I enjoy coding, and getting paid to code, and if someone over in Department 19987-H is doing unethical things, first of all I probably won't even know about it, and second of all I won't really care. I am doing nothing to further the unethical behavior, and if I leave I really doubt that the behavior will stop -- so why should I risk my livelihood to make a political statement that will be listened to by fellow geeks, but which will be largely ignored by the company itself?
If, OTOH, I am personally asked to write missile guidance software for this nice neutron-bomb-tipped ICBM that Department 19987-H has just developed, I will refuse. If I can personally stop unethical behavior through action, I will do so.
If you don't like what the US gov't does (CIA/NSA/IRS/etc.), what do you do? Please don't answer with the thought-stopping "Love it or leave it!" I've written my reps about the 10th amendment, and they seem genuinely clueless about it.
(Netscape, GNN, CompuServe were already dying when we bought them. CompuServe is a relative success, GNN couldn't be saved, [...]
Huh, I didn't know GNN was bought by AOL, they advertised it as a spinoff (i remember beta-testing it, got a few free months of unlimited dialup back when that was worth something)... But looking at AOL's corporate timeline, there it is,
06/01/95 and 10/30/95. That was one oddball browser it came with, too.
And what's to say they couldn't do the same thing with RH?
I don't think RH is "done", operating systems are not a totally solved problem (vs. playing music, which is).
AOL/TW didn't get to be a huge megalithic company by purchasing niche companies and destroying them. If there's one thing that you can be sure of, one thing that AOL/TW can be honest about, it's that they're in business to make a profit. If they perform an action, it is in some way related to increasing profits or the potential of increasing profits later on down the road. People give capitalism a bad name, but it does guarantee predictability: companies will usually do what is in their best interests first and everything else second. And if I worked at that company or was an investor in same, that's exactly what I'd expect.
That's what I expect, too. I think AC is looking out for #1 here, as well: for some reason, he believes the good fortune of AOL/TW is not aligned with his own (in whatever way he feels like measuring it), to the extent that he'd be better off finding another job than cooperating with them.
Alan does a disservice and shows a bit of immaturity by making the statement he did. It is not principles he's sticking to by saying this, it's politics, the same thing he condemns other for "on the other side of the fence".
Since when are principles and politics different? I don't condemn other people for making decisions politically, and if I ran a business, I would be quite uncomfortable with someone who had an "I despise everything you stand for, but as long as your money's green..." attitude.
I understand that businesses exist to make money, but as a customer and employee, I am under no obligation to assist them.
Show me how they could implement that into an opensource os...
Trusted hardware, and a binary-only userland program that talks to it encrypted (through a trivial open-source driver). It may even be possible to do this in a non-"security through obscurity" fashion, but it doesn't really matter, because it'll be illegal to circumvent it.
WinAMP and ICQ were bought by AOL/TW and prosper today. Sure, Netscape has tanked, but the argument could be made that they were damaged goods to begin with.
AOL didn't kill WinAMP because it was a finshed product long before they got their grubby hands on it. It plays the mp3s; it has pretty skins and a plug-in interface; what more do you want? They could have spend a grand total of $0 on WinAMP and just keep letting the download sites ship off the same old version for all anyone cares.
Maybe for set-top boxes, or appliance computers, where the hardware, software, OS, and access are one package deal. Wouldn't make much sense otherwise... who would use it? I would imagine most AOL users are happy with windows.
So, Alan where is your problem?
Don't like opensource OS coders who dare to make money?
Not to put words into his mouth, but maybe he doesn't want to work for AOL/TW because they're pushing for all the laws/technical solutions to not allow people to do what they want with their data and equipment (DMCA, SSSCA, SDMI, etc...)
That and the fact that AOL is nothing but dorks. I mean, ya gotta have some self respect.
Incorrect. Bin Laden was a threat to national security, and he was in Afghanistan. Now that you've bombed the crap out of Afghanistan and Bin Laden is nowhere to be found, can you seriously tell me that the action you took has increased your prospects for safety at home?
I'll say it. He no longer has a country where he can operate openly with the explicit support of the local government. He'll have to move to a country that the US can put more pressure on, and it's been made quite clear that harboring Osama bin Laden will not be a smart idea.
It's also interfered with the major training operations taking place in afghanistan.
