"a potential victim might receive a message from a known person -- for example, a friend or loved one - asking him or her to go to a Web site to update banking information"
Yeah, that's a likely scenario. Your dad or mom writing you all concerned that your bank information needs updating. Has anyone, anywhere, ever had that happen in real life? OK, never mind, I'm sure it has happened to someone, and for sure that person is reading this comment and will respond all indignantly. But you get the point. I cannot believe this approach would be accepted. This is not a typical, 'Hey, check this out' type of email from a relative. It's just a little too strange to work.
Now I have been phished, usually by Citibank-looking emails asking me to click here and update my information. The fact that I don't have a Citibank account was my first clue. The fact that I read/. and know about phishing was my second clue. The fact that I know banks don't operate that way was my third clue. But they are professionally looking emails, until you look closely and find all the typos. But pretending the email comes from Mom?? The first thing I would do is call her up and ask what's going on. And then she could say, "You called, it worked!"
Oh wait, this is a phishing expedition, not from bad guys, but from parents who want more phone calls from their children!
"This is disingenuous, though. As PJ and every Groklaw reader knows, this behavior is typical and wholly unsurprising. SCO are idiots, and their lawyers at this point are merely scrambling to avoid malpractice censure."
Given SCO's history, it may well have been said tongue in cheek. But it is actually surprising, and always has been, that the law team hasn't muzzled McBride and company. That is typically how these things are done. You don't see IBM execs shooting their mouths off, after all, even though they have been the ones accused of wrongdoing. You can bet that any lawyer worth their fees will tell their client to shut up and let them do the defending in the court.
In fact, SCO's behavior has been so surprising, I wouldn't be a bit shocked to one day learn that they overrode their lawyers, or they worked in concert with their lawyers, to try the case in the court of public opinion since they knew they had no real chance in court. Of course, that would imply nefarious behavior on SCO's part, and I wouldn't want to speculate on that. Who knows what they really think. But yeah, it is suprising that SCO would comment on ongoing litigation. The smart move is to say, "No comment."
"OK then, what exactly did you intend with the ending of "The Diamond Age"? Everyone I know who enjoyed that book screamed and threw it against the wall when they realized that there was, would be, and could be no ending reasonable or unreasonable, classical, modern, or post-modern."
I was jolted by the ending too, but then I realized he really did end it the way it should be ended. I'll explain my take on it below, but first let me point out that I'm going to be discussing major spoilers, so if you haven't read the book--- WHY ARE YOU READING THIS ANYWAY?
OK, with that out of the way, here's the ending: Nell, Miranda, and Carl are pulled out of the water by the mouse army. A church bell rings. The end.
Now here is what happens next: The Celestial Kingdom achieved its goal and equilibrium begins again between the phyles. Miranda marries Carl, they both become the parents for Nell she always wanted, Nell is now queen of a brand new phyle, and she can go on to whatever she wants to do as she deals with the other phyles in trade and negotiations. Hackworth is no longer needed and the book wasn't about him, a big hint for which is given in the subtitle of the book that talks about a "Young Lady."
All of the above is implied in the book. Nell was trying to find her "mother." She found her. Carl was trying to find Miranda. He found her. Nell was trying to solve the primer. She solved it. The mouse army needed to find their queen. They found her. The struggle between the phyles needed to move to a new level of equilibrium. It did. Finkle-McGraw wanted to figure out how best to use the primer. He figured it out. The end.
The only thing Neal Stephenson didn't do was spell all this out at the end. He merely implied it by noting what the characters were seeking, and then showed they each found what they sought. Bells play. The end.
Yes, I have the DVR version. A heat issue? Hmm...I'll play around with it. The bedroom one is one a table with a TV stand on top of it and the TV sits on the stand. There is an air gap above the cable box, and air all around in on four sides. The only area where it actually touches anything is on the bottom where it sits on the table. So it's about as ideally located as I can get it. It's also near the window, and as winter approaches it will get cooler.
The living room one is inside a wall unit, behind doors when not being watched, and sitting directly on top of the TV. This HAS to be running hotter than the bedroom unit. I'll pay attention and see if the problem occurs more frequently on the living room unit. Thanks for the tip.
