This is still a privately held company. Everyone who owns shares know damn well that Zuck holds a controlling interest and can has the full authority and right to do these kinds of deals with minimal oversight. They've conceded fiscal oversight for a big payday.
I guess i don't have an example. apparently JP Morgan used to like to lock people in his library till he got his way - but this specific case is other bank owners, not his board http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907
Andrew Carnegie negotiated deals between companies he controlled, collecting commission on both sides of the deals. I vaguely remember that being pretty contentious.
False imprisonment and collusion are exiting, must have overshadowed the exact circumstances in my memory.
When the other board members bring charges ... Which they might or might not, depending on the true financial picture of FB.
I am certain I would take offence at 1bn being spent on my behalf without prior consultation. Its actually a criminal offence and possibly could construe false accounting. Do you know what those words mean? Spending money demands a paper trail and minuted meeting notes. Or used to.
If you can now spend that amount without due ovetsight its no wonder we're financially shafted.
Depending on where you are and what opportunities you know of, it can be a lot easier or harder to make a buck. I don't think the equivalent of 10K pounds for a week or two is so easy to earn everywhere, especially in the more competitive economies of today. Programmers in my country earn wages in line with everyone else, not rockstar salaries. Not sure about consultants but I can't imagine most clients paying a lot (10K) for small projects.
The NASA prize is just a sweetener to make it at least worth some kids', undergrads' or unemployed coders' time to make an attempt. At least it'll look good on their CV, as you said, unlike with other silly competitions that give the winning team US$3K, and aren't even organised by entities as prestigious as NASA.
I leave at 4.30 pm. I get in at 8.00 am, so I figure eight hours is enough -- any longer than that is pointless because I'm too tired. I have a three/four hour commute on top of this and have to be up at 5.15 am. I get back home around 6.45-7-45 pm, so, fuck it, my day is long enough.
I've got a life, my own internal dialogue and other interests. Life's short enough as it is.
I had a point early in my career where I accepted a 5 hour daily commute (round trip) in order to accomplish the more important goal of finding meaningful work in my field in the region I wanted to live in. Definitely sub-optimal, locally, but things worked out for the best in the end. I _did_ gain 25 lbs or so in 10 months of doing this. Luckily, it sounds like the poster is only doing this temporarily.
Please, tell me you are not spending that much time driving every day.
If it is a train or a boat, a plane, anything where you do not have to concentrate, I could see doing that, as you could do plenty of interesting things on a commute these days(ereaders, netbooks, regular books and so on).
I had a 4(2 back and 2 forth) hour daily commute for a year and it was not bad at all since I got 3 hours or reading time every day on a train and and one hour of walking(15minsx4). That actually was quite nice as it let me unwind and get into appropriate zone.
No. I do sometimes, but I do take the train and bus (which incidentally costs a fortune) because I'd pass out at the wheel. This has never happened but its always in my mind.
Besides there's (typically) nowhere to park. I've decided to leave in the next few weeks. Life's too precious for this sorta shit.
I have 2 hours of commute and I'm battling mental instability. I have to keep a queue of audiobooks handy, because two weeks with traffic and nothing to uplift me is enough to drive (haha) me into a bad mood by the time I'm home. I'm also a more aggressive driver when I'm not listening to something worth-while. The worst part is, last job, I had the same time commute, but could code on the train. Night and day.
Caveats:
- Published in 1999 so I don't know how available the albums are.
- Classical is really sensitive to dynamics, and cheap car stereos suck at same. You turn up the volume to hear the quiet parts, then get blasted by the loud ones. I don't have a good car stereo, don't know how much it would help. Earphones are much better, but I don't know about driving with them.
Like you, I couldn't even entertain this had I not an enormous load of audiobooks and a Kindle loaded with hundreds of titles. Most of which I've read. And listened to. At least twice.
Off topic, I know, but the local library often has a lot of good ebooks + audio books which are mp3 or on CD which you can rip... You probably could get an account with the library where your job is, too, if the rural one is too low-scale.
Its interesting -- my little rural library is very good. If you want a book they don't have, you fill in a card and they will either requisition it from somewhere else or they will buy it.
Although I'm rural, the local amenities are actually great -- one of the reasons I'm here. We're lucky. Excellent doctors and hospitals, too.
