What makes you think the people that do this sort of thing care about what we 'deserve'?
They could do it for many motivations. On one extreme, there's the profit motivation of an attacker from a competing project (profit in money or recognition - whatever). On the other extreme there's the idiots who do this sort of thing for the hell of it.
There's any number of reasons people do this sort of thing, and some of them don't even involve a motivation!
And I'd be much happier giving my mother (despite three college degrees and quite a high IQ, Macs are too complex for her) a Linux box than a Windows box or Mac.
Reminds me of a Dilbert strip.
PHB: Make it simple enough so even my mother could us it.
Alice: It's already simple enough that a squirrel could use it. How much dumber is your mother?
He plans to do just that. There was a headline in the local paper the other day about how Dubya views PA as a "keystone" (har har - funny.. we're the "keystone state") of his re-election bid.
That's why it irritates me when people say he and his administration are stupid. They're not, they're very smart. They're also very good at looking very dumb which makes them very attractive to the "average" guy. Ick.
Honestly... why would I WANT to vote for someone "average" for such an important position?
Right-o. I hate "IP law". I keep getting that crap confused. Still, it's in Microsoft's best interest to get a ruling in their favor on this. If they leverage the patent, I'm sure a lot of folks will just fork over the cash. However, if someone challenges the patent and loses (it looks, to me - a troll who doesn't understand patent law;) - to be valid enough) then Microsoft will have some extra weight to push this agenda (for whatever reason).
You do understand there's a reason why they knowingly buy defective voting machines, don't you?
Yea, they're gubment officials and, therefore, totally incapable of making an intelligent purchase decision, no matter how obvious the decision is.
I guess it's easier to just throw away the taxpayers' money and claim another completed project and this snazzy new upgrade. Most of the voters will say "hey - a computer! Yay!" and think (because they're, technologically speaking, complete slobbering morons) that the computer must be secure and good at counting and all that crap. Never mind that the easiest way to trash accuracy and reliability is to increase complexity which is exactly what this does. There are flaws in paper ballot voting but, so far, there are WAY more problems with electronic voting.
Some of the stuff on Slashdot only riles geeks and really only ever will/should. But, frankly, the number of problems with e-Voting disclosed in stories that have hit Slashdot so far is unbelievable. It sickens me to think the government is so inept and/or crooked to continue with this and the public is so apathetic to not care. I'd also like to know why much of the major media is silent on this. It's all very disturbing. This is one of the few times I wear my tinfoil hat out of fear instead of just for looks...
That study also found the system had a "high risk of compromise."
The state [Maryland] decided to buy the system anyway and Diebold is working on fixes for the security problems identified in that report.
Yea! Way to go Maryland! You know, if I went to buy a new car, and the windshield was broken, the locks didn't work, the engine was hanging by two mounts, and it stalled every 100 miles, I don't think I'd say "oh what the heck" and buy it just because it looked real snazzy and drive it around while the company worked on the problems after the fact.
How idiotically negligent do you have to be to look at a MACHINE THAT WILL HELP IN THE PROCESS OF DECIDING OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT POSITIONS and say "well, it's broken, but we'll buy it anyway"!? People like this need to be jailed immediately. That's absolutely innexcusable.
I'm not attacking you personally, but why is Slashdot's reaction to this sort of thing always "host it outside the U.S." or similarly sneaky tactic?
First, this issue involves DEVICES, not code. The Linux kernel doesn't appear to be at risk at all, just embedded systems. Bear in mind, of course, that these systems knowningly used a system that's copyrighted and patented. Microsoft needs to defend this patent lest they lose it. Second, the best solution to this sort of thing is to fight by the rules. If Microsoft suddenly decides to kill interoperability with thier own systems, that's fine - a lot of people would ditch Windows for Linux. Probably as many as would ditch Linux for Windows. Just yank the code from the kernel and go about your business while Microsoft loses more dual-boots to nix-only boots.
