Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but he died recently. Sadly this means Hollywood will only be releasing romantic comedies and musicals from now on.
In other news, Gillette's share price has skyrocketed...
To "Discovery" something is easy: you just make a documentary about it that's too dumbed-down for people who like documentaries but still too boring for those who don't, and add lots of unnecessary and repetitive CG animation.
NASA has been in business a hell of a lot longer than ESA
Time isn't really relevant. Zero fatal accidents in 33 years is still techically a better record than 3 in 50 (NASA was founded in '58). Besides, NASA's two worse accidents were in the last 22 years, so even if we only look at the period both agencies have been in operation and eliminate Apollo 1, NASA still has 14 fatalities to ESA's none.
That might be meaningful if ESA actually launched manned missions, but they don't. The comparison is fundamentally flawed; not to be taken seriously or argued against logically.
and has a far better track record than the Russians.
Oh, really? Soyuz has been flying a "hell of a lot longer" than the shuttle, had four fatalities between 1967 and 1971 (when the shuttle was still on the drawing board) and none since. Even allowing for the fact that fewer people have flown on Soyuz it still has a marginally lower fatality rate, and there are no reported flight crew fatalities from other manned Russian space missions.
NASA certainly has a better record of safety for it's ground crews than the Russians (even omitting Nedelin disaster, which was an ICBM test, not a space mission proper), but in this category ESA wins again: 2 fatalities versus NASA's 8 (or 2 versus 3 since 1975). Statistically speaking it's more dangerous to work for Scaled Composites than ESA.
Apollo 1 was a Ford Pinto, and Challenger was a Ford Crown Victoria. Hmm, probably not a good idea to buy a Ford, either.
Ah, now we get into the reason ESA doesn't do manned missions. Imagine a rocket designed by the Spanish, made with British parts (Lucas, of course) by unionised French workers under kindly German supervision, with mission planning by the Italians and a budget controlled by the Belgians. Would you want a seat on top of that stack? I'll take the Ford, thanks. Or better yet, the Lada.
Hey, I didn't bring up honeypots, all I did was point out the single most obvious reason why it wasn't one. But to defend BiggerIsBetter's logic, I can see sound reasoning behind putting a honeypot (or terminologically distinct LAN equivalent, if one exists) inside a school network: kids go poking around, so give the little buggers something harmless to play with and keep tabs on it.
I'm not so sure the network wasn't secured, since TFA implies he used an ill-gotten password, but there's so much else suspect about the official story that I really don't know what to believe.
You sound like you know what you're talking about.
Um, what...no, I don't know anything about hacking. In fact, I don't even know what a computer is. You can't prove a thing! I demand to see my lawyer!!!
That depends; if he was being honest, then yes, I'd agree. But if the blackmail allegation is true then I wouldn't let him anywhere near sensitive systems until he's had a good hard look at himself.
I currently have, sitting on my desk, a stack of preliminary reports on various cancer-related research seeking approval for full scale studies; you see, it just so happens I'm the consumer advocate on a major cancer advisory committee (a role I sought out after my father had a severe adverse reaction to an experimental chemotherapy procedure). I talk to researchers, pharma reps and doctors, and when I have a query I refer it to a professor of oncology at a nearby public hospital. On the contrary, it is nowhere near as bad as you think: hundreds of drugs are approved every year and only a handful turn out to have unknown risks, and the number where findings of adverse effects were actively suppressed is even lower.
And I can assure you, I'm not guessing about how things work. I know former researchers who have been locked out of their chosen field because they blew the whistle. Competent people with strong ethics, completely wasted, because certain idiots can't get down off their high horses long enough to realise that pissing on fires doesn't fix the systemic problems or protect those we do want in the field.
If there is a conspiracy to defraud customers, that is understandable and acceptable for some of the conspirators?
No, but blackmail is coercion, not conspiracy, so I'll rephrase your question to accurately reflect what I wrote, minus the spin:
If there is a conspiracy to defraud customers, that is understandable and acceptable for those coerced into silence?