Great neighbours who aren't weirdos, its also so quiet on a Friday and Saturday you could hear a pin drop. That might drive some people crazy but I like it.
I have a little garden which I'm making nice and a few interesting little techie projects that I want to finish (I just don't have time right now) but I will quit and then use my time rationally. Who knows where it might lead?
> Ants have very complex social structure and engineering abilities - but are they intelligent?
They are differently enabled. Evolution gave them all they need to thrive and be successful. Intelligence is, in evolutionary terms, very expensive, hi-maintenance and often counter-productive. So is individuality. These things are not the natural end-product of an evolutionary process like they are assumed to be. In fact, its normally the exception rather than the rule. Simplicity (seldom complexity, except for a short while and in niche settings) is the end result of a perfected organism in harmony with its environment.
You get what you need for the time frame in which you need it. After that, as soon as you don't need it so much, it will go. Like flight in birds. Dodo's didn't need it, lost it rapidly and then humans arrived. We killed them, tried to eat them and our technology (ships) brought vermin predators (rats and cats) to their world which they had no defence against -- and that was the end of them. Our `intelligence' didn't pan out too well for them. And they're just one example of this sort of thing. Its happening all the time.
When you are sitting in the shattered and burned-out remains of your world (literally or metaphorically), intelligence looks overrated. The same will eventually, inevitably, happen to us. An AI, or our own avaricious greed and ambition, will probably finish us all off.
Big brains, language and tool-making abilities are not necessarily the best or inevitable end outcomes in evolutionary processes. They happen because they need to. Then again, sometimes they don't, and that can pan out OK as well. When it does happen it also tends toward the self-limiting, as well. Just what you need and no more.
The evolution of an AI will be as much an accident as a design. And that's good because it won't be forced into a form that is trying to mimic our own imperfect intelligence.
You may have assets that are worth, or potentially worth, a lot -- now or in the future.
The reality is, for some, the value of their digital dabblings will be worth as much, if not more, than their tangible assets -- if not today then several years down the line.
So establishing legal ownership on these is potentially very important.
I know. Some things (years old and forgotten) have benefited me greatly.
Because, like AI, molecular biology is complicated and there are no quick hacks.
Some things are meant to take time and be right. First time.
Survival rates are spectacularly better than they were fifteen or twenty years ago and they are getting better all the time.
Also there is no one type of lung cancer, brain tumour or bladder or bowel cancer either. There are many different types. Half the battle is identifying (and successfully treating) the right sort.
I still think there will be cancer in fifty years time. But we won't have to die from it. We may never eradicate it though, because it is a tough, complex bio-engineering problem, closely allied to programmed cell death and immortality. That's another tough nut to crack for the same reasons, inexorably intertwined as they are.
But the discipline isn't even 100 years old yet, and really only in the last couple of decades have we been able to have technology to really take advantage of isolation. We have learned so much about modern medicine, but have so much more to go.
Cancer survival rates are a mixed bag with many barely moving at all. The statistics below are based on that for Victoria, Australia (population of about 5.5m).
5 year survival rates for the following cancers has barely changed at all since 1985: Pancreatic, Larynx, Lung, Mesothelioma, Ovarian, Cervix, Central Nervous System.
Although the following cancers have seen much better improvement:
Pharynx, Colorectal, Stomach, Oesophagus, Gallbladder, Breast, Prostate, Kidney, Thyroid, HL, NHL, MM, ALL (basically all the blood cancers).
Overall the 5 year survival rates for cancers have improved from 47% to 64% now. Definitely better, but unfortunately not "spectacularly better".
Of course, these are survival rates, so do not reflect improvements in public health that prevent people from getting cancer (e.g. survival rates for lung cancer have have actually decreased, but less people are acquiring it due to reductions in smoking meaning deaths have reduced by about 50%).
Do you have a reference for survival rates? Note that there are many confounding factors - lung cancer incidence has dropped a lot although lung cancer itself remains intractable to average cancer survival rates may have improved.
Small cell, granuloma, take your pick. The data is available world-wide. The fact is that lung cancer is one from which there is never a good prognosis regardless of type. People can expect 4-5 years on average (although I know people who have gone past ten and have a good quality of life).
It also is one where heredity and genetics plays an enormous role (as opposed to purely environmental conditions).
