Eh, in this case it isn't the fact that they're using IM, but that they were tunneling encrypted traffic outside of the company's network. In this case it was simple MSN and email. It could have very well been credit card numbers, SSNs, or a laundry list of very sensitive information. Thats beside the fact that we're required to audit our email and IM.
These same contractors just started bringing their personal laptops and connecting via their cell phones. Our managers were OK with that (noting, of course, that they were not allowed to put any company data on their personal laptops, connect those laptops to our internal network, use any thumb drives, etc).
I'm sure some manager somewhere would probably get their panties in a bunch about employees using IM, but for the most part, our management and our admins didn't want sensitive data leaking out. Thats a good thing.
You'd be surprised. Some contractors did something like this at my company in order to use IM software and read external email. They were quickly found out by our admins, and told to knock it off or they would get terminated. And this is a very big company.
Man hunting them down to extinction is natural selection. We are not magically separate from the animal kingdom, and there is nothing particularly interesting about us that makes our actions somehow distinct from other natural processes.
I can't follow the link at the moment, but is this the same logic as last time? You know, where they say that, because Nintendo doesn't disclose enough information, they'll rank Nintendo as low as possible (and, hey, the press that they get because of the Wii's popularity is nice too). Will they ignore the fact that the Wii uses a fraction of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3's power? Basically, are they whoring for more press like the last time they published this study?
Lately, Greenpeace doesn't have a lot of legitimacy with me. And of course, saying that, I'll probably have a couple of people screaming about how I don't care about the environment. Seems theres always at least one guy who think that Greenpeace represents the entire environmental movement.
My work laptop is encrypted and I'm not allowed to let other people use or view the material on it. Since I work for a bank, it can potentially have things like account numbers, social security numbers, and other very sensitive data on it. I'm pretty sure giving a Customs official free reign over it would be a violation of our security policies. I wonder what would happen if I took that through customs and they wanted me to log in so they could examine it.
Luckily I don't have to take my work with me in and out of the country, but what about the higher level people who do?
Set up a Windows partition and a Linux partition, set it to boot to Windows by default, keep all your data on the Linux partition. How well would that work, I wonder.
What caused me pain was the fact that, when I something good happened or I achieved something, the kudos of that achievement was given to God. "Praise God for his blessing." When something bad happened it was either, "You did something bad and God is punishing you, even though I don't know what that bad thing is," or, "You're not a good enough person and God is trying to improve you by trials." That had a profound impact on my self-esteem.
The reality was that I was a good person, and that sometimes bad things just happen for no reason, and not because theres some ultimate force trying to push my life in some direction. It meant that I had control over my life. That I could be proud of my achievements. That I could ask myself "Was there anything that I could have done to avoid this bad thing? Was it just a random event that I should just accept, so I can move on?" The improvement in peace-of-mind was palpable.
I'm sure your time was probably much harder than mine. Honestly my "challenges" seem silly to me in retrospect, so I'm sure that you've dealt with a lot more. Losing my religion certainly helped me to feel better about my life, especially during the bad times. I don't know what you believe, but I hope things look up for you.
So you hate the Catholic Church because their God (who happens to also be the Jew's God, Christian's God, and, come right down to it, the Muslim's God), drowned thousands of innocent children in a tsunami. Nevermind that He did NOT drown several billion other children that day.
I'm not sure if you're being serious, because my sarcasm detector is wonky, but are you seriously suggesting that not committing heinous atrocities is an admirable quality in a all-powerful being? That'd be like praising my friend John because, as far as I know, he hasn't killed anyone and dumped their bodies in the river. Or maybe like people who proudly state that they take care of their children, as if not leaving them to die in ditches is some extraordinary praise-worthy quality. Its kind of expected that normal people not do horrible things, much less omniscient, omnipotent beings.
Personally I'd like to describe God in terms other than "Allows thousands of people to die for no reason, but at least he isn't genocidal." Well as long as you ignore several books of the Old Testament.
Personally I got tired how all the good things that happened in my life were God's blessings and how all the bad things were just part of some incomprehensible plan. A lot of non-believers like to talk about how religion is popular because it gives people hope, but for me it was a millstone around my neck. Imagine the kind of self-esteem issues one develops after being repeatedly told that you didn't really earn the good things in your life, and that the bad things in your life happened for some reasons beyond your comprehension.
I feel a lot better now that my life is my own to control. And its nice to know that sometimes bad things happen for no reason, and not because I've inexplicably displeased some supreme being.
