I'm sorry, but if you trade into the EU, then you are expected to obey the laws of that market. Doesn't matter where the head office is. I'd have thought that Bill would employ lawyers with a clue - at least enough of a clue not to make a stupid statement like this.
I'm not trying to flame you here, but c'mon. Of course Microsoft knows this! This is politics and marketing spin. You appeal to the investors and consumers who don't understand politics, economics, and the law by giving them a highly emotional argument, especially one that turns the issue into an "us vs. them" argument and tries to make the EU sound unfair. It won't work on everyone, like slashdotters, who already know and no amount of spin will change our minds, and they can't make it sound any worse than we already think they are. Might as well scrap for a few extra minds somewhere who might as yet be undecided. When neither the law or the facts are on your side, pound on the desk.
What I find interesting is the fact that the ommited the fact that they were found Guilty by the US and that these types of actions were in fact not permitted! However, the penalty phase broke down when we changed administrations and the US government settled. Again, pounding on the desk, and this time stretch the truth about the facts.
As the Google logo on the page states, this appears to be a public BETA.
I don't say this so that people don't critique the site yet.
Rather, after you discuss here, send your critique to Google! I'm excited about this, but the sort order of the results shows me things in New Jersey before it shows me things in Pennsylvania (and I know there are three Chinese Restaurants right around the corner, closer than Jersey). I would hope that either they already know about some of these issues or would like to make the search engine more useful.
The best place I could come up with was Google's Contact page, which has links to forums and the like, but no reference to local.google at all. If someone has a better place, please post it here. The local.google site has no contact link I can see.
So exactly what function did you serve on the Enterprise D when you experienced this horrible UI? Helm? Security? Engineer? Perhaps you were even the captain having trouble working the ship?
Or maybe you were just some shmuck trapped in a cargo hold who couldn't work the UI to get out so you were forced to just go along for this Crack-induced joy ride of a hallicination because after all it is only a friggin TV show!
These are complaints of the direction and of the writing, not of the editing. Regardless of how you like or dislike them, it was Peter Jackson's vision that determined if they should be in or not. So you are actually giving arguments for it not being the best direction.
Editing is all about the execution of the directors image. It's a very narrow but real interpretation on images and sounds of the movie. Some would question this is just all about direction but at some point, as the academy does with all awards, someone felt it was important to give the editors a nod, too.
I'll give you an example in TV because this one is easy to understand. First, the director has a vision panning over the Las Vegas skyline, flashing images and then cutting to a crime scene. Then the crime scene investigators look over the scene, look at a few pieces of evidence. Grissom finds a key piece of evidence, and cracks a nerdy joke. Fade in Roger Daltry's voice and the intro plus lead credits.
That's the directors vision. Now the editor has to create cool fade ins with the director's fly byes over vegas. The editor has to string cut each scene to the right person at the right time and make the cuts clean and visually appealing. Then when the beginning credits come in, the editor has to string the first scene in with those credits just perfectly to create an exciting moment that the director wanted because the show is coming on.
The award is an artistic interpretation of a technical skill. If a scene ends up in the movie or not, that's the director's fault, not the editor. The editor doesn't design what scenes go in, but he provides an interpretation on what scenes do make it in.
The article doesn't make it clear. Most people will scream and shout about it being a violation of free speech. I would say I would agree, except I'm not worried so much about sites that "promote" so much as sites that "explain" it, or describe the "history" of it.
I watched a great documentary on the history of cannibalism. There were stories of tribes of cannibalists who ate their dead because they felt a spiritual connection to their family members. Most people attribute Cannibalism to the act of murdering someone against their will and eating them like an animal. This documentary showed that this latter interpretation was just fear and lack of understanding.
Also, Generational cannibalism is in general BAD for your health. This is where your family members die you eat their remains out of a sense of spirituality. It's bad for your health as they have identified tribes suffering from degenerative brain diseases passed down through the remains of their family.
It's this kind of information I DO NOT want lost to an overzealous witch hunt. To me, this article does not make that distinction.
And that's the purpose of free speech, and the fundamental philosophy behind it. Sometime's it drives me up a wall when someone speaks up some kind of nazi supremisist BS and I just want them to shut up and wish their speech wasn't protected. But then there are situations like this when Someone says some kind of damage is being done and they don't explain themselves and start attacking blindly, destroying good information with the bad. It's up to us to decide what is good and bad.
