because it says "stub found" gives me a bunch of options for adding on. Well, DUH!, if I already knew the answer, I wouldn't be searching for it.
Seriously, I'd like to see some of the folks recruited for editing write some of the articles and put them out for comment by the users with a meta-mod system like Slashdot. I think this would be far superior than waiting for someone who is a specalist in some esoteric field like medieval seige weapons to wander by and write an addition.
I really don't see the need for it. SSH is for probably 90+% of it's users, a console for a remote box. I really don't feel the need to establish a VPN from my desk to the server down the hall. I'd rather not have that built in to my SSH by default, thank you kindly. I'm from the "old school" - if it ain't installed, it ain't a problem.
Frankly, we're pretty happy using SSH as it is right now. I'd like to see something like easier tunneling of X of an SSH session. Other than that, unless you can spank the already rather well done open source VPN's that are out there, I could care less about VPN as a part of SSH.
You know, it's kinda hard to be "innovative" when you get exactly bupkis out of it other than having your job outsourced to some country you can't even pronouce. It's also disheartening to do something that it is good for your employer only to discover that your staff gets cut so that that some honcho can get a 6 figure bonus for "saving money" by firing your guys. Worse yet, you have companies like TWA where the rank and file has not had a raise in 10 years. During that 10 year period, the employees have been asked to take 3 pay cuts. They're currently having a sick-out because they're being asked to take a 4th pay cut. To make everything really rosy, they just found out that one the executives that got let go has a $4 million dollar a year golden parachute for the next 5 years. They get pay cuts and he gets $20 million. In that kind of atmosphere, who even wants to "innovate" or do much of anything else for their employer?
For those of you who don't want to chase the link - here's what some of the comments are that have Juniper's undies in a twist -
The company's complaint cites an April 20 message that stated, "the man at the helm seems to be paying (off) attorneys all over the bay area to cover up the scandal which resulted in the terminations of many at the top including the VP of HR. 1) Board of director 2) CFO 3) GM 4) VP of engineering 5) VP of HR and more."
Another message cited in the complaint came a day later. According to the complaint, it said the "top management" at Juniper bribes attorneys, and that "the man at the top should join his buddy Bernie [Ebers (sic)]... "
Another message singled out in the complaint says: "This is a very unethical company."
Of course, Juniper critics can be found at other Internet message boards that aren't, as yet, mentioned in Juniper's complaint. "Arrogance coupled with timidity is a deadly combination in business. So, in short JNPR's problem is Kriens," said one Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO - message board) message board post taking aim at Juniper's CEO Scott Kriens.
Frankly, I don't see where any of these are prosecutable. One is allowed to comment on what one sees in the world, IMHO. Surely if you've had to flush your top managment and start over, there is likely some thing to some of these posts. I personally find it interesting that Juniper has chosen to lend credence to these statements by suing. Since they're suing, my assumption is that it's all true. Ooops, better not say that or Juniper will include me too!
Do we blame cars when people die in accident? No, we blame the drivers. Do we blame the knife when we accidentally cut ourselves in the kitchen? No, we blame our own carelessness. I fail to see why the death of some goober who refuses to eat, to drink, to bathe, and to otherwise care for himself is the game's fault. Herion addcits always blame the drug and never themselves for their addiction. Addicts of all types fail to take responsibility for their actions as well as the consquences of those actions. It's part of what makes an addict an addict in the first place. Ask anyone who's ever had to deal with one. It isn't until they can admit that they are responsible that they will seek help. I find more than a hint of this type of thinking in blaming the video game for the gamer's death.
Everyone else is *always* at fault. What a load of crap! It's not like someone held a gun to any of these guys heads and said, "Sit here and keep gaming." It's the stupidest thing I think I've ever heard. While it is curious from a social psychology perspective, it really isn't newsworthy. I think it is research worthy though. We should find out what motivates these people and see if there isn't some medication or therapy that can help them before they manage to do themselves in by gaming. My personal suspicion is that there is some sort of OCD or other mental illness at work here, perhaps even something that might be easily treatable. Where, I ask you, are the university psychology departments stepping up to research what causes this?
