Yet another example of the "lawyers are jerks, so everyone is liable" argument. That isn't a productive line of thinking. The law must, either through codification or through court precedent, must make liability clear. The solution is not for everyone on the planet to assume they are liable for everything. Especially in a world of computers, where computers cannot make legal or value judgements. By your logic, Facebook needs to implement logic to understand what the submitter is doing with the ads, and what municipalities you plan to delivering them to, and what those municipal laws are, etc. That's impossible. It's a slippery slow that they can't win.
There's a flip side too: Suppose Facebook blocks my ad, which was perfectly legal but their computer didn't know it. Now I sue Facebook. By your "keep any and every lawyer from finding an excuse to sue the shit out of them" argument, Facebook is damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Whose law? And how would the software know it is illegal? I gave 2 examples in my post where the software could not possibly know if it was illegal. One was if it was illegal only in some localities, and the other is if they used the tool to have different ads target two different groups. The software doesn't know either of those things. The solution isn't to write software that enforces laws. It's kinda like DRM, it just doesn't work unless it curtails everyone's freedom even if they are doing something legal.
I just heard on the radio how US companies will use their new US corporate tax break to invest in their employees, and in new technologies. It was followed by an announcement by a few corporations that they will raise their minimum wages and give employees $1000 bonuses.
I bet that in 10 years those investments will go into technology that eliminates employees. And the money they spent on increased wages and bonuses will be an argument in favor of those investments. Of course, the reality is that this was going to happen anyway. We already are at the cusp of the point where replacing physical laborers and service personnel with robots was aaalmost economically viable. With the recent minimum wage increases, constant improvements in tech, and now this - the fate of low-end service work is doomed. I wonder if restaurants with actual human employees will be a mark of a high-end place. Most of us will dine in the robotic restaurants.
That was an informative link, thank you. It brings up an important point:
Ad enforcement should not be Facebook's responsibility. We need to stop blaming the providers of infrastructure and tools for how companies abuse them. The companies need to be held liable.
ISPs are not responsible for what people post. Knife manufacturers are not responsible for what people cut with them. Book distributors are not responsible for what is written in the books, or who buys them. Shipping companies are not responsible for the legality of the contents they ship. Alcohol manufacturers are not responsible for who drinks them. Taxis are not responsible for checking if people are allowed to go to the places they go. And advertisers should not be responsible for making sure that advertisements aren't violating laws with the ads they place.
This last point is especially important considering that every municipality in the world has different advertising laws. In some places in the world, ads for alcohol or sex services are illegal, but not in all. Some might not allow them at certain times of day. Some kinds of political ads are illegal or subject to disclosures. Facebook can't possibly enforce this stuff. What if a company just wanted different job ads for millennials versus people over 40? Is that legal or not? Facebook can't be the ones responsible for making that judgement call.
The other reason for this is because if the intermediary enforces the law, it shields the people who are violating it. I want to know the companies that are doing this, and I want the force of law to come against them. The individuals placing these illegal ads need to know that they are committing a crime, and the public should know that the company was doing it. I want to make sure I don't work for that company, and don't buy from that company. If I work for that company I want to use my voice to stop it. So don't have someone mask the problem.
the capabilities, even the existence, of the ME has just come out recently... why has it gone undocumented and unrealized for so long?
No, they released an SDK for it in 2008. Companies like Lenovo and Dell use it for anti-theft software. Corporate IT departments use it to deploy scripts to monitor antivirus and firewall settings. I wrote code for it in 2008 for a product called "Spare Backup." It used AMT to wake at either a specific time, or in response to a specific packet, to initiate a backup.
Thank you, that was informative. I looked it up a bit. So in the case of DirectTV v. Inburgia the articles make it sound like the customers could not file a suit. But upon further reading, are you saying that they could file a suit, and they could enjoin in a class action, but they would have to pay $480 to DirectTV for the privilege? Supreme Court says binding arbitration clauses in consumer contracts trump California law
Business is constrained by uncertaintly. So consider this: Even if this doesn't passm the ISPs will hesitate to violate neutrality. It is hard to push forward with a business model that is constantly threatening to be overturned. Imagine offering paid fast lanes today, only to have them made illegal in 3 months by congress, or in 2 years after midterm elections, or in 3 years with a new presidency. It's just a big risk for them to do. They would be better to play it safe and look like good guys.
