they'd rather sell ten million of just one or two of those than twenty million albums spread across 200 different albums of varying genres
Well, no kidding. Of course they would. Selling ten million copies each of two albums versus a hundred thousand copies each of 200 albums is far more profitable. For each separate album, you have recording costs, production costs, studio time, perhaps some session musicians to be paid, promotional costs, distribution, supply chain costs, etc., etc., etc. It all adds up.
If you have 200 different albums, that's a lot more expensive (considering all those costs coming in for every single one of those albums) than investing in two different albums. These people, by and large, are in business to make money. If you can make the same amount of money with an outlay of a tenth or a fiftieth or a hundredth of the cost, that's good business and it's far less risky (if you know that one album is very probably going to be a blockbuster).
Look, I'm a musician and I love listening to diverse kinds of music. I also understand that the music business is just that - a business. And that's okay. Everyone who's reading this needs money to live, somehow. At some point, someone made some money - you, or someone who is supporting you. There are a thousand ways to make money, and very few of them are totally noble and selfless. Sorry about that.
This is about the power to tell you what to buy, not to tell you to buy from them
Another thought - perhaps they just want to make lots of money with little risk. Really, what's wrong with that?
Want to make bizarre and experimental music, of interest to perhaps only a small number of people? I applaud you (I've been in bands that did just that). But don't be surprised if a major music label decides they're not going to put in the huge amount of time and effort it takes to distribute and publicize your band, when they know (a) they'll likely lose money, and (b) the mainstream band they already have signed will make an actual profit.
Still don't like the major labels? Then why not start your own open community recording "label". As so many people point out, it is possible to record an album with a comparatively inexpensive home studio. Solicit bands, tell them to send you their music. Be honest with them and if you're going to encourage people to download and share the music for free then tell your bands what your policy is on file sharing, and let them decide if they're okay with that.
Put up a cheap web site to tell people what's going on. Figure out the advertising and distribution somehow - use Twitter, or Slashdot, or anything else that takes your fancy. Distribute using peer-to-peer. I suspect nobody will want to pay full-out hosting charges in this kind of a venture because, you know, bandwidth ain't cheap, even for evil empire record labels. But surely someone can figure that out.
Make it a point of pride that you're going to distribute any kind of music, and get together with people who understand marketing and are willing to volunteer their time. It worked for Linux, because people were passionate, so why wouldn't it work for music?
Seriously, go ahead. Stop wasting energy and time just bleating about how evil the big record labels are, don't even worry about what's going on with the mainstream stuff...put your effort into making a difference. Most people involved in this kind of community effort won't make money doing it, but that's the magic of the Linux community, isn't it? Most people involved in developing Linux have day jobs to pay the bills, and work on Linux because they want to make a difference.
If there are enough people who are passionate enough about this, then you could make it work. Stop complaining, and do something to try and make it different. Carpe diem!
The NSA itself is comprised of criminals. From the agent who accesses data he has no legitimate right to,
Like Edward Snowden?
Face it, whether you approve of what he did or think he was wrong, he committed a crime. Merely admitting "the NSA is a criminal organization" doesn't automatically mean it's wrong. There are many activities that have been carried out that history views as admirable which were nonetheless criminal.
I suggest you read the article. It talks about a specific subset of trades that were affected due to a problem resulting from an upgrade. It further discusses the impact in a company which prides itself on risk management.
That would seem to imply that it is thought possible an IT upgrade was performed without adequate backout provisions or due diligence.
The advantage of Open Source is that you or anyone else can fix the software if/when security problems are found, whether in the OS, core libraries, network stack, or any Open Source applications.
Theoretically? Totally, no worries. Alpha plus.
In the real world? How often does that occur? How many people are investigating the code to find security problems? How many of those people are sufficiently competent to fix security problems?
There are bugs which remain open for years. There have been reports of security flaws discovered which have been present for years before being detected. If thousands of developers truly were poring over the code, this shouldn't occur.
I won't deny the advantage you state is very real. I will assert that it is an advantage which is rarely exploited in any meaningful fashion.
I think you may not be familiar with how international diplomacy works, as well as giving rather too much credit to Russia.