I agree that we are in the early stages of this technology as far as cable companies go. Overall, I'm pleased, very pleased, with the functionality. I figure things will improve over time.
"What's all of that digital noise, why does the picture stop and start? "
I don't have the HD version, but I do have a Scientific American digitial cable box using Time Warner service. I also get the picture freeze, then start up again in a second or two, problem. Digital noise I understand, but I'm wondering what is causing the stops and starts. Can anyone enlighten me?
It does lead to the bizarre result that my two TVs can go out of sync while watching the same program. It's amusing to put them both on and then hear something in the living room and know that a few seconds later you can hear it on the bedroom TV too. Pushing the "live" button seems to fix that, so I think this out-of-sync condition is a result of this stop-and-start issue. Instead of jumping back to the live feed when it stops, it just picks up from where it left off. The more stops you get, the more out-of-sync you wind up being. So what's causing this?
I am finding it hard to believe I'm having to defend the idea that because the job market is worse now than it was in 1996 that it will have an impact on the official unemployment numbers. This reminds me of Bush-level argumenting where no matter the reality, just deny it.
OK, so I did a quick Google search for you to give you an idea of some stories that talk about workers dropping off the lists. It's worse now than it was at the start of the Bubble era, and I cannot believe there is anyone out there looking for work who disagrees with that.
The idea is so obvious and self-evident that I'm going to stop here. It's just a waste of time. All those looking for work know what I'm saying. They're living it.
I'm not actually talking about what is going to happen afterward, though you make a good point. I'm talking about what the reality is right now. And I maintain that the unemployment rate today is worse than it was in 1996, though hidden by official stats that do not take into account workplace reality.
"In the mid-90's we were on the rising slopes of a bubble. In comparison the job market today *IS* terrible."
That's all I'm trying to say. Because today's job market is worse than it was in '96, more people are dropping off the unemployment roles now, and thus today's stats about 5.4% are less all-encompassing than '96's 6.7%. I'm not arguing about WHY it is that way, just pointing out that today's job market is worse, and thus the same stat, counted in the same way, will be missing more people today than back then. Regardless of why.
"Almost everyone carries a driver's license, and RFID chips allow people to be tracked," said Kent Willis, Executive Director of the ACLU of Virginia. "This proposal would allow anyone to set up an RFID reader to capture the identities and personal information of every person who comes within range," added Willis. "FBI agents, for example, could sweep up the identities of everyone at a political meeting, protest march, gun show, or Islamic prayer service." -- From the ACLU link.
For this, privacy invasion, it will work just fine. And not only the FBI. Very quickly you'll have devices on the market that will let you read these tags just as easily. Now a mugger can scan identities as he goes down the street and zero in on someone known to be wealthy.
Besides the obvious privacy issues, how does this help? If you apply for a driver's license, and get one (as many of the 9/11 guys did), it means you beat the system. You got an official ID even if you weren't supposed to. They did it. And now they want to add an RFID tag to that license? OK, so now that they have (incorrectly) identified you as someone who is supposed to have a license, and put down whatever name you wanted them to put down, they now add an RFID tag to the mix so that the FBI officer can read it and say, "Yup, that's so-and-so" even if you aren't.
I can see working harder to prevent ID fraud in the first place, but once you have a license, how does tacking an RFID tag onto it improve things? I see it as a surveillance tool, not an ID-theft preventative service. Am I missing something here?
Calm down. I don't recall the source, it was several months ago. And I agree with you that the bubble caused a lot of problems. My point was that the 5.4% of today is not nearly as accurate as the 6.7% back in '96. It was an entirely different working world back then. It was far easier to find work, so there were fewer people out of work long term.
In recent years I've spoken with many co-workers and former co-workers as well as industry headhunters. Every last one of them felt the job market today is terrible. Not one of them felt that way about the mid-90s.