Part of the beauty of OSS is that it's a lot easier for it to lose ground on servers or desktops or whatever than it is for a corp to do the same. It hurts Microsoft a lot more to lose a Fortune 500 company to Linux than it is for Linux to lose one to Windows. Microsoft loses face AND money, we just lose a little face and go about our business - usually, nobody loses any significant money (except the sucker that switched to Windows:p ). There are far fewer people with big stakes in OSS, and, fortunately, the folks that have their fingers in it (Novell, IBM, etc.) will be willing to go to bat for it to protect themselves. Just go about your business. Microsoft is hanging themselves slowly. If we keep doing what we've been for the last several years and stay vigilant, we'll come out on top.
That's not true. You could file a lawsuit against a month old baby if you wanted to. In fact, you can file a lawsuit against ANYONE for ANYTHING you want. You could, technically, sue Dubya for being President of the United States. Granted, it would get thrown out and there could be repurcussions, but you COULD do it.
It's not that minors CAN'T be sued, it's that few corps are stupid enough to do it because children generally don't possess any assets. Still, the RIAA is doing an amazing job of pushing settlements on little kids. Yay for bullies!
Fixing the underlying business problems would seem to be the most logical route. However, if they are "thieves", then the RIAA can sue the crap out of them if they want even if it seems like a dumb idea to us. Heck, why not? So far, it seems, they've gotten some snide comments from lawmakers and they've riled up the userbase of a couple of geek sites. Even the "riled" people don't seem to have a significant population boycotting their garbage, so - from their perspective - this must be going pretty well.
You shouldn't expect 12 year olds to have the same understanding of things as 32 year olds. If you're going to start doing that, you might as well just abolish the whole idea of children needing any guidance. Abolish driving ages, drinking ages, enlistment ages. No more juvenile courts or corrections centers. Don't hold parents responsible for anything or expect them to provide for the children at all once they're physically capable of working for themselves, etc.
I'm not trying to be offensive or troll, or anything like that, but you don't really have a terribly firm grip on reality, do you?
There's a HUGE difference between forking over IPs because of frivilous, civil litigation and being told to hand them over as part of a CRIMINAL investigation.
I highly doubt anyone's going to come knocking at your door for suggesting we all participate in mass, organized wire and credit card fraud, but that's beside the point. I think and HOPE Slashdot would turn over IP addresses if it was part of a legit criminal investigation.
No, I'm not really that bad at math, but thanks for asking.
Apparently, however, you're pretty bad at comprehension since I pointed out right in the beginning that I wasn't disagreeing with the point, only pointing out that all the numbers being thrown about are aribtrary, so what makes his better than anyone else's?
And, if you're sending sensitive, private information through plain text e-mail, you have a bigger problem than potentially being accused of spamming.
Mmmm.... not that I'm necessarily disagreeing with you, but, natural logical flaw...
Why is it "odd" to send 400 in 15 minutes, but not odd to send 20-60 in that same time period? The numbers are all totally arbitrary, it's just that yours is 60 and "normal" and the original limit happened to be 400.
Granted, I understand implicitly what you're saying: they're not allowing for "odd looking but unsustained spikes" such as offliners or batch responders (like yourself). Best to explicitly point this things out in the original post though, lest you inflame the logitechnicality geeks like me:)
The thought would never have crossed my mind that Slashdot and common sense were, at times, mutually exclusive.:)
In a more serious tone, the same thing occurred to me. However, as I've already posted previously, perhaps if Dell and the other venduhs spent some more energy and resources training their customer base in the basic use of one of the tools they're selling them, they wouldn't even have to worry about this.
I still don't think that it's terribly far-fetched to think a venduh should include some small training manual on keeping a computer running smoothly and safely. This applies to patching, viruses, e-mail et. al. - not just spyware crap.
I hate to tell you, but, as much as I dislike Dell myself (and I own one so it's from personal experience, not second or third hand BS), the price they charge for their low end "garbage" is pretty hard to beat for non-techie types. That's good in the respect that it makes PCs more accessible to folks who don't have much money, but, it's very very bad when you start trying to extend it to other realms of computing.
For example... only an idiot would buy a gaming rig from Dell.