The U.S. was pretty close to cancelling the summit anyway, for a number of reasons. The different viewpoints on Syria were already straining relations, and the Kremlin's treatment of dissidents has also been awkward to say the least. This was merely the tipping point. Russia, for their part, was not unaware of this, and it's quite likely they did this at least in part to provoke exactly this response so the U.S. would look bad.
Russia, in the meantime, is doing what any other nation would do and is looking to what they can get out of Snowden. They made a coldly impersonal decision and determined the political value of giving him temporary asylum was greater than the political value of turning him over to the U.S. They likely don't care about his well-being, and they are certainly not all that fussed about any kind of ideology or they'd have given him permanent asylum.
Temporary asylum is a big carrot to the outside world who want to believe the U.S. is the baddie and Russia is the goodie, and a massive stick to Snowden. They will pump him as much as they can, and then simply refuse to renew his temporary asylum. Alternately, once everyone's forgotten about it all, they may simply let him stay (but not with permanent asylum) as it really doesn't cost them all that much.
Edward Snowden has been reduced to a diplomatic pawn, and Russia has no qualms about that. Don't forget that about a month ago they sentenced Aleksei Navalny for trumped-up embezzlement charges, after he exposed rampant high level corruption in the Kremlin. Perhaps we could be equally outraged by that injustice?
As an immigrant who's lived in the U.S. for over a decade, my impression is that a huge part of the explanation is due to the sheer size and complexity of the country.
The U.S. comprises a third of a billion people. Those people live in states, each of which has its own government, its own legislature, its own political interests, and an enormous interest in preserving autonomy whilst still being a part of the union. In effect, it is quite similar to the European Union but with the benefit of a history (as a union) that goes back an order of magnitude longer.
Populations of those states range from a few hundred thousand (Wyoming, Vermont) to nearly 40 million (California). The state of Texas is geographically so big that it takes 12 hours to drive across it.
There are dozens of stereotypes about Americans - the brash New Yorker, the backwoodsman from Arkansas, the huntin' and fishin' outdoorsman from Pennsylvania, the surfers from California, and so on and so on. The USA is such a big and diverse country that all those stereotypes are true; you just have to travel far enough to find a group that matches each one.
Consider that in the context of the "free speech" idealism. Americans have grown up knowing that they have the right to say anything, no matter how controversial, and they are passionate about exercising that right. The tenor of conversation is passionate and tends to violently expressed disagreement. This in turn has huge impact on the politicians who wish to be re-elected, and one of the biggest and most important factors is the debate of states' rights.
Well, it'd be pretty easy to verify, as their books are open to the public to examine. For reference, ASCAP claims 88 cents out of every dollar is distributed to artists.
Of course, they are a member run organization, so members could vote for a different board of directors, or even simply not join.
I should switch to decaf because you call politicians names, then proceed to engage in indefensible hyberbole & describe economic sanctions as an act of war?
What on earth are you talking about and however did you get modded up to +5? Economic sanctions may come about in times of war, granted. But to claim they're an act of war is to cheapen and trivialize the horror that is such a conflict as to be named a war.
Economic sanctions can be as minor a thing as import tariffs. They're a part of everyday international business.
People here are getting way too emotional and need to grow up.
no one wants to control people who create things; nobody is trying to force the people who create things to do anything. they just want to remove the control over people who reproduce what other people have created.
Except that it does control the people who create things. People who create things say "here is my invention/creation/concept, and I want the rules governing use and reproduction of that thing to be this and this and this". The creator can, if she chooses, say "go ahead, copy at will, I welcome it". The creator can also say "nope, I want my creation to be constrained by these rules".
Copyright infringers say "stuff what you want, I'm going to do whatever the heck I like". By their actions, they remove any choice from the creator. Remember, if the creator wants his things to be copied, there are plenty of ways to accomplish that. It would be far more fair for consumers to say "I don't like your choice of restriction by copyright, so I'm going to boycott and not acquire any of your stuff", and let the market forces decide if that business model wins or loses.
But of course that would mean you have to give up something you might want, and we can't have self sacrifice on principle, can we?