Besides... has anyone really bothered to ask the true damage of what a site about necrophilia or cannibalism does? If someone is murdering for the purposes thereof... well that's murder, and we have laws covering that.
If you are a cop, your first role is PROTECTION. That includes the protection of yourself. This man is describing his precautions because most situations he's going to be in are going to be hostile. He's not afraid, just careful.
This makes the rest of this reply completely inane because it's based on a premise that the cop is afraid.
So, it will be I who calls bullshit on this bullshit.
Making a gaming device thinner and lighter with this technology is still highly useful, as it will be easier to store in a pocket and carry around, and 1 GB should be far more than most Game boy cartridges hold these days.
The screen still has to be viewable so there are limits to how small you can make such a device, but PDAs have been getting thinner and lighter and its because of improvements in miniaturization of components.
I pay attention and love reminders
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Cell-Phone Wars
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· Score: 1
Currently I leave my cell phone on almost constantly. Usually because I get SMS messages for sports scores and (more importantly) notifications that I have new email.
I also like to go to movies and theater productions. Some older theaters (where I see live productions) produce a bit of a faraday cage but most I can get signal from.
Every single one of those production gives me a polite reminder to turn off my cell phone before the production, which I immediately heed.
Some places all you have to do is ask someone to turn off their phone. I can't understand why someone would not turn off their phone after being asked to do so. As a matter of fact, I never see people on the phone during movies or theater shows any more. Maybe people should just be asked more often rather than trying to change the construction of the building or setting up illegal jammers?
We also have to be careful of the definition of "who is able to work" and what work is. I have a personal problem with the way the "welfare reform" of a few years ago was coming down on anyone who uses welfare is skimming the system. Many of those on welfare were single mothers, and I personally feel raising a child is extremely important and that asking them to work while forcing their children into day care is an unreasonable request and a waste of money. Also, mothers who have debilitated family members who can't care for themselves were also forced into working because they were able bodied, but otherwise devoting their life to caring for their family members.
This is why I resist "welfare reform" and the complaints of a "welfare state" because ideas that try to push away from how our welfare system works now are now causing more and more people to work when they have more important things than flipping burgers or making crappy $2 toys.
I was right there up with you until you began to go on about this "welfare state."
In today's economy, there is a huge disparity between those with the most money and those with the least, especially in this country. The gaps between the haves and have nots create feelings of discontent, especially amongst those who can barely survive. This became particularly evident during the industrial revolution and really hasn't changed much since.
While morally laws such as these are touted to "level the playing field," they were originally conceived as measures of security, which falls right in line with the founding father's ideals. The idea being that those at the bottom of the pile have a "safety net" so they do not have to resort to crime in order to survive. The founding father's said "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." While I don't think its right to try to make everyone exactly equal and give everyone $50,000 a year no more no less, I don't think its out of line to provide someone with a base means of keeping themselves alive and out of trouble.
And to go into more detail, when someone doesn't have money, they aren't thinking about going down to atlantic city and looking up Donald Trump and mugging him. They are looking for the local hot spots, like convenience stores, banks, and your next door neighbor. This affects your average every day people, not the doctors, lawyers, and business people making way more money than they need to.
Studies also prove that
So next time you complain about "welfare states," be happy that if something completely shitty happens like the tech sector up and gets transplanted to india overnight or something equally drastic and uncontrollable, be glad you have a safety net. I'll be glad you won't be pointing a shotgun at me demanding the $200 I have in my pocket because you are desperate to live.
I don't see why you can't collect a "merger" fee on stock mergers. You could even keep it tax free on mergers on private companies to allow smaller companies to grow and prevent huge corporations from becoming even more obnoxiously huge.
Dunno if this is out on the web, but I googled for it and any site with relevant information was slashdotted before I even posted about this!
The inventor of the Weed Whacker was some lone man somewhere in the US. He patented his device and made a sizeable sum of money from it. Demand was huge, and he just started out.
Well, legend has it Sears made their own weed whacker without obtaining rights to it and sold that to many eager customers who couldn't obtain the original weed whacker. The original inventor sued. Sears tied the case up in the courts until the inventory eventually had to give up because he ran out of money. His income dried up because sears essentially stole his sales.
I welcome corrections to this story, but it's when companies with huge amounts of money can kill lawsuits by making someone else spend what little money they have, that you realize that it's the legal process that is killing patents.
