Threats are not notices of suit. That is, the company has not yet filed suit against you. Therefore, you have no legal obligation to respond.
The problem (or the threat) being, if you do want to settle, the company then files the suit and may say "too late, we're making an example of you now."
Your choice, but be aware of where preemptive settlement ends and legal recourse begins. Myself, I'd get a lawyer's advice when the threat comes in. At the least, I'd feel more comfortable sleeping assured. At best, you've already found someone to handle it if you DO get served.
A couple other things about small claims court: 1) You generally give up your right to appeal by filing there. (You can still appeal counterclaims, if you want.) 2) In the jurisdiction I am in, I was informed that you generally have 15 minutes to present your case. 3) (again, in my jurisdiction) there is a mandatory mediation session between the parties. Perhaps easier than going before the judge. 4) as participants are generally non-lawyers, lawyering (legal terms, etc) will generally raise the bar for your side, on the assumption you "know what you are doing".
> to renew their contracts with the people who originally wrote the apps,
If you contract out the making of custom software, and don't ensure that you have everything you need - specs, internal design documentation, source code, tools - to maintain it, you're doing it wrong. The job ain't over 'til the paperwork is done.
And sadly, almost nobody has the political will to ensure the paperwork all gets done, and the technical knowledge to know when that point is reached.
NASA and the Saturn rockets are a case in point, albeit mostly a H/W case.
The public can video the drone taking some action, but cannot link from that to the operator. If multiple drones are in operation at any one time, with multiple operators, reasonable doubt could be easily established simply by "losing" the drone captured imagery.
The police don't have to prove whatever drone problems they claim, they just have to create reasonable doubt.
We have nigh uncountable garbage mines in this country. Why should we not support our overseas friends power needs by opening them as concessions.
Which would lead to the natural conclusions: The EPA will regulate garbage mining, the Sierra Club will start decrying the spoilation of our resources, the paranoid will start advocate government control to assure our future garbage needs....
At least one site seems to say that the single biggest contributor is a parasitic mite and a virus that it spreads.
The linked BBC article labels those as "merely" stress factors. It mentions - at the very end of the article, mind - that laboratory studies show that the compounds can do harm to bees... but haven't been shown under field conditions. They COULD be much like the rats given artificial sweetener in order to help the market for the next artificial sweetener. Or, they could be spot on. (Hey, that's what Science is for, after all. Answering questions and creating new ones.)
It also quotes a Greenpeace activist as saying (about Monday's vote) "makes it crystal clear that there is overwhelming scientific, political and public support for a ban."... I didn't know votes affected science. I guess you learn something new every day.
>It's also rather arrogant to assume that your game would have been pirated in the first place.
Make a list (A) of games that have never once been pirated, cracked, torrented, cloned, or otherwise ripped off.
Now, make a list (B) of games that have suffered one or more of those fates.
The odds of not getting pirated ( A / (A+B) ) in the general industry are not so great, are they?... or are you saying "that game isn't worth cracking"? And you realize that some minimum level of arrogance is required to publish... anything - book, game, speech - anything at all, right?
Sure, he was FOUND on the 23rd, so it is conceivable he committed suicide in reaction. But what was he doing between March 16 and April 32, aside from not going to class?
I agree, though, that crowd sourcing and more public cameras will make it more likely that police will be able to find body-doubles for criminals more easily.
A follow-up poster replied "confirmation bias". I have to say "so what?"
To function as a bomb detector, all it has to do go bleep when it detects some kind of thing, used in some kind of bomb. Chemical compounds, object density, ferrous metal content, anything.
To be useful as a bomb detector, it doesn't even have to do that - it just has to help reinforce safe handling procedures for "unknown objects".
False positives don't matter - if you have a device that, one time, keeps one operator from doing something that causes a live bomb from going off and killing him, then you've got a win. False negatives do matter, if the person operating the device doesn't recognize the possibility of a false negative and simply relies on the device to say yes or no. Confirmation bias? Someone who finds bombs on a regular basis is likely to recognize signs, consciously or unconsciously. To that end, a dowsing rod would be as useful.
