People like who? And why aren't you including those of other skin colours (native Americans, Chinese etc)? Does it mean anything that people of all skin colours can be just as violent towards their own skin colour? Or are you so racist and skin colour blinkered that you only see a crime if someone of a particular skin colour does something to someone of another skin colour?
I'm all for fundamental liberties, I just expect people to live up to the honour of having those liberties.
Actually, the option 3 is the "sampler". In games, this would be the Demo. If you're not sure about the trade (is the quality sufficient, etc), then a small, limited quantity is supplied by the vendor to show the quality that you'll be paying for, and entice those who are reticent about the trade. But once you have the 'sampler', then yes, you're back at options 1 or 2. You shouldn't expect the whole cargo for free. For some reason though, some game companies seem to insist on placing DRM on the demo, which really breaches the whole concept and makes it almost worthless for many (is this game worth putting up with onerous restrictions? Oh, to see if it is, I have to accept the onerous restrictions first!).
And what about people that only use people, not just techs? Most people I know wouldn't even know how to begin doing that. Could be a market opportunity to set up a simple one click thing to do it.
I'd read Lord of the Rings by the time I was 6. And still the school forced me to read the "Peter and Jane" books.. It's the way they force you to go through the steps you went through ages ago, just to prove you can. Which workplace still takes you through handwriting, and phonetic spelling for a couple of hours a day, just so you can spell 'cat' in an email to someone? If people can forge ahead, they should be supported in doing so..
Because, of course, the US was innocent of stirring up insurrection in the middle east, and destroying societies there, feeding revolutionary groups and arming them, causing countless deaths over the years. The terrorists did all this for no reason, with no view of history right? And all that putting the body on display.. Wow, way to really make a martyr and begin a whole new level of conflict and death.. The idiocy of some, supposedly 'sane' people is quite frankly astounding. Very little is black and white.. Just some incredibly stupid people seem to think they are, and set off bombs, kill people, and advocate stupid grandstanding.
So, any soldier or leader that's got connection to a war anywhere in the world gets killed, and you consider it irrelevant, because they plot the deaths of others every day?
Yes, I have a job. And once I used to work in a small label recording studio, so I have a pretty strong idea of what kinds of costs go into producing an album or track (and the kind of work that it takes). I've also played in bands, so know the amount of work that goes into writing a track (I still play guitar, bass and sax; I own them, not rent, and I bought them so I could play, not necessarily just to make money on, so I know the costs very well). I also know the sheer crap that the recording studios hand out to artists all the time (I have friends whose band folded with an album recorded that the studio wouldn't publish, and wouldn't let them publish), so I've got a fair idea of the mistreatment artists can have, and the politics that go on in the industry.. Tours cost? Weird.. All the gigging bands, and ones that go on tour make a real profit there (incidentally, did you know that touring was how money was made from music before recording came about? Or were you under the impression that recording had been around forever?). Touring is a money maker. Big time. I've written bespoke software as a freelancer, and when I ran my own company (so I have a fair idea of the strength of copyright, and the risks of going it on your own). I've also worked as an employee, and written software for them, so I get the balance of work and compensation. Pretty much all sides of the story I think, which gives me a fair idea of the balance, and how completely out of line it currently is, and is getting worse. By your argument, art would never have arisen before copyright because nobody could survive by being an artist. Strange then that the greatest works of art we still look on have been created before copyright was first thought of.
I'm all for people getting fair pay for a fair day's work. I'm against theft through legal manipulation, which is exactly what's happening. Copyright is so far away from the only mechanism for getting paid for playing music (did you know that loads of bands make a fair living from gigging, and being session musicians? It's a job, and it pays the bills). There's a great reason copyright infringement is called "copyright infringement" and not theft. That argument has been done to death in these forums. Go read.
I can understand the idealism behind your ideas, but it still doesn't make them right. It sounds like you've been suckered in by the advertising and the propaganda of the recording industry (I did a stint in the Advertising industry, so I know full well how closely those two are tied, and the manipulations they're trying to pull all the time). Do a little research, and put aside the emotional pull you've got going there, and look at the hard practicalities. Personally, it'd be great if all the stuff I'd ever written paid me forever. But in reality, the thing that keeps me going is knowing I've got to improve and grow and produce more to get the next pay. That's a hell of an incentive to be creative.
Now I'm as disenchanted with Sony as the next geek.. But plucking claims out of thin air doesn't really help.. The real answer is that it can actually be pretty good, just someone found a way in that's pretty pervasive to their design or implementation. Still, no matter how good (or not) it was before, it can obviously be improved.. Someone will almost certainly break the next version, if they try hard enough (quite a few will probably be picked up on the IDS, and perhaps charged before then). How good it really was, who knows, until someone posts full details and disclosure of the security structure..
