Yeah, I can't see this thing surviving well in a warzone if the opponent knows that it's there. Even if it's got multiple compartmentalized bladders and some secondary lift mechanisms like a quadrotor setup, it's still going to be awfully vulnerable to something as simple as a long line of razor wire tied to a rocket fired in its direction...
I have no doubt that it wouldn't have been as popular had it not been co-opted that day.
At that time in magazine advertising there were thousands of brightly-colored photos of women's faces and interesting backgrounds that could have been used, and they could have even *gasp* bought a photo from a local photography studio... Any of these could have been just as popular, without the legally-questionable sourcing.
Are you sure of that? Because that's basically what I meant...
Having naked pictures in most places of work becomes sexual harassment if women who work there are exposed to them and don't want to be. The only exceptions that I can think of are actually magazines and other intentional publishers of such content, and medical offices, and the latter only if properly in context.
First, a subculture that has very few women, and many of those few that seem to be there* are total attention whores.
Second, with that general lack of women, combined with the disproportionate amount of attention whores, objectification and grandstanding becomes much more common, and fairly violent and derogatory terminology gets bandied about as normal.
Third, many who participate perceive themselves as flaunting the law/rules, and that can lead to a mindset for flaunting the rules outside of the technical realm.
Combine those, and you get a bunch of undersexed, maladjusted men, expecting the few women present to behave in a sexual way, who are used breaking the rules. It's really not much of a surprise to me that this happens.
* I imagine that a lot of the "women" are just men who get their jollies off of role-playing loose women, essentially manipulating the women-characters in to doing what they'd want a woman to do.
...for the followup papers by other scientists examining his findings before I make a conclusion. I have a friend who actually is a planetary geologist and focuses most of his attention on Mars, and I haven't heard any of this from him.
I find your comment juxtaposed against your signature line amusing...
I'm not in favor of heavy-handed things that don't really affect a lot of people. Even if he's the biggest software/movie/music pirate or piracy facilitator in the world, one can argue that the number of people harmed by his actions is small, and the amount of harm caused to them is also small, relatively speaking on the latter. I would argue that a banker that profited off of the loss of someone's life savings has caused more real harm, and someone who has committed a violent crime has certainly caused more harm, and has the potential to cause more harm if likely to repeat the crime.
...to stage a raid on a high-profile target like this...
First, shock-and-awe factor, in the real terms of cowing the target of the raid and ancillary subjects so that they don't do something dangerous to the authorities, like grab weapons. This can be especially important for security staff that might not be wired quite the same as everyone else.
Second, disruption of other elements of critical thinking. If there are things to be destroyed, from the perspective of the target of the raid, this might disrupt that plan.
Third, and in my opinion, most likely, to make a show of force for others. My guess is that this raid didn't require air support, a number of practiced officers could have detained or arrested people on the ground, even security, quickly enough, if enough people were involved in the raid in the first place. It is possible that this was more cost effective in not requiring as many officers to breach and secure, but helicopters aren't cheap either.
Terry Pratchett and Discworld are almost unknown outside of fandom. He's REALLY popular in fandom, but not seemingly widely read outside. And yes, he is a science fiction writer with The Bromeliad...
I also enjoyed Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail. Granted, it was a translation, but it was a helluva interesting story about the third world deciding to invade the first, through mass population exodus. I got to read that in a pop culture sci fi English class in college, even though it was originally written in French and translated.
I enjoy some Piers Anthony, even though I didn't enjoy Bio of a Space Tyrant. The Xanth series is fun if you're bored and willing to read 'em straight through, and like puns. Mute was good.
I read a lot of David Weber, though I wish he'd get on with the Honorverse and with Dahak and Safehold. After Robert Jordan's death I swore I wouldn't read any more authors who were living or at least whose series were still going somewhere and weren't done, and Weber is one of the few that fits that. Dammit, finish the stories!
And Bruce Sterling seems under-appreciated these days too.
Dune had a major motion picture, and 20 years later, a miniseries. It's also a fairly hard read and while it's a good book, I can see why it's not popular with the masses.
