What if it is your job not to hand over those kinds of documents to anyone besides maybe your successor?
Not up to you. Quit if you like. Pass the written passwords (and any other of the company's property) across the table and walk out. If you want to keep your job, object in writing, get the demand in writing, and then you're free and clear. Feel free to become a whistleblower to your board/owner/press/police/etc. In fact, I encourage it.
Defense counsel can and do say anything that comes into their heads that may help their clients. In this case, it's a dubious opinion about sentencing. Go see what Charles Manson's or Bernie Maddoff's defense attorneys suggested about their cases.
Please use "IANAL" or "I am not an attorney" when dispensing bogus legal advice, thanks.
Nope. Just quit. Only thing is don't try to steal anything on the way out the door. Including intellectual property such as passwords, which are your employer's under Work for Hire rules.
If they ask you to do something illegal, document it as best you can and quit. Call the authorities.
If asked to publish the passwords, he should contact the authorities and the media. He can quit at any time - he need only write down the passwords on paper, hand them to his boss, and then walk out. If you don't want to quit, and you're asked to do anything dumb, object in writing, get the instructions in writing, and then do as you're told. You're free and clear.
The remainder of your examples are redundant - they all fall under this principle.
There is a line of negligence over which you can't go, even if your boss tells you to.
Certainly. You need not take any affirmative action you don't want to (some slight exceptions here, i.e. drafted into the military). You can quit any time. When you leave, you only need to give to your employers all materials of theirs that you have. This is anything you created as works for hire, including passwords.
If you don't do that, you are breaking the law, and you go to jail, just like this guy.
I'm not saying that this case is on the far side of that line - we don't have the details - but perhaps the admin felt it was.
Doesn't matter what you feel. The rules are simple. Follow them, and the bad guys get in trouble. You can even help. Break them, and you go to jail.
Perhaps he felt it would be negligent to share those passwords, and would hurt (for example) taxpayers whose data was stored.
Great story for the press, once you're at your next job. Happens all the time.
I think the prosecution should have to prove that he refused to share the passwords out of some malicious intention, as opposed to because he thought sharing them would be negligent.
There is indeed a legal basis for this, used every day in the workplace, called "Work for Hire." There are other arguments as well, but this is the most obvious one. Configurations, including security configurations, including passwords, are all the property of your employer.
Please don't give people bogus legal advice without even admitting you are not a lawyer.
And I say again, how do you ever replace your network admin if they need not give up your passwords?
As for the rest of the charges, I've already said, "At the most, there are some mistakes in ancillary parts of the charges against him (re. modems), which is unimportant to the main issue." So on this we agree.
If your boss wants to do something stupid, put your objection in writing, get his or her insistence in writing, and then you are free and clear. No one can hold you responsible for what happens. If you're terminated wrongly or even just discriminated against as a result of your boss's documented incompetence, you can sue, and with this kind of evidence, you will win.
It's not that complicated a system and it works, if not perfectly, at least reasonably well.
If you think you can keep your employer's property because "you know better what to do with it than them," you will wind up in the cell next to this guy. Please ask a lawyer if you don't believe me.
I hate to say it, but these stories only reinforce for me that Childs is likely guilty.
It seems even clearer that he really did keep passwords to himself, and when asked, refused to hand them over to his management.
Management can ask for them (how can they ever replace a network admin, otherwise?) and they can ask you to hand them over to anyone they say. As Schneier says, they belong to your employer, not you.
These articles imply that it's not "good practice" to give passwords out. If that's really his defense, it's specious and deceptive. If your boss demands a password, you have to give it, by law. If he demands you give it to another person, or 20 other people, you have to give it, by law.
If they do something stupid with it, then maybe _they_ end up in jail. If you want, you can even try catching them at it, being a whistle-blower, help them along with that process. But that's _not_ your problem, as an admin.
I just get the sense of a tense guy who had a personality conflict with his boss (who may have been an ass, or not), and who let his emotions carry him over into criminal conduct. At the most, there are some mistakes in ancillary parts of the charges against him (re. modems), which is unimportant to the main issue.
All joking aside, the underlying point is how easy it is to "extract" a password from a person or organization, by means both violent and non-. In the average company, they're written down all over the place. Especially if "password strength" or "freshness" rules have been enabled and thus have made passwords more difficult to remember.
I believe this is why, given the complexity, risks, and performance penalties involved in full-disk encryption, most companies opt for hardware-level locks instead.