In exactly the same way car manufacturers are currently benefiting from illegal behaviour (getaway cars, etc.). Oooo.. Look, the Government pays for the locations that muggers use! They're supporting crime! Please stop putting forth silly quotes that aren't actually even arguments. The real story behind this is that Lord 'Mandy' Mandelson (who had twice been fired from the Labour government for misconduct and corruption that he only escaped being locked up for because he was a prominent politician. Both times he was quietly brought back in by the government of the time when the public outcry faded away. Now Lord Mandy went away for a nice little holiday with a friend of his, that just incidentally happened to be in the entertainment industry. When he came back, he put this act on a fast track, basically avoiding most of the debate that would normally be associated with something this intrusive. There are so many things wrong with it on so many levels, an it'll ramp up the cost of internet provision hugely. Ok, so I assume you're going to say "Well, it protects the artists".. This would be the artists that did just fine several hundred years ago with a copyright span of just 12 years? Oh, that small limit killed art because nobody would do it with such meagre protection, would they? Well, it didn't kill art. It made a rich public domain that everyone could engage in legally. Now, however, it's a case that if you've got loads of money (read: entertainment industry), you can hire a lawyer to say that technically, copyright terms are extendible to just shy of an infinite duration (because it's termed to be 'a limited time'. This of course deprives everyone of the public domain. Which is essentially theft. Except you've just used a lot of money to make sure it's got a stamp on it by a judge, making it legal. So, you have the unethical, immoral behaviour practiced by the entertainment industry to deprive people of what used to be a right, but spending a shed load of money (that your average person couldn't even begin to fight against) to make it legal. Then you put more laws in place to protect what you've forced through against ethics. This has been shown (several studies) to be socially destructive, yet it's perfectly legal, and they keep on tightening the screws. If you think that an arbitrary law is always just and should dictate what the world does, rather than saying "what works, and what is just is what the law should be", then you're rapidly going to be supporting the building of a massive dystopia.
Assuming a network scan from your IT people means that the machine is secure and not infected says that you haven't quite got a full handle on security. Yes, you bought your own machine with your own money. Did you ask IT before doing this? Do they support iPhones as devices on the network? If not, why are you connecting them to it? The real solution is not to randomly go and install your own project without asking, it's to engage with IT first, and ask why they don't support particular devices and services. If there's a great hospital need that can be filled by this, then get a project started, with a bit of budget, and get the IT bods trained. Get the service installed such that when it (inevitably) goes bang, someone will be around shortly to get it fixed. I'm wondering, as head of a clinical department, how much your time is worth, compared to your IT guys? If it's several times the cost (most likely) then you've just cost the hospital a shed load of money. You now have to support it (more money), and odds on, you'd not be as good as an IT specialist at doing so. So, several times the cost for a less reliable service. When you're doing your clinical job, will you take the calls when it falls over (or will you even take the night calls when it fails for the staff on over night that use it)? There are so many things wrong with just slapping a machine on the network, it's not even funny (I work in a hospital, in the IT side, and attaching a computer to the network that's not been vetted and supported by IT is a disciplinary offence; you could easily put a hole in the network security that puts patient confidentiality at risk). If your IT guy wanted to play by the book, the recommendation would be to shut the box down as a rogue, and get you to engage with IT properly. Do a risk analysis, and a security vetting on it to make sure it's not going to do anything nasty. Make sure it's supportable and the skills are in house to make sure that when it goes bang, someone whose job it is to fix that will be there while you're concentrating on fixing patients (which IT really can't do, but they really are pretty handy at fixing computers that break). No, it won't be ready tomorrow. Or in a few weeks.. But as long as you put your money into it to make sure it's supportable, then all is good. Have a good think, and imagine what would happen if all the departments decided to run their own little projects without engaging IT. What would happen with the standard fail rates of hardware and software, and the user support needed. What would happen to costs and department efficiencies? The account on there is really such a trivial thing in the wrongness here that it's barely worth mentioning amongst the much bigger wrongs going on.. All IT want is to help you do your job more efficiently and provide you with what you need, balanced with what's safe for the hospital and the patients, and what can be safely resourced. If you use the IT department properly, everything gets slowly better. If you don't, you fragment the systems, and end up without support and with lots of expensive wasted time.
Ok, the "idiots" don't have time, or resource to support something. If you want something to run, you ask, and perhaps stump up a little budget for it. How much does the average doctor get paid against how much an IT sysadmin? Who has the better skills to keep the thing stable? Assume for a moment, people start using it. It becomes 'critical', then it goes poof as the hard disk dies. People then phone IT who say "we don't support that". So doctors yell at executive board, who then yell at IT and ask how on earth a machine that's not supported ends up on the network, and it's critical, so just fix it. Except there's no support and no in house skills. The person who set it up may have moved on, or is in a clinic, and obviously can't drop patients to fix a machine. If you want a project on the network, talk to IT. If you don't want a project on the network, don't engage IT. Chances are IT doesn't support iPhone either, due to the it not being a supported device on their network. Oh, you want them on the network? What about Android and WinPhone too? Come to think of it, why not Nokia devices and Palms too.. Hmm.. Now support please.. What, you mean it costs money and time?
