There is no reason that a NYPD network should even open a socket for a connection originating in Asia. "Hacking attempts" should not even reach the first gateway.
It's a little more complicated for my network, because we do a lot of business in China and Thailand, but we still are no more vulnerable to port/web/ssh scans than a well-configured Cisco 7300, which is to say "not at all vulnerable, I'll bet your life or stake my reputation on it as long as nobody but me has the enable password."
>Hmmm, SCO comes to mind. So does SBC and their litigation against little guys years ago
None of that supports the assertion that one must "aggressively defend" a patent or risk losing it. This is not entirely incorrect in trademark disputes, but there is a preposterous notion that someone with a trademark is somehow obligated to sue people on a regular basis.
>Stevens is 85 (unlikely to be able to serve much jail time)
You don't want to be the politician responsible for having a guy die in prison serving time for something that Average Joe recognizes as a quite minor, completely peaceable crime.
On the other hand, you *really* don't want to be one of the prosecutors who is now specifically on record with serious misconduct...
"What is expensive is protecting it; which has to be done aggressively against everyone who infringes on it. Few except deep pocket conglomerates can afford this aspect of patent law."
You have patent confused with trademark, and even the part of your confusion that is justified, is exaggerated.
The exaggerated high costs of civil litigation often come from cases where one party isn't clearly in the right, but is trying to persuade a court that they are. That does tend to be very expensive, and, rightly, often fails. No matter how much you pay your lawyer, it won't help you if another party comes to the table with real, clear, rock solid evidence.
You can believe what you want, but you could also talk to people who have been in litigious situations without it bankrupting them.
"If someone were able to obtain a patent on your published work (the patent office can't check everything) it would be easy to overturn simply by pointing to whichever journal contains your paper."
An ounce of prevention is worth a hundred thousand dollars spent in a failed bid to overturn a patent in court.
In other words, it's vanishingly rare for internet service providers to take action against bittorrent users... Is this an argument in favor of increased enforcement as an ironic step towards privacy and freedom?
Simplified Chinese is a very expressive written language, and I've known people who are quite proficient at typing it. The assertion is that Chinese is not an efficient language for writing documentation (comments). I don't get the impression that this assertion is made from the point of view of a native Chinese speaker who already routinely uses computers that are setup for the language.
This becomes even more of an issue when your comments aren't just for yourself or a small team of programmers. What if your comments are documentation that is of interest to managers, sales people, and business stakeholders all of whom speak Chinese?
I have an interest in this topic that I'm not at liberty to talk about specifically. It concerns the interface between a US and a Chinese manufacturing company, associated with my day job.
"Have fun bricking the laptops of anyone you don't like."
It's the only thing I thought about when I read the summary. The target isn't "bricking the laptops", it's permanently destroying that company's reputation. Their competitors are as motivated to crack this as anybody else.
>English is the most common spoken language on the planet (I didn't say first language.)
English might be the most common second language, and more likely if you don't consider separate Chinese dialects as separate languages (which you do at your peril). English is probably the third most commonly spoken native language.
"There are those who would say we are already slaves considering that while we own shotguns the Army owns F-16s. No militia of the people could possibly stand against the Federal government today."
If an issue were to present itself that had the weight and significance to engender a revolution, it could be expected to cause entire military chains of command, together with the industries that supply armies, to divide along the same lines. Try not to picture a revolution as a rabble of peasants wielding farm implements against a mechanized army.
You make it sound easy to find that kind of service.
Besides that, I don't really understand why hard crypto hasn't already put a wall of privacy between user and service provider, period. What needs to change? This is a bigger issue than just "file sharing."
"I agree; student laptops are useful for generic computer usage, but not that great for assuming a particular set of software, unless you're going to go the extra step and mandate that students buy a particular computer with a particular OS and software environment. If you aren't going to do that, you're stuck with some of your students running Windows, some OS X, a handful Linux, and very little you can assume about what they can install and run."
If you are going to do that, you'll increase costs, especially when you have to renegotiate site licenses and volume pricing because you've mandated a change.
There's also a consideration for when your "nice to have campus wi-fi" becomes a critical component across colleges, and suddenly you've outgrown your Bluesocket solution or whatever. Campus administrators at the risk-management level of funding won't miss this sort of thing. They may be pinheads when it comes to technology, but they have uncanny talent for anticipating hidden costs, particularly when those costs can't be absorbed by a single college or department.
>But their attitude was clearly "guilty until proven innocent":
Now their attitude is "oh fuck, members of our staff have created a scandal that's got national exposure, is going to cost our district tens of millions of dollars in legal fees and settlements, and it's going to end the careers of everyone on the school board, whether we "win" or "lose."
