This was probably meant as a piece of performance art or an "amusing" act of protest. In spite of Star Simpson's protestations that she'd only wanted to draw attention to herself on "Career Day," it seems more likely that her actions were meant to provoke exactly the kind of reaction they elicited. I'd guess she knew perfectly well that non-scientists/engineers would assume her device was explosive.
I agree with other commenters: No terrorist who actually knew how to build a real bomb would build one that looked just like one, then carry it around in public. But a nut with grievance might. Terrorism aside, we've seen bomb-building nuts before. The police might not have thought they saw a terrorist, but just a crazy woman with a rickety, but possibly dangerous explosive device.
Well, I'm in IT security, and Ethereal doesn't scare me like it seems to have scared your guys. It's just a passive network tool that happens to be used by hackers. Whatever. When my shop was still all IBM SNA, our tech support people had packet sniffing boxes they'd carry around for diagnosing network issues. No one ever called that "hacking."
I don't care if Kurzweil is right or not. His utopia sounds like a world of universal luxury. A world of comfort, health, and style, but without peace or without love isn't utopian to me.
then this law will make your job much more difficult.
I'm a security analyst in a Large Government Organization. Part of what I do is to drive around with a laptop, a WiFi card, NetStumbler, and a big antenna, listening for unauthorized or unencrypted access points. The laptop sits on the passenger seat, with the display closed. Again, the display is closed, and I'm not looking at it unless I stop the car outside one of our buildings.
With this law in place, any display that "is operating and is located in the motor vehicle at any point forward of the back of the driver's seat" is illegal. Is a laptop display "operating" if the lid's closed? I think so. And operating illegally.
I'm still working out how to do my job within the law, and without having constantly to stop to get my laptop out of some "safe" place. Throw the thing in the back seat when a cop approaches? Hit the power switch just in time? Keep my laptop on the floor in the back seat so I can just turn around, open it, and check it? That would really enhance my driving safety.
If they were consistent, yeah they would have blamed you and pointed out how much more stable a "truly secure" network they would build was going to be. Etc.
I'm with you. And the story we're discussing here is what happens to highly-skilled, well-educated white-collar workers. How must it be inside this corporate system for the cleaners, line workers, clerks, retail sales staff? Far less stable, I'm sure, and far more dangerous. They can't just "refresh their resume" or "start a consultancy."
Security as everyone's job is an admirable idea, and one that I'd love to see implemented everywhere. My experience, though, as a security analyst myself has been that if security gets in the way of a project, then there won't be any security unless someone insists.
You have every justification, in spite of what some of the businessman hard-asses here have said, to complain and pity yourself for a while. You didn't just get laid off in an outsourcing purge, for incompetence, or for actually being a "security risk." You got crushed by evil forces. That said, management's action in firing you in favor of untested, untrusted, unproven consultants proves that you're well out of it.
There does seem to be a marked tendency among management figures to trust consultants more than their own people. My own organization (where I've been doing security admin for a few years now) has been looking around for security auditors lately. They've even commissioned a study or two, which were crap. But I've never heard of someone actually getting targeted for termination by outsourcers who wanted to take over the operation they just audited. Makes good business sense, I guess, but it makes no sense, again, to bring in untrusted people to do trusted work.
During the Blaster outbreak, we saw more than one VPN-connected infected laptop jumping over the firewall and scanning for vulnerable systems on our large WAN. Yes, patching was the only way to ensure our immunity.
And before the RIAA began its terror campaign of subpoenas and lawsuits, it would have done well to have more vigorously attempted to educate the public about why that free Kazaa software isn't really free. This is a world where endless creative content seems free and easy to view, listen to, download, read, photocopy, etc., at the library, on TV, on the radio, through the Web. So file-sharing software, to the average user, is just another TV or radio or library delivering free content. Admittedly, there are plenty of file-sharers who know exactly what they're doing, but are they the only ones being sued? It doesn't seem so, and the RIAA has done too little to give, frankly, ignorant users fair warning.
I'm one of those who called SCO's bluff and both called and e-mailed them, requesting "licensing" info. That was the first week in August, and I received the usual form message telling me I'd be "contacted."
I'm still waiting for a real call back.
How about a/. Poll asking, "Has SCO called you back yet about taking your (protection) money?"
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I wouldn't want the work done either. Except that here in California, you can't renew registration until all recall work has been done and documented.