EA area games company. They sell a service, which is playable games. Keeping games working for paying customers should be what they do. So, they deliberately introduce a single point of failure (i.e. DRM servers) for a large part of content. If you do this, you better make sure it doesn't fail. If you do, then complete liability lies with you. It's not an inadvertent mistake that couldn't be predicted as a bug in the software that affects some people, it's a decision, made with intent, to deliberately introduct that single point of failure. No passing the buck, no excuses. It's in the design by intent. As they're the guys who actually wrote the login code, then, as a first step to monitoring the service, I'd suggest they write code to say "this minute, can I successfully log into the authentication servers". A "yes" indicates that things are probably fine. A value of "no" means something went wrong. A whole series of "no" for an extended period (say, every minute for 15 minutes) most likely means "Something is VERY badly wrong". At this point, send the alarm out to all the required staff to get a fix in place. Probably the reason most people didn't call was because there was no error that said "The servers are experiencing a problem". The amount of things that could conceivably have gone wrong is astounding (including file corruption, registry changes, a whole host of things you think of before "Oh, the DRM server must be lying"). If they didn't know, then they were that careless with their introduction of a failure point that they were negligent in design (hey, when did you last see a doctor getting off free from a botched surgery because he didn't know that cutting internal organ A would cripple the patient for months, and wasn't looking out for it, even though he'd put "cut organ A" into his surgical plan?). I'm very sorry, but they are responsible for the game. They're responsible for the operation of the single point of failure they introduced and its continuity of service. They should have known. There are two options here: 1) They knew and didn't do anything about it: This means that they simply don't care about product maintenance and keeping a service running that people had paid for (sounds like decent grounds for compensation based on incompetence and denial of service) 2) They didn't know, which means they're incompetent at the management of the staff levels required to maintain a service. If you're incapable of maintaining a service, you shouldn't offer it for sale. If you do, expect the compensation claims that come in when you fail to maintain your end of the bargain.
Right, so the device, as originally sold to a great many people remains unhacked while it has functionality of A + B. Company removes the ability to do A + B. Device is then hacked, such that it can once again do A + B (that people paid for). People who do A are inconvenienced by large amounts of updates that Company sends out to attempt to stay ahead of cracks (which are a direct consequence of Company's earlier action to remove functionality). People are inconvenienced by cheating (which is attributed to a hack of the system, that only came about because Company removed initial functionality that people had paid for).
You, for some reason, follow the chain part of the way, but refuse to follow it all the way. Sony made money from selling A + B. That's a fact (they got my money instead of MS, or, more likely, nobody). They broke their end of the bargain. The consequence of this is someone had to break the security on the system (that had never previously been done while it worked as originally billed, because it did what everyone wanted without a hack) to make it work as wanted. The unintended consequence of this is that there is now cheating in multiplayer games. The root cause of this is Sony's decision to screw a segment of their market over. Take that decision away, and there's a very strong chance all the rest of it would never have happened. Everyone would be happy; games makers would still make money. Sony would have a better name, games players would not be inconvenienced, OS tinkerers would have a shiny play thing. Win all round. Instead, they chose to make a decision that instead made everyone lose. If you really don't care about all this, and want it to just work, then attack the root cause. Complain to Sony that it is indeed all their fault (which it is) and they're irritating their majority market as a direct consequence of their actions.
If someone screws up a device that a large amount of people used to be happy using under "original contract", then I strongly suspect that some bright spark somewhere will obtain them and post them.
Well, my choice given that change of contract is "Well, I no longer have access to the service (full functionality) of the item, so I don't want you to have access to the money anymore. On average, I keep a console for 6 years, I've had it for 2. Refund me the 4 years worth of service I now don't have, and I'll pass you back the item that doesn't fulfil my requirement (other OS plus games) as you've just hamstrung it."
However, they don't allow you this, and they only get away with that one sided agreement because they're a massive industry against an individual. In the Japanese culture, this is highly dishonourable behaviour (the kind that could find you in hot water with the business laws if it were a deal between corporations).