And I believe I already answered that. Don't put words into my mouth and you won't have to ask the same thing over and over.
Look, fact is I'm now convinced you're a drooling ideologue who can't accurately comprehend what's being said, so there's no point in persuing this conversation further.
Agreed. Any sysadmin worth their salt knows that kids are dangerous to a network; a school is massively parallel danger, and a school district is a Beowulf cluster of massively parallel danger.
Like most moral questions, attempting reduce it to simple black-and-white terms makes a nice angry argument, but doesn't go anywhere towards solving the problem because it ignores the nuances inherent in reality.
Certainly, they could take the moral high ground and break whatever NDAs they've signed, but then even if they escape prosecution for that they'd still end up being black-balled by the industry. That way we end up with all the honest, competent scientists flipping burgers, leaving only the clowns and charlatans doing the research...does that sound like it would be better or worse than the current situation? I'll tell you: instead of these hidden reports that prove corporate liability, we'd have nothing but fraudulent* bits of paper saying everything's just fine.
So no, I don't think researchers should be held responsible for decisions they can't control that they're effectively being blackmailed to hush-up (if they're doctoring the results, fair enough, nail 'em to the wall). What I do think is that the current system, where pharmaceutical companies can perform research and then suppress the results with no fear of independent review, is the problem, and until something is done about that it's going to be a continuation of this very old game of trying to prove who knew what when after the event (which has proven inadequate in bringing back the dead or preventing more deaths and injuries).
*And it would take an independent repeat of the research to prove they are fraudulent, so don't expect speedy resolution that way.
The article I linked to explains exactly how they found him: they looked at the originating IP, which led them back to their own computer lab, and from there it was trivial to determine who was logged on to that machine at that time. He could have created a new email account just for this, but it would still be traceable without an anonymous proxy.
Ah, but then it wouldn't have been anonymous. Besides, from this article:
"He sent an e-mail to his principal saying, 'Look what I have,'" DeFeciani said. "That was at 1 [p.m.] Tuesday, and within two hours we knew who he was."
As bad with computers as teachers are (in my experience, anyway), looking at the "From" field would have taken about two seconds. Then again, it's plausible that it really did take the IT people nearly two hours to find it...
The astounding part is that the same IT department that left the security hole open succeeded in tracking the kid down. I don't think anyone would have seen that coming.
Read Dangerous Deception - Hiding the Evidence of Adverse Drug Effects in the New England Journal of Medicine.
I'd suggest you re-read it: the scientists found a problem with Vioxx, but Merck's management suppressed the results. That isn't incompetence or fraud on the part of the researchers, but it is a strong argument against companies directly funding clinical trials (which any sane person would see as a conflict of interest).
It is my observation that fraud and incompetence is widespread in what is called "science".
Then you don't read the research, only the exposés of corporate fraud. "10 years on: drug works as intended with no unexpected effects" is not a headline you're ever going to read because it isn't sensational enough, but it's actually more common.
Practicing motor coordination improves response times.
While that's true, studies of the effectiveness of physiotherapy indicate that the older a person is, the harder it gets to improve motor skills. This study, while not large enough to be conclusive evidence of anything, does point to a mechanism to explain this effect worthy of further investigation. And I'd agree that avid gamers could slew the results, but with a larger sample size and adequate screening the error could be minimised; it isn't hard to find people in any age group who don't play video games. I'm sure the average research neurobiologist would be far more proficient at eliminating confounding factors, since it is a critical part of the job...
The only thing the article proves is small scale preliminary studies are less common than bad science journalism.
Slashdot Mirror
Although dinosaurs did not go completely extinct. Some survived and evolved into birds.
Ahem.
And I thought cats were disgusting...
Who the hell names a programing language COCO.
Nobody that I can think of.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but he died recently. Sadly this means Hollywood will only be releasing romantic comedies and musicals from now on.
In other news, Gillette's share price has skyrocketed...
To "Discovery" something is easy: you just make a documentary about it that's too dumbed-down for people who like documentaries but still too boring for those who don't, and add lots of unnecessary and repetitive CG animation.
