I live in one of these stupid premium-style residential communities that are cropping up hereabouts like mushrooms after a spring rain. The latest trick offered is covering all utilites except phone, including electric bill and high-speed internet. The latter contract, despite numerous service problems since the place opened three years back, will be with Comcast. I have DSL; since I won't be able to get a static IP from Comcast, I plan to set up the damn Comcast connection running a DDNS Fedora Core rsync/http/ftp/torrent mirror, then throw one of my old 60GB drives full of (legally downloaded, redistributable) pr0n pics onto it, and add an open Wireless point to it as well. All kosher, according to my lease. I may even add some locally accessible public R/W storage, just to see what gets put on it.
And if (when?) I get Comcastically cut off, I'll take it up with my landlord... and start escrowing the rent. =)
If your conscience is merely something that society has taught you, logically you have no reason to comply with society's proscribed values other than avoiding retribution for your anti-social actions.
Speaking as someone more happy than you can dream with my increasingly relative morality, no. This is an instance of fallacy "Argumentum ad logicam", concluding that a fallacious argument makes the conclusion ipso facto necessarily false. That a conscience is merely something taught by society does not prove the non-existance of a valid relativistic moral framework, where "good" and "evil" (or something similar) exist. Any resemblance between the two may be a matter of coincidence attributable to evolutionary pressures on society (if not necessarily although possibly the member's genetics), and at best suggestive of correct behavior.
As a specific although oversimplified alternative: being a member of society improves my long term survival prospects, which I consider good; ergo, taking actions likely to collapse the whole society, such as immunizing myself against my best supergerm and secretly releasing into the domestic yahoo population remains ceteris paribus bad. Even if I can get away with it without "retribution", there are always "consequences". Damaging your own life support systems is counterproductive.
This tends to lead toward the moral relativity direction, which I think most people find uncomfortable and counter-intuitive.
Which just means that generally it is (pun unintended but accepted) a hell of a lot easier to inculcate simple ethical frameworks that just have not yet demonstrated highly anti-survival tendencies than it is to get people to learn complicated correct ones. This doesn't seem a major concern; truth has limited survival value.
I'll certainly agree so far as any study of such question is incomplete without some direct attempt to study the effects of nature versus nurture. While I admit such a study would be hard to design to remain within human subjects standards, having RTFA, I see no mention of any conceptual attempt at such. But then, how much can I expect from the NYTimes?
A more subtle possibility is that while the belief may not be genetic, it may be a trait (like sight in animals) that provides sufficient survival value to society to allow multiple societies (although not necessarily the members) to independently develop it; those that did, and were able to pass it on, had enough of a survival advantage to overcome any societies that didn't have it. If the society can pass on (via education/indoctrination/brainwashing/etc.) pass on the idea successfully to new members over time, the survival tendency does not need to be genetically encoded.
An evolutionary development need not be fully optimized to provide a limited form of advantage. Similarly, religion need not be "true" or "correct" to serve a useful function: keeping track of the seasons for planting and harvesting, providing a reason why killing other members of the tribe is bad ("big sky wizard says so!"), disapproval of eating certain animals (dogs, pigs, other humans — raising other omnivores for food is calorically inefficient compared to raising herbivores), and so on. Developing a rational, objective, universal system of ethics without resorting to "Because (mommy, God, the king, the FSM) sayeth so!" is a non-trivial problem. As well, conveying it to other members of society requires that the other members of society have enought cognitive ability and flexibility to assimilate the idea, and suffienct effort to spare from survival tasks to do so. Most religions, on the other hand, are simple enough that a high-grade moron can understand well enough to follow the creed in most cases. Or, in terms CS types ought to understand, a low cost O(n) algorithm that gives an answer within a small episilon all but a small fractional delta of probable cases may be a lot more useful for real-time work than a high cost O(e^n) one that is right every time.
You can accomplish a lot if you can line up enough brute force and massive ignorance pointed all in one direction... or something like that.
