Follow my example of an airplane shedding parts causing properties below.
That comparison isn't valid at all. In that case, the airplane parts are entering someone's property. Same as if I break into someone's house, it doesn't matter if I had a pre-existing business relationship with them or not, I've established a relationship of sorts by entering their property. Same if my plane drops parts on their property. But Equifax didn't trespass on anyone's property or have any interaction with these customers at all. Some information was leaked, but did Equifax have any obligation to keep that information secret in the first place? I would argue "no" since there was no implied agreement between Equifax and these consumers.
CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT! These companies that want to collect all this personal data of people and fail to protect it need to be sued into non-existence!
What would be the basis for such a suit? In most cases there's no business relationship between the consumer and Equifax, so there is no implied trust here. Equifax never promised, either directly or implicitly, to the consumer to keep their data secure, so there's no real breach of trust here. I don't see how the consumers have any standing to sue. Perhaps the retailers who supplied the data to Equifax may have some standing to sue as there may have been an implied expectation of privacy, but I don't see how the consumers can sue Equifax directly.
As much as I am generally against regulation, this is one area I think they should be held fully liable, including compensating any affected customers for ALL of their expenses
The problem is, I'm not sure under what grounds Equifax could be held liable here. When a retailer (such as Target or Home Depot) is hacked, exposing customer data, the customers were able to successfully sue on the grounds that these retailers breached their trust. When a customer hands a credit card over to the retailer, there's an implied trust here: the customer is trusting the retailer not to leak their private info, and when a retailer accepts a customer's credit card, there is an implication that their data will be protected. When the retailers where hacked and customer data stolen, the retailers were liable for breaching that implied trust. There is, however, no implied trust between Equifax and the consumers whose data was leaked. In fact, in most cases, there's no business relationship between the customer and Equifax at all. Since there is no implied trust, there can't be a breach of that trust. So, I really don't see how Equifax can be held liable here. You are suggesting regulation, but what form would this regulation take, exactly? How can you regulate a business relationship which doesn't exist?
After all, if you declare on your tax return that your annual income is $30,000 and your Facebook page is full of pictures of you taking vacations in Hawaii, Fiji, Bermuda, etc., as well as photos taken from your first class seat in the airplane, then they have good reason to audit you. As long as they're searching public information only (eg. your PUBLIC Facebook profile and Twitter account) and not using special government powers to look at private information which would not be viewable by the general public, then I don't see a problem with this. You have no expectation of privacy when you post your vacation pictures to your public Facebook profile.
"It is much too easy to connect devices and industrial equipment to the internet,"
No, that misses the point entirely. It's not that it's too easy to connect devices to the Internet, but rather that, at least sometimes, it is very difficult, if not nearly impossible, to prevent devices from connecting to the Internet. Some Smart TV sets (it might have been Samsung, but I'm not sure) actively seek out open WiFi connections to connect to the Internet even if you tell it not to. It's not enough to block ports in your firewall as maybe your neighbor doesn't have those ports blocked. Or maybe the Starbucks down the street doesn't. And with integrated GPS in many devices (and probably more in the future) the fact that devices connect on someone else's IP address won't protect your privacy/anonymity, since they'll be able to locate the device down to the house or apartment that it's in. Expect to see more of this in the future.
The tablet doesn't really contain trigonometry as we understand it today. There is no concept of angle, for instance. Some have convincingly suggested alternate interpretations. That paper, by the way, dates from 2002, so this isn't really news.
I don't understand why you were voted down, but this. They need a solid background before starting programming.
Why do they need this before they start programming? Why can't programming be an opportunity to learn these other things? Have the students program something fun or useful and then integrate the math and logic lessons in with the programming. They'll likely retain it much better if it's taught as part of a larger useful project rather than just through a series of lectures.
Interesting follow-up: Jordan Peterson, who I mentioned in my post, actually interviewed the author of the essay the day after he was fired.
This interview is up on YouTube now.
Also attempting to hire a workforce with a perfectly equal demographic distribution won't result in the most optimal set of workers - it's hardly possible to tell what distribution would - but I think it's vastly better than letting institutional biases operate unfettered. It's ethically a very good system.
