What's the canadian law's take on monetary damages? Because I don't really think sending him to prison does a lot of good...but how about 'restitution'? You could pick any amount, since the attacks literally caused millions in damage. (Even my own extremely peripheral involvement could have been billed for thousands of dollars worth of consulting time) Maybe his paying a $100k tab or such would help people realize this is serious.
He's not the first person that's happened to. In the past, I hired one person primarily experienced as a 'hacker' -- and he was not only our best engineer, but within years was the CTO of a very well-funded startup (that lives yet).
CNN just reported that the attacks are definitely not from a U.S. source. The white house press secretary passed on word regarding that. That leaves civil war fighting, or possible attacks from a third party (much less likely).
The explosions in Kabul have apparently ceased for the time being. No officials have been able to confirm who is responsible. The burning building is apparently an ammunition dump. No URL links available to the story yet.
CNN speculates that it is possible that the fighting could actually be infighting within afghanistan, and this may be civil infighting. No one has been able to pinpoint the missile's origin.
In Kabul, Afghanistan, CNN reports that there is anti-aircraft fire going up from the city, along with tracer fire. Missiles flying across the city, a building is on fire.
KMBZ radio reports Kansas City, MO has gas at $5/gallon, and another of $4/gallon in Louisville, KY.
That would imply that there is an expectation of serious middle eastern turmoil.
Oh, and thanks for bumping that ass Katz. Maybe next time you'll have the sense to just remove that crap. Only a total fool would try to label this event "Techno-Armageddon".
And you think what, that terrorists could have nuked this time, and were just going easy wiping out the WTC?
First of all, there's no one to go to war with. You can expect, however, that if it turns out a nation is harboring terrorists against justice, action will be taken.
Second of all, unless we are isolationists again, we're going to piss someone off somewhere. It is the unenviable consequence of world leadership. Not retaliating is not protection against further attacks. If we identify a perpetrator, there will be awful consequences.
Certainly, we must be cautious. We should take things slowly. Any response should be well-considered and deliberate...but not pacifistic.
Also, for those of you who live with an arabian population, or any other population likely to be targetted by irrational retaliation, don't let others take their anger out on other Americans, regardless of their ethnic origins. Arabian-Americans are Americans, too.
Then contact the country where the site is. Unless someone starts serving child porn out of sealand, I don't think we need to worry about it, since it is almost certainly illegal wherever they are. If it WAS legal, the U.S. should use diplomatic pressure to get a law against it, and failing that, possibly ban providing internet service to the country if it wants to violate the rights of children that way.
Yes, links to child porn should be legal. Links to ANYTHING should be legal. Of course, in the case of child porn, a link database would make it all the easier for prosecutors to put the perpetrators in prison.
I'm tired of seeing stories like this one from earlier, where Microsoft is throwing their weight around. From a neutral point in this holy war, it is obvious Microsoft has made some great software in their time... and just as often have abused their monopoly to force all sorts of things on people, whether its.doc files that don't have a standard and thus are difficult to convert, or.NET, or a hundred thousand hacked IIS servers with open cmd.exes available.
Their renewed attack with dynamic web-rewriting,.NET, and such is a whole new round of attempts to lock people into computing hell if they aren't totally dependant on Microsoft from cradle to grave for anything touching a computer.
You're completely wrong. When businesses pick mysql to support $100M+ operations, they'll happily pay $1000 or more if it provides them with value. I'd imagine that that's true on a much smaller scale, but I can say that if I had any need for mysql consulting, I'd happily PO a contract at $1000, and it would be trivial to justify next to the cost of an Oracle license.
Just because MySQL is cheap doesn't mean it isn't the best choice for a lot of things -- just as apache being free doesn't mean that people won't pay for it. (And, in fact, people constantly pay hundreds of dollars for stronghold now, even if they could now legitimately compile and use openssl with apache)
what they have going for them. Who better to
service, support, consult on the mysql database
that the people that made it? I'm aware of several companies that use it now in the support of 9-digit revenue streams (yes, that's >100,000,000 $US, annually). Is it absolutely critical? No. Would Oracle work? Yes. But did the companies in question pick MySQL anyhow and would prefer to keep it? Yes.
So how can the MySQL people make some money?
