Actually the buck stopped multiple times up the chain of command:
A researcher in AOL's technology research department and the employee's supervisor have also left the company in the wake of the disclosure, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday.
I doubt the CTO personally authorized the release, and after this I suppose all supervisors will lose some sleep over the prospect of being (unintentionally) torpedoed by a subordinate. That said, it may well motivate some new security measures, or at least awareness, in many companies. If nothing else you can bet AOLs new CTO will be sending down some decrees against the release of personal information.
Re:I'm reminded of what Colnel Kurtz said
on
iPods at War
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· Score: 1
if they were committed, this war could be won with a fourth of our present force...
You: "therefore we should ban all iPods and XBoxes for US troops!"
Me: "therefore we should not enter wars which neither the troops or the nation at large have any real reason to sacrifice for."
Lets not forget farmers. How long has it been since they came up with a truly new food crop? There is nothing wrong or even undesirable about companies reliably and efficiently providing needed products year after year like clockwork and making a good return doing so.
Farming is closer to CD duplication, and those two industries are both very efficient (small margins). The huge profits Microsoft enjoys are not from CD duplication. They are due to IP creation. IP laws make it possible for successful IP creators to coast for a while, but even the greatest can't coast forever. In Microsoft, I'm starting to see shades of Michael Jackson. Did he release some more records after Thriller? Yes, but the sensation was over and now, 20 years later, Jackson is looking at a quality of living adjustment.
You can look at MS and say "what about the XBox 360, what about Visual Studio 2005?" But face it, Microsoft is still Windows + Office. Last I heard the XBox division is still many millions in the hole since its inception. The Internet division seems to have been forgotten to the world entirely. Developer tools aren't a cash cow either. Somebody said Office 2003, but that was three or four years ago, and really wasn't all that "new."
So, in a way kudos to MS for finding the problem and addressing it rather than just sitting on their hands and making users download even more patches to replace the 'non-final' code.
In a way. But has anybody else noticed that Microsoft keeps raking in record multibillion dollar profits even though they haven't delivered anything significant for about 4 years? That's an eternity in the software biz. I think Microsoft occupies the sweetest niche in all of business.
To me that is circular reasoning: "wireless is good enough, because it's only used for light duty, because it isn't very good."
Even at home, I find 802.11g to be better than 802.11b. In particular for streaming video, which is handy if I want to watch a show on my laptop while doing dishes. IMHO wireless is not "good enough" until wires are obsolete.
If they bought a nice laptop for $200 then they had to know it was stolen
C'mon, why would any thief do that instead of getting market price for it on ebay? And if it were missing accessories like the A/C adapter, the customer would probably assume the laptop was from a wholesale lot, or that the seller was taking advantage and hawking the accessories separately.
Usually businesses of any size host their own email, so mail within the company never leaves the site (or vpn) at all.
But yeah, most individuals trust their private correspondence to ISPs, so I don't see why they'd be any less trusting with their documents or spreadsheets. (Between credit agencies, electronic banking, and warantless domestic spying, I suppose it's virtually impossible to have any privacy as a "private" citizen anyways, unless you're Theodore Kaczynski.)
The privacy concerns for this thing are far too great to overcome the cost advantage
I would have thought so too, but surprisingly I've had people give me a gmail or hotmail account for business mail. In fact, one person I know with a.mil email was having me send copies to hotmail due to reliability problems with their official account! (Of course, I'm sure that was against a rule or two).
See, we all know it's useful for us. But we slashdotters are too savvy to think about our own needs and preferences, so instead we discuss everything in terms of some mythical "average joe" or "joe sixpack." Joe's life consists solely of beer and football, so almost evey new technology is worthless to him. But suffering others' foolishness is the burden of our genius, so we defer all our opinions to Joe.
Changing the semantics based on capatilization is a very unfortunatey convention, and not consistently followed. I hereby request that the entire world switch over to writing "bit" or "byte" instead of b or B.
Ha! That was our family car for a good two years after we had our third child. Small on the outside, big on the inside, and that goes for the trunk too. Less so for the newer, rounder body style though.
Wouldn't you rather buy services yourself, instead of having someone take your money, and let someone who has no idea who you are decide what you need, and then buy it with your money?
Does that mean I don't have to help pay for Iraq?
Re:Running over with car not 2000 pounds of pressu
on
Flash Drives Go To Work
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· Score: 2, Interesting
My wife backed our Jetta onto my foot once, and then stopped it there when I yelled at her. (She claims it was accidental:) It wasn't comfortable, but it didn't break my foot either.
As an added bonus I now get to treat Microsoft Windows like just another (bloated) app running on linux:-)
That is not quite true. VMWare is not just an app, it is a linux kernel extension too. Thus it can hinder the responsiveness of your linux box more than a user-mode app, and can crash your machine if you encounter a bug in VMWare. That's on top of the fact that it runs as root. As an additional annoyance, by default it runs with a "nice" value of -10.
Sticking with a proprietary DRM format for your music collection is probably the worst choice you could make for "plug and play" convenience, in the long run. Sure, it's fine so long as the company you buy music from happens to make the nicest music hardware, but that won't last forever. Then what are you going to do?
I'm onclear on that too. I thought the main limitation on processors these days was 1) energy dissipation and 2) latency between transistors, as in, the time it takes light to travel 1 or 2 cm. Is that true, and do faster transistors help with those issues?
