For the measly $70K, I think I might have continued fighting it through to an actual judgement. That won't even begin to cover their costs to date, nor will it cover the costs of home-schooling for six years. In addition to suing the district, I'd be suing the school administrator personally, and be suing the officer personally for criminal acts done under color of law.
Actually $70 probably could cover the cost or just nearly so for a private school where she will get a better education than what the public schools had to offer anyway. Had she kept fighting it might not have gone her way. I would have countered probably with "I'll go away for 70K + legal fees to date" but I would have wanted to settle too; a bird in the hand is worth two in bush.
Usually when you "win" a case through that kind of settlement they don't pay your legal fees, just the one lump sum. In fact, I'm a little surprised the number was released, usually the whole thing is private. It is possible that somebody leaking the dollar value may have automatically ruined the settlement, but I hope not. This has been two years in the making, so I'm pretty sure those legal bills are going to be rather substantial.
You might be right, maybe it was $70K plus all costs, we don't have the terms of the settlement.
As for the cost of schooling, I would look at the cost of private schools to see an equivalency rather than home schooling. A few minutes on Google shows that around here the going rate is about $18,000 for grades 5-7, and about $21,000 for 8-12, so about $141K for tuition alone. Maybe schools are cheaper in their area.
The summary said she gave them her password. That sounds like permission.
No, she refused. Then they called the cops. The police officer and administrator together threatened her, and eventually (in tears) she gave in. Note the age of the child.
As she was not even a teenager at the time, that looks to me like very strong compulsion from authority figures. A normal pre-teen is not going to say "you cannot do this, it violates my rights, let me talk to my parents and a lawyer." Under this kind of pressure they'll believe the officer will throw her in jail forever, and break down.
For the measly $70K, I think I might have continued fighting it through to an actual judgement. That won't even begin to cover their costs to date, nor will it cover the costs of home-schooling for six years. In addition to suing the district, I'd be suing the school administrator personally, and be suing the officer personally for criminal acts done under color of law.
But what were these these "disparaging" comments exactly?
Probably something like "These administrators are total fascists."
Look at the districts reply: We searched her cell phone without permission. We won't do that again. Now we have a standard form requiring permission that all students must sign. WTF?! The problem was not a lack of parental signature. The problem was a flagrant abuse of rights, which apparently they are happy to continue.
The system is not about cheating. The system is primarily about profanity and abuse.
They have been tinkering with it since it came out.
Also they haven't released what specific metrics they are using, but they have already mentioned factors: account playing statistics, complaints per hour played, positive feedback messages, friend requests, negative feedback messages, "Avoid This Player" marks, gamercard mutes, gamercard blocked communications, and filed complaints and reports. Couple all of them together and you will likely see some patterns quickly. They also mention that it will have human involvement and you will not be dinged for being skilled, nor will you be dinged for people targeting you. The last two seem to imply some human involvement.
My guess is that they start with simple statistical analysis to identify players trending downward with a steady stream of "block communications", "avoid this player", and "mute" flags. All of these are specifically mentioned on their site. After algorithmic identification, I'm guessing one of their army of community managers (real live human beings who are employed to listen to the vitriol and enforce the rules) would probably get a notice to monitor the chat when the player starts play. If they hear a profanity stream click the check box marked "profanity". If they hear taunting, harassment, or other abuse, pick the check box that corresponds. With a real live human involved they can nicely handle people who were wrongly accused.
When Eris, MakeMake and Sedna were accepted in the IAU's list they already had about 50 more 'probable dwarf planets' inside the Kuiper belt. The following year the list of 'probable dwarf planets' grew to nearly 400.
The estimated number is about 10,000 dwarf planets in our solar system. Hopefully we won't have big news announcements for each one. But hey, slow news days need something...
The problem is you need an organization that will care for the stuff for longer than than the recorded history of humanity.
We keep creating all this waste that we have no way to actually dispose of.
We can treat it, put it in a concrete cask, and store the casks somewhere, but we have no ways to actually dispose of it other than to wait for millions of years.
Nuclear waste is the most immediately dangerous after we create it. Highly toxic, easily misused, easily stolen and repurposed. (Not all nuclear waste is equal, most of it is fairly benign such as medical and industrial waste. Those little green "exit" signs will eventually classify as nuclear waste.) The really dangerous stuff, like the spent nuclear reactor fuel, we have no way to deal with. But as bad as it is, at least the planet can probably eventually filter through the stuff.
Plastic is less immediately toxic but we also have no way to realistically dispose of it. It doesn't biodegrade. We are ending up with sites like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that continue to grow.
Sadly we keep making more and more trash that we cannot dispose of. Like most of humanity's history we care more about our immediate survival and our immediate convenience than the long-term survival and long-term convenience.
