Yes, actually, they do. If you've read the Operation Payback manifesto and some of the media interviews, that's exactly what they claim, and the supercilious and smug attitude annoys the hell out of me.
No, what makes them hypocrites is not the difference between an individual and a government. Rather, they make themselves hypocrites by placing themselves on a high pedestal in (i) demanding complete transparency (yes, they do), and (ii) comparing themselves to civil rights protesters who actually had the guts to stand up for something. These asses aren't; they are explicitly refusing to have the courage of their convictions, instead hiding behind naive and hoped-for anonymity. That's sickening. That's a slap in the face to real heroes, like Rosa Parks, Desmond Tutu, and Kate Sheppard.
Actually, no, I don't. Shocked? As others have mentioned, none of that is a surprise. Much of it is reprehensible, but essentially all that's been done is to weaken especially fragile diplomatic relations. That is a bad thing.
I wish people would recognize that international relations are delicate and the real world is not black and white. Is it easier if I rephrase it - "the goodies are weaker and the baddies are stronger"? Yes, I know sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but it seems to be about all some people understand.
You're either being deliberately provocative, deliberately obtuse, or just plain puerile.
These attacks are being executed by a group of sheep who give interviews to news outlets and throw out handy unthinking catch phrases like "information wants to be free" and "we demand complete transparency of information" while failing to see the hypocrisy in saying "shh, no, you can't use my name, I'm too scared". They're cowards, vandals, and hypocrites, and what annoys me the most is they claim to speak for me even if I don't realize or accept it.
They like to play up their image by pretending to be supremely skillful hackers when all they're doing is blithely and naively granting control of their computers to a faceless name on the web who says they'll only use that control to attack the evil corporations.
Yes, I'm annoyed, and it really surprises me I haven't seen more condemnation here. I posted on an earlier story that the average man in the street would see this, rightly or wrongly, as being cyber-terrorism which is directly linked with WikiLeaks and would see that as a negative against the overall message (whatever the hell that is; even that hasn't been communicated in a succinct and coherent manner that's made it out to the public). And lo and behold, that's exactly what was being put forth on all the news shows over this weekend.
Bunch of idiots. If you believe this is a valuable thing that WikiLeaks has done (and I don't), then they've done a better job at destroying the public acceptance of any legitimate leaks than any official US retribution.
How many outages for Amazon over the past 12 months, and what aggregate duration?
How many outages for Google (GMail, News, etc.) over the past 12 months, and what aggregate duration?
If you want to take it further, figure out what the % uptime comes out to. Seriously, this is a technical web site. I'd expect people here to understand the difference between 100% uptime and reality.
Exactly. I've been struck by the irony and childishness when reading interviews with the participants in the Anonymous attacks. They spew forth the usual talking points of "information wants to be free" and "we're for complete transparency of all information, of everything", acting very high and mighty - and then are too cowardly to provide their names. (Probably scared their mums will find out and ground them...)
You're conflating too many ideas into one simplistic inference. There's the concept of a group of people engaging in cyber-terrorism with little compunction, the concept of whether MasterCard is right to take this action, and the concept of whether WikiLeaks has done something illegal. You're talking about me sharing the opinion that WikiLeaks is doing something illegal, when in fact there are multiple concepts there that I may or may not agree with.
Answer to your question: it seems to me that WikiLeaks has done something illegal by publishing documents which are secret and which the U.S. laws state may not be made available to the general public. Now you can debate whether this should this be illegal, and why should the government complain if they have nothing to hide, and what harm does it do, and so on and so forth, but so far as I can tell it seems like it was an illegal action.
If you (and serviscope_minor above your post) read my comment and don't skip bits, you'll note I said "If the average person on the street learns of this, they see...". This is the common perception. My post doesn't actually state this is what I believe. (That said, and I hope this does not place too much of a strain on your parsing abilities, I do agree with that opinion.)
So far as your comment Nixon is concerned, I can't give an opinion on that. I am not an American; I grew up in a country that quite simply was hardly impacted at all by U.S. politics. I was not old enough when that occurred to pay much attention to or understand the issues.
Of course it does, by association. Claiming otherwise is naive; pretending it's a viewpoint that can be blamed on Fox news and their listeners is simply childish.