Consult. Train consultants. Offer certifications in MySQL database design/administration
Add features. No one said they weren't allowed to make any money. Maybe create some features (like NuSphere) and sell them, either a table type or more powerful administrative tools. They released the code under the GPL, but they still have the right to release other versions under other licenses, and if they weren't abandoning the primary database that was under the GPL, I personally wouldn't fault them
Start a support organization. When I first started using MySQL, I was very tempted to send them the $1000 license fee they wanted for quick-turnaround email support, because I was relatively new to SQL at the time, and I needed rapid-response for my rapid-development. Anyhow, if you were going to shell out support money, it would seem to make sense to do so to an organization that had the developers at the top
The list goes on and on. Do they need the trademark "mysql"? No. Try, "from the MySQL AB developers comes..." Should they have the trademark? Almost certainly, because we don't need another Microsoft/kerberos fiasco, and owning trademarks on names like "mysql" and "kerberos" can prevent the hostile interference, but MySQL has seemed pissed about the web site all along. How insecure can you be? Everyone knows all about their site. I've got mysql.com on my toolbar bookmarks.
Anyhow, hopefully they'll wise up, and find a way to support themselves AND support the project. I don't think I'm being idealistic when I say that it is possible to do so.
I wonder how they'll feel about stopping recording of shows when the growing block of TiVo viewers simply refuses to watch anything they can't record. I'm certainly in that group. If I can't record it, I'm not watching it. The networks need to stop the "fast forward" button more than anything.
The publishers have already changed copyright law. It's called the DMCA. What happens when libraries can only loan out encrypted copies, and people have to visit a publishers web site and buy a decryption key tied to their physical hardware and time-stamped to only allow access for a certain time period in order to read the material? And if libraries did anything to bypass the encryption, they'd be breaking the DMCA. It's totally filthy.
Cite an example. The worst DJ maneuver I've EVER heard of was "Man Cow in the Morning", on Wild 107 in the Bay Area, who, after clinton stopped traffic at SFO (airline takeoffs, not cars), to get a haircut on the tarmac, stopped the bay bridge to give himself a haircut, causing an uber traffic jam the whole morning.
Even IF the employer had guidelines stating that no unauthorized software was to be installed, that simply means that he erred in the performance of his job duties. To try to come up with a suitable analogy, think of this:
John Doe is a radio DJ. He is responsible for playing the hits, chatting it up between songs, etc. He has a very specific format he's required to stick to, and is absolutely prohibited from playing anything outside that. One day, he's totally taken with a certain band, and decides he'll just 'slip in' a song from them, even though it isn't on the approved playlist. Next thing you know, he's hauled off to prison for trespass, breaking and entering, etc, because he did something during his job he wasn't supposed to.
That's the meatspace equivalent of what's going on here. The man in question had a job, and MAY have violated job guidelines (stating that RC5 is 'personal use' is only borderline correct, in any event, since it is really a donation of time for community benefit. If he named the team/entry after his employer, he could be said to be doing it on their behalf, albeit unauthorized). In any event, he used his discretion to install software they did not want. This is almost certainly cause for termination of his employment, but is absolutely not criminal. His access to the machine was authorized. I'd sure like to see what he's being charged with, but I'd imagine the prosecution would have to construe his actions as willfully malicious in order to prosecute him. On a side note, at my employer, we regularly netbooted new servers with rc5, and ran it until they were prepped to go into production, and did so without permission. When our boss found out, he just said, "It's not on the production stuff?" And it wasn't. I'm sure if it HAD been, he'd have said, "Don't do that." and that would have been the end of it. He shouldn't b getting community service OR jail time, or ANY fine. He may have misperformed his job, but unless he did so in a willfully negligent manner or a malicious manner, then their only remedy should be terminating his employment. My own experience tells me that RC5-on-the-side is generally considered to be non-harmful, and in fact, at one point (in a ~400 person company, at the time), I was discussing with the MIS manager the idea of booting an RC5 client onto all boxes on the network automatically!
Not only that, but I hope we (as in, the judge and jury) are smart enough to assess real damages, notice the gross inflation by the prosecution, and consequently chastise them and dismiss the case.
(1) Where's the Employment Agreement/Guidelines which state that installations had to conform to a standard, and that non-impactful software was banned?
(2) Where were his supervisors/managers in reviewing these installations? He was probably a student getting minimum wage to do installations, and then they leave his work completely unauditted for years, and then try to collect $400k? Um, sure.
(3) While we're at it, what is the criminal charge? It's one thing to hack a computer and install a dnet client, but they gave him the access. He misused it, certainly, and might have a tortious liability, but misperformance of a job does not make you a criminal. "Unauthorized access" is NOT the same as "Unauthorized actions". That goes 10x if there wasn't a very explcit prohibition on what he did.
It's all funny to chime in on the, "He's getting what he deserved!" bandwagon, to prove that you're not one of those damn slashdot hippies that thinks there should be no responsibility, but really, what's happening to him could easily be a horrendous miscarraige of justice. Think for a minute how you'd feel being bent over by a former employer who decided after the fact that what you did wasn't acceptable. It's real easy to take a cheap shot at the guy, but if you don't realize how the average person can be screwed by overzealous prosecutors and mindlessly format and litigious universities, then I can only hope you get don't end up in the same situation.