I hope you then don't turn around and ask in the face of acts like Sept 11th ask stupid questions like "Why has this happened?"
We all know why, a bunch of rich Saudis felt that the US was interfering with their desire to overthrow the current corrupt regime and install their own corrupt regime, so they cook up a plot to damage the relationship between the US and arab governments.
I am sure that the pledge of joining the Waffen SS was just as heroic. And I am sure that Mohammad Atta also considered himself "morally straight". It is unfortunately quite possible to be "morally straight", honest, and loyal to one's friends while serving the interests of the dishonest, greedy, and evil.
Exactly. The soldiers are doing the right thing, following the orders given to them by their superiors: the democratically elected leaders of the United States. The blame, if any, for things they do wrong rests squarely on the shoulders of their superiors: a populace which refuses to take responsibility for its politicians.
A when the army is ordered to do the wrong thing and does it, it's bad. When the army starts doing whatever the hell it wants, that's "dangerous to your constitution".
Would you feel the same way about a movie from the point of view of a WWII German squad? A pure-hearted group of boys fights the American invaders? I would object to that because context matters. Unless it was done just right, our sense of respect and compassion for the boys could naturally be transferred to the cause that they are fighting for. Or worse, the Germans could be shown fighting French people so that American anti-French biases could be strengthened.
What, like "Das Boot"? After watching the directors cut, I just empathized with the characters so much, and now I'm a Nazi and have the uncontrollable urge to disrupt British arms shippments. Such a shame.
I think the important distinction is whether the women and children are willing participants (I don't know). If someone wants to use themselves as a human shield, then that is their right, although any sympathy for they should be taken with a grain of salt in that case, since their entire goal is to screw with your emotions... IMHO, a willing human sheild should be treated as a combatant. (easy for me to say, I'm not the one that has to deal with the guilt trip, I know)
OTOH, if they are being forced to protect combatants with their bodies, then it most certainly is cowardace, even murderous. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say any "culture" that thinks it's OK to use another human being as a piece of emotionally charged peice of armor is cowardly and evil.
BTW, it's pretty obvious they're afraid to die, too, or they wouldn't be interested in human sheilds in the first place...
It's not a security problem. It's a privacy problem.
And barely one at that. It's not like web browsing is anonymous; the server knows who you are, and there's nothing you can do to stop it from telling anyone else.
Pretending there is such a thing as anonymity in web browsing is just delusion.
I wonder why this same mistake comes up time after time in sci-fi.
Having superior raw intelligence doesn't mean anything performancewise. Yeah, you might be able to carry out a perfect logical deduction in a nanosecond but that doesn't make you creative or give you the intuititive ability us humans have to skip over irrelevant facts.
Exactly... people see an exponential graph, and try to extrapolate the point where the line becomes vertical, but it's just a trick of the eye... the "singularity" is always just around the corner, and never shows up (unless you log-plot, in which case it's obvious that growth is more or less constant.) Sure, we have ever more incredible CPU resources at hand, but the (interesting) problems grow exponentially (or nearly so). Things are moving as slowly/quickly as they ever were...
And as for AI, have there been any advancements in that field that aren't:
a) a parlor trick like ELIZA,
b) happening "Real Soon Now", or
a) a plain hoax?
Very good points, but on the optimistic side, maybe fighting with robots (on both sides) will "re-sensitize" people to real human death... Perhaps it will make possible the idea that willfully killing anyone (not just non-combatants) is a "war crime"
The powerful still get to have the wars they always seem to be starting, without the ordinary man being sent off to die for their entertainment.
The problem is that they aren't that effective. The turnaround time from intel collection to a conventional bombing run is usally far too long. You need to have bombers in the area, bombs in the arsenal, and generally have a static target that won't move from the time of intel collection to bomb run; generally pointless for taking out personnel; much more effective for equipment.
It appears that the millitary has shortened the turnaround time (article describing U.S. infantry using laser designators to hit enemy troops in realtime) for bombing runs.
you could more or less pin-point any area under the satellite within a few momements of getting the intel. Throw enough of them above the earth in a geo-synchronous orbit and you could cover all the inhabited portions of the planet. Yes, yes, I'm completing ignoring the political ramifications of a space based assassination system
It seems like aiming the laser that accurately (within the meter or so you'd have to hit to assasinate someone with it) would be pretty difficult... Besides, how often do you know someone's exact location without having someone present who could just shoot them? (ignoring the unmanned drone situation, which, like you said, was fixed)
It's great how all you non college 'whiz' kids who were out to save the world with all your programming skills all of the sudden realize that you aren't as good and you are replaceable.
