No, I think he'd have just nodded and said to himself, "I was right again."
When have you known George Bush or any of his cronies to ever honestly say "I don't know"? When have you known them to honestly say anything? Heinlein's observation is even more true today, given that we have a rising tide of people who cannot admit when they are wrong, and indeed do not want to know. Consequently, they are among our most ignorant, and go to extreme lengths to maintain that ignorance. Those are exactly the sort of people to whom Heinlein was referring.
Okay, I'll define it. The math man at our company only uses Matlab intermittently (the occasional R&D project) and for the past few years it was decided that we couldn't justify buying support or upgrades. This year he was asked to look into what it would cost to upgrade. He was told that we'd need to make up all the money that Matlab didn't get all those years first, before we could even be considered for an upgrade, and conveniently just purchasing a new copy would be even more expensive. Now this was in spite of the fact that they had provided no support or services in that period. Ended up being about fifteen grand for one seat. Let me tell you, that's a sense of entitlement with a vengeance, one that even the RIAA could appreciate. In other words, play our game and pay us our yearly juice money or we'll shove it up your ass.
I know Matlab is a complex product that took decades to develop, but demanding money for services not rendered, just because you know the customer has nowhere else to go, is usurious at best. I presume you've never had to deal with them in that vein because you've obviously bought into their system and it's worth it to you to keep paying them. I have no problem with that. But their attitude left a very bad taste in our corporate mouth, and given that our needs are simplistic compared to yours, we'll be evaluating what else is out there. Their behavior in this regard is not what I expect of a truly customer-oriented operation, but it is what you expect when a single company achieves a de-facto near monopoly.
even though that little blippet was intended to make them sound idiotic.
Which does not, when all is said and done, make them any less idiotic. We live in an age where corporations like Circuit City can purchase their stock at ridiculously low cost from Chinese manufacturers, and they still can't make their businesses work.
Much of the fault lies in the fact that the relationship between the CEO and Board of Directors is no longer adversarial in large corporations. This has the effect of removing any check on an errant CEO's actions. Personally, I think a good first step toward fixing that would be to make it illegal for a CEO to serve on the board of another company.
Lay off all the people that were actually making money for the company, and pay big bucks to keep the people who brought the company to the point where it had to lay people off.
Because computers don't kill. Well consumer stuff, at least not yet.
Precisely. And even if poorly-operated personal computers resulted in the deaths of their operators and innocent bystanders as often as motor vehicles do, it wouldn't matter. The GP doesn't realize that certification means squat. Having a piece of paper that says you know or understand something often has surprisingly little relevance to what you actually know or understand, it just means that you could convince someone in authority, at some point in the past, that you knew something then. Most of the people I encounter on the road today completely lack a basic understanding of what a car can or can't do, from the perspective of what happens when they screw up. If they did... they wouldn't drive them the way they do, or shove cell phones in their ears while behind the wheel. In fact, State-issued driver's license or not, they are oblivious to the consequences of their actions, and those consequences are far more obvious than the risk of ending up part of someone's botnet.
I'm really tired of hearing the old argument "we need to certify people to use a computer". That's ridiculous on the face of it: a computer is a tool and a tool shouldn't do things it's owner doesn't want it to. I don't expect my socket wrench to accidentally murder my neighbor. Furthermore, this is only an issue because a certain large software company failed to acquire even a basic understanding of what a network can or can't do.
Neither law enforcement nor big business understands that respect is a mutual affair. The fully expect us to respect the law, and to respect their rights under that law... and they just can't seem to figure out why we do not. Unfortunately, they have treated us so poorly that there is no longer any respect possible from our perspective. Not until they clean up their acts and become deserving of it again.
ISPs don't want to be common carriers. They went to great lengths to make sure that data services were not considered the same as phone service, which would have placed them under common carrier rules. At this point, they're much more profitable not being subject to the QOS standards and other regulatory burdens that go along with that status, and even the phone companies are exempt when providing Internet services. Ultimately, being a common carrier does provide certain legal immunities... but it also costs you more money.