VM's are sluggish for everything, not just 3d. I run windows in VMWare all the time. It's serviceable, but not the same... and that's running locally, not over a network. My guess is people will not like it, but they'll live with it if they have to.
I would find this whole airport security thing rather amusing, if it weren't such a pain in the tuckus. I think Bruce Schneier summed it up rather nicely in his latest Crypto-gram [schneier.com] when he characterised all these draconian restrictions as 'Security Theatre' - something that looks like security to those who don't know any better, but ultimately has no real effect.
I tend to agree. Blocking off one small avenue of attack doesn't really do much to improve security when there are so many possible ways to kill people. And yet, I don't think public officials have any other choice. If terrorists were to launch some creative new attack tomorrow, everybody would say "wow, those terrorists never stop dreaming up ways to kill us," and would be understanding. But if they were now to hit us with bombs made from mixed liquids, even after we knew they were trying to do just that, can you imagine the outcry?
I don't know. There are a lot fewer people in US manufacturing these days, and it doesn't mean those who remain are making more money. What happened when programmers became too scarce, higher salaries? Nah, the H1-B visa was created specifically to depress wages in that field, i.e. "ensure a supply" of workers. What happened when farm labor grew scarce, higher salaries? Nah, the Man just looks the other way allowing a flood of illegal immigrants in order to keep wages low. If you start to make more money than social conventions dictate, something or other will prevent it. Techies will never make more than business types, period. They set the salaries.
But it's definitely how a majority of Americans feel. Science threatens their faith.
Actually, if you look at the data, the majority of Americans believe that humans did or might have evolved from earlier species. The article summary is likewise incorrect in implying that the majority of Americans say evolution is false. I think the persecution complex pervading this thread is somewhat unwarranted.
Slashdot Mirror
Me: "therefore we should not enter wars which neither the troops or the nation at large have any real reason to sacrifice for."
You can look at MS and say "what about the XBox 360, what about Visual Studio 2005?" But face it, Microsoft is still Windows + Office. Last I heard the XBox division is still many millions in the hole since its inception. The Internet division seems to have been forgotten to the world entirely. Developer tools aren't a cash cow either. Somebody said Office 2003, but that was three or four years ago, and really wasn't all that "new."
Even at home, I find 802.11g to be better than 802.11b. In particular for streaming video, which is handy if I want to watch a show on my laptop while doing dishes. IMHO wireless is not "good enough" until wires are obsolete.
But yeah, most individuals trust their private correspondence to ISPs, so I don't see why they'd be any less trusting with their documents or spreadsheets. (Between credit agencies, electronic banking, and warantless domestic spying, I suppose it's virtually impossible to have any privacy as a "private" citizen anyways, unless you're Theodore Kaczynski.)
See, we all know it's useful for us. But we slashdotters are too savvy to think about our own needs and preferences, so instead we discuss everything in terms of some mythical "average joe" or "joe sixpack." Joe's life consists solely of beer and football, so almost evey new technology is worthless to him. But suffering others' foolishness is the burden of our genius, so we defer all our opinions to Joe.
Changing the semantics based on capatilization is a very unfortunatey convention, and not consistently followed. I hereby request that the entire world switch over to writing "bit" or "byte" instead of b or B.
Wireless is not "good enough" until it obsoletes the expense and inconvenience of running cable everywhere. That clearly hasn't happened yet.
Ha! That was our family car for a good two years after we had our third child. Small on the outside, big on the inside, and that goes for the trunk too. Less so for the newer, rounder body style though.
My wife backed our Jetta onto my foot once, and then stopped it there when I yelled at her. (She claims it was accidental :) It wasn't comfortable, but it didn't break my foot either.
As an added bonus I now get to treat Microsoft Windows like just another (bloated) app running on linux :-)
That is not quite true. VMWare is not just an app, it is a linux kernel extension too. Thus it can hinder the responsiveness of your linux box more than a user-mode app, and can crash your machine if you encounter a bug in VMWare. That's on top of the fact that it runs as root. As an additional annoyance, by default it runs with a "nice" value of -10.
That was 10 years ago. Are you saying the same people were involved this time? Or by "these guys" do you just mean Muslims in general?
Besides, even if the PS3 console costs as much as 3-5 Wii's, I'll bet the difference in game prices won't be nearly that much.
Sticking with a proprietary DRM format for your music collection is probably the worst choice you could make for "plug and play" convenience, in the long run. Sure, it's fine so long as the company you buy music from happens to make the nicest music hardware, but that won't last forever. Then what are you going to do?
I'm onclear on that too. I thought the main limitation on processors these days was 1) energy dissipation and 2) latency between transistors, as in, the time it takes light to travel 1 or 2 cm. Is that true, and do faster transistors help with those issues?
VM's are sluggish for everything, not just 3d. I run windows in VMWare all the time. It's serviceable, but not the same... and that's running locally, not over a network. My guess is people will not like it, but they'll live with it if they have to.
I don't know. There are a lot fewer people in US manufacturing these days, and it doesn't mean those who remain are making more money. What happened when programmers became too scarce, higher salaries? Nah, the H1-B visa was created specifically to depress wages in that field, i.e. "ensure a supply" of workers. What happened when farm labor grew scarce, higher salaries? Nah, the Man just looks the other way allowing a flood of illegal immigrants in order to keep wages low. If you start to make more money than social conventions dictate, something or other will prevent it. Techies will never make more than business types, period. They set the salaries.