If I read the article right, it wasn't as simple as that. The people who opened the phising email were regular employees with little or no access to valuable data. The hackers used these accounts as a springboard to get to the employees who do have access to the good stuff. Once you control a few accounts, phishing suddenly becomes real easy... Using something other than Windows doesn't really help anymore at that point.
I do agree with sandboxing: many companies still take a "walled garden" approach to security: they wall off the perimeter and trust everyone who is inside. Even super sensitive data is often protected only by a second walled garden inside the first one, failing to address the issue of compromised trusted accounts.
But everyone thinks they got what it takes. Same with real estate agents, the papers like to pull up the guy who manages to sell the million dollar luxury apartments and get fat commissions but he's the exception, not the rule.
You made quite an insightful statement, but while this particular bit might hold true for financial analysts (or real estate people), it doesn't for general managers and CEOs. I've seen enough of those who have failed miserably at their previous job but managed to blame failure on "circumstances", then land the next even bigger job.
The problem with engineers working outside of finance, "solving the world's problems" as the article puts it, get paid bugger all because they do not get credit for the impact of their work. You are right about rewards depending almost completely on your sphere of influence; if an engineer comes up with something good, his or her success will usually be reflected only in the perceived success of their department, and in the end will benefit only the manager/VP running that department.
Did you buy your router to store and process data? No, you bought it to move data from one place to another. That is probably the abstraction level of "process" and "store" used to define this law. Maybe the law is wrong. But remember that judges in criminal cases are not there to make "fair" or "just" rulings; they are there to apply the law as it stands. It is up to legislators and politicians to codify what is fair and just into those laws.
This is exactly what this Dutch court case is about. The judges did not rule that breaking into someone's WiFi is now allowed; they ruled that it is not a criminal offence defined as "computervredebreuk" (lit. "violating a computer's peace"). It is still subject to civil proceedings. Although... interestingly, in 2008 a Dutch judge ruled that using someone else's bandwidth isn't theft because bandwidth and data "aren't goods". Maybe this jurisprudence adds up to WiFi hacking being legal, after all.
It's not the judges who are idiots though, as some here claim. From a normal user's perspective, routers only transmit data, they do not store and process it, even if it does do some storage and processing internally. That user's perspective is probably how Dutch law defines data processing and storage, which simply means the law is worded wrong or incomplete if it does alllow Wifi hacking. I do remember that the definition for "computervredebreuk" used to be a lot less narrow... in those days, you technically could be jailed for changing the settings on your sister's alarm clock without her permission. Which is probably why they changed the law at some point.
This is in Australia... what are the rules for underage drinking there? Oddly, in the USA they let you drive a car and buy a gun years before you are to be trusted with alcohol, but many European countries allow alcohol at 18 or even 16 (here in NL it's 16 for beers and alcopop, 18 for hard liquor). Then again, we can't get guns. Perhaps it's an either-or thing...
I was cleaning the basement the other day and came across an old compass of mine. It got me thinking, I wonder if future generations are even going to be able to operate the things.
Check with people in your own age group; you may be disappointed with the small number of people in that group who are able to use a compass or find their way unassisted with minimal aids. The number of such people is most probably declining with each new generation, but it wasn't very high to begin with.
A GPS is superior to a map but does not replace it, and becoming reliant on a GPS to the point where I do not consult or bring a paper map is foolhardy.
And this is exactly why society or the economy won't come crashing down if GPS fails. In most cases we can and will switch to less convenient but more reliable tech.
If you live in a glass house you don't walk around naked unless you want the neighbors to see your naked body.
In other words, if you're somehow forced to move to a glass house, you pretty much lose the option of going around naked. People are rightly scared about that. There is the other side of the coin of total transparency: it may well be that society does not stop caring about some of the stuff hitherto done privately or anonymously; but continue to judge it harshly or even prosecute it.
For example: the online political debates are much more open, frank and no-holds-barred than before; not just because of the instant nature of online debates, but also because people can partake anonymously in most cases. If we're forced to post under our own names, then even the things that we are not afraid to admit to or mention in the company of friends or colleagues can affect our jobs or our lives once it is committed online for the world to see. There are already countless examples of people losing their jobs or getting in trouble over more or less innocent online posts. This means that the online debate will likely become much more reserved, sedate, and "safe". Personally I think that's a big loss.
This seems a bit overly strict and probably not what the people writing the law really had in mind.