For instance, in any Thinkpad from the last decade, one sets the hard disk password. No actual encryption is performed on the platter, but the hard drive firmware will simply refuse to initialize without the password. Simply removing the various batteries will not work. Its beyond the means of all but a very few to read data off of a platter without the assistance of the drive electronics. So in practice this security measure is enough to stymie almost anyone but an organized, well-funded, and technically skilled attacker. Beating the lock involves destruction of the drive, so he/she will be interested in data, rather than a quick sale on the black market. The same type who would find it relatively easy to find an encryption key, by any number of means (usually not needing to resort to wrenches:).
At the same time, this method is available off the shelf, has no performance penalties, no additional risks to data loss, etc.
Google reveals brisk forum traffic by frustrated laptop thieves who would like to unbrick quantities of certain unfortunately locked hard drives. I would even speculate the prevalence of HD locks has deterred laptop theft overall (at least, of certain brands where the lock is commonly used, i.e. Thinkpads vs. Macbooks).
Believe it or not, I'm not really advocating taking fewer security measures. In fact, I hope ultimately we do make strong encryption commonplace. Ideally the drive manufacturers will support it with dedicated hardware as a value add. I suspect the primary reason this hasn't been done already is politics. I'm only saying that, sadly, it provides a great false sense of security. Without being accompanied by elaborate and harrowing human practices today practiced only by organized crime and certain branches of the government, full drive encryption does relatively little more for your data security than simply enabling the HD lock in your BIOS.
I completely agree with you. Force is the great evil. We should never use force to stop Michael Dell from doing what he likes. Obviously, people never need to be supervised or corrected by force, since they always act on their own best interests, which of course benefits everyone, and this leads to utopia.
I'm sure you also agree that it's wrong to use force to prevent people from crossing national borders. Obviously, if a toaster or a pair of jeans crosses a border, that is free trade. Those shoes, they are free to go where they will. The market in goods is perfect!
Unfortunately the evil governments of the world continue to use force to rig the market for labor.
But why does it matter where you live, you ask? Aren't all nations the same?
Well, every country can set its own laws. Do you agree so far? As it happens, some countries may mandate fire exits, public schools, courts, standing armies, food and drug administrations, police forces, including ones that function on a basis other than bribery. Other countries may skip these expensive optional extras.
We used to have laws that tried to create equality as these nations traded with each other. Free trade with a country with slaves picking cotton, for instance, might have an adverse effect on the economies of nations where slavery was illegal, for instance. But we no longer indulge in such foolishness. Thank God, Michael Dell is free shop the laws of the world, to get his computers made in the cheapest labor hell hole he can find.
His workers, however, cannot leave that hell hole and shop for the nations and laws which they might prefer.
I am sure you agree, this is a great evil, and once it is ended and there are no more national restrictions on immigration, then we will truly have a perfect, functional market for labor as well as goods!
I assume Michael Dell would hop the fence to live in the USA if he wasn't born in it. Or perhaps his mother would have to find a citizen to marry. Because when you luck into a nation like the US, hardly anyone in his family will have to die in a chemical plant explosion or beg on the street after they lost one of their arms "in the machine." Since he was born here, he did not have to support his family by working in a factory from the age of 8. He was even able to attend school until his twenties!
I am sure that the sweet life of an American is a complete coincidence, though, and the fact that the world's happiest, wealthiest nations have relatively socialist laws is a coincidence. I, like you, continue to ignore these things and anticipate the coming of a libertarian objectivist utopia any day now. I just hope I can get a visa in the country where it happens!
What's the effect of the end of American Economic Hegemony on the IT industry?
Roughly a year ago I was hiring as quickly as possible, and so were most of the people I knew. Software devs, Ops, PMs, technical writers, IA's, front-end guys, the whole gamut. Sure, I focused on the top end in terms of experience, but it's not a rigid requirement, and I like bright kids out of school (or even still in school). I was one once, and I did pretty well by the people who hired me, way back when.
I can tell you I'm not hiring today. That's just an anecdote. More interesting is this discussion, which seems to be (if you believe everyone) chocked full of other managers. None of them have asked for the kid's contact info. No one on Slashdot wants him. That's a lot more than an anecdote.
Of course you should keep busy in the meantime with unpaid work. That's widely given but good advice.
Not sure how long this will last for. For the record, I'm one of those who's not sure we should even expect a "recovery" at all in our lifetime, at least in the sense to which Americans have become accustomed in the past.
There are hundreds of thousands of software patents now. Thousands of new ones every day. No human, no organization, can possibly know what patents cover a given piece of code.
Or do you know of a way?
Every line of code written is a ticking patent time bomb. Technically, it is impossible to write software legally. Certainly impossible for free software. Except, that is, in every other civilized country on earth, where this silly idea does not exist.
