Comparing JNI to C#'s unsafe mode is a red herring. Unsafe mode was added to C# to allow the grandfathering of massive volumes of ill-behaved code into.NET systems. Microsoft does not like giving up old code bases. As a result, new C# applications will be peppered with security holes as developers of applications and libraries resort to unsafe mode. Even if you choose not to use it yourself, what large scale application can be developed without using off-the-shelf libraries? In practice, you'll have no way to reliably avoid buffer overflows with C#. In contrast, there is no unsafe Java code (JNI is used to run non-Java code. If you port the involved code to Java, you get "safe" code.). As your system moves towards 100% Java, the potential for pointer errors goes to zero. Not so for C#.
Microsoft's claim that sprinkling "unmanaged code" everywhere in your system is superior to linking to external libraries is very strange. What does the phrase "tightly limit unsafe code to just the statements where it is needed, often just a single statement" mean? How can you limit something that can be everywhere? 10 years ago, Microsoft was claiming it didn't need a security sandbox for Active X because it had digital signatures. Now they're claiming it's okay to put buffer overflow vulnerabilities in your code because it's convenient for the programmer. They just don't seem to understand security.
I think this same prediction was made in 1981 by Paul Ehrlich when he predicted half the earth's species gone by 2000 and all of them gone by 2010-25. Maybe these predictions should be treated the same as claims of working perpertual motion machines.
1.) Works with you to establish your hourly rate, and the hourly rate he'll bill you at. (Doesn't hide rates.)
I don't know how you can be sure what hourly rate the headhunter is billing it.
In my case, I contracted through a company that billed itself it was contractor-friendly, ethical, etc. They claimed a flat rate markup of 40% (which was a bit higher than optimal, but I figured I was getting screwed worse on other contracts). A few years after the assignment crashed and burned (they didn't tell me that the owner of the contracting firm previously worked for the client and was fired), I met one of the client's employees and found out they were actually getting a 70% markup!
I wouldn't have accepted that job if I knew the headhunters were making more money than me for the hours I worked.
I've always wanted to see a tornado before I die
on
Surviving Tornadoes
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Los Alamos has far more security people than 50. You can see 50 guards just in the weight room during peak times. And that doesn't consider all the people with office jobs.
It's only a matter of time before wind power falls out of favor with environmentalists. Consider how many birds a large wind farm will cut down out of the sky, or the pollution generated by manufacturing and maintaining so many metal armatures and power distribution lines.
And then there's the issue of where the energy is actually coming from. Given the recent report that airplane contrails might have an effect on global temperature variations, how long will it be before someone speculates that slowing wind down contributes to global warming?
I agree with you that what he did was in very bad judgement. It puzzles and disturbs me. It's been suggested to me that going through college so early deprived him of opportunities to acquire necessary social skills, so at times he does things that don't reflect what you and I would consider common sense.
Personally, I wish he'd get an attack dog lawyer who would tear these charges apart. The reason he has dismissed his lawyers twice eludes me. I'd rather not assume things about him based on that though. Perhaps his family doesn't have the means for a good lawyer. Perhaps the only options available to him are court-appointed public defenders who just want the case over with as quickly as possible so they can go on vacation, never mind that it's a felony conviction. I just don't know.
I have no inside knowledge. I found out about this case from this topic of Slashdot and talk started at work.
I think the judge should resist the urge to have a d1ck-waving contest with Jerome and punish him for his "impudence" (re: the "federal judges are god and you're not" thread) and realize that this is a scared, young, (overly?) idealistic young man who has been trying to act honorably towards a system which is frequently vicious. I don't hold out much hope for this. Considering the snake pit D.C. is, for anyone to reach the level of a federal judge has probably lost 90% of their soul along the way.
And your credentials for diagnosing "mental illness" are what? Your medical degree is from what university?
There are specific criteria in the DSM-IV for diagnosing mental illness, and violating your definition of common sense isn't one of them.
Sorry to belabor this point, but I have it on good authority from my co-worker (who sits right next to me at work and regards Jerome as a friend) that he is a good, decent person. Remarks about his mental condition from those who don't know all the facts are not appreciated.