As opposed to being 4+ years older, a whole lot poorer, and replaceable.
Anybody looking for a fun new project? Figure out what data these bastards send to/from your computer and screw with it. Make them think everyone is an 68 year old female BeOS user who spends most of her disposable income on bondage gear and Ted Neugent albums.
That ought to lead to some entertaining pop-up ads.
> b) written in Java, which means it can't do
> anything too evil (read: anything platform-
> specific).
(call this phydrive.java, then `javac phydrive.java && java phydrive`)
--->8---
import java.io.*;
class phydrive {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("\\\\.\\C:");
FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("diskbytes");
byte[] data = new byte[4096];
fis.read(data);
fos.write(data);
}
}
--->8---
On Win2000, as an Administrator, This gives me the first 4k of my C: drive. I imagine write works as well, but I don't have a breakable box lying around at the moment... Wouldn't be surprised if the linux equivalent works, too.
Java code you run out of a local file (as opposed to java you run in your browser) is assumed safe (although you still get niceities like bounds checking, unless you have a jre that supports disabling that)... so remember to read tha source and don't trust those.jar-s.
Slashdot Mirror
I enjoy coding, and getting paid to code, and if someone over in Department 19987-H is doing unethical things, first of all I probably won't even know about it, and second of all I won't really care. I am doing nothing to further the unethical behavior, and if I leave I really doubt that the behavior will stop -- so why should I risk my livelihood to make a political statement that will be listened to by fellow geeks, but which will be largely ignored by the company itself?
If, OTOH, I am personally asked to write missile guidance software for this nice neutron-bomb-tipped ICBM that Department 19987-H has just developed, I will refuse. If I can personally stop unethical behavior through action, I will do so.
aah, the Banality of Evil.
--
Benjamin Coates
If you don't like what the US gov't does (CIA/NSA/IRS/etc.), what do you do? Please don't answer with the thought-stopping "Love it or leave it!" I've written my reps about the 10th amendment, and they seem genuinely clueless about it.
/.
Run for office.
Get mentioned on
--
Benjamin Coates
(Try not to lose to CowboyNeal)
Well, somebody mod somebody down already!
In the name of tradition, I'm going to have to suggest this post's parent.
--
Benjamin Coates
(Netscape, GNN, CompuServe were already dying when we bought them. CompuServe is a relative success, GNN couldn't be saved, [...]
Huh, I didn't know GNN was bought by AOL, they advertised it as a spinoff (i remember beta-testing it, got a few free months of unlimited dialup back when that was worth something)... But looking at AOL's corporate timeline, there it is,
06/01/95 and 10/30/95. That was one oddball browser it came with, too.
--
Benjamin Coates
And what's to say they couldn't do the same thing with RH?
I don't think RH is "done", operating systems are not a totally solved problem (vs. playing music, which is).
AOL/TW didn't get to be a huge megalithic company by purchasing niche companies and destroying them. If there's one thing that you can be sure of, one thing that AOL/TW can be honest about, it's that they're in business to make a profit. If they perform an action, it is in some way related to increasing profits or the potential of increasing profits later on down the road. People give capitalism a bad name, but it does guarantee predictability: companies will usually do what is in their best interests first and everything else second. And if I worked at that company or was an investor in same, that's exactly what I'd expect.
That's what I expect, too. I think AC is looking out for #1 here, as well: for some reason, he believes the good fortune of AOL/TW is not aligned with his own (in whatever way he feels like measuring it), to the extent that he'd be better off finding another job than cooperating with them.
Alan does a disservice and shows a bit of immaturity by making the statement he did. It is not principles he's sticking to by saying this, it's politics, the same thing he condemns other for "on the other side of the fence".
Since when are principles and politics different? I don't condemn other people for making decisions politically, and if I ran a business, I would be quite uncomfortable with someone who had an "I despise everything you stand for, but as long as your money's green..." attitude.
I understand that businesses exist to make money, but as a customer and employee, I am under no obligation to assist them.
--
Benjamin Coates
Show me how they could implement that into an opensource os...