Not even that much. They're just a trade organization (although I believe they are incorporated in New York) which the studios (who are the actual coalition, or rather, oligopoly) fund to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars yearly to do their dirty work. Just like they fund sister organizations in many other countries. I mean, we're talking an awful lot of money being spent every year on RIAA and RIAA-like efforts, and one has to wonder if it's really worth it, financially or any other way. Doesn't matter, I suppose: short of the Feds raiding their offices and getting some hard numbers, we'll never know.
Okay, so now suppose we have aliens that truly understand the value of a (ahem!) "manned" space presence and have built really large astronomical arrays.
The thing is, this is less about national security than it is about risk avoidance.
Companies that do business with people, and organizations that hire people, wish to avoid risk. In principle, this is just an extension of the way the American credit system works. There, your entire financial history is available to anyone that wants to decide if you can be trusted. It used to be, the deadbeat customer was a normal cost of doing business. In today's world, companies large and small have the credit bureaus to track us for them. However, at least there if you keep your nose clean and wait enough years, your past misdeeds will no longer haunt you. Expect that limit to be removed at some point, because obviously people that can't handle money well are threats to national security.
Make no mistake, the underlying sponsors of this unConstitutional boloney are corporate. From the extension of copyrights to longer credit histories to biometric tracking, this is all about the corporate world wanting to minimize its exposure to risk. The fact that it plays right into the hands of certain power hungry politicians and their appointed/unelected officials is just unfortunate for us.
much of the technology portrayed in the Stargate universe. I'm particularly reminded of the Ancient archive that grew out of a well and grabbed Col. O'Neil's head.
Nostalgia for XP will fade. As existing PCs fail, they will be replaced by Vista boxes.
Vista is an interim solution to a problem that existed only in the minds of Microsoft's stockholders, which has caused and will continue to cause problems for actual customers. I have the feeling that by the time Vista is out in any significant quantity, Microsoft will have obsolesced Vista and moved us onto something else.
I disagree. They were authorized to access the computer for the purpose of installing a specific peripheral. I was a service tech for a few years, and I never accessed anything on a customer's drive without their express permission, much less searched it! And how can you imagine that any service geek worth his salt can't find a few files to use for burner testing without searching the customer's drive for media files? Media files??!! That's ridiculous on the face of it. They were screwing around with that drive hoping to find something interesting on it. They got more than they bargained for. So, while their customer is a slimeball (and a dumbass at that), they are dicks, pure and simple. Unprofessional, childish dicks. Yes, I agree: once they found that child pornography they were bound to follow the law and report it. However, had they been doing their jobs, they'd probably never have found it.
Furthermore, it's hard to believe that any customer would reasonably assume that having a DVD drive installed includes scanning their hard drive for interesting, confidential material. As I said before, it's not the tech's goddamned business. If that were true, hell, nobody in their right mind would ever get their computer repaired! I'm hoping that this case, and cases like it, raise people's awareness of the fact that their expectations have nothing to do with reality here. Besides, all the big chains have had significant problems with unethical behavior on the part of their service centers. This is nothing new. I'm also hopeful that a few honkin' big class-action lawsuits result from this. Maybe then the big boys will implement some QOS standards amongst their employees.
Let me say this: most people never have to deal with the ethical issues raised by having access to highly confidential material. As software engineer for the past quarter century (and as a consultant for most of that) I was privy to a vast quantity of corporate information that, had I been unscrupulous, could have been used to cause a lot of damage. So you learn, very quickly, to keep your mitts off anything that doesn't directly involve the task you're being paid to do. It's not your concern, and they're trusting you to do the right thing. In fact, that's what it all comes down to: trust. What those technicians did, regardless of what they found, is just wrong. You can bet your bottom dollar that Circuit City just lost a lot of their customers' trust over this.
I agree about encryption and protecting your shit.
Furthermore, I wasn't implying that all people are turned on by kiddie porn. I was pointing out that people who have access to your equipment, while not in your presence, are able to copy anything of interest to them, if they are so inclined. I think we can agree on that much.