So even if the devices were PURE snake oil, they'd still be useful as a mental prop.
>>advising all our clients who use WordPress to install an additional plugin 'Limit Login Attempts' that will help to prevent brute force attacks
> Not being familiar with wordpress, I'll ask why isn't that on by default?
What could be a simpler way to deny an administrator access to his own account than by a "limit login attempts" that limits attempts on a per-account basis (vs a per-IP address basis)?
And if the attack is "one attempt per site per zombie", limiting on a per-IP basis has no teeth.
<ignorant_speculation>Of course, if you have created an admin account that's not NAMED admin, you won't be locked out. And if you change the account named "admin" to having lower privileges, even better.</ignorant_speculation>
Unlike hydrogen, helium does not chemically bind so much, so we have a local scarcity of it.
Kinda like how we - locally - have a large amount of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and so on around, compared to the universal distribution.
To be honest, I can live without the helium. I'd have a harder time living with the extra oxygen, so please don't start a government program to redistribute the elements.
> The one thing that never happens as the government regulates ever greater parts of the economy is that the common person benefits.
Do you feel the same way about the EPA? How about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission? Do you get any benefit from the FCC? The FDA?
Surely some public good has come from these extensions to economic regulation. Rivers that don't catch fire. Nuclear waste that isn't simply dumped in the river. WiFi, wedged in where Amateur Radio used to be. (Alternately, spectrum preserves for Amateur Radio in the first place.) Meat packing plants whose products don't regularly contain rat feces or salmonella. Or drugs that often (but perhaps not always) are more effective than snake oil for having had to prove themselves.
Individual, specific laws that benefit specific corporations? Yeah, they happen. Yeah, they're often deplorable. But even if it is only a homeopathic baby, don't throw it out with the....
I was, rather, pointing out that "small as a grain of sand" has little meaning when referring to gasses, where the amount of material depends on the pressure involved; it has rather more meaning when describing liquids and solids, which are much less compressable.
As Silicon Dioxide (silica, a component of sand) is not noted for its fusing properties, I was guessing that the fusion would be from more typical materials: hydrogen, or perhaps helium.
And while liquid hydrogen technology is well developed, liquid helium is a bit more difficult, and metallic hydrogen even more so. A "grain" of (metallic) hydrogen seems a bit beyond expectation. A grain-sized amount of hydrogen, I'd believe. But a tank of granulated metallic hydrogen?
He created an account with network privileges on his own? So either IT authorized it and failed to close it with his "official" account, or they didn't authorize it but created circumstances where it could happen. Either way, an IT failure.
An alternate possibility is that he got credentials of a coworker and shared those. IT (and said coworker) being unaware that the account was no longer secure, they wouldn't automatically secure it on Keys' departure. That scenario is a good "don't share your password even with your boss or friends" example.
One scene I recall fairly vividly just before "permanent daylight savings time" was rescinded for winter, was children in New Mexico going to school in the dark. "Far enough north" doesn't have to mean "anything north of Hawaii", does it?
While we're on about this, why not simply say "start work an hour earlier" instead of mucking about with the clocks?
> The exact value on the paperwork doesn't matter, but the paperwork being filled out and signed does matter.
You clicked the button that said you had read the EULA, therefore you have no grounds.... Signing a document is a statement.
> With an acknowledgement of the error and an attempt to correct it,... The attempt to correct was one sided.
> Using fighting tactics looking for an easy way to "win" is a pretty good indicator that you have something else you're hiding... that's when you'll get more investigations.
You're right, of course. That's why the issue is worth public scrutiny. Or are you claiming that the agent was not (perhaps: also) using fighting tactics?
I beg to differ, sir. You may have heard the aphorism: The plural of anecdote is not data. You have one data point: kids at your school do not walk to that school. Given the difficulty of proving a negative, I'll even grant you the possibility that you are correct even for hours you have not held the school under observation.
I, however, have seen kids walking to schools near me, within the last school year.
Your statement thus cannot be extended universally. The issues of children walking to school in the dark stand.