Be specific. Forgive me - I'm not a U.S. citizen and am not particularly familiar with the constitution.
Do you mean this part?
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Apparently that's the seventh amendment. Think about it.
(Yes, I know it's a side bar. So was your comment.)
Yep. I am wondering if I read the same article. Far from being a ringing endorsement of some buzz phrase (which I'd never heard of), it starts off with a warning about falling for hype and then continues to describe what a software defined data center actually is and finishes with some prognostications about what will be.
I think the main point missing is one that any IT manager will see. (Mind you, I labor under the impression that IT managers, who usually do have some kind of business sense, understand that you can't just buy endless quantities of hard disk and servers on the premise that you'll need it some day. Perhaps I've been lucky, but all the managers I've worked with over the past 20 years certainly got that.) Namely, that unless you are using Amazon's services, you don't have endless arrays of hard disk behind the door and the idea of someone idly clicking a button to format TB of disk at a whim comes crashing back to reality when the next business unit who tries the same thing comes knocking to ask where all the free disk space has gone. I.e. same as always, capacity isn't free, performance isn't automatic, and quotas are a necessary evil.
Summary sounds to me like a typical hatchet job aimed at registering lots of page views by giving a deliberately inflammatory starting point that's designed to get/. readers' blood boiling. And clever them (and dumb me), I've fallen for it as soon as I click "submit".
Thanks - I appreciate that you took the time to make a very rational and fair response. I don't know that I have an answer to your question ("If not the press, who exactly would you tell?"), but at least we both recognize not everything is black and white.
Except that the American people have a right to know.
The American people have a right to know...what? I guess you mean everything about the government and any security institutions charged with keeping the country safe. Let's go with that.
What about the Iranian people? Do they have a right to know the same things?
Do the Iraqis? Yemeni? IRA?
If yes, how do you propose to keep the country safe in a manner that says "there are bad people out there and part of a government's responsibility is to protect its country, and here's how we're doing it"?
If no, how do you keep things to just the American people who "have a right to know", as you so eloquently put it?
me pointing out how the majority is often wrong is not me saying "I know best, these should be the rules, everyone listen to me because I'm smarter then you"
Of course it is. If you claim the majority is often wrong, you're saying you are smarter the majority of people because you know what's right and they don't. That's what it means to say "these people are wrong in their opinion/belief". You may claim you're not forcing your beliefs on anyone else, but this is just so much semantic stuff.
Seriously, be honest, and keep it simple. Do you think the majority of people are wrong? Then you're saying you're right and you're smarter than them. It's not any more complicated than that.
But of course, you are a long term thinking genius with extraordinary insight. And not just you, but several hundred other random individuals who are also posting on this web site. Yes, we all are superior, more able to take a broad view of things, and hence develop a better, more rational strategy and philosophy.
Sounds to me like someone is pining for an oligarchy. You (and lots of others posting this kind of nonsense) are smugly arrogant and confident that you know best. Isn't that what everyone was whining about with the NSA 24 hours ago, and praising that kid who took it on himself to leak secrets because he knew best?
I think there are a bunch of people here who wouldn't mind in the least if the government continued to act in exactly the same kind of allegedly disgraceful fashion so long as the government was doing things they liked. Then you'd respond to any complaints by saying that the rabble rousers just weren't intellectual enough to understand what you were doing, and that it's for their own good so they just have to put up with it.
Do you not see the hypocrisy and sheer arrogance of this?
Just curious, how old are you? Mid-40s or older, i.e. old enough to have lived through and have some awareness of the IRA terrorist extravaganza of the seventies?
So, please, let's hear an argument about why revealing this program is harmful. I'd be interested to hear a good one; because so far I haven't even heard bad ones.
Okay. You'll probably think this is a bad one - I'm not sure I'd disagree - but it's an argument. WSJ reported that this program intercepted two plots in 2009, including a plot to bomb the NY subway. Now that we've got that out of the way...