Sorry, kind of off-topic, but I felt like sharing. The kind of logic you outlined in your post is probably the #1 reason I'm no longer religious. I always find it amusing that so many people view religion as comforting, since it was quite the opposite for me.
I don't see how he was implying that they weren't human. The fact that they are worthy of the job does not change the fact that you are likely to be replaced with that person. Being concerned about H1-B workers doesn't mean that you're bigoted, just that you recognize that the possibility of being replaced by one makes IT work less attractive. Now if he'd launched into a diatribe about foreign workers "stealing" jobs from Americans, that would be another thing, but he didn't.
For example, if I were to say that I don't think its a good idea to start a manufacturing company because of Chinese manufacturing, its not a slight against the Chinese, but rather a recognition of the simple fact that they can do it cheaper than me, and thus it would be very difficult for me to compete.
Yep, humans have an incredible capacity to compartmentalize their thoughts and beliefs. Most people have things they're rational about and things they're irrational about. I guess the problem comes when some of the more hardcore evangelical atheists state that religion is proof that a person is completely irrational and unfit for, say, political positions or scientific pursuits.
Studying blackholes takes away billions that could be used on finding new eco-friendly energy sources. The billions wasted on finding water on Mars could be spent on purifying water in Africa.
Throwing money at a problem doesn't necessarily fix it faster or even fix it at all. Africa's problems haven't been fixed by throwing money at it. Their problems are mostly political and somewhat aggravated by our trade and economic policies in the first world. I haven't seen any evidence or reasoning that throwing NASA's budget at the problem would help.
Eco-friendly energy had been traditionally killed by the NIMBY problem, politics, and cost-effective technology. Now that the technology has improved and the environment is being put in greater focus, we're starting to see more of a push towards greener technology. I don't see how applying NASA's budget towards this could have helped, especially since NASA is one of the very few organizations left with blue-skies research programs, which are needed for more forward-thinking developments.
Again, more money does not mean more improvement. Look up the "Law of Diminishing Returns," or maybe take a course in economics.
Space exploration is a waste of real resources that are needed here. What does having a better understanding of the universe get us, nothing.
A better understanding of the universe is what drives scientific and technological development. I personally think GPS and satellite communication is pretty darn useful. The problem with blue-skies research is that you never know if you're going to run into dead-ends or come across the next big breakthrough. I'm guessing there were plenty of people who didn't see the value in quantum physics research, but its certainly been a great boon to mankind.
By the way, you are the only person I have heard of who thinks that we cannot get two people to agree on feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, or trying to spread peace.
Yeah people agree if you simplify the question to the point of ridiculousness. Now ask those two people how they would like to go about feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, or spreading peace. I'm pretty sure they'll have very different opinions on the matter. You have some people who like to focus on handouts, and other people who would rather focus on "teach a man to fish" methods like the OLPC.
But then hey, everyone has the right to an opinion. Just so we sure on that, that right did not come from space exploration, but an exploration here on earth.
I don't see how the two are mutually exclusive. Well, I guess it is if you have an overly simplistic, zero-sum view of the world. Luckily a lot of people don't have that problem.
Or would you like to provide evidence that the few billion we put into space research would make a real dent at any of the worlds problems (which are, again, mostly political)? As it is now, your argument is entirely emotion-based.
Or giving Bush a blank check to wage war for that matter. Not that I think that the Democrats are worse than the Republicans, on whole. I think the Republicans, as an organization, are definitely more corrupt. But the Democrats failed to take a solid stand when it mattered, and I'm not going to forget that, even if I vote Democrat out of necessity.
Vote for anyone but Republicans in 2008 and vote out everyone who had anything to do with the poorly named Patriot act.
Personally, the voting record is more important to me than whether they have an R or D beside their name. If that means that I'm voting in Republicans then so be it. I'd rather have a Republican who refused to vote for the Patriot Act than a Democrat who dropped to his knees and pucked up to the Bush administration. Not that there are many Republicans who fit that description...
Programming languages benefit from the network affect. Popular languages have more libraries written, more resources available online, and more skilled job applicants to work on the software. I would think that while some carpenters tools are better than others, it doesn't really benefit a carpenter if 1000 people are using his particular tool rather than 1 million.
Open source does not have a corporate cost associated with it.
