"phishing emails that coerced NRC employees" . . . Email doesn't FORCE a person to do something, or COMPEL obedience. Convince, mislead, trick, confuse someone into doing something, sure. My point is, don't blame the emails - assume that something labeled "nuclear" is a tempting target - blame people ignorant enough (or blame training so insufficient) as to fall for such a ruse, and security lax enough to let the action occur.
Oddly, not original. I worked for a company specializing in a particular business utility segment, the market leader in mainframe software at the time, which was contracted by a minicomputer company to release a version of the business utility for that minicomputer line. Flat fee plus royalty on sales, and the item was already on the price list. The guy who negotiated that contract got a big bonus. What nobody realized until 2 years later was that to support an iron-clad policy of never discounting their hardware, the minicomputer salespeople had flexibility to discount *software* - like, say, utilities. Our product, 10x or more the performance of the previous in-house release, was sold for a dollar. Another layoff story.:-)
Second the motion. Though my herniated discs may be in different positions than yours. A recliner is very comfortable while I'm still, and then when I try to get up I pay for it.
At the end of the day, it is humans that control the bots.
I'm picturing you delivering this speech from a lectern in a 1950s sci-fi movie, and right at the end of this sentence the music gets really foreboding. And maybe even some heckler asks: "Yes, but for how long?"
But do you really want bob to be working 0 hours and have jack working 60-80 all the time?
Well . . . if bob is incompetent and turns out shoddy work, and jack is excellent at what he does, I'd rather hire jack. Certainly any/.er has seen the debates about the 10x programmer; we all know people who can't cook and people who can, or people who can make music and people who you would pay to stay silent. I used to carpool with a woman engineer who bought inexpensive clothing and re-tailored it so that she looked 1000% couture; I, on the other hand, can just about fix a button on my shirt. There's a bell curve in every skill, and at least 50% of bobs and jacks are below average.
Welcome to the Matrix. Why not use it for good? There was a science fiction story from the 60s or 70s about elderly infirm being plugged in to fantasy virtual worlds as their bodies were tended to, with the concern that their minds seemed to be going - until someone "visiting" an elder relative retired professor (using a temporary headset) realizes that her mind is going because she's BORED. Policy change time! The next time he "visits", the elder is working papers and calculator at a desk with a blackboard behind her (hey, old story), doing real and practical work in the purely mental domain, unencumbered by the condition of her real-world body. They go to "dinner" with a wave of a hand: "Oh, I know the food's not there, but it feels like it tastes good, and besides, this place has live music!" because other electronic citizens are "playing". It's not quite the Singularity, but it's heading there.
It's one thing to read about finding traces of ancient civilization using new RADAR and LIDAR technology over the South American jungle, a huge area where ground travel is rare and difficult; it's another to find "new" ancient ruins (not so ruined!) in a mostly modern country like Greece. Also, as with so many other constructs, impressive to see how much was done with sheer muscle power (including animals) and what we consider a low level of technology.
As a sysadmin, running the current version -1 is the safe bet for most businesses. The problem is that few businesses have an upgrade path, policy or methodology so you end up being current version -2 or -3...
That tradition goes back to mainframes. One difference is that in the IBM mainframe days, a "version" came out every blue moon, thoroughly tested by an itty bitty monopoly, and justifying similar thorough testing by users; whereas today a "version" can arrive every few days (or faster for people who watch commits to the archive) and testing would almost be continuous.
It's like if your car wasn't acting right, and you took it to a mechanic, and he told you, "just read the fucking manual you idiot." Of course, that doesn't happen, because most-if-not-all mechanics aren't so arrogant they think everyone should know how to fix their own car.
Take it to the next step: Mechanics have realized that the benefit of others not knowing how to fix cars is that Mechanics have a skill for which they can ask to be paid. They can be as arrogant as they want about their superior car knowledge, as long as they don't tick off the paying customers. The programmer who has thrown his incomplete hack on a server and called it FOSS is not getting paid, and sees no reason to put in any "extra" effort.
If I might review your scenario from a slightly different perspective, we might see why Linux has still not taken over the desktop.
The programmer has implemented something that doesn't fully work, because it's "good enough" and/or the programmer can't be bothered to make it right. The writer, like a normal user, is surprised when a casual experiment fails dismally. The programmer might (in a dream world) be embarrassed by the poor quality of his/her work, or (more likely) reacts with anger at the implied accusation of low quality (rather than accept the input as a feature request/prioritization), which anger is reflected back by the writer inferring that the programmer is not just uncaring but incompetent.
