Yes, you stated exactly what I said, and which was visible in plain sight even in the original post. And I then replied to you giving a summary of the thread so far.
Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in biological life, for that is how you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, biological creatures such as these will affect you as a creature.
You are interested in the unknown... the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you, the full story of what happened on that fateful day. We are bringing you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony, of the miserable souls, who survived this terrifying ordeal.
The incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of octosquids from the deep ocean?
Transmeta, the company with some quite amazing chip technology (do you know how it translates microcode on the software level to simplify hardware etc? pretty exciting stuff) was left in the position of a patent troll.
Investing 7.5 million in Transmetta is called "investing heavily".
YouTube, a company built on nothing (it's just a damn site for low res flash videos), that didn't make a dollar profit before google bought it, costed 1.8 billion.
A typical startup investment from a VC is around 3-10 million dollars and that's not "heavily" at all..
So with numbers that distorted, I know now: we're in a very fragile bubble right now, and when it burst, it'll be ugly. Uglier than before.
I more or less agree with you... however, the one difference is the invasion of privacy aspect. Like you say, who knows if those video files are porn, home videos, secret business files, whatever.
Even worse, what is they're all of the above at the same time?!
I'd hate that to get in the wrong hands for sure...
Hold on, my hypocrisy meter just went red.....
If this was any of you guys downloading stuff off Bittorrent all we'd here is "It's NOT STEALING WAAHH!!!" However, now if the guys at GeekSquad do the exact same thing it's now 'stealing'....
No, dude false alarm, didn't you notice your "reasoning abilities" meter is so low? At that low levels, the other meters go in totally random measures and can't be trusted at all. Trust me, I'm a geek.
The issue at hand is stealing potentially private information of one's harddrive, without permission. Bittorent is about someone willfully uploading a file to share it with others, and then a group of people sharing bandwidth to get this file.
The difference is sort of like:
a) looking up a gang bang event in your neighborhood and dropping by to join the party b) someone on the street hitting you with a slab of wood in the back and raping you
To be honest, I'd rather have a competent technician solve my configuration problems and help himself to my MP3 directory than have to waste time with ignorant first-level servicepeople in a tightly overseen, "theft-free" big-box environment.
Oh yea! To be honest, I'd rather have a competent plumber solve my plumbing issues and help himself raping me in the ass, versus waste time with ignorant plumber who can't even find my ass!
Wait, what's the problem in this example? Maybe that there are good plumbers who don't wanna rape my ass. Go figure. Is there even any relation there at all?
Geek Squad/Best Buy employees are no different than walmart employees, and it doesn't require any more IT knowledge than a wallmart janitor would need to get the job. When I work at "the Buy" I remember the *procedure* for fixing a computer was reformat and reload. These aren't professionals and, while what happened was wrong, it shouldn't surprise anyone.
Oh COME ON, man! Get a grip on reality. Have you seen their ads? These guys are practically superheroes. In fact, make sure you take out all kryptonite out your PC tower case before handling it to a GeekSquad agent.
Are you kidding me? You expect these people, who are the low-paid, bottom-of-the-IT-food-chain to have ethics? Why are they any different from a parking lot attendant or car wash guy? Because they're techies? Don't kid yourself.
Is this sort of like a geek defending other geeks here? Everyone jumping to support poor little underpaid geeks in GeekSquad. So the thing you lack most when you're underpaid, is actually porn, and they were FORCED, FORCED I tell you, to obtain it from the hard drives of their clients.
Reached for comment, Geek Squad CEO Robert Stephens expressed desire to launch an internal investigation and said, "If this is true, it's an isolated incident and grounds for termination of the Agent involved.
What a monster! If he was a reasonable guy, he'd apologize to the guy and promise the whole team a regular supply of porn for everyone, free of charge.
They also gotta do something about that collection of credit cards, logins and certificates GeekSquad is collecting on another server. So, yea.. wait... wait a minute, did he say "termination of the Agent"? Shit, screw it. Go for it, but definitely make a video first, that should be cool to see (I hope they use some sort of built-in explosive, like in Mission Impossible).
