I agree that such people do not really see the masses as impacting them, but I see this as a different case since, while not truly a 'group', what they are seeing is a specific community preforming actions that impact them in their personal lives. Not abstract numbers or protests or other things that are removed from them, but personal consequences. It is similar to upsetting a lobby group or a gang, some group that wields enough power to touch them. Though not very much and not very well... so it might (probably) will get lost in the noise longer term.
Going even further, they had the discretion to say 'effected parties do not with to prosecute, the case will be dropped'. They were not under a legal obligation to continue prosecution in the first place.
I would actually put it at significantly more useless. Internet petitions do nothing, they have no impact, they will not represent a negative consequence for the party they are aimed at hurting. Harassment, while not a very good tool, and a tool with its own problems, at least has a personal impact on the person being targeted, one that both they and others in similar roles can see and factor in to future decision making.
Even if it plays into their mythology, it does change the equation somewhat. Even when power is criminal or juvenile, it is still a consequence people with political ambition will increasingly have to factor in when they take various moves. In a way, no response would have been worse since that sends the message that there are no negative consequences or risks involved in such overreach, only gains. Even if it is just a minor effect, the story will stick around and will be remembered when prosectors are pondering how they want to handle such cases in the future and if the political payoff is enough to offset the impact on their life.
And that cuts to the heart of the problem with such a system.. who decides what taking sufficient steps involves? People who support this idea assume that they or someone like them will be in charge, but chances are it would be a beurocratic mess which would involve certification of underlying components (like the OS), which would not make FOSS people very happy...
I think the lesson of this case has little to do with secret compartments. What mainly happened here is the police wanted him to work for them and he said no, so the built a case to punish him. The trial was a joke, the testimony against him was due to plea deals and some of it was physically impossible to be true, and most of it hinged on building up personal dislike by the jury due to his lifestyle.
He refused to put his life at risk when the police threatened him, and they made good on the threat, even if he was within the law. Being within the law does not matter when they want to get you.
While terrible in its way, compared to other media of the time period it was rather groundbreaking, and actually did result in many young people getting interested in science and engineering. So while it might not have had much of a mass impact on the general public, it has been sited as having an impact on the minority that really drove engineering for many decades.
Yeah.. sometimes I wonder if the same thing happened as Super Mario Brother's 2... some new author created an original world with its own backstory and characters, then some executive said 'hey, we like this, but if we rebrand it as something high profile then more people will watch if we just change all the characters and backgrounds.. and hey, since it is a dream/reboot the artifacts from swapping things out does not even have to make sense!'
I was actually thinking the other direction, that this is the wrong audience for NASA. While I know the stats are up for debate, from reading interviews it really seems like the creators of the reboot are primarily interested in reaching people who didn't like star trek.. so films that are heavily built on emotional acting, fast pace, and special effects. So standard action flic stuff. Which has its place, but most of the science geeks I know who loved Trek saw the first movie, were bored, and are not going to bother with the second one.
I would be really curious to see stats on that. I see people claiming it is being hoarded, and others claiming it is being widely used for every day living. I have yet to see anything to back up either extreme.
Well put. The crisis seems to be deeply rooted in HR practices from the 90s designed to remove as many people from the running as possible.
A few weeks ago I had been applying for a job that I was well qualified for except that I had not used their development language in something like 6 years. I explained that and the people I was talking to had no problem with that, in fact they had two groups and I might work with the one that was using a language I had never used.
However, as part of HR, I had to take an online exam in the language I had not used in half a decade... with a timer on each question, going over gritty little syntax details of the language. Naturally I did poorly and that was the end of the process. Another job I was doing well at applying for the HR person (final stage) decided I just didn't think in the 'XYZ way', so even though the local VP wanted to hire me, HR nixed it. Both were cases where the people actually thinking about the work felt I would be a good fit, but HR filters said no.
In a way, that might not be a bad idea. Getting all the 'game changers' together will not solve any kind of 'skills crisis', there are more people capable of filling those roles then room for them at the top already, people who did not have the luck/timing or other factors that resulted in someone else getting propelled to a high profile position.
And of course there is the glaring flaw in their plan.... the skill crisis generally refers to midrange developers, people with significant skill but still close to the actual work being done. We have plenty of entry level people, and plenty of people competing for those top possitions, but have trouble filling the middle.
From what I have gathered, mining via CPUs is, at this point, not cost effective. It eats more power then it produces in bitcoins. The OP would probably get a better economic result by letting the computers go to sleep.
There already is a complete Christian (at least in the US) takeover and has been for centuries. Now, it is possible some of the historical consequences of being an atheist might ramp up again and more people will go into hiding or pretend to be religious for social reasons, but it is not like atheists have any significant political power now.
This particular experiment might be a fairly small issue (well, lost packages and corruption within an institution are not really 'small') but the US has significant issues with religious strife with some pretty significant consequences.
Pity I am out of mod points, this is an important point that many people tend to skip over.
That isn't to say that the patenting of diagnostic tests does not represent its own potential problems, but it is very differnt then the more sensational take on the issue.
That is what tends to worry or displease me about cases like this. I am all for punishment, but 'sending a message' usually involves taking some poor sap who lost the luck of the draw and giving them a high profile punishment vastly out of step with the typical results of such stunts.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that such people do not really see the masses as impacting them, but I see this as a different case since, while not truly a 'group', what they are seeing is a specific community preforming actions that impact them in their personal lives. Not abstract numbers or protests or other things that are removed from them, but personal consequences. It is similar to upsetting a lobby group or a gang, some group that wields enough power to touch them. Though not very much and not very well... so it might (probably) will get lost in the noise longer term.
