There's only one player in that game - "You". The others are just pieces of equipment.
Or we could look at your rather unbelievable analogy. Mine was to a house with a door - fair enough, I think. When was the last time you saw a house with a sign like that on it? Where was the indication in TFA that the cafe had put up such a sign? Besides, it's painfully obvious that if someone wanted to put up a sign making it clear that the door was unlocked, and was happy to have guests, it would be something like "Please come in - all visitors welcome".
The fact you've had to resort to what is effectively pseudo-code is yet another pointer to the fact you are confusing permission in the machine sense with permission in the human sense.
I very much doubt the owner of the cafe gave the router any such instructions - more likely they just plugged it in. Don't confuse machine instructions, and the analogies we use to understand them. When you get down to it, the code running on that box has no concept of "I". Your choice of wording is quite biased towards your own argument. A more accurate description would be, "if the button is pushed then the door will open". Hence, the unlocked door.
The fact that you understand how the technicalities work does not grant you permission to enter the house. Likewise applying imprecise anthropomorphic logic to wireless router operations.
What kind of bizarre background did you have growing up, that machines can give or refuse permission in the human and / or legal sense?
Are you not capable of thinking for yourself? Perhaps don't have the social skills to instinctively understand there's difference?
I'm guessing (it's not clear whether you're any good at logic) you've heard of garbage-in, garbage-out, that computers can't actually think?
The router didn't volunteer anything. It did exactly what the manufacturer's programmers told it to do. And it doesn't say much for this guy that he didn't have the common decency to buy a coffee from this place as a gesture of appreciation, something most people could figure out for themselves as being the thing to do. Maybe he lacked a few skills too.
I really hate these pathetic attempts at poor logic / analogy. Anyone with half a brain should be capable of realising machines going through a form of handshaking protocol is not the same as the owners of said machines exchanging greetings.
To use the tired old house analogy (it's tired because people continue to be incapable of understanding the bloody obvious and so it keeps coming up), if someone's front door is unlocked, the act of the handle turning when I try it and the door subsequently opening does not represent me being given permission to trespass.
If your very first act was indeed to go into the coffeeshop and ask the owner if you were allowed, then of course it would be alright. Logging on to the network directly is a different thing.
The basic concept that owners of anything absolve other parties of all guilt if security measures are not taken is the simplest form of denying personal responsibility and accountability. It's bullshit, it's illogical, it's pathetic.
In other words - just say they were lying as if that were an interesting point to make, ignore the points of detail that might lead to meaningful conclusions, and then make excuses about why there's no point caring about this kind of thing anyway.
It's easy to say, but then knee jerk reactions are by definition not that hard. An investigator lying is not in and of itself illegal, immoral, or fraudulent, therefore there is a need for more words. For instance, lying is not necessarily illegal, but perjury is. Pretexting (pretending to be what you are not) is not necessarily illegal, but identity theft is.
There are many reasons it is a good thing to be able to differentiate like this. Ask a moral philosopher - the subject of lying is a tricky one. Or perhaps to be able to post "09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0" without worrying about the legal consequences, however posting my social security number is identity theft.
For instance, in the HP case, if you'd heard that the investigators were phoning up the newspapers or journalists under false pretenses to find who was dealing in confidential information, or that investigators had put the journalists printing confidential information under surveillance (perhaps disguising themselves as utility workers of some description), a naive idealist might question the ethics but for the most part people would say that's how the world works and it isn't really a bad thing. Activists are known to do such things in noble causes. Further, the journalists are profiting by leaking what they know to be confidential information, despite the fact there is no public good to justify it.
On the other hand, as happened in HP's case, if you found that the investigators had effectively hacked your phone records by identity theft using your social security number, it is clear the firm had overstepped the boundaries into illegal behaviour. Maybe the HP case established the legal precedent, I'm not sure. I confess I've never liked the way the legal system often lets the first person off for the first time a particular kind of crime is clearly identified - surely the fact it is clearly identity theft is enough!
Anyway, my point is - I agree that wrong was done. I don't agree that the investigators were fraudulent simply for lying. It's just too naive. I think it's a shame that even when people are right about the fact that corporations have commited crimes, they do not accuse them with sufficient clarity for their point of view to be worth listening to.
Who does the managing? Whoever runs the individual blog, fer chrissakes. RTFA etc.
Can you trust them? Depends on the blog. For the most part, no, and you need to check other sources. This can be thought of as "living in the real world".
If you don't understand how restrictions produce freedom, consider having the shit kicked out of you everyday by someone free to do so, or never being able to be heard because everyone else shouts you down, or losing all your savings, pension, property etc because someone was free to steal. Then consider how much freedom you've really got. Besides, it's almost amusing to think there are still people who imply (let alone think) that there is such a thing as perfect freedom from restrictions. The real question is what restrictions work.
As for the "uncensored" comment, think about what censorship really means. It is when a group tries to stop you from publishing or broadcasting your work. Seeing as the managing is done by whoever runs the blog, and anyone can set up their own blog, then censorshop isn't even being discussed here.
The bottom line has always been that there's no such thing as perfect freedom when there's many multiple individuals with conflicting desires. The trick is to figure out what limits to freedom are acceptable. Personally, I don't see the point of actually having official codes (who the hell do these guys think they are, the self-important bunch of egotists?). But the actual codes - there's a variety - are pretty simple common sense options.
Here's the deal - there's no such thing as perfect freedom. Any situation or system places some form of limitation upon the participants, whether it is a property of the actual system, or an emergent property of the resulting interactions between the participants themselves. The system with the greatest freedom for any given individual is not necessarily that with the smallest set of limitations imposed by the system authorities. Anyone with much experience of holding discussions with a purpose in mind knows that limits must be placed on the overall discussion to have a productive conversation. In small scale environments where there are not sufficient numbers for moderation systems and the like to work, one of the most effective mechanisms is simply to block out participants or comments that don't help.
For Mom 'n' Pop, who want freedom to have a dignified existence, they might want to delete spam, offense comments, etc. I reckon they have every right to do so. You're implying however that it would be valid to place restrictions on their control of their own website in the name of, erm, removing restrictions...
I find it interesting that all the replies do not answer the question you make. So first, regarding whether the skill is important, and whether it is taught enough:
Yes, it is an important skill, and no it is not taught enough.
Of course it is important to be able to write term papers. A detailed memo is only one format and you do need to learn how to write a well structured, lengthy piece of work. And be wary of the professor just trying to avoid reading and commenting on your work. But most of the replies are distractions to the core point, which is a fair one.
You get out of learning what you put in. Effort invested learning to write four pages with the same amount of basic factual content and original thought / argument contained in a fifteen page paper will not be wasted.
When I recently wrote a 35 page business case, I also produced a 2 page version (no double spacing - probably similar to a four page term paper). To arrive at the content in those 2 pages, I had to talk to several different people in various different companies to confirm my logic and conclusions were valid. It's not easy identifying what is genuinely essential information. The two page summary does not indicate lack of thought, but presence of a focused mind. Although the points were made briefly and with no supporting evidence, as the document is being read by subject experts (much like anything being marked at university) they can rapidly assess the quality of thinking involved.
As long as only one or courses are being assessed by memo-style papers, it does not have a material impact on the accuracy of the marking, and also adds a useful skill to your creative toolkit.