I find it interesting that one of the "regulations gutting the USPS" is that it is being required to fund its pension plan with today's dollars.
My financial advisers tell me to put money into my 401k or IRA now. Pre-tax income, in a fund that generally keeps up with inflation.... mostly.
from the article: The cuts USPS is being forced to make are like eating dog food when you have a million bucks in the bank.... a comparison much like saying "why should I live on ramen noodles when I've got next month's rent in the bank".
Much of the rest of the article, I can agree with, though. Unlike DHL et al, the USPS has an obligation to serve everyone even if doing so is an operational loss. Not so such private companies.
I thought it worth bringing notice here. It's not a simple issue, as he points out:
Do you suppress Card's speech, in contravention of the principles of free speech (but not rising to a first amendment issue - we're not the government)? Isn't that what the Hollywood blacklist of the '40s and '50s was all about?
Or do you let him put his agenda forth unimpeded, with all that that implies? Even if you then come after, and disclaim said agenda?
And how much does all of this have to do with Superman, in the end?
That last question has a lot in common with one I consider about politicians all the time: Should I vote out of office the politician that is knowledgeable, effective, and politically uncorruptible, solely because I disapprove of his not-illegal private affairs?
> Such efforts are "not conducive to the joint efforts of the international community to enhance network security," he said.
Perhaps statements like "we're just defending ourselves" are not productive towards network security. But cyber-attacking China? China cyber-attacking the US? You must be kidding.
Even bacteria "know" that being attacked causes the greatest advances in defenses. What greater motivator can there be than an active and verifiable threat?
Slashdot Mirror
I believe the thought was:
Threats are not notices of suit. That is, the company has not yet filed suit against you. Therefore, you have no legal obligation to respond.
The problem (or the threat) being, if you do want to settle, the company then files the suit and may say "too late, we're making an example of you now."
Your choice, but be aware of where preemptive settlement ends and legal recourse begins. Myself, I'd get a lawyer's advice when the threat comes in. At the least, I'd feel more comfortable sleeping assured. At best, you've already found someone to handle it if you DO get served.
A couple other things about small claims court:
1) You generally give up your right to appeal by filing there. (You can still appeal counterclaims, if you want.)
2) In the jurisdiction I am in, I was informed that you generally have 15 minutes to present your case.
3) (again, in my jurisdiction) there is a mandatory mediation session between the parties. Perhaps easier than going before the judge.
4) as participants are generally non-lawyers, lawyering (legal terms, etc) will generally raise the bar for your side, on the assumption you "know what you are doing".
> to renew their contracts with the people who originally wrote the apps,
If you contract out the making of custom software, and don't ensure that you have everything you need - specs, internal design documentation, source code, tools - to maintain it, you're doing it wrong. The job ain't over 'til the paperwork is done.
And sadly, almost nobody has the political will to ensure the paperwork all gets done, and the technical knowledge to know when that point is reached.
NASA and the Saturn rockets are a case in point, albeit mostly a H/W case.
> ... they WOULD BE pulling the shit you say they would, right now -- ....
I think that you may not have been paying attention.
The public can video the drone taking some action, but cannot link from that to the operator. If multiple drones are in operation at any one time, with multiple operators, reasonable doubt could be easily established simply by "losing" the drone captured imagery.
The police don't have to prove whatever drone problems they claim, they just have to create reasonable doubt.
We have nigh uncountable garbage mines in this country. Why should we not support our overseas friends power needs by opening them as concessions.
Which would lead to the natural conclusions: The EPA will regulate garbage mining, the Sierra Club will start decrying the spoilation of our resources, the paranoid will start advocate government control to assure our future garbage needs....
At least one site seems to say that the single biggest contributor is a parasitic mite and a virus that it spreads.
The linked BBC article labels those as "merely" stress factors. It mentions - at the very end of the article, mind - that laboratory studies show that the compounds can do harm to bees ... but haven't been shown under field conditions. They COULD be much like the rats given artificial sweetener in order to help the market for the next artificial sweetener. Or, they could be spot on. (Hey, that's what Science is for, after all. Answering questions and creating new ones.)