Only place in town that carries a few hardware items over-the-counter, such as USB/FW hard drive enclosures. Half-decent selection of DVDs at semi-competitive prices when on sale. Gift cards from clueless relatives. One or two pieces of interesting hardware of the non-electronic variety. Very intermittent loss-leader sales, beating out Newegg.com's rebate price without a rebate form to file. The occasional clearance price. Individual's ability to directly intimidate and terrorize normal sales staff with overt display of superhuman competence.
I think that sums up my purchases and visits over the last year. Oh, wait, there's also temporarily switching their kiosks to CircuitCity.com for the hell of it. The previous computer section manager was smart enough that on sight he would chase me out of the store; the current manager is smart enough to constantly follow me about chatting, in the hopes of learning something useful while minimizing my incidental havok. Progress, of a sort.
Funnier if, after they brought it out and it was paid for, you immediately take it over to customer service and return it. Why? "Because your company is being run by assholes, and I can afford to burn some good karma." (Raising enough of a scene to get attention from other customers is optional.)
Use the kiosk to go pretty much ANYWHERE on the BestBuy website. Click the link to "careers", near the bottom of the webpage. Appropriately, we're only going into the career to get somewhere better as fast as we can. Clicking this opens a pop-up IE rendered Kiosk window (still without an address bar, the standard browser buttons, or the standard "File/Edit" toolbar of every windows program) at the Best Buy career site.
Click the "about Minneapolis" link on the right; think of your own "want to get somewhere better" jokes from now on, it's only getting worse.
Click the "www.state.mn.us" link towards the bottom.
Click the "Education" link near the top.
Under "Quick Links" off to the right, click "Minnesota State Colleges and Universities".
To the left, click the state's picture to select a campus.
Click for the "A-Z Institution List"
Under the two year colleges, click "Lake Superior College".
Ooooh -- a Google Search form! Toggle to seach Google instead of locally, and go to the real Google website, BestBuy.com, or CircuitCity.com, as you prefer.
A shorter path exists, using the search function on the www.state.mn.us website, but might change. Bonus points for anyone who (using this starting point) figures out how to get (a) a full fledged IE window with address bar (b) a command prompt (c) system level privileges and/or (d) a way to reinstall the hard drive with Linux from the kiosk environment. Changing the kiosk webbrowser home to CircuitCity.com would be another nice hack in several senses of the word.
If you thought "I won't have any W2K in 6 months, so why bother" and 24 months later, the DST issue caught you - well, pay up.
Or, alternatively, migrate before next Sunday.... which is what I did with a couple of our legacy Win2K machines. I'm having more problems with the migration of the surviving pre-firewire Macintoshes onto Linux-PPC. I think one may end up just being reformatted with a flask of liquid oxygen, a jar of aluminum filings, and a magnesium flare.
For better or worse, we have set up corporations to reward simply any profitable behavior that is within the letter of the law. Or even close enough to get away with.
And to punish them if they don't pursue such behavior; look up Dodge v. Ford Motor Company. Carrot and stick.
Believe it or not, there are workplaces where it is safe to voice opposition as long as you do what you're told once the decision is made.
The difficulty lies in distinguishing such places from those where, if you say "this won't work because of reasons A, B, and C" before the decision is officially final and your prediction proves right, you're accused of causing the failure because you weren't "a team player behind the project 125 percent" yada yada yada....
Such places are worth leaving as soon as you see signs of such, even if you weren't the victim. If a project goes ahead when one of your listed reasons is either "that's unethical" or "that's illegal", don't wait for the project to fail before hunting a new job. If your budget can survive it, don't even wait to find a new job before leaving the current one, either. That kind of go-ahead means that the midden has already hit the windmill and the smell has just arrived — and it isn't the only thing headed downwind.
As any geek worth its salt should know, "Security" has three essential and intertwined aspects: Integrity: will the data remain the same and be only changed when and how it should be; Accessibility: will the data stay accessible by those who should have access; and Privacy: will the data stay inaccessible to those who should not have access.
This technique is intended to preserve Privacy, and possibly may help with Integrity; however, quantum cryptography gives no benefits to Accessibility aspects of security. If I cut your fiber lines, your message is no longer accessible. It's that simple.