In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Paul Robert Cohen, reversing a conviction he received for wearing a jacket into the LA County Courthouse which said, "Fuck the Draft". The Court wrote, in its decision, that 'the best remedy for Cohen's "distasteful" slogan was the "powerful medicine" of free speech in a diverse and divided country.' (May it Please the Court - The First Amendment).
That was a bold ruling. We should be following in that noble tradition, following our heritage, and leading the way in free speech. I wrote once before, in another forum, and I still believe:
I tend to believe nothing is better left festering; let the hate speech out. The speech of diversity and value, of understanding and
camaraderie is more than a match for it. Suppression is a tactic used by those who support an agenda which cannot be justified. The
restriction of free speech is the mark of tyranny. Only those who know their cause is lost need to resort to it.
Of course, I fully expect the court to rule in Yahoo's favor. But it is up to us to lead the way in cases like this, and others, to show that the best antitode to Free Speech is, in fact, more Free Speech.
What has always annoyed me about 'extra minutes' is that it seems counterintuitive to pay MORE
for additional volume of anything than you paid
for the original amount. Not that it doesn't happen elsewhere -- all calls up to 20 minutes just $.99, then $.07 each minute after. What? Why not $.05?
Similarly, I can't see why you can pay like $100
or whatever for your DSL line, get 3 GB/mo, then
have to pay $1050 for the NEXT 3GB. Can you just
buy two lines, and switch over halfway through the month? How about you just buy 10 DSL lines and get
30GB for your money?
I guess the assumption is that they are expecting miniscule total downloads...maybe a few hundred MB a month or less, per average user, and the high cap is in place to force the bandwidth devourers to get a different ISP -- except, of course, there ARE no other ISPs in Australia, since Telstra has a government-granted monopoly, and this is definitely what comes of that.
When I finally quit playing the original d2, I had to ask myself: why did I play it so long, when I just HATED it?
Obviously, it all comes down to player types. Richard Bartle is credited with characterizing RPG players into 4 categories: Explorer, Socializer, Achiever, and Killer. Supposedly, this was published in the Journal of Mud Research, but I wasn't able to find it. In any event, I realized I'm an 'achiever' in the games context. Even when playing a PK mud, I didn't kill because I was a Killer, I killed because that was a large part of the game and I wanted to "win". Diablo 2 is psychologically seductive to almost all types of players:
Killers can go hostile and attack anyone
Socializers have both a chat context and global in-game chatting
Achievers have titles, including hardcore, levels, and equipment to seek after
Explorers get some because the world is new every time
So, Diablo 2 clever caters to anyone with an interest in RPGs by having something for all player types -- but their system of equipment makes the achiever an absolute addict. There's ALWAYS another piece of equipment waiting to be had better than what you have. And, sadly, unlike a game of skill like, say, Quake 3, there isn't a great deal of real gain to be had from repeat play, other than equipment gathering. Admittedly, if you were a true groundbreaker, you came up with a playing style that was unique (say, the Tweaker Sorceress or the Hammerdin), but after a gentle early learning curve, most people were eq-dependant.
So, is the game actually FUN? I played it a ton, but if fun is enjoyment, then I couldn't say it was. I wanted to enjoy it but I was too frusted with all those things about D2 that have become terrible jokes:
Grotesque amounts of lag (on a T1, I should add)
Utterly stupid PvP (who hits who first?)
Totally imbalanced character classes
Lame Multiplay (95% of people want to solo in 8-player games, and 80% of them want to do it on the River of Flame, all at once, and barbarians can steal kills, etc)
On top of all this, the "realms" were subject utterly to cheating of the first order. Since I myself spent _hours_ showing support people how to 'dupe' with one of the methods (there were at least 4 different 'duping' bugs, if not more, over the course of the game), I can attest to the fact that they don't take it seriously, thus scrapping the d2 "economy", for better or for worse.
For all these reasons, and more, I've steeled myself against buying the expansion. I don't imagine the major gameplay problems have been improved. I'll buy the Throne of Bhaal expansion back for BG2 instead, and bide my time waiting on Neverwinter Nights, which may well end up becoming the most popular online RPG ever, given that PLAYERs will be able to build, run, and link their worlds, and create new content with an incredibly rich toolkit. Back to the four player classes, I can already see most of them very much enjoying it.
Enjoy D2 if that's your bag, I don't begrudge anyone their game. But D2 has gone down in my book as excellent psychology attached to a very poor game, and despite being one of those people who would spend hundreds of dollars on some of my favorite games because I enjoy them so much, I'm not going to reward Blizzard with another $35.