If the average person on the street learns of this, they see a group of people who have few qualms against engaging in cyber-terrorism against a major financial company that is quite rightly distancing itself from Wikileaks because of some very illegal activities. You may clamor against this viewpoint all you wish and engage in some lovely logical debates, but it doesn't change the fact that this is how most people will see it. Slashdot readers and posters are not representative of the public at large.
I'm not sure quite why this got marked insightful.
Isn't the whole point that the government is contending there is something to hide, hence the big fuss? Look at it for a moment from the government's point of view:
there is something to hide
therefore the exposure of these cables into a public arena is a big problem
therefore from their point of view if you want to get a job with them (possibly being exposed to secrets) and it gets turned up that you deliberately went about accessing these documents then it's going to look unwise on your part.
From that point of view, it seems a fairly judicious warning to float to someone who may be interested in such a sensitive position.
Yep. And in case it hasn't been mentioned in this thread already, Microsoft Small Business Server is designed for this kind of scenario. Here, pricing to get you started (server + CAL packs). If it has the services you need then it's a great way to get started with user authentication, e-mail, web services, etc. And it's in line with the parent's recommendation of KISS.
There may be some Linux equivalent, which would be important depending on what your comfort zone is (do you come from a Linux or Windows background?), but that's not my forte, sorry.
Yes, actually, it does imply that. Americano is giving some calm and rational responses to your rants which are borderline incoherent.
Email works, texts work, SMS and MMS are fine.
So did black & white television. So did TN5250 terminals. Would you prefer a blanket ban on trying to do something better once some arbitrary level of "that's good" is reached? I've posted in other Slashdot threads the reasons why Facebook is useful to me, so you can look them up if you are interested.
Reading through all these comments about how awful Facebook is makes me think:
people need to learn how to use the controls that Americano describes to block messages they don't want to see (e.g. all Farmville messages); and
people need to understand that Facebook doesn't force you to add friends.
There are countless complaints around the vacuousness of how people act on Facebook, or how dreadfully tedious it is to treat it as a popularity contest. If you have friends who spam their Farmville stats, you can either block the application messages, block their messages, or - maybe - reconsider if you want to have them as a Facebook friend. The second part is the one thing that truly puzzles me about the reactions here. Don't people have any self-control? Facebook is a great tool for me, but I don't treat it as a popularity contest. I add people I know and want to stay in touch with. You don't have to play Farmville. I tried it to see what everyone was raving about, got bored, and stopped. Not hard, really.
I'm with Americano - if it's really that painful, that difficult, and that horrendous to think about Facebook, then don't create an account, and skip over all the Slashdot stories that discuss it. If there's something of value to add to a discussion, fair enough, but why waste your time bleating on about how you're so hip and cool that you don't even know where it is or what the Facebook front page looks like? What a futile waste of time...
Not this tired theme again. We get it - you think it's cool to despise Facebook, a kind of geek goth cred. Whatever.
For millions of people it's a way to keep in touch with friends and family which is easier and more effective than e-mail or other means, and that has value. For millions more, it's a relatively harmless diversion.
Agreed. I followed the link back to your original post from June where you said it'd been a while since you worked this much with Linux, and it sounds like you've already got your hands full. Seriously, I applaud your desire to show some initiative (and I wish you worked here for that!), but be very careful you don't bite off more than you can chew.
There are several posts here already asking you why you want to do this, considering the sunk costs in Exchange/Windows 7, so I won't repeat that lot. But if you're on Windows 7, that would seem to indicate you've only recently upgraded, and now you're talking about doing another migration. Think about the reaction from management to that, and have a really good justification if you do go that way. Lesson #1 in business technology case studies is your options always should include the "do nothing" approach, and consider the pros and cons. There'll be some disadvantages, of course, but it's a useful exercise in figuring out what the advantages are that your recommended course of action needs to beat.
The one other question I had which I didn't see answered in your June story was how big the company is, and how big a help desk you have. You're now talking about a significant increase in the technologies that your help desk will have to support. That's not easy or cheap. (Or are you the help desk? In which case, see my first paragraph about it sounds like you've got your hands full.)
I really don't want to sound negative, but these stories come up on/. from time to time and the comments always fly fairly thick and fast asking "why". Given the enthusiasm prevalent on this site for Linux and Gmail and so forth, that should hold some weight.
The blog post you link doesn't mention that Excel did it because it had to be compatible with Lotus 1-2-3, which introduced the bug.
I realized your post (and that blog post you link) is debating whether the ISO standard should've reflected this in the first place. But intimating it's Microsoft's fault is disingenuous.
