I think that the answer to both questions lies with Google and other similar searching technologies. In many cases, I will skim the results of a Google or other search because a bit of summary information is included in the result listing, and I find that it sometimes helps me to make better guesses as to which link is best to follow if I skim those summaries before I click. If these sorts of "reports" don't have much more content than what you just posted, many people who might otherwise click through to TFA based on the title would read the summary, see part of all of the list, and say "oh, so it's total BS then" and never make that click. Fewer eyeballs on the site itself, less ad revenue, bad bad bad. Ergo, Flash and Javascript, which as I understand it is difficult or impossible the current major search providers to pull much of anything useful from to use in a summary.
I'm not seeing a lot of people arguing against the searching itself. While inconvenient and arguably not especially effective the way DHS has chosen to implement them, I think that a reasonable person could see where border searches are a good idea. The ideal, I hope, is that the DHS agents are trying to answer some important questions. "Are those illegal drugs that we don't allow in our country?", "Is that an explosive device?", "Is that some kind of toxin that you're going to use to attack our citizens?", and other similar questions that should be driving each and every search. Though there's a case to be made that this doesn't happen in practice let's ignore that tangent for now. I think the real sticking point for a lot of posters here seems to be the fact that something like a laptop can simply be taken during the course of that search and returned at an indeterminate later date, if at all. I may not be able to leave the country and come back ever again, as it's game over for me if I have to travel outside of the US with my company laptop, which has local copies of everything I'm currently working on so that I can work on it while I'm gone. Certainly, we have backups, so the only immediate loss is whatever I've worked on since the last time I was able to connect to our VPN and commit my changes to the source repository, but now code and company information worth several times what I make in a year are in the hands of heaven only knows who. The Wikipedia article was useful in reading up on the established legality and reasonableness, such as they are, of border searches, and I'm sure if I'd spent the time to read through the primary sources I'd be even more educated on the subject, but in my brief review of the link it didn't say anything about "...and it's also okay to take whatever we want without needing to prove that it's threatening or contraband"
"Water is Wet", proclaims billion dollar study.
We've also inadvertently discovered a relationship between financial status and attractiveness to women, as well as confirming that there just might be something to that theory of gravity thing.
People who didn't know us in college are always amazed that my wife plays console and PC games with me, enjoys some flavors of tabletop RPGs, and puts up with my incessant need to acquire more geek toys. Even after 7 years of marriage, she managed to surprise me a few weeks ago when I was telling her about how I booted off of a Knoppix CD to retrieve some files she needed off of a years-old Windows box that hasn't been booting properly for a while and she turned to me and said "Isn't it about time that we just back up what we need and fry that machine to put Linux on it?"
My work PC doesn't have a torrent client so I'm forced to wait until I head home for the evening, but what kind of disk space requirements are we looking at for Ubuntu? I noticed in the linked article that it can be uninstalled from the Windows add/remove tool, which looks cute, and of course on my 1/2 terabyte primary hard drive on the home desktop it's no problem at all. But for my laptop, which is rocking a mere 80 gigs and has much work-related stuff on it, how much pr0n must I delete if I want to revel in dual-booting goodness?
Actually, I thought that it went "If you can't duck it..." and then ends with a two-word suggestion that I'm very very glad they didn't have to do to the moon buggy. I would think that it'd be physically impossible to do and not at all fun unless the buggy was, in fact, really cute.
Your sentence almost works, but saying "I bought a soda for me and my wife" is just as factually incorrect as "I bought a soda for the Easter Bunny to share with me". I think you really meant to say "I bought myself a soda", because that sentence contains no references to mythical or nonexistent beings.
I've had my rear legitimately handed to me enough times in online discussions by people who have turned out to be twelve to know not to underestimate the young ones
...frickin' perv, you are. Unless you're 13. Got a credit card number to prove that, bub?
The government is even invading the privacy of whole other countries!