Someone offering to handle documentation *is* offering an altruistic gift of time and effort, just like any other open source contributor, though expecting gratefulness is sort of hopeless, mainly because most programmers would *not* see the documentation as an aspect of the project at all, but as a separate afterthought.
Normal people want stuff to work, and they don't want to remanufacture stuff first to make it work. Normal people assume that "published" or "released" stuff is ready to be used, not an experiment or a hobby project. Yes, they're getting stuff for free; but they're still comparing it against other stuff where people worked on the dull parts as well as the fun parts.
"Honest, I only added a few symbols! Why doesn't the program work anymore?" Besides, computer science used to be part of either math or engineering, depending in which school you went to; we could just go back to that and suggest that it be a REAL SUBJECT instead of just tossing web images together and claiming you "wrote" something.
You've hidden bombs on public transit all over the country, and the list of where you hid them is stored on a server in the UK; should the government be able to get a warrant for that information?
On "24", someone would just hang you over the side of a building and threaten to drop you.
Microsoft is an American company. The court is asking Microsoft for license and registration, whichever pocket it happens to be in at the moment (oops, I meant email and whichever server). That's different from you being a Dutch citizen (I assume if you are from Amsterdam) and being arrested for doing something *here*. The comparison would be, if a Dutch court wanted to talk to you about your account on a US game company's servers.
...and the extended commercial for the Elven Rafting Riveride at Universal Orlando
This. This is what has taken me out of the "suspension of disbelief" in each of the first two Hobbit segments - the feeling that I'm looking at the preview of a ride, designed for that purpose rather than designed to be a film.
Do you also remember Nasser saying things like “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel." and "We will not accept any coexistence with Israel" and ordering the UN peacekeepers out of the way? And moving troops and tanks up to Israel's southern border?
Let's imagine your neighbor spends his days sitting on his porch steps, polishing his guns and cursing at you and your family every time he sees you. Well, that's his right, free speech, his property, yadda yadda. Then he starts pointing his gun at you and your family while he talks about how much he'd like to kill all of you. In the US there should be *some* kind of civil action one could take, but countries don't answer to policemen, so let's assume you can't call anyone. How tenable would you find this situation?
It's not a token. It's a freely elected representation. There are also Druze and Christian members. Are you suggesting that a government isn't free unless it's a minority in its own country?
Correction: They are able to exercise that right - they could marry one person of the opposite gender. The fact that they don't *want* to be married to a person of the opposite gender is their own limitation, and the fact that much of society has come around to the idea of changing those rules to remove the "opposite gender" restriction - thereby overturning centuries of tradition in order to make life better for a minority - shows that we are making progress.
Are you encouraging people to use hostages as shields? Are you encouraging people to deliberately endanger their own civilians by firing from within a crowd? Of course, nobody can tell who fired from within the crowd, because there are no uniforms or insignia.
Seems to me that the Palestinians belonging to Hamas put an unequal value on Hamas and non-Hamas life. Like a gang, or a movie Mafia family, only the members are "real people", and everyone else is just a nonentity to be used or risked at whim. They're almost as dangerous to their neighbors as to their enemies.
False flag? probably no need. I'll bet there are enough hotheads that they have trouble controlling everyone who has access to the various stockpiles. As for "laughable" . . . Those missiles may not be guided or accurate, but I still wouldn't want one coming my way. Neither would anyone want people in my neighborhood, 15 miles from the Hudson River, shooting them at New York City. The difference is that here, neighbors and witnesses would be calling law enforcement, and local and state police would come hunting down the troublemakers before the NYC police helicopters showed up.
I wish it were Pascal. Or at least some decent extensions, and some *real* macros, updating C. And maybe a little learning from history: I could do things in IBM Assembler macros in the 1970s that you still can't do in C++ templates. We spent too much time being cool and iconoclastic and "new" that we threw out the good with the bad - except C, which has hung around forever and you STILL don't know how big your values are.