I believe it's the bigger picture that should be considered. Maybe this leak isn't so harmful, but when you sign on to a job like this you say "I won't tell secrets that I'm not supposed to tell". If you can't be trusted with low level secrets, what stops you from throwing out the big ones? Put another way (and you may not agree with this), but some things should be kept secret. There are political considerations, technical considerations, operational considerations, planning considerations. Those all need to be taken into account. Does that mean the people with 25 years of training in making these kinds of assessments will always get it right? No, but they're an awful lot more likely to do so than some random twenty something year old high school dropout with no knowledge of politics, covert operations, or any other inputs.
I'm bemused by the man's claims that he wanted to do this for the common good (i.e. "I got a conscience"). You don't sign on for a job with a secret security agency whose job involves surveillance and trying to capture bad guys without knowing that, gee, sometimes they're gonna do things that aren't black-and-white "we're the goodies, and those guys are the baddies, no middle zone". Just what sort of jobs did he think the NSA did?
I suppose the moral of this story is it doesn't really matter if you use G+ or not; Google, through some sneaky machinations, still are doing everything they can to artificially inflate the number of "users".
I'd like to see a page about me that says, "Here's the information you've provided, and here's the information we're inferring from what we know about you."
Go to your account settings and choose to download your expanded archive. (You can also download an abbreviated version.) If you just click on "settings" it's at the bottom of the "General" settings, which is the default page - nice and easy to find.
Be aware it takes quite some time to collect all the info for the expanded archive - they tell you to continue browsing and they'll email you when it's done. Have fun seeing your account history. I'm quite sure it won't show what they're inferring, but then neither will Google's data access.
28 gun deaths per day is a steep price for our society's inability to distinguish between anecdotes and statistics.
28 gun deaths per day is a cheap price for our society's continued freedom from government tyranny. That's what the second amendment is about. Not self defense, not hunting, not skeet shooting. Protection from tyranny. It's a recognized right for the people to possess the means to revolt should they choose.
This is possibly one of the saddest comments I have ever read in my 14, 15, whatever it's been, years on Slashdot.
Forget the politics. Forget the anger. Forget the "rah-rah-rah" of the NRA or second amendment. For purposes of this, I don't even care about the second amendment.
28 gun deaths per day is a cheap price for... whatever comes next is meaningless.
I think you have lost a sense of proportion. I think you have been horribly desensitized, or perhaps you just make these comments ad hoc without actually having the maturity and strength to think what your words actually mean in the real, physical world. Please, just think about 28 people in your office being killed today.
And another 28 tomorrow.
Look at the people walking by you. This isn't abstract, these are real lives that you dismiss in such a cavalier manner.
Ten thousand people by the time we reach New Year's day 2014.
Twenty thousand people in the next two years.
More than a hundred thousand people in the next decade.
And one of the most depressing parts is you're an Anonymous Coward and probably won't even see this comment, and most likely won't think of these real lives that you so cheaply throw away for even a second.
If you believe so strongly that this is worth it and the second amendment means what you say it means, sign up for the national guard and put yourself at the lethal end of someone else's gun.
May God protect you that none of the ten thousand people who will be murdered in 2013 is someone you know.
No kidding. I started off with the "standout items" list.
Number 1 - gigantic tablet. Nothing standout or breakthrough, just quite large version of existing stuff, vague assertions that "it might be sort of useful in the enterprise?". They couldn't even think why it might be useful.
Number 2 - LG has lots of cool television enhancements on the way such as improved interfaces and voice command response. But they didn't show that. Just a rather big screen that's too expensive for anyone to buy.
Number 3 - a little hovering thing. Nothing new, nothing improved, except it's got extended battery life.
I have to agree with this. My company is not very big - less than 1000 FTEs - but we have a ton of PhD staff. There are six other companies in the U.S. who do what we do and every one of them also has a bunch of doctorates. If you came to us with a PhD, it'd be a definite bonus, rather than making us nervous.
Why the difference? No, we're not a software company like those mentioned by robbo, but we are nonetheless highly technical (in the EE field, as it happens) and value people with expertise in technical fields. EE primarily, but also computer science and math, as well as other disciplines.
I'd be looking at companies that have a technical discipline as their core business in some form.