The real shame here is that the owners of these places don't chase these fools off. Drunks get cut off by bar owners, because they lack the good sense to cut themselves off. Since this also seems to be the case with some of the gamers, why not cut them off in the same way? Since they all obviously have computers with internet connections, it should be easy enough to manage - fairly trivial in fact. Surely it would be in their best business interests not to kill off their best patrons. I've worked on demanding projects that called for an intense schedule and we always follow what we call the 1-2-5 rule. That means you get one bath, two meals (and no, stuff from the vending machine doesn't count) and at least 5 hours of sleep out of every 24 hours. Anyone caught in violation of the 1-2-5 rule is packed off to rectify their violation immediately and not allowed to return until they have done so.
Many phishing sites do offer authentication, just not to the place you thought. I've seen a couple that operate in MIM mode and they're growing in complexity as they try to avoid many of the new software applications that are out to catch them.
Changing the way authentication happens from 2-factor to 3-factor is the only viable means for defeating most of the current phishing sites, but a slight expansion to some of the new MIM sites will be able to manage that as well. Then what? DNS is definitely not the answer since most of the ones we see rely on cloaked URL's and not DNS to carry out the attacks. DNS is more like a phone book. Let me look up who I think I might want to talk to. If you dial the number and get the wrong person, you hang up and try again or try a different number.
Now, if you could do a secure DNS that could prevent someone from doing DNS footprinting of your network, then you might have something. Other than that, what's the use? This seems to be mostly directed at cache poisoning and domain hijacking. If you stop them at the DNS level, all that's going to do is point the hackers back to the registrars so that they can try to social engineer the hijack at the registrar level a la sex.com.
Here's the deal. No one thought that commercial passenger flights would be used as manned missles either, until after it happened. Let's assume for a moment that it is an actual threat. How do we defend against it? Simply, we cannot. There are no "national" border on the internet. We aren't able to block undesirable traffic from any given locale thanks to how the peering points on the internet actually function. If they're in the country, it's equally impossible to isloate them, because the peering points aren't configured in such as way as to isolate that either. If you're connected to the internet, it's basically an all or nothing proposition. The only place you have any control is at your perimeter. Not planning for the obvious is what got us into this mess in the first place. Quit playing ostrich. We HAVE to start planning for things, even if we don't consider them to be particulary possible. The rule of force applies here. For those of you that aren't familiar with it, it goes something like this: You do not pit your strength against your enemy's strength. You pit your strength against your enemy's weakness. That means you look for what is not defended, what is not prepared for, and that then becomes your target.
There shouldn't need to be a provision in the law for this. It's part of the US Constitution or have Oregon and Washington suddenly seceded from the union without anyone being the wiser.
Quote from the Bill of Rights -
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
I'd say that tracking wherer you go would fall under "be violated" part.
A wise man once said, "The battles in academia are so bitter precisely because the stakes are so small." The short version is that academic institutions, by their very nature, are not subject to real world forces like shifting markets. If a market shift occurs, it occurs over decades. This results in a very insular mindset and those in charge often begin to perceive themselves as having godlike powers. They get used to making unreasonable demands and having them met.
Frankly, I would think that there is some kind of board that oversees the selection of the dean or president and who has the authority to discharge this person. I would be appealing to them to see what can be done. While you might not like what someone has to say about you, persecuting them for saying it only lends credence to their tales.
While the Jesuits may be noted for good thinking and solid logic, let us not forget that they were also the backbone of the Inquisition. Apparently, they seem to be content to carry on in their grand old tradition.
Seriously, everything tastes like chicken so this will too. That said, perhaps it won't catch the bird flu, so we can farm big vast hordes of them, like we do chickens now. Then we'll all be safe from the pandemic.
If they don't want to be spidered, let them turn on the robots.txt. Sheesh! Since they can control what Google has for them in their search results, I fail to see how Google is responsible for that.
Besides, if you're selling content, don't you want people to know you have it? How are they supposed to know that they can buy it otherwise?
Not sure where you are, Kjella, but this is Texas. Yes, we have the death penalty here. If you kill someone, we kill you back. Since they want to disband the "national police", why shouldn't the state, county, and local police take over? Yes, we have a state police force here in Texas. It's one of the most well-known and feared law enforcement organizations in the world - The Texas Rangers. While they may be a big bunch of over-weight bubbas with dinner-plate belt buckles, I would seriously consider *not* pi&&ing them off.