Even Microsoft ignores software patents. They hope to survive by using their own to countersue anyone who sues them. On good days, they hope the expense of all this will further reduce competition.
Unfortunately there are patent trolls who do nothing but sue others (and therefore can't be countersued for infringing)... which is getting to the logical conlcusion of this giant attorney's scam.
What's funniest about your argument is that the last 40 years of software development pretty much prove it wrong. It's been a thriving industry in which fortunes have been made while software patents have, luckily, been *mostly* been ignored.
Apple obviously does not need another way to enrich themselves - let alone one that is so unworkable as to be laughable. We all do just fine by the normal ways of competing: innovation, quality, price, copyrights, etc. Thank god, I don't need to stop everyone else from writing code with the same idea/implementation (difference?) I've used in order to make money.
Am I crazy, or is this an unskeptical report of Apple attempting to get a software patent?
Knowing Steve Jobs this is unlikely to be a defensive patent, either. He may actually expect to be able to sue people to stop writing software that seems like his software.
How sleazy. How ridiculous.
You cannot patent software. Period.
People who pretend we can are con men and shakedown artists.
I don't care if it's GIF compression or one click buying or a goddamned 4D desktop. It can not be patented.
You only have one choice: have a software industry, or have software patents.
The only reason we have anything like an industry now is that they are totally ignored and almost everyone is not attempting to enforce them. But this status quo means a goldmine for con men who do enforce them, and a hit on the economy, from all the victims, as well as those who are intimidated away from innovating or competing.
You're right; "free market" is just a vague expression. What I mean by it are particular regulations that are focused on people paying the real price for what it costs to move their traffic, whatever it may be, rather than letting ISPs make dishonest deals, oversubscribing their networks, and then and then letting VPs make decisions in back rooms about whose traffic gets where its going.
I know it's hard to imagine after the last few years of FCC, but it's not that hard - it can be done. Just takes some light shining in those formerly dark corners.
I wish they taught some basic law in high school, because it would be easier to have these discussions.
Deceptive fine print actually is illegal, for instance. I'm always surprised by how many people don't know what; maybe it's the prevalence of those "deal with the devil" movies.
If the ISP advertises unlimited internet, then it is on the hook re. deceptive trade practices, unless that's actually what they're selling. The more they emphasize it, and/or the finer the fine print is, the more on the hook they are.
What constitutes common practice and ordinary fair dealing also have a major weight on the court. But with ISPs there is no track record, so many judges would probably find it harder to interpret what's right and wrong here, as opposed to a weight loss or a real estate scam.
Individuals don't sue their ISPs in civil court because it's a bit unusual for someone to have a few hundred thousand dollars (bare minimum) and a few years of their life to blow on a suit over a $30/mo injustice. That's one reason why these things are regulated to begin with. On the criminal side, the government prosecutors haven't often taken an interest yet either. That's in part because these guys would rather take their cue from the FCC on matters like this - it's novel and it's highly technical and it's supposed to be specifically regulated. Whatever the government does as a matter of policy is what we're actually discussing here.
Someone can be a god on paper, and nothing stops them from also being ignorant, mediocre, obnoxious, or a terrible judge of public policy. Unfortunately I've seen this first-hand more times than I can count, with people about 10x as big as Bennett. Sad, but there are many reasons for it.
On the other hand, if you could tell me where he's right on the facts, and I've gone wrong, that would be more helpful.
Yes. Goes to show how vague and meaningless the term "free market" has become, but you're right, you could put it exactly that way.
Point being let customers' money decide how much customers' traffic gets carried, and how reliably. Don't charge a fake price in a fraudulent deal and then do filtering based on the whim of some vice president rather than people's dollars.
For that matter, you also need regulation to force all of these wealthy monopolists to keep their books completely open, so you can be sure they are not lying about what their costs are (2nd or 3rd oldest trick in the book for a regulated, natural monopoly industry), and hurting the economy by price gouging.
A good point. I used the "free market" buzzword though the term itself is an oxymoron.:)
All markets are regulated. When it's truly free, there is no market, only the strong ruling the weak, caveman style.:) The buzzword is typically used (badly) to indicate one wants less central control; _fewer_ rules. It usually implies stupid and/or crooked rulemaking.
I would look at this like the long gone and well missed public electric utilities. When regulated well (as they usually were), the books are open, and the profits are a well-regulated single-digit percentage, after appropriate investments are maintained to serve all customers, plan for the future, etc.
In a well regulated internet "market," the key issue should not be "how well I can filter your traffic" but "how much are you charging for my traffic?"
