Who walks around with "internecine" in their vocabulary? Seriously...
I do. I spent a lot of time studying vocabulary in high school; I also edit and publish science fiction on the side. A good vocabulary is essential, though a word like "internecine" doesn't come up in casual conversation too much.
Despite my opposition to Jimmy Wales and his self-promotion, I agree that perhaps he's creating a forum that's greater in scope and I applaud the effort, assuming it does not devolve into the petty squabbling and in-fighting that seems to accompany Wikipedia.
They say all politics is local, but now with this development, local has become a whole country, perhaps the whole world. Do you think someone like Hugo Chavez would participate?
No... you provide the facts, we provide the opinion. That's how this works.
I wish people would stop trying to put their own spin on/. stories in the summary. Let us make up our own damn minds.
Spin? I wasn't aware that voicing an opinion is spin, but then perhaps thanks to politics everything is now spin. The idea behind that last little bit was to get the discussion going. Too much of reporting in this day and age is dry regurgitation of the facts which causes the audience to tune out. This is no comparison, but Edward R. Murrow was not afraid to report a story and comment on it, not to inflame passions but to start dialog. If all you want is bare news, bereft of energy and lacking spark, then I suggest Slashdot is not for you. When I send in a story to the editors, it is with the hope that dialog will come out of it, and so far I seem to have succeeded. Whether anyone agrees with my sentiments is irrelevant.
Dishonor will not trouble me, once I am dead. -- Euripides
OK, safe to say that most Americans are probably not shedding a tear for this guy. Had nothing, made himself rich through hard work, then let it go to his head and couldn't face failure, so he bilked others out of billions. We're all a little poorer thanks to his machinations.
OTOH, he was human -- proud, flawed, and subject to the passions of the animal. He was probably not the anti-Christ, didn't kill people, chop them up, and keep them in his freezer for future barbecues, nor order the death of millions because he thought they led to the downfall of his nation in the previous war. Villify him if you wish, call him the criminal he was, but now his impact is for history to decide.
On the one hand, shuttles flew forever shedding foam and it only became a real problem when a large enough piece tore off to actually damage the shuttle in flight significantly. Engineers accepted the risks with many reservations, because damage was never really that severe. Of course hindsight is 20-20 and this problem could have been rectified if the foam was located interior to the tank as opposed to externally. I think they were worried that if they tried that, there would be voids in the insulation that would allow heat to enter and cause problems, but that was a manufacturing issue which probably could have been resolved with a little ingenuity.
On the other hand, a 4-5 inch crack is nothing to sneeze at and with the aerodynamic forces that batter a shuttle on its way into LEO, any number of things could cause that crack to widen and eventually spilt, teraing off a really large section of foam. It has to be repaired; I don't see how NASA management can ignore this. If they do, and the shuttle is damaged or heaven forbid, destroyed, that's the end of the space program. And probably rightly so. Like to many things, NASA was created due to Cold War concerns, namely that the Russians were going to grab the "high ground" of space and show us up in technical endeavors, weakening our position on the world stage. Like other Cold War relics, it too either needs to change or be dismantled.
I'm a NASA booster (forgive the pun) -- my dream from childhood was to walk on the Moon. But I can say that I find it hard to trust the NASA I see now; it has become hamstrung by indecision, beaureaucracy, and lack of imaginative leadership (with apologies to Dan Goldin, Sean O'Keffe, and Mike Griffin). I wanted John Young to become NASA Administrator -- tough talking, smart, no-nonsense, and imaginative. He might have (and still could if he wanted the job) lit a fire under NASA and got them thinking straight. The problem is, NASA was not prepared for life after Apollo and it shows. The STS was a compromise (no engineer in the early 70's thought solid rocket boosters were a good idea) and a poor one at that.
I think a) NASA needs to be saved from itself and b) the American people have to learn what a truly great resource they have in their space program. Barring either of those, it will be up to private industry to carry the torch.
