Or get a USB stick, or an external hard drive. A lot of this depends on your company's IT policies. It sounds like you work for a small company, so I would guess that you don't have much in the way of a computing security or config management department. If you're at one of those companies where you go to the "computer guy" , get an IP for your machine and away you go, they probably won't know/care if you have external storage for your machine.
But for heaven's sake, if you insist on keeping your stuff on the C: drive, put a self-destruct program on it that securely wipes your "Great American Novel" should your machine be seized by your corporate overlords.
Just make sure you have a ton of the nastiest (but keep it legal) pr0n on it when they do their initial checkout. That way it makes it harder for them to claim that you were surfing for that stuff at work. (You: "It was already there when the machine became a company asset")
As the creator of the Melissa virus can attest, Office tags its documents with an ID that can be used as a tracer. The OP's "Great American Novel" would, I imagine, be written in Word.
Still, it would be a real scumbag thing to do. Especially if the correct agreements are vague or nonexistent, not to mention if the OP's work is not related whatsoever to the product in question.
But really, what could possibly happen in the legal world that would surprise any of us?
From the article: "He said he had not used the Goldman code at his new job or distributed it to anyone else, and the criminal complaint offers no evidence that he has." Not to mention that 2.6% of a program (the amount he was quoted to have, including the OSS that is not proprietary) is a bit weak in my opinion.
Apparently I'm not alone (again, from the article): Harvey A. Silverglate, a criminal defense lawyer in Boston not involved in the case, said he was troubled that the F.B.I. had arrested Mr. Aleynikov so quickly, without evidence that he had made any effort to use or sell the code. Such disputes are generally resolved civilly rather than criminally, Mr. Silverglate said.
Possession of proprietary data happens every time one of these guys leaves a company - they have it between their ears. Using it is where they get nailed. The reason I'm so surprised at the FBI is that I know they're smart enough to not spring the trap before they have the guy dead-to-rights. Failing to do that is how perps walk and I expect more from our country's premier law enforcement agency.
The stamping out part is about Citadel, not GS and certainly not the FBI. (You may want to read the article - it's a pretty quick read)
Citadel and GS are either going off half-cocked or we don't have all the pieces.
No evidence of wrongdoing has really been presented. The article (I did RTFA) seemed to say that because some files went out, the company immediately began legal proceedings without even knowing what they were. It seems like PHBs are declaring what the "valuable" files are. I'm also shocked the way the FBI has handled this - there has to be more than we're seeing.
Having said all of that - it does look like (at least the article makes it look this way) the established firms are manipulating the legal system to prevent new competitors from getting on their feet. Slap suits used to be civil only - I would think that attempting criminal slap suits would have some legal consequences for the one filing the false (or should have known they were false) charges.
Free or not, hiding (or not mentioning it, or putting it in the.000001 point fine print, or burying it in a 100 page EULA - IOW: obscuring the truth) something that you know people will object to is deceptive, dishonest and wrong. You have to ask yourself, would people not install my "free" software if they knew what it was doing - if the answer is anywhere close to yes, you have a moral obligation to reveal the details.
This is part of the bargain - if you give away something for "free" and advertise it as "free", it needs to be "free" - as in not just that the costs are hidden. Otherwise, it really is a Trojan Horse.
Don't reap the goodwill of the public when you're secretly using them.
Let's think about this - is Amazon the kind of company that would intentionally incite a class-action lawsuit for the purpose of setting legal precedent against the type of actions it performed?
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but having this whole mess center around "1984" is a pretty big coincidence.
The example in the summary could be easily handled by disallowing the transfer of copyright ownership for academic materials - making the originator always the owner with the option of allowing others to use their work.
We have to remember the purpose of IP law - when it ceases to protect creators of intellectual works, it is no longer serving its purpose.
Make sure to factor in the time it takes to make the system available to the repairman. For me, that's more time than it usually takes to install a part. I can open up the case where it sits at 11:00pm and make the go/nogo decision.