Sounds like a great experiment to do. There are still problems with non-controlled environments - did someone drive fast because they'd just had an argument, or slow because they had elderly passengers, etc. But a few week's of 24x7 data should even out enough of that to have a dataset worth using. Even if people figured out they're driving is being tracked, I bet people tend to forget they've got a small gadget hidden in their car after a week.
However I'm making an assumption that it can't only be racing games that get people excited, and if we established that fact then perhaps the accelerometer experiment is not necessary. Otherwise, potentially you will draw the same conclusion as the "bullshit" study and dig yourself into the hole of suggesting (and hence endorsing) your own experiment to show that racing games have dangerous side effects.
Because to be fair, I suspect it's the conclusions, not the actual study, that are bullshit. I know I'll drive faster when I've got the blood pumping for some reason. If I'd just been racing on my PS2 I might be a bit more agressive. That basic finding of the study I've no reason to disagree with. It might get fleshed out and the causal effect better quantified, but I doubt the end result would change much.
It's the 3rd experiment where they use the finding that "people in the mood to take risks will take risks" to suggest regulation that concerns me. Note it's still a valid experiment. If they'd found that people in the mood to take risks do NOT in fact take risks when in a driving simulator, that could have been interesting).
Hence my argument that they need to control for other situations that can get adrenaline flowing. For adults - are they talking about banning driving during rush hour, doing paperwork, listening to a Dick Cheney interview, on the basis that excitement -> bad driving? For teenagers, would they ban winning the high school football game, going on dates, hanging out with friends?
You're right, a grammer nazi at least has the redeeming virtue of making a valid criticism.
The headline is accuracte, correctly avoids making a definitive statement, states causality not just correlation - what the hell more do you want in seven words? In fact, if you treat "Video Racing Games" as a single noun, then it becomes impossible to have a more concise, informative headline.
Your conclusion that causation is "tenuous at best" purely on the basis of use of "may" is utterly invalid. "May" is a standard word choice where a direct causal link has not been found - and look how long that took to establish in the case of smoking causing cancer.
And if you read the study, you do have to make a reasonable effort to pick valid holes in it. Otherwise - researchers explicitly separated correlation from causality, the numbers *do* indicate causality, the games chosen are not the classic "criticised for violence" games like GTA, the control group accounts for numerous factors e.g. people in a simulator treating it just like a game, etc. So "may" is correct English, and causation is more than tenuous.
I'm guessing the post was rated +5 Insightful because the Slashdot groupthink has reacted against a perceived slight against video games. I'd prefer that to thinking that as a group, the faulty logic was actually deemed Insightful.
Incidentally, sorry for an aggressive tone, I've just had one of those days where the Slashdot collective ruining an otherwise great site with stupid rankings is annoying me way more than it usually does.
The other side to the problem, bizarrely, is that it is too detailed. By which I mean, the financial guys didn't really have many rules for the IT department, and now they do.
Which leads to your point i.e. Great, they've added a layer of detail by requiring IT to be "compliant", but it's so vague *within* that layer it's a nightmare.
I've heard they might be talking about getting rid of the IT controls from SOX entirely and just letting companies get on with it.
The problem is, in essence you're suggesting that the only experimental result you'd trust is if someone actually conducted an experiment intended to get guys hyped on adrenaline and subsequently injuring / killing people in real life driving! Apart from the clear ethical problems with an experiment that requires risks for non-participants, you can also be practical and take on board the fact that experiments in simulated environments can bring useful and indeed valid results.
For example, even a risk taking person would lock down their instincts for dangerous driving if they knew were being watched, so conducting the experiment "in real life" also has as big a flaw. In this case of identifying causes for dangerous driving, it could even be more dangerous to get a false negative.
The mistake in this experiment is the tautology between the 2nd and 3rd studies. In the second, they established that racing games (as compared to "neutral" games) make people more disposed towards risk, as indicated by various accepted symptoms. If you accept that result, then what they found in study free could be summarised as:
"People more disposed to take risk at a given moment in time, are more likely to take risks while driving"
Can I get a chorus of "No shit, Sherlock!" ?
Surely a more useful experiment would be to compare enter the simulator having taken a number of activities known to get your blood pumping: after playing racing games, playing other games shown to get people "hyped" rather than "neutral", to other things like playing competitive sports, arguing high pressure lawsuits in the court house, trying to ignore the neighbours having excessively loud sex, etc? I mean, what if the "neutral" games are actually relaxing?
I drive differently according to my mood, and most everyone does no matter your self-control. And I wouldn't find it too difficult to believe that a bunch of teen age guys are more likely to do something stupid driving-wise after just trying to beat each other on the virtual race track. But at the end of the day, if all they've found is that playing racing games is just as dangerous as the frustration having to fill in your tax forms, what's the conclusion? Forbid high powered lawyers driving home after winning a case? Making meditation a legal requirement prior to getting behind the wheel?
Not really. I understood the headline, it doesn't contradict or misinterpret the linked article, and it turns out my instinctive interpretation (which I bet was the same as most everyone else's) was correct. Yours, however, makes no sense whatsoever. In commonly accepted language, the definition of "people" does not include "seagulls". There's no "may" about it.
Further, to state "People who play racing car games are more likely to be drive dangerously" would comment only on the first and less interesting experiment that establishes a correlation. So to say the "games Bmay spur risky driving" actually tells the reader there is also an established causal link, but does not make a definitive statement of fact in all cases. This makes sense, because if we assume that the study is correct then the flip side is that there are some people not inspired to risky driving.
Sure, a more positive statement such as "playing racing games spurs risky driving" is clearer, however given the various limitations the researchers place on their conclusions, could also be viewed as being inaccurate, misleading or simply sensationalist. A direct causal link is not tested for or found, simply that statistics suggest there is a link. "May" in this context is a perfectly acceptable word, particularly for a Slashdot headline as compared to, say, the abstract of a research article.
I wouldn't normally bother, except that everyone once in a while I'm curious about pointless +5 Insightful grammar nazi posts to well accepted and understood formulations, and need to respond.
Your comment would be more "insightful" if you'd RTFA.
They conducted three experiments. The first showed a correlation between risky driving and playing racing games. They explicitly acknowledged that correlation does not establish causality, hence the subsequent experiments.
Until you understand the importance of reading, hold off on criticising others working on the more advanced topics.
Your Tip #2 is flat out wrong. There's a known effect (supported by research) called anchoring, whereby whoever goes first sets the expectations of where the conversation is going to go. If you want the highest salary you can get, you need to be know what is possible (as per Tip #1, for instance) and then ask for it, or highball to a reasonable extent to allow for negotiation. What is reasonable is dependent on any number of factors - whether there's a conversation on benefits to be had, how aggressive the expected role allows you to be, the culture of the firm you're applying for, whether you have the right personality to ask for a high number without sounding like an asshole, etc.
Knowing what you can get can be difficult, but it pays off and for many roles and companies you can be sure there is some kind of market rate to guide your thinking.
If you let them go first, you're giving open invitation for them to set a lower salary than you would like, and then having to fight to get back up to what you wanted. And it is likely (remember the research!) that you will feel uncomfortable being too pushy despite only trying to get a fair price. The employer might start to see you as an asshole for being pushy, when if you had simply started high yourself the perception can in fact be one of confidence.