Deserts are usually less exploitable by humans, but they are extremely valuable to the planet. Through sorry experience we have learned that desert ecosystems are easily damaged. Vehicles driving across the surface can crack and break the crust of micro-organisms ("desert pavement") where the damage can last for centuries.
The thought process of "Humans cannot immediately exploit the resources, therefore it is worthless" is extremely foolish.
Just look at what humans have done to resources we consider valuable. Deforestation of entire contents, fishing out oceans to possibly the point of exhaustion. Desert regions are one of the few resources left mostly intact from human destruction.
Several countries have attempted to ban YouTube, Twitter, and similar sites. Most end up removing the ban within days. Some remove it within months.
Turkey is one of the countries that maintained a ban longer than most countries, with the YouTube ban lasting about 29 months. Wikipedia says that even with the ban, it was reported as Turkey's 8th most popular web site while DNS blocks were in place and government officials (including the prime minister and president, both the same people in power today) publicly discussed that they continued to use the banned site. Quite a few other web sites are banned as well, yet they still have a strong Turkish user base.
Turkey has a history of banning the interwebz through DNS blocks, and the people know how to get around it easily.
Also, adding up the years, seems like the OP might be approaching the magical years of age discrimination in software development. Five years here, three there, two years at several places... puts the OP at around age 35-40.
To be fair, they were 'compulsory legal process', and almost certainly were accompanied by gag orders that have not been rescinded.
There are many kinds of domestic spying, referred to by their section of law. You've got 501, 1806, 1825, and 1845. All four can be used with gag orders. The ISP is basically forced to install hardware. They can chose to let the government do everything (and get paid for resources used), or install a tap themselves so the government can use it (and charge for resources used), or fight it (the tap still gets installed, but they don't get paid for resources used.)
Most of these come with gag orders: If you say anything, even hint that you might have known was was going on, and you risk violating the gag order.
There are very few business owners who have said anything about the process. Everyone should read Pete Ashdown's account. (He founded a major ISP in 1993, has run for senate, etc.) He describes receiving a FISA order, not being allowed to take notes or other details. Unlike most companies, he decided to isolate the customer's virtual machine to a single dedicated box, and then put the court-ordered recording box on that one specific box.
In the article he spends three paragraphs describing what the did, ending with "I can’t tell you all the details about it. I would love to tell you all the details, but I did get the gag order. I have probably told people too much. That was two years ago. If they want to come back and haunt me, fine.
When these executives are getting potentially a few dozen to a few hundred of these requests that include a gag order. None have revealed as much as Ashdown did in those few paragraphs, other than to say in corporate reports that they have received 0-999 such orders.
In this case, some of the conspiracy questions are also due to sampling methods and poor questions.
In the publicly viewable section of the report, they use an "online survey sample of 1351 adults... The survey results were then weighted to provide a representative sample of the population".
Consider who is most likely to click on the "Take online surveys now!" button. We should all know about the problems with self-selected participants.
If the participant selection method isn't bad enough, look at the questions:
"Health officials know that cell phones cause cancer but are doing nothing to stop it because large corporations won't let them". I immediately see three critical flaws with that one. Do I vote "Disagree" because it doesn't cause cancer? Or maybe they used to cause cancer but have done something? Or maybe it isn't being withheld because of large corporations?
Or another one, "Doctors and the government still want to vaccinate children even though they known these vaccines cause autism and other psychological disorders." What if it is just doctors, not government? What does the "other psychological disorders" include? Can't we all just get along?
As for the results, just look at things Jimmy Kimmel's 'Lie Witness News" where they ask people about made-up things and people proudly state that they know the things for truth. I'd put most of those people firmly into the category who would click the "Take online surveys now!" buttons.
Further more instead of going to ATT, he went to Gawker first.
This, a thousand times.
When you discover a vulnerability:
* Do not go to the vendor. They will often ignore it or sue.
* Do not go to the school or business. They will ignore it, sue, fire, and expel.
* Do not go to the government. They will imprison.
* Do not go to the Interwebz at large. You get everything above.
Take the exploit and related proof to a trusted, large, well-established security company that accepts anonymous submissions and will publicly disclose the exploit if not addressed within a specific number of days.
I personally believe that the experience older programmers provide over younger counterparts makes them a desirable hiring option. The catch is that the price has to be right. Some of the older developers demand two to three times the salary of younger programmers.
So basically you take the classic evidence of age discrimination. You assumed they will demand more money.
If the person has the skills you want, REGARDLESS OF AGE, you make an offer you think is fair.
Applicants usually do not say, "I require $145,000 per year". They instead say, "I'm looking for a job".
If they apply and you think they want lots of money, you can tell them "I'm not sure this is a match with your experience, we are paying around $50,000". If they say "That is wonderful, let's have some interviews", then congratulations on getting experience for cheap.
False premise. Assumes a bias without providing evidence.