Does that mean that we suspend the rule of law? No. Does that mean you don't get a trial? No. Does that mean that justice should be swift? Yes. Why should the tax payers have to support criminals on what I've heard referred to "as vacation"? This particular discussion is about criminals who are fleeing from whatever mess they've stirred up in another locale. Do I have much sympathy for them? Not really. If you want to move from town to town boosting car stereos to feed your crack habit, I really don't feel for you. Sorry, that's just how it is.
As for the "home grown" terrorist, who is more likely to know who these people are - some dufus from Washington, DC or the local sherrif? I'd vote for the local sherrif. I've yet to live in a county in Texas where the sherrif didn't know, by name & by face, every single repetitive criminal in his county. He's also usually aware of the same information for the surrounding counties. Typically, he can give you the person's name, address, phone number, and a brief overview of his rap sheet. He also usually knows who was new in the area, in less populated counties.
If there's a will, there's a way to do it. The real thing here is that there is no such thing as unbreakable security. Even if you leave me no external ports, I can still use my camera phone to take snapshots of my screen as I display the sensitive data and then email it to anyone I choose. How do you stop that? Cavity search all employees every morning? C'mon! You have to pay me a *lot* more to put up with that.
Frankly, how crappy are you to your people that they're doing stuff like this? I think this is a real wake up call to the industry to look at how employees are treated and/or compenstated. If you think it's bad stateside, how bad do you think it is overseas where they're making $8/hour?
Since the Borg Collective and AOL are all about pushing an inferior, overpriced product to an uneducated bunch of end users via slick marketing and since Time-Warner is AOL's parent company, I'd suspect that this might be a very good fit for both of them. I have to agree with an earlier poster who mentioned that any time the Collective "teams up" with another company, the other company is either assimilated or gets screwed.
Frankly, I avoid the MSN home page, MSN searches, etc. because I refuse to "feed the beast". My experience with MSN is that they cannot get past blinky "Flash" things, so I doubt it will fly very well. I wonder if this isn't part of the whole AOL take-over bid by Microsoft, though.
What needs to happen here is that OSS projects need to start filing patents. They can include the right to use the patents in the license (GPL or what ever else, I know there are a lot of them) for the software. If the OSS project holds the patents, then they don't have to worry about being sued. I think this would be really good, since the best parts of Win2K, Win2003, and WinXP are Unix ripoffs - ipconfig anyone?
The Borg Collective always "proposes" some set of "alternate" standards which they then implement in their own products, attempting to make them the de facto standard by sheer force. This just sounds like more of the same from them.
If they can institute a minimum of 25 cents, why not institute a max of say $2.00? Still reasonable and will cover the extra bandwidth to download (and I do mean "down") the latest Brittany Spears single. The trick is that I don't trust them not to try to charge $14.95 for a single...
Well, the biggest problem is see is this..." free to use as long as you don't make any money from it..."
Considering that the largest part (time and effort) of the game development is in creating a story line, objects, quests, dialog, NPC's, etc. and all they're offering is an engine, there should be a one time fee for the engine and it should be free or nearly so. I would say that better than 90% of the total development effort is centered in these areas. These areas are also the ones that make or break a game, MMORPG or otherwise.
This was on a sign outside a town in a game I played once and I really liked it:
"Stranger, obey our laws. We have both swords and shovels and doubt anyone would miss you."
Frankly, I think that's how we ought to handle crimnals that move about. I do see a need for Federal agents for things like Immigration. Instead of disbanding the FBI completely, let's just transfer the funding and field agents to "La Migra" & the Customs Service. That ought to give us a nice handle in controlling illegal immigration, looking for terrorists trying to sneak into the country, people trying to smuggle goods, etc. which is basically what the FBI was supposed to be doing in the first place.
Other on line communities with less restrictive requirements are springing up and gaining ground on MySpace. Frankly, I find the whole eletronic thing to be a bit frightening. Hear me out before you mod me down! Nothing digital happens without leaving traces. As the public library in Philadelphia who's fighting with the FBI over one of their "Letters of National Security". It becomes all too easy to obtain records of who did what and who said what. Anonymity is a big part of what makes the internet go 'round and if you take that away, all you have left is what we have in real space now. A bunch of folks with ideas but too afraid to voice them.