Never go first only really applies when you don't know enough about the situation to have a reasonable expectation of the outcome. You therefore run the risk of shooting yourself in the foot by asking for a lower salary than they were willing to offer. If you don't know what the options are, keep quiet and remember not to let a low opening offer anchor your own expectations too low.
For a great book on the subject of negotiation, try "Bargaining for Advantage" by G. Richard Shell. He gives an example of one of his better students (a successful entrepreneur) who always made the first offer as a way to fix the negotiation range low. So be wary of falling into the same trap by letting your prospective employer name the price if there's something you're aiming for.
Incidentally my handle is chosen to explicitly acknowledge that even in the tech game, contracts and all the bullshit that goes with them have far too much affect on our lives, but it's worth the time learning how they are negotiated and worked. A windfall courtesy of having a great offer handed to you on a plate is wonderful, yes, but it's even better if you know enough about the situation to have control, and to put yourself in the best possible position. I can remember being paid way less than what I was worth (oh, the arrogance!) and it was the most demoralising thing at work. After receiving a job offer where I confidently named a price, I re-negotiated my pay up ~38% and suddenly work was more enjoyable. Note I didn't get my asking price. So I'm fairly sure I got as much as possible, that I didn't have to be a hard ass to get it, and that I sure wouldn't have got 38% if I'd started with, "I believe I'm due a raise, what would you think is good?"
Losing one's job is not punishment for a crime, it's an expression that one is not fit for the job anymore.
Bollocks. Courts will typically take something like loss of employment into account during when assessing fines and sentences. No matter what job loss is an expression of, it is to all intents and purposes part of your punishment. You appear to forget that reasons for job loss can include being a scapegoat (or incompetent managers, or whistle blowers, etc). Do you generally have a tendency to be so judgemental and/or imprecise in your thinking?
My perception is that white collar criminals often get away without jail time, when other defendants committing the same kind of crime would go to jail.
So here's the thing. You admit you are basing what you say on your perception - clearly a lack of facts doesn't bother you. I am very suspicious of people who feel they can determine what is a suitable punishment without providing any examples for comparison. It strikes as either self-righteous or naive. It's certainly not how the courts work, hence my initial "grow up" comment. Or from a pure logical view it's wildly wrong, even though I agree with your premise. The general set of crimes includes e.g. environmental pollution, Enron destroying the penions of their workers, criminal negligence leading to multiple deaths, physical intimidation, theft, etc. You then say that for pretexting Dunn should go to jail because that's what other defendents get for commiting "a crime". It displays absolutely no sense of fairness.
she should get some jail time, because that is necessary as a deterrent
Bullshit. Losing your job and bringing your company (and potentially share price) into disrepute is a sufficient deterrent to prevent a deliberate invasion of privacy. Also, we're talking about the Chairwoman of the Board, who demonstrated bad judgement in following what turns out to be insufficiently cautious legal advice. Once the legal precedent is set, the legal advice becomes "don't do that". There are far worse things a company can do, and I would argue jail time deterrents are more appropriate for things involving physical, environmental or financial harm.
The fines are so laughably small
For something like this, the financial deterrent is typically loss of earnings and damages from subsequent civil lawsuits. Pointing out the size of the fine is either disingenous or again, naive.
Were she not the chairman, the chances of losing her job would have been significantly less. Were she a high level manager, more likely HP would handle the case and she would have not been affected at all. Lower down, politically it would have been bad for the individual but sacking is also less likely, because that could be perceived as a real admission of guilt that HP Legal would probably advise against. At my level - I'm too low down (and I'm a tech) to be involved, and in HR I'm pretty sure a line worker wouldn't get to approve something like this.
So the question becomes - what happens to the typical joe who engages in pretexting in their line of work? Well, no-one's yet provided an example of someone getting jail time for pretexting, and indeed all reports suggest it's a widespread practice. Right or wrong, it does not appear to be something that the rich get away with, and the rest of us don't. So the whole "because they're rich" argument seems to be so much hot air. It is the very fact that the case *does* involve rich people that it has received the attention and consequences that it has.
this case should be used to set a public example that this kind of behavior is not acceptable
These people did not get away with it; the average joe does not go to jail for the same crime; the consquences to their actions is a damn fine deterrent to anyone in a similar position in future; it has been made very public. Anyone thinking more should be done should provide some sodding evidence to support it, rather than adopting some self-righteous "make them an example" trial-by-mob stance.
Fair point. One thing I've found funny in the US is that what they sometimes call a dive bar or somesuch, I would call a really good pub.
Although I wonder if there's also cultural thing to it in Scotland. I'm down in London these days, pubs are no different in layout, but still find that up north it is generally easier to start random chat. Maybe because back in Glasgow they can understand what I'm saying:) Actually to be fair I found Manchester and Newcastle to be good, maybe its a northern thing.
Guaranteed tactic to have random chat anywhere in the world: collect a group of Scots, Irish and Aussies, pour a couple of beers down their necks, and put them within shouting distance of a bar.
I'm guessing you're a Brit of some description? Speaking as a Scot (and therefore fond of the occassional drink) one of the best things about visiting other countries is a more sophisticated approach to serving i.e. table service. The US is really good at this. Particularly useful when there's only two of you and the bar is packed with no space at the bar itself, because you avoid long gaps in the conversation while one of you goes to get the round in.
That's a different kind of "lying".. depends on the circumstances
Just who's playing word games? Lying is not a crime - deal with it. Unlike your games with "it depends" etc, I stated quite plainly that HP commited identity theft, theft as in crime, and therefore it is appropriate that so many senior level people lost their jobs. How on earth does this imply I think it's acceptable? Stop accusing others of word games, when clearly you're quite happy to blatantly misrepresent another person's point of view, and use different meanings for the same word to justify arguments as they suit you.
it looks like she is getting off easy
Any facts to back that up? Examples of someone who "pretexted", and their employer sacked them without waiting to find out whether the courts actually found them guilty? Or is that simply your perception, which appears to be rather influenced by the fact that she's rich? Negative, emotionally driven comments without basis in fact - sounds like bitching to me.
A number of references in my reply to your post show I did read your post, despite your suggestion to the contrary. Presumably your mind is not sufficiently open to consider that I find your post inconsistent and therefore cannot firmly conclude your objection is one of principle, as compared to e.g. knee-jerk anti-authoritarion thinking?
Clearly I recognise the grounds for an objection in principle to the security thing (why mention it otherwise?), and I do get the reference, and I do think the US government is building a fake picture of the dangers we face to justify its actions, or increase control, or however you prefer to describe their goals and motivations. Nonetheless, given the emotional and perjorative tone of calling people like me cowards and sheep, it is entirely possible your thinking is in fact more emotional than logical, and not based on consistent principle as such. As you point out, you can be tracked via other mechanisms that presumably for your own convenience you still keep.
Individuals might have a given point of view or principles similar to your own, and yet nonetheless for practical purposes (e.g. considering the safety of others more important than views on security policy, shared principles here I suspect) choose to make a compromise. You compromise to have a cell phone; I compromise to reduce delays. Why that makes *me* a coward, but gives *you* the luxury of opting out, I'm not sure.
On flying safety - again, not clear what your point is here. Flying is safer per mile because the danger is take off and landing. So driving is clearly safer on a per trip basis if the plane takes off, goes nowhere and lands again. The question then becomes "how many miles do you have to fly before it's safer", and the figure given these days is around 18km (first result on Google for post 9/11 research: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030111/fob3. asp). You can't get commericial flights that short - so flying is always safer. Should you have a different set of figures leading to a different conclusion, fair enough, but I am making a rational decision here.