I don't think the "rich" have any inherent responsibility to provide any sort of opportunity for the poor as long as they're not maliciously sapping resources. Au contrair. I think if you can live your entire life "legitimately" wallowing in such a pathetic, self-serving state, more power to you. Of course, it's things like that which desperately make me want to believe in Hell.
It's the natural order of things to steal resources from the weak if possible. Oddly, however, human beings take that to a ridiculous extreme even against each other. Nothing inherently wrong with that.... but it's certainly better when people choose not to go that route.
Of course, quite frankly, at this point it could just be the beer talking.
My brother recently poured an extra five quarts of oil in his car without checking it first because the check engine light came on.
Go figure. Funny thing - the car comes with a manual that says, in no uncertain terms, that the oil capacity is FOUR AND ONE HALF quarts.
I've never seen a vendor-built PC that says:
We have forcibly included an Operating System with your new PC that is a regular target of spy and ad ware programs. You should not, for the sake of the health of your PC, download random shit from the Internet, open any attachments in e-mail that end with "blah blah blah", etc. Maybe if Dell and the other vendors took a little initiative to train their clueless customers, they wouldn't even have to worry about stupid things like this.
Speaking of "random shit from the Internet"... I saw a file the other day on Usenet attached to a post that was named "Paris Hilton.exe". I've no clue which virus it was though because I don't have a scanner or a Windows box. Amusing, thought I.
Public school teachers's salaries work on a very, very localized basis. For example, my GF is working toward has BS in English w/ a cert in secondary ed. Starting around here will net her anywhere from 29 - 34K a year. Not too bad for a starting salary, but head due south about 150 miles and she could get about 38K a year minimum to start. The teacher market here in central PA is saturated, but just a little south, they're desperate.
The point, however (which I'm sure you got, but others might not have), was that this guy is moaning and bitching about poor people choosing to be poor as if it were some lifestyle choice of "being lazy". I merely pointed out through example, and he immediately took exception to this, that you can be educated, employed, poor, and working your ass off all at the same time.
Wow, you just convinced me to be one of those people! That sounds like a lot more fun than this "caring about other people" bullshit I've been doing all this time.
Gotta love those public school teachers who stay poor because of bad decisions or lifestyle choices that led them away from the big bucks. Golly, it's nice to know that they must have picked that profession because they chose to be poor, and, it's not like the community should give the "bums" anything back since they did that.. maybe if they were contributing something useful I'd have more compassion.
I mean... it's not like there's *gasp* NO - NEVER say it on Slashdot!.... more than two sides to the issue!?
Most mid-level pot/coke dealers aren't nearly as tough as they seem, they aren't going to go more than 500 miles out of their way to recoup under $5,000.
I can't help but think that there's really only one way to learn this sort of thing...
You'll have a heck of a time convincing a judge of that.
Consider you've had at least one credit card for the last 25 years and you've spent, on average, $1000 a year on it. That's $25,000. Assume all credit cards are now paid off.
Consider, if you will, all the checks you've written. If you've written $10,000 a year worth of checks for 25 years, that's $250K.
Unless you have reciepts for all of these transactions, especially the cash ones, organized in a logical system of some sort, you have no database.
In 25 years, you've spent, say, 1/2 a million dollars collecting data about yourself if we include other miscellaneous expenses, assuming you can prove all of the expenditure.
Consider, if you will, a corporation that has 100 customer service folks collecting and processing data at 25K a year. Consider they have a 2TB database of customer data for 6 million people maintained round the clock by 5 DB specialists who have been employed for 10 years at an overall average salary of $40K.
Not only do they have a "real" database (think of a non-techie judge for a moment... 'duhhhh... what's a database? You mean like Access?') that's much, much, much larger than yours and includes you in it, they've spent at least a good 20x what you have in half the time.
Who do you think is going to win rights to your data?
Slashdot Mirror
What makes you think the people that do this sort of thing care about what we 'deserve'?
They could do it for many motivations. On one extreme, there's the profit motivation of an attacker from a competing project (profit in money or recognition - whatever). On the other extreme there's the idiots who do this sort of thing for the hell of it.