Trusted hardware, and a binary-only userland program that talks to it encrypted (through a trivial open-source driver). It may even be possible to do this in a non-"security through obscurity" fashion, but it doesn't really matter, because it'll be illegal to circumvent it.
--
Benjamin Coates
WinAMP and ICQ were bought by AOL/TW and prosper today. Sure, Netscape has tanked, but the argument could be made that they were damaged goods to begin with.
AOL didn't kill WinAMP because it was a finshed product long before they got their grubby hands on it. It plays the mp3s; it has pretty skins and a plug-in interface; what more do you want? They could have spend a grand total of $0 on WinAMP and just keep letting the download sites ship off the same old version for all anyone cares.
--
Benjamin Coates
Maybe for set-top boxes, or appliance computers, where the hardware, software, OS, and access are one package deal. Wouldn't make much sense otherwise... who would use it? I would imagine most AOL users are happy with windows.
--
Benjamin Coates
So, Alan where is your problem?
Don't like opensource OS coders who dare to make money?
Not to put words into his mouth, but maybe he doesn't want to work for AOL/TW because they're pushing for all the laws/technical solutions to not allow people to do what they want with their data and equipment (DMCA, SSSCA, SDMI, etc...)
That and the fact that AOL is nothing but dorks. I mean, ya gotta have some self respect.
--
Benjamin Coates
Employees are not something that you can guarantee to purchase in a corporate buyout.
Unless they're being paid mostly in stock, in which case you have them by the options, so to speak...
--
Benjamin Coates
Incorrect. Bin Laden was a threat to national security, and he was in Afghanistan. Now that you've bombed the crap out of Afghanistan and Bin Laden is nowhere to be found, can you seriously tell me that the action you took has increased your prospects for safety at home?
I'll say it. He no longer has a country where he can operate openly with the explicit support of the local government. He'll have to move to a country that the US can put more pressure on, and it's been made quite clear that harboring Osama bin Laden will not be a smart idea.
It's also interfered with the major training operations taking place in afghanistan.
I hope you then don't turn around and ask in the face of acts like Sept 11th ask stupid questions like "Why has this happened?"
We all know why, a bunch of rich Saudis felt that the US was interfering with their desire to overthrow the current corrupt regime and install their own corrupt regime, so they cook up a plot to damage the relationship between the US and arab governments.
--
Benjamin Coates
I am sure that the pledge of joining the Waffen SS was just as heroic. And I am sure that Mohammad Atta also considered himself "morally straight". It is unfortunately quite possible to be "morally straight", honest, and loyal to one's friends while serving the interests of the dishonest, greedy, and evil.
Exactly. The soldiers are doing the right thing, following the orders given to them by their superiors: the democratically elected leaders of the United States. The blame, if any, for things they do wrong rests squarely on the shoulders of their superiors: a populace which refuses to take responsibility for its politicians.
A when the army is ordered to do the wrong thing and does it, it's bad. When the army starts doing whatever the hell it wants, that's "dangerous to your constitution".
--
Benjamin Coates
Would you feel the same way about a movie from the point of view of a WWII German squad? A pure-hearted group of boys fights the American invaders? I would object to that because context matters. Unless it was done just right, our sense of respect and compassion for the boys could naturally be transferred to the cause that they are fighting for. Or worse, the Germans could be shown fighting French people so that American anti-French biases could be strengthened.
What, like "Das Boot"? After watching the directors cut, I just empathized with the characters so much, and now I'm a Nazi and have the uncontrollable urge to disrupt British arms shippments. Such a shame.
--
Benjamin Coates
I would say that at least as many innocent Afghan people died as died in 9/11.
So this is the new standard of morality? Whoever loses more civilians is the good guy?
Ugh.
--
Benjamin Coates
I think the important distinction is whether the women and children are willing participants (I don't know). If someone wants to use themselves as a human shield, then that is their right, although any sympathy for they should be taken with a grain of salt in that case, since their entire goal is to screw with your emotions... IMHO, a willing human sheild should be treated as a combatant. (easy for me to say, I'm not the one that has to deal with the guilt trip, I know)
OTOH, if they are being forced to protect combatants with their bodies, then it most certainly is cowardace, even murderous. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say any "culture" that thinks it's OK to use another human being as a piece of emotionally charged peice of armor is cowardly and evil.