Doing a little bit of searching, I found a much simpler explanation for his actions. Jerome previously volunteered himself for prison because of his court-imposed inability to support himself or live with his parents in Wisconsin.
My guess is he played the judge like a puppet, tweaking him just enough to get a paid stay at the government's expense.
I'd suggest all the amateur psychoanalysis can stop now.
Assuming you are not said mental health practitioner, I will defer to someone else's authority on what constitutes "psycotic [sic] behavior."
I'm sorry, but how much respect are you supposed to show a system which suppressed a Forbes article giving demographic information on MagicFX conflicting with Jerome's status, and has twice successfully pressured the ISP of freesk8.org to take the site offline? This case is a verdict in search of a trial.
There is still an article at Forbes which identified MagicFX as a 22-year-old in 1999. Jerome might just be turning 22 now. I don't know.
It reminds me of the second season Star Trek: DS9 episode "Tribunal" where O'Brien is tried in a Cardassian court where it is known in advance he will be convicted. The judge is irritated that O'Brien refuses to just "plead guilty and get it over with" since the system needs (and intends to get by any means) its martyr.
I expect once it becomes clear that Jerome is going all the way with this case, the FBI will look for the quickest way out and drop the charges, rather than risk the embarrassment of a case they cannot prove. I'd be willing to do the legwork necessary to cause that embarrassment.
For someone hoping to have a career after this, I doubt pleading guilty to even one felony charge is an option. Further, the recent hyping of computer intrusion as a kind of "terrorism" makes this less an option.
Personally, I don't believe he did anything unethical or illegal. He is, as I have heard him described at the Lab, a "white hat hacker" who used his powers for good, just as you say. He informed the institutions accusing him of what he'd found. They thanked him, then stabbed him in the back.
I presume what happened is that some large tech corporations are worried that their customers will find out how little effort they've invested in security. They decided to make an example out of Jerome to scare away anyone (even those not yet out of grad school) who would dare to test their systems in the future. The FBI, being a fully ownx0r3d subsidiary of Qualcomm and eBay (companies now on my list of organizations never to patronize), just said "Yes, boss," and never dared to ask whether there was any actual evidence of wrongdoing.
LANL employees with limited term staff appointments are pretty much dismissed automatically if they are arrested, so he lost his job without anything more than an accusation.
As always, my opinions are only my own, not those of my employer.
I was just talking with someone who hired on with Jerome at LANL, and he speculated that Jerome might have been performing a scene from an Ayn Rand novel.
He may (rightly?) realize at this point that having a lawyer is of no use when the system is so wack. This legal process seems like the textbook example of how to create Ted Kozinskis: you subject bright people to arbitrary and unending persecution until they become irrecoverably bitter and use their intelligence against society.
I'd find it worthwhile just to contribute to his living expenses, since this young man has an awful lot to contribute to society, once society stops being so stupid. The government has Jerome in jail, but we've just cleared Mohammed Atta to be in the country.
I am an employee of Los Alamos National Laboratory. I work in CCS-1. My boss hired Jerome. I speak for myself, not the Lab, nor my co-workers. What I can say is that support for him here runs high.
I can understand why, by this time, Jerome might be acting in a way that appears a little loopy. He's lost his job and been put in jail for being merely accused of something which, even if true, amounts to spraying a graffito on a wall. I can drive down to Albuquerque and see plenty of that. If I were in that position, I would have little faith left in the justice system or the FBI.
I find myself very angry at what has happened to him, and I would welcome the opportunity to work with him when the courts get finish this auto-da-fe.
I've donated money to the legal defense fund at freesk8.org and encourage others to do likewise.
Apple's trademark reflects a novel use of the word (computers don't essentially have anything to do with fruit) and that use wouldn't ordinarily occur apart from their trademark. Microsoft just took an aspect of computing that everyone deals with and claimed exclusive use of the term to describe it.
Maybe the next version of Windows will be called Icons 2002.
Slashdot Mirror
I attended a meeting where Nanos attacked Feynman, saying he would never allow such a person to work at the Lab.
"His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking." -Spock
Who gave these people permission to invade Slashdot and block me and anyone else from accessing it? Get this pink ponies stuff off Slashdot!!!! It is blocking access to the website. I consider this hacking, and will complain to the FBI unless it is removed within 24 hours! First notice!