There's any number of reasons people do this sort of thing, and some of them don't even involve a motivation!
And I'd be much happier giving my mother (despite three college degrees and quite a high IQ, Macs are too complex for her) a Linux box than a Windows box or Mac.
Reminds me of a Dilbert strip.
PHB: Make it simple enough so even my mother could us it.
Alice: It's already simple enough that a squirrel could use it. How much dumber is your mother?
He plans to do just that. There was a headline in the local paper the other day about how Dubya views PA as a "keystone" (har har - funny.. we're the "keystone state") of his re-election bid.
That's why it irritates me when people say he and his administration are stupid. They're not, they're very smart. They're also very good at looking very dumb which makes them very attractive to the "average" guy. Ick.
Honestly... why would I WANT to vote for someone "average" for such an important position?
Oh, great.... now you've done it. Here come the Insensitive Clod trolls! I can hear them now!
About five years, give or take. I hope for your woman's sake you aren't in such a rush in the sack.
What, you hope he's not in a rush to get done in the sack within five years?
Dude... you must have some superhuman stamina if five years is a "quickie" to you! :)
Right-o. I hate "IP law". I keep getting that crap confused. Still, it's in Microsoft's best interest to get a ruling in their favor on this. If they leverage the patent, I'm sure a lot of folks will just fork over the cash. However, if someone challenges the patent and loses (it looks, to me - a troll who doesn't understand patent law ;) - to be valid enough) then Microsoft will have some extra weight to push this agenda (for whatever reason).
You do understand there's a reason why they knowingly buy defective voting machines, don't you?
Yea, they're gubment officials and, therefore, totally incapable of making an intelligent purchase decision, no matter how obvious the decision is.
I guess it's easier to just throw away the taxpayers' money and claim another completed project and this snazzy new upgrade. Most of the voters will say "hey - a computer! Yay!" and think (because they're, technologically speaking, complete slobbering morons) that the computer must be secure and good at counting and all that crap. Never mind that the easiest way to trash accuracy and reliability is to increase complexity which is exactly what this does. There are flaws in paper ballot voting but, so far, there are WAY more problems with electronic voting.
Some of the stuff on Slashdot only riles geeks and really only ever will/should. But, frankly, the number of problems with e-Voting disclosed in stories that have hit Slashdot so far is unbelievable. It sickens me to think the government is so inept and/or crooked to continue with this and the public is so apathetic to not care. I'd also like to know why much of the major media is silent on this. It's all very disturbing. This is one of the few times I wear my tinfoil hat out of fear instead of just for looks...
From the article:
That study also found the system had a "high risk of compromise."
The state [Maryland] decided to buy the system anyway and Diebold is working on fixes for the security problems identified in that report.
Yea! Way to go Maryland! You know, if I went to buy a new car, and the windshield was broken, the locks didn't work, the engine was hanging by two mounts, and it stalled every 100 miles, I don't think I'd say "oh what the heck" and buy it just because it looked real snazzy and drive it around while the company worked on the problems after the fact.
How idiotically negligent do you have to be to look at a MACHINE THAT WILL HELP IN THE PROCESS OF DECIDING OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT POSITIONS and say "well, it's broken, but we'll buy it anyway"!? People like this need to be jailed immediately. That's absolutely innexcusable.
I'm not attacking you personally, but why is Slashdot's reaction to this sort of thing always "host it outside the U.S." or similarly sneaky tactic?
First, this issue involves DEVICES, not code. The Linux kernel doesn't appear to be at risk at all, just embedded systems. Bear in mind, of course, that these systems knowningly used a system that's copyrighted and patented. Microsoft needs to defend this patent lest they lose it. Second, the best solution to this sort of thing is to fight by the rules. If Microsoft suddenly decides to kill interoperability with thier own systems, that's fine - a lot of people would ditch Windows for Linux. Probably as many as would ditch Linux for Windows. Just yank the code from the kernel and go about your business while Microsoft loses more dual-boots to nix-only boots.