Yes, and actually I agree with jabberw0k. There's simply no call for that kind of language; it added nothing to the points being made, and in fact distracted the poster from what had been a reasonably cogent argument up until that point.
If you reread the AC post, he/she makes several good points with some substance in the first four paragraphs - and then just lets rip with the profanity in the fifth paragraph, which, coincidentally, is where the entire post dissolves into a bunch of assertions with little to no rationale provided.
"Javascript is horrible." Oh, okay, then - why? "PHP is just as dreadful." Really, you don't say? Justify this assertion, please. "Every web developer who doesn't fit my narrow criteria is automatically rubbish." Glad you are still giving us some cogent points, then.
For what it's worth, I actually agree that "working" is different from "working well". One of my day jobs is as a member sitting on an interoperability panel at the moment, and you very quickly realize that something can meet the base level of "it does what it says" and fail miserably to be compatible and interoperable with other products.
But I don't need to descend to toilet language to explain this.
This is true. And (ignoring the tool being discussed in this story for a moment) if your friends do choose to post things about you, they can (and presumably will) do so even if you are not on Facebook.
However -
if you are on Facebook and have friended that person, you'll have a better chance of seeing it. (Keep an eye open for notifications from that friend listing "47 new photos uploaded in album wild night in Amsterdam last weekend" and if you know you were there - browse the album.) At least then you know about it and can send them a message politely asking them to desist.
If you are actually tagged in a photo (which would make it easier for someone searching for material to actually find something with your name attached), then you'll get notified, but my understanding is you can remove the tag and that person then loses the ability to tag you in photos posted in the future.
I'm not saying this is a recommendation for using Facebook; just pointing out that you may find it easier to police the use of your visage if you do use Facebook.
My status - I use Facebook because it's a great tool for me to keep in touch with family and friends all over the world. And I set my privacy settings appropriately - it's really not that hard.
Another time I delayed buying a Nintendo Gamecube because I thought the original color was hokey (looked like a toy). Also not many games worth playing. Then they released the black version about a year later, which I liked a lot better, so I decided to buy it.
You know, I truly can't tell if you're serious. You delayed buying a toy because the color made it look...like...a...toy...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, actually, they do. If you've read the Operation Payback manifesto and some of the media interviews, that's exactly what they claim, and the supercilious and smug attitude annoys the hell out of me.
I think this is a pretty good read.
No, what makes them hypocrites is not the difference between an individual and a government. Rather, they make themselves hypocrites by placing themselves on a high pedestal in (i) demanding complete transparency (yes, they do), and (ii) comparing themselves to civil rights protesters who actually had the guts to stand up for something. These asses aren't; they are explicitly refusing to have the courage of their convictions, instead hiding behind naive and hoped-for anonymity. That's sickening. That's a slap in the face to real heroes, like Rosa Parks, Desmond Tutu, and Kate Sheppard.
Actually, no, I don't. Shocked? As others have mentioned, none of that is a surprise. Much of it is reprehensible, but essentially all that's been done is to weaken especially fragile diplomatic relations. That is a bad thing.
I wish people would recognize that international relations are delicate and the real world is not black and white. Is it easier if I rephrase it - "the goodies are weaker and the baddies are stronger"? Yes, I know sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but it seems to be about all some people understand.
You're either being deliberately provocative, deliberately obtuse, or just plain puerile.
These attacks are being executed by a group of sheep who give interviews to news outlets and throw out handy unthinking catch phrases like "information wants to be free" and "we demand complete transparency of information" while failing to see the hypocrisy in saying "shh, no, you can't use my name, I'm too scared". They're cowards, vandals, and hypocrites, and what annoys me the most is they claim to speak for me even if I don't realize or accept it.
They like to play up their image by pretending to be supremely skillful hackers when all they're doing is blithely and naively granting control of their computers to a faceless name on the web who says they'll only use that control to attack the evil corporations.
Yes, I'm annoyed, and it really surprises me I haven't seen more condemnation here. I posted on an earlier story that the average man in the street would see this, rightly or wrongly, as being cyber-terrorism which is directly linked with WikiLeaks and would see that as a negative against the overall message (whatever the hell that is; even that hasn't been communicated in a succinct and coherent manner that's made it out to the public). And lo and behold, that's exactly what was being put forth on all the news shows over this weekend.