In order to get bids, you will have to post a good description. OSS devs will then be able to have some remote idea of the exploit, and might be able to fix it.
Yea, just like a good trailer kinda makes it pointless to see the movie, right... Here's the good description:
"An exploit in Apache 2.x which allows a remote attacker sending kdata on port 80 to gain full control of the machine"
"An exploit in PHP core 4.x an 5.x which allows uploading arbitrary content to victim's server in arbitrary locations"
"A system and a method for implementing and deploying undetectable rootkit for Linux system with kernel ver X.YZ or later and installed X-Windows".
Hey, that's clue right there! Now get onto it, find me that exploit.
Ok. So if I can't refute your premise, and you can't refute my premise, then the problem with this site is what, in your eyes? That the people who hunt down exploits might make more money? That this could start an economy in glitches, where a programmer might intentionally insert exploitable flaws in software he's working on, with the intention of selling the exploit, then patching the program the next day? Something else?
Why, you're doing great yourself. I should just sit here and watch you go against yourself.
Let's just say that, just like you don't want people freely bidding for, say, a biological weapon some lab came up with, for the same reason you don't want to do it with software exploits.
The fuel industry claims that the costs of installing temperature-adjustment sensors on every pump would be prohibitively high. These sensors are already installed in Canada, however, where the colder temperatures favor consumers.
Nutrasweet is harmless! (i.e. cheaper than sugar!)
IE is an integral part of Windows! (wait.. it's not yet... wait.. wait.. wait.. aaahh! now it is. congrats!)
We can offer better price and services as a single huge telecom monopoly, don't split us up! (we'll kinda merge later anyway)
Piracy causes tremendous losses to our industry! (we know this, since whatever our profits, we think they should've been 4 times that!)
Companies like Microsoft seem to have developed the attitude that people shouldn't find their security holes at all, but if they do, they should be obligated to report them for free.
You're very conveniently using Microsoft as an example, but Microsoft won't be the one hurt from the entire deal. Microsoft has the money to bid and win, it has the money to lobby for a law that would make this site illegal if it hurts them. It has the lawyers to bring the site down even just like that.
What do FOSS vendors do, however, when someone starts auctioning a critical exploit to malicious parties? Where would they take the money to join the bid? And should all donations go to exploit auctions?
Or you think the site owners will be just veeery very good and never ever try to discover, say, PHP/Apache/Linux holes? Ya, sure.
So if this site never goes up, the exploits will never get into the hands of evil people? Yeah, that's likely. With this, the security companies would get a chance to bid too, and potentially keep the bug in-house.
Kinda flawed logic right there. Let's flip it, since a bidder is a bidder, never mind what are his intentions:
"So if this site never goes up, the exploits will never get into the hands of the software vendors? Yeah, that's likely. With this, the malicious companies would get a chance to bid too, and potentially keep the exploit a secret while making active use of it."
Companies like Microsoft seem to have developed the attitude that people shouldn't find their security holes at all, but if they do, they should be obligated to report them for free.
I think a free market approach like this is good.
Oh yea, free market always works! Especially when the bidders in this case would actually gain financial benefit from said "goods" by illegal access to people's machines.
Software companies that produce products will be forced to "pay up" or let the vulnerability go to said parties above.
Other free markets that work just fine, and bidding works miracles in there:
* Human Organ Markets * Internet domains * Fire Weapons, Biological Weapons, Missiles * Kidnapping journalists in Iraq for bounty * De-regulated utility monopolies * Open Market Health Insurances
The world is full of amazing examples where the best thing EVAH to do, was just sit there in awe and think "it's perfect"!
I live in Canada and the Apple presence is kind of non-existent. Not counting the iPod, it's pretty hard to find any apple products here in Canada. You can order online, but in terms of physical presence, there is none. There used to be one shop I knew of that sold a lot of Apple stuff (notebooks, monitors, software) but they closed down recently.