Would this, by any chance, be the same DMCA that's been decried from the very start as a Corporate lobbied removal of existing liberties? My, I think it just might. GeoHot happened to disagree that a corporation has the right to dictate what you can or can't do with an item you've purchased, so he worked out how to do whathe wanted on his own machine. Now, he distributes that knowledge to a variety of people who are interested in doing the same. Personally, I'd love the ability to have the 'Other OS' functionality back on my PS3. I put my money where my mouth was in supporting the idea that it should be there (I hadn't really been much interested in purchasing a console, but I liked that a corporation would open up a console for the home brew/enthusiast crowd; the very same ideals I had when I was a kid/teenager in the 70s and 80s), and thought 'hell, I can play a game or two on it to justify the spend, and it'll be good to reward a company for even attempting to do something slightly enlightened in this age of trying to lock everything down and out. More than anything, I think I was disappointed in Sony execs. It was a dishonourable thing to do (strike a deal, then renege on it). Western companies, sure I can see them doing just that, but acting with dishonour in the Japanese culture? Wow. Still, I find your argument that we should all cheer on Sony because they choose to charge someone under an unethical law for attempting to regain his side of a deal that was struck at the point of payment to be a little naive. I bought the console simply because it gave me options to do A and B. After I buy, the company decide that now they only want me to do B. I can do A if I want, but they'll prevent me doing B for as long as I choose to do A. Should I ever choose to do B, then I can never do A. Someone works out a way to do A and B again, and the company immediately drag them to court. Personally, I'd cheer anyone on who attempts to get me my original deal back again. GeoHot did that. So I applaud him for it. Yes, he's in court for his own actions, but that doesn't mean I'm on Sony's side in this; I find their dealings with me to be dishonourable. I consider the DMCA to be unethical. Really, the USA has fallen a long way, and I somewhat suspect the idealists who started the American war of Independence would be spinning in their graves. There was an unfair levy placed, and a stripping of liberty on the country, so they threw a whole load of tea into a harbour, and were remembered for centuries as heroes who started a rebellion. I'm a Brit, and I'm pretty much an "establishment" person. I'm still behind the guys who did this all the way. I wasn't behind the DDOS and compromising of companies. I am behind the peaceful civil unrest of people turning round and saying "this is unjust", and spreading the message. I'm pondering taking part myself, and calmly explaining to people that anything they buy on features could suffer exactly the same fate, and that the company now has an established track record for dishonouring their point of sale promise of functionality. Personally, I really hope the media takes this and runs with it. It'll be interesting to see how much of a PR hit Sony takes with this one, and how it starts to affect sales at time of austerity, where everyone wants to be able to rely on their vendor. No, I don't want to see Sony fail. But I want them to understand that actions have consequences, and their action in removing the original deal has a price. And I'd really like them to understand that this may be a price that in future they'll know they don't want to pay. Ah for an idea world. I suspect it won't hurt them that much, and they'll carry on, knowing they can renege on any deal with impunity. We, as customers, cannot. What a lovely world us mere mortals live in 'eh? Where's that representation when you need it?
How is a software engineer, in a few weeks, going to learn enough about a particular field to go and be able to obtain a spec document from a client? Answer, they don't, they just learn enough to be able to communicate with the experts, and translate their knowledge into relevance for the task at hand.
Really, the Judge in question seems to be entirely on the ball. He doesn't need to know how to apply the relevant parts in a program of his own; he just needs to understand generally what the basic principle is. You know, the kind of thing that got explained in a couple of hours of a lecture at the beginning of a degree. A bit above layman, but nowhere near enough to be a full on practitioner. When you know enough of what the base principles are, you get the ability to make sensible questions on the deeper detail. All the judge needs to know is how this language detail translates into the field of law,
The taxes taken from smokers aren't channelled into the NHS, so the fact money is absorbed from a person with a lifestyle choice doesn't mean that the body responsible for healthcare gets any of that cash (just the burden). The same is definitely true of alcohol, which is one of the biggest drains (weekend nights, the amount of trouble that ends up in an Emergency Department is beyond belief; this comes from assault on staff who then can't work for a while and need to be covered by others, or agency which is expensive, damage to equipment, extra security, and the actual treatment of the drunks, which is usually more problematic as they aren't usually very cooperative, extra staff to deal with purely alcohol, thus 'lifestyle choice', related injuries/illness).
If you're a small company, with highly distributed work, and a single repository for all these to check in, and very little in the way of hard tech, why not? Would you trust your car repair to just one garage when you get a service? Yes? Well, that's because you trust them to do what you pay for.. Not everyone has the money to get multiple offsite backups for each site, or even the resource to perform more than one backup (from the sounds of TFA, a lot of this work of contribution has been ad-hoc by highly distributed, and not particularly technical people, so their onsite backups are going to be flakey).
No, I don't assume at all. Just part of my remit to make sure they have a fair stab at doing the right thing. By and large, they do. No such thing as perfect, it's all risk mitigation.
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Somehow, the "Cave Johnson" voice seemed to come out loud and clear in that last paragraph.. And it captured the apparent Sony approach nicely!
People like who? And why aren't you including those of other skin colours (native Americans, Chinese etc)? Does it mean anything that people of all skin colours can be just as violent towards their own skin colour? Or are you so racist and skin colour blinkered that you only see a crime if someone of a particular skin colour does something to someone of another skin colour?