If the telecom bureaucrats are well regulated, they will not be able to advertise falsely, enter into fraudulent contracts, and then arbitrarily filter traffic. It should be very, very difficult for them to filter while staying within the law, and they should expect fines and prison if they do the elementary and thousands year old scam ("HEY UNLIMITED USE 4GB/sec PIPE ONLY $9.99 - fine print only use 1Mb per hour or we silently cap your traffic"). In such an environment, they are forced to honestly negotiate with consumers, speak clearly about what they are selling, and there is a transparent process where they charge enough for it that they make a good profit for themselves and their investors.
And by "good profit" I mean not using their natural monopoly to price gouge - a nostalgic ideal that I sometimes wonder if anyone even remembers. We certainly know exactly what they do if not regulated properly. This is from the people that brought you the tale of the 5 cent, no 10 cent, no 20 cent text messages...
This sounds like the basest kind of scare mongering, relying on a basic ignorance of the way networks work.
UDP is not any less filterable than TCP. To even make this argument, the reasoning is so contorted as to be silly. In either case, one uses a router to inspect packets and decide what to do with them. ISPs will simply go as deep through the envelopes as they like; they already do. With that knowledge they will do whatever is allowed by law. At present, almost anything is. If they abuse that power too foolishly, then it will start to be taken away from them.
And in the meantime, whoever they filter will tweak to retaliate, and it will always be a race. As far as I can see, this is just the ISPs (or their proxies) stopping at one random lap and crying how unfair it all is.
Why ignore the real issue here? If you sold a teenager in Topeka unlimited use of a large pipe, but now cannot handle her actual unlimited use of her large pipe, then you just need to start cutting better deals.
It's as simple as that.
If the teenager cannot actually use her fat pipe, 100% of the time, then stop lying about what it is you have sold to her. Either charge more or advertise less. It's as simple as that.
When I as a CEO, and millions of others like me, buy #MB upstream and #MB downstream, and utilize it 100%, 24/7, no one quakes over the calamity of the internet backbone melting down.
All of this discussion over filtering is really a discussion of pricing. And the fact that we are talking about it in the wrong terms is creepy.
Believe me, you do not want a bunch of unaccountable telecom bureaucrats playing god with the backbone. You want a free market making these decisions.
I hear the same thing everyday from the business community, except about the comparative lax proletarian crime enforcement. I guess it depends what side of the fence you stand on.
Hah! True, but I'm not sure it's necessary to throw up hands without being able to understand whether blue collar or white collar criminals do more time versus the cost of their crimes to society.:) One can simply read these things, or ask a prosecutor.
I will say there's an emotional reaction when someone breaks into your house to steal $200, which just isn't there when someone makes a phone call to cause $2000 of my money to disappear in some more abstract, complicated way. Human justice is based on human emotions, cultural and traditional ideas of fair play, no way around it.
Then again, for most of human history that's involved things like monarchs and the Auto de fe.:) We have to at least try to be rational; usually our level of success at that determines our quality of life.:)
I heartily agree about corruption. Stateside, it feels more like South America every day. "Expediters," for instance, are everywhere now - I always chuckle when I hear the word (read: bribery facilitator, usually an ex-employee of the department you're working with). As the general level of education has declined, so have standards. I really wish we could send US kids to study abroad in the 3rd world for a year so they can see what the stakes are.
Yes, we are over-regulated in many respects, and I agree specifically with the two cases you mention.
Don't even get me started on the courts. Not sure how bad it is in Australia. In the US, you can steal hundreds of thousands of dollars and simply get away with it. I've seen it happen. Why? Because the cost of civil litigation is... hundreds of thousands of dollars. Plus you have to be up for spending years in the broken civil court system. Plus you have to be prepared to lose, because the quality of the bench is not what it used to be...
Slashdot Mirror
What if it is your job not to hand over those kinds of documents to anyone besides maybe your successor?
Not up to you. Quit if you like. Pass the written passwords (and any other of the company's property) across the table and walk out. If you want to keep your job, object in writing, get the demand in writing, and then you're free and clear. Feel free to become a whistleblower to your board/owner/press/police/etc. In fact, I encourage it.
Passwords are intellectual property and governed under the Work for Hire provisions of copyright law.
Don't take my word for it. Ask an attorney.
Or just ask yourself how you ever replace your network or system admins if they don't feel like letting you?
This one. There are others as well.
Defense counsel can and do say anything that comes into their heads that may help their clients. In this case, it's a dubious opinion about sentencing. Go see what Charles Manson's or Bernie Maddoff's defense attorneys suggested about their cases.