I did not say delay was the issue, but delays and standing on a forecourt filling up a car are not typically associated with luxury. Perhaps a blunter point to make would be that your supposed luxury in fact appears to be an indulgence in either self-righteousness, thinking you are more free-willed than others, or some other intellectual self-praise. Luxuriating in this kind of self-belief is often an indicator that the individual's stated principles are in fact not the emotional driver behind that person is expressing. For example, a government official might indulge in the luxury of saying they are protecting their citizens from harm, and actually enjoy that warm feeling, while everyone else is thinking they really just want more control even at the risk of removing civil liberties.
My flatmate was stalked once. Very unpleasant - suspicious phone calls, the guy loitering outside the block of flats, physical damage to the flat (ex-boyfriend, so the locks had to be changed). Clare was fucking scared. Never been investigated personally, although I have suffered two break ins (including my account cleaned out just in time for Christmas, that was fun), and been physically assaulted once, leading to time off work and staying at home eating takeaway til my face recovered enough.
Am I sufficiently qualified to talk to you now? I am perfectly well aware of the feeling you get when your privacy is invaded, and very much doubt that being investigated makes you anywhere near as instinctively nervous about going outside as being attacked.
And I tell you this - the bunch of guys who kicked the shit out of me are known to the police. They're not rich, but they didn't get even get their wrists slapped. It was in their neighbourhood and strangely no witnesses came forward. If they had been stuck in the international press, lost their jobs, and been left open to a civil law suit, I'd have been absolutely fucking delighted.
I'm pretty damn sure if the guys who broke into my house didn't take anything, were caught but found to have a) been first time offenders, and b) been found to have reasons to believe (albeit faulty ones) that I was e.g. sleeping with their wife, they wouldn't have got jail time. And failing jail time, being publically humiliated is probably the most you could expect from the courts.
If the journalists were worried about people not daring to speak to them, there wouldn't have been articles in the national press with their name and picture telling everyone about it.
A multi-billion dollar company has someone at board level leaking confidental information. That opens up risks of insider trading and all sorts of things. The board is obliged to take it seriously and investigate. No, this does not justify what they actually did, but don't give me the "absolutely no good reason" line.
HP did something wrong. Several senior level people have lost their jobs. In my experience, the actions taken by HP are commensurate with any harm inflicted and a damn sight more than many other companies might have done.
If you have examples showing they've been let off lightly compared to others doing comparable things, or have a good reason why your personal experience is better than mine or the general legal framework for assessing what is illegal and what the punishment should be, I'm all ears.
"If this sets a precedent that it's OK" - what, because when someone gets very publically sacked from her job, everybody else thinks "hey, I guess there no problem then?"
Incidentally, for the naive and innocent of you, lying is and always will be considered acceptable to get information (ask a journalist or a security expert). It's a standard investigative technique. Try watching a TV watchdog show where it is used to catch out corporations, or cowboy builders ripping off old ladies. And quite simply, the courts are unlikely to create a double standard for people investigating other companies versus their own employees. What HP did was not just lying - it was identity theft. It wasn't just tailing the journalists, it was breaking into their accounts.
As for punishment: being sacked, taken to court and left open to civil lawsuits seems a reasonable set of actions. If *you* do something wrong at work, what more could they do to you? What does the fact that she's richer than I'll ever be got to do with it?
"she won't be doing any jail time". No shit. You come back with evidence that private investigators and police officers consistently get sacked and sent to jail when they overstep the legal boundaries, and I'll admit the point. I don't believe such evidence is the case because I don't believe it works like that. Bitching about jail time just because she's rich is, as far as I know, just bullshit.
If I want to travel a couple of thousand miles from A to B, I want to fly because it's faster. I'm not paranoid about paying by credit card, taking my driving license or being blown up by terrorists. I have maybe a few minutes delay because of slightly higher security.
You, however, have to use cash, try to stay off as many "lists" as possible, and are willing to add however many hours to your travel time (including an overnight stay in a motel, fer chrissakes), rather than show a piece of ID *you already have*.
You might not be a coward, but either you are indeed paranoid, or time and logic doesn't figure much in your thinking. If you have an objection in principle to the security thing, that's would be a different point. But don't kid yourself that you are opting out of the herd of sheeple. *You* are the one that has made a real change to your actions, based on what *somebody else* thinks. I'm just dealing with an almost non-existant "problem" because I'm not going to let somebody else's paranoia get in the way of doing what I want to do.
Where's the luxury in having to drive a couple thousand miles when flying is faster and safer? The delay from having to show ID is probably less than the time you take to fill up your gas tank!
A bit of disclouse here - I'm an HP guy. So I could be accused of bias when I say this is bullshit. But here goes:
The share price has gone up since the scandal. It barely blinked while it was going on. What fucking idiot of a shareholder sues a company for "insider trading" when the share price is still going up?
But wait, at the time the trades were made, the price had been inflated! You know they're inflated, because they had been going up every single month for 18 months straight! Erm, again, not too sure why a shareholder (as compared to an opportunistic "law suits are a valid business model" asshat) would be worried about a guy delivering a 180% improvement in share price, more or less constantly delivered over his entire time in the CEO position.
You know what, I don't care if not only did these execs genuinely believe the share price would plummet, but were also thinking about coming round to my house to shot my dog and steal my hubcaps. Partly this is because I don't have a dog. Mainly though it's because lawsuits by people who haven't actually been harmed are a plague upon society.
And to all those bitching about HP's pretexting, one law for the rich and the corporations, one for the rest of us, etc - grow up. Yes, it's unethical. Yes, it should be illegal (I say "should" because, well, frankly I suspect this will become a legal test case where at best HP gets a slap on the wrist in order to set a legal precedent). But if you didn't notice, the *chairwoman* of a huge damn company lost her job. It will be costing her a fortune in legal fees. Her public image has been damaged - and I'd bet this impacts her future earnings because people are now questioning her judgement (first she brought in Carly with all the problems that caused, then she dropped HP in a scandal, etc). Not only her, but the general counsel who advised her has gone as well. We've also lost a couple of board members, one on principle, one because he got caught out.
You know what - no-one outside of HP has been harmed. No-one has lost money, or had any propery stolen or damaged. Executives have not engaged in a fraudulent effort to fiddle the numbers, backdate stock options, or cheat customers. Suppliers have not been threatened using M$-style tactics. Government has not been lobbied to allow the use of some potent, environment killing chemical. Some people have had their privacy invaded, which is wrong (particulary where friends and family are concerned), but frankly the journalists are enjoying the whole thing - they've got significantly more column inches out of this than anything else HP has done recently.
If you're hoping for more to happen beyond board members and executives being sacked and pushed out the door to handle lawsuits on their own *when no-one has been hurt*, just piss off and listen to emo or some shit. The world is too nasty a place for you to deal with... this rant dedicated to anyone that has really been fucked over by a large company but couldn't even get a response to their complaint, let alone get some of their top people sacked..
Slashdot Mirror
Try again, sparky.
There's only one player in that game - "You". The others are just pieces of equipment.