I didn't need to wear my scientist hat, to turn down a job in a place that made my eyes hurt from the minute I got off the plane, and where I was sick for a week after every time I visited there...
"Basicly, letting AIG fail would not just crash the American economy. It would crash the world economy. As in NO MONEY IN THE ATM crash. As in NO FUEL FOR YOUR CAR crash."
And I have been known to put bogus things on job req's in order to catch people who lie about what they know.
If you don't know something, you should say "I don't know that particular technology, but I know how to learn it, and I push the envelope on acquiring new skills faster than anybody else who you will interview for this job."
Those are magic words that would get a thumbs-up from me when it comes to my input in the hiring process. (I would have been the second person to interview you, after an HR admin and before the president of the company. I would be the only person to ask you any really interesting technical questions, and I will *know* if you're lying about your programming or sysadmin skills.)
When your viewers are mainly intelligent people, you have a problem: They don't respond to advertising. One solution is to get advertisers who advertise products that your viewers *will* buy, but the simpler alternative is to adjust your viewership to include more of those people who will buy the things sold by the advertisers you can get.
Remember, in television YOU are the product.
I got into Cable TV *because* of the Sci-Fi channel. And the thing that made me interested was actually a DVD of the Sci-Fi Dune miniseries. And I had to opt for the expensive "Digital Cable" service in order to get Sci-Fi Channel. Together with my internet bill, I was spending like $150/month for TV... and the Sci-Fi channel *sucked.* I got rid of TV, and now just have cable internet service. If Sci-Fi produces another good DVD I might buy it, who knows? But I don't think I'll ever subscribe again.
Slashdot Mirror
If either of those web properties is on the same network as critical/confidential police business, it should not be.
The city of New York can't afford me, so this is all the free IT consulting they're gonna get from me.
There is no reason that a NYPD network should even open a socket for a connection originating in Asia. "Hacking attempts" should not even reach the first gateway.
It's a little more complicated for my network, because we do a lot of business in China and Thailand, but we still are no more vulnerable to port/web/ssh scans than a well-configured Cisco 7300, which is to say "not at all vulnerable, I'll bet your life or stake my reputation on it as long as nobody but me has the enable password."
Hey librarian! Search the university websites for all the reports from the board meetings about closing the libraries and library staff reductions!
It is funny, because the guy is acting as if the cops being pinheads is going to amount to a defense at trial.
This story would be scary if there wasn't sufficient cause to execute the warrant, console mode or no console mode.
What would be scary, would be police refusing to execute a properly issued warrant for any of the reasons being discussed here.
>I take it you are not familiar with the incidents you describe.
Cite all the corner cases you'd like, but don't pretend that when "you" try it you'll get the same results.
>Simple. I'd shoot you, write up the report, then move on.
Right, a college campus police officer shoots a student who is in your custody, being investigated for some completely nonviolent civil question.
You wouldn't simply "move on."
It would end your career, starting with you being kicked out of your criminal justice program or whatever you're doing there.
Cite some specific "complete disregard for both justice and the standard of law in this country" that this particular appointee has expressed.
Did he break or bend a law? Or is it merely that you don't like his former client?
>Hmmm, SCO comes to mind. So does SBC and their litigation against little guys years ago
None of that supports the assertion that one must "aggressively defend" a patent or risk losing it.
This is not entirely incorrect in trademark disputes, but there is a preposterous notion that someone with a trademark is somehow obligated to sue people on a regular basis.
>Stevens is 85 (unlikely to be able to serve much jail time)
You don't want to be the politician responsible for having a guy die in prison serving time for something that Average Joe recognizes as a quite minor, completely peaceable crime.
On the other hand, you *really* don't want to be one of the prosecutors who is now specifically on record with serious misconduct...
"What is expensive is protecting it; which has to be done aggressively against everyone who infringes on it. Few except deep pocket conglomerates can afford this aspect of patent law."
You have patent confused with trademark, and even the part of your confusion that is justified, is exaggerated.
The exaggerated high costs of civil litigation often come from cases where one party isn't clearly in the right, but is trying to persuade a court that they are. That does tend to be very expensive, and, rightly, often fails. No matter how much you pay your lawyer, it won't help you if another party comes to the table with real, clear, rock solid evidence.
You can believe what you want, but you could also talk to people who have been in litigious situations without it bankrupting them.
"If someone were able to obtain a patent on your published work (the patent office can't check everything) it would be easy to overturn simply by pointing to whichever journal contains your paper."
An ounce of prevention is worth a hundred thousand dollars spent in a failed bid to overturn a patent in court.
>NASA does not name things after living people.