Please use "IANAL" or "I am not an attorney" when dispensing bogus legal advice, thanks.
Sure.
But don't take my word on it. Ask a lawyer.
Or just ask yourself how you ever replace your system or network administrator, if you're not entitled to your own passwords?
Nope. Just quit. Only thing is don't try to steal anything on the way out the door. Including intellectual property such as passwords, which are your employer's under Work for Hire rules.
Summary of the law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire
Not tricky at all (I hope).
If they ask you to do something illegal, document it as best you can and quit. Call the authorities.
If asked to publish the passwords, he should contact the authorities and the media. He can quit at any time - he need only write down the passwords on paper, hand them to his boss, and then walk out. If you don't want to quit, and you're asked to do anything dumb, object in writing, get the instructions in writing, and then do as you're told. You're free and clear.
The remainder of your examples are redundant - they all fall under this principle.
There is a line of negligence over which you can't go, even if your boss tells you to.
Certainly. You need not take any affirmative action you don't want to (some slight exceptions here, i.e. drafted into the military). You can quit any time. When you leave, you only need to give to your employers all materials of theirs that you have. This is anything you created as works for hire, including passwords.
If you don't do that, you are breaking the law, and you go to jail, just like this guy.
I'm not saying that this case is on the far side of that line - we don't have the details - but perhaps the admin felt it was.
Doesn't matter what you feel. The rules are simple. Follow them, and the bad guys get in trouble. You can even help. Break them, and you go to jail.
Perhaps he felt it would be negligent to share those passwords, and would hurt (for example) taxpayers whose data was stored.
Great story for the press, once you're at your next job. Happens all the time.
I think the prosecution should have to prove that he refused to share the passwords out of some malicious intention, as opposed to because he thought sharing them would be negligent.
No. Wrong.
It is not as simple as schneir makes out.
Yes, it is. Ask a lawyer if you don't believe me.
There is indeed a legal basis for this, used every day in the workplace, called "Work for Hire." There are other arguments as well, but this is the most obvious one. Configurations, including security configurations, including passwords, are all the property of your employer.
Please don't give people bogus legal advice without even admitting you are not a lawyer.
And I say again, how do you ever replace your network admin if they need not give up your passwords?
As for the rest of the charges, I've already said, "At the most, there are some mistakes in ancillary parts of the charges against him (re. modems), which is unimportant to the main issue." So on this we agree.
Here is how it works:
If your boss wants to do something stupid, put your objection in writing, get his or her insistence in writing, and then you are free and clear. No one can hold you responsible for what happens. If you're terminated wrongly or even just discriminated against as a result of your boss's documented incompetence, you can sue, and with this kind of evidence, you will win.
It's not that complicated a system and it works, if not perfectly, at least reasonably well.
If you think you can keep your employer's property because "you know better what to do with it than them," you will wind up in the cell next to this guy. Please ask a lawyer if you don't believe me.
I hate to say it, but these stories only reinforce for me that Childs is likely guilty.
It seems even clearer that he really did keep passwords to himself, and when asked, refused to hand them over to his management.
Management can ask for them (how can they ever replace a network admin, otherwise?) and they can ask you to hand them over to anyone they say. As Schneier says, they belong to your employer, not you.
These articles imply that it's not "good practice" to give passwords out. If that's really his defense, it's specious and deceptive. If your boss demands a password, you have to give it, by law. If he demands you give it to another person, or 20 other people, you have to give it, by law.
If they do something stupid with it, then maybe _they_ end up in jail. If you want, you can even try catching them at it, being a whistle-blower, help them along with that process. But that's _not_ your problem, as an admin.
I just get the sense of a tense guy who had a personality conflict with his boss (who may have been an ass, or not), and who let his emotions carry him over into criminal conduct. At the most, there are some mistakes in ancillary parts of the charges against him (re. modems), which is unimportant to the main issue.
You're right of course.
All joking aside, the underlying point is how easy it is to "extract" a password from a person or organization, by means both violent and non-. In the average company, they're written down all over the place. Especially if "password strength" or "freshness" rules have been enabled and thus have made passwords more difficult to remember.
I believe this is why, given the complexity, risks, and performance penalties involved in full-disk encryption, most companies opt for hardware-level locks instead.
For instance, in any Thinkpad from the last decade, one sets the hard disk password. No actual encryption is performed on the platter, but the hard drive firmware will simply refuse to initialize without the password. Simply removing the various batteries will not work. Its beyond the means of all but a very few to read data off of a platter without the assistance of the drive electronics. So in practice this security measure is enough to stymie almost anyone but an organized, well-funded, and technically skilled attacker. Beating the lock involves destruction of the drive, so he/she will be interested in data, rather than a quick sale on the black market. The same type who would find it relatively easy to find an encryption key, by any number of means (usually not needing to resort to wrenches :).