Or we could look at your rather unbelievable analogy. Mine was to a house with a door - fair enough, I think. When was the last time you saw a house with a sign like that on it? Where was the indication in TFA that the cafe had put up such a sign? Besides, it's painfully obvious that if someone wanted to put up a sign making it clear that the door was unlocked, and was happy to have guests, it would be something like "Please come in - all visitors welcome".
The fact you've had to resort to what is effectively pseudo-code is yet another pointer to the fact you are confusing permission in the machine sense with permission in the human sense.
I very much doubt the owner of the cafe gave the router any such instructions - more likely they just plugged it in. Don't confuse machine instructions, and the analogies we use to understand them. When you get down to it, the code running on that box has no concept of "I". Your choice of wording is quite biased towards your own argument. A more accurate description would be, "if the button is pushed then the door will open". Hence, the unlocked door.
The fact that you understand how the technicalities work does not grant you permission to enter the house. Likewise applying imprecise anthropomorphic logic to wireless router operations.
What kind of bizarre background did you have growing up, that machines can give or refuse permission in the human and / or legal sense?
Are you not capable of thinking for yourself? Perhaps don't have the social skills to instinctively understand there's difference?
I'm guessing (it's not clear whether you're any good at logic) you've heard of garbage-in, garbage-out, that computers can't actually think?
The router didn't volunteer anything. It did exactly what the manufacturer's programmers told it to do. And it doesn't say much for this guy that he didn't have the common decency to buy a coffee from this place as a gesture of appreciation, something most people could figure out for themselves as being the thing to do. Maybe he lacked a few skills too.
I really hate these pathetic attempts at poor logic / analogy. Anyone with half a brain should be capable of realising machines going through a form of handshaking protocol is not the same as the owners of said machines exchanging greetings.
To use the tired old house analogy (it's tired because people continue to be incapable of understanding the bloody obvious and so it keeps coming up), if someone's front door is unlocked, the act of the handle turning when I try it and the door subsequently opening does not represent me being given permission to trespass.
If your very first act was indeed to go into the coffeeshop and ask the owner if you were allowed, then of course it would be alright. Logging on to the network directly is a different thing.
The basic concept that owners of anything absolve other parties of all guilt if security measures are not taken is the simplest form of denying personal responsibility and accountability. It's bullshit, it's illogical, it's pathetic.
In other words - just say they were lying as if that were an interesting point to make, ignore the points of detail that might lead to meaningful conclusions, and then make excuses about why there's no point caring about this kind of thing anyway.
Inspiring.
It's easy to say, but then knee jerk reactions are by definition not that hard. An investigator lying is not in and of itself illegal, immoral, or fraudulent, therefore there is a need for more words. For instance, lying is not necessarily illegal, but perjury is. Pretexting (pretending to be what you are not) is not necessarily illegal, but identity theft is.
There are many reasons it is a good thing to be able to differentiate like this. Ask a moral philosopher - the subject of lying is a tricky one. Or perhaps to be able to post "09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0" without worrying about the legal consequences, however posting my social security number is identity theft.
For instance, in the HP case, if you'd heard that the investigators were phoning up the newspapers or journalists under false pretenses to find who was dealing in confidential information, or that investigators had put the journalists printing confidential information under surveillance (perhaps disguising themselves as utility workers of some description), a naive idealist might question the ethics but for the most part people would say that's how the world works and it isn't really a bad thing. Activists are known to do such things in noble causes. Further, the journalists are profiting by leaking what they know to be confidential information, despite the fact there is no public good to justify it.
On the other hand, as happened in HP's case, if you found that the investigators had effectively hacked your phone records by identity theft using your social security number, it is clear the firm had overstepped the boundaries into illegal behaviour. Maybe the HP case established the legal precedent, I'm not sure. I confess I've never liked the way the legal system often lets the first person off for the first time a particular kind of crime is clearly identified - surely the fact it is clearly identity theft is enough!
Anyway, my point is - I agree that wrong was done. I don't agree that the investigators were fraudulent simply for lying. It's just too naive. I think it's a shame that even when people are right about the fact that corporations have commited crimes, they do not accuse them with sufficient clarity for their point of view to be worth listening to.
Your lack of logic and objective thinking is scary. Are you sure you want to be a developer?
(if you can't figure out at least a couple of reasons I say this, again I would ask the developer question)
Who does the managing? Whoever runs the individual blog, fer chrissakes. RTFA etc.
Can you trust them? Depends on the blog. For the most part, no, and you need to check other sources. This can be thought of as "living in the real world".
If you don't understand how restrictions produce freedom, consider having the shit kicked out of you everyday by someone free to do so, or never being able to be heard because everyone else shouts you down, or losing all your savings, pension, property etc because someone was free to steal. Then consider how much freedom you've really got. Besides, it's almost amusing to think there are still people who imply (let alone think) that there is such a thing as perfect freedom from restrictions. The real question is what restrictions work.
As for the "uncensored" comment, think about what censorship really means. It is when a group tries to stop you from publishing or broadcasting your work. Seeing as the managing is done by whoever runs the blog, and anyone can set up their own blog, then censorshop isn't even being discussed here.
The bottom line has always been that there's no such thing as perfect freedom when there's many multiple individuals with conflicting desires. The trick is to figure out what limits to freedom are acceptable. Personally, I don't see the point of actually having official codes (who the hell do these guys think they are, the self-important bunch of egotists?). But the actual codes - there's a variety - are pretty simple common sense options.
Here's the deal - there's no such thing as perfect freedom. Any situation or system places some form of limitation upon the participants, whether it is a property of the actual system, or an emergent property of the resulting interactions between the participants themselves. The system with the greatest freedom for any given individual is not necessarily that with the smallest set of limitations imposed by the system authorities. Anyone with much experience of holding discussions with a purpose in mind knows that limits must be placed on the overall discussion to have a productive conversation. In small scale environments where there are not sufficient numbers for moderation systems and the like to work, one of the most effective mechanisms is simply to block out participants or comments that don't help.
For Mom 'n' Pop, who want freedom to have a dignified existence, they might want to delete spam, offense comments, etc. I reckon they have every right to do so. You're implying however that it would be valid to place restrictions on their control of their own website in the name of, erm, removing restrictions...
I find it interesting that all the replies do not answer the question you make. So first, regarding whether the skill is important, and whether it is taught enough:
Yes, it is an important skill, and no it is not taught enough.
Of course it is important to be able to write term papers. A detailed memo is only one format and you do need to learn how to write a well structured, lengthy piece of work. And be wary of the professor just trying to avoid reading and commenting on your work. But most of the replies are distractions to the core point, which is a fair one.
You get out of learning what you put in. Effort invested learning to write four pages with the same amount of basic factual content and original thought / argument contained in a fifteen page paper will not be wasted.
When I recently wrote a 35 page business case, I also produced a 2 page version (no double spacing - probably similar to a four page term paper). To arrive at the content in those 2 pages, I had to talk to several different people in various different companies to confirm my logic and conclusions were valid. It's not easy identifying what is genuinely essential information. The two page summary does not indicate lack of thought, but presence of a focused mind. Although the points were made briefly and with no supporting evidence, as the document is being read by subject experts (much like anything being marked at university) they can rapidly assess the quality of thinking involved.
As long as only one or courses are being assessed by memo-style papers, it does not have a material impact on the accuracy of the marking, and also adds a useful skill to your creative toolkit.