We should love smart users. If they come up with their own solutions to problems, they're de facto developers. If the business is run well, good workers will succeed and advance while poor workers fail and leave the company. In time, we'll have evolved a class of competent users, even experts, and have application development in the hands of everyone, along with the skillset to actually make decent software.
You omit several factors that I see. I agree, a diversity of minds working to develop solutions is highly desirable... provided the solutions are reviewed by others to point out potential problems. Otherwise you get people using GMail to send copies of HIPAA restricted data to themselves for backup. So, you need to have the solutions reviewed, and the "users" willing to take feedback. This implies you also need a class of competent managers, able to provide review, feedback, education, and encouragement; and willing to tolerate experimentation and give credit where it is due.
Develop such managers, develop such users, and your IT may become a happier place.
This is the type of attitude that gets us into the game of "If I rename the extension to.rar then I can send you this critical document you've been needing!" Then.rar files are blocked the next day. Then you zip the rar and it gets through again. The war escalates forever.
I've found that a ROT13 of a UUEncoded file inserts nicely into emails, and seems to get through all current scanning, including the major Anti-virus software scanners. Of course, recipients need to be technologically literate enough to figure out how to ROT13 and UUdecode. =)
`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
Here, it seems the cop may also have been trying to stop the e-mail he was getting. (Not technical enough to set up email filter rules, I guess.) But assume that wasn't the case. Besides going to the state police, FBI, or whatever other higher authority, there's another option.
This is a republic: Run for DA. In almost all juristictions below the federal level, it's an elected position. The only qualification is getting elected; being a lawyer makes it easier to convince the public to vote for you, but it isn't required. Run on a platform with doing something about cops who act above the law as the main plank of your platform. If you win, you're now in a position to DO something about it — impanel a grand jury, or take heed to all citizen arrests of cops. If you lose — well, you'll at least have raised public consciousness, and the cops may back off... or start giving you enough tickets to put together a serious federal case against the department.
But win or lose, don't ever drive more than 5 MPH over the speed limit in that state ever again.
A cop is better trained in tactical driving than the average citizen.
True; and the instant he has the blue flashing lights on, almost none of the traffic laws apply to him. John Q. Citizen with his home radar gun could catch him doing 175 MPH, and wouldn't be able to complain worth squat. (Yes, there are cop cars that will go that fast. I think it was Indiana where a group of cops sucessfully bid at auction on a Lamborghini seized from a drug dealer, donated it, and got the department to give it the standard paint job and light bars.)
However, until those lights go on, they're bound by the law like anyone else. One of the local cops is widely considered an asshole, because unless he has something urgent, he'll ticket anyone for any offense he sees. A black acquaintance of mine tried claiming Officer Asshole issuing him a jaywalking ticket because he was a racist to convince the judge to throw it out on equal protection grounds. Bad move (see Lincoln on pro se). The judge and DA both snickered; the Judge told him that in the cop's first week on the job, he had ticketed the DA for speeding, and the judge for making an illegal right on red. It took three weeks before he had ticketed his boss for running a stop sign... in a cop car with, yes, no lights flashing.
Having had dealings with some other cops on the force, I'm unhappy to say they mainly want a quiet job and to preserve the peace; Officer Asshole believes it is important to be seen to uphold the law as well. I like him, myself... but am careful to check for him as well as for traffic before jaywalking. =)
Come court day bob told the judge what happened and that his was the only reasonable and prudent course of action. Judge asked what experience he had driving at high speeds. Reply? Pursuit instructor and EOD officer for HM Army and MI6 back home in England.
IAmNotALawyer, but my guess is that the judge realized this guy effectively qualified as an Expert Witness on his own behalf. Credible and hard-to-impeach expert eyewitness, unavoidable reasonable doubt, case dismissed.
Slashdot Mirror
Subtlety improves the quality of humor. So, yes, yours is more troll than funny.
Besides, banjo music is pretty funny in its own right.