Only when supply is limited and transport and distribution is perilous.
There is a finite (albeit large) supply of drugs at any given time and the transport and distribution is expensive and the penalties are severe. By contrast, since data is copyable, there is an unlimited supply, and while there are some perils in distribution in the form of law firms attempting to find the most egregious pirates, the average software pirate is unlikely to face peril even if known.
Pretty much. Plus there's no pressure to keep up when it's easy to pull up the shows later, without even having to go through the expense of having a DVR to record them.
We do watch a few shows when they air new. BBT, New Tricks, Person of Interest. But they're all on the same night, so it's easy to let Thursday be TV night, and to just do whatever on all of the other nights. Certainly sometimes the TV is the thing, but other times I'm out working on the cars or building model rockets or working on the house or the like.
I was coming home and watching 4+ hours of CSI every evening. It was easy to veg out to. It was mildly interesting, mildly entertaining, and required minimal thought or engagement to pay attention to. I also watched The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, and the various movie channels like TCM and AMC.
One day I realized I was neglecting my wife, my hobbies, my chores around the house, etc. We got rid of pay cable when Turner Classic Movies was taken off of extended analog and put on to digital, which was one of the few networks that we actually cared to specifically watch.
We went without pay TV for years, and bought our DTV decoder boxes like everyone else, and I rediscovered many of the actually good vintage shows on RTN and Me and other networks. Just recently I started playing with XBMC, and I wholly recommend it. I threw together a junk PC from parts laying around and hooked it into the component inputs on our widescreen HD tube TV, and now we can watch hundreds of "channels" worth of free content from PBS, several cable networks, Vimeo, Youtube, and lots and lots of other sources. They seem to be without commercials too.
Now we can watch what we want, when we want, and can pursue our hobbies without having to interrupt just to watch a stupid TV show.
You shouldn't be crawling under desks. The people you will be supervising should.
Correct. The grand poobah of an IT department with more than four or five employees may get his hands dirty with things for others even as lowly as rackmount switches and servers, but should generally not stoop to the PC repair level. He needs to be seen as someone who sees the big picture, not the little picture. He can program, he an administrate user account privileges, he can administer an application, or can deal with network routing and administration, but he shouldn't be doing entry-level work. Even for board meetings or other officer meetings he should bring an underling if anything more complicated than hooking a laptop to the projector is necessary, for others. For himself, he needs to be never seen needing outside assistance by employees outside of the IT department.
I'd say, ask you boss what is required for you to wear. If he's ok with jeans and tshirts, go for it.
Probably not, in my opinion, at least not for four days a week. Clean, non-stone-wash jeans in dark colors are about as far into denim as I would think are acceptable, and minimally a polo shirt or short-sleeve button-down shirt.
the IT director doesn't just interface with the geeks, and has to make a different kind of impression. He has to show that he leads to others, and in part that means having the look. It also is important to help start the department off with a modicum of discipline and self-restraint. Once the department is established and has something of a culture, then maybe perhaps the director can cut loose a bit, but until then, no. If he doesn't build it right from the start then it could be dysfunctional from the beginning.
...will this mean "wiretapping" via traditional warrant methods, or warrantless eavesdropping, either by non-warrant request or by essentially giving them the keys to the castle?
If it's traditional warrant methods then I'm not really any more concerned than I am for regular phone calls on POTS lines. If it's otherwise then I'm glad that I never set up a Skype account.
That's actually part of the point. Law enforcement was not tipped off to it, or if they were, took no actions. Given Colorado's previous experiences, my guess is that if they had known that this person was dangerous, they would have acted before he did.
It makes me doubt the whole "mass surveillance" thing and its true functionality.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I can't see this thing surviving well in a warzone if the opponent knows that it's there. Even if it's got multiple compartmentalized bladders and some secondary lift mechanisms like a quadrotor setup, it's still going to be awfully vulnerable to something as simple as a long line of razor wire tied to a rocket fired in its direction...
No, it's battery. I do not condone the action, I simply attempt to find the mechanism that led to the action being taken by the perpetrator.
