Not really. Either the guy has PMI, or the lender's own insurance will cover the loss.
Re:I'm not convinced of VoIP yet...
on
VoIP Questioned
·
· Score: 1
I'm of the opinion that almost no one cares about their lack of privacy unless some else is making money from it. Then it becomes a "privacy issue."
Though they are aware that they can be evesdroped on, as long as they're not aware of it actually happening and it doesn't inconvienance them, they don't care.
feeding the troll... Just think of it as a sport. It's easier that way.
if you read the above posted letter and sanction, they cared the guy made over 4.5 MILLION dollars playing there... Since I neglected to RTFA, I seem to have missed that point. Thank you for enlightening me.
That, however, puts the US government's actions in a worse light in my opinion. Since socialists frown on competing for money, the fact that they offered and paid a huge prize woud appear to undermine their cause on two fronts. And In spite of the fact that I don't care for his political views, Americans should see Fischer's actions as a cold war victory precisely because it was a violation of UN sanctions, and a confirmation of capitalist philosophy.
Like someone said before, its just like Cuba, you can go there, you just cant buy anything or have anything be bought for you Another of my disconnects with fellow consevatives; I think the best way to defeat comunism is to send lots of tourists and spend lots of money. People who are trying to figure out how to make more money aren't usually trying to figure out how to kill you.
More evidence of the left-wing slant of Slashdot. The parent is exactly right. I've seen worse here. The only thing I'll add is that he is into computers, so I expect to see him posting here as soon as fatherland security is done with him. I despise out of controll government only slightly more than I despise collectivism.
More to the point of the article. I find it abhorant that the US government actually indicted someone for playing chess. Especially since he won!
I don't much care for what he said on the radio, but I'll defend to the death his right to be an asshole. Even an insane one.
Some people are good at it. Most aren't. And the PHBs can't tell the difference.
so the job goes to the person more interested in tooting his horn and being spoon fed pre-digested drivel, than in learning and in doing the job well. I'm sick of working with idiots, and half of them are taking this class.
<tangent> I only went for the CISSP because it seemed like it was the hardest to to get. 250 nit-picking questions over ten major areas in 4 hours. Then another CISSP has to say that you know what the hell you're doing or you took the test for nothing. But management can't tell the difference between that and an MSCPC (Micorsoft Certified Point and Clicker. (I was the first to use that acronym 2 years ago, don't you dare claim it for yourself.))
I still value my CISSP since it was difficult to get. But I'm sick of the InfoSec field since it's become a haven for Doogie Howzer with a CS degree and no idea about how to protect information.
I recently had an interview, in wihich I was told that my skills were right on, but my personality just wasn't a fit for the organization. Reading the above you probably get an idea of what they were talking about. I still don't. I don't know anone who is any good at this shit that fits in even halfway. Who cares about your quirks as long as you can function in society and keep the bad guys off the servers. </tangent>
This class is just one more example of a solution in search of a problem.
If you get the reference, you get the point. We're talking software here. More efficient code will yield faster preformance. Write faster code -> make more land. You'll never know the difference.
I once had a customer express amazement at my habit of training the "locals" when I made services calls or worked on projects for that company. They couldn't understand why I would just give away my knowledge. "won't that hurt your business?" They would ask.
No, of course not. If I was a one trick pony and didn't constantly educate myself on new technologies and techniques, perhaps I would become useless. But that would happen even If I kept my secrets. Instead I build new business by educating my customers to new possibilities and showing them that they can be the master of the machine. Then, I get the more interesting jobs, and they get to do the day to day stuff that's still interesting at their level of understanding.
We would do well to remember that we all started out ignorant and wanting to learn. And we all had mentors and teachers, even if they were authors who we had never met. It's easy to bitch about ignorance. It's hard to do something about it.
In the words of Richard Bach: "You teach best what you most want to learn."
Doesn't anyone see oil as the problem behind CO2 increases?
First, remember that gasoline (diesel, kerosene, etc) is is only part of the equation. Plastics and lubricants are other products made from oil. In a technological society, it will be a very very long time before we get away from oil as an essential natural resource.
so no, oil per se is not the problem, it's burning fuels in inefficient heat engines. And that only accounts for a small part of the problem (water vapor, and methane account for much more.)