I live in one of these stupid premium-style residential communities that are cropping up hereabouts like mushrooms after a spring rain. The latest trick offered is covering all utilites except phone, including electric bill and high-speed internet. The latter contract, despite numerous service problems since the place opened three years back, will be with Comcast. I have DSL; since I won't be able to get a static IP from Comcast, I plan to set up the damn Comcast connection running a DDNS Fedora Core rsync/http/ftp/torrent mirror, then throw one of my old 60GB drives full of (legally downloaded, redistributable) pr0n pics onto it, and add an open Wireless point to it as well. All kosher, according to my lease. I may even add some locally accessible public R/W storage, just to see what gets put on it.
And if (when?) I get Comcastically cut off, I'll take it up with my landlord... and start escrowing the rent. =)
There are studies going back to the 1920's that show this correlation:
Having checked your sources, the corrolation seems to be there... but not the particular statistic.
See the word "battlespace" in the description - that's DoD-ese for "battleground." [...] This isn't domestic surveillance that they're talking about.
Maybe you haven't been paying attention during this presidency, but the "battlespace" in the "War on terror" potentially includes US soil.
If your conscience is merely something that society has taught you, logically you have no reason to comply with society's proscribed values other than avoiding retribution for your anti-social actions.
Speaking as someone more happy than you can dream with my increasingly relative morality, no. This is an instance of fallacy "Argumentum ad logicam", concluding that a fallacious argument makes the conclusion ipso facto necessarily false. That a conscience is merely something taught by society does not prove the non-existance of a valid relativistic moral framework, where "good" and "evil" (or something similar) exist. Any resemblance between the two may be a matter of coincidence attributable to evolutionary pressures on society (if not necessarily although possibly the member's genetics), and at best suggestive of correct behavior.
As a specific although oversimplified alternative: being a member of society improves my long term survival prospects, which I consider good; ergo, taking actions likely to collapse the whole society, such as immunizing myself against my best supergerm and secretly releasing into the domestic yahoo population remains ceteris paribus bad. Even if I can get away with it without "retribution", there are always "consequences". Damaging your own life support systems is counterproductive.
This tends to lead toward the moral relativity direction, which I think most people find uncomfortable and counter-intuitive.
Which just means that generally it is (pun unintended but accepted) a hell of a lot easier to inculcate simple ethical frameworks that just have not yet demonstrated highly anti-survival tendencies than it is to get people to learn complicated correct ones. This doesn't seem a major concern; truth has limited survival value.
I'll certainly agree so far as any study of such question is incomplete without some direct attempt to study the effects of nature versus nurture. While I admit such a study would be hard to design to remain within human subjects standards, having RTFA, I see no mention of any conceptual attempt at such. But then, how much can I expect from the NYTimes?
A more subtle possibility is that while the belief may not be genetic, it may be a trait (like sight in animals) that provides sufficient survival value to society to allow multiple societies (although not necessarily the members) to independently develop it; those that did, and were able to pass it on, had enough of a survival advantage to overcome any societies that didn't have it. If the society can pass on (via education/indoctrination/brainwashing/etc.) pass on the idea successfully to new members over time, the survival tendency does not need to be genetically encoded.
An evolutionary development need not be fully optimized to provide a limited form of advantage. Similarly, religion need not be "true" or "correct" to serve a useful function: keeping track of the seasons for planting and harvesting, providing a reason why killing other members of the tribe is bad ("big sky wizard says so!"), disapproval of eating certain animals (dogs, pigs, other humans — raising other omnivores for food is calorically inefficient compared to raising herbivores), and so on. Developing a rational, objective, universal system of ethics without resorting to "Because (mommy, God, the king, the FSM) sayeth so!" is a non-trivial problem. As well, conveying it to other members of society requires that the other members of society have enought cognitive ability and flexibility to assimilate the idea, and suffienct effort to spare from survival tasks to do so. Most religions, on the other hand, are simple enough that a high-grade moron can understand well enough to follow the creed in most cases. Or, in terms CS types ought to understand, a low cost O(n) algorithm that gives an answer within a small episilon all but a small fractional delta of probable cases may be a lot more useful for real-time work than a high cost O(e^n) one that is right every time.
You can accomplish a lot if you can line up enough brute force and massive ignorance pointed all in one direction... or something like that.