Yes it does. The biggest contributors to Open Source and Free Software are large corporations like Red Hat, IBM, Novell, and Sun. They do it because they don't make their money on that software specifically, but products and services based on it. By sharing contributions, they also receive contributions in return, and are able to make a better product, and more money.
Companies do pay for it. They pay for it because they get value in return.
My girlfriend is currently living in another country. If I connect via an IM program, then I can talk to her for the cost of my unlimited data plan. If I call her up or send an SMS then I have to pay.
Of course, when I'm at home we use Skype. But usually I have to chat with her when I'm working (code compiling!), and my work blocks all IM, so I have to use my phone. Luckily the nature of IM also means that I can work and talk to her at the same time.
I kinda figure that if God has enough of a sense of humor to prank us by burying dinosaur fossils, he's probably not going to be that uptight about the requirements for getting into heaven.
Well, that is if I believed in biblical literalism. Or God.
Hah, thank god someone else thinks this way. More often than not, the people holding open the door end up blocking it in awkward ways, or otherwise end up causing more time/trouble getting in. My coworkers always comment on how rude it is that I don't hold open doors, even when I point out that its just causing more trouble, or that they're perfectly capable of opening their own doors. Of course, the exception is when they have their hands full, security doors (for people I know), etc.
I guess I just feel like making worthless gestures for the sake of being polite is a waste of everyone's time.
Of course, I also end up holding doors open for my girlfriend, so I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite like that.:)
Fair enough. I personally have no problem with Scientology's actual beliefs. They're not really any more outlandish than any other religion. I have a problem with the way they behave in our society. Specifically their policy of Fair Game and Disconnection, which exist to harass (and some would claim physically harm) detractors, and to isolate their members from any support network than Scientology.
Groups that practice the beliefs without misbehaving, I would consider a full-fledged religion. I have no problem with them. See the Free Zone, for example.
What, the Catholic church is still running the inquisition? They're still torturing people? Or are you trying to compare behavior of a religion today with behavior of a religion hundreds of years in the past?
I'm not against criticism of religion, but at least try to come up with something that isn't hundreds of years old.
Slashdot Mirror
Eh, in this case it isn't the fact that they're using IM, but that they were tunneling encrypted traffic outside of the company's network. In this case it was simple MSN and email. It could have very well been credit card numbers, SSNs, or a laundry list of very sensitive information. Thats beside the fact that we're required to audit our email and IM.
These same contractors just started bringing their personal laptops and connecting via their cell phones. Our managers were OK with that (noting, of course, that they were not allowed to put any company data on their personal laptops, connect those laptops to our internal network, use any thumb drives, etc).
I'm sure some manager somewhere would probably get their panties in a bunch about employees using IM, but for the most part, our management and our admins didn't want sensitive data leaking out. Thats a good thing.
You'd be surprised. Some contractors did something like this at my company in order to use IM software and read external email. They were quickly found out by our admins, and told to knock it off or they would get terminated. And this is a very big company.
Man hunting them down to extinction is natural selection. We are not magically separate from the animal kingdom, and there is nothing particularly interesting about us that makes our actions somehow distinct from other natural processes.
I can't follow the link at the moment, but is this the same logic as last time? You know, where they say that, because Nintendo doesn't disclose enough information, they'll rank Nintendo as low as possible (and, hey, the press that they get because of the Wii's popularity is nice too). Will they ignore the fact that the Wii uses a fraction of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3's power? Basically, are they whoring for more press like the last time they published this study?
Lately, Greenpeace doesn't have a lot of legitimacy with me. And of course, saying that, I'll probably have a couple of people screaming about how I don't care about the environment. Seems theres always at least one guy who think that Greenpeace represents the entire environmental movement.
They're already way ahead of you.
Obligatory Penny Arcade
That brings up an interesting point for me.
My work laptop is encrypted and I'm not allowed to let other people use or view the material on it. Since I work for a bank, it can potentially have things like account numbers, social security numbers, and other very sensitive data on it. I'm pretty sure giving a Customs official free reign over it would be a violation of our security policies. I wonder what would happen if I took that through customs and they wanted me to log in so they could examine it.
Luckily I don't have to take my work with me in and out of the country, but what about the higher level people who do?
Set up a Windows partition and a Linux partition, set it to boot to Windows by default, keep all your data on the Linux partition. How well would that work, I wonder.
I didn't have to fight off guilt either.
