Re:It should read 'stoopid people hath spoken'
on
Terry Childs Found Guilty
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes... yes it is, except it isn't his password they wanted. They wanted the admin passwords, not his personal account passwords, which they could reset any time they wanted.
It blows my mind that people are siding with such an idiotic person.
I wouldn't tell anyone how you feel about this case if you ever expect to be put in a situation like his.
Fortunately, this sort of ignorance generally prevents you from getting to the interview process most of the time so its probably not something you'll have to worry about.
You do realize one of the jurors is a network admin... right? I'm pretty sure they had someone with a clue there, but way to talk about it like you know the facts when you clearly don't have a clue.
They probably just made a secure password list like any admin with a 1/10th of a clue, which would solve the problem instantly since the real problem is that a spoiled brat held the keys to the kingdom.
Yes, he would, because he should have stored them properly. They should have been stored securely in a way they could be recovered by others. Thats what proper sysadmins do. If you can't die tomorrow and have someone competent walk in and replace you, you are a shitty sysadmin who shouldn't be doing the job.
The difference is, it would be a pointless waste of time to do anything to a dead man.
Do you understand why that rule exists and who it is made for? I seriously don't think you do.
They weren't asking for 'his' password, which is what the rule is about specifically. The rule isn't for administrator passwords, it in no way applies to what he did and there is absolutely no way for any person with half a clue to think otherwise.
The rule is to prevent idiots from screwing up and giving their password out to someone who uses their account to do bad things, intentionally or otherwise. Its to protect stupid users who don't understand the implications of giving out their password or being loose lipped with it.
This was simply a BOFH who was about to be fired and pulled some bullshit to try and stop it... interestingly enough, I assure you, he'll never work in IT again unless its his own company. You can safely bet no one will ever employee his company if they realize what he's done.
He tried to take hostage of computer systems as a method to manipulate his employers... computer systems that help manage the lives of millions. There are many very dangerous possible side effects due to his behavior that very easily could result in loss of life. He's lucky nothing bad actually happened.
. Because he doesn't make products for us geeks, but for the rest of the people.
Really?
Thats pretty funny cause I don't know any geeks who run Linux any more, and I know only 2 people that have had Android phones, neither of which are geeks, one of which has already been returned.
I can think of atleast 10 MacBook Pro geeks that I know and hell, I saw at least 6 iPhones on the bus on the way to where I currently am.
I'm pretty sure you have absolutely no idea who uses what outside of your little imaginary Linux world in your mind.
I'll fully admit I'm an iPhone fanboy... but I have yet to see any Android phone that 'worked well' unless by worked well you mean laggy, slow, feels like its more bloated than a 40 year old on the rag.
Perhaps I've only experienced the shitty versions of android and theres some mysterious not shitty version I haven't seen yet, but it certainly isn't what comes on any phone I've seen yet.
Perhaps you Android lovers have just been using Windows too long and aren't really aware that UI's don't have to suck ass?
Yes, and now that I'm in the Dominican Republic instead of America, I would have spent about 8 times the price of the TomTom app just to get to the hotel from the airport in data charges to use the Google app being that it literally cost $20/MB for me to get data.
So awesome, you got a free app... guess what, the iPhone also has a free google maps app, it doesn't do turn by turn so you when there. Either way, you're data required app is going to suck ass pretty much anywhere you actually need to use it.
TomTom's app is over priced and over rated, but it works in far more places than Googles can be useful, regardless of which device you use it on.
So good for you, you have a turn by turn app... and good for me, cause so do I, and the price of the app doesn't really bother me since its a fraction of the cost of the ridiculously priced phone itself.
Perhaps you should go ahead and search the Internet or hell, just read some old slashdot posts.
If you aren't aware of how shitty the 3d situation is in Linux than you probably have never put a 3d capable card in a Linux machine.
If you have, and you think its on equal to Windows or OS X than you've never used Windows or OS X.