Only place in town that carries a few hardware items over-the-counter, such as USB/FW hard drive enclosures. Half-decent selection of DVDs at semi-competitive prices when on sale. Gift cards from clueless relatives. One or two pieces of interesting hardware of the non-electronic variety. Very intermittent loss-leader sales, beating out Newegg.com's rebate price without a rebate form to file. The occasional clearance price. Individual's ability to directly intimidate and terrorize normal sales staff with overt display of superhuman competence.
I think that sums up my purchases and visits over the last year. Oh, wait, there's also temporarily switching their kiosks to CircuitCity.com for the hell of it. The previous computer section manager was smart enough that on sight he would chase me out of the store; the current manager is smart enough to constantly follow me about chatting, in the hopes of learning something useful while minimizing my incidental havok. Progress, of a sort.
It would have been funny though if the OP had internet access in-store (PDA, phone)
Poorly armored Windows-based kiosk....
Funnier if, after they brought it out and it was paid for, you immediately take it over to customer service and return it. Why? "Because your company is being run by assholes, and I can afford to burn some good karma." (Raising enough of a scene to get attention from other customers is optional.)A shorter path exists, using the search function on the www.state.mn.us website, but might change. Bonus points for anyone who (using this starting point) figures out how to get (a) a full fledged IE window with address bar (b) a command prompt (c) system level privileges and/or (d) a way to reinstall the hard drive with Linux from the kiosk environment. Changing the kiosk webbrowser home to CircuitCity.com would be another nice hack in several senses of the word.
If you thought "I won't have any W2K in 6 months, so why bother" and 24 months later, the DST issue caught you - well, pay up.
Or, alternatively, migrate before next Sunday.... which is what I did with a couple of our legacy Win2K machines. I'm having more problems with the migration of the surviving pre-firewire Macintoshes onto Linux-PPC. I think one may end up just being reformatted with a flask of liquid oxygen, a jar of aluminum filings, and a magnesium flare.
No one is using femtoseconds for uptime.
Insert obligatory Microsoft jokes....Or tried to hit a stall speed about 88 miles per hour....
For better or worse, we have set up corporations to reward simply any profitable behavior that is within the letter of the law. Or even close enough to get away with.
And to punish them if they don't pursue such behavior; look up Dodge v. Ford Motor Company. Carrot and stick.
ObPlug: Despair, Inc. I don't work for 'em, I just buy their toys.
The one for Burnout is popular with the local BOFH crowd; the one for Arrogance seems to amuse most of the local managers.
Believe it or not, there are workplaces where it is safe to voice opposition as long as you do what you're told once the decision is made.
The difficulty lies in distinguishing such places from those where, if you say "this won't work because of reasons A, B, and C" before the decision is officially final and your prediction proves right, you're accused of causing the failure because you weren't "a team player behind the project 125 percent" yada yada yada....
Such places are worth leaving as soon as you see signs of such, even if you weren't the victim. If a project goes ahead when one of your listed reasons is either "that's unethical" or "that's illegal", don't wait for the project to fail before hunting a new job. If your budget can survive it, don't even wait to find a new job before leaving the current one, either. That kind of go-ahead means that the midden has already hit the windmill and the smell has just arrived — and it isn't the only thing headed downwind.
If they wanted out, all they have to do is make a pass at their commanding officer (provided their commanding officer is the same sex they are)
The poster didn't say what kind of "service" was intended....
Where'd you get 8 from?
Maybe he included all of the voters in Florida, Ohio, and Chicago.
As any geek worth its salt should know, "Security" has three essential and intertwined aspects: Integrity: will the data remain the same and be only changed when and how it should be; Accessibility: will the data stay accessible by those who should have access; and Privacy: will the data stay inaccessible to those who should not have access.
This technique is intended to preserve Privacy, and possibly may help with Integrity; however, quantum cryptography gives no benefits to Accessibility aspects of security. If I cut your fiber lines, your message is no longer accessible. It's that simple.