Absolutely, if the stuff is in plain sight. My concern is for what I know (because I've witnessed it on many occasions) what goes on in service shops. Machines come in, techs fix them and, if nobody's looking, sometimes they'll cruise around looking for good stuff. Sometimes they do it when the boss is looking, because he doesn't care. That kind of behavior is what I'm talking about, and it goes on everywhere because there's no accountability. Sure, if you're brainless enough to leave a naked picture of an underage girl on your desktop expect to get hammered. That's an extreme case, though... the fact is most of us have files on our systems that are perfectly legal but that we'd rather keep to ourselves. The ONLY way to do that is to have an encrypted partition, and the self-discipline to use it, or to just not give the tech your drive. That annoys them, because it's extra work, but that's too bad. My need for privacy is more important than their convenience.
Oh, please. I knew someone would try to twist my words that way: I'm not defending a criminal, per se, but you have to look at the big picture here.
This discussion isn't revolving around whether a kiddie port consumer got his just desserts. That is irrelevant and such a story would be of marginal interest on Slashdot, probably because most of those here who are that sick and twisted are also smart enough to cover their tracks. However, a crook that got nailed only because someone else did something illegal and/or unethical affects all of us, and the fact that the law tacitly encourages that behavior is problematic. My opinion happens to be that this guy should be put away, but not because some underpaid computer geek decided to go for a cheap thrill. I'm not a lawyer but... nobody likes a snitch.
Anyone that takes their computer in for repair is subject to the same risks: the few stories we hear about are the tip of the iceberg, believe me. And it's not just a matter of criminal activity: would you want your personal correspondence, your tax and accounting records, and everything else that is important to you being pawed through by someone you don't even know? Would you want that information available on the Internet? Would you invite this person to come over to your home and rifle through your filing cabinet? Once you've let that hard drive out of your sight that's what can, and will, happen to you. Possibly it already has, but you'll probably never know.
What I'm saying is that the popular image of the white-coated scientist-type fixing computers is very far from reality. Yes, I've been a service technician (many moons ago) and let me tell you: some people have a sense of responsibility towards their customers, and some of them don't. Like I said, most of the technicians that work in your typical department store service shop are underpaid kids, people to whom you really can't reasonably expect to have developed any level of professional ethics. Yet, by dropping off that box with it's hard drive intact you're trusting them to have a level of responsibility equivalent to your attorney, or your doctor. That's a mistake.
So, yeah, the guy was a moron and a slimeball, no question. If he's proven guilty in court of law, he'll deserve what he gets. That doesn't exculpate the technicians who had no business doing what they were doing, and certainly does not make them heroes.
Most techs have some kind of ethical standard, written or unwritten, which prevents them from engrossed reading of personal documents and unnecessary browsing of media, as well as not divulging or discussing private information found in the course of normal work.
Baloney. Most technicians are teenagers hired at minimum wage because they say they can fix a 'puter. Do you really trust your confidential data to the ethics of a seventeen year old? I wouldn't. And it's not just the younger set. I worked as a service tech (a looong time ago) and the other tech was the local fire chief, who worked as a tech just for the fun of it. The bastard was a pervert in his own right, and would riffle through anything that came along just for a cheap thrill. If he found anything that he wanted, he'd just copy it.
So don't you even begin to bring "ethics" into the equation, because there aren't any in this case, and there never are when people are unaccountable for their actions. Those technicians should have been censured or fired for what they did, because if nothing else they'll have shaken the confidence of their customer base. Kind of like when a Chicago-area Best Buy's "ethical" techs upgraded a guy's laptop hard disk, assuring him that the still-functional drive would be destroyed... and then sold it! The thing ended up in New York at a flea market, still full of his personal information. Ethical. Yeah. The only decent person in that scenario was the New Yorker that bought the drive, looked it over and called the original owner, offering to send it back.
So... if you do happen to accidentally uncover some evidence of a crime, sure report it... but what we're talking about in these cases are supposedly "professional" service people that search customer's drives looking for stuff. That's not the same thing. Tell you what, go get a job (just part time, a few hours a week) at a local Circuit City or Best Buy. Work there for a month or two. Then come back to Slashdot and tell us how ethically everyone behaved.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I think he'd have just nodded and said to himself, "I was right again."
When have you known George Bush or any of his cronies to ever honestly say "I don't know"? When have you known them to honestly say anything? Heinlein's observation is even more true today, given that we have a rising tide of people who cannot admit when they are wrong, and indeed do not want to know. Consequently, they are among our most ignorant, and go to extreme lengths to maintain that ignorance. Those are exactly the sort of people to whom Heinlein was referring.