Call me an egocentrist, but better theirs than mine. Of course, a glance at just those government-related stories that have made it to/. in the last few weeks makes it clear that we can deficit-spend our way to enough resources to invade everyone's privacy, so I guess the "not it" mentality falls apart at that point. *twitch*
"And then they went after the illegal Mexicans, and I did not speak up, for I was neither illegal nor a Mexican..."
I'm not arguing that Microsoft isn't in good company with....oh, let's say everyone else who releases software with some form of EULA, because they're definitely not unique in this practice and arguing that they are would be stupid. I will say, though, that I'm far more comfortable with an OSS license that says "this may or may not be fit for any purpose whatsoever, so don't blame us if something gets hosed because we warned you" than I am with that same statement on a Microsoft (or Adobe, or anything non-free-as-in-beer) product. In the case of Word, I've paid money for the chance to read that EULA and find out that it's not sold with a guarantee that it will fill the need that I bought it for originally. With most OSS (that I use) at least, I got exactly the amount of assurance that I paid for.
In relative terms, especially if we're talking about large organizations, the cost of Word is not a lot if you only look at the sticker price and not at loss of security or productive time. Replace "Word" with "SQL Server" or "the latest server OS", however...
If they did use Jones in leiu of his real name, they missed a golden opportunity.
How much harder would it have been to call him Johnson instead? Richard Johnson, there's a pseudonym for you.
Of course your grandad didn't read The Divine Comedy when he was a small child. He had one of the original copies of "My First Big Picture Book o' Dante", which should explain quite a lot if you've ever wondered why he had those recurring nightmares that started around age 5...
I was willing to concede that a "yet" could have been added to the end of that sentence until I read
"The group that published the exploit said Microsoft has been aware of the Javascript Window() vulnerability for several months but was mistakenly treating it as a low-priority denial-of-service flaw."
After that, my view of the exploit got just a little bit dimmer.
I'll get off my soapbox now and get back in my rocking chair by the back porch.:-)
Would you like some help there, grandpa? With that rocking chair and the outdated notion of being paid somewhere near what you're worth, you've got to be a little more than over the hill...
Seriously, are there any other tidbits you'd like to impart re: salary negotiation? Though a lot of people will probably never grasp the concept, it seems fairly obvious to me that it's good to come with solid references, good interviewing skills, and abilities that meet or exceed the requirements of the job you're after, but is it a good idea to ask for 10% more? 15%? years_of_experience * $1000? I would guess it's something that you have to evaluate on a case-by-case basis, but it seems silly to pass up any chance for a little insight, even on/.
I'm in a similar situation as your friend with the Masters, except for the whole "female" thing. I've done some salary negotiation in the past that has turned out well and have gotten a couple of unsolicited "out of cycle" raises at my current job, but it's been a few years since I've had to think about such things and I'm getting another opportunity to flex my (atrophied to the point of nonexistence) negotiation muscles. I'd welcome insight from anyone, really.
I am one of two technical people on my team. My boss (the other technical person, and the only other male) sits in an office on the opposite side of the floor. The rest of the team populated mostly by single and reasonably attractive twenty- to thirty-something women, with a couple of notable exceptions who also work in offices that are far away from our main workspace. The rest of us share a nice open cube farm, fairly well shielded from the other departments on our floor.
The number of marketroids I've met who actually know about Javascript is vanishingly small, like maybe two whole people. The rest of them simply break it down into its component parts to figure out what it means. Since the word is a combination of both "Java" and "script", it's obviously a set of pre-rehearsed lines that, when spoken, spur your marketroid intern to action so that he/she will bring you more coffee.
If you think that's bad, let me tell you about the months I spent trying to explain to a management-type that wanted us to do absolutely everything in XML. Lucky Charms form widgets? Sure! "Can you guys do them in XML? That's the language that we should be using for all of our projects now. Thanks!" Stupid buzzwords. *shudder*
I don't care about the style, just as long as it works;)
Just keep repeating that over and over in the face of the warbling graphic designers, marketing droids, and/or management-types who come to you with the battle cry "We don't care if it works, just make it look pretty!"
