Why would anyone think that the credit card companies would ever care about identity theft? Sure, it does cost them some money. But by far the cost of identity theft is placed on merchants. If someone disputes a charge on the credit card bill, the credit card companies merely take the money back from the merchant.
As a glaring demonstration of how unconcerned credit card companies are about theft, on the same credit card I had someone fraudulently use it three times. Each time I asked for a new card with a new number on it. Each time the issuing bank (Citibank) said, "Let's just wait to see if it happens again". I had to insist on the third time because I was sick of dealing with it.
When they can just pass costs onto merchants and consumers, is it any wonder they're designing ineffective solutions?
We need more stories about this history of computing and the Internet to educate all the N003Ies out here.
If you were just getting into computing today, would Visicalc mean anything to you at all? My first computer (a Commodore 64) was bought for me back in 1982. I still fire up an emulator every now and then to nostalgically play 8-bit games like Archon and Seven Cities of Gold. Hell, sometimes I just like to type "POKE 53281,0" to see the background change.
I can't imagine there are many people who experienced their first computer in 2005 that would do these things with the same interest I do. To them, Archon is a crappy chess game with crappy graphics and Visicalc is a crappy spreadsheet program.
The article doesn't say that. It says Microsoft alleges Fu-Lee sent Microsoft documents.
You're right. The article does say that Microsoft alleges Lee sent Google information while still working for them. You're wrong in that you missed Google's defense to this allegation which I've copied here:
although Google insists all the material that Lee relayed to Google had been made public previously.
That's clearly an admission that it did occur, they're just saying that they could have gathered the information in another way as well because it was public. That's hardly a defense.
Again, two alleged violations occurred. As for non-compete clauses, there is high suspicion in the industry and in the courts these types of agreements are even legal.
First, it seems pretty clear cut to me that what he's doing would violate a non-compete agreement. Microsoft hired him to do X for Microsoft, Google pursued him "like wolves" (from their own internal documents) to get him to do X for Google.
Second, you're correct. If a $50,000 per year programmer signs a non-compete agreement with his employer and then finds another job for $55,000 per year, there is a legal gray area as to whether the non-compete agreement can be enforced. You can't stop someone from earning a living. You're wrong though if you think this applies to someone that Google has offered to pay $10 million dollars.
Did anyone that's bashing Ballmer and Microsoft actually read the article? Here's the summary:
1. Kai Fu-Lee was an important executive at Microsoft and was a key resource on their expansion into China.
2. Even before quitting at Microsoft, Kai Fu-Lee was working secretly for Google by sending them Microsoft documents. Google admits this, but their defense is that it was public information anyway.
3. Kai Fu-Lee had an employment contract with Microsoft that Google conspired with Lee to violate. At least two violations occurred including his non-compete agreement and working against the company you're working for while you're working for it.
4. A judge already ruled preliminarily in Microsoft's favor, stating that Lee could not do the duties at Google he was hired to do.
Of course, anyone surprised by this hasn't been paying attention to Google's actions lately. They're trying to be the next Microsoft and as such will be not only utilizing every play from their playbook, but also inventing some new evil tactics as well.
In computing platforms, I think any possible benefits of diversity (as you say, more protection from malware) are greatly offset by the cost of having to have multiple teams of sysadmins.
Sure, having Linux, Solaris, Windows, OS/X, FreeBSD, BeOS, OS/2, HP/UX, AIX, etc pretty much ensures your entire infrastructure won't be taken out by a single virus. It also ensures your support costs, virus or no virus, will be much higher than having an environment of one operating system.
MIT scientists have applied for a patent on a coating process that reduces or eliminates fogging on glass surfaces. The new coating consists of a highly acidic chemical that melts the glass into a thick green goo. While the glass (now known as green goo) possesses none of its original qualities including transparency, it has also been shown to provide a 5% or greater resistance to fog.
caused by the service's complete lack of XMPP server-to-server communication support
I tried to explain to my 15-year-old niece how she shouldn't use Google Talk because of its lack of support for XMPP server-to-server communication. Then she discovered some new emoticons and stopped paying attention to me.
As far as I can tell, Google's business plan is similar to all the dot-com bubble stories:
1. Get funding through at least one huge IPO
2. Hire all the top talent you can find
3. Give away your products for free, relying on advertising
4. You can figure this one out yourself
So for everyone sarcastically crying how Google is "so evil" because they're doing this, think about it for a second. How fair is it if you have a long-term business strategy to be run out of business by an upstart that is little more than a flash in the pan? For as good as Google is (and they are good), history shows their business model not to last the long haul.