Healthcare companies face this too: companies hesitate to open up to the ACA (Obamacare) markets given that the Republican majority keeps threatening to repeal it.
Yeah, but then when power is restored, the OS boots, and the application just re-registers itself with AMT again. There's a public API to do it. It doesn't have to be burned into the firmware to work. It just needs to wake the OS when a request is made.
The submission is confusing because the author proposes "repurposing" the ME, but the example is something that it what it is intended for in the first place. Back when it was first introduced, I worked for a company that created a program that would wake a remote computer on demand and run a few sundry tasks: a defrag and a backup. Intel partnered with various software vendors to create demos of what ME could do. And heck, even without ME, most network cards have a wake-on-LAN feature anyway.
Intel clearly didn't do a good job marketing the feature if nobody thought of how to use it until a vulnerability was found in it.
Look at the options for the "per-library survey results":
[ ] I've never heard of it [ ] I've HEARD of it, and am NOT interested [ ] I've HEARD of it, and WOULD like to learn it [ ] I've USED it before, and would NOT use it again [ ] I've USED it before, and WOULD use it again
Notice there's no option for "I've actually deployed it to a production platform and it has been running stably for a year." I can attest that every interview candidate tells me they've used Angular 2/4/5 before, because they went through the tutorial. So be careful when using these results.
I am on a project that started with Angular 1, then took a significant delay to move it to Angular 2, even when it was in beta, because we thought it was more stable and it was the future. Now, it's #5 in the "Ive USED it before and WOULD use it again" category. Our latest front-end developer is threatening a coup unless we move to Angular 5 (which is actually quite easy, but still - WTH?) There's just no winning here! We can't develop stable software if the platforms lifetime is shorter than the time it takes to get a product to market!
In a team of 4 men and 1 woman, the 4 men must walk around on eggshells and constantly self-censor.
This dynamic applies to any homogeneous group of people. It could be 4 Caucasians, or 4 gamers, or 4 jocks, or 4 Christians + 1 other person.
But this is complex. There is a line between the group members tapping into their shared background in order to communicate effectively, and merely being assholes to people outside of their shared background. In the case of the 4 men + 1 woman, are these guys just sexist jerks? If not, they really should be able to find a shared understanding with the woman. But it is the company's responsibility to make a safe path to do that. But to work, the group of 4 has to not be used to acting like assholes, and the the outsider needs to not start out from a jaded perspective. That is part of why it is important for a group of men to avoid sexist behavior, even in a male-only group.
You're saying there are innate differences due to gender. One gender could do something the other couldn't.
He did not say this. You are doing exactly what people fear most in a discussion. When someone says "person X is different from person Y" that does not give you the right to label them as racist or sexist or classist or something, which is where you are heading. Not all differences are "innate" and not all differences mean someone is less capable. That's a leap of logic you made.
Wouldn't the correct solution be to revoke their monopolies along with the net neutrality regulations?
Yes. But revoking monopolies is actually hard, and often requires more laws, not less. Frankly, Congress doesn't understand the issue well enough to implement this and there is no real will to do so. Let us consider what it would mean to have no telecom monopolies:
Telecom consists of wires and service over them. Wires need land, so you need some way to determine who can run those wires. That ties into digging rights, rights to build utility poles, and rights to string wires on those poles. The solution we have now is that the govt defines two types of service: "cable" and "telephone" (meaningless 1980s concepts, way out of date) and gives those companies exclusive rights to run wires. In exchange, they are forced to run a certain minimum level of wiring to every home and business, and they get subsidies to do so. So they would need to open that up to allow more companies to do it. We would need ways to handle the inevitable conflict between companies wanting to string wires on the same poles and in the same ditches. And if the monopoly breakup worked, there would be a lot of landowners would be inconvenienced by the constant digging. It might be worth it though.
Another thing we could do is to keep the monopolies on wires, and allow many companies to run different services over those wires. IMHO that's the way to go. But it's politically complex. In that scenario, and Comcast would need to be broken into a wiring company and a cable TV+ISP company. Call them ComWire and ComNet. ComNet would pay a fee to ComWire for access to their wires, but SilverGunNet could also rent those same wires. Laws would need to be written to breakup Comcast, handle the Wall Street backlash, and ensure no preferential treatment is given to ComNet (or against). And congress would need to select a network protocol for having multiple service providers on one wire. (Something like PPTP, which was used over ISDN).