Making fun of Microsoft and claiming how OSX will take over the world is kinda funny put in perspective (they're not even actively selling outside of few select countries ?!).
I live in Eastern Europe and the presence of Apple here is basically nill.
There isn't a single Apple store here. There are 3rd party distributors which sell Apple hardware/software and that's about it. With the kind of deals iPhone is after (tightly integrating the iPhone functionality with a specific provider), I see a big chunk of the world simply denied access to the iPhone (with the exception of illegally imported and hacked units I guess..)
I'll be very sad to see albums go away and we are left with a bunch of singles. Albums are like a complete work, singles are merely chapters.
Don't be sad, we'll be mostly seeing pop music products go exclusively to singles for the plain reason this is how they work best (there's not coherence between the tracks in the album, no message, no chapters).
As the labels lose more and more ground under their feet, independents artists will feel more confidence to pick their own music format to offer to their fans. Some of it will make sense as a 4 track mini album, some as 3 hour mix, some as singles: anything that the artists believes is best.
Labels are likely to be relegated to the role of venture capital companies that sponsor select artist with "mainstream" potential (and losing exclusive access to distribution channels, production etc)
Slashdot Mirror
I so wanted to read their take on it, but I gotta catch a flight back to my universe.
Anyone who knows if they'll be selling this one in other universes?
excellent, you compared copying data with rape.
Well done.
Yes, you stated exactly what I said, and which was visible in plain sight even in the original post. And I then replied to you giving a summary of the thread so far.
How cute.
Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in biological life, for that is how you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, biological creatures such as these will affect you as a creature.
You are interested in the unknown... the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you, the full story of what happened on that fateful day. We are bringing you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony, of the miserable souls, who survived this terrifying ordeal.
The incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of octosquids from the deep ocean?
I am a VC and would like to invest $50 million (FIFTY MILLION US DOLLARS) in your blog, please.
50 million?! Do I look like I'm desperate here. Try better next time.
Transmeta, the company with some quite amazing chip technology (do you know how it translates microcode on the software level to simplify hardware etc? pretty exciting stuff) was left in the position of a patent troll.
Investing 7.5 million in Transmetta is called "investing heavily".
YouTube, a company built on nothing (it's just a damn site for low res flash videos), that didn't make a dollar profit before google bought it, costed 1.8 billion.
A typical startup investment from a VC is around 3-10 million dollars and that's not "heavily" at all..
So with numbers that distorted, I know now: we're in a very fragile bubble right now, and when it burst, it'll be ugly. Uglier than before.
No, actually. Anyone who's delt with 'Geek Squad' in the last couple years will say, 'Add kryptonite'.
Well, make them shave their head, get a cool side-chick, and we got a movie baby!
I more or less agree with you... however, the one difference is the invasion of privacy aspect. Like you say, who knows if those video files are porn, home videos, secret business files, whatever.
Even worse, what is they're all of the above at the same time?!
I'd hate that to get in the wrong hands for sure...
Hold on, my hypocrisy meter just went red.....
If this was any of you guys downloading stuff off Bittorrent all we'd here is "It's NOT STEALING WAAHH!!!"
However, now if the guys at GeekSquad do the exact same thing it's now 'stealing'....
No, dude false alarm, didn't you notice your "reasoning abilities" meter is so low? At that low levels, the other meters go in totally random measures and can't be trusted at all. Trust me, I'm a geek.
The issue at hand is stealing potentially private information of one's harddrive, without permission. Bittorent is about someone willfully uploading a file to share it with others, and then a group of people sharing bandwidth to get this file.
The difference is sort of like:
a) looking up a gang bang event in your neighborhood and dropping by to join the party
b) someone on the street hitting you with a slab of wood in the back and raping you
See?
To be honest, I'd rather have a competent technician solve my configuration problems and help himself to my MP3 directory than have to waste time with ignorant first-level servicepeople in a tightly overseen, "theft-free" big-box environment.
:( ?
Oh yea! To be honest, I'd rather have a competent plumber solve my plumbing issues and help himself raping me in the ass, versus waste time with ignorant plumber who can't even find my ass!