Well my argument is not that the company is purely to blame, it's that the company this person hired shares some of the blame. The article to me pins all of this on one lone stupid programmer, and hints only slightly at the beauracracy of subcontracting being the problem. Like i said... this programmer is a boob, but if the company had no clear policy, it shares some but not all of the blame.
I in fact share the feeling that customer data is not necessary in general, but I'm in support, not development. I personally feel having to get so much customer data is truly a waste, and the time should be spent ahead of time with better testing procedures, but I really have little say over this. What I am saying is if you feel this is necessary, get yourself a corporate policy.
First of all, the article is fanning the flames by saying this is a database of children's whereabouts. Okay, this is a problem, but then again it doesn't matter if its children or anyone, it just gets "oh please save the children!" sympathy clicks.
It also doesn't address what I think the biggest problem is. It's obvious to me someone assumed this bozo of a programmer had some not-so-common-sense about posting information to a website. I deal with customer data all the time, and my company has taken some steps to make it a little harder for people who should not need the data to not get the data, and our data exchange policy clearly states "Do not give this data to anyone outside of this company or you will be beheaded!"
I get to this day accountants in our company saying "why can't I peek at this customer's data" to which I reply "Do you have a signficant need? If so, tell your manager to talk to my manager, and I'll be happy to give it to you." I get nothing after that. The customer data we have is for support and development use, not an accountant who has no use for inventory and sales information (at least not in this company). It is also freely accessible amongst those people, who typically only share it within others in their department.
One day a manager might get an idea that looking at a customer's data might give them an idea of their open bills, but that might be unethical or illegal so until a manager says to give access, I won't.
My point is, it could be that the policy was not pounded into this dolt's head, or that a proper data exchange policy even existed. If so, he's still a dumbass, but companies frequently hire dumbasses, which is why you sometimes need a policy to help prevent dumbass behavior. The article puts full blame on the programmer and doesn't really give any blame to the company who hired him.
If you are going to get into online gaming, the time spent getting into a clan is worth it. Just finding a community of like minded people who you can trust is huge. I don't do FPS gaming but I've done Diablo 2 and online RPG games.
Many games have very loosely organized clans. You register on a website and you are basically in on a clan. Most RPGs with clans like this set up servers or games with password protection so that you can't get into the game randomly from a server list. This may seem silly but for script kiddies and random crackers who like to ruin other people's games, adding just this basic level of security is enough to make the cheater move onto the next server without a second thought.
So before you dismiss a clan as not worth your time, look to see if there are any clans who accept casual but trustworthy players. Clans are not just for hardcore 23 hour a day gamers.
How does one dispute math as a universal concept?
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The Golden Ratio
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I'd be fascinated to hear more about this. I want to get the book but I'm impatient and want to discuss it now!:)
I would think that math in some was is universal, in the sense that every sentient creature has to figure out a method of counting. Some creatures count in base 10, others base six, maybe base 12. Other creates could figure out a counting base we haven't thought of yet. However, if they have a method of counting and measuring, I'm sure we'd have a method of translating their mathmatical models to our own, without too much trouble.
Perhaps the definition of math here is different than mine? Thoughts?
My company sells software to distributors. IT has an EDI component that allows them to buy from other companies who don't buy our software.
We stick strictly to standards layed out by those who control EDI. However, all the other companies do not and invariably these companies, one company in particular, really bork the shit up by hand entering some EDI document that failed or inserting humans in the process when a computer should have just processed it normally.
Our customers suffer because people they deal with don't know how to stick to standards. Some of them have dropped back to paper and faxes because someone in the pipeline, probably some very scared data processors, don't like standards or EDI.
"If he's really sorry, then why did he release it," said Michele Morelock, technical support leader at anti-virus software maker Sophos Inc. "I would imagine it's much more tongue-in-cheek than saying I'm really sorry for releasing it."
The man is working for some criminal organization. He's an amoral man who's been hired to write some sort of virus for spamming or other purposes. At the same time, he feels that he's "just doing his job" and he's not mastermind behind this idea, just a tool in a larger scam.
He also has a small smattering of a conscience. He's trying to offload the guilt by justifying that he's just "following orders."
This is just a psych profile. The guy deserves to be flayed alive and he doesn't understand he's just as responsible for the damage this caused as his boss is.
There are only five major media companies working in the US (and the world?) right now. All those companies own the recording companies AND the media companies under the same umbrella. You are absolutely right, but this is a smear and FUD campaign to marginalize people who download music in the public eye. It's also used to scare people into thinking "they will catch you if you download."