Linux 3d (and all the open OSes really) has absolutely shitty 3d acceleration support. Linux is the best of the open OSes in this case, but its still horrible compared to the OSes actually supported by ATI and nVidia. No, ATI doesn't support 3D accel under linux. I mean, yes, they do, but only in some specific cases. Just because they are giving out some specs doesn't mean they are giving out the ones that are important and its not like their OSS implementations are exactly showing how to do 3D.
nVidia on Linux... I'd rather pull out my eyeballs using toenails to do it.
Why don't you go find some citation for 3D performance in Linux where it claims its as good as or better than Windows. Its fine that you like Linux. Hell, its even fine that you're a fanboy, but for fucks sake, don't sit around and completely ignore obvious problems it has, you just sound stupid and make it clear no one should listen to you.
If you weren't aware of this you really haven't put any effort into finding out about it. Yes, I realize you're talking about playing games not just the dedicated server, but the fact that the dedicated servers will be happy to run in Linux means the core is already there, its just a matter of graphics support, and that is going to be specific to every game, not the source engine directly.
Well okay, every game that matters to anyone as anything worth its salt has to go outside the SDK to get what it wants accomplished graphically.
Its more than likely nothing more than support for Linux dedicated servers via the steam interface.
Truth of the matter is, once it was ported to OS X, porting to Linux is just a matter of fixing it to work with the various broken Linux API calls... I'm, sorry, Linux optimized API calls, which can be done in most cases by some syscall hacks on binaries (see FBSD Linux emulation) or of course, recompiling using some macros to redefine function argument order.
Either way, as you said, we might see Steam for Linux, but no one is going to automagically get games because of this. It is possible we'll start to see Linux games thanks to Mac OS X steam support though, once you get OS X done, making Linux work is generally trivial (Assuming the use of OpenGL for the UI and rendering rather than native Aqua widgets)
Well, in Chrome, the comment expands for me, then the browser jumps to a new page with the comment alone. Just like you, it works fine on normal pages and doesn't jump to a single comment entry.
I suspect some javascript issues. As I write this I also look up at the button above the subject box... which is apparently the 'cancel reply' button, I say apparently because I had to figure out wtf it said since reading dark green text on a dark grey background is rather difficult.
Perhaps slashdot should go back to more static html pages until they can get some devs who know what test frameworks are and how to use them.
In effect, paparazzi can be sued around here. Journalists can be sued and bloggers aren't considered journalists. Writing a story denouncing a politician can get you a lawsuit.
Except for the last sentence in that quote, the rest of it sounds great to me. I'm all for killing the paparazzi bullshit and I fail to see why blogging makes you a journalist so... not really seeing the problem with most of it. I'd be happy if America did those first bits as well.
Many of those one-off requests may coincide with our own content policies, so when the numbers get small enough, they don’t necessarily reflect anything about the level of censorship in that country. Similarly, if a governmental agency used a web form to demand removal of content, we generally have no way of including those reports in our statistics.
Do you ever remove content that violates local law without a court order or government demand?
Yes. The statistics we report here do not include content removals that we regularly process every day across our products for violation of our content policies (for example, we do not permit hate speech in Blogger and other similar products) in response to user complaints. In many cases, those removals result in the takedown of material that violates local law, independent of any government demand or court order seeking such removal.
So basically, if the country agrees with Googles version of censorship, its okay... but if it disagrees with Googles censorship, its not okay...
I fail to see why exactly I'm supposed to be excited to trade one companies censorship for a countries censorship. In the end, the result will be the same, someone is still deciding who gets to see what, and that someone isn't me, so it doesn't matter who, what, when, where, or why... Google is just as guilty of censoring as anyone else, by their own admission.
I'm rather happy to have certain things censored by Google. Censorship is not 'bad' just because. If you buy into this and think Google is good for it, you've just been manipulated by Google and a fair amount of your own ignorance. Good job, you're not officially a tool of the man.