Wait, what's the problem in this example? Maybe that there are good plumbers who don't wanna rape my ass. Go figure. Is there even any relation there at all?
No
Damn it.
Geek Squad/Best Buy employees are no different than walmart employees, and it doesn't require any more IT knowledge than a wallmart janitor would need to get the job. When I work at "the Buy" I remember the *procedure* for fixing a computer was reformat and reload. These aren't professionals and, while what happened was wrong, it shouldn't surprise anyone.
Oh COME ON, man! Get a grip on reality. Have you seen their ads? These guys are practically superheroes. In fact, make sure you take out all kryptonite out your PC tower case before handling it to a GeekSquad agent.
Are you kidding me? You expect these people, who are the low-paid,
bottom-of-the-IT-food-chain to have ethics? Why are they any different
from a parking lot attendant or car wash guy? Because they're techies?
Don't kid yourself.
Is this sort of like a geek defending other geeks here? Everyone jumping to support poor little underpaid geeks in GeekSquad.
So the thing you lack most when you're underpaid, is actually porn, and they were FORCED, FORCED I tell you, to obtain it from the hard drives of their clients.
Reached for comment, Geek Squad CEO Robert Stephens expressed desire to launch an internal investigation and said, "If this is true, it's an isolated incident and grounds for termination of the Agent involved.
What a monster! If he was a reasonable guy, he'd apologize to the guy and promise the whole team a regular supply of porn for everyone, free of charge.
They also gotta do something about that collection of credit cards, logins and certificates GeekSquad is collecting on another server.
So, yea.. wait... wait a minute, did he say "termination of the Agent"? Shit, screw it. Go for it, but definitely make a video first, that should be cool to see (I hope they use some sort of built-in explosive, like in Mission Impossible).
You can tell a bunch of kids "we're good guys" and if your logo is colorful enough, they'll trust you.
But fooling the people in the legal system is a bit more involved than that. I don't like Google trying to mess around where it has no business.
'some of them might be waking up now, wondering who they got in bed with.
yea, I can imagine the lawsuits... "misled into buying overpriced shiny devices by means of marketing hype".
including the San Jose Merc's Nooch asking why you'd want to buy an Xbox in the first place.
Yea, I went there and the article title read with huge letters: "XBOX 360 - just skip it"
I wasn't very sure if he means skip the console, or skip the article, so I skipped the article.
In order to get bids, you will have to post a good description. OSS devs will then be able to have some remote idea of the exploit, and might be able to fix it.
Yea, just like a good trailer kinda makes it pointless to see the movie, right... Here's the good description:
"An exploit in Apache 2.x which allows a remote attacker sending kdata on port 80 to gain full control of the machine"
"An exploit in PHP core 4.x an 5.x which allows uploading arbitrary content to victim's server in arbitrary locations"
"A system and a method for implementing and deploying undetectable rootkit for Linux system with kernel ver X.YZ or later and installed X-Windows".
Hey, that's clue right there! Now get onto it, find me that exploit.
Ok. So if I can't refute your premise, and you can't refute my premise, then the problem with this site is what, in your eyes? That the people who hunt down exploits might make more money? That this could start an economy in glitches, where a programmer might intentionally insert exploitable flaws in software he's working on, with the intention of selling the exploit, then patching the program the next day? Something else?
Why, you're doing great yourself. I should just sit here and watch you go against yourself.
Let's just say that, just like you don't want people freely bidding for, say, a biological weapon some lab came up with, for the same reason you don't want to do it with software exploits.
The fuel industry claims that the costs of installing temperature-adjustment sensors on every pump would be prohibitively high. These sensors are already installed in Canada, however, where the colder temperatures favor consumers.
Nutrasweet is harmless! (i.e. cheaper than sugar!)
IE is an integral part of Windows! (wait.. it's not yet... wait.. wait.. wait.. aaahh! now it is. congrats!)