It also quotes a Greenpeace activist as saying (about Monday's vote) "makes it crystal clear that there is overwhelming scientific, political and public support for a ban." ... I didn't know votes affected science. I guess you learn something new every day.
>It's also rather arrogant to assume that your game would have been pirated in the first place.
Make a list (A) of games that have never once been pirated, cracked, torrented, cloned, or otherwise ripped off.
Now, make a list (B) of games that have suffered one or more of those fates.
The odds of not getting pirated ( A / (A+B) ) in the general industry are not so great, are they? ... or are you saying "that game isn't worth cracking"? And you realize that some minimum level of arrogance is required to publish ... anything - book, game, speech - anything at all, right?
> because quite frankly most people look like someone else.
In that, you, me, and the GP are in agreement. My only complaint was about the assumption of cause and effect.
> (presumed) suicide of Sunil Tripathi
Odd that Sunil was http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/25/sunil-tripathi-body-found_n_3155595.html>reported missing March 16th, if his "suicide" was caused by the exposure over the bombing that occurred on April 18th.
Sure, he was FOUND on the 23rd, so it is conceivable he committed suicide in reaction. But what was he doing between March 16 and April 32, aside from not going to class?
I agree, though, that crowd sourcing and more public cameras will make it more likely that police will be able to find body-doubles for criminals more easily.
A follow-up poster replied "confirmation bias". I have to say "so what?"
To function as a bomb detector, all it has to do go bleep when it detects some kind of thing, used in some kind of bomb. Chemical compounds, object density, ferrous metal content, anything.
To be useful as a bomb detector, it doesn't even have to do that - it just has to help reinforce safe handling procedures for "unknown objects".
False positives don't matter - if you have a device that, one time, keeps one operator from doing something that causes a live bomb from going off and killing him, then you've got a win. False negatives do matter, if the person operating the device doesn't recognize the possibility of a false negative and simply relies on the device to say yes or no. Confirmation bias? Someone who finds bombs on a regular basis is likely to recognize signs, consciously or unconsciously. To that end, a dowsing rod would be as useful.
So even if the devices were PURE snake oil, they'd still be useful as a mental prop.
US carriers regularly commit 4th circle (greed) sins. This one is clearly an 8th circle (fraud) sin.
The only thing we have to do is actually COMMIT their corporate souls....
>>advising all our clients who use WordPress to install an additional plugin 'Limit Login Attempts' that will help to prevent brute force attacks
> Not being familiar with wordpress, I'll ask why isn't that on by default?
What could be a simpler way to deny an administrator access to his own account than by a "limit login attempts" that limits attempts on a per-account basis (vs a per-IP address basis)?
And if the attack is "one attempt per site per zombie", limiting on a per-IP basis has no teeth.
<ignorant_speculation>Of course, if you have created an admin account that's not NAMED admin, you won't be locked out. And if you change the account named "admin" to having lower privileges, even better.</ignorant_speculation>
Unlike hydrogen, helium does not chemically bind so much, so we have a local scarcity of it.
Kinda like how we - locally - have a large amount of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and so on around, compared to the universal distribution.
To be honest, I can live without the helium. I'd have a harder time living with the extra oxygen, so please don't start a government program to redistribute the elements.
> The one thing that never happens as the government regulates ever greater parts of the economy is that the common person benefits.
Do you feel the same way about the EPA? How about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission? Do you get any benefit from the FCC? The FDA?
Surely some public good has come from these extensions to economic regulation. Rivers that don't catch fire. Nuclear waste that isn't simply dumped in the river. WiFi, wedged in where Amateur Radio used to be. (Alternately, spectrum preserves for Amateur Radio in the first place.) Meat packing plants whose products don't regularly contain rat feces or salmonella. Or drugs that often (but perhaps not always) are more effective than snake oil for having had to prove themselves.
Individual, specific laws that benefit specific corporations? Yeah, they happen. Yeah, they're often deplorable. But even if it is only a homeopathic baby, don't throw it out with the....