To get one repaired, I have to disconnect the system and take it to the shop or avail myself, my computer and my home office to an onsite repairman during business hours.
I have always built my own systems - and I have encountered very, very few (can count on one hand) the times that a repair was the most cost effective option. Usually when a PC has a problem that inhibits operation, it's time for a new one. They've pretty much reached the point that other electronic devices have - repairs cost more in labor than a new one would cost - not to mention that the technology advances so fast that finding parts is a problem (that's what happened to the last computer I had to take behind the woodshed).
There's a recession, people are out of work (despite what some think, food and shelter are more important than gaming). Few good games have been released, (it's about the plotline, not how big you can draw the imaginary gun). MMORPGs supply ongoing gaming experience for a low, flat rate per month.
I realize that these are hard problems to fix, but the "silver bullet / soundbite" method appeals to the sheeple that follow the loudest voice that keeps its words small. So we're bound to hear from casual or even non-gamers how piracy and used game stores are the source of these woes.
Accept it - adapt and overcome. Figure out how to rebut these claims - keep your words small and your voice loud. Repetition never hurts either.
Sadly enough, I think you're right. This is just another attempt by producers to exploit intellectual property laws beyond their original intention. I had to study First Sale Doctrine and how it applies to software in grad school. DMCA was only the first in a series of legal changes aimed at preventing a consumer from having any real "rights" when they pay for content.
Hopefully we'll come to our senses before any real damage is done and re-evaluate the purpose of intellectual property's legal protection.
How about we try to develop an app platform that is vendor independent - not simply so we can have homegrown apps, but so that you don't have to choose your cell service provider based on what apps you want to run. While we're at it, can we make software for phones that will run reasonably fast? I hate having to hit the power button 7 times, each time wondering if the button is worn out or if the software just hasn't caught up yet.
I mean, really, really lame? Even an action scene where they're having to blast oncoming rocks for any time longer than 10 seconds will be overkill. It's not that I have no appreciation for the game, I played it in the 80's (the home version I rolled over the score twice in the same game while I had chicken pox).
There are many better games to make movies from. (Deus Ex, Thief, Zelda, Golden Axe, heck - even Pitfall or Pac Man would be better).
Agreed - the likelihood of a "fire sale" scenario is very minimal, but the odds for any given individual getting caught up in a specific attack on a "soft target" such as in the TJ Maxx case are about 1:1. I have already been involved in 3 - one of those incidents put a coworker in the sights of an identity thief. This is the issue: It's the same old game - "Security is a cost to be minimized, not a "value-added" feature of a business", "It's not like we're protecting national security info", "Why would someone want our data?". Until this old-school mindset is broken, the problems will persist and fear of consequence is the only way to motivate the decision makers in the short term.
Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering. - Yoda
The biggest problem I have with Hulu is its bandwidth requirements. TFA states that you need a 2Mbit connection. I just don't have that available to me. On a good day I get.5Mbit out of my Sprint wireless card and I have the best connection in my neighborhood. If I could set a buffer high enough, or if I could set it to download overnight, I could watch it later. Does anyone know of a way to do this with Hulu or any other such service for that matter?
What do you do with people who refuse to cooperate? My assumption must be that they are not allowed to leave. This is not compatible with the American idea of freedom.
Seriously, in my experience, any nonprofit would be further ahead to use web-based systems hosted not on someone's personal pc. You will always have people coming and going, so you will need to be able to smoothly transition data into the hands of whomever is at the helm. Beware people who don't want things to go onto the web - they're usually information hoarders and don't share (but you will probably have other problems with them before you get to this point). This isn't true for all of them, but you need an extremely robust system for handling people who leave the organization without turning over their responsibilities and/or information. Web services like Yahoo Groups, simply because of how they're set up, provide some insulation to people leaving as long as you don't have all of the moderators leave at once. I've not used other systems, but I'm sure there are others out there.