In order to route IPs on the Internet, route
aggregation is required. An end host isn't going
to be able to switch its address amongst
many different network addresses, only to
different IPs in a subnet. Given that someone who
wants to compromise a machine has to have a way
to find/connect to it first, it is trivial to
relocate a machine. Also, see if ARIN wants to assign whole blocks of IPs for machines to hop around on.
IPv6? Maybe that would make this slightly more useful. But if a machine is supposed to be
accessible, you have to make it known where it is -- if it isn't accessible, then you SHOULD just put a firewall blocking all inbound traffic, and that's that.
That's not nearly as subtle of a troll as you
think, but I may as well respond, since I've had a burgeoning feeling of joy lately over how much
progress linux has made.
Microsoft Windows always has been, and always will be holed up in the desktop market. It's stupid for Linux to even think of competing there.
That's the statement of a troll, I think, but I'll pretend otherwise. 5 years ago,
I had to compile everything for linux. I didn't even try to get X running. There was no office software, at all, that I knew of. Mail was text
only. Fast forward to today: several office packages, 2 of which are free, to choose from. I enjoy having mutt as a mailreader, so I read from
a shell, but it has both inline pgp and can spawn
up attachments into StarOffice right from the
mail client. Oh, and I don't have to worry that
every attachment I'm getting (or every email,
for that matter) is some VBScript laden bomb waiting to infect my system with a virus and wipe
out all my files.
When I need to set up a new desktop client, it
typically takes 3-4 days, using Windows 2000.
About 6 months ago, I needed to update my Linux
box (well, wanted to, anyhow, but that's
such a fine line for a computer geek;)), so I
decided to try out the prebuilt market. I ordered
a box from penguin computing. It came pretty
decently installed, but I decided to go ahead
and run through myself, because I didn't like
their partitioning. So, installing from scratch,
I installed RHat6.2 with RAID 5 across a bunch
of SCSI drives (in software), in about 45 minutes.
Gnome: already running. Enlightenment: had to
pick it from a list. Staroffice I had to download,
although I think it was on one of the CDs. The
latest stuff is even better. Now, when you install
the right gnome packages, practically all the
gnome software works without any further changes,
including stuff like the Gimp. That means you
spent 2-3 days and about 6 hours more installing
win2k that I needed for linux. Downloading source?
Nonsense. Buy or burn a copy of a distro. And
guess what? If you don't need support, you only
need to buy one, no risk of Red Hat storming your
office to check for illegal copies of your OS.
Problem hardware? Nonsense. RedHat has a nice
HCL now you can check against. My _wireless
ethernet_ worked out of the box on my laptop
in 7.1. Yes, you can't necessarily buy anything
out there, but since when did corporations buy
things willy-nilly? IS departments can spend
a few hours checking an HCL to get a standard
hardware setup -- or find a vendor, like Penguin,
that can do it for them.
An
inferior operating system, matched by shoddy programs that don't work
I've spent months now using netscape and staroffice
every single day. Netscape is utterly stable,
when you discount Java, which I have off on
ALL platforms due to that instability. Try comparing the resources used by the latest linux
netscape to those used by IE. Mozilla isn't a
1.0 version yet, but I tried out 0.9, and it
seems like its well on its way to being nice.
That said, let's look at what I get that you don't:
I get built-in firewalling/packet-filtering capability, and RedHat 7.1 will even build access lists for me.
I get a variety of mail clients, graphical
or shell, which are faster and more robust than
garbage like exchange (ever try to close a multi-thousand message box? Better have something else to do for a while), as well as not being easy victims for every virus writer on the planet.
I get system monitors, media players, development tools, games, graphics programs, irc
clients, a palm-sync package, cd ripping/burning
software, newsreaders, as well as a desktop that
is so customizable it makes the pathetic attempts
under windows ("Oh, your mouse pointer is now
really a mouse, how cute *gag*") worthy of tears.
And of course, I get to choose from a variety
of office suites that are free, never mind the
commercial ones.
Meanwhile, Linux as a server has grown from
fun to just amazing. With a vastly improved
kernel, now offering fast context switching,
and speedy multithreaded I/O, you get software
like Apache, PHP, MySql/Postgres/Oracle, sendmail,
BIND, etc, all of which put their Win2k equivalents utterly to shame (with the possible
exception that MS SQL Server is pretty decent).
Want an incredibly fast webserver? TUX in the
kernel and you're beating the pants off anything.