Once the above is done, and enough ISPs exist, no network neutrality laws would need to exist, because market forces would allow customers to demand network neutrality. Even if the above was done, I wonder if there would be enough of them, and if users would understand the issue well enough. *shrugs*
Is the body not a physical object? If they ignored the DNR tattoo, why couldn't they ignore the paper? Maybe it is forged, or out-of-date. I don't understand why paper has more power than a tattoo.
The hospital staff got lucky that he died anyway and never woke. (Or they were smart enough to kill him to cover their mistake.) If they guy had woken up with massive brain damage, his next of kin would have sued them. Equally bad would be if the person was in a motorcycle accident, and woke up with amputated limbs, forced to live out a hellish remaining life, knowing that they took every precaution possible to prevent it from happening that way. That's the kind of nightmare scenario that a DNR is intended to prevent.
But seriously, when a 70-year old man with heart problems comes in with a DNR tattoo, it probably wasn't a college frat prank. "Ha ha guys, this isn't funny. I know I got drunk last night, but why did you have to give me this DNR tattoo! This sucks!"
It takes time, however, before the DNR form can be located and sent to the hospital
It is strange that it takes less time to transport the person to the hospital in a physical vehicle than it takes to transfer the DNR form to the hospital over a wire. Yet if they needed to know his driver's license was expired, a police officer could have pulled that up in about 45 seconds. This is preposterous. The guy probably had the tattoo put in place because of this very problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Yet another example of the "lawyers are jerks, so everyone is liable" argument. That isn't a productive line of thinking. The law must, either through codification or through court precedent, must make liability clear. The solution is not for everyone on the planet to assume they are liable for everything. Especially in a world of computers, where computers cannot make legal or value judgements. By your logic, Facebook needs to implement logic to understand what the submitter is doing with the ads, and what municipalities you plan to delivering them to, and what those municipal laws are, etc. That's impossible. It's a slippery slow that they can't win.
There's a flip side too: Suppose Facebook blocks my ad, which was perfectly legal but their computer didn't know it. Now I sue Facebook. By your "keep any and every lawyer from finding an excuse to sue the shit out of them" argument, Facebook is damned if they do and damned if they don't.
This is about compliance with law.
Whose law? And how would the software know it is illegal?
I gave 2 examples in my post where the software could not possibly know if it was illegal. One was if it was illegal only in some localities, and the other is if they used the tool to have different ads target two different groups. The software doesn't know either of those things. The solution isn't to write software that enforces laws. It's kinda like DRM, it just doesn't work unless it curtails everyone's freedom even if they are doing something legal.
Are these maybe stock-trading bots?
I just heard on the radio how US companies will use their new US corporate tax break to invest in their employees, and in new technologies. It was followed by an announcement by a few corporations that they will raise their minimum wages and give employees $1000 bonuses.
I bet that in 10 years those investments will go into technology that eliminates employees. And the money they spent on increased wages and bonuses will be an argument in favor of those investments. Of course, the reality is that this was going to happen anyway. We already are at the cusp of the point where replacing physical laborers and service personnel with robots was aaalmost economically viable. With the recent minimum wage increases, constant improvements in tech, and now this - the fate of low-end service work is doomed. I wonder if restaurants with actual human employees will be a mark of a high-end place. Most of us will dine in the robotic restaurants.
That was an informative link, thank you. It brings up an important point:
Ad enforcement should not be Facebook's responsibility. We need to stop blaming the providers of infrastructure and tools for how companies abuse them. The companies need to be held liable.
ISPs are not responsible for what people post. Knife manufacturers are not responsible for what people cut with them. Book distributors are not responsible for what is written in the books, or who buys them. Shipping companies are not responsible for the legality of the contents they ship. Alcohol manufacturers are not responsible for who drinks them. Taxis are not responsible for checking if people are allowed to go to the places they go. And advertisers should not be responsible for making sure that advertisements aren't violating laws with the ads they place.