What caused me pain was the fact that, when I something good happened or I achieved something, the kudos of that achievement was given to God. "Praise God for his blessing." When something bad happened it was either, "You did something bad and God is punishing you, even though I don't know what that bad thing is," or, "You're not a good enough person and God is trying to improve you by trials." That had a profound impact on my self-esteem.
The reality was that I was a good person, and that sometimes bad things just happen for no reason, and not because theres some ultimate force trying to push my life in some direction. It meant that I had control over my life. That I could be proud of my achievements. That I could ask myself "Was there anything that I could have done to avoid this bad thing? Was it just a random event that I should just accept, so I can move on?" The improvement in peace-of-mind was palpable.
I'm sure your time was probably much harder than mine. Honestly my "challenges" seem silly to me in retrospect, so I'm sure that you've dealt with a lot more. Losing my religion certainly helped me to feel better about my life, especially during the bad times. I don't know what you believe, but I hope things look up for you.
So you hate the Catholic Church because their God (who happens to also be the Jew's God, Christian's God, and, come right down to it, the Muslim's God), drowned thousands of innocent children in a tsunami. Nevermind that He did NOT drown several billion other children that day.
I'm not sure if you're being serious, because my sarcasm detector is wonky, but are you seriously suggesting that not committing heinous atrocities is an admirable quality in a all-powerful being? That'd be like praising my friend John because, as far as I know, he hasn't killed anyone and dumped their bodies in the river. Or maybe like people who proudly state that they take care of their children, as if not leaving them to die in ditches is some extraordinary praise-worthy quality. Its kind of expected that normal people not do horrible things, much less omniscient, omnipotent beings.
Personally I'd like to describe God in terms other than "Allows thousands of people to die for no reason, but at least he isn't genocidal." Well as long as you ignore several books of the Old Testament.
Personally I got tired how all the good things that happened in my life were God's blessings and how all the bad things were just part of some incomprehensible plan. A lot of non-believers like to talk about how religion is popular because it gives people hope, but for me it was a millstone around my neck. Imagine the kind of self-esteem issues one develops after being repeatedly told that you didn't really earn the good things in your life, and that the bad things in your life happened for some reasons beyond your comprehension.
I feel a lot better now that my life is my own to control. And its nice to know that sometimes bad things happen for no reason, and not because I've inexplicably displeased some supreme being.
Sorry, kind of off-topic, but I felt like sharing. The kind of logic you outlined in your post is probably the #1 reason I'm no longer religious. I always find it amusing that so many people view religion as comforting, since it was quite the opposite for me.
I don't see how he was implying that they weren't human. The fact that they are worthy of the job does not change the fact that you are likely to be replaced with that person. Being concerned about H1-B workers doesn't mean that you're bigoted, just that you recognize that the possibility of being replaced by one makes IT work less attractive. Now if he'd launched into a diatribe about foreign workers "stealing" jobs from Americans, that would be another thing, but he didn't.
For example, if I were to say that I don't think its a good idea to start a manufacturing company because of Chinese manufacturing, its not a slight against the Chinese, but rather a recognition of the simple fact that they can do it cheaper than me, and thus it would be very difficult for me to compete.
Yep, humans have an incredible capacity to compartmentalize their thoughts and beliefs. Most people have things they're rational about and things they're irrational about. I guess the problem comes when some of the more hardcore evangelical atheists state that religion is proof that a person is completely irrational and unfit for, say, political positions or scientific pursuits.
:)
Not to start a flame war.
Studying blackholes takes away billions that could be used on finding new eco-friendly energy sources. The billions wasted on finding water on Mars could be spent on purifying water in Africa.
Throwing money at a problem doesn't necessarily fix it faster or even fix it at all. Africa's problems haven't been fixed by throwing money at it. Their problems are mostly political and somewhat aggravated by our trade and economic policies in the first world. I haven't seen any evidence or reasoning that throwing NASA's budget at the problem would help.
Eco-friendly energy had been traditionally killed by the NIMBY problem, politics, and cost-effective technology. Now that the technology has improved and the environment is being put in greater focus, we're starting to see more of a push towards greener technology. I don't see how applying NASA's budget towards this could have helped, especially since NASA is one of the very few organizations left with blue-skies research programs, which are needed for more forward-thinking developments.
Again, more money does not mean more improvement. Look up the "Law of Diminishing Returns," or maybe take a course in economics.
Space exploration is a waste of real resources that are needed here. What does having a better understanding of the universe get us, nothing.
