They lose even more money by convincing people that Ford is run by dicks. Lawyers make money by (among other things) using the law to bludgeon people, thereby justifying their hourly rates. Car companies make money by selling cars. Ford's management should take steps to make sure their legal team doesn't give them a black eye, PR-wise. That's been happening more and more lately with big corporations, as Congress' dimwitted extensions to copyright law are coming back to bite all of us in the ass.
Congress is doing its job already: Crating jobs and boosting the economy. [boldface mine]
Indeed. Congress is "crating" all of our jobs... boxing them up and shipping them overseas. How that is supposed to boost the United States' economy is a mystery to me. Conversely, it is readily apparent how all those jobs have boosted the respective economies of India and China.
What? I assume you're shooting for a +2 Funny or something. Copyright law doesn't make any statements about how content must be distributed... it just says that the copyright owner gets to set the terms. Presumably they have deals with the major studios that allow them to stream content for a set fee.
Bosh and fiddle-faddle. By "shared resource" I mean "shared natural resource", just like the oceans, the atmosphere or our planet's mineral wealth. I feel the same way when nations (any nation, mine included) treat those resources with disrespect, just as I feel perfectly justified in criticizing China for its recent abuse of near-space.
Conversely, when a country invests billions of its citizens dollars in developing defense technology, it is in no way obligated to share that technology with any nation, particularly inimical ones. If you think China wouldn't use that tech against us in a heartbeat, you're naive. Furthermore, even if you truly believe that China is really a pleasant, friendly nation underneath that brusque, totalitarian exterior, it would be foolish of us to give them anything which we wouldn't feel comfortable with anyone else having. And believe me, there are a lot of countries on this planet that would pay big money for that technology, if nothing else to help figure out how to defeat it.
It would be utterly irresponsible for our government to just hand over advanced military technology (like they already have with so much else) in order to spare China some growing pains. We the People paid for it, it belongs to us, not the world. If China feels this is important to them, let them make the same investment we did. If not... tough. And I might add that had America taken that same stance regarding all the other technology that we've given to China, or had outright stolen from us, we might not be in our current situation.
So stop making excuses what those assholes did here... they knew better. Period.
I think you *precisely* correct in referring to the whole system as a pendulum.
As an engineer, upon further reflection I think that a more apt description would be "running open loop". If you look at the U.S. Constitution, you'll realize that the so-called "checks-and-balances" put in place by the Founders, indeed the underpinnings of our entire Republic, are nothing but a series of carefully crafted negative feedback loops. The intent of those mechanisms was, of course, to prevent the government from going too far in one direction. The most basic of those is the fact that we can elect our leaders: the governments actions are processed by the population and fed back to the input as votes. Another loop was the original tariff system. It is complicated, but it worked for a long, long time, and had our elected leaders not fiddled with it continuously, would still be working now.
The problem is that Congress, with its fundamental incompetence and endless quest for votes, has opened most of those loops and the proper amount of negative feedback is no longer being applied to the system inputs. In fact, there's generally no negative feedback whatsoever: it's all going the other way. That's placed us in a swell of uncontrolled positive feedback which will eventually reach the maximum tolerance of the system.
In electronic terms, that usually means your output is locked to within a few millivolts of your positive supply voltage. In civil terms, it means a revolution is about to start.
Scary all right. I know that I went in for a checkup last week, and my doctor and the other personnel carried compact notebook machines with wireless links, so they could conveniently access their records database. Very cool, very efficient... but I had to wonder just whether they'd taken the right steps to secure that network. Kinda made me want to take my own machine and do a little checking up on their WAP configuration, but I decided it wasn't worth the risk. That's even scarier, when you get right down to it.
Actually, I think they meant apt as described in the John Carter of Mars novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. His "Apts" (e.g., giant white four-armed apes) come pretty close to describing some of the TSA security people I've encountered.