The interesting possibility to me, is that of oil as a renewable resource, and gasoline fuel cells to replace internal combustion engines. That would be a "green" solution that would preserve current investments, and not be a hardship to consumers. If you want a compelling reason to use cleaner fuels, how about efficiency and lower cost?
I have 12 years of professional paid experience, and another 12 doing the exact same thing for no pay. I taught myself to program in assembler at 12 years old and began doing PC repair and maintenance for local businesses for free about a year later. I was administrating AT&T UNIX systems before I could drive. I was in IT before the dot.com boom, and I'm still around after the bust. Many others here on/. have a similar story.
The point of all of the above is this; I'm sick of overeducated idiots being paid big money to do a job for which they lack the skills, ability, and aptitude. It's worse when they're managers.
Of course, the one time I had a team of serious pros; (All of whom were a pleasure to work with, and had my utmost respect) The company went belly up thanks to management ignoring the pleadings of one of the finest technical staffs I've ever been a part of. I saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship. Most of the rest stayed around. Management told them they would be taken care of.
It didn't happen. Some of them are still unemployed today, and others have had to change career paths. I landed on my feet only to have the rug pulled out again because my new employer expected less than ethical behavior from its employees. That's one compromise I won't make.
The moral of the story:
I've been around a while. I've learned a few things, mostly from people who've been in IT longer than I've been alive. Also, I'm skilled and employable, not some kid who's bitching because the collectivist utopia his high school guidance counselor promised him didn't appear.
-- It's been called DP, MIS, IS, and now IT, but little has changed except the technology.
-- Management will lie to you and not feel the least bit of remorse.
-- Your education will be largely useless, because nearly all of the technologies you work with weren't even imagined when you were in school.
-- You will work your ass off to learn as fast as you can, because if you don't, someone smarter and faster will take your place.
-- You only get what you're worth if you demand it and can convince someone to pay it.
-- If you have any ambition at all, you will be forced to sell yourself to the highest bidder.
And to top it all off, some asshole hiring manager will decide that you don't cut it because you did all of the above including drop out of college to make something of yourself instead of being turned into a good little drone that "don't ask for too much, or get too uppity."
But it's the only career I can think of that rewards intelligence and hard work with enough cash to keep you in books and hardware. So if the parent is done spouting dogmatic, collectivist, MBA bullshit, I've got a business to run. Because unlike him, I build things for a living and judge people for their skills and work ethic, not the length of their tenure, or what school they went to. You want people to stick around? give them a reason to. Keep your promises. Let them do the job you hired them for. And don't make them look for work elsewhere just to get a raise.
One last thought.
Isn't it ironic how employers like to talk about investment when they're rationalizing why they discarded your resume, or making promises about training and bonuses to get you to agree to a lower salary? But the promises get broken and the decision criteria change, and no one talks about investment after you're hired.
So your theory is that programs are MORE secure when they have LESS security features
Actually, programs are MORE secure when they have LESS features. period. Security features are still features. If implemented incorrectly they can weaken security instead of enhance it. Complexity increases the probability of vulnerability.
I suppose that having passwords on user accounts is silly, too, because some rogue program could log keystrokes and post them to the web.
In some situations, that is exactly correct. It depends very much on the application. In some very high security situations, passwords are considered too weak to rely on. In those cases "something you have" and "something you are" are often used as two factor (strong) authentication.
And yes, I am an information security professional. (but not a lawyer.)
I have not read the book
Please do. You may very likely reconsider what you said below. And if you have even a slightly open mind, it will challenge many of the assumptions that you may have made about the purpose of violent conflict in human societies.
My view of the book was always that it made idols of the military, only giving the right to vote to the military, etc.
The point here was that if you are not willing to give service to your nation; in its defense, or in some other way, then you should have no say in the allocation of resources. I view paying taxes the same way. Why should someone who didn't contribute have any say in how the money is used? A famous Scottish historian (I forget his name) pointed out that the American Experiment would last only until the people discovered that they could vote themselves money out of the treasury. Heinlein simply points out that adherence to some basic principles would go a long way to preventing things like that.
As for idols, I think you overstate the case, but what's wrong with honoring people (of all nations) who go and get themselves shot at, and often killed, so that we can all sit around and sip lattes and take freedom for granted.