Slashdot Mirror
they'd rather sell ten million of just one or two of those than twenty million albums spread across 200 different albums of varying genres
Well, no kidding. Of course they would. Selling ten million copies each of two albums versus a hundred thousand copies each of 200 albums is far more profitable. For each separate album, you have recording costs, production costs, studio time, perhaps some session musicians to be paid, promotional costs, distribution, supply chain costs, etc., etc., etc. It all adds up.
If you have 200 different albums, that's a lot more expensive (considering all those costs coming in for every single one of those albums) than investing in two different albums. These people, by and large, are in business to make money. If you can make the same amount of money with an outlay of a tenth or a fiftieth or a hundredth of the cost, that's good business and it's far less risky (if you know that one album is very probably going to be a blockbuster).
Look, I'm a musician and I love listening to diverse kinds of music. I also understand that the music business is just that - a business. And that's okay. Everyone who's reading this needs money to live, somehow. At some point, someone made some money - you, or someone who is supporting you. There are a thousand ways to make money, and very few of them are totally noble and selfless. Sorry about that.
This is about the power to tell you what to buy, not to tell you to buy from them
Another thought - perhaps they just want to make lots of money with little risk. Really, what's wrong with that?
Want to make bizarre and experimental music, of interest to perhaps only a small number of people? I applaud you (I've been in bands that did just that). But don't be surprised if a major music label decides they're not going to put in the huge amount of time and effort it takes to distribute and publicize your band, when they know (a) they'll likely lose money, and (b) the mainstream band they already have signed will make an actual profit.
Still don't like the major labels? Then why not start your own open community recording "label". As so many people point out, it is possible to record an album with a comparatively inexpensive home studio. Solicit bands, tell them to send you their music. Be honest with them and if you're going to encourage people to download and share the music for free then tell your bands what your policy is on file sharing, and let them decide if they're okay with that.
Put up a cheap web site to tell people what's going on. Figure out the advertising and distribution somehow - use Twitter, or Slashdot, or anything else that takes your fancy. Distribute using peer-to-peer. I suspect nobody will want to pay full-out hosting charges in this kind of a venture because, you know, bandwidth ain't cheap, even for evil empire record labels. But surely someone can figure that out.
Make it a point of pride that you're going to distribute any kind of music, and get together with people who understand marketing and are willing to volunteer their time. It worked for Linux, because people were passionate, so why wouldn't it work for music?
Seriously, go ahead. Stop wasting energy and time just bleating about how evil the big record labels are, don't even worry about what's going on with the mainstream stuff...put your effort into making a difference. Most people involved in this kind of community effort won't make money doing it, but that's the magic of the Linux community, isn't it? Most people involved in developing Linux have day jobs to pay the bills, and work on Linux because they want to make a difference.
If there are enough people who are passionate enough about this, then you could make it work. Stop complaining, and do something to try and make it different. Carpe diem!
The NSA itself is comprised of criminals. From the agent who accesses data he has no legitimate right to,
Like Edward Snowden?
Face it, whether you approve of what he did or think he was wrong, he committed a crime. Merely admitting "the NSA is a criminal organization" doesn't automatically mean it's wrong. There are many activities that have been carried out that history views as admirable which were nonetheless criminal.
I suggest you read the article. It talks about a specific subset of trades that were affected due to a problem resulting from an upgrade. It further discusses the impact in a company which prides itself on risk management.
That would seem to imply that it is thought possible an IT upgrade was performed without adequate backout provisions or due diligence.
The advantage of Open Source is that you or anyone else can fix the software if/when security problems are found, whether in the OS, core libraries, network stack, or any Open Source applications.
Theoretically? Totally, no worries. Alpha plus.
In the real world? How often does that occur? How many people are investigating the code to find security problems? How many of those people are sufficiently competent to fix security problems?
There are bugs which remain open for years. There have been reports of security flaws discovered which have been present for years before being detected. If thousands of developers truly were poring over the code, this shouldn't occur.
I won't deny the advantage you state is very real. I will assert that it is an advantage which is rarely exploited in any meaningful fashion.
I think you may not be familiar with how international diplomacy works, as well as giving rather too much credit to Russia.