Slashdot Mirror
My assumption is that a few hundred posts on some message boards, if left alone will burn themselves out UNLESS there is some basis in fact to the posts.
Surely all of us have been on USENET, etc. long enough to know how flame wars work. When there is no real basis, they eventally run out of fuel and self-extinguish.
I would lend credence to these statements based on the fact the Juniper has chosen to sue. It's called deductive reasoning and it goes like this:
1) Juniper has chosen to sue some users on a message board.
2) It's not a particulary popular message board, as such things go
3) #2 makes me wonder why you're picking on 11 users on a fairly minor message board
4) Since the comments were not particulary inflammatory (I think I've said worse stuff to my Mom), that makes me thing that their must indeed be some basis in fact which Juniper wishes to surpress.
JUNIPER - UR PWNED! Your lawsuit has attracted attention to the very thing you are trying to sweep under the carpet. I think it's probably time for ANOTHER change of top management at Juniper.
2 more cents,
Queen B
Maybe we can push the Sony root kit out via IM to all of Sony's employees. Anyone know if they have a corporate IM server?
2 cents,
Queen B
First off, all that means is we get something new to hack. Those that will be pirates will continue to pirate. All this is going to do is really pi$$ people off when the go to watch their movie and the stupid thing won't play. I've already stopped buying music because of the RIAA.
I urge all of you to join in boycotting the RIAA and MPAA.
RIAA Radar is here - http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/ This site will tell you if a band is a member.
I'm unable to find a site that lists the MPAA members, however, there is a partial list on the MPAA's own site that includes Buena Vista Pictures Distribution (A Disney Company), Sony (big surprise there), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer or MGM, Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, Universal Studios, and Warner Brothers.
I'd like to suggest that for the companies that have other products that you boycott the entire product line. For example, don't buy that Sony Televison set. Don't go the Universal Studios theme park. You get the idea...
If they do the same kind of ridiculous copy protection with movies, I'll be boycotting them too. Frankly, I'd urge all of you to hit them where it hurts the worst. STOP BUYING THEIR STUPID PRODUCTS!!! If their crap quit selling, perhaps they'd get the message. You cannot continually pi$$ on your customer base and expect to remain profitable. Best Case - it works and they go out of business and all their music becomes public domain. Worst Case - it works and they remove their heads from their butts.
2 cents,
Queen B
Who has no bias? Seriously, we all have them. It's just that when we get together the more extreme ones tend to cancel each other out and we end up with something kinda sensible in the middle.
I'd be interested in seeing who they get to do the editing before I make any judgements. I know that I'm often frustrated with Wikipedia because it says "stub found" gives me a bunch of options for adding on. Well, DUH!, if I already knew the answer, I wouldn't be searching for it.
Seriously, I'd like to see some of the folks recruited for editing write some of the articles and put them out for comment by the users with a meta-mod system like Slashdot. I think this would be far superior than waiting for someone who is a specalist in some esoteric field like medieval seige weapons to wander by and write an addition.
2 cents,
Queen B
The only appreciable effect I've seen from CAN-SPAM has been that instead of coming from the USA, my spam now comes from Korea, China, and Nigera.
2 cents,
Queen B
I really don't see the need for it. SSH is for probably 90+% of it's users, a console for a remote box. I really don't feel the need to establish a VPN from my desk to the server down the hall. I'd rather not have that built in to my SSH by default, thank you kindly. I'm from the "old school" - if it ain't installed, it ain't a problem.
Frankly, we're pretty happy using SSH as it is right now. I'd like to see something like easier tunneling of X of an SSH session. Other than that, unless you can spank the already rather well done open source VPN's that are out there, I could care less about VPN as a part of SSH.