It's a good story even without the politics. But if you think as I, that it's axiomatic that you must be ready, willing, and able to soundly defeat aggressors and then be willing to help them change for the better, then you will particularly like it.
I bought some Corel stock back when they were botching their Linux strategy. I thought they might be able to pull it off. Guess not. I also bought Corel office. Another bad move.
That won't happen again. The product was unstable and slow. And I barely got the stock sold for what I paid, before it tanked. I no longer trust Corel to run their company profitably, and I seriously doubt that they can put out even moderately good software any more. After all, they didn't create WP. They purchased it.
Besides, OOo is much better than WP Office ever was. OOo is a key part of my business and I find that I'm very productive because such good tools are available.
This isn't meant to be adversarial, but you've given me an opportunity to expand on my original point. Besides, I rather enjoy intelectual debate.
My memory of that time was that there was plenty of free software, yes. But that it was often nearly unusable. The university software was always highly functional within its scope, but you were expected to modify it to make it actually work in any sort of easy way.
You and I may be capable of using a very complicated command line or shell script to string tools together for a task, but I find that I'm less inclined to do so when I need to get a report to a client immediately and must have processed data for the presentation.
The fact is that the free tools available at the time were usually superior to their commercial counterparts, but the level of knowledge required to use them was also.
As for the generally available free software it was usually unsupported and public domain. Often it was of such poor quality that it was unusable. Which brings me to my primary argument against your first point; Before RMS created the GPL you essentially had only two ways to make free software available. You could use a University license (if you worked for a University.) That would give the author some protection against his work being raided by someone who wanted to make a quick buck off of someone else's work. Or you could put it in the public domain and if it was good, be guaranteed that someone with the resources to publish it would make a bundle at your expense.
Without the GPL (and similar licenses) there would be no OSS movement to speak of. High quality free software requires a return on investment. That investment may be intangible, but it is very real.
as for your second point, I think that commercial enterprises have become involved because there is a market for software support and supporting good software is cheap. Since most companies don't know the difference between good and bad software they pay the same for support of either. Essentially Microsoft, and others, are encouraging OSS publishers to exist and make big money by charging a competitive rate for a less expensive product.
For the first time there is a financial incentive for the creation of quality software and its associated support. But without the incentive of copyright retention offered by open source licenses, authors would not produce it and we would be back in the bad old days of generally crappy free software with the occasional gem. Perhaps I have selective memory, but I think that the OSS movement is fairly recent and markedly different from just free (as in beer) software.
If you could build really bad software that looks good on the surface, get other people fix it for you for free, and still get paid, would you do it?
I suppose that the reason I'm not rich yet is because I wouldn't. Building software is usually time consuming and costly. Building good software is more so. I wonder that the OSS movement didn't gain popularity so much because of a desire to contribute, as out of a sense of frustration that there was very little good software available at any price.
The market dosen't reward good software because most users are so ignorant of what is good software that they just buy whatever is most shinny and pretty and expensive. The only alternative seems to be to write good software and give it away for free so that you don't have to sit in the Microsoft (and others) stench all day long. It's not just Microsoft, but they're the best example.
Ever heard of OnStar? It's got GPS, and can therefore report whether you're speeding, and yet it's not abused in the way you suggest it would be. People actually even pay extra to have it in their car.
The difference is that OnStar is a service (A very nice one, I might add) that depends on customers for its existence. If it's abused customers will will stop paying for it. I know I will.
I rely on GMs self interest, and not on laws or contracts to limit abuse. When they decide it's time to burn their customers I'll shop some where else. If they try to do it in secret, it will eventually get out.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. Either the guy has PMI, or the lender's own insurance will cover the loss.
I'm of the opinion that almost no one cares about their lack of privacy unless some else is making money from it.
Then it becomes a "privacy issue."
Though they are aware that they can be evesdroped on, as long as they're not aware of it actually happening and it doesn't inconvienance them, they don't care.
feeding the troll...
Just think of it as a sport. It's easier that way.
if you read the above posted letter and sanction, they cared the guy made over 4.5 MILLION dollars playing there...
Since I neglected to RTFA, I seem to have missed that point. Thank you for enlightening me.
That, however, puts the US government's actions in a worse light in my opinion. Since socialists frown on competing for money, the fact that they offered and paid a huge prize woud appear to undermine their cause on two fronts. And In spite of the fact that I don't care for his political views, Americans should see Fischer's actions as a cold war victory precisely because it was a violation of UN sanctions, and a confirmation of capitalist philosophy.