Sadly, that quote comes very nearly verbatim from a couple of "important" meetings I've attended where the main event involved kicking the functionality of one of my systems directly in the nads until the whole thing fell down on the floor and cried.
Here's a question for you that wasn't clear from the original post: did/does the source code that your employer is trying to patent retain any sort of "this code created by X on Y date and is released under the GPL" comments or notices of any kind? If so, it seems to me like the employer is on pretty darned shaky ground (IANAL) because the original code was GPL'd before you derived it, and probably was long before you ever went to work for these jokers.
Am I correct in assuming that the only assurances you got from your employer regarding the code were verbal? I know that verbal contracts are often said to be binding, but I have yet to see or hear of a verbal assurance that was actually upheld if one of the parties tries to weasel out of it. Call me a cynic, but I'm in the habit of not believing any business dealing that isn't written down somewhere and signed in (someone else's) blood for this very reason.
I'd never want you to disclose the name of this employer so that we might curse them to Heck or sign them up for SCO newsletters or anything like that, but perhaps a plucky Anonymous Coward *cough cough* could hazard a guess or two.
Not to mention the fact that anybody forced/paid to read even a tenth of a percent of that crap would go apeshit in just one day of reading all that inanity.
Now, back to reading slashdot...
Please tell me that I'm not the only person who did a double-take reading that, and that the effect was intentional? On a completely unrelated topic, what's the best way to clean Mt. Dew off of a monitor?
Slashdot Mirror
http://androidandme.com/2009/09/news/10-reasons-to-start-saving-for-the-verizon-motorola-sholes-android-phone/ I think the current word on the street is early December?
I think that the answer to both questions lies with Google and other similar searching technologies. In many cases, I will skim the results of a Google or other search because a bit of summary information is included in the result listing, and I find that it sometimes helps me to make better guesses as to which link is best to follow if I skim those summaries before I click. If these sorts of "reports" don't have much more content than what you just posted, many people who might otherwise click through to TFA based on the title would read the summary, see part of all of the list, and say "oh, so it's total BS then" and never make that click. Fewer eyeballs on the site itself, less ad revenue, bad bad bad. Ergo, Flash and Javascript, which as I understand it is difficult or impossible the current major search providers to pull much of anything useful from to use in a summary.
I'm not seeing a lot of people arguing against the searching itself. While inconvenient and arguably not especially effective the way DHS has chosen to implement them, I think that a reasonable person could see where border searches are a good idea. The ideal, I hope, is that the DHS agents are trying to answer some important questions. "Are those illegal drugs that we don't allow in our country?", "Is that an explosive device?", "Is that some kind of toxin that you're going to use to attack our citizens?", and other similar questions that should be driving each and every search. Though there's a case to be made that this doesn't happen in practice let's ignore that tangent for now. I think the real sticking point for a lot of posters here seems to be the fact that something like a laptop can simply be taken during the course of that search and returned at an indeterminate later date, if at all. I may not be able to leave the country and come back ever again, as it's game over for me if I have to travel outside of the US with my company laptop, which has local copies of everything I'm currently working on so that I can work on it while I'm gone. Certainly, we have backups, so the only immediate loss is whatever I've worked on since the last time I was able to connect to our VPN and commit my changes to the source repository, but now code and company information worth several times what I make in a year are in the hands of heaven only knows who. The Wikipedia article was useful in reading up on the established legality and reasonableness, such as they are, of border searches, and I'm sure if I'd spent the time to read through the primary sources I'd be even more educated on the subject, but in my brief review of the link it didn't say anything about "...and it's also okay to take whatever we want without needing to prove that it's threatening or contraband"
Am I missing something here?
"Water is Wet", proclaims billion dollar study. We've also inadvertently discovered a relationship between financial status and attractiveness to women, as well as confirming that there just might be something to that theory of gravity thing.