Well, to be fair, the story does make a claim.
it falls to the 40-year-old programmer to prove that he can still use the newest up-and-coming technology.
It falls to ALL programmers to demonstrate that they can use the technology for the job.
If you are a programmer who has no documented experience in (technology) and want a job that asks for a job requiring (technology), either get some experience with (technology) or expect trouble finding that job.
Swap in whatever technology you want. For an example, are you a 40 year old programmer with pre-standard C++ experience and 14 years of Java experience, but looking for jobs requiring C# experience? Then either make some transitions to pick up some C# experience (perhaps on your main job or by picking up some side projects) or you expect difficulty finding one that requires C#. Maybe it isn't C#, maybe it is HTML5. Either find a way to get HTML5 experience or expect difficulty finding the job.
The past few decades have seen the demise of on-the-job training. You get hired because you already have the necessary skills.
I agree. If a person is qualified, ill hire him regardless of race. Just because you are black or latino you should not get any special treatment. If we do let unqualified people in, then it perpetuates the problem by highlighting their lack of skill.
Great!
When I graduated from my university, it was almost entirely a blend of american white and asian males in the program. We had 3 white women, 2 black males, and no latinos, in a graduating class of about 70 people. One of the graduation speakers made special point of it in the commencement address when discussing issues in diversity in our field.
When I am in a position to interview people for our engineering jobs, over the past ten years I recall exactly one female applicant with the mandatory degrees and certifications. We see mostly white males, some Asian males (mostly from India and China) and a handful of others. That isn't because we are refusing to interview minorities, it is because those are the people who have the mandatory certifications. I cannot find any solid statistics on the racial distributions of people with engineering certifications, but I'd assume they are similarly skewed.
If he wants to address diversity in our field, he needs to look at those entering the program. If he wants more people in the job, help give them the proper educational background and other certifications required to enter the field.
What I wonder is, what could they write about what they didn't do which would not be so totally general that a huge company like them must have broken that promise hundreds of times ? Or in general, is it possible to write relatively simple texts with promises that are not so overreaching that they must be wrong, and at the same time make "the public" happy ? An example of this would be great.
In this case, not really. IBM's business model is such that they cannot get away from government money.
As for an example, maybe a different bullet point list:
* We attempt to push back against government requests and warrants. See such-and-such site for a list of hundreds of times we have done this.
* Sometimes governments compel us to give them information. Usually the details are required to be kept secret. We do our best to limit the information government demands, but ultimately must comply with government orders.
* To the best of my knowledge as a senior VP and company-wide general council, I do not believe we have ever given such-and-such information to government. IBM has over 400,000 employees globally. It is possible someone at the company has done it without permission, it is possible that spy agencies have infiltrated us, it is possible mistakes were made and it happened by accident without being reported. That is a problem at every large company, and not even the super-secret government agencies are immune from spies and unauthorized leaks. Our policy is that the information is confidential, and we do not give out, sell, rent, or otherwise allow anybody to access that information. To the best of my knowledge, we have not released that information.
That kind of list is probably the best we could see, short of a "cancelling all projects with federal ties" announcement.
Quite simply, when a company reaches a certain size (say, around 5 people) the ability to keep information a secret quickly erodes. I was at a small business with 7 people, and we had entries of "High Profile Family 1", and "High Profile Family 2", yet they still had phone numbers and addresses tied to them so their identities could be discovered trivially. I've been in businesses with 30 people where rumors were uncontrollable and big announcements were seldom surprises. A company with a half million employees globally will have a steady flow of people willing to break the rules, for reasons including patriotism, 'being nice', and the almighty dollar, plus people who wouldn't normally knowingly break the rules but go along with it for any reason such as perceived kindness, ignorance, or social engineering, or other benign reasoning. At IBM's size that type of breach is just SOP.
Qwest found out what happens when you challenge the NSA--you mysteriously lose government contacts. And then your CEO goes to prison.
And if IBM truly does want to distance itself from these government agencies, that is exactly what they should be doing proactively.
The article has the headline IBM Distances itself from the NSA and its Spy Activities. If IBM were truly distancing itself, the article would have had a list of billions, nay, trillions of dollars worth of contracts that IBM was cancelling, along with an announcement that IBM would no longer make bids on NSA projects, and they would prohibit their products from being used as the backend as far as allowed by law.
Instead IBM has released a very specific bullet list of things they didn't do. For example, one of the bullet points is "IBM has not provided client data... under the program known as PRISM." Which is a wonderfully worded statement. They might have provided other data under PRISM. They might have provided client data outside of PRISM. But in that specific program, that specific data was not provided.
Sorry Robert C Weber, Senior VP at IBM, your words are too much like a lawyer's wiggling for my tastes. Does IBM really want to distance itself? In that case, actually distance yourself by terminating existing contracts and refusing to bid for future contracts.