I STRONGLY disagree. First, I think you're introducing a false dichotomy here, suggesting the two choices are either having all groups represented according to their demographics in every job position in a company or allowing "institutional biases to operate unfettered". It is quite possible, even likely there will be strongly disproportionate representation even when no biases operate in hiring at all. There are simply some jobs that women don't want to do. Over 90% of bricklayers are men, for example. Are you suggesting that bricklaying companies can't hire more men than women? Most would go out of business. Construction would grind to a halt. Your kind of thinking is very dangerous, and all too prevalent in today's politically correct society.
I certainly wouldn't write a letter to colleagues recommending that we hire less of some groups because they're statistically less likely to be optimal for biological reasons.
Neither would I, and that's not what the guy at Google did. (And yes, I'm one of the few people that actually read his entire essay!)
and start going after the posters. These are photos of women. In most cases, I'm pretty sure the women involved know with absolute certainty when the picture was taken, and who took the picture, or if they took the picture themselves, who they shared it with. Go after these people.
I think the "anon" part of the site's name implies that the photos are posted anonymously. And just because the women involved may know who the poster is doesn't mean she can prove it in a court of law. And even if she can, if the site is located offshore, it doesn't mean she can have the photo taken down. I'm not even sure if the original poster can take the photo down.
The scientific correctness of his arguments is irrelevant to the moral or ethical issues here.
A lot of people seem to think that scientific racism is only wrong if the science is wrong. Not so, it's equally wrong whether the science is rock-solid or nonsensical pseudoscience.
Using science to try to justify racism is an ethical problem first and foremost, any incidental scientific problems are a footnote.
This, in a nutshell, describes what is wrong in modern academia and increasingly, society at large. The idea that fact should be superseded by social theory. Science comes from the Latin scientia which means "knowledge" and is about the pursuit of truth through rigorous means. When you talk about "scientific racism", and how it's "wrong" you are implicitly saying that when truth contradicts accepted "moral" and "ethical" social theory, truth should be ignored. I personally don't believe that is a sound basis on which to build a moral philosophy.
Now, how we apply our knowledge, preferably gained through scientific inquiry, can have a moral and ethical dimension. Just because we may find that on average one race or gender has a better aptitude for something than another doesn't mean it's right to discriminate based on that race or gender when hiring, etc., but modern social scientists want to ignore or suppress the truth itself. In fact, the truth itself although it can be misused can be also be used to the benefit of society. Accommodations could be made for people with specific weaknesses, for example, or workplaces could be better designed with respect for differences in mind. And perhaps, as the writer of the essay suggests, there are real statistical differences in interests and aptitudes between the genders, so it isn't best to insist that they be represented in equal numbers in all positions of a company.
Oh for f's sake. Do you all have the memory of gnats? When I started in IT in 1978, half of the 44-person IT staff--programmers and analysts, including project leaders--were female. In a conservative Midwestern state. We all came from different backgrounds and were all damned good at our jobs. I moved to L.A. in '81: Higher salaries. Still a buncha' women in IT, but fewer. By the time I left the field (I'm old now, with two fun auto-diseases), where the f*ck were all the women? They left 'cause IT wasn't to their taste? 'Cause they prefer schmoozing and cuddling to thinking? Or they don't like high-paying work that's fun as hell?
Yeah. I'm sure that's it.
If, as you say, women used to make up 50% of the I.T. workforce, then why did they let themselves be bullied out of it? Perhaps the reason many left was because they had other priorities. Maybe they wanted to spend more time with family than that sort of job would have allowed them to.
Those that are criticizing the essay seem to be missing the points it makes. Primary among them is that males and females have different interests and therefore tend to pursue different careers which could account for a lot of the so-called gender gaps in the tech sector. And the author is right, there are relationships between personality traits and political leanings. Jordan Peterson has written a lot about this and his YouTube videos are well worth watching. He makes the case that the notion of equity or equality of outcome in all sectors is a dangerous one. It doesn't mean females can't be good engineers, rather than few females might be going into engineering cause they have different interests and hiring so you always have 50% male and 50% female may not lead to the best outcomes.
Actually, it's neither a molecule, not an atom. It is an ion. It consists of a carbon atom and a nitrogen atom triply bonded together and has an overall charge of -1.
Generally if you refuse to assist in the discovery process, by refusing to answer questions or give up passwords, you risk a default judgment against you, which can be very, very costly.
So, you have a "guilty until proven innocent" system, eh? Good to know....
Keep in mind, my statement was made in the context of CIVIL suits, not criminal proceedings. They are very different. There's no concept of "guilt" or "innocence" in a civil suit. Defendants do have some rights against self-incrimination in a criminal case, even in Canada, although they are not as strong as in the U.S.