You'll have to pardon me if I don't like dealing with companies that are out and about pushing their agenda's as if its for the good of the people. Even if it IS for the good of the people, I still don't want to deal with a company pushing its own political agenda on me, ESPECIALLY when it comes to one like Google which is trying to have its hands in everything.
Google needs to stay neutral.
I'm sure I'm in the minority or alone, but if China wants to censor stuff, thats their business.
There are PLENTY of Chinese that could take over their government and resolve the censorship problem tomorrow if they wanted to.
Its not important enough or doesn't matter enough to people to do anything about it. It is entirely possible (admittedly, unlikely) that the majority prefer it that way. I don't know. What I do know is that I REALLY don't like when people from no where near me, especially half way around the world, start telling me about how I'm wrong and I need to be more like them.
Its retarded to assume you are right and the are wrong, even though I agree that china would be a shitty place to live. My culture and personality dislike it because I was brought up in America... taught to hate the things that China and Russia do.
What I've come to learn is that... many times what I think is utterly 'wrong' or 'evil', other people can completely justify and are okay with and almost convince me that its okay until that little voice kicks in and says 'no really, its not'.
I really don't like when companies stick their noses into other peoples business, regardless of why. Its evil because it has nothing to do with 'the right thing' and everything to do with 'we can make lots of money if we can get China to give in to us, AND we'll get a lot of points with the rest of the world for doing it!'
So if I commit a felony, using the excuse that a company policy (which btw, people further up the food chain, including the highest ranking person there, told him to ignore in this case) prevents me from doing so... you are in danger.
If you do your job right, you can simply say 'I can't give them to you, but person XXX has them and the authority to give them to you'
And you go home after you've been fired for being a prick like Childs was.
What you don't do is tell YOUR MAYOR that they aren't authorized. Or your CEO, or what ever.
There are REALLY simple ways to handle these solutions. Being an arrogant prick and holding the passwords (that should have been recorded elsewhere for just this situation, as per the policy he's using to defend himself) is actually a federal crime.
When are admins going to realize they are nothing more than computer janitors?
Written policies exist to lay down the foundation and rules.
He is a living being. Part of the role of humans (rather than computers) is to deal with situations where you can't just Follow the rules. If all it was was 'following the rules' it would be computerized.
I have never worked somewhere that my supervisors did not have access to system passwords.
I regularly supply them with updates to the passwords for our systems that have them.
Its called being a good admin. NO ONE PERSON EVER holds the ONLY SET OF KEYS to the system. That is fucking retarded administration and anyone doing it needs to be fired.
If you allowed the situation to exist where no one had the passwords then you failed in your job. You should have known the policy was retarded and worked to get it changed.
You can make all the arguments about policy and chain of command you want, but the reality of it is policy is regularly broken when it doesn't actually fit the situation.
Whats more interesting is why we aren't talking about the fact that thier policy required THESE PASSWORDS TO BE RECORDED IN A SAFE MANNER THAT HE DIDN'T ACTUALLY DO.
The city's property? Who the hell is "The city"? Did "The city" appeared and he refused to give the passwords to him (or is it her?)?
Yes, The City did appear, or at least its duly elected representative, 'The Mayor of The City', who told him to give up the keys, to which he refused sighting some more bullshit about it being an unsecured facility....
There are also several other people that represent the city and most likely are legally allowed to assume responsibility of infrastruction in the case of emergancies, the City Manager is the first that comes to mind.
This really isn't that hard to comprehend if you're older than 8 years.
He was just being a dick. He used the policy as an excuse but 'the mayor tried to get the passwords in a non-secure setting' is just fucking bullshit.
They aren't nuclear launch codes and it was the highest man on the totem pole.
Smack his ass back to reality for it and remind him how unacceptable it is to do what he did.
You can argue that he was right ALL day long, but I dare you to make that argument at a job interview. There will be VERY few places that will side with you on that one.
He effectively held hostage... for 12 days... the keys to a large chunk of infrastructure. You know what, you're right, we should let admins do whatever they want cause they know best. Admins should just run the country rather than doing their jobs as their told.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes ... yes it is, except it isn't his password they wanted. They wanted the admin passwords, not his personal account passwords, which they could reset any time they wanted.