To specifically address the contact management that you're talking about can be done with any word processing/spreadsheet/flat file product as long as you have a neutral place to store it and a mechanism to keep folks from stepping on each other. Again, any type of group management service with a place to upload files provides that.
I tried to choose my words carefully - "Hacking" in the current popularly accepted definition (as opposed to its original definition, which you referenced in your post) is not computing security, but one way to attempt to breach security. I have found several items to fall under the umbrella of computing security such as Configuration Management, confidentiality policy, forensics, disaster recovery, cost/benefit analysis of security measures, virus handling - and these are just the ones off the top of my head.
Hackers are only one of your concerns - hurricanes, power outages, disgruntled employees, that stupid screensaver trojan that the secretary keeps installing, short funding and that guy with admin level access who's a bit short on cash right now due to his crank habit are more of a threat.
Yes, all of the necessary skills can be taught academically. The notion that you can only learn these skills by trial and error is fed by the fact that due to the small number of quality institutions teaching the skills, most folks learn them by trial and error.
I have been looking for formal academic training in computing security for quite some time. The best I've found is "boot camps" for CISSP and seminar courses taught by a local college on how to use tools like Metasploit, Wireshark and C&A.
I went all the way through a MS CS looking for any opportunity to study computing security and drew nothing but shrugs from my professors when I inquired about seriously studying the subject.
If they really want to produce cybersecurity experts, forget the competitions - you have to make training available. Forget all of the hand waving talk about academics not "having the right mindset". I have found that the kind of people who say such things just don't want to share their knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
Or get a USB stick, or an external hard drive. A lot of this depends on your company's IT policies. It sounds like you work for a small company, so I would guess that you don't have much in the way of a computing security or config management department. If you're at one of those companies where you go to the "computer guy" , get an IP for your machine and away you go, they probably won't know/care if you have external storage for your machine.
But for heaven's sake, if you insist on keeping your stuff on the C: drive, put a self-destruct program on it that securely wipes your "Great American Novel" should your machine be seized by your corporate overlords.
Just make sure you have a ton of the nastiest (but keep it legal) pr0n on it when they do their initial checkout. That way it makes it harder for them to claim that you were surfing for that stuff at work. (You: "It was already there when the machine became a company asset")
As the creator of the Melissa virus can attest, Office tags its documents with an ID that can be used as a tracer. The OP's "Great American Novel" would, I imagine, be written in Word.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_virus
Still, it would be a real scumbag thing to do. Especially if the correct agreements are vague or nonexistent, not to mention if the OP's work is not related whatsoever to the product in question.
But really, what could possibly happen in the legal world that would surprise any of us?
From the article: "He said he had not used the Goldman code at his new job or distributed it to anyone else, and the criminal complaint offers no evidence that he has." Not to mention that 2.6% of a program (the amount he was quoted to have, including the OSS that is not proprietary) is a bit weak in my opinion.
Apparently I'm not alone (again, from the article): Harvey A. Silverglate, a criminal defense lawyer in Boston not involved in the case, said he was troubled that the F.B.I. had arrested Mr. Aleynikov so quickly, without evidence that he had made any effort to use or sell the code. Such disputes are generally resolved civilly rather than criminally, Mr. Silverglate said.
Possession of proprietary data happens every time one of these guys leaves a company - they have it between their ears. Using it is where they get nailed. The reason I'm so surprised at the FBI is that I know they're smart enough to not spring the trap before they have the guy dead-to-rights. Failing to do that is how perps walk and I expect more from our country's premier law enforcement agency.
The stamping out part is about Citadel, not GS and certainly not the FBI. (You may want to read the article - it's a pretty quick read)
Citadel and GS are either going off half-cocked or we don't have all the pieces.
No evidence of wrongdoing has really been presented. The article (I did RTFA) seemed to say that because some files went out, the company immediately began legal proceedings without even knowing what they were. It seems like PHBs are declaring what the "valuable" files are. I'm also shocked the way the FBI has handled this - there has to be more than we're seeing.