Bunch of idiots. If you believe this is a valuable thing that WikiLeaks has done (and I don't), then they've done a better job at destroying the public acceptance of any legitimate leaks than any official US retribution.
How many outages for Amazon over the past 12 months, and what aggregate duration?
How many outages for Google (GMail, News, etc.) over the past 12 months, and what aggregate duration?
If you want to take it further, figure out what the % uptime comes out to. Seriously, this is a technical web site. I'd expect people here to understand the difference between 100% uptime and reality.
Exactly. I've been struck by the irony and childishness when reading interviews with the participants in the Anonymous attacks. They spew forth the usual talking points of "information wants to be free" and "we're for complete transparency of all information, of everything", acting very high and mighty - and then are too cowardly to provide their names. (Probably scared their mums will find out and ground them...)
Right, because stooping to being a vigilante is always a good idea.
You're conflating too many ideas into one simplistic inference. There's the concept of a group of people engaging in cyber-terrorism with little compunction, the concept of whether MasterCard is right to take this action, and the concept of whether WikiLeaks has done something illegal. You're talking about me sharing the opinion that WikiLeaks is doing something illegal, when in fact there are multiple concepts there that I may or may not agree with.
Answer to your question: it seems to me that WikiLeaks has done something illegal by publishing documents which are secret and which the U.S. laws state may not be made available to the general public. Now you can debate whether this should this be illegal, and why should the government complain if they have nothing to hide, and what harm does it do, and so on and so forth, but so far as I can tell it seems like it was an illegal action.
who are you working for, Fifth Collumnist (sic)
That's rather amusing, in this context. I like it. Was it deliberate?
There's lots of non-US-ians who can handle stuff like this.
Me too. I'm just not that interested in Nixon.
If you (and serviscope_minor above your post) read my comment and don't skip bits, you'll note I said "If the average person on the street learns of this, they see...". This is the common perception. My post doesn't actually state this is what I believe. (That said, and I hope this does not place too much of a strain on your parsing abilities, I do agree with that opinion.)
So far as your comment Nixon is concerned, I can't give an opinion on that. I am not an American; I grew up in a country that quite simply was hardly impacted at all by U.S. politics. I was not old enough when that occurred to pay much attention to or understand the issues.
...getting passwords and DNA samples is, actually, a real crime...
Okay, I give in. Where is this discussed or mentioned in the referenced article?
Wow, seriously wish I could mod you up. See also this comment for some more rationale that makes sense.
Of course it does, by association. Claiming otherwise is naive; pretending it's a viewpoint that can be blamed on Fox news and their listeners is simply childish.
If the average person on the street learns of this, they see a group of people who have few qualms against engaging in cyber-terrorism against a major financial company that is quite rightly distancing itself from Wikileaks because of some very illegal activities. You may clamor against this viewpoint all you wish and engage in some lovely logical debates, but it doesn't change the fact that this is how most people will see it. Slashdot readers and posters are not representative of the public at large.
I'm not sure quite why this got marked insightful.
Isn't the whole point that the government is contending there is something to hide, hence the big fuss? Look at it for a moment from the government's point of view:
From that point of view, it seems a fairly judicious warning to float to someone who may be interested in such a sensitive position.
Proprietary software only gives you the "low level of paid support included in price" and "higher level of paid support at extra cost".
Really? Where's the "pay here" button for http://support.microsoft.com?
Yep. And in case it hasn't been mentioned in this thread already, Microsoft Small Business Server is designed for this kind of scenario. Here, pricing to get you started (server + CAL packs). If it has the services you need then it's a great way to get started with user authentication, e-mail, web services, etc. And it's in line with the parent's recommendation of KISS.
There may be some Linux equivalent, which would be important depending on what your comfort zone is (do you come from a Linux or Windows background?), but that's not my forte, sorry.
Yes, actually, it does imply that. Americano is giving some calm and rational responses to your rants which are borderline incoherent.
Email works, texts work, SMS and MMS are fine.
So did black & white television. So did TN5250 terminals. Would you prefer a blanket ban on trying to do something better once some arbitrary level of "that's good" is reached? I've posted in other Slashdot threads the reasons why Facebook is useful to me, so you can look them up if you are interested.