Part of the beauty of OSS is that it's a lot easier for it to lose ground on servers or desktops or whatever than it is for a corp to do the same. It hurts Microsoft a lot more to lose a Fortune 500 company to Linux than it is for Linux to lose one to Windows. Microsoft loses face AND money, we just lose a little face and go about our business - usually, nobody loses any significant money (except the sucker that switched to Windows :p ). There are far fewer people with big stakes in OSS, and, fortunately, the folks that have their fingers in it (Novell, IBM, etc.) will be willing to go to bat for it to protect themselves. Just go about your business. Microsoft is hanging themselves slowly. If we keep doing what we've been for the last several years and stay vigilant, we'll come out on top.
I guess it was too much to expect an obvious Troll account to stay realistic and on topic for more than a single post, wasn't it?
That's not true. You could file a lawsuit against a month old baby if you wanted to. In fact, you can file a lawsuit against ANYONE for ANYTHING you want. You could, technically, sue Dubya for being President of the United States. Granted, it would get thrown out and there could be repurcussions, but you COULD do it.
It's not that minors CAN'T be sued, it's that few corps are stupid enough to do it because children generally don't possess any assets. Still, the RIAA is doing an amazing job of pushing settlements on little kids. Yay for bullies!
IANAL, but... I have been sued.
Fixing the underlying business problems would seem to be the most logical route. However, if they are "thieves", then the RIAA can sue the crap out of them if they want even if it seems like a dumb idea to us. Heck, why not? So far, it seems, they've gotten some snide comments from lawmakers and they've riled up the userbase of a couple of geek sites. Even the "riled" people don't seem to have a significant population boycotting their garbage, so - from their perspective - this must be going pretty well.
You shouldn't expect 12 year olds to have the same understanding of things as 32 year olds. If you're going to start doing that, you might as well just abolish the whole idea of children needing any guidance. Abolish driving ages, drinking ages, enlistment ages. No more juvenile courts or corrections centers. Don't hold parents responsible for anything or expect them to provide for the children at all once they're physically capable of working for themselves, etc.
NOT a good idea.
I'm not trying to be offensive or troll, or anything like that, but you don't really have a terribly firm grip on reality, do you?
There's a HUGE difference between forking over IPs because of frivilous, civil litigation and being told to hand them over as part of a CRIMINAL investigation.
I highly doubt anyone's going to come knocking at your door for suggesting we all participate in mass, organized wire and credit card fraud, but that's beside the point. I think and HOPE Slashdot would turn over IP addresses if it was part of a legit criminal investigation.
No, I'm not really that bad at math, but thanks for asking.
Apparently, however, you're pretty bad at comprehension since I pointed out right in the beginning that I wasn't disagreeing with the point, only pointing out that all the numbers being thrown about are aribtrary, so what makes his better than anyone else's?
And, if you're sending sensitive, private information through plain text e-mail, you have a bigger problem than potentially being accused of spamming.
Mmmm.... not that I'm necessarily disagreeing with you, but, natural logical flaw...
Why is it "odd" to send 400 in 15 minutes, but not odd to send 20-60 in that same time period? The numbers are all totally arbitrary, it's just that yours is 60 and "normal" and the original limit happened to be 400.
Granted, I understand implicitly what you're saying: they're not allowing for "odd looking but unsustained spikes" such as offliners or batch responders (like yourself). Best to explicitly point this things out in the original post though, lest you inflame the logitechnicality geeks like me :)
The thought would never have crossed my mind that Slashdot and common sense were, at times, mutually exclusive. :)
In a more serious tone, the same thing occurred to me. However, as I've already posted previously, perhaps if Dell and the other venduhs spent some more energy and resources training their customer base in the basic use of one of the tools they're selling them, they wouldn't even have to worry about this.
I still don't think that it's terribly far-fetched to think a venduh should include some small training manual on keeping a computer running smoothly and safely. This applies to patching, viruses, e-mail et. al. - not just spyware crap.
I hate to tell you, but, as much as I dislike Dell myself (and I own one so it's from personal experience, not second or third hand BS), the price they charge for their low end "garbage" is pretty hard to beat for non-techie types. That's good in the respect that it makes PCs more accessible to folks who don't have much money, but, it's very very bad when you start trying to extend it to other realms of computing.