This last point is especially important considering that every municipality in the world has different advertising laws. In some places in the world, ads for alcohol or sex services are illegal, but not in all. Some might not allow them at certain times of day. Some kinds of political ads are illegal or subject to disclosures. Facebook can't possibly enforce this stuff. What if a company just wanted different job ads for millennials versus people over 40? Is that legal or not? Facebook can't be the ones responsible for making that judgement call.
The other reason for this is because if the intermediary enforces the law, it shields the people who are violating it. I want to know the companies that are doing this, and I want the force of law to come against them. The individuals placing these illegal ads need to know that they are committing a crime, and the public should know that the company was doing it. I want to make sure I don't work for that company, and don't buy from that company. If I work for that company I want to use my voice to stop it. So don't have someone mask the problem.
the capabilities, even the existence, of the ME has just come out recently... why has it gone undocumented and unrealized for so long?
No, they released an SDK for it in 2008. Companies like Lenovo and Dell use it for anti-theft software. Corporate IT departments use it to deploy scripts to monitor antivirus and firewall settings. I wrote code for it in 2008 for a product called "Spare Backup." It used AMT to wake at either a specific time, or in response to a specific packet, to initiate a backup.
Thank you, that was informative. I looked it up a bit. So in the case of DirectTV v. Inburgia the articles make it sound like the customers could not file a suit. But upon further reading, are you saying that they could file a suit, and they could enjoin in a class action, but they would have to pay $480 to DirectTV for the privilege?
Supreme Court says binding arbitration clauses in consumer contracts trump California law
Business is constrained by uncertaintly. So consider this: Even if this doesn't passm the ISPs will hesitate to violate neutrality. It is hard to push forward with a business model that is constantly threatening to be overturned. Imagine offering paid fast lanes today, only to have them made illegal in 3 months by congress, or in 2 years after midterm elections, or in 3 years with a new presidency. It's just a big risk for them to do. They would be better to play it safe and look like good guys.
Healthcare companies face this too: companies hesitate to open up to the ACA (Obamacare) markets given that the Republican majority keeps threatening to repeal it.
since it loses code on poweroff
Yeah, but then when power is restored, the OS boots, and the application just re-registers itself with AMT again. There's a public API to do it. It doesn't have to be burned into the firmware to work. It just needs to wake the OS when a request is made.
The submission is confusing because the author proposes "repurposing" the ME, but the example is something that it what it is intended for in the first place. Back when it was first introduced, I worked for a company that created a program that would wake a remote computer on demand and run a few sundry tasks: a defrag and a backup. Intel partnered with various software vendors to create demos of what ME could do. And heck, even without ME, most network cards have a wake-on-LAN feature anyway.
Intel clearly didn't do a good job marketing the feature if nobody thought of how to use it until a vulnerability was found in it.
Look at the options for the "per-library survey results":
[ ] I've never heard of it
[ ] I've HEARD of it, and am NOT interested
[ ] I've HEARD of it, and WOULD like to learn it
[ ] I've USED it before, and would NOT use it again
[ ] I've USED it before, and WOULD use it again
Notice there's no option for "I've actually deployed it to a production platform and it has been running stably for a year." I can attest that every interview candidate tells me they've used Angular 2/4/5 before, because they went through the tutorial. So be careful when using these results.
I am on a project that started with Angular 1, then took a significant delay to move it to Angular 2, even when it was in beta, because we thought it was more stable and it was the future. Now, it's #5 in the "Ive USED it before and WOULD use it again" category. Our latest front-end developer is threatening a coup unless we move to Angular 5 (which is actually quite easy, but still - WTH?) There's just no winning here! We can't develop stable software if the platforms lifetime is shorter than the time it takes to get a product to market!
To be more specific:The maximum number of commissioners who may be members of the same political party shall be a number equal to the least number of commissioners which constitutes a majority of the full membership of the Commission.
I would love to see a president nominate members of the green, constitution, and libertarian parties, or some independents.
In a team of 4 men and 1 woman, the 4 men must walk around on eggshells and constantly self-censor.
This dynamic applies to any homogeneous group of people. It could be 4 Caucasians, or 4 gamers, or 4 jocks, or 4 Christians + 1 other person.