I'm all for fundamental liberties, I just expect people to live up to the honour of having those liberties.
I've found it pretty straightforward.. There's an undercurrent going on, and it's been interesting following it, but certainly not over complicated..
Actually, the option 3 is the "sampler". In games, this would be the Demo.
If you're not sure about the trade (is the quality sufficient, etc), then a small, limited quantity is supplied by the vendor to show the quality that you'll be paying for, and entice those who are reticent about the trade.
But once you have the 'sampler', then yes, you're back at options 1 or 2. You shouldn't expect the whole cargo for free.
For some reason though, some game companies seem to insist on placing DRM on the demo, which really breaches the whole concept and makes it almost worthless for many (is this game worth putting up with onerous restrictions? Oh, to see if it is, I have to accept the onerous restrictions first!).
And what about people that only use people, not just techs?
Most people I know wouldn't even know how to begin doing that.
Could be a market opportunity to set up a simple one click thing to do it.
I'd read Lord of the Rings by the time I was 6. And still the school forced me to read the "Peter and Jane" books..
It's the way they force you to go through the steps you went through ages ago, just to prove you can. Which workplace still takes you through handwriting, and phonetic spelling for a couple of hours a day, just so you can spell 'cat' in an email to someone?
If people can forge ahead, they should be supported in doing so..
Because, of course, the US was innocent of stirring up insurrection in the middle east, and destroying societies there, feeding revolutionary groups and arming them, causing countless deaths over the years.
The terrorists did all this for no reason, with no view of history right?
And all that putting the body on display.. Wow, way to really make a martyr and begin a whole new level of conflict and death..
The idiocy of some, supposedly 'sane' people is quite frankly astounding.
Very little is black and white.. Just some incredibly stupid people seem to think they are, and set off bombs, kill people, and advocate stupid grandstanding.
So, any soldier or leader that's got connection to a war anywhere in the world gets killed, and you consider it irrelevant, because they plot the deaths of others every day?
Yes, I have a job. And once I used to work in a small label recording studio, so I have a pretty strong idea of what kinds of costs go into producing an album or track (and the kind of work that it takes). I've also played in bands, so know the amount of work that goes into writing a track (I still play guitar, bass and sax; I own them, not rent, and I bought them so I could play, not necessarily just to make money on, so I know the costs very well). I also know the sheer crap that the recording studios hand out to artists all the time (I have friends whose band folded with an album recorded that the studio wouldn't publish, and wouldn't let them publish), so I've got a fair idea of the mistreatment artists can have, and the politics that go on in the industry.. Tours cost? Weird.. All the gigging bands, and ones that go on tour make a real profit there (incidentally, did you know that touring was how money was made from music before recording came about? Or were you under the impression that recording had been around forever?). Touring is a money maker. Big time.
I've written bespoke software as a freelancer, and when I ran my own company (so I have a fair idea of the strength of copyright, and the risks of going it on your own). I've also worked as an employee, and written software for them, so I get the balance of work and compensation. Pretty much all sides of the story I think, which gives me a fair idea of the balance, and how completely out of line it currently is, and is getting worse. By your argument, art would never have arisen before copyright because nobody could survive by being an artist. Strange then that the greatest works of art we still look on have been created before copyright was first thought of.
I'm all for people getting fair pay for a fair day's work. I'm against theft through legal manipulation, which is exactly what's happening.
Copyright is so far away from the only mechanism for getting paid for playing music (did you know that loads of bands make a fair living from gigging, and being session musicians? It's a job, and it pays the bills).
There's a great reason copyright infringement is called "copyright infringement" and not theft. That argument has been done to death in these forums. Go read.
I can understand the idealism behind your ideas, but it still doesn't make them right. It sounds like you've been suckered in by the advertising and the propaganda of the recording industry (I did a stint in the Advertising industry, so I know full well how closely those two are tied, and the manipulations they're trying to pull all the time). Do a little research, and put aside the emotional pull you've got going there, and look at the hard practicalities. Personally, it'd be great if all the stuff I'd ever written paid me forever. But in reality, the thing that keeps me going is knowing I've got to improve and grow and produce more to get the next pay. That's a hell of an incentive to be creative.
Now I'm as disenchanted with Sony as the next geek.. But plucking claims out of thin air doesn't really help..
The real answer is that it can actually be pretty good, just someone found a way in that's pretty pervasive to their design or implementation.
Still, no matter how good (or not) it was before, it can obviously be improved.. Someone will almost certainly break the next version, if they try hard enough (quite a few will probably be picked up on the IDS, and perhaps charged before then).
How good it really was, who knows, until someone posts full details and disclosure of the security structure..