I was actually being sarcastic, as another poster noted. Of course the governments I listed will take whatever powers the are granted and overreach... it's expected. The question is how to keep them in their place. In the United States, at the present time, that seems to be very difficult since the very people entrusted to protect us from such abuses are, by and large, failing to do so. By that I mean the judiciary and Congress itself.
{sigh} I was trying to say "it's not all about us" and give some credit where credit is due, but I guess you limeys are too damn thickheaded to take a compliment when you get one. Fine. Next time I'll say "Us and the Germans" or maybe "Us and the French" or maybe "Us and the Iranians". Sheesh. Would you have felt better if I'd said, "The Brits and us?"
Besides, Canada is the 51st State... I thought everyone knew that, and for all you Canucks in the viewing audience that's a goddamn JOKE and I just don't want to hear it.
The initial "breaktrough", however, is not reserved to Americans in all instances as some people seem to think.
I never said it was, invention is a worldwide phenomenon and always will be. But the GP seemed to think that Americans are idiots. I was contesting that perspective.
Not really. What we had was a situation where we were presented with a known evil (George Bush) and an unknown but potentially greater evil (John Kerry.) The decision wasn't entirely irrational, the election was hotly contested and was hardly a landslide, and in any event a majority is hardly "all"... and it's that word to which I take exception. ALL Americans are not the same.
Children so stupid they think America invented the Internet, computer, motor car, light bulb, telephone etc ad infinitum....
You're really a depressed individual. If you're so incapable of seeing the good things in life, I suggest you simply off yourself now, and put yourself out of our misery.
And Americans mostly did invent the Internet, computer (well, us and the Brits), motor car (well, us and the Brits), the light bulb and the telephone. Find some other examples if you want to prove how stupid and uncreative Americans are.
You do raise some good points, however, you're making the same fundamental mistake that many people of other countries make. That's assuming that the vast majority of Americans think one way or another, and pegging all of us as fitting some arbitrary mold that serves their own prejudices. What I find hysterical (and hypocritical) about that is that America, of pretty much all nations, is a pretty fractious affair, with most of us disagreeing with somebody else about something.
True, but that's not what I mean. I'm talking about someone who is already an outsider discovering a problem. That's what this article is about: someone who found something and reported it, and was then attacked for it. This has been going on for some time. Generally speaking, if you find a problem with a corporation or government agency's Internet presence, you're better off keeping it to yourself. That's because odds are the people administering that resource don't really care about security, and are more interested in covering their asses at your expense.
It's a much better move, careerwise, for a network admin to say "some guy was trying to hack our system, and being the network guru that I am I got his name and number", rather than admit that "some guy found a major hole in our security system, and kindly reported to us."
There have been numerous cases of Good Samaritan types reporting an insecurity on a Web site, and having the sysadmins call up the FBI and report a "hacking attempt." Over the past several years I've been on misconfigured Web sites and FTP servers that gave me access to things I should never have been allowed to see. My normal instinct would be to report the problem to the site's administrators... but I wouldn't take the chance, not anymore. I have no interest in having the Feds knock at my door and arrest me on some bogus antiterrorism charge. If I see anything I don't think was meant to be public, I immediately get out and never go back.
This is not the same thing as being a whistleblower, which is what you're referring to. See, someone who is truly interested in securing a system would investigate such reports, from any source internal or external, and fix them. What we've been seeing is that it's more important to simply squelch such complaints at any cost, rather take the heat for one's mistakes. Worse, given the current legal situation in the U.S. a corporation that files a false hacking report can screw somebody up for life.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget "look both ways before flossing."
Whats the 1 state that hasn't jumped in on this?
Canada.
No, it can't, but with a slight modification it can produce verteron particles.
They've been doing crowd-doubling since the forties, if not earlier, only it was done using compositing and multiple exposure, not CG.
I've seen on Slashdot all month. Parents can submit email addresses all day long, and their kids will create disposable addresses all day long.
Pointless, but I suppose it makes the parents feel like they're doing something.