Oh? Over here in NL, our previous Minister of Justice proposed a "2 party consent" law (thankfully it never saw the ligh of day). Of course he tried to sell it as a law meant to protect citizens (from what exactly?), but this particular case of preventing citizens from policing state officials with recordings in evidence is exactly what he had in mind, and I am willing to bet your legislators are not any different from ours. Else, they would have included a clause to exclude government representatives on duty.
On a nonsensical note, I think its cool if they park my car in a "elevator thingy"hahha
You mean the car park in iRobot where cars are rotated vertically so they can be stacked closely together? I wondered about that thing. It seems like a great idea... until you realise you left grandma's priceless collection of bone china in the boot.
CFLs have come a long way, and most of such bulbs I've bought have performed as expected, with the right colour. But LEDs? Sure, there are good ones out there. If you can find them. But more often than not, they suck. Common problems include:
- light output is often less than advertised
- lights advertised as 'white' have a distinctive blueish tint
- lights advertised as 'warm' often emit a sickening yellow-green light instead
- spotlight beams are too narrow or too wide
Even A-brand LED lights have these issues, and there are variations between different production runs of the same type of bulb. At €20 or more per bulb, I'm not all that willing to just buy one and see if it will perform as expected.
It's fully understandable. The problem is that Sony is in too many different types of busines, which leads to them wanting to control too much. A manufacturer of DVD players has little incentive to enforce region coding. But if that same company also publishes DVDs, you can be certain that their players will be region locked. If they are also into content distribution, you can be sure that they'll find ways to block their hardware from downloading from competing services. If they make good money off accessories, they will block aftermarket sales by using proprietary standards and locking these down with patents. That is what Sony is like, and it's why I will no longer buy from them.
Sadly many more companies are heading that way. Amazon with their Kindle, for instance. And Apple: they used to be a company making good software and hardware, but they got into bed with the mobile carriers, and their latest rule changes around App store content has made it clear that they no longer see efficient content distribution merely as a selling point for their hardware and a nice extra revenue stream, it is now considered to be their core business, and something to be tightly controlled. All at the expense of customer choice and convenience.
Geophysicists and seismic interpreters sometimes use large screens like these to collaborate on data analysis, even making use of stereo 3D at times. Being able to slice and recolor data, look at stuff from different angles, etc in real time increases accuracy and greatly speeds up things. I've seen such a "3d theater" used for interpretation of seismic data; the first time it was used they more than doubly recouped the (considerable) expense of building it, just in saved workhours of some very expensive experts.
I can imagine that the ability to move the data around more easily (rather than have some facilitator do it), and being able to "break out" and work on more than one data view at the same time will speed things up even further.
It's been said that Gandhi was extraordinarily lucky with the opponents he had. The Russians (just to name an example) would have wasted no time do drag him behind the barn and shoot him, even without a show trial.
True, and I'm glad Indians are getting a lot of good, high-tech jobs (it's not all call centers). But they are worried about the race to the bottom too, and rightly so. A few of the Indians I worked with had their work outsourced to Calcutta, as Bangalore wages were getting too high (they kept their jobs and were put on a different assignment, though). But the biggest worry is China, as companies have found you can outsource to there even cheaper. When one of my clients went looking for a company to outsource IT work to, they only considered candidates with a presence in both India and China...
Several parents asked why on earth this project won, and the answer given was "The kid came from a deprived background, which affects his self esteem. The award is to make him feel better about himself, in the hope that he'll do better and strive harder".
A bit like the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Obama, ha ha.
But jokes aside, I am a firm believer in "let the best man win", which means awarding prizes for notable achievements, and not as an encouragement (unless it's an encouragement to continue an already succesful undertaking). By all means encourage every kid who takes part, though.
Not so great when that goldmine of data gets stolen (and it will...). Fingerprints, licenses... sounds like good stuff for identity thieves. It would be a lot better if the bars ID everyone, but don't store the data and only compare it against the national database of known troublemakers.
Slashdot Mirror
If I read the article right, it wasn't as simple as that. The people who opened the phising email were regular employees with little or no access to valuable data. The hackers used these accounts as a springboard to get to the employees who do have access to the good stuff. Once you control a few accounts, phishing suddenly becomes real easy... Using something other than Windows doesn't really help anymore at that point.