In exactly the same way car manufacturers are currently benefiting from illegal behaviour (getaway cars, etc.). Oooo.. Look, the Government pays for the locations that muggers use! They're supporting crime!
Please stop putting forth silly quotes that aren't actually even arguments.
The real story behind this is that Lord 'Mandy' Mandelson (who had twice been fired from the Labour government for misconduct and corruption that he only escaped being locked up for because he was a prominent politician. Both times he was quietly brought back in by the government of the time when the public outcry faded away.
Now Lord Mandy went away for a nice little holiday with a friend of his, that just incidentally happened to be in the entertainment industry. When he came back, he put this act on a fast track, basically avoiding most of the debate that would normally be associated with something this intrusive. There are so many things wrong with it on so many levels, an it'll ramp up the cost of internet provision hugely.
Ok, so I assume you're going to say "Well, it protects the artists".. This would be the artists that did just fine several hundred years ago with a copyright span of just 12 years? Oh, that small limit killed art because nobody would do it with such meagre protection, would they?
Well, it didn't kill art. It made a rich public domain that everyone could engage in legally.
Now, however, it's a case that if you've got loads of money (read: entertainment industry), you can hire a lawyer to say that technically, copyright terms are extendible to just shy of an infinite duration (because it's termed to be 'a limited time'. This of course deprives everyone of the public domain. Which is essentially theft. Except you've just used a lot of money to make sure it's got a stamp on it by a judge, making it legal. So, you have the unethical, immoral behaviour practiced by the entertainment industry to deprive people of what used to be a right, but spending a shed load of money (that your average person couldn't even begin to fight against) to make it legal. Then you put more laws in place to protect what you've forced through against ethics.
This has been shown (several studies) to be socially destructive, yet it's perfectly legal, and they keep on tightening the screws.
If you think that an arbitrary law is always just and should dictate what the world does, rather than saying "what works, and what is just is what the law should be", then you're rapidly going to be supporting the building of a massive dystopia.
Assuming a network scan from your IT people means that the machine is secure and not infected says that you haven't quite got a full handle on security.
Yes, you bought your own machine with your own money. Did you ask IT before doing this? Do they support iPhones as devices on the network? If not, why are you connecting them to it?
The real solution is not to randomly go and install your own project without asking, it's to engage with IT first, and ask why they don't support particular devices and services. If there's a great hospital need that can be filled by this, then get a project started, with a bit of budget, and get the IT bods trained. Get the service installed such that when it (inevitably) goes bang, someone will be around shortly to get it fixed.
I'm wondering, as head of a clinical department, how much your time is worth, compared to your IT guys? If it's several times the cost (most likely) then you've just cost the hospital a shed load of money. You now have to support it (more money), and odds on, you'd not be as good as an IT specialist at doing so. So, several times the cost for a less reliable service.
When you're doing your clinical job, will you take the calls when it falls over (or will you even take the night calls when it fails for the staff on over night that use it)?
There are so many things wrong with just slapping a machine on the network, it's not even funny (I work in a hospital, in the IT side, and attaching a computer to the network that's not been vetted and supported by IT is a disciplinary offence; you could easily put a hole in the network security that puts patient confidentiality at risk). If your IT guy wanted to play by the book, the recommendation would be to shut the box down as a rogue, and get you to engage with IT properly. Do a risk analysis, and a security vetting on it to make sure it's not going to do anything nasty. Make sure it's supportable and the skills are in house to make sure that when it goes bang, someone whose job it is to fix that will be there while you're concentrating on fixing patients (which IT really can't do, but they really are pretty handy at fixing computers that break).
No, it won't be ready tomorrow. Or in a few weeks.. But as long as you put your money into it to make sure it's supportable, then all is good.
Have a good think, and imagine what would happen if all the departments decided to run their own little projects without engaging IT. What would happen with the standard fail rates of hardware and software, and the user support needed. What would happen to costs and department efficiencies?
The account on there is really such a trivial thing in the wrongness here that it's barely worth mentioning amongst the much bigger wrongs going on..
All IT want is to help you do your job more efficiently and provide you with what you need, balanced with what's safe for the hospital and the patients, and what can be safely resourced. If you use the IT department properly, everything gets slowly better. If you don't, you fragment the systems, and end up without support and with lots of expensive wasted time.
Ok, the "idiots" don't have time, or resource to support something. If you want something to run, you ask, and perhaps stump up a little budget for it.
How much does the average doctor get paid against how much an IT sysadmin? Who has the better skills to keep the thing stable?
Assume for a moment, people start using it. It becomes 'critical', then it goes poof as the hard disk dies. People then phone IT who say "we don't support that". So doctors yell at executive board, who then yell at IT and ask how on earth a machine that's not supported ends up on the network, and it's critical, so just fix it.
Except there's no support and no in house skills. The person who set it up may have moved on, or is in a clinic, and obviously can't drop patients to fix a machine.