Factory Outlet Rolling Defect
Fucked Over Rebuilt Dodge
They lose even more money by convincing people that Ford is run by dicks. Lawyers make money by (among other things) using the law to bludgeon people, thereby justifying their hourly rates. Car companies make money by selling cars. Ford's management should take steps to make sure their legal team doesn't give them a black eye, PR-wise. That's been happening more and more lately with big corporations, as Congress' dimwitted extensions to copyright law are coming back to bite all of us in the ass.
that their work will be subject to some experimental validation shortly. Let's hope we all survive the test.
Congress is doing its job already: Crating jobs and boosting the economy. [boldface mine]
... boxing them up and shipping them overseas. How that is supposed to boost the United States' economy is a mystery to me. Conversely, it is readily apparent how all those jobs have boosted the respective economies of India and China.
Indeed. Congress is "crating" all of our jobs
All yanks are dumb as shit
You're not gonna like my sig.
A few do (I had a thumbdrive once that did) but yeah, it'd be a good idea.
So then you'll call yourself Cubanadexico. Or Maybe Mexicanuba.
Because that way other people are invited to comment upon it.
Or, as Lieutenant Worf would no doubt say, "They are like the Romulans, Captain. They are without honor."
What? I assume you're shooting for a +2 Funny or something. Copyright law doesn't make any statements about how content must be distributed ... it just says that the copyright owner gets to set the terms. Presumably they have deals with the major studios that allow them to stream content for a set fee.
Bosh and fiddle-faddle. By "shared resource" I mean "shared natural resource", just like the oceans, the atmosphere or our planet's mineral wealth. I feel the same way when nations (any nation, mine included) treat those resources with disrespect, just as I feel perfectly justified in criticizing China for its recent abuse of near-space.
... tough. And I might add that had America taken that same stance regarding all the other technology that we've given to China, or had outright stolen from us, we might not be in our current situation.
... they knew better. Period.
Conversely, when a country invests billions of its citizens dollars in developing defense technology, it is in no way obligated to share that technology with any nation, particularly inimical ones. If you think China wouldn't use that tech against us in a heartbeat, you're naive. Furthermore, even if you truly believe that China is really a pleasant, friendly nation underneath that brusque, totalitarian exterior, it would be foolish of us to give them anything which we wouldn't feel comfortable with anyone else having. And believe me, there are a lot of countries on this planet that would pay big money for that technology, if nothing else to help figure out how to defeat it.
It would be utterly irresponsible for our government to just hand over advanced military technology (like they already have with so much else) in order to spare China some growing pains. We the People paid for it, it belongs to us, not the world. If China feels this is important to them, let them make the same investment we did. If not
So stop making excuses what those assholes did here
I think you *precisely* correct in referring to the whole system as a pendulum.
As an engineer, upon further reflection I think that a more apt description would be "running open loop". If you look at the U.S. Constitution, you'll realize that the so-called "checks-and-balances" put in place by the Founders, indeed the underpinnings of our entire Republic, are nothing but a series of carefully crafted negative feedback loops. The intent of those mechanisms was, of course, to prevent the government from going too far in one direction. The most basic of those is the fact that we can elect our leaders: the governments actions are processed by the population and fed back to the input as votes. Another loop was the original tariff system. It is complicated, but it worked for a long, long time, and had our elected leaders not fiddled with it continuously, would still be working now.
The problem is that Congress, with its fundamental incompetence and endless quest for votes, has opened most of those loops and the proper amount of negative feedback is no longer being applied to the system inputs. In fact, there's generally no negative feedback whatsoever: it's all going the other way. That's placed us in a swell of uncontrolled positive feedback which will eventually reach the maximum tolerance of the system.
In electronic terms, that usually means your output is locked to within a few millivolts of your positive supply voltage. In civil terms, it means a revolution is about to start.
Scary all right. I know that I went in for a checkup last week, and my doctor and the other personnel carried compact notebook machines with wireless links, so they could conveniently access their records database. Very cool, very efficient ... but I had to wonder just whether they'd taken the right steps to secure that network. Kinda made me want to take my own machine and do a little checking up on their WAP configuration, but I decided it wasn't worth the risk. That's even scarier, when you get right down to it.