At the same time, this method is available off the shelf, has no performance penalties, no additional risks to data loss, etc.
Google reveals brisk forum traffic by frustrated laptop thieves who would like to unbrick quantities of certain unfortunately locked hard drives. I would even speculate the prevalence of HD locks has deterred laptop theft overall (at least, of certain brands where the lock is commonly used, i.e. Thinkpads vs. Macbooks).
Believe it or not, I'm not really advocating taking fewer security measures. In fact, I hope ultimately we do make strong encryption commonplace. Ideally the drive manufacturers will support it with dedicated hardware as a value add. I suspect the primary reason this hasn't been done already is politics. I'm only saying that, sadly, it provides a great false sense of security. Without being accompanied by elaborate and harrowing human practices today practiced only by organized crime and certain branches of the government, full drive encryption does relatively little more for your data security than simply enabling the HD lock in your BIOS.
Let me explain to you how this works. In pictures:
http://xkcd.com/538/
I completely agree with you. Force is the great evil. We should never use force to stop Michael Dell from doing what he likes. Obviously, people never need to be supervised or corrected by force, since they always act on their own best interests, which of course benefits everyone, and this leads to utopia.
I'm sure you also agree that it's wrong to use force to prevent people from crossing national borders. Obviously, if a toaster or a pair of jeans crosses a border, that is free trade. Those shoes, they are free to go where they will. The market in goods is perfect!
Unfortunately the evil governments of the world continue to use force to rig the market for labor.
But why does it matter where you live, you ask? Aren't all nations the same?
Well, every country can set its own laws. Do you agree so far? As it happens, some countries may mandate fire exits, public schools, courts, standing armies, food and drug administrations, police forces, including ones that function on a basis other than bribery. Other countries may skip these expensive optional extras.
We used to have laws that tried to create equality as these nations traded with each other. Free trade with a country with slaves picking cotton, for instance, might have an adverse effect on the economies of nations where slavery was illegal, for instance. But we no longer indulge in such foolishness. Thank God, Michael Dell is free shop the laws of the world, to get his computers made in the cheapest labor hell hole he can find.
His workers, however, cannot leave that hell hole and shop for the nations and laws which they might prefer.
I am sure you agree, this is a great evil, and once it is ended and there are no more national restrictions on immigration, then we will truly have a perfect, functional market for labor as well as goods!
I assume Michael Dell would hop the fence to live in the USA if he wasn't born in it. Or perhaps his mother would have to find a citizen to marry. Because when you luck into a nation like the US, hardly anyone in his family will have to die in a chemical plant explosion or beg on the street after they lost one of their arms "in the machine." Since he was born here, he did not have to support his family by working in a factory from the age of 8. He was even able to attend school until his twenties!
I am sure that the sweet life of an American is a complete coincidence, though, and the fact that the world's happiest, wealthiest nations have relatively socialist laws is a coincidence. I, like you, continue to ignore these things and anticipate the coming of a libertarian objectivist utopia any day now. I just hope I can get a visa in the country where it happens!
What's the effect of the end of American Economic Hegemony on the IT industry?
Roughly a year ago I was hiring as quickly as possible, and so were most of the people I knew. Software devs, Ops, PMs, technical writers, IA's, front-end guys, the whole gamut. Sure, I focused on the top end in terms of experience, but it's not a rigid requirement, and I like bright kids out of school (or even still in school). I was one once, and I did pretty well by the people who hired me, way back when.
I can tell you I'm not hiring today. That's just an anecdote. More interesting is this discussion, which seems to be (if you believe everyone) chocked full of other managers. None of them have asked for the kid's contact info. No one on Slashdot wants him. That's a lot more than an anecdote.
Of course you should keep busy in the meantime with unpaid work. That's widely given but good advice.
Not sure how long this will last for. For the record, I'm one of those who's not sure we should even expect a "recovery" at all in our lifetime, at least in the sense to which Americans have become accustomed in the past.
Should that circuit judge be able to keep their job?
After all, he's blatantly participating in a cover-up of illegal activities in the Arkansas state government.
There is no problem with not having them.
You can't have them in the first place.
There are hundreds of thousands of software patents now. Thousands of new ones every day. No human, no organization, can possibly know what patents cover a given piece of code.
Or do you know of a way?