2 cents,
Queen B
You know, it's kinda hard to be "innovative" when you get exactly bupkis out of it other than having your job outsourced to some country you can't even pronouce. It's also disheartening to do something that it is good for your employer only to discover that your staff gets cut so that that some honcho can get a 6 figure bonus for "saving money" by firing your guys. Worse yet, you have companies like TWA where the rank and file has not had a raise in 10 years. During that 10 year period, the employees have been asked to take 3 pay cuts. They're currently having a sick-out because they're being asked to take a 4th pay cut. To make everything really rosy, they just found out that one the executives that got let go has a $4 million dollar a year golden parachute for the next 5 years. They get pay cuts and he gets $20 million. In that kind of atmosphere, who even wants to "innovate" or do much of anything else for their employer?
2 cents,
Queen B
For those of you who don't want to chase the link - here's what some of the comments are that have Juniper's undies in a twist -
The company's complaint cites an April 20 message that stated, "the man at the helm seems to be paying (off) attorneys all over the bay area to cover up the scandal which resulted in the terminations of many at the top including the VP of HR. 1) Board of director 2) CFO 3) GM 4) VP of engineering 5) VP of HR and more."
Another message cited in the complaint came a day later. According to the complaint, it said the "top management" at Juniper bribes attorneys, and that "the man at the top should join his buddy Bernie [Ebers (sic)]... "
Another message singled out in the complaint says: "This is a very unethical company."
Of course, Juniper critics can be found at other Internet message boards that aren't, as yet, mentioned in Juniper's complaint. "Arrogance coupled with timidity is a deadly combination in business. So, in short JNPR's problem is Kriens," said one Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO - message board) message board post taking aim at Juniper's CEO Scott Kriens.
Frankly, I don't see where any of these are prosecutable. One is allowed to comment on what one sees in the world, IMHO. Surely if you've had to flush your top managment and start over, there is likely some thing to some of these posts. I personally find it interesting that Juniper has chosen to lend credence to these statements by suing. Since they're suing, my assumption is that it's all true. Ooops, better not say that or Juniper will include me too!
2 cents,
Queen B
Do we blame cars when people die in accident? No, we blame the drivers. Do we blame the knife when we accidentally cut ourselves in the kitchen? No, we blame our own carelessness. I fail to see why the death of some goober who refuses to eat, to drink, to bathe, and to otherwise care for himself is the game's fault. Herion addcits always blame the drug and never themselves for their addiction. Addicts of all types fail to take responsibility for their actions as well as the consquences of those actions. It's part of what makes an addict an addict in the first place. Ask anyone who's ever had to deal with one. It isn't until they can admit that they are responsible that they will seek help. I find more than a hint of this type of thinking in blaming the video game for the gamer's death.
Everyone else is *always* at fault. What a load of crap! It's not like someone held a gun to any of these guys heads and said, "Sit here and keep gaming." It's the stupidest thing I think I've ever heard. While it is curious from a social psychology perspective, it really isn't newsworthy. I think it is research worthy though. We should find out what motivates these people and see if there isn't some medication or therapy that can help them before they manage to do themselves in by gaming. My personal suspicion is that there is some sort of OCD or other mental illness at work here, perhaps even something that might be easily treatable. Where, I ask you, are the university psychology departments stepping up to research what causes this?
The real shame here is that the owners of these places don't chase these fools off. Drunks get cut off by bar owners, because they lack the good sense to cut themselves off. Since this also seems to be the case with some of the gamers, why not cut them off in the same way? Since they all obviously have computers with internet connections, it should be easy enough to manage - fairly trivial in fact. Surely it would be in their best business interests not to kill off their best patrons. I've worked on demanding projects that called for an intense schedule and we always follow what we call the 1-2-5 rule. That means you get one bath, two meals (and no, stuff from the vending machine doesn't count) and at least 5 hours of sleep out of every 24 hours. Anyone caught in violation of the 1-2-5 rule is packed off to rectify their violation immediately and not allowed to return until they have done so.
2 cents,
Queen B
Many phishing sites do offer authentication, just not to the place you thought. I've seen a couple that operate in MIM mode and they're growing in complexity as they try to avoid many of the new software applications that are out to catch them.
Changing the way authentication happens from 2-factor to 3-factor is the only viable means for defeating most of the current phishing sites, but a slight expansion to some of the new MIM sites will be able to manage that as well. Then what? DNS is definitely not the answer since most of the ones we see rely on cloaked URL's and not DNS to carry out the attacks. DNS is more like a phone book. Let me look up who I think I might want to talk to. If you dial the number and get the wrong person, you hang up and try again or try a different number.