If the police were not there the cable companies would have no right or ability to hold Adam, make him answer questions or take his equipment
Canadian and U.S. law are very different. In Canada, plaintiffs have very broad powers of discovery. It's up to the judge to later sort out all the evidence and decide what's relevant and what isn't. Generally if you refuse to assist in the discovery process, by refusing to answer questions or give up passwords, you risk a default judgment against you, which can be very, very costly.
Since font shapes cannot be copyrighted, they will have a tough time proving that their own ttf file (which can be copyrighted) was used unlawfully.
And proving it was used unlawfully will be all but impossible if it was ever sold to the public. Even if Universal doesn't have a license for the font files (ttf, otf, or whatever) they may have contracted a designer who does have such a license. And even if the designer was using the font without a license, it is the designer they could sue, not Universal, unless Universal had knowledge in which case they could be liable for contributory infringement.
I thought this was settled in U.S. copyright law. You can't copyright a font, only the computer instructions for making the font. Therefore, you can't restrict how text set in the font is distributed, only the usage of the font files by the designers.
So what happens when you're fired, quit, retire, or otherwise leave this company's employment? Surgery to remove the implant? Who pays for that?
Probably not necessary. Each chip has a unique ID number. Simply delete that record from the access control file and your chip will no longer open any doors. It's the same way card entry systems typically work. That's one of their big advantages over physical keys.
I know already this will be a very unpopular opinion on Slashdot, and I know this analogy has been made before, but just because someone leaves their front door unlocked, it doesn't mean you get to go in, root around the house, and leave a note saying the owner really needs to lock their door.
A better analogy here might actually be walking into a store, swapping price stickers on two products so you can buy one at a lower price than it was actually selling for. Now that most stores use barcode scanners and the register displays the product name, that isn't so easily done anymore, but it used to be possible and it was illegal. I don't see how what this kid did was any different. He may have had good intentions, and he did point out the flaw, but that doesn't give him the right to do this in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Follow my example of an airplane shedding parts causing properties below.
That comparison isn't valid at all. In that case, the airplane parts are entering someone's property. Same as if I break into someone's house, it doesn't matter if I had a pre-existing business relationship with them or not, I've established a relationship of sorts by entering their property. Same if my plane drops parts on their property. But Equifax didn't trespass on anyone's property or have any interaction with these customers at all. Some information was leaked, but did Equifax have any obligation to keep that information secret in the first place? I would argue "no" since there was no implied agreement between Equifax and these consumers.
CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT! These companies that want to collect all this personal data of people and fail to protect it need to be sued into non-existence!
What would be the basis for such a suit? In most cases there's no business relationship between the consumer and Equifax, so there is no implied trust here. Equifax never promised, either directly or implicitly, to the consumer to keep their data secure, so there's no real breach of trust here. I don't see how the consumers have any standing to sue. Perhaps the retailers who supplied the data to Equifax may have some standing to sue as there may have been an implied expectation of privacy, but I don't see how the consumers can sue Equifax directly.
As much as I am generally against regulation, this is one area I think they should be held fully liable, including compensating any affected customers for ALL of their expenses
The problem is, I'm not sure under what grounds Equifax could be held liable here. When a retailer (such as Target or Home Depot) is hacked, exposing customer data, the customers were able to successfully sue on the grounds that these retailers breached their trust. When a customer hands a credit card over to the retailer, there's an implied trust here: the customer is trusting the retailer not to leak their private info, and when a retailer accepts a customer's credit card, there is an implication that their data will be protected. When the retailers where hacked and customer data stolen, the retailers were liable for breaching that implied trust. There is, however, no implied trust between Equifax and the consumers whose data was leaked. In fact, in most cases, there's no business relationship between the customer and Equifax at all. Since there is no implied trust, there can't be a breach of that trust. So, I really don't see how Equifax can be held liable here. You are suggesting regulation, but what form would this regulation take, exactly? How can you regulate a business relationship which doesn't exist?
After all, if you declare on your tax return that your annual income is $30,000 and your Facebook page is full of pictures of you taking vacations in Hawaii, Fiji, Bermuda, etc., as well as photos taken from your first class seat in the airplane, then they have good reason to audit you. As long as they're searching public information only (eg. your PUBLIC Facebook profile and Twitter account) and not using special government powers to look at private information which would not be viewable by the general public, then I don't see a problem with this. You have no expectation of privacy when you post your vacation pictures to your public Facebook profile.