Going even further, they had the discretion to say 'effected parties do not with to prosecute, the case will be dropped'. They were not under a legal obligation to continue prosecution in the first place.
No, they were abusing their positions to further political aspirations. A big part of the problem is they were not doing their jobs....
I would actually put it at significantly more useless. Internet petitions do nothing, they have no impact, they will not represent a negative consequence for the party they are aimed at hurting. Harassment, while not a very good tool, and a tool with its own problems, at least has a personal impact on the person being targeted, one that both they and others in similar roles can see and factor in to future decision making.
Even if it plays into their mythology, it does change the equation somewhat. Even when power is criminal or juvenile, it is still a consequence people with political ambition will increasingly have to factor in when they take various moves. In a way, no response would have been worse since that sends the message that there are no negative consequences or risks involved in such overreach, only gains. Even if it is just a minor effect, the story will stick around and will be remembered when prosectors are pondering how they want to handle such cases in the future and if the political payoff is enough to offset the impact on their life.
And that cuts to the heart of the problem with such a system.. who decides what taking sufficient steps involves? People who support this idea assume that they or someone like them will be in charge, but chances are it would be a beurocratic mess which would involve certification of underlying components (like the OS), which would not make FOSS people very happy...
That would be the equivalent of holding a honey pot admin responsible for attacks coming form their system.
I think the lesson of this case has little to do with secret compartments. What mainly happened here is the police wanted him to work for them and he said no, so the built a case to punish him. The trial was a joke, the testimony against him was due to plea deals and some of it was physically impossible to be true, and most of it hinged on building up personal dislike by the jury due to his lifestyle.
He refused to put his life at risk when the police threatened him, and they made good on the threat, even if he was within the law. Being within the law does not matter when they want to get you.
The posts are in ROT13, so any of the 'translation' sites out there will do the trick. Or click on the link to see the original story.
The joke is rapidly getting old....
While terrible in its way, compared to other media of the time period it was rather groundbreaking, and actually did result in many young people getting interested in science and engineering. So while it might not have had much of a mass impact on the general public, it has been sited as having an impact on the minority that really drove engineering for many decades.
Yeah.. sometimes I wonder if the same thing happened as Super Mario Brother's 2... some new author created an original world with its own backstory and characters, then some executive said 'hey, we like this, but if we rebrand it as something high profile then more people will watch if we just change all the characters and backgrounds.. and hey, since it is a dream/reboot the artifacts from swapping things out does not even have to make sense!'
Do you rant at your doctors about how they should be balancing your humors and complain that the aether is hurting your cell phone connection?
I was actually thinking the other direction, that this is the wrong audience for NASA. While I know the stats are up for debate, from reading interviews it really seems like the creators of the reboot are primarily interested in reaching people who didn't like star trek.. so films that are heavily built on emotional acting, fast pace, and special effects. So standard action flic stuff. Which has its place, but most of the science geeks I know who loved Trek saw the first movie, were bored, and are not going to bother with the second one.
Second verse same as the first, not a whole lot better in fact a whole lot worse.
I would be really curious to see stats on that. I see people claiming it is being hoarded, and others claiming it is being widely used for every day living. I have yet to see anything to back up either extreme.
Pretty much, or at least potentially. Figuring out when to profit on irrational fear is a good key for success ^_^
When you need to plan years or even decades ahead, yes. Though there is usually more behind it then WAGs.
Maybe, maybe not. Teaching is also a skill, and having people who suck at it teaching the people under them can be worse then useless.
Well put. The crisis seems to be deeply rooted in HR practices from the 90s designed to remove as many people from the running as possible.
A few weeks ago I had been applying for a job that I was well qualified for except that I had not used their development language in something like 6 years. I explained that and the people I was talking to had no problem with that, in fact they had two groups and I might work with the one that was using a language I had never used.
However, as part of HR, I had to take an online exam in the language I had not used in half a decade... with a timer on each question, going over gritty little syntax details of the language. Naturally I did poorly and that was the end of the process. Another job I was doing well at applying for the HR person (final stage) decided I just didn't think in the 'XYZ way', so even though the local VP wanted to hire me, HR nixed it. Both were cases where the people actually thinking about the work felt I would be a good fit, but HR filters said no.
In a way, that might not be a bad idea. Getting all the 'game changers' together will not solve any kind of 'skills crisis', there are more people capable of filling those roles then room for them at the top already, people who did not have the luck/timing or other factors that resulted in someone else getting propelled to a high profile position.
And of course there is the glaring flaw in their plan.... the skill crisis generally refers to midrange developers, people with significant skill but still close to the actual work being done. We have plenty of entry level people, and plenty of people competing for those top possitions, but have trouble filling the middle.
From what I have gathered, mining via CPUs is, at this point, not cost effective. It eats more power then it produces in bitcoins. The OP would probably get a better economic result by letting the computers go to sleep.
There already is a complete Christian (at least in the US) takeover and has been for centuries. Now, it is possible some of the historical consequences of being an atheist might ramp up again and more people will go into hiding or pretend to be religious for social reasons, but it is not like atheists have any significant political power now.
This particular experiment might be a fairly small issue (well, lost packages and corruption within an institution are not really 'small') but the US has significant issues with religious strife with some pretty significant consequences.
Pity I am out of mod points, this is an important point that many people tend to skip over.
That isn't to say that the patenting of diagnostic tests does not represent its own potential problems, but it is very differnt then the more sensational take on the issue.
That is what tends to worry or displease me about cases like this. I am all for punishment, but 'sending a message' usually involves taking some poor sap who lost the luck of the draw and giving them a high profile punishment vastly out of step with the typical results of such stunts.