If you want a project on the network, talk to IT. If you don't want a project on the network, don't engage IT.
Chances are IT doesn't support iPhone either, due to the it not being a supported device on their network. Oh, you want them on the network? What about Android and WinPhone too? Come to think of it, why not Nokia devices and Palms too.. Hmm.. Now support please.. What, you mean it costs money and time?
EA area games company. They sell a service, which is playable games. Keeping games working for paying customers should be what they do.
So, they deliberately introduce a single point of failure (i.e. DRM servers) for a large part of content. If you do this, you better make sure it doesn't fail. If you do, then complete liability lies with you. It's not an inadvertent mistake that couldn't be predicted as a bug in the software that affects some people, it's a decision, made with intent, to deliberately introduct that single point of failure. No passing the buck, no excuses. It's in the design by intent.
As they're the guys who actually wrote the login code, then, as a first step to monitoring the service, I'd suggest they write code to say "this minute, can I successfully log into the authentication servers". A "yes" indicates that things are probably fine. A value of "no" means something went wrong.
A whole series of "no" for an extended period (say, every minute for 15 minutes) most likely means "Something is VERY badly wrong". At this point, send the alarm out to all the required staff to get a fix in place.
Probably the reason most people didn't call was because there was no error that said "The servers are experiencing a problem". The amount of things that could conceivably have gone wrong is astounding (including file corruption, registry changes, a whole host of things you think of before "Oh, the DRM server must be lying").
If they didn't know, then they were that careless with their introduction of a failure point that they were negligent in design (hey, when did you last see a doctor getting off free from a botched surgery because he didn't know that cutting internal organ A would cripple the patient for months, and wasn't looking out for it, even though he'd put "cut organ A" into his surgical plan?).
I'm very sorry, but they are responsible for the game. They're responsible for the operation of the single point of failure they introduced and its continuity of service. They should have known.
There are two options here:
1) They knew and didn't do anything about it: This means that they simply don't care about product maintenance and keeping a service running that people had paid for (sounds like decent grounds for compensation based on incompetence and denial of service)
2) They didn't know, which means they're incompetent at the management of the staff levels required to maintain a service. If you're incapable of maintaining a service, you shouldn't offer it for sale. If you do, expect the compensation claims that come in when you fail to maintain your end of the bargain.
Right, so the device, as originally sold to a great many people remains unhacked while it has functionality of A + B.
Company removes the ability to do A + B. Device is then hacked, such that it can once again do A + B (that people paid for).
People who do A are inconvenienced by large amounts of updates that Company sends out to attempt to stay ahead of cracks (which are a direct consequence of Company's earlier action to remove functionality).
People are inconvenienced by cheating (which is attributed to a hack of the system, that only came about because Company removed initial functionality that people had paid for).
You, for some reason, follow the chain part of the way, but refuse to follow it all the way. Sony made money from selling A + B. That's a fact (they got my money instead of MS, or, more likely, nobody). They broke their end of the bargain. The consequence of this is someone had to break the security on the system (that had never previously been done while it worked as originally billed, because it did what everyone wanted without a hack) to make it work as wanted. The unintended consequence of this is that there is now cheating in multiplayer games.
The root cause of this is Sony's decision to screw a segment of their market over. Take that decision away, and there's a very strong chance all the rest of it would never have happened. Everyone would be happy; games makers would still make money. Sony would have a better name, games players would not be inconvenienced, OS tinkerers would have a shiny play thing. Win all round.
Instead, they chose to make a decision that instead made everyone lose.
If you really don't care about all this, and want it to just work, then attack the root cause. Complain to Sony that it is indeed all their fault (which it is) and they're irritating their majority market as a direct consequence of their actions.
If someone screws up a device that a large amount of people used to be happy using under "original contract", then I strongly suspect that some bright spark somewhere will obtain them and post them.
Well, my choice given that change of contract is "Well, I no longer have access to the service (full functionality) of the item, so I don't want you to have access to the money anymore. On average, I keep a console for 6 years, I've had it for 2. Refund me the 4 years worth of service I now don't have, and I'll pass you back the item that doesn't fulfil my requirement (other OS plus games) as you've just hamstrung it."
However, they don't allow you this, and they only get away with that one sided agreement because they're a massive industry against an individual. In the Japanese culture, this is highly dishonourable behaviour (the kind that could find you in hot water with the business laws if it were a deal between corporations).
Would this, by any chance, be the same DMCA that's been decried from the very start as a Corporate lobbied removal of existing liberties?
My, I think it just might.
GeoHot happened to disagree that a corporation has the right to dictate what you can or can't do with an item you've purchased, so he worked out how to do whathe wanted on his own machine.