There are *many* tangible reasons why we should believe that SCOX knows that their case is bogus (Darl and Sontag's outright lies being first and foremost) and nothing but idle speculation to believe otherwise.
I know from whence I speak, as it is exactly this kind of thing my wife is going through with her ex right now. Perhaps SCO does know the case is weak, but given their statements and the chest-thumping they do on a regular basis, it's more likely they have deluded themselves into believing they are in the right, ignoring the evidence. When you're an inveterate liar, you tend to believe your own lies wholeheartedly (enough to easily pass a lie detector test, but I digress); they've lied so often that they're sure it's all true, when anyone else knows its nothing but half-truths wrapped in fantasy.
And don't kid yourself: lawyers are generally not stupid, and the law firm is undoubtedly capable of handling a technical case, or at least hiring people to help them sort out the technical arguments involved. They may however be shifty and underhanded, and are not above milking a client who is willing to keep writing checks. Look for an SCO yard sale in the near future, when investors get tired of footing the bill for this.
If their case was strong, why on earth would they try to delay and obfuscate it?
Ah, but you're confusing the SCO with their lawyers. The SCO believes their case is strong; their lawyers know better, and so began a campaign to drag out and delay the ruling to a) cover up for the weak case, b) cause some people to give up and settle rather than fight it out (due to lack of resources), and c) to ramp up their billable hours. Never let it be said a lawyer would willingly pass up a gravy train. By the time the SCO is having a yard sale to pay off their bankruptcy, their lawyers will be bemoaning their client's fate on some deserted tropical island while tanning and drinking little drinks with rum and umbrellas in them.
They really are so cute, so adorably innocent and naive, as they go about their daily business, chatting away to other people, getting crazy naive ideas in their inexperienced little heads. Of course they think what they're doing is right, but they just don't have the capacity or life experience to understand. If only we could gather them around, hug them, tell them it's all going to be okay as long as they stop for a moment and consider what they're doing, and educate them about the full, terrible impact their actions will have not only on themselves, but on everyone else around them. But, of course, they don't want to listen to wisdom, not at their age..
..I'm referring, of course, to the damn fool parents groups and lawmakers.
Perhaps that truer than we give credit for. Consider that with the march of technology, the newest generation is always accosiated with that technology and the immediately prior generation is painted as the "bad guys" because they don't understand the technology the "young whippersnappers" are using. Take it beyond even technology; how many parents in the 50's were scandlized by rock n'roll (and back then it was Bill Hailey and the Comets, not Black Sabbath)?
Currently Congress and the parents groups, pretty much all from the prior generation, are seeing an explosion of communication and social networking in the newest generation that they do not understand and can't for the most part get in tune with. I'll admit it -- I don't think much of MySpace, blogs, and the like, but kids today have integrated such things into their personalities and made it integral to their lives. Of ocurse, like anything new, they don't understand the full number of repercussions these things represent, but the older generation doesn't either because of their technical ignorance and negative reaction to things. Kids will continue to do what they are doing, simply because it breaks them with the current order, and that's something that is not new at all.
SCO _have_ made their case. Specifically, they've effectively gone "our case is extremely weak and you should throw it out."
Except I don't think it was quite that simple. While their case is extremely weak, they believed it was very strong. They've spent years now firing off one motion after another, trying to obfuscate, decalrify,and otherwise muddy a perfectly straightforward situation -- that they have no leg to stand on. They got some companies to settle with them, if nothing else to avoid the hassle of being dragged into this farce. While their attack may be driving investiment, it was not their primary goal, but now the case has been revealed for what it is: a tottering house of cards.
Agreed. Most OSS software is so entrenched, so much a part of the current workings of the Internet, that to try and sue it away is a futile gesture at best. What corporation wants to take the brunt of the backlash when they successfully sue an OSS provider, forcing them to remove their software, only to have some major Net functiionality suddenly become unavailable? In this day and age, publicity is more important than product (think Arthur Andersen) and no company wants to be thought of us as the bully that deprived Internet users of something they coveted, especially if it drives them away from their product/service.