Every line of code written is a ticking patent time bomb. Technically, it is impossible to write software legally. Certainly impossible for free software. Except, that is, in every other civilized country on earth, where this silly idea does not exist.
Even Microsoft ignores software patents. They hope to survive by using their own to countersue anyone who sues them. On good days, they hope the expense of all this will further reduce competition.
Unfortunately there are patent trolls who do nothing but sue others (and therefore can't be countersued for infringing)... which is getting to the logical conlcusion of this giant attorney's scam.
What's funniest about your argument is that the last 40 years of software development pretty much prove it wrong. It's been a thriving industry in which fortunes have been made while software patents have, luckily, been *mostly* been ignored.
Apple obviously does not need another way to enrich themselves - let alone one that is so unworkable as to be laughable. We all do just fine by the normal ways of competing: innovation, quality, price, copyrights, etc. Thank god, I don't need to stop everyone else from writing code with the same idea/implementation (difference?) I've used in order to make money.
Am I crazy, or is this an unskeptical report of Apple attempting to get a software patent?
Knowing Steve Jobs this is unlikely to be a defensive patent, either. He may actually expect to be able to sue people to stop writing software that seems like his software.
How sleazy. How ridiculous.
You cannot patent software. Period.
People who pretend we can are con men and shakedown artists.
I don't care if it's GIF compression or one click buying or a goddamned 4D desktop. It can not be patented.
You only have one choice: have a software industry, or have software patents.
The only reason we have anything like an industry now is that they are totally ignored and almost everyone is not attempting to enforce them. But this status quo means a goldmine for con men who do enforce them, and a hit on the economy, from all the victims, as well as those who are intimidated away from innovating or competing.
Ironic - did you read my post?
This sounds like the basest kind of scare mongering, relying on a basic ignorance of the way networks work.
I say the argument relies on ignorance. He doesn't need to be ignorant himself to make the argument (though it helps). :)
You answer that by pointing out he's got a great resume. Without anything said about the facts at hand, it's almost a non-sequitur in my book.
If I tell you I did read the article, will we argue about it? :)
Do you have any other specific points to make, other than to reiterate this quote:
The damage is going to appear inside the core internet links connecting ISPs, which will become much less responsive to load management.
OK, why? Do you know?
If you were a carrier, why would you not simply say, "OK, I'm hitting my limit, no more traffic without more money?"
You're right; "free market" is just a vague expression. What I mean by it are particular regulations that are focused on people paying the real price for what it costs to move their traffic, whatever it may be, rather than letting ISPs make dishonest deals, oversubscribing their networks, and then and then letting VPs make decisions in back rooms about whose traffic gets where its going.
I know it's hard to imagine after the last few years of FCC, but it's not that hard - it can be done. Just takes some light shining in those formerly dark corners.
I wish they taught some basic law in high school, because it would be easier to have these discussions.
Deceptive fine print actually is illegal, for instance. I'm always surprised by how many people don't know what; maybe it's the prevalence of those "deal with the devil" movies.
If the ISP advertises unlimited internet, then it is on the hook re. deceptive trade practices, unless that's actually what they're selling. The more they emphasize it, and/or the finer the fine print is, the more on the hook they are.
What constitutes common practice and ordinary fair dealing also have a major weight on the court. But with ISPs there is no track record, so many judges would probably find it harder to interpret what's right and wrong here, as opposed to a weight loss or a real estate scam.
Individuals don't sue their ISPs in civil court because it's a bit unusual for someone to have a few hundred thousand dollars (bare minimum) and a few years of their life to blow on a suit over a $30/mo injustice. That's one reason why these things are regulated to begin with. On the criminal side, the government prosecutors haven't often taken an interest yet either. That's in part because these guys would rather take their cue from the FCC on matters like this - it's novel and it's highly technical and it's supposed to be specifically regulated. Whatever the government does as a matter of policy is what we're actually discussing here.
Someone can be a god on paper, and nothing stops them from also being ignorant, mediocre, obnoxious, or a terrible judge of public policy. Unfortunately I've seen this first-hand more times than I can count, with people about 10x as big as Bennett. Sad, but there are many reasons for it.
On the other hand, if you could tell me where he's right on the facts, and I've gone wrong, that would be more helpful.
Yes. Goes to show how vague and meaningless the term "free market" has become, but you're right, you could put it exactly that way.
Point being let customers' money decide how much customers' traffic gets carried, and how reliably. Don't charge a fake price in a fraudulent deal and then do filtering based on the whim of some vice president rather than people's dollars.
For that matter, you also need regulation to force all of these wealthy monopolists to keep their books completely open, so you can be sure they are not lying about what their costs are (2nd or 3rd oldest trick in the book for a regulated, natural monopoly industry), and hurting the economy by price gouging.