Now, he distributes that knowledge to a variety of people who are interested in doing the same. Personally, I'd love the ability to have the 'Other OS' functionality back on my PS3. I put my money where my mouth was in supporting the idea that it should be there (I hadn't really been much interested in purchasing a console, but I liked that a corporation would open up a console for the home brew/enthusiast crowd; the very same ideals I had when I was a kid/teenager in the 70s and 80s), and thought 'hell, I can play a game or two on it to justify the spend, and it'll be good to reward a company for even attempting to do something slightly enlightened in this age of trying to lock everything down and out. More than anything, I think I was disappointed in Sony execs. It was a dishonourable thing to do (strike a deal, then renege on it). Western companies, sure I can see them doing just that, but acting with dishonour in the Japanese culture?
Wow.
Still, I find your argument that we should all cheer on Sony because they choose to charge someone under an unethical law for attempting to regain his side of a deal that was struck at the point of payment to be a little naive.
I bought the console simply because it gave me options to do A and B.
After I buy, the company decide that now they only want me to do B. I can do A if I want, but they'll prevent me doing B for as long as I choose to do A.
Should I ever choose to do B, then I can never do A.
Someone works out a way to do A and B again, and the company immediately drag them to court.
Personally, I'd cheer anyone on who attempts to get me my original deal back again. GeoHot did that. So I applaud him for it. Yes, he's in court for his own actions, but that doesn't mean I'm on Sony's side in this; I find their dealings with me to be dishonourable. I consider the DMCA to be unethical.
Really, the USA has fallen a long way, and I somewhat suspect the idealists who started the American war of Independence would be spinning in their graves.
There was an unfair levy placed, and a stripping of liberty on the country, so they threw a whole load of tea into a harbour, and were remembered for centuries as heroes who started a rebellion. I'm a Brit, and I'm pretty much an "establishment" person. I'm still behind the guys who did this all the way.
I wasn't behind the DDOS and compromising of companies. I am behind the peaceful civil unrest of people turning round and saying "this is unjust", and spreading the message. I'm pondering taking part myself, and calmly explaining to people that anything they buy on features could suffer exactly the same fate, and that the company now has an established track record for dishonouring their point of sale promise of functionality.
Personally, I really hope the media takes this and runs with it. It'll be interesting to see how much of a PR hit Sony takes with this one, and how it starts to affect sales at time of austerity, where everyone wants to be able to rely on their vendor.
No, I don't want to see Sony fail. But I want them to understand that actions have consequences, and their action in removing the original deal has a price. And I'd really like them to understand that this may be a price that in future they'll know they don't want to pay.
Ah for an idea world. I suspect it won't hurt them that much, and they'll carry on, knowing they can renege on any deal with impunity. We, as customers, cannot.
What a lovely world us mere mortals live in 'eh? Where's that representation when you need it?
How is a software engineer, in a few weeks, going to learn enough about a particular field to go and be able to obtain a spec document from a client? Answer, they don't, they just learn enough to be able to communicate with the experts, and translate their knowledge into relevance for the task at hand.
Really, the Judge in question seems to be entirely on the ball. He doesn't need to know how to apply the relevant parts in a program of his own; he just needs to understand generally what the basic principle is. You know, the kind of thing that got explained in a couple of hours of a lecture at the beginning of a degree. A bit above layman, but nowhere near enough to be a full on practitioner. When you know enough of what the base principles are, you get the ability to make sensible questions on the deeper detail.
All the judge needs to know is how this language detail translates into the field of law,
The taxes taken from smokers aren't channelled into the NHS, so the fact money is absorbed from a person with a lifestyle choice doesn't mean that the body responsible for healthcare gets any of that cash (just the burden).
The same is definitely true of alcohol, which is one of the biggest drains (weekend nights, the amount of trouble that ends up in an Emergency Department is beyond belief; this comes from assault on staff who then can't work for a while and need to be covered by others, or agency which is expensive, damage to equipment, extra security, and the actual treatment of the drunks, which is usually more problematic as they aren't usually very cooperative, extra staff to deal with purely alcohol, thus 'lifestyle choice', related injuries/illness).
A small price to pay for an irregular treat. A large price to pay if you're a regular.
If you're a small company, with highly distributed work, and a single repository for all these to check in, and very little in the way of hard tech, why not?
Would you trust your car repair to just one garage when you get a service? Yes? Well, that's because you trust them to do what you pay for..
Not everyone has the money to get multiple offsite backups for each site, or even the resource to perform more than one backup (from the sounds of TFA, a lot of this work of contribution has been ad-hoc by highly distributed, and not particularly technical people, so their onsite backups are going to be flakey).
No, I don't assume at all. Just part of my remit to make sure they have a fair stab at doing the right thing. By and large, they do. No such thing as perfect, it's all risk mitigation.
Wish I had points to mod that funny, informative and insightful simultaneously.
Actually, no. Windows by and large.