The problem with the current barrage of lawsuits is equivalent to being hit with a fire hose of information. With so many individuals being hit at once, it becomes counterproductive to the entertainment industry's effort to educate the file-sharing populace. The growing perception over the years has developed into complacency. Who are these people? Do they live near me? Why should I care if some nameless, faceless individual on the other side of the continent was sued for sharing 5,000 songs on the FastTrack network?
This lack of focus is apparent when alleged file-sharing pirates come forward to the media and plead ignorance in the face of a $3,000.00 settlement. Often times such individuals are completely befuddled, unaware their actions were unlawful.
Or the RIAA/MPAA are so befuddled that they sue people who aren't guilty of much of anything. If they think this is somehow going to put a better face on their draconian tactics then they are even more egotistical and deluded than I had previously realized. If nothing else, it will rally local P2P groups and rouse them into action, and the local publicity the RIAA/MPAA is seeking will not be as friendly as they imagine. In fact, i see this backfiring on them in the long run, as the average customer begins to wonder why they are paying so much for this content.
On the more serious side, I think you're wrong in saying that plenty of people are bothered by it - just because we're the majority on Slashdot, it doesn't mean we have a significant mindshare in general population.
We are few.
Perhaps we're few in terms of the general population. But consider: it doesn't take much to get the ball rolling. No one heard of Howard Dean outside of Vermont but when he went to run for President in 2004 and used the Internet to gather donations in a run at the grass roots vote, he did pretty well... until of course his exuberance got the best of him and the press blew it out of proportion. I would suggest that a candidate of the Slashdot party could start at that level and work their way up. I remarked on this once before in terms of the Pirate Party coming to America -- if they could start at the local level, win elections here and there to get on city councils or become mayors, it would start a ripple effect that would eventually spread to the national level.
It only takes one screwball with principles, smarts, and Internet access... and I suspect Slashdot is a great breeding ground for just such people.
I wonder how long before people start being bothered by this kind of behaviour?
I think it's safe to say if you've been reading Slashdot for any fair period, plenty of people are bothered by it, however that's not as important as what those of us bothered by it intend to do about it. I vote for sending in ninjas... or maybe pirates... but seriously, if people in the tech community are worried about this, then a few of us need to get elected. The Slashdot Party anyone?
Look, as I've said repeatedly (and I don't need a post doc to know this), users fall for phishing because they are in general not Net savvy. A typical user looks at a browser or a desktop application and treats it like their TV/VCR or pocket calculator -- they expect to turn it on, use it, and aren't aware of anything else that it might be doing or be capable of doing. Doesn't matter if it's Firefox, IE, Opera, or what have you, the average user is not going to understand the workings of a browser. Nor should they have to.
There was an article a few days back (memory gets foggy with age) about IE7 and all the new stuff, to which I replied that it was all well and good, but the fact is, there have been no revolutionary new breakthroughs in browser technology. I'm not talking plug-ins, downloads, schemes, scripting, etc., but looking at the browser as more than simply a viewer of web content. It's long past that -- it's now the doorway to information and allows the user to access all kinds of data about themselves and others that is supposed to be "secure."
Browsers have to be redesigned with the average user in mind and they have to be developed to do much more of the security work for the user than they do now. They have to be turned from data reader into combination access port/firewall/security screen, and they have to run these functions automatically (except when you're a knowledgeable sort and can turn the systems on and off to your liking). A browser should stop a user from being able to access "phishy" sites, reject sites where security certificates are dodgy, and alert the user in the strongest terms that the thing they were about to do was stupid and they're not being allowed.
Phishers will continue to winnow out personal data from people as long as no one marches in and builds the next generation of tools to combat them. Trying to do anything with the current crop of technologies is like putting a band-aid over a severed jugular; to truly put the fire out, it will take a technology the phishers are not prepared for and cannot easily simulate.
In Africa, they're using cellphones for personalbanking, which is a pretty good way to move money without the hassle of checks an credit cards. I'm not sure I like this 30 cent fee, given that most parking isn't all that expensive.