The U.S. was pretty close to cancelling the summit anyway, for a number of reasons. The different viewpoints on Syria were already straining relations, and the Kremlin's treatment of dissidents has also been awkward to say the least. This was merely the tipping point. Russia, for their part, was not unaware of this, and it's quite likely they did this at least in part to provoke exactly this response so the U.S. would look bad.
Russia, in the meantime, is doing what any other nation would do and is looking to what they can get out of Snowden. They made a coldly impersonal decision and determined the political value of giving him temporary asylum was greater than the political value of turning him over to the U.S. They likely don't care about his well-being, and they are certainly not all that fussed about any kind of ideology or they'd have given him permanent asylum.
Temporary asylum is a big carrot to the outside world who want to believe the U.S. is the baddie and Russia is the goodie, and a massive stick to Snowden. They will pump him as much as they can, and then simply refuse to renew his temporary asylum. Alternately, once everyone's forgotten about it all, they may simply let him stay (but not with permanent asylum) as it really doesn't cost them all that much.
Edward Snowden has been reduced to a diplomatic pawn, and Russia has no qualms about that. Don't forget that about a month ago they sentenced Aleksei Navalny for trumped-up embezzlement charges, after he exposed rampant high level corruption in the Kremlin. Perhaps we could be equally outraged by that injustice?
As an immigrant who's lived in the U.S. for over a decade, my impression is that a huge part of the explanation is due to the sheer size and complexity of the country.
The U.S. comprises a third of a billion people. Those people live in states, each of which has its own government, its own legislature, its own political interests, and an enormous interest in preserving autonomy whilst still being a part of the union. In effect, it is quite similar to the European Union but with the benefit of a history (as a union) that goes back an order of magnitude longer.
Populations of those states range from a few hundred thousand (Wyoming, Vermont) to nearly 40 million (California). The state of Texas is geographically so big that it takes 12 hours to drive across it.
There are dozens of stereotypes about Americans - the brash New Yorker, the backwoodsman from Arkansas, the huntin' and fishin' outdoorsman from Pennsylvania, the surfers from California, and so on and so on. The USA is such a big and diverse country that all those stereotypes are true; you just have to travel far enough to find a group that matches each one.
Consider that in the context of the "free speech" idealism. Americans have grown up knowing that they have the right to say anything, no matter how controversial, and they are passionate about exercising that right. The tenor of conversation is passionate and tends to violently expressed disagreement. This in turn has huge impact on the politicians who wish to be re-elected, and one of the biggest and most important factors is the debate of states' rights.
Well, it'd be pretty easy to verify, as their books are open to the public to examine. For reference, ASCAP claims 88 cents out of every dollar is distributed to artists.
Of course, they are a member run organization, so members could vote for a different board of directors, or even simply not join.
I should switch to decaf because you call politicians names, then proceed to engage in indefensible hyberbole & describe economic sanctions as an act of war?
What on earth are you talking about and however did you get modded up to +5? Economic sanctions may come about in times of war, granted. But to claim they're an act of war is to cheapen and trivialize the horror that is such a conflict as to be named a war.
Economic sanctions can be as minor a thing as import tariffs. They're a part of everyday international business.
People here are getting way too emotional and need to grow up.
no one wants to control people who create things; nobody is trying to force the people who create things to do anything. they just want to remove the control over people who reproduce what other people have created.
Except that it does control the people who create things. People who create things say "here is my invention/creation/concept, and I want the rules governing use and reproduction of that thing to be this and this and this". The creator can, if she chooses, say "go ahead, copy at will, I welcome it". The creator can also say "nope, I want my creation to be constrained by these rules".
Copyright infringers say "stuff what you want, I'm going to do whatever the heck I like". By their actions, they remove any choice from the creator. Remember, if the creator wants his things to be copied, there are plenty of ways to accomplish that. It would be far more fair for consumers to say "I don't like your choice of restriction by copyright, so I'm going to boycott and not acquire any of your stuff", and let the market forces decide if that business model wins or loses.
But of course that would mean you have to give up something you might want, and we can't have self sacrifice on principle, can we?
Be specific. Forgive me - I'm not a U.S. citizen and am not particularly familiar with the constitution.
Do you mean this part?