It frustrates me to no end as well, but it's simple to see that this isn't stupidity, its blatant lying and misinformation directed by the large companies who own the media.
Damnit... this is what my original post should have looked like (correction in Italics, somehow this got deleted when I meant to copy):
I believe in a little axiom that says "Never attribute any action to malice when you can attribute it to stupidity or ignorance."
I'm only going by my experience in anti-virus software, but lets look at it this way:
1) Anti-virus software is on the desktop machine to prevent infection
2) Soon viruses are getting in via email. Anti-virus software writers decide to target the enterprise (where the real money is) and where it makes most logical sense to block viruses now.
3) Some programmer comes up with the idea "Hey! Wouldn't it be great if our software automatically emailed the person who sent the virus in the first place? After all, its 1997 and the only way to get a virus is via a word or excel document attached to the email." The product development approved, not only because education is a huge tool in stopping viruses, but a little (I stress a little) free advertising couldn't hurt.
4) Microsoft introduces new features and more sophisticated viruses are introduced.
5) The option stays on and is set by default because no one re-evaluates it and its just that way.
6) Some cracker gets an ingenious idea to use the feature against itself and cause more harm than good. The feature is exploited to send out thousands of emails per server, which the original designers never intended.
7) Anti-virus writers don't pay attention because you can just turn it off and its not important to them any more. It's the admin's job to know to turn this off. They may tell some people, and they may default it to off in the next version, but its not high on the list.
And even still, you can't just tell someone they are stupid for coding it this way or for not turning it off. Until recently, this option made "Never attribute any action to malice when you can attribute it to stupidity or ignorance."sense. Tell the infected user of their problem so cut down on the spread of virii. Now, as in the biological world, the virus writers figured out how to use a portion of the "immune system" against itself.
It's just the way things happen. I write a virus, you write a counter measure, I write a way to get around it. What's missing here is an email illustrating that the intent of sending out all these emails was deliberate on the part of anti virus writers. The article is assuming intent for no other reason than to scare people. Again, "Never attribute any action to malice when you can attribute it to stupidity or ignorance."
I'm only going by my experience in anti-virus software, but lets look at it this way:
1) Anti-virus software is on the desktop machine to prevent infection
2) Soon viruses are getting in via email. Anti-virus software writers decide to target the enterprise (where the real money is) and where it makes most logical sense to block viruses now.
3) Some programmer comes up with the idea "Hey! Wouldn't it be great if our software automatically emailed the person who sent the virus in the first place? After all, its 1997 and the only way to get a virus is via a word or excel document attached to the email." The product development approved, not only because education is a huge tool in stopping viruses, but a little (I stress a little) free advertising couldn't hurt.
4) Microsoft introduces new features and more sophisticated viruses are introduced.
5) The option stays on and is set by default because no one re-evaluates it and its just that way.
6) Some cracker gets an ingenious idea to use the feature against itself and cause more harm than good. The feature is exploited to send out thousands of emails per server, which the original designers never intended.
7) Anti-virus writers don't pay attention because you can just turn it off and its not important to them any more. It's the admin's job to know to turn this off. They may tell some people, and they may default it to off in the next version, but its not high on the list.
And even still, you can't just tell someone they are stupid for coding it this way or for not turning it off. Until recently, this option made "Never attribute any action to malice when you can attribute it to stupidity or ignorance."sense. Tell the infected user of their problem so cut down on the spread of virii. Now, as in the biological world, the virus writers figured out how to use a portion of the "immune system" against itself.
It's just the way things happen. I write a virus, you write a counter measure, I write a way to get around it. What's missing here is an email illustrating that the intent of sending out all these emails was deliberate on the part of anti virus writers. The article is assuming intent for no other reason than to scare people. Again, "Never attribute any action to malice when you can attribute it to stupidity or ignorance."
Hit the print screen button and open up word and then "paste." You'll get a screenshot of the entire screen from when you hit the button. Hold down ALT while hitting print screen and the paste into a word document and you'll get the contents of the active window.
Pasting into a word document is not required, print screen simply dumps the screen contents into the clipboard for later use.
I use this frequently with customers who need to give me screenshots.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but if you trade into the EU, then you are expected to obey the laws of that market. Doesn't matter where the head office is. I'd have thought that Bill would employ lawyers with a clue - at least enough of a clue not to make a stupid statement like this.