This is to say nothing of the true cost of
ownership. Imagine an IT world based on linux:
you can export X displays without expensive
add-ons, you can ssh safely and securely into
your client machines, you get built-in packet
filtering with logs you can easily transfer and
audit, which your users can't override at their
whim, AND is fast and free. Linux really COULD
be a desktop now. I shudder to think how amazing it will be with some market share. Add to this
the incredible stability -- I'd like to see
you put a windows box at a colo provider 1500
miles away and feel safe when you walked away!
CompUSA cheap... nice troll, or nice setup, but give me a break -- IT people spend 10x as much time just repairing virus damage on windows garbage than they would converting their
whole company to Linux. Games under linux are
coming, and when they do, Windows is finished.
It really is a cool book. Everyone I know has seen and liked the film, so its truly the coolest thing to stick in the living room on the table. It's very fun to read.
Also, check out a lot of cool related comic art,
at the
official Matrix site. And check out their page for the book, because its funny to read William Gibson's complimentary quote, then think to yourself: "Man, Johnny Mnemonic, Matrix, both sci-fi, both Keanu, and you know Gibson is feeling like he seriously got the shaft." (Even know, the thoughts return..."I've got...to get on...the Net!"... So cold...)
Slashdot Mirror
What's the canadian law's take on monetary damages? Because I don't really think sending him to prison does a lot of good...but how about 'restitution'? You could pick any amount, since the attacks literally caused millions in damage. (Even my own extremely peripheral involvement could have been billed for thousands of dollars worth of consulting time) Maybe his paying a $100k tab or such would help people realize this is serious.
He's not the first person that's happened to. In the past, I hired one person primarily experienced as a 'hacker' -- and he was not only our best engineer, but within years was the CTO of a very well-funded startup (that lives yet).
CNN just reported that the attacks are definitely not from a U.S. source. The white house press secretary passed on word regarding that. That leaves civil war fighting, or possible attacks from a third party (much less likely).
The explosions in Kabul have apparently ceased for the time being. No officials have been able to confirm who is responsible. The burning building is apparently an ammunition dump. No URL links available to the story yet.
CNN speculates that it is possible that the fighting could actually be infighting within afghanistan, and this may be civil infighting. No one has been able to pinpoint the missile's origin.
In Kabul, Afghanistan, CNN reports that there is anti-aircraft fire going up from the city, along with tracer fire. Missiles flying across the city, a building is on fire.
KMBZ radio reports Kansas City, MO has gas at $5/gallon, and another of $4/gallon in Louisville, KY.
That would imply that there is an expectation of serious middle eastern turmoil.
Oh, and thanks for bumping that ass Katz. Maybe next time you'll have the sense to just remove that crap. Only a total fool would try to label this event "Techno-Armageddon".
And you think what, that terrorists could have nuked this time, and were just going easy wiping out the WTC?
First of all, there's no one to go to war with. You can expect, however, that if it turns out a nation is harboring terrorists against justice, action will be taken.
Second of all, unless we are isolationists again, we're going to piss someone off somewhere. It is the unenviable consequence of world leadership. Not retaliating is not protection against further attacks. If we identify a perpetrator, there will be awful consequences.
Certainly, we must be cautious. We should take things slowly. Any response should be well-considered and deliberate...but not pacifistic.
Also, for those of you who live with an arabian population, or any other population likely to be targetted by irrational retaliation, don't let others take their anger out on other Americans, regardless of their ethnic origins. Arabian-Americans are Americans, too.
Then contact the country where the site is. Unless someone starts serving child porn out of sealand, I don't think we need to worry about it, since it is almost certainly illegal wherever they are. If it WAS legal, the U.S. should use diplomatic pressure to get a law against it, and failing that, possibly ban providing internet service to the country if it wants to violate the rights of children that way.
Yes, links to child porn should be legal. Links to ANYTHING should be legal. Of course, in the case of child porn, a link database would make it all the easier for prosecutors to put the perpetrators in prison.
I'm tired of seeing stories like this one from earlier, where Microsoft is throwing their weight around. From a neutral point in this holy war, it is obvious Microsoft has made some great software in their time... and just as often have abused their monopoly to force all sorts of things on people, whether its .doc files that don't have a standard and thus are difficult to convert, or .NET, or a hundred thousand hacked IIS servers with open cmd.exes available.
.NET, and such is a whole new round of attempts to lock people into computing hell if they aren't totally dependant on Microsoft from cradle to grave for anything touching a computer.
Their renewed attack with dynamic web-rewriting,
You're completely wrong. When businesses pick mysql to support $100M+ operations, they'll happily pay $1000 or more if it provides them with value. I'd imagine that that's true on a much smaller scale, but I can say that if I had any need for mysql consulting, I'd happily PO a contract at $1000, and it would be trivial to justify next to the cost of an Oracle license.