Sounds like a great experiment to do. There are still problems with non-controlled environments - did someone drive fast because they'd just had an argument, or slow because they had elderly passengers, etc. But a few week's of 24x7 data should even out enough of that to have a dataset worth using. Even if people figured out they're driving is being tracked, I bet people tend to forget they've got a small gadget hidden in their car after a week.
However I'm making an assumption that it can't only be racing games that get people excited, and if we established that fact then perhaps the accelerometer experiment is not necessary. Otherwise, potentially you will draw the same conclusion as the "bullshit" study and dig yourself into the hole of suggesting (and hence endorsing) your own experiment to show that racing games have dangerous side effects.
Because to be fair, I suspect it's the conclusions, not the actual study, that are bullshit. I know I'll drive faster when I've got the blood pumping for some reason. If I'd just been racing on my PS2 I might be a bit more agressive. That basic finding of the study I've no reason to disagree with. It might get fleshed out and the causal effect better quantified, but I doubt the end result would change much.
It's the 3rd experiment where they use the finding that "people in the mood to take risks will take risks" to suggest regulation that concerns me. Note it's still a valid experiment. If they'd found that people in the mood to take risks do NOT in fact take risks when in a driving simulator, that could have been interesting).
Hence my argument that they need to control for other situations that can get adrenaline flowing. For adults - are they talking about banning driving during rush hour, doing paperwork, listening to a Dick Cheney interview, on the basis that excitement -> bad driving? For teenagers, would they ban winning the high school football game, going on dates, hanging out with friends?
You're right, a grammer nazi at least has the redeeming virtue of making a valid criticism.
The headline is accuracte, correctly avoids making a definitive statement, states causality not just correlation - what the hell more do you want in seven words? In fact, if you treat "Video Racing Games" as a single noun, then it becomes impossible to have a more concise, informative headline.
Your conclusion that causation is "tenuous at best" purely on the basis of use of "may" is utterly invalid. "May" is a standard word choice where a direct causal link has not been found - and look how long that took to establish in the case of smoking causing cancer.
And if you read the study, you do have to make a reasonable effort to pick valid holes in it. Otherwise - researchers explicitly separated correlation from causality, the numbers *do* indicate causality, the games chosen are not the classic "criticised for violence" games like GTA, the control group accounts for numerous factors e.g. people in a simulator treating it just like a game, etc. So "may" is correct English, and causation is more than tenuous.
I'm guessing the post was rated +5 Insightful because the Slashdot groupthink has reacted against a perceived slight against video games. I'd prefer that to thinking that as a group, the faulty logic was actually deemed Insightful.
Incidentally, sorry for an aggressive tone, I've just had one of those days where the Slashdot collective ruining an otherwise great site with stupid rankings is annoying me way more than it usually does.
The other side to the problem, bizarrely, is that it is too detailed. By which I mean, the financial guys didn't really have many rules for the IT department, and now they do.
Which leads to your point i.e. Great, they've added a layer of detail by requiring IT to be "compliant", but it's so vague *within* that layer it's a nightmare.
I've heard they might be talking about getting rid of the IT controls from SOX entirely and just letting companies get on with it.
The problem is, in essence you're suggesting that the only experimental result you'd trust is if someone actually conducted an experiment intended to get guys hyped on adrenaline and subsequently injuring / killing people in real life driving! Apart from the clear ethical problems with an experiment that requires risks for non-participants, you can also be practical and take on board the fact that experiments in simulated environments can bring useful and indeed valid results.
For example, even a risk taking person would lock down their instincts for dangerous driving if they knew were being watched, so conducting the experiment "in real life" also has as big a flaw. In this case of identifying causes for dangerous driving, it could even be more dangerous to get a false negative.
The mistake in this experiment is the tautology between the 2nd and 3rd studies. In the second, they established that racing games (as compared to "neutral" games) make people more disposed towards risk, as indicated by various accepted symptoms. If you accept that result, then what they found in study free could be summarised as:
"People more disposed to take risk at a given moment in time, are more likely to take risks while driving"
Can I get a chorus of "No shit, Sherlock!" ?
Surely a more useful experiment would be to compare enter the simulator having taken a number of activities known to get your blood pumping: after playing racing games, playing other games shown to get people "hyped" rather than "neutral", to other things like playing competitive sports, arguing high pressure lawsuits in the court house, trying to ignore the neighbours having excessively loud sex, etc? I mean, what if the "neutral" games are actually relaxing?
I drive differently according to my mood, and most everyone does no matter your self-control. And I wouldn't find it too difficult to believe that a bunch of teen age guys are more likely to do something stupid driving-wise after just trying to beat each other on the virtual race track. But at the end of the day, if all they've found is that playing racing games is just as dangerous as the frustration having to fill in your tax forms, what's the conclusion? Forbid high powered lawyers driving home after winning a case? Making meditation a legal requirement prior to getting behind the wheel?
Not really. I understood the headline, it doesn't contradict or misinterpret the linked article, and it turns out my instinctive interpretation (which I bet was the same as most everyone else's) was correct. Yours, however, makes no sense whatsoever. In commonly accepted language, the definition of "people" does not include "seagulls". There's no "may" about it.
Further, to state "People who play racing car games are more likely to be drive dangerously" would comment only on the first and less interesting experiment that establishes a correlation. So to say the "games Bmay spur risky driving" actually tells the reader there is also an established causal link, but does not make a definitive statement of fact in all cases. This makes sense, because if we assume that the study is correct then the flip side is that there are some people not inspired to risky driving.
Sure, a more positive statement such as "playing racing games spurs risky driving" is clearer, however given the various limitations the researchers place on their conclusions, could also be viewed as being inaccurate, misleading or simply sensationalist. A direct causal link is not tested for or found, simply that statistics suggest there is a link. "May" in this context is a perfectly acceptable word, particularly for a Slashdot headline as compared to, say, the abstract of a research article.
I wouldn't normally bother, except that everyone once in a while I'm curious about pointless +5 Insightful grammar nazi posts to well accepted and understood formulations, and need to respond.
Your comment would be more "insightful" if you'd RTFA.
They conducted three experiments. The first showed a correlation between risky driving and playing racing games. They explicitly acknowledged that correlation does not establish causality, hence the subsequent experiments.
Until you understand the importance of reading, hold off on criticising others working on the more advanced topics.
Your Tip #2 is flat out wrong. There's a known effect (supported by research) called anchoring, whereby whoever goes first sets the expectations of where the conversation is going to go. If you want the highest salary you can get, you need to be know what is possible (as per Tip #1, for instance) and then ask for it, or highball to a reasonable extent to allow for negotiation. What is reasonable is dependent on any number of factors - whether there's a conversation on benefits to be had, how aggressive the expected role allows you to be, the culture of the firm you're applying for, whether you have the right personality to ask for a high number without sounding like an asshole, etc.
Knowing what you can get can be difficult, but it pays off and for many roles and companies you can be sure there is some kind of market rate to guide your thinking.
If you let them go first, you're giving open invitation for them to set a lower salary than you would like, and then having to fight to get back up to what you wanted. And it is likely (remember the research!) that you will feel uncomfortable being too pushy despite only trying to get a fair price. The employer might start to see you as an asshole for being pushy, when if you had simply started high yourself the perception can in fact be one of confidence.