I'm not trying to flame you here, but c'mon. Of course Microsoft knows this! This is politics and marketing spin. You appeal to the investors and consumers who don't understand politics, economics, and the law by giving them a highly emotional argument, especially one that turns the issue into an "us vs. them" argument and tries to make the EU sound unfair. It won't work on everyone, like slashdotters, who already know and no amount of spin will change our minds, and they can't make it sound any worse than we already think they are. Might as well scrap for a few extra minds somewhere who might as yet be undecided. When neither the law or the facts are on your side, pound on the desk.
What I find interesting is the fact that the ommited the fact that they were found Guilty by the US and that these types of actions were in fact not permitted! However, the penalty phase broke down when we changed administrations and the US government settled. Again, pounding on the desk, and this time stretch the truth about the facts.
As the Google logo on the page states, this appears to be a public BETA.
I don't say this so that people don't critique the site yet.
Rather, after you discuss here, send your critique to Google! I'm excited about this, but the sort order of the results shows me things in New Jersey before it shows me things in Pennsylvania (and I know there are three Chinese Restaurants right around the corner, closer than Jersey). I would hope that either they already know about some of these issues or would like to make the search engine more useful.
The best place I could come up with was Google's Contact page, which has links to forums and the like, but no reference to local.google at all. If someone has a better place, please post it here. The local.google site has no contact link I can see.
So exactly what function did you serve on the Enterprise D when you experienced this horrible UI? Helm? Security? Engineer? Perhaps you were even the captain having trouble working the ship?
Or maybe you were just some shmuck trapped in a cargo hold who couldn't work the UI to get out so you were forced to just go along for this Crack-induced joy ride of a hallicination because after all it is only a friggin TV show!
These are complaints of the direction and of the writing, not of the editing. Regardless of how you like or dislike them, it was Peter Jackson's vision that determined if they should be in or not. So you are actually giving arguments for it not being the best direction.
Editing is all about the execution of the directors image. It's a very narrow but real interpretation on images and sounds of the movie. Some would question this is just all about direction but at some point, as the academy does with all awards, someone felt it was important to give the editors a nod, too.
I'll give you an example in TV because this one is easy to understand. First, the director has a vision panning over the Las Vegas skyline, flashing images and then cutting to a crime scene. Then the crime scene investigators look over the scene, look at a few pieces of evidence. Grissom finds a key piece of evidence, and cracks a nerdy joke. Fade in Roger Daltry's voice and the intro plus lead credits.
That's the directors vision. Now the editor has to create cool fade ins with the director's fly byes over vegas. The editor has to string cut each scene to the right person at the right time and make the cuts clean and visually appealing. Then when the beginning credits come in, the editor has to string the first scene in with those credits just perfectly to create an exciting moment that the director wanted because the show is coming on.
The award is an artistic interpretation of a technical skill. If a scene ends up in the movie or not, that's the director's fault, not the editor. The editor doesn't design what scenes go in, but he provides an interpretation on what scenes do make it in.
The article doesn't make it clear. Most people will scream and shout about it being a violation of free speech. I would say I would agree, except I'm not worried so much about sites that "promote" so much as sites that "explain" it, or describe the "history" of it.
I watched a great documentary on the history of cannibalism. There were stories of tribes of cannibalists who ate their dead because they felt a spiritual connection to their family members. Most people attribute Cannibalism to the act of murdering someone against their will and eating them like an animal. This documentary showed that this latter interpretation was just fear and lack of understanding.
Also, Generational cannibalism is in general BAD for your health. This is where your family members die you eat their remains out of a sense of spirituality. It's bad for your health as they have identified tribes suffering from degenerative brain diseases passed down through the remains of their family.
It's this kind of information I DO NOT want lost to an overzealous witch hunt. To me, this article does not make that distinction.
And that's the purpose of free speech, and the fundamental philosophy behind it. Sometime's it drives me up a wall when someone speaks up some kind of nazi supremisist BS and I just want them to shut up and wish their speech wasn't protected. But then there are situations like this when Someone says some kind of damage is being done and they don't explain themselves and start attacking blindly, destroying good information with the bad. It's up to us to decide what is good and bad.
Besides... has anyone really bothered to ask the true damage of what a site about necrophilia or cannibalism does? If someone is murdering for the purposes thereof... well that's murder, and we have laws covering that.