We should love smart users. If they come up with their own solutions to problems, they're de facto developers. If the business is run well, good workers will succeed and advance while poor workers fail and leave the company. In time, we'll have evolved a class of competent users, even experts, and have application development in the hands of everyone, along with the skillset to actually make decent software.
You omit several factors that I see. I agree, a diversity of minds working to develop solutions is highly desirable... provided the solutions are reviewed by others to point out potential problems. Otherwise you get people using GMail to send copies of HIPAA restricted data to themselves for backup. So, you need to have the solutions reviewed, and the "users" willing to take feedback. This implies you also need a class of competent managers, able to provide review, feedback, education, and encouragement; and willing to tolerate experimentation and give credit where it is due.
Develop such managers, develop such users, and your IT may become a happier place.
This is the type of attitude that gets us into the game of "If I rename the extension to .rar then I can send you this critical document you've been needing!" Then .rar files are blocked the next day. Then you zip the rar and it gets through again. The war escalates forever.
I've found that a ROT13 of a UUEncoded file inserts nicely into emails, and seems to get through all current scanning, including the major Anti-virus software scanners. Of course, recipients need to be technologically literate enough to figure out how to ROT13 and UUdecode. =)
ortva 644 UNAQ.gkg
12&%I92!N(&LV8I4@9&%L+@X_
`
raq
Welcome to Slashdot. Tea?
a Milli Vanilli flavor - fudge and Nilla wafers (which contain no vanilla at all).
Perhaps also using a carob bean based fudge?
Well, technically the ships would be made of an ice/sawdust mix called picrete(sp?).
Pykrete; the operation was called Project Habakkuk.
There is another alternative in such cases.
Here, it seems the cop may also have been trying to stop the e-mail he was getting. (Not technical enough to set up email filter rules, I guess.) But assume that wasn't the case. Besides going to the state police, FBI, or whatever other higher authority, there's another option.
This is a republic: Run for DA. In almost all juristictions below the federal level, it's an elected position. The only qualification is getting elected; being a lawyer makes it easier to convince the public to vote for you, but it isn't required. Run on a platform with doing something about cops who act above the law as the main plank of your platform. If you win, you're now in a position to DO something about it — impanel a grand jury, or take heed to all citizen arrests of cops. If you lose — well, you'll at least have raised public consciousness, and the cops may back off... or start giving you enough tickets to put together a serious federal case against the department.
But win or lose, don't ever drive more than 5 MPH over the speed limit in that state ever again.
A cop is better trained in tactical driving than the average citizen.
True; and the instant he has the blue flashing lights on, almost none of the traffic laws apply to him. John Q. Citizen with his home radar gun could catch him doing 175 MPH, and wouldn't be able to complain worth squat. (Yes, there are cop cars that will go that fast. I think it was Indiana where a group of cops sucessfully bid at auction on a Lamborghini seized from a drug dealer, donated it, and got the department to give it the standard paint job and light bars.)
However, until those lights go on, they're bound by the law like anyone else. One of the local cops is widely considered an asshole, because unless he has something urgent, he'll ticket anyone for any offense he sees. A black acquaintance of mine tried claiming Officer Asshole issuing him a jaywalking ticket because he was a racist to convince the judge to throw it out on equal protection grounds. Bad move (see Lincoln on pro se). The judge and DA both snickered; the Judge told him that in the cop's first week on the job, he had ticketed the DA for speeding, and the judge for making an illegal right on red. It took three weeks before he had ticketed his boss for running a stop sign... in a cop car with, yes, no lights flashing.
Having had dealings with some other cops on the force, I'm unhappy to say they mainly want a quiet job and to preserve the peace; Officer Asshole believes it is important to be seen to uphold the law as well. I like him, myself... but am careful to check for him as well as for traffic before jaywalking. =)
Come court day bob told the judge what happened and that his was the only reasonable and prudent course of action. Judge asked what experience he had driving at high speeds. Reply? Pursuit instructor and EOD officer for HM Army and MI6 back home in England.
IAmNotALawyer, but my guess is that the judge realized this guy effectively qualified as an Expert Witness on his own behalf. Credible and hard-to-impeach expert eyewitness, unavoidable reasonable doubt, case dismissed.