Just because MySQL is cheap doesn't mean it isn't the best choice for a lot of things -- just as apache being free doesn't mean that people won't pay for it. (And, in fact, people constantly pay hundreds of dollars for stronghold now, even if they could now legitimately compile and use openssl with apache)
So how can the MySQL people make some money?
Consult. Train consultants. Offer certifications in MySQL database design/administration
Add features. No one said they weren't allowed to make any money. Maybe create some features (like NuSphere) and sell them, either a table type or more powerful administrative tools. They released the code under the GPL, but they still have the right to release other versions under other licenses, and if they weren't abandoning the primary database that was under the GPL, I personally wouldn't fault them
Start a support organization. When I first started using MySQL, I was very tempted to send them the $1000 license fee they wanted for quick-turnaround email support, because I was relatively new to SQL at the time, and I needed rapid-response for my rapid-development. Anyhow, if you were going to shell out support money, it would seem to make sense to do so to an organization that had the developers at the top
The list goes on and on. Do they need the trademark "mysql"? No. Try, "from the MySQL AB developers comes..." Should they have the trademark? Almost certainly, because we don't need another Microsoft/kerberos fiasco, and owning trademarks on names like "mysql" and "kerberos" can prevent the hostile interference, but MySQL has seemed pissed about the web site all along. How insecure can you be? Everyone knows all about their site. I've got mysql.com on my toolbar bookmarks.
Anyhow, hopefully they'll wise up, and find a way to support themselves AND support the project. I don't think I'm being idealistic when I say that it is possible to do so.
A link was here on /. about how to extract the video files from a TiVo. In the past, adding ethernet to the tivo has been posted.
I wonder how they'll feel about stopping recording of shows when the growing block of TiVo viewers simply refuses to watch anything they can't record. I'm certainly in that group. If I can't record it, I'm not watching it. The networks need to stop the "fast forward" button more than anything.
The publishers have already changed copyright law. It's called the DMCA. What happens when libraries can only loan out encrypted copies, and people have to visit a publishers web site and buy a decryption key tied to their physical hardware and time-stamped to only allow access for a certain time period in order to read the material? And if libraries did anything to bypass the encryption, they'd be breaking the DMCA. It's totally filthy.
Cite an example. The worst DJ maneuver I've EVER heard of was "Man Cow in the Morning", on Wild 107 in the Bay Area, who, after clinton stopped traffic at SFO (airline takeoffs, not cars), to get a haircut on the tarmac, stopped the bay bridge to give himself a haircut, causing an uber traffic jam the whole morning.
He wasn't even fired.
Even IF the employer had guidelines stating that no unauthorized software was to be installed, that simply means that he erred in the performance of his job duties. To try to come up with a suitable analogy, think of this:
John Doe is a radio DJ. He is responsible for playing the hits, chatting it up between songs, etc. He has a very specific format he's required to stick to, and is absolutely prohibited from playing anything outside that. One day, he's totally taken with a certain band, and decides he'll just 'slip in' a song from them, even though it isn't on the approved playlist. Next thing you know, he's hauled off to prison for trespass, breaking and entering, etc, because he did something during his job he wasn't supposed to.
That's the meatspace equivalent of what's going on here. The man in question had a job, and MAY have violated job guidelines (stating that RC5 is 'personal use' is only borderline correct, in any event, since it is really a donation of time for community benefit. If he named the team/entry after his employer, he could be said to be doing it on their behalf, albeit unauthorized). In any event, he used his discretion to install software they did not want. This is almost certainly cause for termination of his employment, but is absolutely not criminal. His access to the machine was authorized. I'd sure like to see what he's being charged with, but I'd imagine the prosecution would have to construe his actions as willfully malicious in order to prosecute him. On a side note, at my employer, we regularly netbooted new servers with rc5, and ran it until they were prepped to go into production, and did so without permission. When our boss found out, he just said, "It's not on the production stuff?" And it wasn't. I'm sure if it HAD been, he'd have said, "Don't do that." and that would have been the end of it. He shouldn't b getting community service OR jail time, or ANY fine. He may have misperformed his job, but unless he did so in a willfully negligent manner or a malicious manner, then their only remedy should be terminating his employment. My own experience tells me that RC5-on-the-side is generally considered to be non-harmful, and in fact, at one point (in a ~400 person company, at the time), I was discussing with the MIS manager the idea of booting an RC5 client onto all boxes on the network automatically!
Not only that, but I hope we (as in, the judge and jury) are smart enough to assess real damages, notice the gross inflation by the prosecution, and consequently chastise them and dismiss the case.