Never go first only really applies when you don't know enough about the situation to have a reasonable expectation of the outcome. You therefore run the risk of shooting yourself in the foot by asking for a lower salary than they were willing to offer. If you don't know what the options are, keep quiet and remember not to let a low opening offer anchor your own expectations too low.
For a great book on the subject of negotiation, try "Bargaining for Advantage" by G. Richard Shell. He gives an example of one of his better students (a successful entrepreneur) who always made the first offer as a way to fix the negotiation range low. So be wary of falling into the same trap by letting your prospective employer name the price if there's something you're aiming for.
Incidentally my handle is chosen to explicitly acknowledge that even in the tech game, contracts and all the bullshit that goes with them have far too much affect on our lives, but it's worth the time learning how they are negotiated and worked. A windfall courtesy of having a great offer handed to you on a plate is wonderful, yes, but it's even better if you know enough about the situation to have control, and to put yourself in the best possible position. I can remember being paid way less than what I was worth (oh, the arrogance!) and it was the most demoralising thing at work. After receiving a job offer where I confidently named a price, I re-negotiated my pay up ~38% and suddenly work was more enjoyable. Note I didn't get my asking price. So I'm fairly sure I got as much as possible, that I didn't have to be a hard ass to get it, and that I sure wouldn't have got 38% if I'd started with, "I believe I'm due a raise, what would you think is good?"
Losing one's job is not punishment for a crime, it's an expression that one is not fit for the job anymore.
Bollocks. Courts will typically take something like loss of employment into account during when assessing fines and sentences. No matter what job loss is an expression of, it is to all intents and purposes part of your punishment. You appear to forget that reasons for job loss can include being a scapegoat (or incompetent managers, or whistle blowers, etc). Do you generally have a tendency to be so judgemental and/or imprecise in your thinking?
My perception is that white collar criminals often get away without jail time, when other defendants committing the same kind of crime would go to jail.
So here's the thing. You admit you are basing what you say on your perception - clearly a lack of facts doesn't bother you. I am very suspicious of people who feel they can determine what is a suitable punishment without providing any examples for comparison. It strikes as either self-righteous or naive. It's certainly not how the courts work, hence my initial "grow up" comment. Or from a pure logical view it's wildly wrong, even though I agree with your premise. The general set of crimes includes e.g. environmental pollution, Enron destroying the penions of their workers, criminal negligence leading to multiple deaths, physical intimidation, theft, etc. You then say that for pretexting Dunn should go to jail because that's what other defendents get for commiting "a crime". It displays absolutely no sense of fairness.
she should get some jail time, because that is necessary as a deterrent
Bullshit. Losing your job and bringing your company (and potentially share price) into disrepute is a sufficient deterrent to prevent a deliberate invasion of privacy. Also, we're talking about the Chairwoman of the Board, who demonstrated bad judgement in following what turns out to be insufficiently cautious legal advice. Once the legal precedent is set, the legal advice becomes "don't do that". There are far worse things a company can do, and I would argue jail time deterrents are more appropriate for things involving physical, environmental or financial harm.
The fines are so laughably small
For something like this, the financial deterrent is typically loss of earnings and damages from subsequent civil lawsuits. Pointing out the size of the fine is either disingenous or again, naive.
Were she not the chairman, the chances of losing her job would have been significantly less. Were she a high level manager, more likely HP would handle the case and she would have not been affected at all. Lower down, politically it would have been bad for the individual but sacking is also less likely, because that could be perceived as a real admission of guilt that HP Legal would probably advise against. At my level - I'm too low down (and I'm a tech) to be involved, and in HR I'm pretty sure a line worker wouldn't get to approve something like this.
So the question becomes - what happens to the typical joe who engages in pretexting in their line of work? Well, no-one's yet provided an example of someone getting jail time for pretexting, and indeed all reports suggest it's a widespread practice. Right or wrong, it does not appear to be something that the rich get away with, and the rest of us don't. So the whole "because they're rich" argument seems to be so much hot air. It is the very fact that the case *does* involve rich people that it has received the attention and consequences that it has.
this case should be used to set a public example that this kind of behavior is not acceptable
These people did not get away with it; the average joe does not go to jail for the same crime; the consquences to their actions is a damn fine deterrent to anyone in a similar position in future; it has been made very public. Anyone thinking more should be done should provide some sodding evidence to support it, rather than adopting some self-righteous "make them an example" trial-by-mob stance.
Fair point. One thing I've found funny in the US is that what they sometimes call a dive bar or somesuch, I would call a really good pub. Although I wonder if there's also cultural thing to it in Scotland. I'm down in London these days, pubs are no different in layout, but still find that up north it is generally easier to start random chat. Maybe because back in Glasgow they can understand what I'm saying :) Actually to be fair I found Manchester and Newcastle to be good, maybe its a northern thing.
Guaranteed tactic to have random chat anywhere in the world: collect a group of Scots, Irish and Aussies, pour a couple of beers down their necks, and put them within shouting distance of a bar.
I'm guessing you're a Brit of some description? Speaking as a Scot (and therefore fond of the occassional drink) one of the best things about visiting other countries is a more sophisticated approach to serving i.e. table service. The US is really good at this. Particularly useful when there's only two of you and the bar is packed with no space at the bar itself, because you avoid long gaps in the conversation while one of you goes to get the round in.
That's a different kind of "lying" .. depends on the circumstances
Just who's playing word games? Lying is not a crime - deal with it. Unlike your games with "it depends" etc, I stated quite plainly that HP commited identity theft, theft as in crime, and therefore it is appropriate that so many senior level people lost their jobs. How on earth does this imply I think it's acceptable? Stop accusing others of word games, when clearly you're quite happy to blatantly misrepresent another person's point of view, and use different meanings for the same word to justify arguments as they suit you.
it looks like she is getting off easy
Any facts to back that up? Examples of someone who "pretexted", and their employer sacked them without waiting to find out whether the courts actually found them guilty? Or is that simply your perception, which appears to be rather influenced by the fact that she's rich? Negative, emotionally driven comments without basis in fact - sounds like bitching to me.
A number of references in my reply to your post show I did read your post, despite your suggestion to the contrary. Presumably your mind is not sufficiently open to consider that I find your post inconsistent and therefore cannot firmly conclude your objection is one of principle, as compared to e.g. knee-jerk anti-authoritarion thinking?
. asp). You can't get commericial flights that short - so flying is always safer. Should you have a different set of figures leading to a different conclusion, fair enough, but I am making a rational decision here.
Clearly I recognise the grounds for an objection in principle to the security thing (why mention it otherwise?), and I do get the reference, and I do think the US government is building a fake picture of the dangers we face to justify its actions, or increase control, or however you prefer to describe their goals and motivations. Nonetheless, given the emotional and perjorative tone of calling people like me cowards and sheep, it is entirely possible your thinking is in fact more emotional than logical, and not based on consistent principle as such. As you point out, you can be tracked via other mechanisms that presumably for your own convenience you still keep.
Individuals might have a given point of view or principles similar to your own, and yet nonetheless for practical purposes (e.g. considering the safety of others more important than views on security policy, shared principles here I suspect) choose to make a compromise. You compromise to have a cell phone; I compromise to reduce delays. Why that makes *me* a coward, but gives *you* the luxury of opting out, I'm not sure.