"On the whole unemployment thing what is left to fix, its at the same place it was in 1996 under the all wise Bill Clinton.. Heck he has done even better, in 1996 September Unemployment was 6.7%, in september 2004 it is at 5.4! "
Uh, no, not really. The 5.4% number is not counting all those people out of work for longer than six months. I read one estimate that the true number of Americans of working age who do not have jobs is closer to 10%. Anecdotally, I can believe it. I know people in recent years who tooks many, many months to find jobs. I was one of them. In 1996 I was looking for work and the job market was much better than it is now. Same type of work, same area, different results in a dramatic way. Things have been much worse recently than they ever were in the mid-1990s, even pre-boom.
"If he averages 150,000 jobs for the last four months of his term, he will net positive job growth."
Uh, no. Since you need about 150,000 jobs added each month just to keep up with a growing population, if he averages 150,000 jobs for the last four months of his term he will merely tread water. At this point, there is absolutely no chance that Bush can avoid being the first president since Hoover in the Great Depression to have had fewer jobs at the end of his term than when he began. With a growing population, that ain't easy to do. Just keep up with the population growth and you will wind up with more jobs at the end of four years. Which is why through recession after recession over the last seventy years no other president has managed to pull off such a shoddy record on job growth.
Naturally whatever the number is, it gets trumpeted by the incumbent. "96,000 new jobs were added last month! That shows my economic policies are working!" Garbage. It shows that the job market is going backward, not even keeping up with equilibrium.
"Personally, I believe I should be able to take stupid risks so long as I'm informed of the risks and I'm not coerced into doing so.
Me too. But when you wind up in the hospital, and my health insurance rises, may I bill you for the difference? And if your stupid risk takes place in a national park, shall we call off the search & rescue team that is paid for by our taxes?
See, I agree with you that if a person wants to risk their neck for fun they should be allowed to. We'll leave you alone. But whenever you need help, suddenly it's me who pays the bill for your stupidity. That's what I object to. So as long as you promise to quietly die in the wilderness with your broken back and leg, I have no problem with you taking stupid risks. Break a leg!
Thanks. I figured I was going to get flamed into a crispy cinder for my comment here. Glad to see people noticing I was calling for balance, not either extreme.
"Thank goodness someone can resist the kneejerk libertarian cry against Government involvement. "
Heh. I don't know why, but that struck my mind funny. Almost like a new sig line:
On the one hand, the small government crowd will say, "Let private industry do what it needs to do without all those regulations that tie people in knots trying to get things done. The government is too inefficient, and private industry is finally making great progress in the space area. Let them breathe!"
On the other hand, you have to acknowledge that the private approach is typically to put profits first, last, and mostly in-between, and if that means cutting corners, well what's a few accidents? The problem, of course, is that the public ends up paying for those accidents. If a rocket causes environmental damage, people pay, court cases spring up, it's a mess. If the rocket folks cut corners in a way that somehow (I dunno how, I'm just saying) threatens public health, we, the public end up paying higher health insurance claims. There's an interconnectedness at work here.
This is/., so we are sick of government interference in our high-tech toys. And they do go too far a lot of the time. But it's good to remember how far the private sector can go if there is no regulation whatsoever. A nice balance of corporate efficiency coupled with sensible public safety regulations would suit me. Let the rocket folks excel, but don't let them cause problems for the rest of us just because they put profits above all.
Somewhere in space, one group of aliens just started laughing uproariously. Another group of aliens started shaking their heads in bewilderment. A third group just starting petitioning the GCC (Galactic Communication Commission) to get this offensive alien voice off the radio waves emanating from this backward, blue planet in the bad part of the galaxy.
I have no idea what this story is for, or why this book will be featured on/., but it was an interesting read anyway. So it got me remembering the late 80s and early 90s back when I was working in Rockefeller Center in New York City. The Rockefeller family had kept controlling interest in the property since it was built, and one day we opened our newspapers (pre-Web, kiddies) and our jaws dropped: Rockefeller Center had been sold to the Japanese! The very icon of American financial success was now bought by the rising financial power in Japan.
That was the era of business books talking about the Japanese miracle, and this freaked everyone out. They really are going to surpass us, people whispered.