Is it that simple?
(1) Where's the Employment Agreement/Guidelines which state that installations had to conform to a standard, and that non-impactful software was banned?
(2) Where were his supervisors/managers in reviewing these installations? He was probably a student getting minimum wage to do installations, and then they leave his work completely unauditted for years, and then try to collect $400k? Um, sure.
(3) While we're at it, what is the criminal charge? It's one thing to hack a computer and install a dnet client, but they gave him the access. He misused it, certainly, and might have a tortious liability, but misperformance of a job does not make you a criminal. "Unauthorized access" is NOT the same as "Unauthorized actions". That goes 10x if there wasn't a very explcit prohibition on what he did.
It's all funny to chime in on the, "He's getting what he deserved!" bandwagon, to prove that you're not one of those damn slashdot hippies that thinks there should be no responsibility, but really, what's happening to him could easily be a horrendous miscarraige of justice. Think for a minute how you'd feel being bent over by a former employer who decided after the fact that what you did wasn't acceptable. It's real easy to take a cheap shot at the guy, but if you don't realize how the average person can be screwed by overzealous prosecutors and mindlessly format and litigious universities, then I can only hope you get don't end up in the same situation.
That was a bold ruling. We should be following in that noble tradition, following our heritage, and leading the way in free speech. I wrote once before, in another forum, and I still believe:
Of course, I fully expect the court to rule in Yahoo's favor. But it is up to us to lead the way in cases like this, and others, to show that the best antitode to Free Speech is, in fact, more Free Speech.
What has always annoyed me about 'extra minutes' is that it seems counterintuitive to pay MORE for additional volume of anything than you paid for the original amount. Not that it doesn't happen elsewhere -- all calls up to 20 minutes just $.99, then $.07 each minute after. What? Why not $.05?
Similarly, I can't see why you can pay like $100 or whatever for your DSL line, get 3 GB/mo, then have to pay $1050 for the NEXT 3GB. Can you just buy two lines, and switch over halfway through the month? How about you just buy 10 DSL lines and get 30GB for your money?
I guess the assumption is that they are expecting miniscule total downloads...maybe a few hundred MB a month or less, per average user, and the high cap is in place to force the bandwidth devourers to get a different ISP -- except, of course, there ARE no other ISPs in Australia, since Telstra has a government-granted monopoly, and this is definitely what comes of that.
Obviously, it all comes down to player types. Richard Bartle is credited with characterizing RPG players into 4 categories: Explorer, Socializer, Achiever, and Killer. Supposedly, this was published in the Journal of Mud Research, but I wasn't able to find it. In any event, I realized I'm an 'achiever' in the games context. Even when playing a PK mud, I didn't kill because I was a Killer, I killed because that was a large part of the game and I wanted to "win". Diablo 2 is psychologically seductive to almost all types of players:
Killers can go hostile and attack anyone
Socializers have both a chat context and global in-game chatting
Achievers have titles, including hardcore, levels, and equipment to seek after
Explorers get some because the world is new every time
So, Diablo 2 clever caters to anyone with an interest in RPGs by having something for all player types -- but their system of equipment makes the achiever an absolute addict. There's ALWAYS another piece of equipment waiting to be had better than what you have. And, sadly, unlike a game of skill like, say, Quake 3, there isn't a great deal of real gain to be had from repeat play, other than equipment gathering. Admittedly, if you were a true groundbreaker, you came up with a playing style that was unique (say, the Tweaker Sorceress or the Hammerdin), but after a gentle early learning curve, most people were eq-dependant.
So, is the game actually FUN? I played it a ton, but if fun is enjoyment, then I couldn't say it was. I wanted to enjoy it but I was too frusted with all those things about D2 that have become terrible jokes:
Grotesque amounts of lag (on a T1, I should add)
Utterly stupid PvP (who hits who first?)
Totally imbalanced character classes
Lame Multiplay (95% of people want to solo in 8-player games, and 80% of them want to do it on the River of Flame, all at once, and barbarians can steal kills, etc)
On top of all this, the "realms" were subject utterly to cheating of the first order. Since I myself spent _hours_ showing support people how to 'dupe' with one of the methods (there were at least 4 different 'duping' bugs, if not more, over the course of the game), I can attest to the fact that they don't take it seriously, thus scrapping the d2 "economy", for better or for worse.
For all these reasons, and more, I've steeled myself against buying the expansion. I don't imagine the major gameplay problems have been improved. I'll buy the Throne of Bhaal expansion back for BG2 instead, and bide my time waiting on Neverwinter Nights, which may well end up becoming the most popular online RPG ever, given that PLAYERs will be able to build, run, and link their worlds, and create new content with an incredibly rich toolkit. Back to the four player classes, I can already see most of them very much enjoying it.