... I'm not so sure people are going to get out of the way of a truck blaring C+C Music Factory
Open fire on it, maybe...
A crack Al-Qaida dive team is being trained in Afghanistan even as we speak. Of course, they're in for a rude shock when they see an ocean...
I've always wanted to drive a Saab. Lousy fuel economy, but it'd be nice to have local air superiority with something reverse park.
NASA has been in business a hell of a lot longer than ESA
Time isn't really relevant. Zero fatal accidents in 33 years is still techically a better record than 3 in 50 (NASA was founded in '58). Besides, NASA's two worse accidents were in the last 22 years, so even if we only look at the period both agencies have been in operation and eliminate Apollo 1, NASA still has 14 fatalities to ESA's none.
That might be meaningful if ESA actually launched manned missions, but they don't. The comparison is fundamentally flawed; not to be taken seriously or argued against logically.
and has a far better track record than the Russians.
Oh, really? Soyuz has been flying a "hell of a lot longer" than the shuttle, had four fatalities between 1967 and 1971 (when the shuttle was still on the drawing board) and none since. Even allowing for the fact that fewer people have flown on Soyuz it still has a marginally lower fatality rate, and there are no reported flight crew fatalities from other manned Russian space missions.
NASA certainly has a better record of safety for it's ground crews than the Russians (even omitting Nedelin disaster, which was an ICBM test, not a space mission proper), but in this category ESA wins again: 2 fatalities versus NASA's 8 (or 2 versus 3 since 1975). Statistically speaking it's more dangerous to work for Scaled Composites than ESA.
Apollo 1 was a Ford Pinto, and Challenger was a Ford Crown Victoria. Hmm, probably not a good idea to buy a Ford, either.
Ah, now we get into the reason ESA doesn't do manned missions. Imagine a rocket designed by the Spanish, made with British parts (Lucas, of course) by unionised French workers under kindly German supervision, with mission planning by the Italians and a budget controlled by the Belgians. Would you want a seat on top of that stack? I'll take the Ford, thanks. Or better yet, the Lada.
NASA may have a better record with robots, but ESA has never lost a single astronaut. Admittedly that is through lack of trying...
I've heard of Robinson and Cole, but none of the firms are Vault top 100
Don't worry, the RIAA will just buy them a chart position. Wouldn't be the first time...
My good Anonymous Coward,
Hey, I didn't bring up honeypots, all I did was point out the single most obvious reason why it wasn't one. But to defend BiggerIsBetter's logic, I can see sound reasoning behind putting a honeypot (or terminologically distinct LAN equivalent, if one exists) inside a school network: kids go poking around, so give the little buggers something harmless to play with and keep tabs on it.
I'm not so sure the network wasn't secured, since TFA implies he used an ill-gotten password, but there's so much else suspect about the official story that I really don't know what to believe.
You sound like you know what you're talking about.
Um, what...no, I don't know anything about hacking. In fact, I don't even know what a computer is. You can't prove a thing! I demand to see my lawyer!!!
That depends; if he was being honest, then yes, I'd agree. But if the blackmail allegation is true then I wouldn't let him anywhere near sensitive systems until he's had a good hard look at himself.
You are just guessing, I think.
I currently have, sitting on my desk, a stack of preliminary reports on various cancer-related research seeking approval for full scale studies; you see, it just so happens I'm the consumer advocate on a major cancer advisory committee (a role I sought out after my father had a severe adverse reaction to an experimental chemotherapy procedure). I talk to researchers, pharma reps and doctors, and when I have a query I refer it to a professor of oncology at a nearby public hospital. On the contrary, it is nowhere near as bad as you think: hundreds of drugs are approved every year and only a handful turn out to have unknown risks, and the number where findings of adverse effects were actively suppressed is even lower.
And I can assure you, I'm not guessing about how things work. I know former researchers who have been locked out of their chosen field because they blew the whistle. Competent people with strong ethics, completely wasted, because certain idiots can't get down off their high horses long enough to realise that pissing on fires doesn't fix the systemic problems or protect those we do want in the field.