A better understanding of the universe is what drives scientific and technological development. I personally think GPS and satellite communication is pretty darn useful. The problem with blue-skies research is that you never know if you're going to run into dead-ends or come across the next big breakthrough. I'm guessing there were plenty of people who didn't see the value in quantum physics research, but its certainly been a great boon to mankind.
By the way, you are the only person I have heard of who thinks that we cannot get two people to agree on feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, or trying to spread peace.
Yeah people agree if you simplify the question to the point of ridiculousness. Now ask those two people how they would like to go about feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, or spreading peace. I'm pretty sure they'll have very different opinions on the matter. You have some people who like to focus on handouts, and other people who would rather focus on "teach a man to fish" methods like the OLPC.
But then hey, everyone has the right to an opinion. Just so we sure on that, that right did not come from space exploration, but an exploration here on earth.
I don't see how the two are mutually exclusive. Well, I guess it is if you have an overly simplistic, zero-sum view of the world. Luckily a lot of people don't have that problem.
Or would you like to provide evidence that the few billion we put into space research would make a real dent at any of the worlds problems (which are, again, mostly political)? As it is now, your argument is entirely emotion-based.
Yeah, because Doom and Doom 2 were nothing like that.
Exactly.
Or giving Bush a blank check to wage war for that matter. Not that I think that the Democrats are worse than the Republicans, on whole. I think the Republicans, as an organization, are definitely more corrupt. But the Democrats failed to take a solid stand when it mattered, and I'm not going to forget that, even if I vote Democrat out of necessity.
Vote for anyone but Republicans in 2008 and vote out everyone who had anything to do with the poorly named Patriot act.
Personally, the voting record is more important to me than whether they have an R or D beside their name. If that means that I'm voting in Republicans then so be it. I'd rather have a Republican who refused to vote for the Patriot Act than a Democrat who dropped to his knees and pucked up to the Bush administration. Not that there are many Republicans who fit that description...
Programming languages benefit from the network affect. Popular languages have more libraries written, more resources available online, and more skilled job applicants to work on the software. I would think that while some carpenters tools are better than others, it doesn't really benefit a carpenter if 1000 people are using his particular tool rather than 1 million.
Open source does not have a corporate cost associated with it.
Yes it does. The biggest contributors to Open Source and Free Software are large corporations like Red Hat, IBM, Novell, and Sun. They do it because they don't make their money on that software specifically, but products and services based on it. By sharing contributions, they also receive contributions in return, and are able to make a better product, and more money.
Companies do pay for it. They pay for it because they get value in return.
My girlfriend is currently living in another country. If I connect via an IM program, then I can talk to her for the cost of my unlimited data plan. If I call her up or send an SMS then I have to pay.
Of course, when I'm at home we use Skype. But usually I have to chat with her when I'm working (code compiling!), and my work blocks all IM, so I have to use my phone. Luckily the nature of IM also means that I can work and talk to her at the same time.
I grew up in the same circles and never heard it either. Just sayin.
Most creationists take the position that dating techniques are basically just plain wrong, and that dinosaurs died off in the flood.
I kinda figure that if God has enough of a sense of humor to prank us by burying dinosaur fossils, he's probably not going to be that uptight about the requirements for getting into heaven.
Well, that is if I believed in biblical literalism. Or God.
Hah, thank god someone else thinks this way. More often than not, the people holding open the door end up blocking it in awkward ways, or otherwise end up causing more time/trouble getting in. My coworkers always comment on how rude it is that I don't hold open doors, even when I point out that its just causing more trouble, or that they're perfectly capable of opening their own doors. Of course, the exception is when they have their hands full, security doors (for people I know), etc.
:)
I guess I just feel like making worthless gestures for the sake of being polite is a waste of everyone's time.
Of course, I also end up holding doors open for my girlfriend, so I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite like that.
Fair enough. I personally have no problem with Scientology's actual beliefs. They're not really any more outlandish than any other religion. I have a problem with the way they behave in our society. Specifically their policy of Fair Game and Disconnection, which exist to harass (and some would claim physically harm) detractors, and to isolate their members from any support network than Scientology.
Groups that practice the beliefs without misbehaving, I would consider a full-fledged religion. I have no problem with them. See the Free Zone, for example.
What, the Catholic church is still running the inquisition? They're still torturing people? Or are you trying to compare behavior of a religion today with behavior of a religion hundreds of years in the past?
I'm not against criticism of religion, but at least try to come up with something that isn't hundreds of years old.