It blows my mind that people are siding with such an idiotic person.
I wouldn't tell anyone how you feel about this case if you ever expect to be put in a situation like his.
Fortunately, this sort of ignorance generally prevents you from getting to the interview process most of the time so its probably not something you'll have to worry about.
You do realize one of the jurors is a network admin ... right? I'm pretty sure they had someone with a clue there, but way to talk about it like you know the facts when you clearly don't have a clue.
They probably just made a secure password list like any admin with a 1/10th of a clue, which would solve the problem instantly since the real problem is that a spoiled brat held the keys to the kingdom.
If you think what he did was 'the right thing' then yes, you probably need to not do 'the right thing' since it wasn't right in any way.
Yes, he would, because he should have stored them properly. They should have been stored securely in a way they could be recovered by others. Thats what proper sysadmins do. If you can't die tomorrow and have someone competent walk in and replace you, you are a shitty sysadmin who shouldn't be doing the job.
The difference is, it would be a pointless waste of time to do anything to a dead man.
Get some perspective.
Did you notice the bold.
Do you understand why that rule exists and who it is made for? I seriously don't think you do.
They weren't asking for 'his' password, which is what the rule is about specifically. The rule isn't for administrator passwords, it in no way applies to what he did and there is absolutely no way for any person with half a clue to think otherwise.
The rule is to prevent idiots from screwing up and giving their password out to someone who uses their account to do bad things, intentionally or otherwise. Its to protect stupid users who don't understand the implications of giving out their password or being loose lipped with it.
This was simply a BOFH who was about to be fired and pulled some bullshit to try and stop it ... interestingly enough, I assure you, he'll never work in IT again unless its his own company. You can safely bet no one will ever employee his company if they realize what he's done.
He tried to take hostage of computer systems as a method to manipulate his employers ... computer systems that help manage the lives of millions. There are many very dangerous possible side effects due to his behavior that very easily could result in loss of life. He's lucky nothing bad actually happened.
Really? Because thats the way every android phone I've seen acts?
What do you have to do to make it actually respond better than an old Tandy running Deskmate from 1986?
Really?
Thats pretty funny cause I don't know any geeks who run Linux any more, and I know only 2 people that have had Android phones, neither of which are geeks, one of which has already been returned.
I can think of atleast 10 MacBook Pro geeks that I know and hell, I saw at least 6 iPhones on the bus on the way to where I currently am.
I'm pretty sure you have absolutely no idea who uses what outside of your little imaginary Linux world in your mind.
I'll fully admit I'm an iPhone fanboy ... but I have yet to see any Android phone that 'worked well' unless by worked well you mean laggy, slow, feels like its more bloated than a 40 year old on the rag.
Perhaps I've only experienced the shitty versions of android and theres some mysterious not shitty version I haven't seen yet, but it certainly isn't what comes on any phone I've seen yet.
Perhaps you Android lovers have just been using Windows too long and aren't really aware that UI's don't have to suck ass?
Then why the hell do they feel so god damn laggy? Why am I always waiting on the UI to catch up to me?
Yes, and now that I'm in the Dominican Republic instead of America, I would have spent about 8 times the price of the TomTom app just to get to the hotel from the airport in data charges to use the Google app being that it literally cost $20/MB for me to get data.
So awesome, you got a free app ... guess what, the iPhone also has a free google maps app, it doesn't do turn by turn so you when there. Either way, you're data required app is going to suck ass pretty much anywhere you actually need to use it.
TomTom's app is over priced and over rated, but it works in far more places than Googles can be useful, regardless of which device you use it on.
So good for you, you have a turn by turn app... and good for me, cause so do I, and the price of the app doesn't really bother me since its a fraction of the cost of the ridiculously priced phone itself.
You need some perspective and less fanboy.
And that changes the point how exactly?
...