If you are a cop, your first role is PROTECTION. That includes the protection of yourself. This man is describing his precautions because most situations he's going to be in are going to be hostile. He's not afraid, just careful.
This makes the rest of this reply completely inane because it's based on a premise that the cop is afraid.
So, it will be I who calls bullshit on this bullshit.
Making a gaming device thinner and lighter with this technology is still highly useful, as it will be easier to store in a pocket and carry around, and 1 GB should be far more than most Game boy cartridges hold these days.
The screen still has to be viewable so there are limits to how small you can make such a device, but PDAs have been getting thinner and lighter and its because of improvements in miniaturization of components.
Currently I leave my cell phone on almost constantly. Usually because I get SMS messages for sports scores and (more importantly) notifications that I have new email.
I also like to go to movies and theater productions. Some older theaters (where I see live productions) produce a bit of a faraday cage but most I can get signal from.
Every single one of those production gives me a polite reminder to turn off my cell phone before the production, which I immediately heed.
Some places all you have to do is ask someone to turn off their phone. I can't understand why someone would not turn off their phone after being asked to do so. As a matter of fact, I never see people on the phone during movies or theater shows any more. Maybe people should just be asked more often rather than trying to change the construction of the building or setting up illegal jammers?
We also have to be careful of the definition of "who is able to work" and what work is. I have a personal problem with the way the "welfare reform" of a few years ago was coming down on anyone who uses welfare is skimming the system. Many of those on welfare were single mothers, and I personally feel raising a child is extremely important and that asking them to work while forcing their children into day care is an unreasonable request and a waste of money. Also, mothers who have debilitated family members who can't care for themselves were also forced into working because they were able bodied, but otherwise devoting their life to caring for their family members.
This is why I resist "welfare reform" and the complaints of a "welfare state" because ideas that try to push away from how our welfare system works now are now causing more and more people to work when they have more important things than flipping burgers or making crappy $2 toys.
I was right there up with you until you began to go on about this "welfare state."
In today's economy, there is a huge disparity between those with the most money and those with the least, especially in this country. The gaps between the haves and have nots create feelings of discontent, especially amongst those who can barely survive. This became particularly evident during the industrial revolution and really hasn't changed much since.
While morally laws such as these are touted to "level the playing field," they were originally conceived as measures of security, which falls right in line with the founding father's ideals. The idea being that those at the bottom of the pile have a "safety net" so they do not have to resort to crime in order to survive. The founding father's said "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." While I don't think its right to try to make everyone exactly equal and give everyone $50,000 a year no more no less, I don't think its out of line to provide someone with a base means of keeping themselves alive and out of trouble.
And to go into more detail, when someone doesn't have money, they aren't thinking about going down to atlantic city and looking up Donald Trump and mugging him. They are looking for the local hot spots, like convenience stores, banks, and your next door neighbor. This affects your average every day people, not the doctors, lawyers, and business people making way more money than they need to.
Studies also prove that
So next time you complain about "welfare states," be happy that if something completely shitty happens like the tech sector up and gets transplanted to india overnight or something equally drastic and uncontrollable, be glad you have a safety net. I'll be glad you won't be pointing a shotgun at me demanding the $200 I have in my pocket because you are desperate to live.
He got into drugs and yes an attempt was made on his life and he nearly died, but did not die at this point.
Don Corleone died later in the movie when playing with his grandson in a small vineyard years later. I believe he had a heart attack.
Getting into the drug trade caused huge problems for his family but it didn't directly kill him.
I don't see why you can't collect a "merger" fee on stock mergers. You could even keep it tax free on mergers on private companies to allow smaller companies to grow and prevent huge corporations from becoming even more obnoxiously huge.
Dunno if this is out on the web, but I googled for it and any site with relevant information was slashdotted before I even posted about this!
The inventor of the Weed Whacker was some lone man somewhere in the US. He patented his device and made a sizeable sum of money from it. Demand was huge, and he just started out.
Well, legend has it Sears made their own weed whacker without obtaining rights to it and sold that to many eager customers who couldn't obtain the original weed whacker. The original inventor sued. Sears tied the case up in the courts until the inventory eventually had to give up because he ran out of money. His income dried up because sears essentially stole his sales.
I welcome corrections to this story, but it's when companies with huge amounts of money can kill lawsuits by making someone else spend what little money they have, that you realize that it's the legal process that is killing patents.
To this end, we are proposing a tax-free stock for stock merger..