I'm not going to argue that 32GB of uncompressed audio isn't stupid (because it really, truly is; the dev could've included a 5GB option to use compressed audio, or something). What I *will* argue is that not everyone chose the same trade-off that you did, and you've got the option to take both roads at the same time.
Yet another who failed to RTFA.
The article describes how they found some bugs on low-end systems very late in the development process. Late enough that trying to fix the audio system would have pushed the release date back by weeks or months.
Rather than push the date back, they decided to ship decompressed audio as a workaround to the decompressor bug. Give it a few months and they will likely have a patch that addresses the issue and removes the uncompressed audio. These days 32GB is not much of a difference on a hard drive and anyone who actually want to play it if they don't have that much space available should easily be able to free it up.
Which is why citizens should start taking their own videos. You film me, i'll film you, and when we go to court well make sure the tapes agree
Amen!
This is what so seriously bothers me about those who pronounce "glasshole" and disagree with individuals recording everything. The ones with the cameras have the power. Police have cameras to provide evidence in their favor. Businesses have cameras to provide evidence in their favor. Somehow individuals should not have that power.
We are rapidly approaching the day of ubiquitous cameras. When people can say "here are 37 different viewpoints of the event" it will radically transform this type of interaction. We can see the suspect commit the crime, if applicable. We can see the cop beat the suspect repeatedly, if applicable. More likely we can see both the suspect being combative and the officer escalating the situation with force. Whatever it is, ubiquitous cameras mean we get many viewpoints and the story can be told without the he-said/she-said problems we have today. Getting there will be bumpy, but I hope we get there quickly.
The idea that the police can simply delete what they don't like or switch of the device when ever they feel like it, is a very false premise in terms of the law. Lost evidence immediately creates doubts about the veracity of statements against those who lost or purposefully failed to gather evidence.
You obviously didn't read the articles.:-)
Simply put, right now today all those bad things are happening. That is what the ACLU was objecting to.
They provided a nice list of actual court cases where officers turned of their cameras on a complaining suspect, and turned them on to a beaten and bloody suspect who managed to injure themselves while resisting arrest.
They provided a nice list of actual court cases where officers submitted evidence of edited films rather than complete unedited films, conveniently omitting the bad things the cop did.
And just look back in the news last month, two cops who had badly beaten a motorist after crashing into him and then working with prosecutors to demand a severe plea deal rather than decades in prison, only to have some cops anonymously post their own dashboard cam showing the police flagrantly breaking the law. The mayor decries that the cops who "leaked" the evidence of corruption and police brutality were "rats", thereby reinforcing the absolute need for the law the ACLU is speaking for.
Specifically, the requirements are the officers MUST record the interactions, the recordings MUST be made available to those involved without editing or deletion, and there MUST be data retention standards to prevent officers from erasing the data too soon ("Police beating yesterday? Sorry, that file was already deleted") or keeping them indefinitely.
Without that kind of law firmly in place, missing video is simply non-evidence; "sorry, my dashboard camera wasn't running" is a valid excuse. Only with that law in place does the missing police video become something judges and juries can rely on.
That might be the case, I've seen conditions that say something like by entering the event you are concenting to be filmed ect. This was for a rock concert in the uk at sheffield arena.
The UK has probably the most inconsistent rules for photography of any country.
You can take pictures in public, unless the activity might be deemed private such as holding hands or eating, or might be disrespectful of a famous or powerful person, or is of a child doing something they might want to be kept private. But even then if someone would rather not have it known, such as walking out of a drug rehab center, then even though it would normally be public and newsworthy it isn't exactly public in this case unless the photograph is for an established news corporation by a professionally employed photographer rather than an independent photographer, which would then make it improper. At least this rule from Hungary is self-consistent.
The UK law can best be described as: If someone with money or power dislikes the photo it is unlawful, unless you have more money or power which then makes it lawful agai. Of course, that applies to just about everything in the country, not just photography.
The other important detail in their study was that when officers were assigned to wear the cameras, their use was not optional. This bill says officers need to have them but did not make their use manditory. They could be kept in a pocket turned off, kept in a vehicle turned off, or kept in the officer's locker.
The ACLU complaint was three items: cameras must be used during interactions; the complete unedited recordings must be made available to the people involved; and a data retention policy must be specified to prevent premature deletion and perpetual retention.
a start doesn't need those things, because it's a start.
Sometimes in businesses or other small policies it is good to implement something incomplete rather than nothing at all.
Law is not one of those cases. An incomplete law can be very detrimental to society and difficult to get changed. When the choice is between a bad/incomplete law or no law at all, prefer having no law.
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For the measly $70K, I think I might have continued fighting it through to an actual judgement. That won't even begin to cover their costs to date, nor will it cover the costs of home-schooling for six years. In addition to suing the district, I'd be suing the school administrator personally, and be suing the officer personally for criminal acts done under color of law.