Now, if you could do a secure DNS that could prevent someone from doing DNS footprinting of your network, then you might have something. Other than that, what's the use? This seems to be mostly directed at cache poisoning and domain hijacking. If you stop them at the DNS level, all that's going to do is point the hackers back to the registrars so that they can try to social engineer the hijack at the registrar level a la sex.com.
2 cents,
Queen B
Hah! You were tagged. Seriously, I want to know when Sun is going to get off their behinds and release the 128-bit chip....
2 cents,
Queen B
Here's the deal. No one thought that commercial passenger flights would be used as manned missles either, until after it happened. Let's assume for a moment that it is an actual threat. How do we defend against it? Simply, we cannot. There are no "national" border on the internet. We aren't able to block undesirable traffic from any given locale thanks to how the peering points on the internet actually function. If they're in the country, it's equally impossible to isloate them, because the peering points aren't configured in such as way as to isolate that either. If you're connected to the internet, it's basically an all or nothing proposition. The only place you have any control is at your perimeter. Not planning for the obvious is what got us into this mess in the first place. Quit playing ostrich. We HAVE to start planning for things, even if we don't consider them to be particulary possible. The rule of force applies here. For those of you that aren't familiar with it, it goes something like this: You do not pit your strength against your enemy's strength. You pit your strength against your enemy's weakness. That means you look for what is not defended, what is not prepared for, and that then becomes your target.
2 cents,
Queen B
There shouldn't need to be a provision in the law for this. It's part of the US Constitution or have Oregon and Washington suddenly seceded from the union without anyone being the wiser.
Quote from the Bill of Rights -
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
I'd say that tracking wherer you go would fall under "be violated" part.
2 cents,
Queen B
A wise man once said, "The battles in academia are so bitter precisely because the stakes are so small." The short version is that academic institutions, by their very nature, are not subject to real world forces like shifting markets. If a market shift occurs, it occurs over decades. This results in a very insular mindset and those in charge often begin to perceive themselves as having godlike powers. They get used to making unreasonable demands and having them met.
Frankly, I would think that there is some kind of board that oversees the selection of the dean or president and who has the authority to discharge this person. I would be appealing to them to see what can be done. While you might not like what someone has to say about you, persecuting them for saying it only lends credence to their tales.
While the Jesuits may be noted for good thinking and solid logic, let us not forget that they were also the backbone of the Inquisition. Apparently, they seem to be content to carry on in their grand old tradition.
2 cents,
Queen B
Seriously, everything tastes like chicken so this will too. That said, perhaps it won't catch the bird flu, so we can farm big vast hordes of them, like we do chickens now. Then we'll all be safe from the pandemic.
See Mother Nature provides....
2 cents,
Queen B
If they don't want to be spidered, let them turn on the robots.txt. Sheesh! Since they can control what Google has for them in their search results, I fail to see how Google is responsible for that.
Besides, if you're selling content, don't you want people to know you have it? How are they supposed to know that they can buy it otherwise?
Just how big a DUH! does this get?
2 cents,
Queen B
Not sure where you are, Kjella, but this is Texas. Yes, we have the death penalty here. If you kill someone, we kill you back. Since they want to disband the "national police", why shouldn't the state, county, and local police take over? Yes, we have a state police force here in Texas. It's one of the most well-known and feared law enforcement organizations in the world - The Texas Rangers. While they may be a big bunch of over-weight bubbas with dinner-plate belt buckles, I would seriously consider *not* pi&&ing them off.
Does that mean that we suspend the rule of law? No. Does that mean you don't get a trial? No. Does that mean that justice should be swift? Yes. Why should the tax payers have to support criminals on what I've heard referred to "as vacation"? This particular discussion is about criminals who are fleeing from whatever mess they've stirred up in another locale. Do I have much sympathy for them? Not really. If you want to move from town to town boosting car stereos to feed your crack habit, I really don't feel for you. Sorry, that's just how it is.
As for the "home grown" terrorist, who is more likely to know who these people are - some dufus from Washington, DC or the local sherrif? I'd vote for the local sherrif. I've yet to live in a county in Texas where the sherrif didn't know, by name & by face, every single repetitive criminal in his county. He's also usually aware of the same information for the surrounding counties. Typically, he can give you the person's name, address, phone number, and a brief overview of his rap sheet. He also usually knows who was new in the area, in less populated counties.