Fast-forward a few years. The Nikkei is down. Rockefeller Center is sold by the Japanese at a loss during a recession, having lost money for their new owners. Japanese companies are losing money, and not quite as many Japanese tourists are flashing cash all over Fifth Avenue.
What's my point? Nothing. Hey, the story was aimless so I thought I'd add my aimless thoughts to the miasma of this page. But actually there is one point to learn from this: Economic and political power are rarely linear. We tend to think in linear terms, but reality tends to go in jumps and starts and backward slides. One day your nation's economy is red-hot and the world's your oyster. The next thing you know your stock market has been down for a decade and you're wondering where all your pocket change went. This too will pass. There is only one unalterable truth that never changes in life: Whatever high-tech gadget you have in your possession, there are hordes of Japanese schoolgirls who will kick your butt with their higher-tech gadgets.
"Poor planning, poor execution and poor leadership are more likely to blame than bad code when it comes to systems that fail. "
Nevertheless, it's those poor planners, poor executors, and poor leaders who are in charge. You really think they are going to take the blame? No, of course not! It's so much easier, more fun, and better for your career to tell upper management that it was just the programmers who couldn't follow their instructions correctly.
Programmers will then get blamed, the poor managers will get a bonus for "correctly" identifying the problem, and corporate America will sail on as it always has: giving the big bucks to the managers and sales folks, while ignoring the programmers.
Slashdot Mirror
Very good. You have correctly identified the method crooks used before phishing technology was possible.
Yeah, that's a likely scenario. Your dad or mom writing you all concerned that your bank information needs updating. Has anyone, anywhere, ever had that happen in real life? OK, never mind, I'm sure it has happened to someone, and for sure that person is reading this comment and will respond all indignantly. But you get the point. I cannot believe this approach would be accepted. This is not a typical, 'Hey, check this out' type of email from a relative. It's just a little too strange to work.
Now I have been phished, usually by Citibank-looking emails asking me to click here and update my information. The fact that I don't have a Citibank account was my first clue. The fact that I read /. and know about phishing was my second clue. The fact that I know banks don't operate that way was my third clue. But they are professionally looking emails, until you look closely and find all the typos. But pretending the email comes from Mom?? The first thing I would do is call her up and ask what's going on. And then she could say, "You called, it worked!"
Oh wait, this is a phishing expedition, not from bad guys, but from parents who want more phone calls from their children!
Given SCO's history, it may well have been said tongue in cheek. But it is actually surprising, and always has been, that the law team hasn't muzzled McBride and company. That is typically how these things are done. You don't see IBM execs shooting their mouths off, after all, even though they have been the ones accused of wrongdoing. You can bet that any lawyer worth their fees will tell their client to shut up and let them do the defending in the court.
In fact, SCO's behavior has been so surprising, I wouldn't be a bit shocked to one day learn that they overrode their lawyers, or they worked in concert with their lawyers, to try the case in the court of public opinion since they knew they had no real chance in court. Of course, that would imply nefarious behavior on SCO's part, and I wouldn't want to speculate on that. Who knows what they really think. But yeah, it is suprising that SCO would comment on ongoing litigation. The smart move is to say, "No comment."
I was jolted by the ending too, but then I realized he really did end it the way it should be ended. I'll explain my take on it below, but first let me point out that I'm going to be discussing major spoilers, so if you haven't read the book--- WHY ARE YOU READING THIS ANYWAY?
OK, with that out of the way, here's the ending: Nell, Miranda, and Carl are pulled out of the water by the mouse army. A church bell rings. The end.
Now here is what happens next: The Celestial Kingdom achieved its goal and equilibrium begins again between the phyles. Miranda marries Carl, they both become the parents for Nell she always wanted, Nell is now queen of a brand new phyle, and she can go on to whatever she wants to do as she deals with the other phyles in trade and negotiations. Hackworth is no longer needed and the book wasn't about him, a big hint for which is given in the subtitle of the book that talks about a "Young Lady."
All of the above is implied in the book. Nell was trying to find her "mother." She found her. Carl was trying to find Miranda. He found her. Nell was trying to solve the primer. She solved it. The mouse army needed to find their queen. They found her. The struggle between the phyles needed to move to a new level of equilibrium. It did. Finkle-McGraw wanted to figure out how best to use the primer. He figured it out. The end.