Actually $70 probably could cover the cost or just nearly so for a private school where she will get a better education than what the public schools had to offer anyway. Had she kept fighting it might not have gone her way. I would have countered probably with "I'll go away for 70K + legal fees to date" but I would have wanted to settle too; a bird in the hand is worth two in bush.
Usually when you "win" a case through that kind of settlement they don't pay your legal fees, just the one lump sum. In fact, I'm a little surprised the number was released, usually the whole thing is private. It is possible that somebody leaking the dollar value may have automatically ruined the settlement, but I hope not. This has been two years in the making, so I'm pretty sure those legal bills are going to be rather substantial.
You might be right, maybe it was $70K plus all costs, we don't have the terms of the settlement.
As for the cost of schooling, I would look at the cost of private schools to see an equivalency rather than home schooling. A few minutes on Google shows that around here the going rate is about $18,000 for grades 5-7, and about $21,000 for 8-12, so about $141K for tuition alone. Maybe schools are cheaper in their area.
The summary said she gave them her password. That sounds like permission.
No, she refused. Then they called the cops. The police officer and administrator together threatened her, and eventually (in tears) she gave in. Note the age of the child.
As she was not even a teenager at the time, that looks to me like very strong compulsion from authority figures. A normal pre-teen is not going to say "you cannot do this, it violates my rights, let me talk to my parents and a lawyer." Under this kind of pressure they'll believe the officer will throw her in jail forever, and break down.
For the measly $70K, I think I might have continued fighting it through to an actual judgement. That won't even begin to cover their costs to date, nor will it cover the costs of home-schooling for six years. In addition to suing the district, I'd be suing the school administrator personally, and be suing the officer personally for criminal acts done under color of law.
But what were these these "disparaging" comments exactly?
Probably something like "These administrators are total fascists."
Look at the districts reply: We searched her cell phone without permission. We won't do that again. Now we have a standard form requiring permission that all students must sign. WTF?! The problem was not a lack of parental signature. The problem was a flagrant abuse of rights, which apparently they are happy to continue.
The system is not about cheating. The system is primarily about profanity and abuse.
They have been tinkering with it since it came out.
Also they haven't released what specific metrics they are using, but they have already mentioned factors: account playing statistics, complaints per hour played, positive feedback messages, friend requests, negative feedback messages, "Avoid This Player" marks, gamercard mutes, gamercard blocked communications, and filed complaints and reports. Couple all of them together and you will likely see some patterns quickly. They also mention that it will have human involvement and you will not be dinged for being skilled, nor will you be dinged for people targeting you. The last two seem to imply some human involvement.
My guess is that they start with simple statistical analysis to identify players trending downward with a steady stream of "block communications", "avoid this player", and "mute" flags. All of these are specifically mentioned on their site. After algorithmic identification, I'm guessing one of their army of community managers (real live human beings who are employed to listen to the vitriol and enforce the rules) would probably get a notice to monitor the chat when the player starts play. If they hear a profanity stream click the check box marked "profanity". If they hear taunting, harassment, or other abuse, pick the check box that corresponds. With a real live human involved they can nicely handle people who were wrongly accused.
That's why his plan is to covert it all to bars of Xanax.
Stockpiling a prescription anti-anxiety drug?
Unless he is planning on some massive illegal drug parties or become a dealer of some sort I don't see how that would be a good investment.
Not really news.
When Eris, MakeMake and Sedna were accepted in the IAU's list they already had about 50 more 'probable dwarf planets' inside the Kuiper belt. The following year the list of 'probable dwarf planets' grew to nearly 400.
The estimated number is about 10,000 dwarf planets in our solar system. Hopefully we won't have big news announcements for each one. But hey, slow news days need something...
The problem is you need an organization that will care for the stuff for longer than than the recorded history of humanity.
We keep creating all this waste that we have no way to actually dispose of.
We can treat it, put it in a concrete cask, and store the casks somewhere, but we have no ways to actually dispose of it other than to wait for millions of years.
Nuclear waste is the most immediately dangerous after we create it. Highly toxic, easily misused, easily stolen and repurposed. (Not all nuclear waste is equal, most of it is fairly benign such as medical and industrial waste. Those little green "exit" signs will eventually classify as nuclear waste.) The really dangerous stuff, like the spent nuclear reactor fuel, we have no way to deal with. But as bad as it is, at least the planet can probably eventually filter through the stuff.
Plastic is less immediately toxic but we also have no way to realistically dispose of it. It doesn't biodegrade. We are ending up with sites like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that continue to grow.
Sadly we keep making more and more trash that we cannot dispose of. Like most of humanity's history we care more about our immediate survival and our immediate convenience than the long-term survival and long-term convenience.
Desert? yes. Worthless? No.