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"phishing emails that coerced NRC employees" . . . Email doesn't FORCE a person to do something, or COMPEL obedience. Convince, mislead, trick, confuse someone into doing something, sure. My point is, don't blame the emails - assume that something labeled "nuclear" is a tempting target - blame people ignorant enough (or blame training so insufficient) as to fall for such a ruse, and security lax enough to let the action occur.
Oddly, not original. I worked for a company specializing in a particular business utility segment, the market leader in mainframe software at the time, which was contracted by a minicomputer company to release a version of the business utility for that minicomputer line. Flat fee plus royalty on sales, and the item was already on the price list. The guy who negotiated that contract got a big bonus. What nobody realized until 2 years later was that to support an iron-clad policy of never discounting their hardware, the minicomputer salespeople had flexibility to discount *software* - like, say, utilities. Our product, 10x or more the performance of the previous in-house release, was sold for a dollar. Another layoff story. :-)
Second the motion. Though my herniated discs may be in different positions than yours. A recliner is very comfortable while I'm still, and then when I try to get up I pay for it.
At the end of the day, it is humans that control the bots.
I'm picturing you delivering this speech from a lectern in a 1950s sci-fi movie, and right at the end of this sentence the music gets really foreboding. And maybe even some heckler asks: "Yes, but for how long?"
And at what point do they realize, like offshore workers, that they don't really need the managers?
But do you really want bob to be working 0 hours and have jack working 60-80 all the time?
Well . . . if bob is incompetent and turns out shoddy work, and jack is excellent at what he does, I'd rather hire jack. Certainly any /.er has seen the debates about the 10x programmer; we all know people who can't cook and people who can, or people who can make music and people who you would pay to stay silent. I used to carpool with a woman engineer who bought inexpensive clothing and re-tailored it so that she looked 1000% couture; I, on the other hand, can just about fix a button on my shirt. There's a bell curve in every skill, and at least 50% of bobs and jacks are below average.
Maybe, just maybe, the universe doesn't need quite so many people.
Welcome to the Matrix. Why not use it for good? There was a science fiction story from the 60s or 70s about elderly infirm being plugged in to fantasy virtual worlds as their bodies were tended to, with the concern that their minds seemed to be going - until someone "visiting" an elder relative retired professor (using a temporary headset) realizes that her mind is going because she's BORED. Policy change time! The next time he "visits", the elder is working papers and calculator at a desk with a blackboard behind her (hey, old story), doing real and practical work in the purely mental domain, unencumbered by the condition of her real-world body. They go to "dinner" with a wave of a hand: "Oh, I know the food's not there, but it feels like it tastes good, and besides, this place has live music!" because other electronic citizens are "playing". It's not quite the Singularity, but it's heading there.
It's one thing to read about finding traces of ancient civilization using new RADAR and LIDAR technology over the South American jungle, a huge area where ground travel is rare and difficult; it's another to find "new" ancient ruins (not so ruined!) in a mostly modern country like Greece. Also, as with so many other constructs, impressive to see how much was done with sheer muscle power (including animals) and what we consider a low level of technology.
As a sysadmin, running the current version -1 is the safe bet for most businesses. The problem is that few businesses have an upgrade path, policy or methodology so you end up being current version -2 or -3 ...
That tradition goes back to mainframes. One difference is that in the IBM mainframe days, a "version" came out every blue moon, thoroughly tested by an itty bitty monopoly, and justifying similar thorough testing by users; whereas today a "version" can arrive every few days (or faster for people who watch commits to the archive) and testing would almost be continuous.
... generate documentation based on the specifications and requirements.
What are these strange and mystic words you use?
It's like if your car wasn't acting right, and you took it to a mechanic, and he told you, "just read the fucking manual you idiot." Of course, that doesn't happen, because most-if-not-all mechanics aren't so arrogant they think everyone should know how to fix their own car.
Take it to the next step: Mechanics have realized that the benefit of others not knowing how to fix cars is that Mechanics have a skill for which they can ask to be paid. They can be as arrogant as they want about their superior car knowledge, as long as they don't tick off the paying customers. The programmer who has thrown his incomplete hack on a server and called it FOSS is not getting paid, and sees no reason to put in any "extra" effort.
If I might review your scenario from a slightly different perspective, we might see why Linux has still not taken over the desktop.