And people forget that the DC-X was a concept vehicle, to prove that the technology existed and could be adapted to VTOL rockets. It was Pete Conrad's dream to take the DC-X and expand it, and make it a viable competitor for space commerce, a dream he saw dashed when the DC-X crashed during a test in July 1995.
[1] Speaking of stupid CxO titles, what the hell is a "Chief Administrative Officer"?
a) Chief Administrative Officer - in charge of paper clip chains and bottom photos from the copiers
b) Chief Administrative Officer - new member of the Enterprise bridge crew: Picard:...and this Commander Throckmorton, our Chief Administrative Officer.
The whole "ethical intruder" meme had spread, and people had started cracking into systems and then claiming they were just "rattling doorknobs" to "help security". Of course you couldn't tell an "ethical hacker" from a crook, and the crooks could claim they were just trying to help.
That's like a jewel thief or bank robber claiming they were "just trying to help out" when relieving a bank or jewelry store of its goods. Breaking and entering is breaking and entering -- if you do not belong in a place and you enter that place without authorization, you're breaking the law. Come up with any justification you like.
It's the "ethical hackers" themselves that have made it impossible for this kind of activity to be condoned.
"Ethical hacker" is an oxymoron; a hacker is trying to break into something they are not supposed to, namely the security of a computer system. Entering a system you do not have authorization to be in is the computer equivalent of breaking and entering -- it's a crime. If "hackers" want to be part of making of the solution to security concerns, then let them form security companies and have other concered companies contract their services. Don't try to get me to buy the "helping out" garbage.
If a suitable deal could not be reached, Boeing would be prepared to shut Connexion down, even though the service works as advertised and is used by a handful of international airlines on long-haul flights, one of the sources said.
Boeing has not said how much it has invested in Connexion, but people familiar with the situation say it is about $1 billion, according to the Journal.
Some industry officials say the business, because of lack of interest among U.S. airlines in outfitting their fleets with the system, may be worth no more than $150 million, the report said.
It's amazing that after 6 years with a working system, Boeing won't stick with this. It's been inevitable that Internet access would extend to airplanes and Boeing has it and now plans to give it up. I suspect someone will buy it on the cheap and turn around and make a profit on it in short order. Boeing may rue the day it turned its back on a potentially lucrative market all for lack of patience.
Young male volunteers at Fatebenefratelli hospital in Milan used a GSM900 device for 45 minutes. Reporting in the journal Annals of Neurology, Dr Paolo Rossini and colleagues then measured activity in the motor cortex, located near the ear. Powerful magnets aimed at the motor cortex have been shown to induce muscles to twitch.
It might explain while people can't seem to walk and talk on their mobile phone at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
I do. I spent a lot of time studying vocabulary in high school; I also edit and publish science fiction on the side. A good vocabulary is essential, though a word like "internecine" doesn't come up in casual conversation too much.
Despite my opposition to Jimmy Wales and his self-promotion, I agree that perhaps he's creating a forum that's greater in scope and I applaud the effort, assuming it does not devolve into the petty squabbling and in-fighting that seems to accompany Wikipedia.
They say all politics is local, but now with this development, local has become a whole country, perhaps the whole world. Do you think someone like Hugo Chavez would participate?
Spin? I wasn't aware that voicing an opinion is spin, but then perhaps thanks to politics everything is now spin. The idea behind that last little bit was to get the discussion going. Too much of reporting in this day and age is dry regurgitation of the facts which causes the audience to tune out. This is no comparison, but Edward R. Murrow was not afraid to report a story and comment on it, not to inflame passions but to start dialog. If all you want is bare news, bereft of energy and lacking spark, then I suggest Slashdot is not for you. When I send in a story to the editors, it is with the hope that dialog will come out of it, and so far I seem to have succeeded. Whether anyone agrees with my sentiments is irrelevant.
Dishonor will not trouble me, once I am dead. -- Euripides
OK, safe to say that most Americans are probably not shedding a tear for this guy. Had nothing, made himself rich through hard work, then let it go to his head and couldn't face failure, so he bilked others out of billions. We're all a little poorer thanks to his machinations.