A good point. I used the "free market" buzzword though the term itself is an oxymoron. :)
All markets are regulated. When it's truly free, there is no market, only the strong ruling the weak, caveman style. :) The buzzword is typically used (badly) to indicate one wants less central control; _fewer_ rules. It usually implies stupid and/or crooked rulemaking.
I would look at this like the long gone and well missed public electric utilities. When regulated well (as they usually were), the books are open, and the profits are a well-regulated single-digit percentage, after appropriate investments are maintained to serve all customers, plan for the future, etc.
In a well regulated internet "market," the key issue should not be "how well I can filter your traffic" but "how much are you charging for my traffic?"
If the telecom bureaucrats are well regulated, they will not be able to advertise falsely, enter into fraudulent contracts, and then arbitrarily filter traffic. It should be very, very difficult for them to filter while staying within the law, and they should expect fines and prison if they do the elementary and thousands year old scam ("HEY UNLIMITED USE 4GB/sec PIPE ONLY $9.99 - fine print only use 1Mb per hour or we silently cap your traffic"). In such an environment, they are forced to honestly negotiate with consumers, speak clearly about what they are selling, and there is a transparent process where they charge enough for it that they make a good profit for themselves and their investors.
And by "good profit" I mean not using their natural monopoly to price gouge - a nostalgic ideal that I sometimes wonder if anyone even remembers. We certainly know exactly what they do if not regulated properly. This is from the people that brought you the tale of the 5 cent, no 10 cent, no 20 cent text messages...
This sounds like the basest kind of scare mongering, relying on a basic ignorance of the way networks work.
UDP is not any less filterable than TCP. To even make this argument, the reasoning is so contorted as to be silly. In either case, one uses a router to inspect packets and decide what to do with them. ISPs will simply go as deep through the envelopes as they like; they already do. With that knowledge they will do whatever is allowed by law. At present, almost anything is. If they abuse that power too foolishly, then it will start to be taken away from them.
And in the meantime, whoever they filter will tweak to retaliate, and it will always be a race. As far as I can see, this is just the ISPs (or their proxies) stopping at one random lap and crying how unfair it all is.
Why ignore the real issue here? If you sold a teenager in Topeka unlimited use of a large pipe, but now cannot handle her actual unlimited use of her large pipe, then you just need to start cutting better deals.
It's as simple as that.
If the teenager cannot actually use her fat pipe, 100% of the time, then stop lying about what it is you have sold to her. Either charge more or advertise less. It's as simple as that.
When I as a CEO, and millions of others like me, buy #MB upstream and #MB downstream, and utilize it 100%, 24/7, no one quakes over the calamity of the internet backbone melting down.
All of this discussion over filtering is really a discussion of pricing. And the fact that we are talking about it in the wrong terms is creepy.
Believe me, you do not want a bunch of unaccountable telecom bureaucrats playing god with the backbone. You want a free market making these decisions.
For more information, please see the public service announcement, Sexual Harrassment and You.
I hear the same thing everyday from the business community, except about the comparative lax proletarian crime enforcement. I guess it depends what side of the fence you stand on.
Hah! True, but I'm not sure it's necessary to throw up hands without being able to understand whether blue collar or white collar criminals do more time versus the cost of their crimes to society. :) One can simply read these things, or ask a prosecutor.
I will say there's an emotional reaction when someone breaks into your house to steal $200, which just isn't there when someone makes a phone call to cause $2000 of my money to disappear in some more abstract, complicated way. Human justice is based on human emotions, cultural and traditional ideas of fair play, no way around it.
Then again, for most of human history that's involved things like monarchs and the Auto de fe. :) We have to at least try to be rational; usually our level of success at that determines our quality of life. :)
I heartily agree about corruption. Stateside, it feels more like South America every day. "Expediters," for instance, are everywhere now - I always chuckle when I hear the word (read: bribery facilitator, usually an ex-employee of the department you're working with). As the general level of education has declined, so have standards. I really wish we could send US kids to study abroad in the 3rd world for a year so they can see what the stakes are.
Yes, we are over-regulated in many respects, and I agree specifically with the two cases you mention.
Don't even get me started on the courts. Not sure how bad it is in Australia. In the US, you can steal hundreds of thousands of dollars and simply get away with it. I've seen it happen. Why? Because the cost of civil litigation is... hundreds of thousands of dollars. Plus you have to be up for spending years in the broken civil court system. Plus you have to be prepared to lose, because the quality of the bench is not what it used to be...