Like someone said before, its just like Cuba, you can go there, you just cant buy anything or have anything be bought for you
Another of my disconnects with fellow consevatives; I think the best way to defeat comunism is to send lots of tourists and spend lots of money. People who are trying to figure out how to make more money aren't usually trying to figure out how to kill you.
Just one more dollar. It's waffer thin.
More evidence of the left-wing slant of Slashdot. The parent is exactly right. I've seen worse here. The only thing I'll add is that he is into computers, so I expect to see him posting here as soon as fatherland security is done with him. I despise out of controll government only slightly more than I despise collectivism.
More to the point of the article. I find it abhorant that the US government actually indicted someone for playing chess. Especially since he won!
I don't much care for what he said on the radio, but I'll defend to the death his right to be an asshole. Even an insane one.
Your sense of humor is your own. I don't presume to comment on it. Your judgent, however, and lack of wit are another matter.
Thank you for proving my point, nonetheless.
The Gaultish Troll strikes again; Speaking truth, and offending collectivests with extreme predjuce.
Why? Well, who's John Gault?
Sounds more like the result of John Kerry in office to me.
Count the troll mods to see how left leaning Slashdot really is. It's either funny or it's not. If it's not, then ignore it or post a witty repartee.
Yes. And they obviously switched to Roman Engineers Notation for that one.
So ME (1000E) would be 1000.0. That makes it a skip of 902.0
If you can't figure out that I made that up, then please don't bother to post a reply.
Some people are good at it. Most aren't. And the PHBs can't tell the difference.
so the job goes to the person more interested in tooting his horn and being spoon fed pre-digested drivel, than in learning and in doing the job well. I'm sick of working with idiots, and half of them are taking this class.
<tangent>
I only went for the CISSP because it seemed like it was the hardest to to get. 250 nit-picking questions over ten major areas in 4 hours. Then another CISSP has to say that you know what the hell you're doing or you took the test for nothing. But management can't tell the difference between that and an MSCPC (Micorsoft Certified Point and Clicker. (I was the first to use that acronym 2 years ago, don't you dare claim it for yourself.))
I still value my CISSP since it was difficult to get. But I'm sick of the InfoSec field since it's become a haven for Doogie Howzer with a CS degree and no idea about how to protect information.
I recently had an interview, in wihich I was told that my skills were right on, but my personality just wasn't a fit for the organization. Reading the above you probably get an idea of what they were talking about. I still don't. I don't know anone who is any good at this shit that fits in even halfway. Who cares about your quirks as long as you can function in society and keep the bad guys off the servers.
</tangent>
This class is just one more example of a solution in search of a problem.
God bless my wife. Her sense of smell is much less defined than mine. Which helps me avoid diaper duty more often than not.
...the Shuttle problems were political, not technical.
Which is why commercial spaceflight is so vital our successfully exploiting space.
"...but this one goes to 11. So it's louder."
If you get the reference, you get the point. We're talking software here. More efficient code will yield faster preformance. Write faster code -> make more land. You'll never know the difference.
oh, and who was suppling the diagnostics again?
I once had a customer express amazement at my habit of training the "locals" when I made services calls or worked on projects for that company. They couldn't understand why I would just give away my knowledge. "won't that hurt your business?" They would ask.
No, of course not. If I was a one trick pony and didn't constantly educate myself on new technologies and techniques, perhaps I would become useless. But that would happen even If I kept my secrets. Instead I build new business by educating my customers to new possibilities and showing them that they can be the master of the machine. Then, I get the more interesting jobs, and they get to do the day to day stuff that's still interesting at their level of understanding.
We would do well to remember that we all started out ignorant and wanting to learn. And we all had mentors and teachers, even if they were authors who we had never met. It's easy to bitch about ignorance. It's hard to do something about it.
In the words of Richard Bach:
"You teach best what you most want to learn."
First, remember that gasoline (diesel, kerosene, etc) is is only part of the equation. Plastics and lubricants are other products made from oil. In a technological society, it will be a very very long time before we get away from oil as an essential natural resource.
so no, oil per se is not the problem, it's burning fuels in inefficient heat engines. And that only accounts for a small part of the problem (water vapor, and methane account for much more.)