I do agree with sandboxing: many companies still take a "walled garden" approach to security: they wall off the perimeter and trust everyone who is inside. Even super sensitive data is often protected only by a second walled garden inside the first one, failing to address the issue of compromised trusted accounts.
But everyone thinks they got what it takes. Same with real estate agents, the papers like to pull up the guy who manages to sell the million dollar luxury apartments and get fat commissions but he's the exception, not the rule.
You made quite an insightful statement, but while this particular bit might hold true for financial analysts (or real estate people), it doesn't for general managers and CEOs. I've seen enough of those who have failed miserably at their previous job but managed to blame failure on "circumstances", then land the next even bigger job.
The problem with engineers working outside of finance, "solving the world's problems" as the article puts it, get paid bugger all because they do not get credit for the impact of their work. You are right about rewards depending almost completely on your sphere of influence; if an engineer comes up with something good, his or her success will usually be reflected only in the perceived success of their department, and in the end will benefit only the manager/VP running that department.
How many romantic comedies have been written about that thing? Still, I loved Wouk's "Don't stop the carnival" so I might pick that one up as well.
Did you buy your router to store and process data? No, you bought it to move data from one place to another. That is probably the abstraction level of "process" and "store" used to define this law. Maybe the law is wrong. But remember that judges in criminal cases are not there to make "fair" or "just" rulings; they are there to apply the law as it stands. It is up to legislators and politicians to codify what is fair and just into those laws.
This is exactly what this Dutch court case is about. The judges did not rule that breaking into someone's WiFi is now allowed; they ruled that it is not a criminal offence defined as "computervredebreuk" (lit. "violating a computer's peace"). It is still subject to civil proceedings. Although... interestingly, in 2008 a Dutch judge ruled that using someone else's bandwidth isn't theft because bandwidth and data "aren't goods". Maybe this jurisprudence adds up to WiFi hacking being legal, after all.
It's not the judges who are idiots though, as some here claim. From a normal user's perspective, routers only transmit data, they do not store and process it, even if it does do some storage and processing internally. That user's perspective is probably how Dutch law defines data processing and storage, which simply means the law is worded wrong or incomplete if it does alllow Wifi hacking. I do remember that the definition for "computervredebreuk" used to be a lot less narrow... in those days, you technically could be jailed for changing the settings on your sister's alarm clock without her permission. Which is probably why they changed the law at some point.
This is in Australia... what are the rules for underage drinking there? Oddly, in the USA they let you drive a car and buy a gun years before you are to be trusted with alcohol, but many European countries allow alcohol at 18 or even 16 (here in NL it's 16 for beers and alcopop, 18 for hard liquor). Then again, we can't get guns. Perhaps it's an either-or thing...
I was cleaning the basement the other day and came across an old compass of mine. It got me thinking, I wonder if future generations are even going to be able to operate the things.
Check with people in your own age group; you may be disappointed with the small number of people in that group who are able to use a compass or find their way unassisted with minimal aids. The number of such people is most probably declining with each new generation, but it wasn't very high to begin with.
A GPS is superior to a map but does not replace it, and becoming reliant on a GPS to the point where I do not consult or bring a paper map is foolhardy.
And this is exactly why society or the economy won't come crashing down if GPS fails. In most cases we can and will switch to less convenient but more reliable tech.
Maybe because the content of that speech ought to matter more than the name of the author.
If you live in a glass house you don't walk around naked unless you want the neighbors to see your naked body.
In other words, if you're somehow forced to move to a glass house, you pretty much lose the option of going around naked. People are rightly scared about that. There is the other side of the coin of total transparency: it may well be that society does not stop caring about some of the stuff hitherto done privately or anonymously; but continue to judge it harshly or even prosecute it.
For example: the online political debates are much more open, frank and no-holds-barred than before; not just because of the instant nature of online debates, but also because people can partake anonymously in most cases. If we're forced to post under our own names, then even the things that we are not afraid to admit to or mention in the company of friends or colleagues can affect our jobs or our lives once it is committed online for the world to see. There are already countless examples of people losing their jobs or getting in trouble over more or less innocent online posts. This means that the online debate will likely become much more reserved, sedate, and "safe". Personally I think that's a big loss.
This seems a bit overly strict and probably not what the people writing the law really had in mind.