If there is a conspiracy to defraud customers, that is understandable and acceptable for some of the conspirators?
No, but blackmail is coercion, not conspiracy, so I'll rephrase your question to accurately reflect what I wrote, minus the spin:
If there is a conspiracy to defraud customers, that is understandable and acceptable for those coerced into silence?
And I believe I already answered that. Don't put words into my mouth and you won't have to ask the same thing over and over.
Look, fact is I'm now convinced you're a drooling ideologue who can't accurately comprehend what's being said, so there's no point in persuing this conversation further.
The sysadmin should be the one on trial.
Agreed. Any sysadmin worth their salt knows that kids are dangerous to a network; a school is massively parallel danger, and a school district is a Beowulf cluster of massively parallel danger.
Like most moral questions, attempting reduce it to simple black-and-white terms makes a nice angry argument, but doesn't go anywhere towards solving the problem because it ignores the nuances inherent in reality.
Certainly, they could take the moral high ground and break whatever NDAs they've signed, but then even if they escape prosecution for that they'd still end up being black-balled by the industry. That way we end up with all the honest, competent scientists flipping burgers, leaving only the clowns and charlatans doing the research...does that sound like it would be better or worse than the current situation? I'll tell you: instead of these hidden reports that prove corporate liability, we'd have nothing but fraudulent* bits of paper saying everything's just fine.
So no, I don't think researchers should be held responsible for decisions they can't control that they're effectively being blackmailed to hush-up (if they're doctoring the results, fair enough, nail 'em to the wall). What I do think is that the current system, where pharmaceutical companies can perform research and then suppress the results with no fear of independent review, is the problem, and until something is done about that it's going to be a continuation of this very old game of trying to prove who knew what when after the event (which has proven inadequate in bringing back the dead or preventing more deaths and injuries).
*And it would take an independent repeat of the research to prove they are fraudulent, so don't expect speedy resolution that way.
I can see the bumper sticker now: "I'm a drunken, thieving rapist, and I vote!"
The article I linked to explains exactly how they found him: they looked at the originating IP, which led them back to their own computer lab, and from there it was trivial to determine who was logged on to that machine at that time. He could have created a new email account just for this, but it would still be traceable without an anonymous proxy.
If you're baiting your honeypot with real data, you're doing it wrong.
Ah, but then it wouldn't have been anonymous. Besides, from this article:
As bad with computers as teachers are (in my experience, anyway), looking at the "From" field would have taken about two seconds. Then again, it's plausible that it really did take the IT people nearly two hours to find it...
The astounding part is that the same IT department that left the security hole open succeeded in tracking the kid down. I don't think anyone would have seen that coming.
Read Dangerous Deception - Hiding the Evidence of Adverse Drug Effects in the New England Journal of Medicine.
I'd suggest you re-read it: the scientists found a problem with Vioxx, but Merck's management suppressed the results. That isn't incompetence or fraud on the part of the researchers, but it is a strong argument against companies directly funding clinical trials (which any sane person would see as a conflict of interest).
It is my observation that fraud and incompetence is widespread in what is called "science".
Then you don't read the research, only the exposés of corporate fraud. "10 years on: drug works as intended with no unexpected effects" is not a headline you're ever going to read because it isn't sensational enough, but it's actually more common.
Practicing motor coordination improves response times.
While that's true, studies of the effectiveness of physiotherapy indicate that the older a person is, the harder it gets to improve motor skills. This study, while not large enough to be conclusive evidence of anything, does point to a mechanism to explain this effect worthy of further investigation. And I'd agree that avid gamers could slew the results, but with a larger sample size and adequate screening the error could be minimised; it isn't hard to find people in any age group who don't play video games. I'm sure the average research neurobiologist would be far more proficient at eliminating confounding factors, since it is a critical part of the job...
The only thing the article proves is small scale preliminary studies are less common than bad science journalism.
Definitely don't wait, because after 40 your...whatchamacallit...doesn't...that thing...um, lunchtime?
So in a nutshell you're saying I'm not too old and slow to get a first post.