Enjoy D2 if that's your bag, I don't begrudge anyone their game. But D2 has gone down in my book as excellent psychology attached to a very poor game, and despite being one of those people who would spend hundreds of dollars on some of my favorite games because I enjoy them so much, I'm not going to reward Blizzard with another $35.
Are they trying to outdo one-click ordering?
In order to route IPs on the Internet, route aggregation is required. An end host isn't going to be able to switch its address amongst many different network addresses, only to different IPs in a subnet. Given that someone who wants to compromise a machine has to have a way to find/connect to it first, it is trivial to relocate a machine. Also, see if ARIN wants to assign whole blocks of IPs for machines to hop around on.
IPv6? Maybe that would make this slightly more useful. But if a machine is supposed to be accessible, you have to make it known where it is -- if it isn't accessible, then you SHOULD just put a firewall blocking all inbound traffic, and that's that.
Another day, another "revolution". *sigh*
Microsoft Windows always has been, and always will be holed up in the desktop market. It's stupid for Linux to even think of competing there.
That's the statement of a troll, I think, but I'll pretend otherwise. 5 years ago, I had to compile everything for linux. I didn't even try to get X running. There was no office software, at all, that I knew of. Mail was text only. Fast forward to today: several office packages, 2 of which are free, to choose from. I enjoy having mutt as a mailreader, so I read from a shell, but it has both inline pgp and can spawn up attachments into StarOffice right from the mail client. Oh, and I don't have to worry that every attachment I'm getting (or every email, for that matter) is some VBScript laden bomb waiting to infect my system with a virus and wipe out all my files.
When I need to set up a new desktop client, it typically takes 3-4 days, using Windows 2000.
About 6 months ago, I needed to update my Linux box (well, wanted to, anyhow, but that's such a fine line for a computer geek
An inferior operating system, matched by shoddy programs that don't work
I've spent months now using netscape and staroffice every single day. Netscape is utterly stable, when you discount Java, which I have off on ALL platforms due to that instability. Try comparing the resources used by the latest linux netscape to those used by IE. Mozilla isn't a 1.0 version yet, but I tried out 0.9, and it seems like its well on its way to being nice.
That said, let's look at what I get that you don't:
I get built-in firewalling/packet-filtering capability, and RedHat 7.1 will even build access lists for me.
I get a variety of mail clients, graphical or shell, which are faster and more robust than garbage like exchange (ever try to close a multi-thousand message box? Better have something else to do for a while), as well as not being easy victims for every virus writer on the planet.
I get system monitors, media players, development tools, games, graphics programs, irc clients, a palm-sync package, cd ripping/burning software, newsreaders, as well as a desktop that is so customizable it makes the pathetic attempts under windows ("Oh, your mouse pointer is now really a mouse, how cute *gag*") worthy of tears. And of course, I get to choose from a variety of office suites that are free, never mind the commercial ones.
Meanwhile, Linux as a server has grown from fun to just amazing. With a vastly improved kernel, now offering fast context switching, and speedy multithreaded I/O, you get software like Apache, PHP, MySql/Postgres/Oracle, sendmail, BIND, etc, all of which put their Win2k equivalents utterly to shame (with the possible exception that MS SQL Server is pretty decent). Want an incredibly fast webserver? TUX in the kernel and you're beating the pants off anything.
This is to say nothing of the true cost of ownership. Imagine an IT world based on linux: you can export X displays without expensive add-ons, you can ssh safely and securely into your client machines, you get built-in packet filtering with logs you can easily transfer and audit, which your users can't override at their whim, AND is fast and free. Linux really COULD be a desktop now. I shudder to think how amazing it will be with some market share. Add to this the incredible stability -- I'd like to see you put a windows box at a colo provider 1500 miles away and feel safe when you walked away!
CompUSA cheap... nice troll, or nice setup, but give me a break -- IT people spend 10x as much time just repairing virus damage on windows garbage than they would converting their whole company to Linux. Games under linux are coming, and when they do, Windows is finished.
I'm sure someone will find the time to point out their security vulnerabilities :P
It really is a cool book. Everyone I know has seen and liked the film, so its truly the coolest thing to stick in the living room on the table. It's very fun to read.
Also, check out a lot of cool related comic art, at the official Matrix site. And check out their page for the book, because its funny to read William Gibson's complimentary quote, then think to yourself: "Man, Johnny Mnemonic, Matrix, both sci-fi, both Keanu, and you know Gibson is feeling like he seriously got the shaft." (Even know, the thoughts return..."I've got...to get on...the Net!"... So cold...)