Deserts are usually less exploitable by humans, but they are extremely valuable to the planet. Through sorry experience we have learned that desert ecosystems are easily damaged. Vehicles driving across the surface can crack and break the crust of micro-organisms ("desert pavement") where the damage can last for centuries.
The thought process of "Humans cannot immediately exploit the resources, therefore it is worthless" is extremely foolish.
Just look at what humans have done to resources we consider valuable. Deforestation of entire contents, fishing out oceans to possibly the point of exhaustion. Desert regions are one of the few resources left mostly intact from human destruction.
Several countries have attempted to ban YouTube, Twitter, and similar sites. Most end up removing the ban within days. Some remove it within months.
Turkey is one of the countries that maintained a ban longer than most countries, with the YouTube ban lasting about 29 months. Wikipedia says that even with the ban, it was reported as Turkey's 8th most popular web site while DNS blocks were in place and government officials (including the prime minister and president, both the same people in power today) publicly discussed that they continued to use the banned site. Quite a few other web sites are banned as well, yet they still have a strong Turkish user base.
Turkey has a history of banning the interwebz through DNS blocks, and the people know how to get around it easily.
Also, adding up the years, seems like the OP might be approaching the magical years of age discrimination in software development. Five years here, three there, two years at several places... puts the OP at around age 35-40.
So the solution: Be younger.
To be fair, they were 'compulsory legal process', and almost certainly were accompanied by gag orders that have not been rescinded.
There are many kinds of domestic spying, referred to by their section of law. You've got 501, 1806, 1825, and 1845. All four can be used with gag orders. The ISP is basically forced to install hardware. They can chose to let the government do everything (and get paid for resources used), or install a tap themselves so the government can use it (and charge for resources used), or fight it (the tap still gets installed, but they don't get paid for resources used.)
Most of these come with gag orders: If you say anything, even hint that you might have known was was going on, and you risk violating the gag order.
There are very few business owners who have said anything about the process. Everyone should read Pete Ashdown's account. (He founded a major ISP in 1993, has run for senate, etc.) He describes receiving a FISA order, not being allowed to take notes or other details. Unlike most companies, he decided to isolate the customer's virtual machine to a single dedicated box, and then put the court-ordered recording box on that one specific box.
In the article he spends three paragraphs describing what the did, ending with "I can’t tell you all the details about it. I would love to tell you all the details, but I did get the gag order. I have probably told people too much. That was two years ago. If they want to come back and haunt me, fine.
When these executives are getting potentially a few dozen to a few hundred of these requests that include a gag order. None have revealed as much as Ashdown did in those few paragraphs, other than to say in corporate reports that they have received 0-999 such orders.
In this case, some of the conspiracy questions are also due to sampling methods and poor questions.
In the publicly viewable section of the report, they use an "online survey sample of 1351 adults ... The survey results were then weighted to provide a representative sample of the population".
Consider who is most likely to click on the "Take online surveys now!" button. We should all know about the problems with self-selected participants.
If the participant selection method isn't bad enough, look at the questions:
"Health officials know that cell phones cause cancer but are doing nothing to stop it because large corporations won't let them". I immediately see three critical flaws with that one. Do I vote "Disagree" because it doesn't cause cancer? Or maybe they used to cause cancer but have done something? Or maybe it isn't being withheld because of large corporations?
Or another one, "Doctors and the government still want to vaccinate children even though they known these vaccines cause autism and other psychological disorders." What if it is just doctors, not government? What does the "other psychological disorders" include? Can't we all just get along?
As for the results, just look at things Jimmy Kimmel's 'Lie Witness News" where they ask people about made-up things and people proudly state that they know the things for truth. I'd put most of those people firmly into the category who would click the "Take online surveys now!" buttons.
Further more instead of going to ATT, he went to Gawker first.
This, a thousand times.
When you discover a vulnerability:
* Do not go to the vendor. They will often ignore it or sue.
* Do not go to the school or business. They will ignore it, sue, fire, and expel.
* Do not go to the government. They will imprison.
* Do not go to the Interwebz at large. You get everything above.
Take the exploit and related proof to a trusted, large, well-established security company that accepts anonymous submissions and will publicly disclose the exploit if not addressed within a specific number of days.
I personally believe that the experience older programmers provide over younger counterparts makes them a desirable hiring option. The catch is that the price has to be right. Some of the older developers demand two to three times the salary of younger programmers.
So basically you take the classic evidence of age discrimination. You assumed they will demand more money.
If the person has the skills you want, REGARDLESS OF AGE, you make an offer you think is fair.
Applicants usually do not say, "I require $145,000 per year". They instead say, "I'm looking for a job".
If they apply and you think they want lots of money, you can tell them "I'm not sure this is a match with your experience, we are paying around $50,000". If they say "That is wonderful, let's have some interviews", then congratulations on getting experience for cheap.
False premise. Assumes a bias without providing evidence.