But this is complex. There is a line between the group members tapping into their shared background in order to communicate effectively, and merely being assholes to people outside of their shared background. In the case of the 4 men + 1 woman, are these guys just sexist jerks? If not, they really should be able to find a shared understanding with the woman. But it is the company's responsibility to make a safe path to do that. But to work, the group of 4 has to not be used to acting like assholes, and the the outsider needs to not start out from a jaded perspective. That is part of why it is important for a group of men to avoid sexist behavior, even in a male-only group.
You're saying there are innate differences due to gender. One gender could do something the other couldn't.
He did not say this. You are doing exactly what people fear most in a discussion. When someone says "person X is different from person Y" that does not give you the right to label them as racist or sexist or classist or something, which is where you are heading. Not all differences are "innate" and not all differences mean someone is less capable. That's a leap of logic you made.
You know this guy is nuts, because for the first time in Slashdot history I completely agree with drinkypoo.
Obligatory SMBC comic. (Yes it is SFW)
Wouldn't the correct solution be to revoke their monopolies along with the net neutrality regulations?
Yes. But revoking monopolies is actually hard, and often requires more laws, not less. Frankly, Congress doesn't understand the issue well enough to implement this and there is no real will to do so. Let us consider what it would mean to have no telecom monopolies:
Telecom consists of wires and service over them. Wires need land, so you need some way to determine who can run those wires. That ties into digging rights, rights to build utility poles, and rights to string wires on those poles. The solution we have now is that the govt defines two types of service: "cable" and "telephone" (meaningless 1980s concepts, way out of date) and gives those companies exclusive rights to run wires. In exchange, they are forced to run a certain minimum level of wiring to every home and business, and they get subsidies to do so. So they would need to open that up to allow more companies to do it. We would need ways to handle the inevitable conflict between companies wanting to string wires on the same poles and in the same ditches. And if the monopoly breakup worked, there would be a lot of landowners would be inconvenienced by the constant digging. It might be worth it though.
Another thing we could do is to keep the monopolies on wires, and allow many companies to run different services over those wires. IMHO that's the way to go. But it's politically complex. In that scenario, and Comcast would need to be broken into a wiring company and a cable TV+ISP company. Call them ComWire and ComNet. ComNet would pay a fee to ComWire for access to their wires, but SilverGunNet could also rent those same wires. Laws would need to be written to breakup Comcast, handle the Wall Street backlash, and ensure no preferential treatment is given to ComNet (or against). And congress would need to select a network protocol for having multiple service providers on one wire. (Something like PPTP, which was used over ISDN).
Once the above is done, and enough ISPs exist, no network neutrality laws would need to exist, because market forces would allow customers to demand network neutrality. Even if the above was done, I wonder if there would be enough of them, and if users would understand the issue well enough. *shrugs*
Less government is always better.
That is an oversimplification and is provably not true. If "less government" is always better, than no government is optimal.
Is the body not a physical object? If they ignored the DNR tattoo, why couldn't they ignore the paper? Maybe it is forged, or out-of-date. I don't understand why paper has more power than a tattoo.
First I've heard of this one. Link please? Google didn't turn anything up. I tried searching for this and found nothing.
The hospital staff got lucky that he died anyway and never woke. (Or they were smart enough to kill him to cover their mistake.) If they guy had woken up with massive brain damage, his next of kin would have sued them. Equally bad would be if the person was in a motorcycle accident, and woke up with amputated limbs, forced to live out a hellish remaining life, knowing that they took every precaution possible to prevent it from happening that way. That's the kind of nightmare scenario that a DNR is intended to prevent.
Tattoo something else over it.
But seriously, when a 70-year old man with heart problems comes in with a DNR tattoo, it probably wasn't a college frat prank. "Ha ha guys, this isn't funny. I know I got drunk last night, but why did you have to give me this DNR tattoo! This sucks!"
It takes time, however, before the DNR form can be located and sent to the hospital
It is strange that it takes less time to transport the person to the hospital in a physical vehicle than it takes to transfer the DNR form to the hospital over a wire. Yet if they needed to know his driver's license was expired, a police officer could have pulled that up in about 45 seconds. This is preposterous. The guy probably had the tattoo put in place because of this very problem.
When you're in a gray area...
How the heck is that a gray area!?!?!?! If THIS isn't good enough, then what could the patient have a POSSIBLY done!?!?!?!
Fair enough. Strength to weight ratio is indeed a valid measure.
Unrelated apology: I didn't preview, which is why I have the nested quote. Whoops!