The incident might be at a face-to-face conference, but the culture that spawned that face-to-face conference was online.
I have no doubt that it wouldn't have been as popular had it not been co-opted that day.
At that time in magazine advertising there were thousands of brightly-colored photos of women's faces and interesting backgrounds that could have been used, and they could have even *gasp* bought a photo from a local photography studio... Any of these could have been just as popular, without the legally-questionable sourcing.
Are you sure of that? Because that's basically what I meant...
Having naked pictures in most places of work becomes sexual harassment if women who work there are exposed to them and don't want to be. The only exceptions that I can think of are actually magazines and other intentional publishers of such content, and medical offices, and the latter only if properly in context.
See the discussion on whether or not sexual harassment is ingrained in hacker culture...
It's a multi-part problem.
First, a subculture that has very few women, and many of those few that seem to be there* are total attention whores.
Second, with that general lack of women, combined with the disproportionate amount of attention whores, objectification and grandstanding becomes much more common, and fairly violent and derogatory terminology gets bandied about as normal.
Third, many who participate perceive themselves as flaunting the law/rules, and that can lead to a mindset for flaunting the rules outside of the technical realm.
Combine those, and you get a bunch of undersexed, maladjusted men, expecting the few women present to behave in a sexual way, who are used breaking the rules. It's really not much of a surprise to me that this happens.
* I imagine that a lot of the "women" are just men who get their jollies off of role-playing loose women, essentially manipulating the women-characters in to doing what they'd want a woman to do.
Maybe we now know what happened to those canals... damn earthquakes!
Or would they be marsquakes?
...for the followup papers by other scientists examining his findings before I make a conclusion. I have a friend who actually is a planetary geologist and focuses most of his attention on Mars, and I haven't heard any of this from him.
I don't need no calculus! I just tell that math teacher that the only three-variable algebra letters I need are U, S, and A!
I find your comment juxtaposed against your signature line amusing...
I'm not in favor of heavy-handed things that don't really affect a lot of people. Even if he's the biggest software/movie/music pirate or piracy facilitator in the world, one can argue that the number of people harmed by his actions is small, and the amount of harm caused to them is also small, relatively speaking on the latter. I would argue that a banker that profited off of the loss of someone's life savings has caused more real harm, and someone who has committed a violent crime has certainly caused more harm, and has the potential to cause more harm if likely to repeat the crime.
So had Al Lowe, creator of Leisure Suit Larry, been, and so was Ron Jeremy...
Come to think of it, just about all of us were interested in teenage sex, at least when we were teenagers...
...to stage a raid on a high-profile target like this...
First, shock-and-awe factor, in the real terms of cowing the target of the raid and ancillary subjects so that they don't do something dangerous to the authorities, like grab weapons. This can be especially important for security staff that might not be wired quite the same as everyone else.
Second, disruption of other elements of critical thinking. If there are things to be destroyed, from the perspective of the target of the raid, this might disrupt that plan.
Third, and in my opinion, most likely, to make a show of force for others. My guess is that this raid didn't require air support, a number of practiced officers could have detained or arrested people on the ground, even security, quickly enough, if enough people were involved in the raid in the first place. It is possible that this was more cost effective in not requiring as many officers to breach and secure, but helicopters aren't cheap either.
Terry Pratchett and Discworld are almost unknown outside of fandom. He's REALLY popular in fandom, but not seemingly widely read outside. And yes, he is a science fiction writer with The Bromeliad...
I also enjoyed Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail. Granted, it was a translation, but it was a helluva interesting story about the third world deciding to invade the first, through mass population exodus. I got to read that in a pop culture sci fi English class in college, even though it was originally written in French and translated.
I enjoy some Piers Anthony, even though I didn't enjoy Bio of a Space Tyrant. The Xanth series is fun if you're bored and willing to read 'em straight through, and like puns. Mute was good.
I read a lot of David Weber, though I wish he'd get on with the Honorverse and with Dahak and Safehold. After Robert Jordan's death I swore I wouldn't read any more authors who were living or at least whose series were still going somewhere and weren't done, and Weber is one of the few that fits that. Dammit, finish the stories!