The Concorde first flew in 1969 and became a symbol of French and European industrial acumen. But the planes were retired from commercial service in October 2003, never having recouped the billions of tax dollars invested in them.
The article did a good job writing up all the past failures of this Japanese program, but one thing that was conspicuously absent was a rationale for why Japan is doing this at all. Considering the fiscal failure of the Concorde, I would expect any article on this topic to include what the "next generation" plans to do differently other than just niftier technology.
I don't see how an open DRM solution could allow someone to play a media file they've purchased while simultaneously prevent them from copying and/or distributing the media file.
On the other hand, I don't see how closed DRM which has had millions invested into it has ever stopped anyone either.
Ten years ago, the biggest trouble I was having selling Linux solutions was the support issue. My rebuttal then was, "How often do you call Sun, Microsoft, or Novell?"
Unfortunately, perception is and always has been reality to a certain extent. Remember the old adage, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."? It's getting better, but to a certain extent it's true of Microsoft now.
Going Linux might be considered a radical idea with big risks. If the slightest thing goes wrong, you might be looking for another job.
If you go Microsoft which is perceived as "the natural choice" by some, if something goes wrong, not many bosses would blame you.
This doesn't make it right, but it is reality for many.
Homer: Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine-making course and I forgot how to drive?
Rita's Water Ice yesterday announced it had hired Mary Lopez, 15-year old former ice-cream scooper at Little Shop of Ice Cream. Lopez's career at LSIC consisted of serving drinks, hot dogs and various frozen ice cream and custard products. She will now be responsible for Rita's [...]
OK, but increasing your coffers while at the same time diversifying the stock? Sounds like a good move to me. If you're stock is at $300/share and you'd like some extra cash to boot, might as well sell more stock, right?
The board of directors of a public company has a legal fiduciary responsibility to increase the value of the company. Taking any action (whether to enrich themselves or not) to purposely reduce the value of the company would be illegal.
Besides, during a stock split the stock usually rises right after the split as people take advantage of the suddenly lower price.
If this were reliably true, everyone would just buy a stock right after it splits and gain instant fortune. This assertion is similar to a virtually infinite number of other assertions that are true a certain percentage of time and false a certain percentage of time. The problem with such assertions is human nature makes you typically more likely to be wrong.
They're just selling additional shares to bring that $300/share price down a bit. You don't want to have your stock all held by the big boys of investing who will turn on you and your company on the proverbial dime.
Taking any action to purposely bring down the value of your company would be illegal. If they wanted to make a more attractive price point to fool investors without $300 into buying their stock because it appears cheap, that's what a stock split is for.
I've played that Triple-A game before. It's boring as hell.
You drive around all day, helping stranded motorists. Talk about repetition.
That's funny. I'm still getting spam.
on
Spammers on the Run
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm amazed at Blue Security's success. They've gotten a few spammers to shut down a few domains.
The odd thing is, I'm still receiving as much spam as I've always received. No matter how many tens of thousands of users they sign up for this process, I fear this is going to be a very small drop in a very large bucket.
Microsoft is disappointed that certain security researchers have breached the commonly accepted industry practice of withholding vulnerability data so close to update release and have published exploit code
I can already hear the Slashdot chant of how security researchers have every right to release exploit code usable by script-kiddies whenever they want. I can't wait until the Internet culture is such that just because you can do something doesn't make it right.
My point was not that you are wrong about George W. Bush, but that bringing up GWB's stance on intelligent design in a discussion of scientist's creating movies is off-topic and that you likely did it for the inevitable mod points you would accumulate.
I would love to see more science and engineering being taught and endorsed by the federal government, but it does not help that our POTUS is endorsing the teaching of Intelligent Design (ID)
I loathe the concept of "intelligent design" and the way its proponents attempt to give it parity with sensible ideas, but come on. Nice formula for Karma riches...
1. Beat up on George W. Bush
2. Beat up on Micrsooft
3. ???
4. Karma profits!
Slashdot Mirror
Why would anyone think that the credit card companies would ever care about identity theft? Sure, it does cost them some money. But by far the cost of identity theft is placed on merchants. If someone disputes a charge on the credit card bill, the credit card companies merely take the money back from the merchant.
As a glaring demonstration of how unconcerned credit card companies are about theft, on the same credit card I had someone fraudulently use it three times. Each time I asked for a new card with a new number on it. Each time the issuing bank (Citibank) said, "Let's just wait to see if it happens again". I had to insist on the third time because I was sick of dealing with it.