Comparing JNI to C#'s unsafe mode is a red herring. Unsafe mode was added to C# to allow the grandfathering of massive volumes of ill-behaved code into .NET systems. Microsoft does not like giving up old code bases. As a result, new C# applications will be peppered with security holes as developers of applications and libraries resort to unsafe mode. Even if you choose not to use it yourself, what large scale application can be developed without using off-the-shelf libraries? In practice, you'll have no way to reliably avoid buffer overflows with C#. In contrast, there is no unsafe Java code (JNI is used to run non-Java code. If you port the involved code to Java, you get "safe" code.). As your system moves towards 100% Java, the potential for pointer errors goes to zero. Not so for C#.
Microsoft's claim that sprinkling "unmanaged code" everywhere in your system is superior to linking to external libraries is very strange. What does the phrase "tightly limit unsafe code to just the statements where it is needed, often just a single statement" mean? How can you limit something that can be everywhere? 10 years ago, Microsoft was claiming it didn't need a security sandbox for Active X because it had digital signatures. Now they're claiming it's okay to put buffer overflow vulnerabilities in your code because it's convenient for the programmer. They just don't seem to understand security.
I think this same prediction was made in 1981 by Paul Ehrlich when he predicted half the earth's species gone by 2000 and all of them gone by 2010-25. Maybe these predictions should be treated the same as claims of working perpertual motion machines.
1.) Works with you to establish your hourly rate, and the hourly rate he'll bill you at. (Doesn't hide rates.)
I don't know how you can be sure what hourly rate the headhunter is billing it.
In my case, I contracted through a company that billed itself it was contractor-friendly, ethical, etc. They claimed a flat rate markup of 40% (which was a bit higher than optimal, but I figured I was getting screwed worse on other contracts). A few years after the assignment crashed and burned (they didn't tell me that the owner of the contracting firm previously worked for the client and was fired), I met one of the client's employees and found out they were actually getting a 70% markup!
I wouldn't have accepted that job if I knew the headhunters were making more money than me for the hours I worked.
...just not right before.
Los Alamos has far more security people than 50. You can see 50 guards just in the weight room during peak times. And that doesn't consider all the people with office jobs.
It's only a matter of time before wind power falls out of favor with environmentalists. Consider how many birds a large wind farm will cut down out of the sky, or the pollution generated by manufacturing and maintaining so many metal armatures and power distribution lines.
And then there's the issue of where the energy is actually coming from. Given the recent report that airplane contrails might have an effect on global temperature variations, how long will it be before someone speculates that slowing wind down contributes to global warming?
I agree with you that what he did was in very bad judgement. It puzzles and disturbs me. It's been suggested to me that going through college so early deprived him of opportunities to acquire necessary social skills, so at times he does things that don't reflect what you and I would consider common sense.
Personally, I wish he'd get an attack dog lawyer who would tear these charges apart. The reason he has dismissed his lawyers twice eludes me. I'd rather not assume things about him based on that though. Perhaps his family doesn't have the means for a good lawyer. Perhaps the only options available to him are court-appointed public defenders who just want the case over with as quickly as possible so they can go on vacation, never mind that it's a felony conviction. I just don't know.
I have no inside knowledge. I found out about this case from this topic of Slashdot and talk started at work.
I think the judge should resist the urge to have a d1ck-waving contest with Jerome and punish him for his "impudence" (re: the "federal judges are god and you're not" thread) and realize that this is a scared, young, (overly?) idealistic young man who has been trying to act honorably towards a system which is frequently vicious. I don't hold out much hope for this. Considering the snake pit D.C. is, for anyone to reach the level of a federal judge has probably lost 90% of their soul along the way.
And your credentials for diagnosing "mental illness" are what? Your medical degree is from what university?
There are specific criteria in the DSM-IV for diagnosing mental illness, and violating your definition of common sense isn't one of them.
Sorry to belabor this point, but I have it on good authority from my co-worker (who sits right next to me at work and regards Jerome as a friend) that he is a good, decent person. Remarks about his mental condition from those who don't know all the facts are not appreciated.
I'd suggest all the amateur psychoanalysis can stop now.