Having said all of that - it does look like (at least the article makes it look this way) the established firms are manipulating the legal system to prevent new competitors from getting on their feet. Slap suits used to be civil only - I would think that attempting criminal slap suits would have some legal consequences for the one filing the false (or should have known they were false) charges.
Wasn't there also a story a while back about robots fueled by biomass? This was twisted to mean "human eating" and we all laughed.
Combine that with what you said and we could have a certified evil, lying and flesh eating robot - What could possibly go wrong indeed.....
The previous post was brought to you by AT&T
- Our service may suck, but our techs won't beat you up.
Free or not, hiding (or not mentioning it, or putting it in the .000001 point fine print, or burying it in a 100 page EULA - IOW: obscuring the truth) something that you know people will object to is deceptive, dishonest and wrong. You have to ask yourself, would people not install my "free" software if they knew what it was doing - if the answer is anywhere close to yes, you have a moral obligation to reveal the details.
This is part of the bargain - if you give away something for "free" and advertise it as "free", it needs to be "free" - as in not just that the costs are hidden. Otherwise, it really is a Trojan Horse.
Don't reap the goodwill of the public when you're secretly using them.
Didn't you see Bubba Hotep?
Elvis went to a West Texas nursing home with the president.
Let's think about this - is Amazon the kind of company that would intentionally incite a class-action lawsuit for the purpose of setting legal precedent against the type of actions it performed?
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but having this whole mess center around "1984" is a pretty big coincidence.
In any case - Release the hounds!
The example in the summary could be easily handled by disallowing the transfer of copyright ownership for academic materials - making the originator always the owner with the option of allowing others to use their work.
We have to remember the purpose of IP law - when it ceases to protect creators of intellectual works, it is no longer serving its purpose.
Make sure to factor in the time it takes to make the system available to the repairman. For me, that's more time than it usually takes to install a part. I can open up the case where it sits at 11:00pm and make the go/nogo decision.
To get one repaired, I have to disconnect the system and take it to the shop or avail myself, my computer and my home office to an onsite repairman during business hours.
I have always built my own systems - and I have encountered very, very few (can count on one hand) the times that a repair was the most cost effective option. Usually when a PC has a problem that inhibits operation, it's time for a new one. They've pretty much reached the point that other electronic devices have - repairs cost more in labor than a new one would cost - not to mention that the technology advances so fast that finding parts is a problem (that's what happened to the last computer I had to take behind the woodshed).
You're missing the point - this is just attorneys' arrogance at work (on the public dime, no less). The Bard had it right - they lawyers need to go.
This reminds me of a joke I heard from a court clerk:
Q: Do you know what they call an attorney with an IQ under 80?
A: Your Honor
There's a recession, people are out of work (despite what some think, food and shelter are more important than gaming). Few good games have been released, (it's about the plotline, not how big you can draw the imaginary gun). MMORPGs supply ongoing gaming experience for a low, flat rate per month.
I realize that these are hard problems to fix, but the "silver bullet / soundbite" method appeals to the sheeple that follow the loudest voice that keeps its words small. So we're bound to hear from casual or even non-gamers how piracy and used game stores are the source of these woes.
Accept it - adapt and overcome. Figure out how to rebut these claims - keep your words small and your voice loud. Repetition never hurts either.
Sadly enough, I think you're right. This is just another attempt by producers to exploit intellectual property laws beyond their original intention. I had to study First Sale Doctrine and how it applies to software in grad school. DMCA was only the first in a series of legal changes aimed at preventing a consumer from having any real "rights" when they pay for content.
Hopefully we'll come to our senses before any real damage is done and re-evaluate the purpose of intellectual property's legal protection.
Isn't this what Wikileaks was made for?
How about we try to develop an app platform that is vendor independent - not simply so we can have homegrown apps, but so that you don't have to choose your cell service provider based on what apps you want to run. While we're at it, can we make software for phones that will run reasonably fast? I hate having to hit the power button 7 times, each time wondering if the button is worn out or if the software just hasn't caught up yet.