BTW, it's pretty obvious they're afraid to die, too, or they wouldn't be interested in human sheilds in the first place...
--
Benjamin Coates
It's not a security problem. It's a privacy problem.
And barely one at that. It's not like web browsing is anonymous; the server knows who you are, and there's nothing you can do to stop it from telling anyone else.
Pretending there is such a thing as anonymity in web browsing is just delusion.
--
Benjamin Coates
Or even through napster's own messaging system, if an outside program is capaple of spoofing it or scripting the client.
--
Benjamin Coates
I wonder why this same mistake comes up time after time in sci-fi.
Having superior raw intelligence doesn't mean anything performancewise. Yeah, you might be able to carry out a perfect logical deduction in a nanosecond but that doesn't make you creative or give you the intuititive ability us humans have to skip over irrelevant facts.
Exactly... people see an exponential graph, and try to extrapolate the point where the line becomes vertical, but it's just a trick of the eye... the "singularity" is always just around the corner, and never shows up (unless you log-plot, in which case it's obvious that growth is more or less constant.) Sure, we have ever more incredible CPU resources at hand, but the (interesting) problems grow exponentially (or nearly so). Things are moving as slowly/quickly as they ever were...
And as for AI, have there been any advancements in that field that aren't:
a) a parlor trick like ELIZA,
b) happening "Real Soon Now", or
a) a plain hoax?
--
Benjamin Coates
When my computer starts manufacturing robots with which to take over the world, I'll simply turn it off.
That's why i don't trust these newfangled ATX power supplies. "Soft Power" my ass!
...it'll be a cold day in hell when i let my computer control the big red switch...
--
Benjamin Coates
Very good points, but on the optimistic side, maybe fighting with robots (on both sides) will "re-sensitize" people to real human death... Perhaps it will make possible the idea that willfully killing anyone (not just non-combatants) is a "war crime"
The powerful still get to have the wars they always seem to be starting, without the ordinary man being sent off to die for their entertainment.
--
Benjamin Coates
The problem is that they aren't that effective. The turnaround time from intel collection to a conventional bombing run is usally far too long. You need to have bombers in the area, bombs in the arsenal, and generally have a static target that won't move from the time of intel collection to bomb run; generally pointless for taking out personnel; much more effective for equipment.
It appears that the millitary has shortened the turnaround time (article describing U.S. infantry using laser designators to hit enemy troops in realtime) for bombing runs.
you could more or less pin-point any area under the satellite within a few momements of getting the intel. Throw enough of them above the earth in a geo-synchronous orbit and you could cover all the inhabited portions of the planet. Yes, yes, I'm completing ignoring the political ramifications of a space based assassination system
It seems like aiming the laser that accurately (within the meter or so you'd have to hit to assasinate someone with it) would be pretty difficult... Besides, how often do you know someone's exact location without having someone present who could just shoot them? (ignoring the unmanned drone situation, which, like you said, was fixed)
--
Benjamin Coates
I thought New Orleans' problem was not so much rising oceans as sinking land...
--
Benjamin Coates
It's great how all you non college 'whiz' kids who were out to save the world with all your programming skills all of the sudden realize that you aren't as good and you are replaceable.
As opposed to being 4+ years older, a whole lot poorer, and replaceable.
--
Benjamin Coates
Anybody looking for a fun new project? Figure out what data these bastards send to/from your computer and screw with it. Make them think everyone is an 68 year old female BeOS user who spends most of her disposable income on bondage gear and Ted Neugent albums.
That ought to lead to some entertaining pop-up ads.
--
Benjamin Coates
> b) written in Java, which means it can't do
.jar-s.
> anything too evil (read: anything platform-
> specific).
(call this phydrive.java, then `javac phydrive.java && java phydrive`)
--->8---
import java.io.*;
class phydrive {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("\\\\.\\C:");
FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("diskbytes");
byte[] data = new byte[4096];
fis.read(data);
fos.write(data);
}
}
--->8---
On Win2000, as an Administrator, This gives me the first 4k of my C: drive. I imagine write works as well, but I don't have a breakable box lying around at the moment... Wouldn't be surprised if the linux equivalent works, too.
Java code you run out of a local file (as opposed to java you run in your browser) is assumed safe (although you still get niceities like bounds checking, unless you have a jre that supports disabling that)... so remember to read tha source and don't trust those
--
Benjamin Coates