Why? Because we're not agreeing with you that Jerome's a digital martyr?
No, because you're not an expert in psychotherapy. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)
Doing a little bit of searching, I found a much simpler explanation for his actions. Jerome previously volunteered himself for prison because of his court-imposed inability to support himself or live with his parents in Wisconsin.
My guess is he played the judge like a puppet, tweaking him just enough to get a paid stay at the government's expense.
I'd suggest all the amateur psychoanalysis can stop now.
Didn't Morpheus' just recently (as in last month) contain a prominent "no spyware" logo?
That sure didn't last long.
Assuming you are not said mental health practitioner, I will defer to someone else's authority on what constitutes "psycotic [sic] behavior."
I'm sorry, but how much respect are you supposed to show a system which suppressed a Forbes article giving demographic information on MagicFX conflicting with Jerome's status, and has twice successfully pressured the ISP of freesk8.org to take the site offline? This case is a verdict in search of a trial.
There is still an article at Forbes which identified MagicFX as a 22-year-old in 1999. Jerome might just be turning 22 now. I don't know.
It reminds me of the second season Star Trek: DS9 episode "Tribunal" where O'Brien is tried in a Cardassian court where it is known in advance he will be convicted. The judge is irritated that O'Brien refuses to just "plead guilty and get it over with" since the system needs (and intends to get by any means) its martyr.
I expect once it becomes clear that Jerome is going all the way with this case, the FBI will look for the quickest way out and drop the charges, rather than risk the embarrassment of a case they cannot prove. I'd be willing to do the legwork necessary to cause that embarrassment.
For someone hoping to have a career after this, I doubt pleading guilty to even one felony charge is an option. Further, the recent hyping of computer intrusion as a kind of "terrorism" makes this less an option.
Personally, I don't believe he did anything unethical or illegal. He is, as I have heard him described at the Lab, a "white hat hacker" who used his powers for good, just as you say. He informed the institutions accusing him of what he'd found. They thanked him, then stabbed him in the back.
I presume what happened is that some large tech corporations are worried that their customers will find out how little effort they've invested in security. They decided to make an example out of Jerome to scare away anyone (even those not yet out of grad school) who would dare to test their systems in the future. The FBI, being a fully ownx0r3d subsidiary of Qualcomm and eBay (companies now on my list of organizations never to patronize), just said "Yes, boss," and never dared to ask whether there was any actual evidence of wrongdoing.
LANL employees with limited term staff appointments are pretty much dismissed automatically if they are arrested, so he lost his job without anything more than an accusation.
As always, my opinions are only my own, not those of my employer.
I was just talking with someone who hired on with Jerome at LANL, and he speculated that Jerome might have been performing a scene from an Ayn Rand novel.
He may (rightly?) realize at this point that having a lawyer is of no use when the system is so wack. This legal process seems like the textbook example of how to create Ted Kozinskis: you subject bright people to arbitrary and unending persecution until they become irrecoverably bitter and use their intelligence against society.
I'd find it worthwhile just to contribute to his living expenses, since this young man has an awful lot to contribute to society, once society stops being so stupid. The government has Jerome in jail, but we've just cleared Mohammed Atta to be in the country.
I am an employee of Los Alamos National Laboratory. I work in CCS-1. My boss hired Jerome. I speak for myself, not the Lab, nor my co-workers. What I can say is that support for him here runs high.
I can understand why, by this time, Jerome might be acting in a way that appears a little loopy. He's lost his job and been put in jail for being merely accused of something which, even if true, amounts to spraying a graffito on a wall. I can drive down to Albuquerque and see plenty of that. If I were in that position, I would have little faith left in the justice system or the FBI.
I find myself very angry at what has happened to him, and I would welcome the opportunity to work with him when the courts get finish this auto-da-fe.
I've donated money to the legal defense fund at freesk8.org and encourage others to do likewise.
Apple's trademark reflects a novel use of the word (computers don't essentially have anything to do with fruit) and that use wouldn't ordinarily occur apart from their trademark. Microsoft just took an aspect of computing that everyone deals with and claimed exclusive use of the term to describe it.
Maybe the next version of Windows will be called Icons 2002.