On flying safety - again, not clear what your point is here. Flying is safer per mile because the danger is take off and landing. So driving is clearly safer on a per trip basis if the plane takes off, goes nowhere and lands again. The question then becomes "how many miles do you have to fly before it's safer", and the figure given these days is around 18km (first result on Google for post 9/11 research: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030111/fob3
I did not say delay was the issue, but delays and standing on a forecourt filling up a car are not typically associated with luxury. Perhaps a blunter point to make would be that your supposed luxury in fact appears to be an indulgence in either self-righteousness, thinking you are more free-willed than others, or some other intellectual self-praise. Luxuriating in this kind of self-belief is often an indicator that the individual's stated principles are in fact not the emotional driver behind that person is expressing. For example, a government official might indulge in the luxury of saying they are protecting their citizens from harm, and actually enjoy that warm feeling, while everyone else is thinking they really just want more control even at the risk of removing civil liberties.
My flatmate was stalked once. Very unpleasant - suspicious phone calls, the guy loitering outside the block of flats, physical damage to the flat (ex-boyfriend, so the locks had to be changed). Clare was fucking scared. Never been investigated personally, although I have suffered two break ins (including my account cleaned out just in time for Christmas, that was fun), and been physically assaulted once, leading to time off work and staying at home eating takeaway til my face recovered enough.
Am I sufficiently qualified to talk to you now? I am perfectly well aware of the feeling you get when your privacy is invaded, and very much doubt that being investigated makes you anywhere near as instinctively nervous about going outside as being attacked.
And I tell you this - the bunch of guys who kicked the shit out of me are known to the police. They're not rich, but they didn't get even get their wrists slapped. It was in their neighbourhood and strangely no witnesses came forward. If they had been stuck in the international press, lost their jobs, and been left open to a civil law suit, I'd have been absolutely fucking delighted.
I'm pretty damn sure if the guys who broke into my house didn't take anything, were caught but found to have a) been first time offenders, and b) been found to have reasons to believe (albeit faulty ones) that I was e.g. sleeping with their wife, they wouldn't have got jail time. And failing jail time, being publically humiliated is probably the most you could expect from the courts.
If the journalists were worried about people not daring to speak to them, there wouldn't have been articles in the national press with their name and picture telling everyone about it.
A multi-billion dollar company has someone at board level leaking confidental information. That opens up risks of insider trading and all sorts of things. The board is obliged to take it seriously and investigate. No, this does not justify what they actually did, but don't give me the "absolutely no good reason" line.
HP did something wrong. Several senior level people have lost their jobs. In my experience, the actions taken by HP are commensurate with any harm inflicted and a damn sight more than many other companies might have done.
If you have examples showing they've been let off lightly compared to others doing comparable things, or have a good reason why your personal experience is better than mine or the general legal framework for assessing what is illegal and what the punishment should be, I'm all ears.
"If this sets a precedent that it's OK" - what, because when someone gets very publically sacked from her job, everybody else thinks "hey, I guess there no problem then?"
Incidentally, for the naive and innocent of you, lying is and always will be considered acceptable to get information (ask a journalist or a security expert). It's a standard investigative technique. Try watching a TV watchdog show where it is used to catch out corporations, or cowboy builders ripping off old ladies. And quite simply, the courts are unlikely to create a double standard for people investigating other companies versus their own employees. What HP did was not just lying - it was identity theft. It wasn't just tailing the journalists, it was breaking into their accounts.
As for punishment: being sacked, taken to court and left open to civil lawsuits seems a reasonable set of actions. If *you* do something wrong at work, what more could they do to you? What does the fact that she's richer than I'll ever be got to do with it?
"she won't be doing any jail time". No shit. You come back with evidence that private investigators and police officers consistently get sacked and sent to jail when they overstep the legal boundaries, and I'll admit the point. I don't believe such evidence is the case because I don't believe it works like that. Bitching about jail time just because she's rich is, as far as I know, just bullshit.
If I want to travel a couple of thousand miles from A to B, I want to fly because it's faster. I'm not paranoid about paying by credit card, taking my driving license or being blown up by terrorists. I have maybe a few minutes delay because of slightly higher security.
You, however, have to use cash, try to stay off as many "lists" as possible, and are willing to add however many hours to your travel time (including an overnight stay in a motel, fer chrissakes), rather than show a piece of ID *you already have*.
You might not be a coward, but either you are indeed paranoid, or time and logic doesn't figure much in your thinking. If you have an objection in principle to the security thing, that's would be a different point. But don't kid yourself that you are opting out of the herd of sheeple. *You* are the one that has made a real change to your actions, based on what *somebody else* thinks. I'm just dealing with an almost non-existant "problem" because I'm not going to let somebody else's paranoia get in the way of doing what I want to do.
Where's the luxury in having to drive a couple thousand miles when flying is faster and safer? The delay from having to show ID is probably less than the time you take to fill up your gas tank!
A bit of disclouse here - I'm an HP guy. So I could be accused of bias when I say this is bullshit. But here goes:
.. this rant dedicated to anyone that has really been fucked over by a large company but couldn't even get a response to their complaint, let alone get some of their top people sacked ..
The share price has gone up since the scandal. It barely blinked while it was going on. What fucking idiot of a shareholder sues a company for "insider trading" when the share price is still going up?
But wait, at the time the trades were made, the price had been inflated! You know they're inflated, because they had been going up every single month for 18 months straight! Erm, again, not too sure why a shareholder (as compared to an opportunistic "law suits are a valid business model" asshat) would be worried about a guy delivering a 180% improvement in share price, more or less constantly delivered over his entire time in the CEO position.
You know what, I don't care if not only did these execs genuinely believe the share price would plummet, but were also thinking about coming round to my house to shot my dog and steal my hubcaps. Partly this is because I don't have a dog. Mainly though it's because lawsuits by people who haven't actually been harmed are a plague upon society.
And to all those bitching about HP's pretexting, one law for the rich and the corporations, one for the rest of us, etc - grow up. Yes, it's unethical. Yes, it should be illegal (I say "should" because, well, frankly I suspect this will become a legal test case where at best HP gets a slap on the wrist in order to set a legal precedent). But if you didn't notice, the *chairwoman* of a huge damn company lost her job. It will be costing her a fortune in legal fees. Her public image has been damaged - and I'd bet this impacts her future earnings because people are now questioning her judgement (first she brought in Carly with all the problems that caused, then she dropped HP in a scandal, etc). Not only her, but the general counsel who advised her has gone as well. We've also lost a couple of board members, one on principle, one because he got caught out.
You know what - no-one outside of HP has been harmed. No-one has lost money, or had any propery stolen or damaged. Executives have not engaged in a fraudulent effort to fiddle the numbers, backdate stock options, or cheat customers. Suppliers have not been threatened using M$-style tactics. Government has not been lobbied to allow the use of some potent, environment killing chemical. Some people have had their privacy invaded, which is wrong (particulary where friends and family are concerned), but frankly the journalists are enjoying the whole thing - they've got significantly more column inches out of this than anything else HP has done recently.
If you're hoping for more to happen beyond board members and executives being sacked and pushed out the door to handle lawsuits on their own *when no-one has been hurt*, just piss off and listen to emo or some shit. The world is too nasty a place for you to deal with.
Whoops, bollocks, that should be "if you've not met anyone that finds it useful".
Note to self: Don't fuck up when flaming another. And read the goddamned preview post before hitting submit.