The programmer has implemented something that doesn't fully work, because it's "good enough" and/or the programmer can't be bothered to make it right. The writer, like a normal user, is surprised when a casual experiment fails dismally. The programmer might (in a dream world) be embarrassed by the poor quality of his/her work, or (more likely) reacts with anger at the implied accusation of low quality (rather than accept the input as a feature request/prioritization), which anger is reflected back by the writer inferring that the programmer is not just uncaring but incompetent.
Someone offering to handle documentation *is* offering an altruistic gift of time and effort, just like any other open source contributor, though expecting gratefulness is sort of hopeless, mainly because most programmers would *not* see the documentation as an aspect of the project at all, but as a separate afterthought.
Normal people want stuff to work, and they don't want to remanufacture stuff first to make it work. Normal people assume that "published" or "released" stuff is ready to be used, not an experiment or a hobby project. Yes, they're getting stuff for free; but they're still comparing it against other stuff where people worked on the dull parts as well as the fun parts.
"Honest, I only added a few symbols! Why doesn't the program work anymore?" Besides, computer science used to be part of either math or engineering, depending in which school you went to; we could just go back to that and suggest that it be a REAL SUBJECT instead of just tossing web images together and claiming you "wrote" something.
You've hidden bombs on public transit all over the country, and the list of where you hid them is stored on a server in the UK; should the government be able to get a warrant for that information?
On "24", someone would just hang you over the side of a building and threaten to drop you.
Microsoft is an American company. The court is asking Microsoft for license and registration, whichever pocket it happens to be in at the moment (oops, I meant email and whichever server). That's different from you being a Dutch citizen (I assume if you are from Amsterdam) and being arrested for doing something *here*. The comparison would be, if a Dutch court wanted to talk to you about your account on a US game company's servers.
...and the extended commercial for the Elven Rafting Riveride at Universal Orlando
This. This is what has taken me out of the "suspension of disbelief" in each of the first two Hobbit segments - the feeling that I'm looking at the preview of a ride, designed for that purpose rather than designed to be a film.
You may have a problem. I have never found fuck boring.
Similar problem with another health club, due to a merger/acquisition. They referred it to collections before contacting the customer (me).
Do you also remember Nasser saying things like “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel." and "We will not accept any coexistence with Israel" and ordering the UN peacekeepers out of the way? And moving troops and tanks up to Israel's southern border?
Let's imagine your neighbor spends his days sitting on his porch steps, polishing his guns and cursing at you and your family every time he sees you. Well, that's his right, free speech, his property, yadda yadda. Then he starts pointing his gun at you and your family while he talks about how much he'd like to kill all of you. In the US there should be *some* kind of civil action one could take, but countries don't answer to policemen, so let's assume you can't call anyone. How tenable would you find this situation?
It's not a token. It's a freely elected representation. There are also Druze and Christian members. Are you suggesting that a government isn't free unless it's a minority in its own country?
Correction: They are able to exercise that right - they could marry one person of the opposite gender. The fact that they don't *want* to be married to a person of the opposite gender is their own limitation, and the fact that much of society has come around to the idea of changing those rules to remove the "opposite gender" restriction - thereby overturning centuries of tradition in order to make life better for a minority - shows that we are making progress.
Are you encouraging people to use hostages as shields? Are you encouraging people to deliberately endanger their own civilians by firing from within a crowd? Of course, nobody can tell who fired from within the crowd, because there are no uniforms or insignia.
Seems to me that the Palestinians belonging to Hamas put an unequal value on Hamas and non-Hamas life. Like a gang, or a movie Mafia family, only the members are "real people", and everyone else is just a nonentity to be used or risked at whim. They're almost as dangerous to their neighbors as to their enemies.
False flag? probably no need. I'll bet there are enough hotheads that they have trouble controlling everyone who has access to the various stockpiles. As for "laughable" . . . Those missiles may not be guided or accurate, but I still wouldn't want one coming my way. Neither would anyone want people in my neighborhood, 15 miles from the Hudson River, shooting them at New York City. The difference is that here, neighbors and witnesses would be calling law enforcement, and local and state police would come hunting down the troublemakers before the NYC police helicopters showed up.
I wish it were Pascal. Or at least some decent extensions, and some *real* macros, updating C. And maybe a little learning from history: I could do things in IBM Assembler macros in the 1970s that you still can't do in C++ templates. We spent too much time being cool and iconoclastic and "new" that we threw out the good with the bad - except C, which has hung around forever and you STILL don't know how big your values are.