We can offer better price and services as a single huge telecom monopoly, don't split us up! (we'll kinda merge later anyway)
Piracy causes tremendous losses to our industry! (we know this, since whatever our profits, we think they should've been 4 times that!)
System - Microsoft Windows
Flaw - You name it
Bid - 1 beeeeellllion dollars
Yep, funny. Let's put Linux up there now. Where will be beeeeellllion dollars come from now? FSF? Yea sure.
Sites like these are a potential disaster for FOSS software.
Companies like Microsoft seem to have developed the attitude that people shouldn't find their security holes at all, but if they do, they should be obligated to report them for free.
You're very conveniently using Microsoft as an example, but Microsoft won't be the one hurt from the entire deal. Microsoft has the money to bid and win, it has the money to lobby for a law that would make this site illegal if it hurts them. It has the lawyers to bring the site down even just like that.
What do FOSS vendors do, however, when someone starts auctioning a critical exploit to malicious parties? Where would they take the money to join the bid? And should all donations go to exploit auctions?
Or you think the site owners will be just veeery very good and never ever try to discover, say, PHP/Apache/Linux holes? Ya, sure.
Wow! Things aren't so simple now, are they?
So if this site never goes up, the exploits will never get into the hands of evil people? Yeah, that's likely. With this, the security companies would get a chance to bid too, and potentially keep the bug in-house.
Kinda flawed logic right there. Let's flip it, since a bidder is a bidder, never mind what are his intentions:
"So if this site never goes up, the exploits will never get into the hands of the software vendors? Yeah, that's likely. With this, the malicious companies would get a chance to bid too, and potentially keep the exploit a secret while making active use of it."
Companies like Microsoft seem to have developed the attitude that people shouldn't find their security holes at all, but if they do, they should be obligated to report them for free.
I think a free market approach like this is good.
Oh yea, free market always works! Especially when the bidders in this case would actually gain financial benefit from said "goods" by illegal access to people's machines.
Software companies that produce products will be forced to "pay up" or let the vulnerability go to said parties above.
Other free markets that work just fine, and bidding works miracles in there:
* Human Organ Markets
* Internet domains
* Fire Weapons, Biological Weapons, Missiles
* Kidnapping journalists in Iraq for bounty
* De-regulated utility monopolies
* Open Market Health Insurances
The world is full of amazing examples where the best thing EVAH to do, was just sit there in awe and think "it's perfect"!
I live in Canada and the Apple presence is kind of non-existent. Not counting the iPod, it's pretty hard to find any apple products here in Canada. You can order online, but in terms of physical presence, there is none. There used to be one shop I knew of that sold a lot of Apple stuff (notebooks, monitors, software) but they closed down recently.
Making fun of Microsoft and claiming how OSX will take over the world is kinda funny put in perspective (they're not even actively selling outside of few select countries ?!).
A big chunk of the world is denied basic such as:
- peace
- clean water
- clean air
- housing
- electricity
What a cheap spin: if I want iPhone then it must be I don't sympathize with the dying african children! What a monster I am!
Loser.
I live in Eastern Europe and the presence of Apple here is basically nill.
There isn't a single Apple store here. There are 3rd party distributors which sell Apple hardware/software and that's about it. With the kind of deals iPhone is after (tightly integrating the iPhone functionality with a specific provider), I see a big chunk of the world simply denied access to the iPhone (with the exception of illegally imported and hacked units I guess..)
I'll be very sad to see albums go away and we are left with a bunch of singles. Albums are like a complete work, singles are merely chapters.
Don't be sad, we'll be mostly seeing pop music products go exclusively to singles for the plain reason this is how they work best (there's not coherence between the tracks in the album, no message, no chapters).
As the labels lose more and more ground under their feet, independents artists will feel more confidence to pick their own music format to offer to their fans. Some of it will make sense as a 4 track mini album, some as 3 hour mix, some as singles: anything that the artists believes is best.
Labels are likely to be relegated to the role of venture capital companies that sponsor select artist with "mainstream" potential (and losing exclusive access to distribution channels, production etc)