Perhaps this is the reason why these rather scary mergers happen too often.
Well my argument is not that the company is purely to blame, it's that the company this person hired shares some of the blame. The article to me pins all of this on one lone stupid programmer, and hints only slightly at the beauracracy of subcontracting being the problem. Like i said... this programmer is a boob, but if the company had no clear policy, it shares some but not all of the blame.
I in fact share the feeling that customer data is not necessary in general, but I'm in support, not development. I personally feel having to get so much customer data is truly a waste, and the time should be spent ahead of time with better testing procedures, but I really have little say over this. What I am saying is if you feel this is necessary, get yourself a corporate policy.
First of all, the article is fanning the flames by saying this is a database of children's whereabouts. Okay, this is a problem, but then again it doesn't matter if its children or anyone, it just gets "oh please save the children!" sympathy clicks.
It also doesn't address what I think the biggest problem is. It's obvious to me someone assumed this bozo of a programmer had some not-so-common-sense about posting information to a website. I deal with customer data all the time, and my company has taken some steps to make it a little harder for people who should not need the data to not get the data, and our data exchange policy clearly states "Do not give this data to anyone outside of this company or you will be beheaded!"
I get to this day accountants in our company saying "why can't I peek at this customer's data" to which I reply "Do you have a signficant need? If so, tell your manager to talk to my manager, and I'll be happy to give it to you." I get nothing after that. The customer data we have is for support and development use, not an accountant who has no use for inventory and sales information (at least not in this company). It is also freely accessible amongst those people, who typically only share it within others in their department.
One day a manager might get an idea that looking at a customer's data might give them an idea of their open bills, but that might be unethical or illegal so until a manager says to give access, I won't.
My point is, it could be that the policy was not pounded into this dolt's head, or that a proper data exchange policy even existed. If so, he's still a dumbass, but companies frequently hire dumbasses, which is why you sometimes need a policy to help prevent dumbass behavior. The article puts full blame on the programmer and doesn't really give any blame to the company who hired him.
If you are going to get into online gaming, the time spent getting into a clan is worth it. Just finding a community of like minded people who you can trust is huge. I don't do FPS gaming but I've done Diablo 2 and online RPG games.
Many games have very loosely organized clans. You register on a website and you are basically in on a clan. Most RPGs with clans like this set up servers or games with password protection so that you can't get into the game randomly from a server list. This may seem silly but for script kiddies and random crackers who like to ruin other people's games, adding just this basic level of security is enough to make the cheater move onto the next server without a second thought.
So before you dismiss a clan as not worth your time, look to see if there are any clans who accept casual but trustworthy players. Clans are not just for hardcore 23 hour a day gamers.
I'd be fascinated to hear more about this. I want to get the book but I'm impatient and want to discuss it now! :)
I would think that math in some was is universal, in the sense that every sentient creature has to figure out a method of counting. Some creatures count in base 10, others base six, maybe base 12. Other creates could figure out a counting base we haven't thought of yet. However, if they have a method of counting and measuring, I'm sure we'd have a method of translating their mathmatical models to our own, without too much trouble.
Perhaps the definition of math here is different than mine? Thoughts?
...because the people in charge fuck it up.
My company sells software to distributors. IT has an EDI component that allows them to buy from other companies who don't buy our software.
We stick strictly to standards layed out by those who control EDI. However, all the other companies do not and invariably these companies, one company in particular, really bork the shit up by hand entering some EDI document that failed or inserting humans in the process when a computer should have just processed it normally.
Our customers suffer because people they deal with don't know how to stick to standards. Some of them have dropped back to paper and faxes because someone in the pipeline, probably some very scared data processors, don't like standards or EDI.
The 20 point dingbat is actually running the country, so maybe you should collect on your bet.
"If he's really sorry, then why did he release it," said Michele Morelock, technical support leader at anti-virus software maker Sophos Inc. "I would imagine it's much more tongue-in-cheek than saying I'm really sorry for releasing it."
The man is working for some criminal organization. He's an amoral man who's been hired to write some sort of virus for spamming or other purposes. At the same time, he feels that he's "just doing his job" and he's not mastermind behind this idea, just a tool in a larger scam.
He also has a small smattering of a conscience. He's trying to offload the guilt by justifying that he's just "following orders."
This is just a psych profile. The guy deserves to be flayed alive and he doesn't understand he's just as responsible for the damage this caused as his boss is.