And Bruce Sterling seems under-appreciated these days too.
Dune had a major motion picture, and 20 years later, a miniseries. It's also a fairly hard read and while it's a good book, I can see why it's not popular with the masses.
Only when supply is limited and transport and distribution is perilous.
There is a finite (albeit large) supply of drugs at any given time and the transport and distribution is expensive and the penalties are severe. By contrast, since data is copyable, there is an unlimited supply, and while there are some perils in distribution in the form of law firms attempting to find the most egregious pirates, the average software pirate is unlikely to face peril even if known.
Pretty much. Plus there's no pressure to keep up when it's easy to pull up the shows later, without even having to go through the expense of having a DVR to record them.
We do watch a few shows when they air new. BBT, New Tricks, Person of Interest. But they're all on the same night, so it's easy to let Thursday be TV night, and to just do whatever on all of the other nights. Certainly sometimes the TV is the thing, but other times I'm out working on the cars or building model rockets or working on the house or the like.
I was coming home and watching 4+ hours of CSI every evening. It was easy to veg out to. It was mildly interesting, mildly entertaining, and required minimal thought or engagement to pay attention to. I also watched The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, and the various movie channels like TCM and AMC.
One day I realized I was neglecting my wife, my hobbies, my chores around the house, etc. We got rid of pay cable when Turner Classic Movies was taken off of extended analog and put on to digital, which was one of the few networks that we actually cared to specifically watch.
We went without pay TV for years, and bought our DTV decoder boxes like everyone else, and I rediscovered many of the actually good vintage shows on RTN and Me and other networks. Just recently I started playing with XBMC, and I wholly recommend it. I threw together a junk PC from parts laying around and hooked it into the component inputs on our widescreen HD tube TV, and now we can watch hundreds of "channels" worth of free content from PBS, several cable networks, Vimeo, Youtube, and lots and lots of other sources. They seem to be without commercials too.
Now we can watch what we want, when we want, and can pursue our hobbies without having to interrupt just to watch a stupid TV show.
Correct. The grand poobah of an IT department with more than four or five employees may get his hands dirty with things for others even as lowly as rackmount switches and servers, but should generally not stoop to the PC repair level. He needs to be seen as someone who sees the big picture, not the little picture. He can program, he an administrate user account privileges, he can administer an application, or can deal with network routing and administration, but he shouldn't be doing entry-level work. Even for board meetings or other officer meetings he should bring an underling if anything more complicated than hooking a laptop to the projector is necessary, for others. For himself, he needs to be never seen needing outside assistance by employees outside of the IT department.
Probably not, in my opinion, at least not for four days a week. Clean, non-stone-wash jeans in dark colors are about as far into denim as I would think are acceptable, and minimally a polo shirt or short-sleeve button-down shirt.
the IT director doesn't just interface with the geeks, and has to make a different kind of impression. He has to show that he leads to others, and in part that means having the look. It also is important to help start the department off with a modicum of discipline and self-restraint. Once the department is established and has something of a culture, then maybe perhaps the director can cut loose a bit, but until then, no. If he doesn't build it right from the start then it could be dysfunctional from the beginning.
"Never Give Up! Never Surrender!"
Oh, wrong movie...
"To Infinity... And Beyond!"
...will this mean "wiretapping" via traditional warrant methods, or warrantless eavesdropping, either by non-warrant request or by essentially giving them the keys to the castle?
If it's traditional warrant methods then I'm not really any more concerned than I am for regular phone calls on POTS lines. If it's otherwise then I'm glad that I never set up a Skype account.
Hey, it may be a shit sandwich, but at least it's a sandwich, which is more than they got before...
That's actually part of the point. Law enforcement was not tipped off to it, or if they were, took no actions. Given Colorado's previous experiences, my guess is that if they had known that this person was dangerous, they would have acted before he did.
It makes me doubt the whole "mass surveillance" thing and its true functionality.
I think that we can safely say that terrorist mass murder would fall well above the threshold.
I think the parent comment meant the result, not the cause...