When they can just pass costs onto merchants and consumers, is it any wonder they're designing ineffective solutions?
We need more stories about this history of computing and the Internet to educate all the N003Ies out here.
If you were just getting into computing today, would Visicalc mean anything to you at all? My first computer (a Commodore 64) was bought for me back in 1982. I still fire up an emulator every now and then to nostalgically play 8-bit games like Archon and Seven Cities of Gold. Hell, sometimes I just like to type "POKE 53281,0" to see the background change.
I can't imagine there are many people who experienced their first computer in 2005 that would do these things with the same interest I do. To them, Archon is a crappy chess game with crappy graphics and Visicalc is a crappy spreadsheet program.
The article doesn't say that. It says Microsoft alleges Fu-Lee sent Microsoft documents.
You're right. The article does say that Microsoft alleges Lee sent Google information while still working for them. You're wrong in that you missed Google's defense to this allegation which I've copied here:
although Google insists all the material that Lee relayed to Google had been made public previously.
That's clearly an admission that it did occur, they're just saying that they could have gathered the information in another way as well because it was public. That's hardly a defense.
Again, two alleged violations occurred. As for non-compete clauses, there is high suspicion in the industry and in the courts these types of agreements are even legal.
First, it seems pretty clear cut to me that what he's doing would violate a non-compete agreement. Microsoft hired him to do X for Microsoft, Google pursued him "like wolves" (from their own internal documents) to get him to do X for Google.
Second, you're correct. If a $50,000 per year programmer signs a non-compete agreement with his employer and then finds another job for $55,000 per year, there is a legal gray area as to whether the non-compete agreement can be enforced. You can't stop someone from earning a living. You're wrong though if you think this applies to someone that Google has offered to pay $10 million dollars.
Did anyone that's bashing Ballmer and Microsoft actually read the article? Here's the summary:
1. Kai Fu-Lee was an important executive at Microsoft and was a key resource on their expansion into China.
2. Even before quitting at Microsoft, Kai Fu-Lee was working secretly for Google by sending them Microsoft documents. Google admits this, but their defense is that it was public information anyway.
3. Kai Fu-Lee had an employment contract with Microsoft that Google conspired with Lee to violate. At least two violations occurred including his non-compete agreement and working against the company you're working for while you're working for it.
4. A judge already ruled preliminarily in Microsoft's favor, stating that Lee could not do the duties at Google he was hired to do.
Of course, anyone surprised by this hasn't been paying attention to Google's actions lately. They're trying to be the next Microsoft and as such will be not only utilizing every play from their playbook, but also inventing some new evil tactics as well.
In computing platforms, I think any possible benefits of diversity (as you say, more protection from malware) are greatly offset by the cost of having to have multiple teams of sysadmins.
Sure, having Linux, Solaris, Windows, OS/X, FreeBSD, BeOS, OS/2, HP/UX, AIX, etc pretty much ensures your entire infrastructure won't be taken out by a single virus. It also ensures your support costs, virus or no virus, will be much higher than having an environment of one operating system.
MIT scientists have applied for a patent on a coating process that reduces or eliminates fogging on glass surfaces. The new coating consists of a highly acidic chemical that melts the glass into a thick green goo. While the glass (now known as green goo) possesses none of its original qualities including transparency, it has also been shown to provide a 5% or greater resistance to fog.
Be careful eating old sandwiches. Homer tried that once and got so sick he couldn't go to Duff Gardens.
caused by the service's complete lack of XMPP server-to-server communication support
I tried to explain to my 15-year-old niece how she shouldn't use Google Talk because of its lack of support for XMPP server-to-server communication. Then she discovered some new emoticons and stopped paying attention to me.
As far as I can tell, Google's business plan is similar to all the dot-com bubble stories:
1. Get funding through at least one huge IPO
2. Hire all the top talent you can find
3. Give away your products for free, relying on advertising
4. You can figure this one out yourself
So for everyone sarcastically crying how Google is "so evil" because they're doing this, think about it for a second. How fair is it if you have a long-term business strategy to be run out of business by an upstart that is little more than a flash in the pan? For as good as Google is (and they are good), history shows their business model not to last the long haul.
Nobody will fall for such obvious viral marketing techniques by spreading the news on their site. I'll be surprised if I ever even hear of this.