Okay, I'll define it. The math man at our company only uses Matlab intermittently (the occasional R&D project) and for the past few years it was decided that we couldn't justify buying support or upgrades. This year he was asked to look into what it would cost to upgrade. He was told that we'd need to make up all the money that Matlab didn't get all those years first, before we could even be considered for an upgrade, and conveniently just purchasing a new copy would be even more expensive. Now this was in spite of the fact that they had provided no support or services in that period. Ended up being about fifteen grand for one seat. Let me tell you, that's a sense of entitlement with a vengeance, one that even the RIAA could appreciate. In other words, play our game and pay us our yearly juice money or we'll shove it up your ass.
I know Matlab is a complex product that took decades to develop, but demanding money for services not rendered, just because you know the customer has nowhere else to go, is usurious at best. I presume you've never had to deal with them in that vein because you've obviously bought into their system and it's worth it to you to keep paying them. I have no problem with that. But their attitude left a very bad taste in our corporate mouth, and given that our needs are simplistic compared to yours, we'll be evaluating what else is out there. Their behavior in this regard is not what I expect of a truly customer-oriented operation, but it is what you expect when a single company achieves a de-facto near monopoly.
even though that little blippet was intended to make them sound idiotic.
Which does not, when all is said and done, make them any less idiotic. We live in an age where corporations like Circuit City can purchase their stock at ridiculously low cost from Chinese manufacturers, and they still can't make their businesses work.
Much of the fault lies in the fact that the relationship between the CEO and Board of Directors is no longer adversarial in large corporations. This has the effect of removing any check on an errant CEO's actions. Personally, I think a good first step toward fixing that would be to make it illegal for a CEO to serve on the board of another company.
Lay off all the people that were actually making money for the company, and pay big bucks to keep the people who brought the company to the point where it had to lay people off.
Brilliant!
IRS Data Security Still a Concern
The IRS' data store is always a concern, whether they lose track of it or not.
This will be a good thing. That company really doesn't treat its customers very well at all.
Because computers don't kill. Well consumer stuff, at least not yet.
... they wouldn't drive them the way they do, or shove cell phones in their ears while behind the wheel. In fact, State-issued driver's license or not, they are oblivious to the consequences of their actions, and those consequences are far more obvious than the risk of ending up part of someone's botnet.
Precisely. And even if poorly-operated personal computers resulted in the deaths of their operators and innocent bystanders as often as motor vehicles do, it wouldn't matter. The GP doesn't realize that certification means squat. Having a piece of paper that says you know or understand something often has surprisingly little relevance to what you actually know or understand, it just means that you could convince someone in authority, at some point in the past, that you knew something then. Most of the people I encounter on the road today completely lack a basic understanding of what a car can or can't do, from the perspective of what happens when they screw up. If they did
I'm really tired of hearing the old argument "we need to certify people to use a computer". That's ridiculous on the face of it: a computer is a tool and a tool shouldn't do things it's owner doesn't want it to. I don't expect my socket wrench to accidentally murder my neighbor. Furthermore, this is only an issue because a certain large software company failed to acquire even a basic understanding of what a network can or can't do.
Neither law enforcement nor big business understands that respect is a mutual affair. The fully expect us to respect the law, and to respect their rights under that law ... and they just can't seem to figure out why we do not. Unfortunately, they have treated us so poorly that there is no longer any respect possible from our perspective. Not until they clean up their acts and become deserving of it again.
ISPs don't want to be common carriers. They went to great lengths to make sure that data services were not considered the same as phone service, which would have placed them under common carrier rules. At this point, they're much more profitable not being subject to the QOS standards and other regulatory burdens that go along with that status, and even the phone companies are exempt when providing Internet services. Ultimately, being a common carrier does provide certain legal immunities ... but it also costs you more money.
You're assuming that we want to communicate with you. This isn't Star Trek.
Not even that much. They're just a trade organization (although I believe they are incorporated in New York) which the studios (who are the actual coalition, or rather, oligopoly) fund to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars yearly to do their dirty work. Just like they fund sister organizations in many other countries. I mean, we're talking an awful lot of money being spent every year on RIAA and RIAA-like efforts, and one has to wonder if it's really worth it, financially or any other way. Doesn't matter, I suppose: short of the Feds raiding their offices and getting some hard numbers, we'll never know.