Reading through all these comments about how awful Facebook is makes me think:
There are countless complaints around the vacuousness of how people act on Facebook, or how dreadfully tedious it is to treat it as a popularity contest. If you have friends who spam their Farmville stats, you can either block the application messages, block their messages, or - maybe - reconsider if you want to have them as a Facebook friend. The second part is the one thing that truly puzzles me about the reactions here. Don't people have any self-control? Facebook is a great tool for me, but I don't treat it as a popularity contest. I add people I know and want to stay in touch with. You don't have to play Farmville. I tried it to see what everyone was raving about, got bored, and stopped. Not hard, really.
I'm with Americano - if it's really that painful, that difficult, and that horrendous to think about Facebook, then don't create an account, and skip over all the Slashdot stories that discuss it. If there's something of value to add to a discussion, fair enough, but why waste your time bleating on about how you're so hip and cool that you don't even know where it is or what the Facebook front page looks like? What a futile waste of time...
Not this tired theme again. We get it - you think it's cool to despise Facebook, a kind of geek goth cred. Whatever.
For millions of people it's a way to keep in touch with friends and family which is easier and more effective than e-mail or other means, and that has value. For millions more, it's a relatively harmless diversion.
Deal with it.
Agreed. I followed the link back to your original post from June where you said it'd been a while since you worked this much with Linux, and it sounds like you've already got your hands full. Seriously, I applaud your desire to show some initiative (and I wish you worked here for that!), but be very careful you don't bite off more than you can chew.
There are several posts here already asking you why you want to do this, considering the sunk costs in Exchange/Windows 7, so I won't repeat that lot. But if you're on Windows 7, that would seem to indicate you've only recently upgraded, and now you're talking about doing another migration. Think about the reaction from management to that, and have a really good justification if you do go that way. Lesson #1 in business technology case studies is your options always should include the "do nothing" approach, and consider the pros and cons. There'll be some disadvantages, of course, but it's a useful exercise in figuring out what the advantages are that your recommended course of action needs to beat.
The one other question I had which I didn't see answered in your June story was how big the company is, and how big a help desk you have. You're now talking about a significant increase in the technologies that your help desk will have to support. That's not easy or cheap. (Or are you the help desk? In which case, see my first paragraph about it sounds like you've got your hands full.)
I really don't want to sound negative, but these stories come up on /. from time to time and the comments always fly fairly thick and fast asking "why". Given the enthusiasm prevalent on this site for Linux and Gmail and so forth, that should hold some weight.
If you really don't care, then why are you commenting on the article about it, rather than merely moving on to the next Slashdot story?
The blog post you link doesn't mention that Excel did it because it had to be compatible with Lotus 1-2-3, which introduced the bug.
I realized your post (and that blog post you link) is debating whether the ISO standard should've reflected this in the first place. But intimating it's Microsoft's fault is disingenuous.
Same here, in my Yahoo spam box. And it looked like a scam e-mail, too...
Yes, and actually I agree with jabberw0k. There's simply no call for that kind of language; it added nothing to the points being made, and in fact distracted the poster from what had been a reasonably cogent argument up until that point.
If you reread the AC post, he/she makes several good points with some substance in the first four paragraphs - and then just lets rip with the profanity in the fifth paragraph, which, coincidentally, is where the entire post dissolves into a bunch of assertions with little to no rationale provided.
"Javascript is horrible." Oh, okay, then - why? "PHP is just as dreadful." Really, you don't say? Justify this assertion, please. "Every web developer who doesn't fit my narrow criteria is automatically rubbish." Glad you are still giving us some cogent points, then.
For what it's worth, I actually agree that "working" is different from "working well". One of my day jobs is as a member sitting on an interoperability panel at the moment, and you very quickly realize that something can meet the base level of "it does what it says" and fail miserably to be compatible and interoperable with other products.
But I don't need to descend to toilet language to explain this.
This is true. And (ignoring the tool being discussed in this story for a moment) if your friends do choose to post things about you, they can (and presumably will) do so even if you are not on Facebook.
However -
I'm not saying this is a recommendation for using Facebook; just pointing out that you may find it easier to police the use of your visage if you do use Facebook.
My status - I use Facebook because it's a great tool for me to keep in touch with family and friends all over the world. And I set my privacy settings appropriately - it's really not that hard.
Another time I delayed buying a Nintendo Gamecube because I thought the original color was hokey (looked like a toy). Also not many games worth playing. Then they released the black version about a year later, which I liked a lot better, so I decided to buy it.
You know, I truly can't tell if you're serious. You delayed buying a toy because the color made it look...like...a...toy...
NIST Smart Grid Interoperability Panel Cyber Security Working Group.