People who didn't know us in college are always amazed that my wife plays console and PC games with me, enjoys some flavors of tabletop RPGs, and puts up with my incessant need to acquire more geek toys. Even after 7 years of marriage, she managed to surprise me a few weeks ago when I was telling her about how I booted off of a Knoppix CD to retrieve some files she needed off of a years-old Windows box that hasn't been booting properly for a while and she turned to me and said "Isn't it about time that we just back up what we need and fry that machine to put Linux on it?"
I love her more every single day.
My work PC doesn't have a torrent client so I'm forced to wait until I head home for the evening, but what kind of disk space requirements are we looking at for Ubuntu? I noticed in the linked article that it can be uninstalled from the Windows add/remove tool, which looks cute, and of course on my 1/2 terabyte primary hard drive on the home desktop it's no problem at all. But for my laptop, which is rocking a mere 80 gigs and has much work-related stuff on it, how much pr0n must I delete if I want to revel in dual-booting goodness?
Actually, I thought that it went "If you can't duck it..." and then ends with a two-word suggestion that I'm very very glad they didn't have to do to the moon buggy. I would think that it'd be physically impossible to do and not at all fun unless the buggy was, in fact, really cute.
Your sentence almost works, but saying "I bought a soda for me and my wife" is just as factually incorrect as "I bought a soda for the Easter Bunny to share with me". I think you really meant to say "I bought myself a soda", because that sentence contains no references to mythical or nonexistent beings.
Remember where you are, man.
Say again?
A lawyer on the wind, watch how I... *KA-CHUNK*
Well, there's that sorted out.
I've had my rear legitimately handed to me enough times in online discussions by people who have turned out to be twelve to know not to underestimate the young ones
...frickin' perv, you are. Unless you're 13. Got a credit card number to prove that, bub?
The government is even invading the privacy of whole other countries!
/. in the last few weeks makes it clear that we can deficit-spend our way to enough resources to invade everyone's privacy, so I guess the "not it" mentality falls apart at that point. *twitch*
Call me an egocentrist, but better theirs than mine. Of course, a glance at just those government-related stories that have made it to
"And then they went after the illegal Mexicans, and I did not speak up, for I was neither illegal nor a Mexican..."
I'm not arguing that Microsoft isn't in good company with....oh, let's say everyone else who releases software with some form of EULA, because they're definitely not unique in this practice and arguing that they are would be stupid. I will say, though, that I'm far more comfortable with an OSS license that says "this may or may not be fit for any purpose whatsoever, so don't blame us if something gets hosed because we warned you" than I am with that same statement on a Microsoft (or Adobe, or anything non-free-as-in-beer) product. In the case of Word, I've paid money for the chance to read that EULA and find out that it's not sold with a guarantee that it will fill the need that I bought it for originally. With most OSS (that I use) at least, I got exactly the amount of assurance that I paid for.
In relative terms, especially if we're talking about large organizations, the cost of Word is not a lot if you only look at the sticker price and not at loss of security or productive time. Replace "Word" with "SQL Server" or "the latest server OS", however...
If they did use Jones in leiu of his real name, they missed a golden opportunity. How much harder would it have been to call him Johnson instead? Richard Johnson, there's a pseudonym for you.
Of course your grandad didn't read The Divine Comedy when he was a small child. He had one of the original copies of "My First Big Picture Book o' Dante", which should explain quite a lot if you've ever wondered why he had those recurring nightmares that started around age 5...
From the comments in the source code:
The protruding upper halves of any text translated into Klingon will appear, in the recipient's local dialect, to read "Go stick your head in a pig"
Okay, not really. But it would be cool.
I was willing to concede that a "yet" could have been added to the end of that sentence until I read
"The group that published the exploit said Microsoft has been aware of the Javascript Window() vulnerability for several months but was mistakenly treating it as a low-priority denial-of-service flaw."
After that, my view of the exploit got just a little bit dimmer.