For example... only an idiot would buy a gaming rig from Dell.
Bonus off since we're offtopic...
I don't think the "rich" have any inherent responsibility to provide any sort of opportunity for the poor as long as they're not maliciously sapping resources. Au contrair. I think if you can live your entire life "legitimately" wallowing in such a pathetic, self-serving state, more power to you. Of course, it's things like that which desperately make me want to believe in Hell.
It's the natural order of things to steal resources from the weak if possible. Oddly, however, human beings take that to a ridiculous extreme even against each other. Nothing inherently wrong with that.... but it's certainly better when people choose not to go that route.
Of course, quite frankly, at this point it could just be the beer talking.
My brother recently poured an extra five quarts of oil in his car without checking it first because the check engine light came on.
Go figure. Funny thing - the car comes with a manual that says, in no uncertain terms, that the oil capacity is FOUR AND ONE HALF quarts.
I've never seen a vendor-built PC that says:
We have forcibly included an Operating System with your new PC that is a regular target of spy and ad ware programs. You should not, for the sake of the health of your PC, download random shit from the Internet, open any attachments in e-mail that end with "blah blah blah", etc. Maybe if Dell and the other vendors took a little initiative to train their clueless customers, they wouldn't even have to worry about stupid things like this.
Speaking of "random shit from the Internet"... I saw a file the other day on Usenet attached to a post that was named "Paris Hilton.exe". I've no clue which virus it was though because I don't have a scanner or a Windows box. Amusing, thought I.
Public school teachers's salaries work on a very, very localized basis. For example, my GF is working toward has BS in English w/ a cert in secondary ed. Starting around here will net her anywhere from 29 - 34K a year. Not too bad for a starting salary, but head due south about 150 miles and she could get about 38K a year minimum to start. The teacher market here in central PA is saturated, but just a little south, they're desperate.
The point, however (which I'm sure you got, but others might not have), was that this guy is moaning and bitching about poor people choosing to be poor as if it were some lifestyle choice of "being lazy". I merely pointed out through example, and he immediately took exception to this, that you can be educated, employed, poor, and working your ass off all at the same time.
Wow, you just convinced me to be one of those people! That sounds like a lot more fun than this "caring about other people" bullshit I've been doing all this time.
One for all, and all for me!
Gotta love those public school teachers who stay poor because of bad decisions or lifestyle choices that led them away from the big bucks. Golly, it's nice to know that they must have picked that profession because they chose to be poor, and, it's not like the community should give the "bums" anything back since they did that.. maybe if they were contributing something useful I'd have more compassion.
I mean... it's not like there's *gasp* NO - NEVER say it on Slashdot!.... more than two sides to the issue!?
WARNING: Extreme sarcasm detected in the area.
Most mid-level pot/coke dealers aren't nearly as tough as they seem, they aren't going to go more than 500 miles out of their way to recoup under $5,000.
I can't help but think that there's really only one way to learn this sort of thing...
You'll have a heck of a time convincing a judge of that.
Consider you've had at least one credit card for the last 25 years and you've spent, on average, $1000 a year on it. That's $25,000. Assume all credit cards are now paid off.
Consider, if you will, all the checks you've written. If you've written $10,000 a year worth of checks for 25 years, that's $250K.
Unless you have reciepts for all of these transactions, especially the cash ones, organized in a logical system of some sort, you have no database.
In 25 years, you've spent, say, 1/2 a million dollars collecting data about yourself if we include other miscellaneous expenses, assuming you can prove all of the expenditure.
Consider, if you will, a corporation that has 100 customer service folks collecting and processing data at 25K a year. Consider they have a 2TB database of customer data for 6 million people maintained round the clock by 5 DB specialists who have been employed for 10 years at an overall average salary of $40K.
Not only do they have a "real" database (think of a non-techie judge for a moment... 'duhhhh... what's a database? You mean like Access?') that's much, much, much larger than yours and includes you in it, they've spent at least a good 20x what you have in half the time.
Who do you think is going to win rights to your data?