Oh? Over here in NL, our previous Minister of Justice proposed a "2 party consent" law (thankfully it never saw the ligh of day). Of course he tried to sell it as a law meant to protect citizens (from what exactly?), but this particular case of preventing citizens from policing state officials with recordings in evidence is exactly what he had in mind, and I am willing to bet your legislators are not any different from ours. Else, they would have included a clause to exclude government representatives on duty.
On a nonsensical note, I think its cool if they park my car in a "elevator thingy"hahha
You mean the car park in iRobot where cars are rotated vertically so they can be stacked closely together? I wondered about that thing. It seems like a great idea... until you realise you left grandma's priceless collection of bone china in the boot.
You mean Storm Troopers?
CFLs have come a long way, and most of such bulbs I've bought have performed as expected, with the right colour. But LEDs? Sure, there are good ones out there. If you can find them. But more often than not, they suck. Common problems include:
- light output is often less than advertised
- lights advertised as 'white' have a distinctive blueish tint
- lights advertised as 'warm' often emit a sickening yellow-green light instead
- spotlight beams are too narrow or too wide
Even A-brand LED lights have these issues, and there are variations between different production runs of the same type of bulb. At €20 or more per bulb, I'm not all that willing to just buy one and see if it will perform as expected.
It's fully understandable. The problem is that Sony is in too many different types of busines, which leads to them wanting to control too much. A manufacturer of DVD players has little incentive to enforce region coding. But if that same company also publishes DVDs, you can be certain that their players will be region locked. If they are also into content distribution, you can be sure that they'll find ways to block their hardware from downloading from competing services. If they make good money off accessories, they will block aftermarket sales by using proprietary standards and locking these down with patents. That is what Sony is like, and it's why I will no longer buy from them.
Sadly many more companies are heading that way. Amazon with their Kindle, for instance. And Apple: they used to be a company making good software and hardware, but they got into bed with the mobile carriers, and their latest rule changes around App store content has made it clear that they no longer see efficient content distribution merely as a selling point for their hardware and a nice extra revenue stream, it is now considered to be their core business, and something to be tightly controlled. All at the expense of customer choice and convenience.
Fine, we'll just have the 'bot march inside, locate the CEO*, drag him outside, and administer a savage beating. That'll be just as good.
(* I'll settle for the head of their Legal dept).
Sadly, our western, basement dwelling nerdiosity doesn't begin to comprehend the potential of courage in such a situation.
Fixed that for you.
That's a Dutch ship, using the Goalkeeper antimissile system rather than the Phalanx.
Geophysicists and seismic interpreters sometimes use large screens like these to collaborate on data analysis, even making use of stereo 3D at times. Being able to slice and recolor data, look at stuff from different angles, etc in real time increases accuracy and greatly speeds up things. I've seen such a "3d theater" used for interpretation of seismic data; the first time it was used they more than doubly recouped the (considerable) expense of building it, just in saved workhours of some very expensive experts.
I can imagine that the ability to move the data around more easily (rather than have some facilitator do it), and being able to "break out" and work on more than one data view at the same time will speed things up even further.
Very poetic, this made my day.
It's been said that Gandhi was extraordinarily lucky with the opponents he had. The Russians (just to name an example) would have wasted no time do drag him behind the barn and shoot him, even without a show trial.
True, and I'm glad Indians are getting a lot of good, high-tech jobs (it's not all call centers). But they are worried about the race to the bottom too, and rightly so. A few of the Indians I worked with had their work outsourced to Calcutta, as Bangalore wages were getting too high (they kept their jobs and were put on a different assignment, though). But the biggest worry is China, as companies have found you can outsource to there even cheaper. When one of my clients went looking for a company to outsource IT work to, they only considered candidates with a presence in both India and China...
Several parents asked why on earth this project won, and the answer given was "The kid came from a deprived background, which affects his self esteem. The award is to make him feel better about himself, in the hope that he'll do better and strive harder".
A bit like the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Obama, ha ha.
But jokes aside, I am a firm believer in "let the best man win", which means awarding prizes for notable achievements, and not as an encouragement (unless it's an encouragement to continue an already succesful undertaking). By all means encourage every kid who takes part, though.
Yay free market! Praise be to Rand!
Free market != no oversight. Even Rand suggested as much in her books.
Not so great when that goldmine of data gets stolen (and it will...). Fingerprints, licenses... sounds like good stuff for identity thieves. It would be a lot better if the bars ID everyone, but don't store the data and only compare it against the national database of known troublemakers.