I mean, really, really lame? Even an action scene where they're having to blast oncoming rocks for any time longer than 10 seconds will be overkill. It's not that I have no appreciation for the game, I played it in the 80's (the home version I rolled over the score twice in the same game while I had chicken pox).
There are many better games to make movies from. (Deus Ex, Thief, Zelda, Golden Axe, heck - even Pitfall or Pac Man would be better).
Agreed - the likelihood of a "fire sale" scenario is very minimal, but the odds for any given individual getting caught up in a specific attack on a "soft target" such as in the TJ Maxx case are about 1:1. I have already been involved in 3 - one of those incidents put a coworker in the sights of an identity thief. This is the issue: It's the same old game - "Security is a cost to be minimized, not a "value-added" feature of a business", "It's not like we're protecting national security info", "Why would someone want our data?". Until this old-school mindset is broken, the problems will persist and fear of consequence is the only way to motivate the decision makers in the short term.
Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering. - Yoda
The biggest problem I have with Hulu is its bandwidth requirements. TFA states that you need a 2Mbit connection. I just don't have that available to me. On a good day I get .5Mbit out of my Sprint wireless card and I have the best connection in my neighborhood. If I could set a buffer high enough, or if I could set it to download overnight, I could watch it later. Does anyone know of a way to do this with Hulu or any other such service for that matter?
What do you do with people who refuse to cooperate? My assumption must be that they are not allowed to leave. This is not compatible with the American idea of freedom.
Our nonprofit uses "Decapitated Poultry v0.01 beta".
Seriously, in my experience, any nonprofit would be further ahead to use web-based systems hosted not on someone's personal pc. You will always have people coming and going, so you will need to be able to smoothly transition data into the hands of whomever is at the helm. Beware people who don't want things to go onto the web - they're usually information hoarders and don't share (but you will probably have other problems with them before you get to this point). This isn't true for all of them, but you need an extremely robust system for handling people who leave the organization without turning over their responsibilities and/or information. Web services like Yahoo Groups, simply because of how they're set up, provide some insulation to people leaving as long as you don't have all of the moderators leave at once. I've not used other systems, but I'm sure there are others out there.
To specifically address the contact management that you're talking about can be done with any word processing/spreadsheet/flat file product as long as you have a neutral place to store it and a mechanism to keep folks from stepping on each other. Again, any type of group management service with a place to upload files provides that.
I tried to choose my words carefully - "Hacking" in the current popularly accepted definition (as opposed to its original definition, which you referenced in your post) is not computing security, but one way to attempt to breach security. I have found several items to fall under the umbrella of computing security such as Configuration Management, confidentiality policy, forensics, disaster recovery, cost/benefit analysis of security measures, virus handling - and these are just the ones off the top of my head.
Hackers are only one of your concerns - hurricanes, power outages, disgruntled employees, that stupid screensaver trojan that the secretary keeps installing, short funding and that guy with admin level access who's a bit short on cash right now due to his crank habit are more of a threat.
Yes, all of the necessary skills can be taught academically. The notion that you can only learn these skills by trial and error is fed by the fact that due to the small number of quality institutions teaching the skills, most folks learn them by trial and error.
I have been looking for formal academic training in computing security for quite some time. The best I've found is "boot camps" for CISSP and seminar courses taught by a local college on how to use tools like Metasploit, Wireshark and C&A.
I went all the way through a MS CS looking for any opportunity to study computing security and drew nothing but shrugs from my professors when I inquired about seriously studying the subject.
If they really want to produce cybersecurity experts, forget the competitions - you have to make training available. Forget all of the hand waving talk about academics not "having the right mindset". I have found that the kind of people who say such things just don't want to share their knowledge.
If you're hitting your numbers in terms of price and power consumption, what's wrong with having more capability than you really need?