Perhaps you should go ahead and search the Internet or hell, just read some old slashdot posts.
If you aren't aware of how shitty the 3d situation is in Linux than you probably have never put a 3d capable card in a Linux machine.
If you have, and you think its on equal to Windows or OS X than you've never used Windows or OS X.
Linux 3d (and all the open OSes really) has absolutely shitty 3d acceleration support. Linux is the best of the open OSes in this case, but its still horrible compared to the OSes actually supported by ATI and nVidia. No, ATI doesn't support 3D accel under linux. I mean, yes, they do, but only in some specific cases. Just because they are giving out some specs doesn't mean they are giving out the ones that are important and its not like their OSS implementations are exactly showing how to do 3D.
nVidia on Linux ... I'd rather pull out my eyeballs using toenails to do it.
Why don't you go find some citation for 3D performance in Linux where it claims its as good as or better than Windows. Its fine that you like Linux. Hell, its even fine that you're a fanboy, but for fucks sake, don't sit around and completely ignore obvious problems it has, you just sound stupid and make it clear no one should listen to you.
Source already runs on Linux.
If you weren't aware of this you really haven't put any effort into finding out about it. Yes, I realize you're talking about playing games not just the dedicated server, but the fact that the dedicated servers will be happy to run in Linux means the core is already there, its just a matter of graphics support, and that is going to be specific to every game, not the source engine directly.
Well okay, every game that matters to anyone as anything worth its salt has to go outside the SDK to get what it wants accomplished graphically.
Its more than likely nothing more than support for Linux dedicated servers via the steam interface.
Truth of the matter is, once it was ported to OS X, porting to Linux is just a matter of fixing it to work with the various broken Linux API calls ... I'm, sorry, Linux optimized API calls, which can be done in most cases by some syscall hacks on binaries (see FBSD Linux emulation) or of course, recompiling using some macros to redefine function argument order.
Either way, as you said, we might see Steam for Linux, but no one is going to automagically get games because of this. It is possible we'll start to see Linux games thanks to Mac OS X steam support though, once you get OS X done, making Linux work is generally trivial (Assuming the use of OpenGL for the UI and rendering rather than native Aqua widgets)
Well, in Chrome, the comment expands for me, then the browser jumps to a new page with the comment alone. Just like you, it works fine on normal pages and doesn't jump to a single comment entry.
I suspect some javascript issues. As I write this I also look up at the button above the subject box ... which is apparently the 'cancel reply' button, I say apparently because I had to figure out wtf it said since reading dark green text on a dark grey background is rather difficult.
Perhaps slashdot should go back to more static html pages until they can get some devs who know what test frameworks are and how to use them.
Except for the last sentence in that quote, the rest of it sounds great to me. I'm all for killing the paparazzi bullshit and I fail to see why blogging makes you a journalist so ... not really seeing the problem with most of it. I'd be happy if America did those first bits as well.
From: http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/faq.html
So basically, if the country agrees with Googles version of censorship, its okay ... but if it disagrees with Googles censorship, its not okay ...
I fail to see why exactly I'm supposed to be excited to trade one companies censorship for a countries censorship. In the end, the result will be the same, someone is still deciding who gets to see what, and that someone isn't me, so it doesn't matter who, what, when, where, or why ... Google is just as guilty of censoring as anyone else, by their own admission.
I'm rather happy to have certain things censored by Google. Censorship is not 'bad' just because. If you buy into this and think Google is good for it, you've just been manipulated by Google and a fair amount of your own ignorance. Good job, you're not officially a tool of the man.
Well, its evil, but not because its not enough.
Its evil because its too much.
You'll have to pardon me if I don't like dealing with companies that are out and about pushing their agenda's as if its for the good of the people. Even if it IS for the good of the people, I still don't want to deal with a company pushing its own political agenda on me, ESPECIALLY when it comes to one like Google which is trying to have its hands in everything.
Google needs to stay neutral.
I'm sure I'm in the minority or alone, but if China wants to censor stuff, thats their business.