Well, to be fair, the story does make a claim.
it falls to the 40-year-old programmer to prove that he can still use the newest up-and-coming technology.
It falls to ALL programmers to demonstrate that they can use the technology for the job.
If you are a programmer who has no documented experience in (technology) and want a job that asks for a job requiring (technology), either get some experience with (technology) or expect trouble finding that job.
Swap in whatever technology you want. For an example, are you a 40 year old programmer with pre-standard C++ experience and 14 years of Java experience, but looking for jobs requiring C# experience? Then either make some transitions to pick up some C# experience (perhaps on your main job or by picking up some side projects) or you expect difficulty finding one that requires C#. Maybe it isn't C#, maybe it is HTML5. Either find a way to get HTML5 experience or expect difficulty finding the job.
The past few decades have seen the demise of on-the-job training. You get hired because you already have the necessary skills.
I agree. If a person is qualified, ill hire him regardless of race. Just because you are black or latino you should not get any special treatment. If we do let unqualified people in, then it perpetuates the problem by highlighting their lack of skill.
Great!
When I graduated from my university, it was almost entirely a blend of american white and asian males in the program. We had 3 white women, 2 black males, and no latinos, in a graduating class of about 70 people. One of the graduation speakers made special point of it in the commencement address when discussing issues in diversity in our field.
When I am in a position to interview people for our engineering jobs, over the past ten years I recall exactly one female applicant with the mandatory degrees and certifications. We see mostly white males, some Asian males (mostly from India and China) and a handful of others. That isn't because we are refusing to interview minorities, it is because those are the people who have the mandatory certifications. I cannot find any solid statistics on the racial distributions of people with engineering certifications, but I'd assume they are similarly skewed.
If he wants to address diversity in our field, he needs to look at those entering the program. If he wants more people in the job, help give them the proper educational background and other certifications required to enter the field.
What I wonder is, what could they write about what they didn't do which would not be so totally general that a huge company like them must have broken that promise hundreds of times ? Or in general, is it possible to write relatively simple texts with promises that are not so overreaching that they must be wrong, and at the same time make "the public" happy ? An example of this would be great.
In this case, not really. IBM's business model is such that they cannot get away from government money.
As for an example, maybe a different bullet point list:
* We attempt to push back against government requests and warrants. See such-and-such site for a list of hundreds of times we have done this.
* Sometimes governments compel us to give them information. Usually the details are required to be kept secret. We do our best to limit the information government demands, but ultimately must comply with government orders.
* To the best of my knowledge as a senior VP and company-wide general council, I do not believe we have ever given such-and-such information to government. IBM has over 400,000 employees globally. It is possible someone at the company has done it without permission, it is possible that spy agencies have infiltrated us, it is possible mistakes were made and it happened by accident without being reported. That is a problem at every large company, and not even the super-secret government agencies are immune from spies and unauthorized leaks. Our policy is that the information is confidential, and we do not give out, sell, rent, or otherwise allow anybody to access that information. To the best of my knowledge, we have not released that information.
That kind of list is probably the best we could see, short of a "cancelling all projects with federal ties" announcement.
Quite simply, when a company reaches a certain size (say, around 5 people) the ability to keep information a secret quickly erodes. I was at a small business with 7 people, and we had entries of "High Profile Family 1", and "High Profile Family 2", yet they still had phone numbers and addresses tied to them so their identities could be discovered trivially. I've been in businesses with 30 people where rumors were uncontrollable and big announcements were seldom surprises. A company with a half million employees globally will have a steady flow of people willing to break the rules, for reasons including patriotism, 'being nice', and the almighty dollar, plus people who wouldn't normally knowingly break the rules but go along with it for any reason such as perceived kindness, ignorance, or social engineering, or other benign reasoning. At IBM's size that type of breach is just SOP.
Qwest found out what happens when you challenge the NSA--you mysteriously lose government contacts. And then your CEO goes to prison.
And if IBM truly does want to distance itself from these government agencies, that is exactly what they should be doing proactively.
The article has the headline IBM Distances itself from the NSA and its Spy Activities. If IBM were truly distancing itself, the article would have had a list of billions, nay, trillions of dollars worth of contracts that IBM was cancelling, along with an announcement that IBM would no longer make bids on NSA projects, and they would prohibit their products from being used as the backend as far as allowed by law.
Instead IBM has released a very specific bullet list of things they didn't do. For example, one of the bullet points is "IBM has not provided client data ... under the program known as PRISM." Which is a wonderfully worded statement. They might have provided other data under PRISM. They might have provided client data outside of PRISM. But in that specific program, that specific data was not provided.
Sorry Robert C Weber, Senior VP at IBM, your words are too much like a lawyer's wiggling for my tastes. Does IBM really want to distance itself? In that case, actually distance yourself by terminating existing contracts and refusing to bid for future contracts.