I was, rather, pointing out that "small as a grain of sand" has little meaning when referring to gasses, where the amount of material depends on the pressure involved; it has rather more meaning when describing liquids and solids, which are much less compressable.
As Silicon Dioxide (silica, a component of sand) is not noted for its fusing properties, I was guessing that the fusion would be from more typical materials: hydrogen, or perhaps helium.
And while liquid hydrogen technology is well developed, liquid helium is a bit more difficult, and metallic hydrogen even more so. A "grain" of (metallic) hydrogen seems a bit beyond expectation. A grain-sized amount of hydrogen, I'd believe. But a tank of granulated metallic hydrogen?
the rewards are well worth the collateral damages. ... unless you happen to be the collateral, of course.
"If you sup with the devil you need a long spoon."
He created an account with network privileges on his own? So either IT authorized it and failed to close it with his "official" account, or they didn't authorize it but created circumstances where it could happen. Either way, an IT failure.
An alternate possibility is that he got credentials of a coworker and shared those. IT (and said coworker) being unaware that the account was no longer secure, they wouldn't automatically secure it on Keys' departure. That scenario is a good "don't share your password even with your boss or friends" example.
One scene I recall fairly vividly just before "permanent daylight savings time" was rescinded for winter, was children in New Mexico going to school in the dark. "Far enough north" doesn't have to mean "anything north of Hawaii", does it?
While we're on about this, why not simply say "start work an hour earlier" instead of mucking about with the clocks?
> The exact value on the paperwork doesn't matter, but the paperwork being filled out and signed does matter.
You clicked the button that said you had read the EULA, therefore you have no grounds.... Signing a document is a statement.
> With an acknowledgement of the error and an attempt to correct it, ...
The attempt to correct was one sided.
> Using fighting tactics looking for an easy way to "win" is a pretty good indicator that you have something else you're hiding... that's when you'll get more investigations.
You're right, of course. That's why the issue is worth public scrutiny. Or are you claiming that the agent was not (perhaps: also) using fighting tactics?
I beg to differ, sir. You may have heard the aphorism: The plural of anecdote is not data. You have one data point: kids at your school do not walk to that school. Given the difficulty of proving a negative, I'll even grant you the possibility that you are correct even for hours you have not held the school under observation.
I, however, have seen kids walking to schools near me, within the last school year.
Your statement thus cannot be extended universally. The issues of children walking to school in the dark stand.
I find it interesting that one of the "regulations gutting the USPS" is that it is being required to fund its pension plan with today's dollars.
My financial advisers tell me to put money into my 401k or IRA now. Pre-tax income, in a fund that generally keeps up with inflation. ... mostly.
from the article: The cuts USPS is being forced to make are like eating dog food when you have a million bucks in the bank. ... a comparison much like saying "why should I live on ramen noodles when I've got next month's rent in the bank".
Much of the rest of the article, I can agree with, though. Unlike DHL et al, the USPS has an obligation to serve everyone even if doing so is an operational loss. Not so such private companies.
Microsoft (et al) are good for answers to questions like:
how does (x) work (what are the details of (x) )
Stack Overflow is good for answers to questions like:
how do I do (x).
Really, really, really different types of questions.
... on his blog.
I thought it worth bringing notice here. It's not a simple issue, as he points out:
Do you suppress Card's speech, in contravention of the principles of free speech (but not rising to a first amendment issue - we're not the government)? Isn't that what the Hollywood blacklist of the '40s and '50s was all about?
Or do you let him put his agenda forth unimpeded, with all that that implies? Even if you then come after, and disclaim said agenda?
And how much does all of this have to do with Superman, in the end?
That last question has a lot in common with one I consider about politicians all the time: Should I vote out of office the politician that is knowledgeable, effective, and politically uncorruptible, solely because I disapprove of his not-illegal private affairs?
> Such efforts are "not conducive to the joint efforts of the international community to enhance network security," he said.
Perhaps statements like "we're just defending ourselves" are not productive towards network security. But cyber-attacking China? China cyber-attacking the US? You must be kidding.
Even bacteria "know" that being attacked causes the greatest advances in defenses. What greater motivator can there be than an active and verifiable threat?