OTOH, he was human -- proud, flawed, and subject to the passions of the animal. He was probably not the anti-Christ, didn't kill people, chop them up, and keep them in his freezer for future barbecues, nor order the death of millions because he thought they led to the downfall of his nation in the previous war. Villify him if you wish, call him the criminal he was, but now his impact is for history to decide.
And BTW, Skilling is still here to take the rap.
Or since this is Slashdot, maybe a more high-tech colution.
On the one hand, shuttles flew forever shedding foam and it only became a real problem when a large enough piece tore off to actually damage the shuttle in flight significantly. Engineers accepted the risks with many reservations, because damage was never really that severe. Of course hindsight is 20-20 and this problem could have been rectified if the foam was located interior to the tank as opposed to externally. I think they were worried that if they tried that, there would be voids in the insulation that would allow heat to enter and cause problems, but that was a manufacturing issue which probably could have been resolved with a little ingenuity.
On the other hand, a 4-5 inch crack is nothing to sneeze at and with the aerodynamic forces that batter a shuttle on its way into LEO, any number of things could cause that crack to widen and eventually spilt, teraing off a really large section of foam. It has to be repaired; I don't see how NASA management can ignore this. If they do, and the shuttle is damaged or heaven forbid, destroyed, that's the end of the space program. And probably rightly so. Like to many things, NASA was created due to Cold War concerns, namely that the Russians were going to grab the "high ground" of space and show us up in technical endeavors, weakening our position on the world stage. Like other Cold War relics, it too either needs to change or be dismantled.
I'm a NASA booster (forgive the pun) -- my dream from childhood was to walk on the Moon. But I can say that I find it hard to trust the NASA I see now; it has become hamstrung by indecision, beaureaucracy, and lack of imaginative leadership (with apologies to Dan Goldin, Sean O'Keffe, and Mike Griffin). I wanted John Young to become NASA Administrator -- tough talking, smart, no-nonsense, and imaginative. He might have (and still could if he wanted the job) lit a fire under NASA and got them thinking straight. The problem is, NASA was not prepared for life after Apollo and it shows. The STS was a compromise (no engineer in the early 70's thought solid rocket boosters were a good idea) and a poor one at that.
I think a) NASA needs to be saved from itself and b) the American people have to learn what a truly great resource they have in their space program. Barring either of those, it will be up to private industry to carry the torch.
I know from whence I speak, as it is exactly this kind of thing my wife is going through with her ex right now. Perhaps SCO does know the case is weak, but given their statements and the chest-thumping they do on a regular basis, it's more likely they have deluded themselves into believing they are in the right, ignoring the evidence. When you're an inveterate liar, you tend to believe your own lies wholeheartedly (enough to easily pass a lie detector test, but I digress); they've lied so often that they're sure it's all true, when anyone else knows its nothing but half-truths wrapped in fantasy.
And don't kid yourself: lawyers are generally not stupid, and the law firm is undoubtedly capable of handling a technical case, or at least hiring people to help them sort out the technical arguments involved. They may however be shifty and underhanded, and are not above milking a client who is willing to keep writing checks. Look for an SCO yard sale in the near future, when investors get tired of footing the bill for this.
Ah, but you're confusing the SCO with their lawyers. The SCO believes their case is strong; their lawyers know better, and so began a campaign to drag out and delay the ruling to a) cover up for the weak case, b) cause some people to give up and settle rather than fight it out (due to lack of resources), and c) to ramp up their billable hours. Never let it be said a lawyer would willingly pass up a gravy train. By the time the SCO is having a yard sale to pay off their bankruptcy, their lawyers will be bemoaning their client's fate on some deserted tropical island while tanning and drinking little drinks with rum and umbrellas in them.