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Apparently that's the seventh amendment. Think about it.
(Yes, I know it's a side bar. So was your comment.)
Yep. I am wondering if I read the same article. Far from being a ringing endorsement of some buzz phrase (which I'd never heard of), it starts off with a warning about falling for hype and then continues to describe what a software defined data center actually is and finishes with some prognostications about what will be.
I think the main point missing is one that any IT manager will see. (Mind you, I labor under the impression that IT managers, who usually do have some kind of business sense, understand that you can't just buy endless quantities of hard disk and servers on the premise that you'll need it some day. Perhaps I've been lucky, but all the managers I've worked with over the past 20 years certainly got that.) Namely, that unless you are using Amazon's services, you don't have endless arrays of hard disk behind the door and the idea of someone idly clicking a button to format TB of disk at a whim comes crashing back to reality when the next business unit who tries the same thing comes knocking to ask where all the free disk space has gone. I.e. same as always, capacity isn't free, performance isn't automatic, and quotas are a necessary evil.
Summary sounds to me like a typical hatchet job aimed at registering lots of page views by giving a deliberately inflammatory starting point that's designed to get /. readers' blood boiling. And clever them (and dumb me), I've fallen for it as soon as I click "submit".
Thanks - I appreciate that you took the time to make a very rational and fair response. I don't know that I have an answer to your question ("If not the press, who exactly would you tell?"), but at least we both recognize not everything is black and white.
He had no reason to reveal that to the press
Except that the American people have a right to know.
The American people have a right to know...what? I guess you mean everything about the government and any security institutions charged with keeping the country safe. Let's go with that.
What about the Iranian people? Do they have a right to know the same things?
Do the Iraqis? Yemeni? IRA?
If yes, how do you propose to keep the country safe in a manner that says "there are bad people out there and part of a government's responsibility is to protect its country, and here's how we're doing it"?
If no, how do you keep things to just the American people who "have a right to know", as you so eloquently put it?
me pointing out how the majority is often wrong is not me saying "I know best, these should be the rules, everyone listen to me because I'm smarter then you"
Of course it is. If you claim the majority is often wrong, you're saying you are smarter the majority of people because you know what's right and they don't. That's what it means to say "these people are wrong in their opinion/belief". You may claim you're not forcing your beliefs on anyone else, but this is just so much semantic stuff.
Seriously, be honest, and keep it simple. Do you think the majority of people are wrong? Then you're saying you're right and you're smarter than them. It's not any more complicated than that.
But of course, you are a long term thinking genius with extraordinary insight. And not just you, but several hundred other random individuals who are also posting on this web site. Yes, we all are superior, more able to take a broad view of things, and hence develop a better, more rational strategy and philosophy.
Sounds to me like someone is pining for an oligarchy. You (and lots of others posting this kind of nonsense) are smugly arrogant and confident that you know best. Isn't that what everyone was whining about with the NSA 24 hours ago, and praising that kid who took it on himself to leak secrets because he knew best?
I think there are a bunch of people here who wouldn't mind in the least if the government continued to act in exactly the same kind of allegedly disgraceful fashion so long as the government was doing things they liked. Then you'd respond to any complaints by saying that the rabble rousers just weren't intellectual enough to understand what you were doing, and that it's for their own good so they just have to put up with it.
Do you not see the hypocrisy and sheer arrogance of this?
Congratulations, you have been modded +4 Insightful for suggesting a dictatorship should be put in place.
Just curious, how old are you? Mid-40s or older, i.e. old enough to have lived through and have some awareness of the IRA terrorist extravaganza of the seventies?
So, please, let's hear an argument about why revealing this program is harmful. I'd be interested to hear a good one; because so far I haven't even heard bad ones.
Okay. You'll probably think this is a bad one - I'm not sure I'd disagree - but it's an argument. WSJ reported that this program intercepted two plots in 2009, including a plot to bomb the NY subway. Now that we've got that out of the way...