This was probably meant as a piece of performance art or an "amusing" act of protest. In spite of Star Simpson's protestations that she'd only wanted to draw attention to herself on "Career Day," it seems more likely that her actions were meant to provoke exactly the kind of reaction they elicited. I'd guess she knew perfectly well that non-scientists/engineers would assume her device was explosive.
I agree with other commenters: No terrorist who actually knew how to build a real bomb would build one that looked just like one, then carry it around in public. But a nut with grievance might. Terrorism aside, we've seen bomb-building nuts before. The police might not have thought they saw a terrorist, but just a crazy woman with a rickety, but possibly dangerous explosive device.
And me. Prompt appears from Microsoft ISA box, I enter ID/password, Safari crashes. Back to Firefox...
And it became part of General Electric's show at the New York World's Fair in 1964: http://www.nywf64.com/genele08.shtml
Well, I'm in IT security, and Ethereal doesn't scare me like it seems to have scared your guys. It's just a passive network tool that happens to be used by hackers. Whatever. When my shop was still all IBM SNA, our tech support people had packet sniffing boxes they'd carry around for diagnosing network issues. No one ever called that "hacking."
Fired from their company for, say, leaving sensitive documents in a public folder?
I don't care if Kurzweil is right or not. His utopia sounds like a world of universal luxury. A world of comfort, health, and style, but without peace or without love isn't utopian to me.
then this law will make your job much more difficult.
I'm a security analyst in a Large Government Organization. Part of what I do is to drive around with a laptop, a WiFi card, NetStumbler, and a big antenna, listening for unauthorized or unencrypted access points. The laptop sits on the passenger seat, with the display closed. Again, the display is closed, and I'm not looking at it unless I stop the car outside one of our buildings.
With this law in place, any display that "is operating and is located in the motor vehicle at any point forward of the back of the driver's seat" is illegal. Is a laptop display "operating" if the lid's closed? I think so. And operating illegally.
I'm still working out how to do my job within the law, and without having constantly to stop to get my laptop out of some "safe" place. Throw the thing in the back seat when a cop approaches? Hit the power switch just in time? Keep my laptop on the floor in the back seat so I can just turn around, open it, and check it? That would really enhance my driving safety.
If they were consistent, yeah they would have blamed you and pointed out how much more stable a "truly secure" network they would build was going to be. Etc.
I'm with you. And the story we're discussing here is what happens to highly-skilled, well-educated white-collar workers. How must it be inside this corporate system for the cleaners, line workers, clerks, retail sales staff? Far less stable, I'm sure, and far more dangerous. They can't just "refresh their resume" or "start a consultancy."
Not so easy to replace if you're the only one with the root passwords. But I take your point.
Security as everyone's job is an admirable idea, and one that I'd love to see implemented everywhere. My experience, though, as a security analyst myself has been that if security gets in the way of a project, then there won't be any security unless someone insists.
You have every justification, in spite of what some of the businessman hard-asses here have said, to complain and pity yourself for a while. You didn't just get laid off in an outsourcing purge, for incompetence, or for actually being a "security risk." You got crushed by evil forces. That said, management's action in firing you in favor of untested, untrusted, unproven consultants proves that you're well out of it.
There does seem to be a marked tendency among management figures to trust consultants more than their own people. My own organization (where I've been doing security admin for a few years now) has been looking around for security auditors lately. They've even commissioned a study or two, which were crap. But I've never heard of someone actually getting targeted for termination by outsourcers who wanted to take over the operation they just audited. Makes good business sense, I guess, but it makes no sense, again, to bring in untrusted people to do trusted work.
During the Blaster outbreak, we saw more than one VPN-connected infected laptop jumping over the firewall and scanning for vulnerable systems on our large WAN. Yes, patching was the only way to ensure our immunity.
Getting ready to patch all over again...
And before the RIAA began its terror campaign of subpoenas and lawsuits, it would have done well to have more vigorously attempted to educate the public about why that free Kazaa software isn't really free. This is a world where endless creative content seems free and easy to view, listen to, download, read, photocopy, etc., at the library, on TV, on the radio, through the Web. So file-sharing software, to the average user, is just another TV or radio or library delivering free content. Admittedly, there are plenty of file-sharers who know exactly what they're doing, but are they the only ones being sued? It doesn't seem so, and the RIAA has done too little to give, frankly, ignorant users fair warning.
I'm one of those who called SCO's bluff and both called and e-mailed them, requesting "licensing" info. That was the first week in August, and I received the usual form message telling me I'd be "contacted."
/. Poll asking, "Has SCO called you back yet about taking your (protection) money?"
I'm still waiting for a real call back.
How about a