There are only five major media companies working in the US (and the world?) right now. All those companies own the recording companies AND the media companies under the same umbrella. You are absolutely right, but this is a smear and FUD campaign to marginalize people who download music in the public eye. It's also used to scare people into thinking "they will catch you if you download."
It frustrates me to no end as well, but it's simple to see that this isn't stupidity, its blatant lying and misinformation directed by the large companies who own the media.
Damnit... this is what my original post should have looked like (correction in Italics, somehow this got deleted when I meant to copy):
I believe in a little axiom that says "Never attribute any action to malice when you can attribute it to stupidity or ignorance."
I'm only going by my experience in anti-virus software, but lets look at it this way:
1) Anti-virus software is on the desktop machine to prevent infection
2) Soon viruses are getting in via email. Anti-virus software writers decide to target the enterprise (where the real money is) and where it makes most logical sense to block viruses now.
3) Some programmer comes up with the idea "Hey! Wouldn't it be great if our software automatically emailed the person who sent the virus in the first place? After all, its 1997 and the only way to get a virus is via a word or excel document attached to the email." The product development approved, not only because education is a huge tool in stopping viruses, but a little (I stress a little) free advertising couldn't hurt.
4) Microsoft introduces new features and more sophisticated viruses are introduced.
5) The option stays on and is set by default because no one re-evaluates it and its just that way.
6) Some cracker gets an ingenious idea to use the feature against itself and cause more harm than good. The feature is exploited to send out thousands of emails per server, which the original designers never intended.
7) Anti-virus writers don't pay attention because you can just turn it off and its not important to them any more. It's the admin's job to know to turn this off. They may tell some people, and they may default it to off in the next version, but its not high on the list.
And even still, you can't just tell someone they are stupid for coding it this way or for not turning it off. Until recently, this option made "Never attribute any action to malice when you can attribute it to stupidity or ignorance."sense. Tell the infected user of their problem so cut down on the spread of virii. Now, as in the biological world, the virus writers figured out how to use a portion of the "immune system" against itself.
It's just the way things happen. I write a virus, you write a counter measure, I write a way to get around it. What's missing here is an email illustrating that the intent of sending out all these emails was deliberate on the part of anti virus writers. The article is assuming intent for no other reason than to scare people. Again, "Never attribute any action to malice when you can attribute it to stupidity or ignorance."
I believe in a little axiom that says
I'm only going by my experience in anti-virus software, but lets look at it this way:
1) Anti-virus software is on the desktop machine to prevent infection
2) Soon viruses are getting in via email. Anti-virus software writers decide to target the enterprise (where the real money is) and where it makes most logical sense to block viruses now.
3) Some programmer comes up with the idea "Hey! Wouldn't it be great if our software automatically emailed the person who sent the virus in the first place? After all, its 1997 and the only way to get a virus is via a word or excel document attached to the email." The product development approved, not only because education is a huge tool in stopping viruses, but a little (I stress a little) free advertising couldn't hurt.
4) Microsoft introduces new features and more sophisticated viruses are introduced.
5) The option stays on and is set by default because no one re-evaluates it and its just that way.
6) Some cracker gets an ingenious idea to use the feature against itself and cause more harm than good. The feature is exploited to send out thousands of emails per server, which the original designers never intended.
7) Anti-virus writers don't pay attention because you can just turn it off and its not important to them any more. It's the admin's job to know to turn this off. They may tell some people, and they may default it to off in the next version, but its not high on the list.
And even still, you can't just tell someone they are stupid for coding it this way or for not turning it off. Until recently, this option made "Never attribute any action to malice when you can attribute it to stupidity or ignorance."sense. Tell the infected user of their problem so cut down on the spread of virii. Now, as in the biological world, the virus writers figured out how to use a portion of the "immune system" against itself.
It's just the way things happen. I write a virus, you write a counter measure, I write a way to get around it. What's missing here is an email illustrating that the intent of sending out all these emails was deliberate on the part of anti virus writers. The article is assuming intent for no other reason than to scare people. Again, "Never attribute any action to malice when you can attribute it to stupidity or ignorance."
Hit the print screen button and open up word and then "paste." You'll get a screenshot of the entire screen from when you hit the button. Hold down ALT while hitting print screen and the paste into a word document and you'll get the contents of the active window.
Pasting into a word document is not required, print screen simply dumps the screen contents into the clipboard for later use.
I use this frequently with customers who need to give me screenshots.