The Concorde first flew in 1969 and became a symbol of French and European industrial acumen. But the planes were retired from commercial service in October 2003, never having recouped the billions of tax dollars invested in them.
The article did a good job writing up all the past failures of this Japanese program, but one thing that was conspicuously absent was a rationale for why Japan is doing this at all. Considering the fiscal failure of the Concorde, I would expect any article on this topic to include what the "next generation" plans to do differently other than just niftier technology.
Open DRM = Oxymoronic
Closed DRM = Moronic
I don't see how an open DRM solution could allow someone to play a media file they've purchased while simultaneously prevent them from copying and/or distributing the media file.
On the other hand, I don't see how closed DRM which has had millions invested into it has ever stopped anyone either.
I was one of the early (...early) adopters of voice over IP (...pee) and I think {static} is great (...great).
My hat's off to Vonage (...ojj)
Ten years ago, the biggest trouble I was having selling Linux solutions was the support issue. My rebuttal then was, "How often do you call Sun, Microsoft, or Novell?"
Unfortunately, perception is and always has been reality to a certain extent. Remember the old adage, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."? It's getting better, but to a certain extent it's true of Microsoft now.
Going Linux might be considered a radical idea with big risks. If the slightest thing goes wrong, you might be looking for another job.
If you go Microsoft which is perceived as "the natural choice" by some, if something goes wrong, not many bosses would blame you.
This doesn't make it right, but it is reality for many.
Homer: Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine-making course and I forgot how to drive?
Marge: Homer, you were drunk!
Homer: And how!
In other news...
Local Ice Cream Shop Scores Big Hiring Scoop
Rita's Water Ice yesterday announced it had hired Mary Lopez, 15-year old former ice-cream scooper at Little Shop of Ice Cream. Lopez's career at LSIC consisted of serving drinks, hot dogs and various frozen ice cream and custard products. She will now be responsible for Rita's [...]
OK, but increasing your coffers while at the same time diversifying the stock? Sounds like a good move to me. If you're stock is at $300/share and you'd like some extra cash to boot, might as well sell more stock, right?
The board of directors of a public company has a legal fiduciary responsibility to increase the value of the company. Taking any action (whether to enrich themselves or not) to purposely reduce the value of the company would be illegal.
Besides, during a stock split the stock usually rises right after the split as people take advantage of the suddenly lower price.
If this were reliably true, everyone would just buy a stock right after it splits and gain instant fortune. This assertion is similar to a virtually infinite number of other assertions that are true a certain percentage of time and false a certain percentage of time. The problem with such assertions is human nature makes you typically more likely to be wrong.
They're just selling additional shares to bring that $300/share price down a bit. You don't want to have your stock all held by the big boys of investing who will turn on you and your company on the proverbial dime.
Taking any action to purposely bring down the value of your company would be illegal. If they wanted to make a more attractive price point to fool investors without $300 into buying their stock because it appears cheap, that's what a stock split is for.
As of a few years, many one-hour photo labs have had a clear policy to report potentially illegal things they see develop on film dropped off.
Photo labs develop porn-reporting policies
I've played that Triple-A game before. It's boring as hell.
You drive around all day, helping stranded motorists. Talk about repetition.
I'm amazed at Blue Security's success. They've gotten a few spammers to shut down a few domains.
The odd thing is, I'm still receiving as much spam as I've always received. No matter how many tens of thousands of users they sign up for this process, I fear this is going to be a very small drop in a very large bucket.
Microsoft is disappointed that certain security researchers have breached the commonly accepted industry practice of withholding vulnerability data so close to update release and have published exploit code
I can already hear the Slashdot chant of how security researchers have every right to release exploit code usable by script-kiddies whenever they want. I can't wait until the Internet culture is such that just because you can do something doesn't make it right.
My point was not that you are wrong about George W. Bush, but that bringing up GWB's stance on intelligent design in a discussion of scientist's creating movies is off-topic and that you likely did it for the inevitable mod points you would accumulate.
I challenge anyone who thinks movies today aren't scientific to watch the original Jurassic Park.
"Hey this is Unix. I know Unix"
With scientific banter like that, what purpose does the government have in getting involved?!
I would love to see more science and engineering being taught and endorsed by the federal government, but it does not help that our POTUS is endorsing the teaching of Intelligent Design (ID)
I loathe the concept of "intelligent design" and the way its proponents attempt to give it parity with sensible ideas, but come on. Nice formula for Karma riches...
1. Beat up on George W. Bush
2. Beat up on Micrsooft
3. ???
4. Karma profits!