The extreme desire for power over others is a mental disorder. It should be recognized and treated as such.
Think of it as a combination of every gadget you could ever want for your car with the simplicity of a single-button user interface.
Gee, one could almost think of it as a four-wheeled Macintosh.
Okay, so now suppose we have aliens that truly understand the value of a (ahem!) "manned" space presence and have built really large astronomical arrays.
The thing is, this is less about national security than it is about risk avoidance.
Companies that do business with people, and organizations that hire people, wish to avoid risk. In principle, this is just an extension of the way the American credit system works. There, your entire financial history is available to anyone that wants to decide if you can be trusted. It used to be, the deadbeat customer was a normal cost of doing business. In today's world, companies large and small have the credit bureaus to track us for them. However, at least there if you keep your nose clean and wait enough years, your past misdeeds will no longer haunt you. Expect that limit to be removed at some point, because obviously people that can't handle money well are threats to national security.
Make no mistake, the underlying sponsors of this unConstitutional boloney are corporate. From the extension of copyrights to longer credit histories to biometric tracking, this is all about the corporate world wanting to minimize its exposure to risk. The fact that it plays right into the hands of certain power hungry politicians and their appointed/unelected officials is just unfortunate for us.
much of the technology portrayed in the Stargate universe. I'm particularly reminded of the Ancient archive that grew out of a well and grabbed Col. O'Neil's head.
Nostalgia for XP will fade. As existing PCs fail, they will be replaced by Vista boxes.
Vista is an interim solution to a problem that existed only in the minds of Microsoft's stockholders, which has caused and will continue to cause problems for actual customers. I have the feeling that by the time Vista is out in any significant quantity, Microsoft will have obsolesced Vista and moved us onto something else.
Nope. If you'd read my later post, you'd understand much more clearly what I'm talking about.
Granted. So, from the point of view of the user, the device is about as functional as a brick. I stand by my words.
Exactly. The term implies that, from the perspective of its intended purpose, the device is as functional as a brick.
I disagree. They were authorized to access the computer for the purpose of installing a specific peripheral. I was a service tech for a few years, and I never accessed anything on a customer's drive without their express permission, much less searched it! And how can you imagine that any service geek worth his salt can't find a few files to use for burner testing without searching the customer's drive for media files? Media files??!! That's ridiculous on the face of it. They were screwing around with that drive hoping to find something interesting on it. They got more than they bargained for. So, while their customer is a slimeball (and a dumbass at that), they are dicks, pure and simple. Unprofessional, childish dicks. Yes, I agree: once they found that child pornography they were bound to follow the law and report it. However, had they been doing their jobs, they'd probably never have found it.
Furthermore, it's hard to believe that any customer would reasonably assume that having a DVD drive installed includes scanning their hard drive for interesting, confidential material. As I said before, it's not the tech's goddamned business. If that were true, hell, nobody in their right mind would ever get their computer repaired! I'm hoping that this case, and cases like it, raise people's awareness of the fact that their expectations have nothing to do with reality here. Besides, all the big chains have had significant problems with unethical behavior on the part of their service centers. This is nothing new. I'm also hopeful that a few honkin' big class-action lawsuits result from this. Maybe then the big boys will implement some QOS standards amongst their employees.
Let me say this: most people never have to deal with the ethical issues raised by having access to highly confidential material. As software engineer for the past quarter century (and as a consultant for most of that) I was privy to a vast quantity of corporate information that, had I been unscrupulous, could have been used to cause a lot of damage. So you learn, very quickly, to keep your mitts off anything that doesn't directly involve the task you're being paid to do. It's not your concern, and they're trusting you to do the right thing. In fact, that's what it all comes down to: trust. What those technicians did, regardless of what they found, is just wrong. You can bet your bottom dollar that Circuit City just lost a lot of their customers' trust over this.
I agree about encryption and protecting your shit.
Furthermore, I wasn't implying that all people are turned on by kiddie porn. I was pointing out that people who have access to your equipment, while not in your presence, are able to copy anything of interest to them, if they are so inclined. I think we can agree on that much.