Actually, I think they meant apt as described in the John Carter of Mars novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. His "Apts" (e.g., giant white four-armed apes) come pretty close to describing some of the TSA security people I've encountered.
I was actually being sarcastic, as another poster noted. Of course the governments I listed will take whatever powers the are granted and overreach ... it's expected. The question is how to keep them in their place. In the United States, at the present time, that seems to be very difficult since the very people entrusted to protect us from such abuses are, by and large, failing to do so. By that I mean the judiciary and Congress itself.
{sigh} I was trying to say "it's not all about us" and give some credit where credit is due, but I guess you limeys are too damn thickheaded to take a compliment when you get one. Fine. Next time I'll say "Us and the Germans" or maybe "Us and the French" or maybe "Us and the Iranians". Sheesh. Would you have felt better if I'd said, "The Brits and us?"
... I thought everyone knew that, and for all you Canucks in the viewing audience that's a goddamn JOKE and I just don't want to hear it.
Besides, Canada is the 51st State
The initial "breaktrough", however, is not reserved to Americans in all instances as some people seem to think.
I never said it was, invention is a worldwide phenomenon and always will be. But the GP seemed to think that Americans are idiots. I was contesting that perspective.
Not really. What we had was a situation where we were presented with a known evil (George Bush) and an unknown but potentially greater evil (John Kerry.) The decision wasn't entirely irrational, the election was hotly contested and was hardly a landslide, and in any event a majority is hardly "all" ... and it's that word to which I take exception. ALL Americans are not the same.
Children so stupid they think America invented the Internet, computer, motor car, light bulb, telephone etc ad infinitum....
You're really a depressed individual. If you're so incapable of seeing the good things in life, I suggest you simply off yourself now, and put yourself out of our misery.
And Americans mostly did invent the Internet, computer (well, us and the Brits), motor car (well, us and the Brits), the light bulb and the telephone. Find some other examples if you want to prove how stupid and uncreative Americans are.
You do raise some good points, however, you're making the same fundamental mistake that many people of other countries make. That's assuming that the vast majority of Americans think one way or another, and pegging all of us as fitting some arbitrary mold that serves their own prejudices. What I find hysterical (and hypocritical) about that is that America, of pretty much all nations, is a pretty fractious affair, with most of us disagreeing with somebody else about something.
True, but that's not what I mean. I'm talking about someone who is already an outsider discovering a problem. That's what this article is about: someone who found something and reported it, and was then attacked for it. This has been going on for some time. Generally speaking, if you find a problem with a corporation or government agency's Internet presence, you're better off keeping it to yourself. That's because odds are the people administering that resource don't really care about security, and are more interested in covering their asses at your expense.
... but I wouldn't take the chance, not anymore. I have no interest in having the Feds knock at my door and arrest me on some bogus antiterrorism charge. If I see anything I don't think was meant to be public, I immediately get out and never go back.
It's a much better move, careerwise, for a network admin to say "some guy was trying to hack our system, and being the network guru that I am I got his name and number", rather than admit that "some guy found a major hole in our security system, and kindly reported to us."
There have been numerous cases of Good Samaritan types reporting an insecurity on a Web site, and having the sysadmins call up the FBI and report a "hacking attempt." Over the past several years I've been on misconfigured Web sites and FTP servers that gave me access to things I should never have been allowed to see. My normal instinct would be to report the problem to the site's administrators
This is not the same thing as being a whistleblower, which is what you're referring to. See, someone who is truly interested in securing a system would investigate such reports, from any source internal or external, and fix them. What we've been seeing is that it's more important to simply squelch such complaints at any cost, rather take the heat for one's mistakes. Worse, given the current legal situation in the U.S. a corporation that files a false hacking report can screw somebody up for life.
That's where I draw the line.