So why didn't they just say so, and be done with it?
Why a "conundrum?"
Why did they even have to disclose the results, or ever mention Colbert at all?
In other words, it's vanishingly rare for internet service providers to take action against bittorrent users... Is this an argument in favor of increased enforcement as an ironic step towards privacy and freedom?
Simplified Chinese is a very expressive written language, and I've known people who are quite proficient at typing it. The assertion is that Chinese is not an efficient language for writing documentation (comments). I don't get the impression that this assertion is made from the point of view of a native Chinese speaker who already routinely uses computers that are setup for the language.
This becomes even more of an issue when your comments aren't just for yourself or a small team of programmers. What if your comments are documentation that is of interest to managers, sales people, and business stakeholders all of whom speak Chinese?
I have an interest in this topic that I'm not at liberty to talk about specifically. It concerns the interface between a US and a Chinese manufacturing company, associated with my day job.
"Have fun bricking the laptops of anyone you don't like."
It's the only thing I thought about when I read the summary. The target isn't "bricking the laptops", it's permanently destroying that company's reputation. Their competitors are as motivated to crack this as anybody else.
>English is the most common spoken language on the planet (I didn't say first language.)
English might be the most common second language, and more likely if you don't consider separate Chinese dialects as separate languages (which you do at your peril). English is probably the third most commonly spoken native language.
"There are those who would say we are already slaves considering that while we own shotguns the Army owns F-16s. No militia of the people could possibly stand against the Federal government today."
If an issue were to present itself that had the weight and significance to engender a revolution, it could be expected to cause entire military chains of command, together with the industries that supply armies, to divide along the same lines. Try not to picture a revolution as a rabble of peasants wielding farm implements against a mechanized army.
You make it sound easy to find that kind of service.
Besides that, I don't really understand why hard crypto hasn't already put a wall of privacy between user and service provider, period. What needs to change? This is a bigger issue than just "file sharing."
"I agree; student laptops are useful for generic computer usage, but not that great for assuming a particular set of software, unless you're going to go the extra step and mandate that students buy a particular computer with a particular OS and software environment. If you aren't going to do that, you're stuck with some of your students running Windows, some OS X, a handful Linux, and very little you can assume about what they can install and run."
If you are going to do that, you'll increase costs, especially when you have to renegotiate site licenses and volume pricing because you've mandated a change.
There's also a consideration for when your "nice to have campus wi-fi" becomes a critical component across colleges, and suddenly you've outgrown your Bluesocket solution or whatever. Campus administrators at the risk-management level of funding won't miss this sort of thing. They may be pinheads when it comes to technology, but they have uncanny talent for anticipating hidden costs, particularly when those costs can't be absorbed by a single college or department.
Shame on the Site, for having information in the first place. Court can't order you to give up what you don't have.
>But their attitude was clearly "guilty until proven innocent":
Now their attitude is "oh fuck, members of our staff have created a scandal that's got national exposure, is going to cost our district tens of millions of dollars in legal fees and settlements, and it's going to end the careers of everyone on the school board, whether we "win" or "lose."
I didn't need to wear my scientist hat, to turn down a job in a place that made my eyes hurt from the minute I got off the plane, and where I was sick for a week after every time I visited there...
"Basicly, letting AIG fail would not just crash the American economy. It would crash the world economy. As in NO MONEY IN THE ATM crash. As in NO FUEL FOR YOUR CAR crash."
FUD.
And I have been known to put bogus things on job req's in order to catch people who lie about what they know.
If you don't know something, you should say "I don't know that particular technology, but I know how to learn it, and I push the envelope on acquiring new skills faster than anybody else who you will interview for this job."
Those are magic words that would get a thumbs-up from me when it comes to my input in the hiring process. (I would have been the second person to interview you, after an HR admin and before the president of the company. I would be the only person to ask you any really interesting technical questions, and I will *know* if you're lying about your programming or sysadmin skills.)
When your viewers are mainly intelligent people, you have a problem: They don't respond to advertising. One solution is to get advertisers who advertise products that your viewers *will* buy, but the simpler alternative is to adjust your viewership to include more of those people who will buy the things sold by the advertisers you can get.
Remember, in television YOU are the product.
I got into Cable TV *because* of the Sci-Fi channel. And the thing that made me interested was actually a DVD of the Sci-Fi Dune miniseries. And I had to opt for the expensive "Digital Cable" service in order to get Sci-Fi Channel. Together with my internet bill, I was spending like $150/month for TV... and the Sci-Fi channel *sucked.* I got rid of TV, and now just have cable internet service. If Sci-Fi produces another good DVD I might buy it, who knows? But I don't think I'll ever subscribe again.