Would you like some help there, grandpa? With that rocking chair and the outdated notion of being paid somewhere near what you're worth, you've got to be a little more than over the hill...
Seriously, are there any other tidbits you'd like to impart re: salary negotiation? Though a lot of people will probably never grasp the concept, it seems fairly obvious to me that it's good to come with solid references, good interviewing skills, and abilities that meet or exceed the requirements of the job you're after, but is it a good idea to ask for 10% more? 15%? years_of_experience * $1000? I would guess it's something that you have to evaluate on a case-by-case basis, but it seems silly to pass up any chance for a little insight, even on /.
I'm in a similar situation as your friend with the Masters, except for the whole "female" thing. I've done some salary negotiation in the past that has turned out well and have gotten a couple of unsolicited "out of cycle" raises at my current job, but it's been a few years since I've had to think about such things and I'm getting another opportunity to flex my (atrophied to the point of nonexistence) negotiation muscles. I'd welcome insight from anyone, really.
If I'm marrying a weatherman, I think that's called "not a legal marriage in many US states".
Ice Phishing: Breaking through a wall of "black ice" when attempting to get your phishing phreak on during an intense hack.
I am one of two technical people on my team. My boss (the other technical person, and the only other male) sits in an office on the opposite side of the floor. The rest of the team populated mostly by single and reasonably attractive twenty- to thirty-something women, with a couple of notable exceptions who also work in offices that are far away from our main workspace. The rest of us share a nice open cube farm, fairly well shielded from the other departments on our floor.
Hell yes, I want Naked Fridays.
The number of marketroids I've met who actually know about Javascript is vanishingly small, like maybe two whole people. The rest of them simply break it down into its component parts to figure out what it means. Since the word is a combination of both "Java" and "script", it's obviously a set of pre-rehearsed lines that, when spoken, spur your marketroid intern to action so that he/she will bring you more coffee.
If you think that's bad, let me tell you about the months I spent trying to explain to a management-type that wanted us to do absolutely everything in XML. Lucky Charms form widgets? Sure! "Can you guys do them in XML? That's the language that we should be using for all of our projects now. Thanks!" Stupid buzzwords. *shudder*
I don't care about the style, just as long as it works ;)
Just keep repeating that over and over in the face of the warbling graphic designers, marketing droids, and/or management-types who come to you with the battle cry "We don't care if it works, just make it look pretty!"
Sadly, that quote comes very nearly verbatim from a couple of "important" meetings I've attended where the main event involved kicking the functionality of one of my systems directly in the nads until the whole thing fell down on the floor and cried.
Quoth the blurb:
This is likely aimed at preventing Linux from gaining market share where MS is currently alienating their customers."
So...everywhere, then? It's much easier to just come out and say that than to string all those other words together, you know.
Here's a question for you that wasn't clear from the original post: did/does the source code that your employer is trying to patent retain any sort of "this code created by X on Y date and is released under the GPL" comments or notices of any kind? If so, it seems to me like the employer is on pretty darned shaky ground (IANAL) because the original code was GPL'd before you derived it, and probably was long before you ever went to work for these jokers.
Am I correct in assuming that the only assurances you got from your employer regarding the code were verbal? I know that verbal contracts are often said to be binding, but I have yet to see or hear of a verbal assurance that was actually upheld if one of the parties tries to weasel out of it. Call me a cynic, but I'm in the habit of not believing any business dealing that isn't written down somewhere and signed in (someone else's) blood for this very reason.
I'd never want you to disclose the name of this employer so that we might curse them to Heck or sign them up for SCO newsletters or anything like that, but perhaps a plucky Anonymous Coward *cough cough* could hazard a guess or two.
Not to mention the fact that anybody forced/paid to read even a tenth of a percent of that crap would go apeshit in just one day of reading all that inanity.
Now, back to reading slashdot...
Please tell me that I'm not the only person who did a double-take reading that, and that the effect was intentional? On a completely unrelated topic, what's the best way to clean Mt. Dew off of a monitor?