Absolutely, if the stuff is in plain sight. My concern is for what I know (because I've witnessed it on many occasions) what goes on in service shops. Machines come in, techs fix them and, if nobody's looking, sometimes they'll cruise around looking for good stuff. Sometimes they do it when the boss is looking, because he doesn't care. That kind of behavior is what I'm talking about, and it goes on everywhere because there's no accountability. Sure, if you're brainless enough to leave a naked picture of an underage girl on your desktop expect to get hammered. That's an extreme case, though ... the fact is most of us have files on our systems that are perfectly legal but that we'd rather keep to ourselves. The ONLY way to do that is to have an encrypted partition, and the self-discipline to use it, or to just not give the tech your drive. That annoys them, because it's extra work, but that's too bad. My need for privacy is more important than their convenience.
Oh, please. I knew someone would try to twist my words that way: I'm not defending a criminal, per se, but you have to look at the big picture here.
... nobody likes a snitch.
This discussion isn't revolving around whether a kiddie port consumer got his just desserts. That is irrelevant and such a story would be of marginal interest on Slashdot, probably because most of those here who are that sick and twisted are also smart enough to cover their tracks. However, a crook that got nailed only because someone else did something illegal and/or unethical affects all of us, and the fact that the law tacitly encourages that behavior is problematic. My opinion happens to be that this guy should be put away, but not because some underpaid computer geek decided to go for a cheap thrill. I'm not a lawyer but
Anyone that takes their computer in for repair is subject to the same risks: the few stories we hear about are the tip of the iceberg, believe me. And it's not just a matter of criminal activity: would you want your personal correspondence, your tax and accounting records, and everything else that is important to you being pawed through by someone you don't even know? Would you want that information available on the Internet? Would you invite this person to come over to your home and rifle through your filing cabinet? Once you've let that hard drive out of your sight that's what can, and will, happen to you. Possibly it already has, but you'll probably never know.
What I'm saying is that the popular image of the white-coated scientist-type fixing computers is very far from reality. Yes, I've been a service technician (many moons ago) and let me tell you: some people have a sense of responsibility towards their customers, and some of them don't. Like I said, most of the technicians that work in your typical department store service shop are underpaid kids, people to whom you really can't reasonably expect to have developed any level of professional ethics. Yet, by dropping off that box with it's hard drive intact you're trusting them to have a level of responsibility equivalent to your attorney, or your doctor. That's a mistake.
So, yeah, the guy was a moron and a slimeball, no question. If he's proven guilty in court of law, he'll deserve what he gets. That doesn't exculpate the technicians who had no business doing what they were doing, and certainly does not make them heroes.
Most techs have some kind of ethical standard, written or unwritten, which prevents them from engrossed reading of personal documents and unnecessary browsing of media, as well as not divulging or discussing private information found in the course of normal work.
... and then sold it! The thing ended up in New York at a flea market, still full of his personal information. Ethical. Yeah. The only decent person in that scenario was the New Yorker that bought the drive, looked it over and called the original owner, offering to send it back.
... if you do happen to accidentally uncover some evidence of a crime, sure report it ... but what we're talking about in these cases are supposedly "professional" service people that search customer's drives looking for stuff. That's not the same thing. Tell you what, go get a job (just part time, a few hours a week) at a local Circuit City or Best Buy. Work there for a month or two. Then come back to Slashdot and tell us how ethically everyone behaved.
Baloney. Most technicians are teenagers hired at minimum wage because they say they can fix a 'puter. Do you really trust your confidential data to the ethics of a seventeen year old? I wouldn't. And it's not just the younger set. I worked as a service tech (a looong time ago) and the other tech was the local fire chief, who worked as a tech just for the fun of it. The bastard was a pervert in his own right, and would riffle through anything that came along just for a cheap thrill. If he found anything that he wanted, he'd just copy it.
So don't you even begin to bring "ethics" into the equation, because there aren't any in this case, and there never are when people are unaccountable for their actions. Those technicians should have been censured or fired for what they did, because if nothing else they'll have shaken the confidence of their customer base. Kind of like when a Chicago-area Best Buy's "ethical" techs upgraded a guy's laptop hard disk, assuring him that the still-functional drive would be destroyed
So
I guarantee you will be unpleasantly surprised.