"It is much too easy to connect devices and industrial equipment to the internet,"
No, that misses the point entirely. It's not that it's too easy to connect devices to the Internet, but rather that, at least sometimes, it is very difficult, if not nearly impossible, to prevent devices from connecting to the Internet. Some Smart TV sets (it might have been Samsung, but I'm not sure) actively seek out open WiFi connections to connect to the Internet even if you tell it not to. It's not enough to block ports in your firewall as maybe your neighbor doesn't have those ports blocked. Or maybe the Starbucks down the street doesn't. And with integrated GPS in many devices (and probably more in the future) the fact that devices connect on someone else's IP address won't protect your privacy/anonymity, since they'll be able to locate the device down to the house or apartment that it's in. Expect to see more of this in the future.
The tablet doesn't really contain trigonometry as we understand it today. There is no concept of angle, for instance. Some have convincingly suggested alternate interpretations. That paper, by the way, dates from 2002, so this isn't really news.
The engineer gets prosecuted for decisions signed off by the executives?
Wait what? The hitman gets a murder charge for decisions signed off by his employer?
I don't understand why you were voted down, but this. They need a solid background before starting programming.
Why do they need this before they start programming? Why can't programming be an opportunity to learn these other things? Have the students program something fun or useful and then integrate the math and logic lessons in with the programming. They'll likely retain it much better if it's taught as part of a larger useful project rather than just through a series of lectures.
The choice to be vaccinated.
Interesting follow-up: Jordan Peterson, who I mentioned in my post, actually interviewed the author of the essay the day after he was fired. This interview is up on YouTube now.
Also attempting to hire a workforce with a perfectly equal demographic distribution won't result in the most optimal set of workers - it's hardly possible to tell what distribution would - but I think it's vastly better than letting institutional biases operate unfettered. It's ethically a very good system.
I STRONGLY disagree. First, I think you're introducing a false dichotomy here, suggesting the two choices are either having all groups represented according to their demographics in every job position in a company or allowing "institutional biases to operate unfettered". It is quite possible, even likely there will be strongly disproportionate representation even when no biases operate in hiring at all. There are simply some jobs that women don't want to do. Over 90% of bricklayers are men, for example. Are you suggesting that bricklaying companies can't hire more men than women? Most would go out of business. Construction would grind to a halt. Your kind of thinking is very dangerous, and all too prevalent in today's politically correct society.
I certainly wouldn't write a letter to colleagues recommending that we hire less of some groups because they're statistically less likely to be optimal for biological reasons.
Neither would I, and that's not what the guy at Google did. (And yes, I'm one of the few people that actually read his entire essay!)
and start going after the posters. These are photos of women. In most cases, I'm pretty sure the women involved know with absolute certainty when the picture was taken, and who took the picture, or if they took the picture themselves, who they shared it with. Go after these people.
I think the "anon" part of the site's name implies that the photos are posted anonymously. And just because the women involved may know who the poster is doesn't mean she can prove it in a court of law. And even if she can, if the site is located offshore, it doesn't mean she can have the photo taken down. I'm not even sure if the original poster can take the photo down.
The scientific correctness of his arguments is irrelevant to the moral or ethical issues here.
A lot of people seem to think that scientific racism is only wrong if the science is wrong. Not so, it's equally wrong whether the science is rock-solid or nonsensical pseudoscience.
Using science to try to justify racism is an ethical problem first and foremost, any incidental scientific problems are a footnote.
This, in a nutshell, describes what is wrong in modern academia and increasingly, society at large. The idea that fact should be superseded by social theory. Science comes from the Latin scientia which means "knowledge" and is about the pursuit of truth through rigorous means. When you talk about "scientific racism", and how it's "wrong" you are implicitly saying that when truth contradicts accepted "moral" and "ethical" social theory, truth should be ignored. I personally don't believe that is a sound basis on which to build a moral philosophy.
Now, how we apply our knowledge, preferably gained through scientific inquiry, can have a moral and ethical dimension. Just because we may find that on average one race or gender has a better aptitude for something than another doesn't mean it's right to discriminate based on that race or gender when hiring, etc., but modern social scientists want to ignore or suppress the truth itself. In fact, the truth itself although it can be misused can be also be used to the benefit of society. Accommodations could be made for people with specific weaknesses, for example, or workplaces could be better designed with respect for differences in mind. And perhaps, as the writer of the essay suggests, there are real statistical differences in interests and aptitudes between the genders, so it isn't best to insist that they be represented in equal numbers in all positions of a company.