The interesting possibility to me, is that of oil as a renewable resource, and gasoline fuel cells to replace internal combustion engines. That would be a "green" solution that would preserve current investments, and not be a hardship to consumers. If you want a compelling reason to use cleaner fuels, how about efficiency and lower cost?
I have 12 years of professional paid experience, and another 12 doing the exact same thing for no pay. I taught myself to program in assembler at 12 years old and began doing PC repair and maintenance for local businesses for free about a year later. I was administrating AT&T UNIX systems before I could drive. I was in IT before the dot.com boom, and I'm still around after the bust. Many others here on /. have a similar story.
The point of all of the above is this; I'm sick of overeducated idiots being paid big money to do a job for which they lack the skills, ability, and aptitude. It's worse when they're managers.
Of course, the one time I had a team of serious pros; (All of whom were a pleasure to work with, and had my utmost respect) The company went belly up thanks to management ignoring the pleadings of one of the finest technical staffs I've ever been a part of. I saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship. Most of the rest stayed around. Management told them they would be taken care of.
It didn't happen. Some of them are still unemployed today, and others have had to change career paths. I landed on my feet only to have the rug pulled out again because my new employer expected less than ethical behavior from its employees. That's one compromise I won't make.
The moral of the story:
I've been around a while. I've learned a few things, mostly from people who've been in IT longer than I've been alive. Also, I'm skilled and employable, not some kid who's bitching because the collectivist utopia his high school guidance counselor promised him didn't appear.
-- It's been called DP, MIS, IS, and now IT, but little has changed except the technology.
-- Management will lie to you and not feel the least bit of remorse.
-- Your education will be largely useless, because nearly all of the technologies you work with weren't even imagined when you were in school.
-- You will work your ass off to learn as fast as you can, because if you don't, someone smarter and faster will take your place.
-- You only get what you're worth if you demand it and can convince someone to pay it.
-- If you have any ambition at all, you will be forced to sell yourself to the highest bidder.
And to top it all off, some asshole hiring manager will decide that you don't cut it because you did all of the above including drop out of college to make something of yourself instead of being turned into a good little drone that "don't ask for too much, or get too uppity."
But it's the only career I can think of that rewards intelligence and hard work with enough cash to keep you in books and hardware. So if the parent is done spouting dogmatic, collectivist, MBA bullshit, I've got a business to run. Because unlike him, I build things for a living and judge people for their skills and work ethic, not the length of their tenure, or what school they went to. You want people to stick around? give them a reason to. Keep your promises. Let them do the job you hired them for. And don't make them look for work elsewhere just to get a raise.
One last thought.
Isn't it ironic how employers like to talk about investment when they're rationalizing why they discarded your resume, or making promises about training and bonuses to get you to agree to a lower salary? But the promises get broken and the decision criteria change, and no one talks about investment after you're hired.
So your theory is that programs are MORE secure when they have LESS security features
Actually, programs are MORE secure when they have LESS features. period. Security features are still features. If implemented incorrectly they can weaken security instead of enhance it. Complexity increases the probability of vulnerability.
I suppose that having passwords on user accounts is silly, too, because some rogue program could log keystrokes and post them to the web.
In some situations, that is exactly correct. It depends very much on the application. In some very high security situations, passwords are considered too weak to rely on. In those cases "something you have" and "something you are" are often used as two factor (strong) authentication.
And yes, I am an information security professional. (but not a lawyer.)
I have not read the book
Please do. You may very likely reconsider what you said below. And if you have even a slightly open mind, it will challenge many of the assumptions that you may have made about the purpose of violent conflict in human societies.
My view of the book was always that it made idols of the military, only giving the right to vote to the military, etc.
The point here was that if you are not willing to give service to your nation; in its defense, or in some other way, then you should have no say in the allocation of resources. I view paying taxes the same way. Why should someone who didn't contribute have any say in how the money is used? A famous Scottish historian (I forget his name) pointed out that the American Experiment would last only until the people discovered that they could vote themselves money out of the treasury. Heinlein simply points out that adherence to some basic principles would go a long way to preventing things like that.
As for idols, I think you overstate the case, but what's wrong with honoring people (of all nations) who go and get themselves shot at, and often killed, so that we can all sit around and sip lattes and take freedom for granted.