There are PLENTY of Chinese that could take over their government and resolve the censorship problem tomorrow if they wanted to.
Its not important enough or doesn't matter enough to people to do anything about it. It is entirely possible (admittedly, unlikely) that the majority prefer it that way. I don't know. What I do know is that I REALLY don't like when people from no where near me, especially half way around the world, start telling me about how I'm wrong and I need to be more like them.
Its retarded to assume you are right and the are wrong, even though I agree that china would be a shitty place to live. My culture and personality dislike it because I was brought up in America ... taught to hate the things that China and Russia do.
What I've come to learn is that ... many times what I think is utterly 'wrong' or 'evil', other people can completely justify and are okay with and almost convince me that its okay until that little voice kicks in and says 'no really, its not'.
I really don't like when companies stick their noses into other peoples business, regardless of why. Its evil because it has nothing to do with 'the right thing' and everything to do with 'we can make lots of money if we can get China to give in to us, AND we'll get a lot of points with the rest of the world for doing it!'
So if I commit a felony, using the excuse that a company policy (which btw, people further up the food chain, including the highest ranking person there, told him to ignore in this case) prevents me from doing so ... you are in danger.
If you do your job right, you can simply say 'I can't give them to you, but person XXX has them and the authority to give them to you'
And you go home after you've been fired for being a prick like Childs was.
What you don't do is tell YOUR MAYOR that they aren't authorized. Or your CEO, or what ever.
There are REALLY simple ways to handle these solutions. Being an arrogant prick and holding the passwords (that should have been recorded elsewhere for just this situation, as per the policy he's using to defend himself) is actually a federal crime.
When are admins going to realize they are nothing more than computer janitors?
He is a living being. Part of the role of humans (rather than computers) is to deal with situations where you can't just Follow the rules. If all it was was 'following the rules' it would be computerized.
I have never worked somewhere that my supervisors did not have access to system passwords.
I regularly supply them with updates to the passwords for our systems that have them.
Its called being a good admin. NO ONE PERSON EVER holds the ONLY SET OF KEYS to the system. That is fucking retarded administration and anyone doing it needs to be fired.
If you allowed the situation to exist where no one had the passwords then you failed in your job. You should have known the policy was retarded and worked to get it changed.
You can make all the arguments about policy and chain of command you want, but the reality of it is policy is regularly broken when it doesn't actually fit the situation.
Whats more interesting is why we aren't talking about the fact that thier policy required THESE PASSWORDS TO BE RECORDED IN A SAFE MANNER THAT HE DIDN'T ACTUALLY DO.
I've followed the story rather closely.
He did break the law.
He should pay.
You can write me off as 'not knowing the history' but that just makes you ignorant, not me.
Yes, The City did appear, or at least its duly elected representative, 'The Mayor of The City', who told him to give up the keys, to which he refused sighting some more bullshit about it being an unsecured facility ....
There are also several other people that represent the city and most likely are legally allowed to assume responsibility of infrastruction in the case of emergancies, the City Manager is the first that comes to mind.
This really isn't that hard to comprehend if you're older than 8 years.
In which case he is effectively breaking several state and federal anti-hacking laws that Kevin Mitnick was happy to get created for us.
You really don't want to take that route as a defense against any lawyer with some knowledge of the history.
Just holding the keys to a computer system you are not authorized to hold is a felony offense.
He was just being a dick. He used the policy as an excuse but 'the mayor tried to get the passwords in a non-secure setting' is just fucking bullshit.
They aren't nuclear launch codes and it was the highest man on the totem pole.
Smack his ass back to reality for it and remind him how unacceptable it is to do what he did.
You can argue that he was right ALL day long, but I dare you to make that argument at a job interview. There will be VERY few places that will side with you on that one.
He effectively held hostage ... for 12 days ... the keys to a large chunk of infrastructure. You know what, you're right, we should let admins do whatever they want cause they know best. Admins should just run the country rather than doing their jobs as their told.