It isn't just that.
Snowden documents and news reports do the affiliation they need. They proudly proclaim that they use IBM's cloud-based processing systems for processing.
If IBM really wants to distance themselves, they should cancel these contracts.
I'm not going to argue that 32GB of uncompressed audio isn't stupid (because it really, truly is; the dev could've included a 5GB option to use compressed audio, or something). What I *will* argue is that not everyone chose the same trade-off that you did, and you've got the option to take both roads at the same time.
Yet another who failed to RTFA.
The article describes how they found some bugs on low-end systems very late in the development process. Late enough that trying to fix the audio system would have pushed the release date back by weeks or months.
Rather than push the date back, they decided to ship decompressed audio as a workaround to the decompressor bug. Give it a few months and they will likely have a patch that addresses the issue and removes the uncompressed audio. These days 32GB is not much of a difference on a hard drive and anyone who actually want to play it if they don't have that much space available should easily be able to free it up.
Which is why citizens should start taking their own videos. You film me, i'll film you, and when we go to court well make sure the tapes agree
Amen!
This is what so seriously bothers me about those who pronounce "glasshole" and disagree with individuals recording everything. The ones with the cameras have the power. Police have cameras to provide evidence in their favor. Businesses have cameras to provide evidence in their favor. Somehow individuals should not have that power.
We are rapidly approaching the day of ubiquitous cameras. When people can say "here are 37 different viewpoints of the event" it will radically transform this type of interaction. We can see the suspect commit the crime, if applicable. We can see the cop beat the suspect repeatedly, if applicable. More likely we can see both the suspect being combative and the officer escalating the situation with force. Whatever it is, ubiquitous cameras mean we get many viewpoints and the story can be told without the he-said/she-said problems we have today. Getting there will be bumpy, but I hope we get there quickly.
The idea that the police can simply delete what they don't like or switch of the device when ever they feel like it, is a very false premise in terms of the law. Lost evidence immediately creates doubts about the veracity of statements against those who lost or purposefully failed to gather evidence.
You obviously didn't read the articles. :-)
Simply put, right now today all those bad things are happening. That is what the ACLU was objecting to.
They provided a nice list of actual court cases where officers turned of their cameras on a complaining suspect, and turned them on to a beaten and bloody suspect who managed to injure themselves while resisting arrest.
They provided a nice list of actual court cases where officers submitted evidence of edited films rather than complete unedited films, conveniently omitting the bad things the cop did.
And just look back in the news last month, two cops who had badly beaten a motorist after crashing into him and then working with prosecutors to demand a severe plea deal rather than decades in prison, only to have some cops anonymously post their own dashboard cam showing the police flagrantly breaking the law. The mayor decries that the cops who "leaked" the evidence of corruption and police brutality were "rats", thereby reinforcing the absolute need for the law the ACLU is speaking for.
Specifically, the requirements are the officers MUST record the interactions, the recordings MUST be made available to those involved without editing or deletion, and there MUST be data retention standards to prevent officers from erasing the data too soon ("Police beating yesterday? Sorry, that file was already deleted") or keeping them indefinitely.
Without that kind of law firmly in place, missing video is simply non-evidence; "sorry, my dashboard camera wasn't running" is a valid excuse. Only with that law in place does the missing police video become something judges and juries can rely on.
That might be the case, I've seen conditions that say something like by entering the event you are concenting to be filmed ect. This was for a rock concert in the uk at sheffield arena.
The UK has probably the most inconsistent rules for photography of any country.
You can take pictures in public, unless the activity might be deemed private such as holding hands or eating, or might be disrespectful of a famous or powerful person, or is of a child doing something they might want to be kept private. But even then if someone would rather not have it known, such as walking out of a drug rehab center, then even though it would normally be public and newsworthy it isn't exactly public in this case unless the photograph is for an established news corporation by a professionally employed photographer rather than an independent photographer, which would then make it improper. At least this rule from Hungary is self-consistent.
The UK law can best be described as: If someone with money or power dislikes the photo it is unlawful, unless you have more money or power which then makes it lawful agai. Of course, that applies to just about everything in the country, not just photography.
The other important detail in their study was that when officers were assigned to wear the cameras, their use was not optional. This bill says officers need to have them but did not make their use manditory. They could be kept in a pocket turned off, kept in a vehicle turned off, or kept in the officer's locker.
The ACLU complaint was three items: cameras must be used during interactions; the complete unedited recordings must be made available to the people involved; and a data retention policy must be specified to prevent premature deletion and perpetual retention.
a start doesn't need those things, because it's a start.
Sometimes in businesses or other small policies it is good to implement something incomplete rather than nothing at all.
Law is not one of those cases. An incomplete law can be very detrimental to society and difficult to get changed. When the choice is between a bad/incomplete law or no law at all, prefer having no law.