It's a good story even without the politics. But if you think as I, that it's axiomatic that you must be ready, willing, and able to soundly defeat aggressors and then be willing to help them change for the better, then you will particularly like it.
This is Slashdot. If the news wasn't a little slanted I wouldn't read it.
Besides. It's the community take on events that I'm interested in. I can check out the wire services if I just want the news.
Ah yes, Jeri Ryan. Resistance IS futile.
I bought some Corel stock back when they were botching their Linux strategy. I thought they might be able to pull it off. Guess not. I also bought Corel office. Another bad move.
That won't happen again. The product was unstable and slow. And I barely got the stock sold for what I paid, before it tanked. I no longer trust Corel to run their company profitably, and I seriously doubt that they can put out even moderately good software any more. After all, they didn't create WP. They purchased it.
Besides, OOo is much better than WP Office ever was. OOo is a key part of my business and I find that I'm very productive because such good tools are available.
So do you think he's going to need three or will it be four terms to do that?
1. Bush/Cheney in '04
2. Bush/Rice in '08
3. Bush/??? in 2012
4. Profit!
This isn't meant to be adversarial, but you've given me an opportunity to expand on my original point. Besides, I rather enjoy intelectual debate.
My memory of that time was that there was plenty of free software, yes. But that it was often nearly unusable. The university software was always highly functional within its scope, but you were expected to modify it to make it actually work in any sort of easy way.
You and I may be capable of using a very complicated command line or shell script to string tools together for a task, but I find that I'm less inclined to do so when I need to get a report to a client immediately and must have processed data for the presentation.
The fact is that the free tools available at the time were usually superior to their commercial counterparts, but the level of knowledge required to use them was also.
As for the generally available free software it was usually unsupported and public domain. Often it was of such poor quality that it was unusable. Which brings me to my primary argument against your first point; Before RMS created the GPL you essentially had only two ways to make free software available. You could use a University license (if you worked for a University.) That would give the author some protection against his work being raided by someone who wanted to make a quick buck off of someone else's work. Or you could put it in the public domain and if it was good, be guaranteed that someone with the resources to publish it would make a bundle at your expense.
Without the GPL (and similar licenses) there would be no OSS movement to speak of. High quality free software requires a return on investment. That investment may be intangible, but it is very real.
as for your second point, I think that commercial enterprises have become involved because there is a market for software support and supporting good software is cheap. Since most companies don't know the difference between good and bad software they pay the same for support of either. Essentially Microsoft, and others, are encouraging OSS publishers to exist and make big money by charging a competitive rate for a less expensive product.
For the first time there is a financial incentive for the creation of quality software and its associated support. But without the incentive of copyright retention offered by open source licenses, authors would not produce it and we would be back in the bad old days of generally crappy free software with the occasional gem. Perhaps I have selective memory, but I think that the OSS movement is fairly recent and markedly different from just free (as in beer) software.
If you could build really bad software that looks good on the surface, get other people fix it for you for free, and still get paid, would you do it?
I suppose that the reason I'm not rich yet is because I wouldn't. Building software is usually time consuming and costly. Building good software is more so. I wonder that the OSS movement didn't gain popularity so much because of a desire to contribute, as out of a sense of frustration that there was very little good software available at any price.
The market dosen't reward good software because most users are so ignorant of what is good software that they just buy whatever is most shinny and pretty and expensive. The only alternative seems to be to write good software and give it away for free so that you don't have to sit in the Microsoft (and others) stench all day long. It's not just Microsoft, but they're the best example.
It could also be "areole density." Which has a rather titillating definition.
I still couldn't resist tossing my own two cents onto the fire.
Careful, those two cents may contain RFIDs and could therefore explode if tossed onto a fire.
Just lookin' out for y'all.
Ever heard of OnStar? It's got GPS, and can therefore report whether you're speeding, and yet it's not abused in the way you suggest it would be. People actually even pay extra to have it in their car.
The difference is that OnStar is a service (A very nice one, I might add) that depends on customers for its existence. If it's abused customers will will stop paying for it. I know I will.
I rely on GMs self interest, and not on laws or contracts to limit abuse. When they decide it's time to burn their customers I'll shop some where else. If they try to do it in secret, it will eventually get out.