Oh for f's sake. Do you all have the memory of gnats? When I started in IT in 1978, half of the 44-person IT staff--programmers and analysts, including project leaders--were female. In a conservative Midwestern state. We all came from different backgrounds and were all damned good at our jobs. I moved to L.A. in '81: Higher salaries. Still a buncha' women in IT, but fewer. By the time I left the field (I'm old now, with two fun auto-diseases), where the f*ck were all the women? They left 'cause IT wasn't to their taste? 'Cause they prefer schmoozing and cuddling to thinking? Or they don't like high-paying work that's fun as hell?
Yeah. I'm sure that's it.
If, as you say, women used to make up 50% of the I.T. workforce, then why did they let themselves be bullied out of it? Perhaps the reason many left was because they had other priorities. Maybe they wanted to spend more time with family than that sort of job would have allowed them to.
Those that are criticizing the essay seem to be missing the points it makes. Primary among them is that males and females have different interests and therefore tend to pursue different careers which could account for a lot of the so-called gender gaps in the tech sector. And the author is right, there are relationships between personality traits and political leanings. Jordan Peterson has written a lot about this and his YouTube videos are well worth watching. He makes the case that the notion of equity or equality of outcome in all sectors is a dangerous one. It doesn't mean females can't be good engineers, rather than few females might be going into engineering cause they have different interests and hiring so you always have 50% male and 50% female may not lead to the best outcomes.
I just use gandalf as my password everywhere. If they require letters and digits then I use gandalf1.
Actually, it's neither a molecule, not an atom. It is an ion. It consists of a carbon atom and a nitrogen atom triply bonded together and has an overall charge of -1.
So, you have a "guilty until proven innocent" system, eh? Good to know....
Keep in mind, my statement was made in the context of CIVIL suits, not criminal proceedings. They are very different. There's no concept of "guilt" or "innocence" in a civil suit. Defendants do have some rights against self-incrimination in a criminal case, even in Canada, although they are not as strong as in the U.S.
If the police were not there the cable companies would have no right or ability to hold Adam, make him answer questions or take his equipment
Canadian and U.S. law are very different. In Canada, plaintiffs have very broad powers of discovery. It's up to the judge to later sort out all the evidence and decide what's relevant and what isn't. Generally if you refuse to assist in the discovery process, by refusing to answer questions or give up passwords, you risk a default judgment against you, which can be very, very costly.
Since font shapes cannot be copyrighted, they will have a tough time proving that their own ttf file (which can be copyrighted) was used unlawfully.
And proving it was used unlawfully will be all but impossible if it was ever sold to the public. Even if Universal doesn't have a license for the font files (ttf, otf, or whatever) they may have contracted a designer who does have such a license. And even if the designer was using the font without a license, it is the designer they could sue, not Universal, unless Universal had knowledge in which case they could be liable for contributory infringement.
I thought this was settled in U.S. copyright law. You can't copyright a font, only the computer instructions for making the font. Therefore, you can't restrict how text set in the font is distributed, only the usage of the font files by the designers.
It is (was now) illegal for NZ to spy on it's own citizens and the US was using NZ to do the dirty work.
Perhaps illegal under NZ law, but that is completely irrelevant if Kim Dotcom is tried in a US court.
and a network designed to impose reasonable controls on behavior.
Who gets to decide what controls are "reasonable"? What kind of "behavior" is to be controlled, and how?
So what happens when you're fired, quit, retire, or otherwise leave this company's employment? Surgery to remove the implant? Who pays for that?
Probably not necessary. Each chip has a unique ID number. Simply delete that record from the access control file and your chip will no longer open any doors. It's the same way card entry systems typically work. That's one of their big advantages over physical keys.
I know already this will be a very unpopular opinion on Slashdot, and I know this analogy has been made before, but just because someone leaves their front door unlocked, it doesn't mean you get to go in, root around the house, and leave a note saying the owner really needs to lock their door.
A better analogy here might actually be walking into a store, swapping price stickers on two products so you can buy one at a lower price than it was actually selling for. Now that most stores use barcode scanners and the register displays the product name, that isn't so easily done anymore, but it used to be possible and it was illegal. I don't see how what this kid did was any different. He may have had good intentions, and he did point out the flaw, but that doesn't give him the right to do this in the first place.