2 cents,
Queen B.
If there's a will, there's a way to do it. The real thing here is that there is no such thing as unbreakable security. Even if you leave me no external ports, I can still use my camera phone to take snapshots of my screen as I display the sensitive data and then email it to anyone I choose. How do you stop that? Cavity search all employees every morning? C'mon! You have to pay me a *lot* more to put up with that.
s p. Or how about one of these babies - http://www.xybernaut.com/itemList.asp?categoryID=2 8. It's not much bigger than a pack of cigarettes and can be used to transmit data out of a data center via a cellular card. Hook up a hub and .... I know, because I've seen something similar at least twice already.
What about the USB storage devices that mimic other things? Like this - a watch - http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/7899/ or this - a pen - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1618595,00.a
Frankly, how crappy are you to your people that they're doing stuff like this? I think this is a real wake up call to the industry to look at how employees are treated and/or compenstated. If you think it's bad stateside, how bad do you think it is overseas where they're making $8/hour?
2 cents,
Queen B
Since the Borg Collective and AOL are all about pushing an inferior, overpriced product to an uneducated bunch of end users via slick marketing and since Time-Warner is AOL's parent company, I'd suspect that this might be a very good fit for both of them. I have to agree with an earlier poster who mentioned that any time the Collective "teams up" with another company, the other company is either assimilated or gets screwed.
Frankly, I avoid the MSN home page, MSN searches, etc. because I refuse to "feed the beast". My experience with MSN is that they cannot get past blinky "Flash" things, so I doubt it will fly very well. I wonder if this isn't part of the whole AOL take-over bid by Microsoft, though.
2 cents,
Queen B
What needs to happen here is that OSS projects need to start filing patents. They can include the right to use the patents in the license (GPL or what ever else, I know there are a lot of them) for the software. If the OSS project holds the patents, then they don't have to worry about being sued. I think this would be really good, since the best parts of Win2K, Win2003, and WinXP are Unix ripoffs - ipconfig anyone?
2 cents,
Queen B
The Borg Collective always "proposes" some set of "alternate" standards which they then implement in their own products, attempting to make them the de facto standard by sheer force. This just sounds like more of the same from them.
2 cents,
Queen B
If they can institute a minimum of 25 cents, why not institute a max of say $2.00? Still reasonable and will cover the extra bandwidth to download (and I do mean "down") the latest Brittany Spears single. The trick is that I don't trust them not to try to charge $14.95 for a single...
2 cents,
Queen B
Well, the biggest problem is see is this..." free to use as long as you don't make any money from it..."
Considering that the largest part (time and effort) of the game development is in creating a story line, objects, quests, dialog, NPC's, etc. and all they're offering is an engine, there should be a one time fee for the engine and it should be free or nearly so. I would say that better than 90% of the total development effort is centered in these areas. These areas are also the ones that make or break a game, MMORPG or otherwise.
2 cents,
Queen B
This was on a sign outside a town in a game I played once and I really liked it:
"Stranger, obey our laws. We have both swords and shovels and doubt anyone would miss you."
Frankly, I think that's how we ought to handle crimnals that move about. I do see a need for Federal agents for things like Immigration. Instead of disbanding the FBI completely, let's just transfer the funding and field agents to "La Migra" & the Customs Service. That ought to give us a nice handle in controlling illegal immigration, looking for terrorists trying to sneak into the country, people trying to smuggle goods, etc. which is basically what the FBI was supposed to be doing in the first place.
2 cents,
Queen B
Other on line communities with less restrictive requirements are springing up and gaining ground on MySpace. Frankly, I find the whole eletronic thing to be a bit frightening. Hear me out before you mod me down! Nothing digital happens without leaving traces. As the public library in Philadelphia who's fighting with the FBI over one of their "Letters of National Security". It becomes all too easy to obtain records of who did what and who said what. Anonymity is a big part of what makes the internet go 'round and if you take that away, all you have left is what we have in real space now. A bunch of folks with ideas but too afraid to voice them.
2 cents,
Queen B