I believe it's the bigger picture that should be considered. Maybe this leak isn't so harmful, but when you sign on to a job like this you say "I won't tell secrets that I'm not supposed to tell". If you can't be trusted with low level secrets, what stops you from throwing out the big ones? Put another way (and you may not agree with this), but some things should be kept secret. There are political considerations, technical considerations, operational considerations, planning considerations. Those all need to be taken into account. Does that mean the people with 25 years of training in making these kinds of assessments will always get it right? No, but they're an awful lot more likely to do so than some random twenty something year old high school dropout with no knowledge of politics, covert operations, or any other inputs.
I'm bemused by the man's claims that he wanted to do this for the common good (i.e. "I got a conscience"). You don't sign on for a job with a secret security agency whose job involves surveillance and trying to capture bad guys without knowing that, gee, sometimes they're gonna do things that aren't black-and-white "we're the goodies, and those guys are the baddies, no middle zone". Just what sort of jobs did he think the NSA did?
This move isn't going to get me to use G+ any more, either, Google.
Are you sure about that?.
I suppose the moral of this story is it doesn't really matter if you use G+ or not; Google, through some sneaky machinations, still are doing everything they can to artificially inflate the number of "users".
I'd like to see a page about me that says, "Here's the information you've provided, and here's the information we're inferring from what we know about you."
Go to your account settings and choose to download your expanded archive. (You can also download an abbreviated version.) If you just click on "settings" it's at the bottom of the "General" settings, which is the default page - nice and easy to find.
Be aware it takes quite some time to collect all the info for the expanded archive - they tell you to continue browsing and they'll email you when it's done. Have fun seeing your account history. I'm quite sure it won't show what they're inferring, but then neither will Google's data access.
28 gun deaths per day is a steep price for our society's inability to distinguish between anecdotes and statistics.
28 gun deaths per day is a cheap price for our society's continued freedom from government tyranny. That's what the second amendment is about. Not self defense, not hunting, not skeet shooting. Protection from tyranny. It's a recognized right for the people to possess the means to revolt should they choose.
This is possibly one of the saddest comments I have ever read in my 14, 15, whatever it's been, years on Slashdot.
Forget the politics. Forget the anger. Forget the "rah-rah-rah" of the NRA or second amendment. For purposes of this, I don't even care about the second amendment.
28 gun deaths per day is a cheap price for... whatever comes next is meaningless.
I think you have lost a sense of proportion. I think you have been horribly desensitized, or perhaps you just make these comments ad hoc without actually having the maturity and strength to think what your words actually mean in the real, physical world. Please, just think about 28 people in your office being killed today.
And another 28 tomorrow.
Look at the people walking by you. This isn't abstract, these are real lives that you dismiss in such a cavalier manner.
Ten thousand people by the time we reach New Year's day 2014.
Twenty thousand people in the next two years.
More than a hundred thousand people in the next decade.
And one of the most depressing parts is you're an Anonymous Coward and probably won't even see this comment, and most likely won't think of these real lives that you so cheaply throw away for even a second.
If you believe so strongly that this is worth it and the second amendment means what you say it means, sign up for the national guard and put yourself at the lethal end of someone else's gun.
May God protect you that none of the ten thousand people who will be murdered in 2013 is someone you know.
No kidding. I started off with the "standout items" list.
Number 1 - gigantic tablet. Nothing standout or breakthrough, just quite large version of existing stuff, vague assertions that "it might be sort of useful in the enterprise?". They couldn't even think why it might be useful.
Number 2 - LG has lots of cool television enhancements on the way such as improved interfaces and voice command response. But they didn't show that. Just a rather big screen that's too expensive for anyone to buy.
Number 3 - a little hovering thing. Nothing new, nothing improved, except it's got extended battery life.
I gave up at this point.
Only in the narrowest possible definition.
I have to agree with this. My company is not very big - less than 1000 FTEs - but we have a ton of PhD staff. There are six other companies in the U.S. who do what we do and every one of them also has a bunch of doctorates. If you came to us with a PhD, it'd be a definite bonus, rather than making us nervous.
Why the difference? No, we're not a software company like those mentioned by robbo, but we are nonetheless highly technical (in the EE field, as it happens) and value people with expertise in technical fields. EE primarily, but also computer science and math, as well as other disciplines.
I'd be looking at companies that have a technical discipline as their core business in some form.