The only thing Neal Stephenson didn't do was spell all this out at the end. He merely implied it by noting what the characters were seeking, and then showed they each found what they sought. Bells play. The end.
The living room one is inside a wall unit, behind doors when not being watched, and sitting directly on top of the TV. This HAS to be running hotter than the bedroom unit. I'll pay attention and see if the problem occurs more frequently on the living room unit. Thanks for the tip.
I agree that we are in the early stages of this technology as far as cable companies go. Overall, I'm pleased, very pleased, with the functionality. I figure things will improve over time.
Yup, mangled the name in my brain as I was typing. Kinda funny typo, though. Just the sort of thing I would love to make fun of on my site!
I don't have the HD version, but I do have a Scientific American digitial cable box using Time Warner service. I also get the picture freeze, then start up again in a second or two, problem. Digital noise I understand, but I'm wondering what is causing the stops and starts. Can anyone enlighten me?
It does lead to the bizarre result that my two TVs can go out of sync while watching the same program. It's amusing to put them both on and then hear something in the living room and know that a few seconds later you can hear it on the bedroom TV too. Pushing the "live" button seems to fix that, so I think this out-of-sync condition is a result of this stop-and-start issue. Instead of jumping back to the live feed when it stops, it just picks up from where it left off. The more stops you get, the more out-of-sync you wind up being. So what's causing this?
OK, so I did a quick Google search for you to give you an idea of some stories that talk about workers dropping off the lists. It's worse now than it was at the start of the Bubble era, and I cannot believe there is anyone out there looking for work who disagrees with that.
One sample story
Second sample story
Third sample story
The idea is so obvious and self-evident that I'm going to stop here. It's just a waste of time. All those looking for work know what I'm saying. They're living it.
I'm not actually talking about what is going to happen afterward, though you make a good point. I'm talking about what the reality is right now. And I maintain that the unemployment rate today is worse than it was in 1996, though hidden by official stats that do not take into account workplace reality.
That's all I'm trying to say. Because today's job market is worse than it was in '96, more people are dropping off the unemployment roles now, and thus today's stats about 5.4% are less all-encompassing than '96's 6.7%. I'm not arguing about WHY it is that way, just pointing out that today's job market is worse, and thus the same stat, counted in the same way, will be missing more people today than back then. Regardless of why.
Thank you.
For this, privacy invasion, it will work just fine. And not only the FBI. Very quickly you'll have devices on the market that will let you read these tags just as easily. Now a mugger can scan identities as he goes down the street and zero in on someone known to be wealthy.
Besides the obvious privacy issues, how does this help? If you apply for a driver's license, and get one (as many of the 9/11 guys did), it means you beat the system. You got an official ID even if you weren't supposed to. They did it. And now they want to add an RFID tag to that license? OK, so now that they have (incorrectly) identified you as someone who is supposed to have a license, and put down whatever name you wanted them to put down, they now add an RFID tag to the mix so that the FBI officer can read it and say, "Yup, that's so-and-so" even if you aren't.
I can see working harder to prevent ID fraud in the first place, but once you have a license, how does tacking an RFID tag onto it improve things? I see it as a surveillance tool, not an ID-theft preventative service. Am I missing something here?
But not in the same working world circumstances, and that makes all the difference in the world.
In recent years I've spoken with many co-workers and former co-workers as well as industry headhunters. Every last one of them felt the job market today is terrible. Not one of them felt that way about the mid-90s.
Uh, no, not really. The 5.4% number is not counting all those people out of work for longer than six months. I read one estimate that the true number of Americans of working age who do not have jobs is closer to 10%. Anecdotally, I can believe it. I know people in recent years who tooks many, many months to find jobs. I was one of them. In 1996 I was looking for work and the job market was much better than it is now. Same type of work, same area, different results in a dramatic way. Things have been much worse recently than they ever were in the mid-1990s, even pre-boom.