Perhaps that truer than we give credit for. Consider that with the march of technology, the newest generation is always accosiated with that technology and the immediately prior generation is painted as the "bad guys" because they don't understand the technology the "young whippersnappers" are using. Take it beyond even technology; how many parents in the 50's were scandlized by rock n'roll (and back then it was Bill Hailey and the Comets, not Black Sabbath)?
Currently Congress and the parents groups, pretty much all from the prior generation, are seeing an explosion of communication and social networking in the newest generation that they do not understand and can't for the most part get in tune with. I'll admit it -- I don't think much of MySpace, blogs, and the like, but kids today have integrated such things into their personalities and made it integral to their lives. Of ocurse, like anything new, they don't understand the full number of repercussions these things represent, but the older generation doesn't either because of their technical ignorance and negative reaction to things. Kids will continue to do what they are doing, simply because it breaks them with the current order, and that's something that is not new at all.
Except I don't think it was quite that simple. While their case is extremely weak, they believed it was very strong. They've spent years now firing off one motion after another, trying to obfuscate, decalrify,and otherwise muddy a perfectly straightforward situation -- that they have no leg to stand on. They got some companies to settle with them, if nothing else to avoid the hassle of being dragged into this farce. While their attack may be driving investiment, it was not their primary goal, but now the case has been revealed for what it is: a tottering house of cards.
Agreed. Most OSS software is so entrenched, so much a part of the current workings of the Internet, that to try and sue it away is a futile gesture at best. What corporation wants to take the brunt of the backlash when they successfully sue an OSS provider, forcing them to remove their software, only to have some major Net functiionality suddenly become unavailable? In this day and age, publicity is more important than product (think Arthur Andersen) and no company wants to be thought of us as the bully that deprived Internet users of something they coveted, especially if it drives them away from their product/service.
Or the RIAA/MPAA are so befuddled that they sue people who aren't guilty of much of anything. If they think this is somehow going to put a better face on their draconian tactics then they are even more egotistical and deluded than I had previously realized. If nothing else, it will rally local P2P groups and rouse them into action, and the local publicity the RIAA/MPAA is seeking will not be as friendly as they imagine. In fact, i see this backfiring on them in the long run, as the average customer begins to wonder why they are paying so much for this content.
Hey!! Perl has real objects... you just have to work at it...
Of course, being a Perl programmer, I am very averse to work, hence all the time I spend reading Slashdot.
Perhaps we're few in terms of the general population. But consider: it doesn't take much to get the ball rolling. No one heard of Howard Dean outside of Vermont but when he went to run for President in 2004 and used the Internet to gather donations in a run at the grass roots vote, he did pretty well... until of course his exuberance got the best of him and the press blew it out of proportion. I would suggest that a candidate of the Slashdot party could start at that level and work their way up. I remarked on this once before in terms of the Pirate Party coming to America -- if they could start at the local level, win elections here and there to get on city councils or become mayors, it would start a ripple effect that would eventually spread to the national level.
It only takes one screwball with principles, smarts, and Internet access... and I suspect Slashdot is a great breeding ground for just such people.
I think it's safe to say if you've been reading Slashdot for any fair period, plenty of people are bothered by it, however that's not as important as what those of us bothered by it intend to do about it. I vote for sending in ninjas... or maybe pirates... but seriously, if people in the tech community are worried about this, then a few of us need to get elected. The Slashdot Party anyone?
It has been named the Goonhilly House of Porn. Blank CDs and boxes of tissues will be on sale in the lobby.
Look, as I've said repeatedly (and I don't need a post doc to know this), users fall for phishing because they are in general not Net savvy. A typical user looks at a browser or a desktop application and treats it like their TV/VCR or pocket calculator -- they expect to turn it on, use it, and aren't aware of anything else that it might be doing or be capable of doing. Doesn't matter if it's Firefox, IE, Opera, or what have you, the average user is not going to understand the workings of a browser. Nor should they have to.
There was an article a few days back (memory gets foggy with age) about IE7 and all the new stuff, to which I replied that it was all well and good, but the fact is, there have been no revolutionary new breakthroughs in browser technology. I'm not talking plug-ins, downloads, schemes, scripting, etc., but looking at the browser as more than simply a viewer of web content. It's long past that -- it's now the doorway to information and allows the user to access all kinds of data about themselves and others that is supposed to be "secure."
Browsers have to be redesigned with the average user in mind and they have to be developed to do much more of the security work for the user than they do now. They have to be turned from data reader into combination access port/firewall/security screen, and they have to run these functions automatically (except when you're a knowledgeable sort and can turn the systems on and off to your liking). A browser should stop a user from being able to access "phishy" sites, reject sites where security certificates are dodgy, and alert the user in the strongest terms that the thing they were about to do was stupid and they're not being allowed.
Phishers will continue to winnow out personal data from people as long as no one marches in and builds the next generation of tools to combat them. Trying to do anything with the current crop of technologies is like putting a band-aid over a severed jugular; to truly put the fire out, it will take a technology the phishers are not prepared for and cannot easily simulate.
In Africa, they're using cellphones for personal banking, which is a pretty good way to move money without the hassle of checks an credit cards. I'm not sure I like this 30 cent fee, given that most parking isn't all that expensive.
...but hackers who hack bullets do!
The 26 hour turnaround was for the DC-X.
And people forget that the DC-X was a concept vehicle, to prove that the technology existed and could be adapted to VTOL rockets. It was Pete Conrad's dream to take the DC-X and expand it, and make it a viable competitor for space commerce, a dream he saw dashed when the DC-X crashed during a test in July 1995.
[1] Speaking of stupid CxO titles, what the hell is a "Chief Administrative Officer"?
a) Chief Administrative Officer - in charge of paper clip chains and bottom photos from the copiers
...and this Commander Throckmorton, our Chief Administrative Officer.
b) Chief Administrative Officer - new member of the Enterprise bridge crew:
Picard:
The whole "ethical intruder" meme had spread, and people had started cracking into systems and then claiming they were just "rattling doorknobs" to "help security". Of course you couldn't tell an "ethical hacker" from a crook, and the crooks could claim they were just trying to help.
That's like a jewel thief or bank robber claiming they were "just trying to help out" when relieving a bank or jewelry store of its goods. Breaking and entering is breaking and entering -- if you do not belong in a place and you enter that place without authorization, you're breaking the law. Come up with any justification you like.
It's the "ethical hackers" themselves that have made it impossible for this kind of activity to be condoned.
"Ethical hacker" is an oxymoron; a hacker is trying to break into something they are not supposed to, namely the security of a computer system. Entering a system you do not have authorization to be in is the computer equivalent of breaking and entering -- it's a crime. If "hackers" want to be part of making of the solution to security concerns, then let them form security companies and have other concered companies contract their services. Don't try to get me to buy the "helping out" garbage.
If a suitable deal could not be reached, Boeing would be prepared to shut Connexion down, even though the service works as advertised and is used by a handful of international airlines on long-haul flights, one of the sources said.
Boeing has not said how much it has invested in Connexion, but people familiar with the situation say it is about $1 billion, according to the Journal.
Some industry officials say the business, because of lack of interest among U.S. airlines in outfitting their fleets with the system, may be worth no more than $150 million, the report said.
It's amazing that after 6 years with a working system, Boeing won't stick with this. It's been inevitable that Internet access would extend to airplanes and Boeing has it and now plans to give it up. I suspect someone will buy it on the cheap and turn around and make a profit on it in short order. Boeing may rue the day it turned its back on a potentially lucrative market all for lack of patience.
Young male volunteers at Fatebenefratelli hospital in Milan used a GSM900 device for 45 minutes. Reporting in the journal Annals of Neurology, Dr Paolo Rossini and colleagues then measured activity in the motor cortex, located near the ear. Powerful magnets aimed at the motor cortex have been shown to induce muscles to twitch.
It might explain while people can't seem to walk and talk on their mobile phone at the same time.
To be fair, that's only because he lopped some grumbling off the end.
Maybe the grumbling didn't render properly...