Uh, no. Since you need about 150,000 jobs added each month just to keep up with a growing population, if he averages 150,000 jobs for the last four months of his term he will merely tread water. At this point, there is absolutely no chance that Bush can avoid being the first president since Hoover in the Great Depression to have had fewer jobs at the end of his term than when he began. With a growing population, that ain't easy to do. Just keep up with the population growth and you will wind up with more jobs at the end of four years. Which is why through recession after recession over the last seventy years no other president has managed to pull off such a shoddy record on job growth.
Naturally whatever the number is, it gets trumpeted by the incumbent. "96,000 new jobs were added last month! That shows my economic policies are working!" Garbage. It shows that the job market is going backward, not even keeping up with equilibrium.
That's because the accidents never happened and thus we never heard about them.
Me too. But when you wind up in the hospital, and my health insurance rises, may I bill you for the difference? And if your stupid risk takes place in a national park, shall we call off the search & rescue team that is paid for by our taxes?
See, I agree with you that if a person wants to risk their neck for fun they should be allowed to. We'll leave you alone. But whenever you need help, suddenly it's me who pays the bill for your stupidity. That's what I object to. So as long as you promise to quietly die in the wilderness with your broken back and leg, I have no problem with you taking stupid risks. Break a leg!
"Thank goodness someone can resist the kneejerk libertarian cry against Government involvement. "
Heh. I don't know why, but that struck my mind funny. Almost like a new sig line:
Fun With Headlines: Resisting kneejerk cries since 2002!
I agree with you. I did say I was hoping for "sensible" regulation, but I also realize that I'm dreaming if I think that's going to happen.
On the other hand, you have to acknowledge that the private approach is typically to put profits first, last, and mostly in-between, and if that means cutting corners, well what's a few accidents? The problem, of course, is that the public ends up paying for those accidents. If a rocket causes environmental damage, people pay, court cases spring up, it's a mess. If the rocket folks cut corners in a way that somehow (I dunno how, I'm just saying) threatens public health, we, the public end up paying higher health insurance claims. There's an interconnectedness at work here.
This is /., so we are sick of government interference in our high-tech toys. And they do go too far a lot of the time. But it's good to remember how far the private sector can go if there is no regulation whatsoever. A nice balance of corporate efficiency coupled with sensible public safety regulations would suit me. Let the rocket folks excel, but don't let them cause problems for the rest of us just because they put profits above all.
Somewhere in space, one group of aliens just started laughing uproariously. Another group of aliens started shaking their heads in bewilderment. A third group just starting petitioning the GCC (Galactic Communication Commission) to get this offensive alien voice off the radio waves emanating from this backward, blue planet in the bad part of the galaxy.
GCC contacts the Vogons...
That was the era of business books talking about the Japanese miracle, and this freaked everyone out. They really are going to surpass us, people whispered.
Fast-forward a few years. The Nikkei is down. Rockefeller Center is sold by the Japanese at a loss during a recession, having lost money for their new owners. Japanese companies are losing money, and not quite as many Japanese tourists are flashing cash all over Fifth Avenue.
What's my point? Nothing. Hey, the story was aimless so I thought I'd add my aimless thoughts to the miasma of this page. But actually there is one point to learn from this: Economic and political power are rarely linear. We tend to think in linear terms, but reality tends to go in jumps and starts and backward slides. One day your nation's economy is red-hot and the world's your oyster. The next thing you know your stock market has been down for a decade and you're wondering where all your pocket change went. This too will pass. There is only one unalterable truth that never changes in life: Whatever high-tech gadget you have in your possession, there are hordes of Japanese schoolgirls who will kick your butt with their higher-tech gadgets.
Too drunk to drive, too jittery to just sit in the back seat.
Nevertheless, it's those poor planners, poor executors, and poor leaders who are in charge. You really think they are going to take the blame? No, of course not! It's so much easier, more fun, and better for your career to tell upper management that it was just the programmers who couldn't follow their instructions correctly.
Programmers will then get blamed, the poor managers will get a bonus for "correctly" identifying the problem, and corporate America will sail on as it always has: giving the big bucks to the managers and sales folks, while ignoring the programmers.
Who me, bitter?