Like I said, molecular biology is something we've only just noticed far less got a handle on.
If any one is interested John Diamond was a journalist who wrote about his experiences in his newspaper column as he was going through treatment. I remember reading them at the time and being affected by them, it's easy to be flippant about other people when your viewpoint is purely superficial.
Here are a couple of good articles about his experiences.
The longer you live the less like "cosmic woo-woo" it gets. Believe me. It becomes a mundane certainty. And if you can't give people the benefit of the doubt when you are well, then when it comes time for you to bear whatever cross comes your way (as it certainly will) then you will have no tools at your disposal to deal with it.
Be kind to people and don't prejudge. Grudge and jealousy are hideous, crippling afflictions (and its half of what's wrong with us as a species) and they don't help you in the time of your own need.
Everything is a hacking tool. Every programming language and every pre-existing piece of software, every computer and every phone is a potential hacking tool. Thought itself is the biggest hacking tool.
How are these fucking morons going to define legally what is and isn't a "hacking tool"?
The law has no trouble at all making fuzzy distinctions. They are attempting to keep the peace, not make orthogonal cuts into reality.
We programmers need absolute clarity because our systems are executed by machines with no insight. But in other fields where humans execute rules, everyone else just shrugs and deals with little inconsistencies, or make meta-rules about judging "intent", that sort of thing.
> The law has no trouble at all making fuzzy distinctions.
Actually, in most of Europe it does.
While the US, UK and Ireland's legal system is based on "Common Law", most of Europe uses "Civil Law", where the primary source of law is the law code, which is a systematic collection of interrelated articles that explain the principles of law, rights and entitlements, and how basic legal mechanisms work.
Of course there's still a lot of room for interpretation and pragmatics, but the point is that right from the start, you try to get your definitions down as clear as possible.
It's quite interesting to see how the fundamentals of our legal systems actually differ. I decided to look this up for the first time because at some point I read some thread where some US people were actively discussing interpretation of your Constitution or the Bill of Rights, as to whether something fairly trivial to define could be ruled or not--might even have had to do with the right to bear arms, but the specifics aren't important. I was just amazed that this centuries-old document was seriously being "consulted" as if somewhere between the lines would appear some sort of hidden meaning--except it was pretty obvious that the final decision would rest with the interpretation and political ideas of whatever judge got to rule it. Which completely amazed me, it's one thing if somnewhere, in some obscure corner of fiscal tax laws some particular exception to a rule isn't defined unambiguously, but the big-to-medium picture of the law is not supposed to be up for interpretation!
Except in the US, or more precisely in Common Law legal systems, that's pretty much the idea.
I'm not saying it's bad BTW, it's just different. And I'm just commenting on how surprised I was that there's other ways (in democratic countries) than to strictly codify your laws.
Ah, of course. How stupid of me to think that they would have an empirical definition or set of legal definitions that actually was robust and made coherent sense.
Why bother with the hard stuff when opinionated prejudice gets you where you want to go?
This is 'hacking' a la the popular meaning of the term (gaining unauthorised entry to a computer system), not the definition adopted by self-described 'hackers'.
Think port scanners, password crackers, vulnerability identification and exploitation tools. Any reasonable person would consider these to be 'hacking tools', and that's all a legal system needs for a definition.
As an ex network admin, not having port scanners and vulnerability testing tools would make me feel blind. Those tools have very legitimate uses. Port scanners don't even have to be used for security purposes, sometimes you can't access a machine and want to see what services are active and open to the world etc.
There will probably be a vague exception for legitimate professional use, the way there is for burglary tools. Varies based on the jurisdiction, but whether carrying a lockpick set is illegal depends a lot on factors like whether you're a locksmith, the circumstances in which you were carrying it, etc. The crime essentially boils down to something like: carrying a lockpick set while seeming suspicious and not having a good excuse.
Indeed. I often find myself using nmap on my own network to find out which IP address was assigned to a system when .local/mDNS name resolution is down and the DHCP server doesn't provide enough info to identify a specific computer.
"Think port scanners, password crackers, vulnerability identification and exploitation tools. Any reasonable person would consider these to be 'hacking tools'"
But, once again, these are all perfectly legitimate system engineering tools and are essential for hardening commercial or government or military sites, for example. You can't make something secure unless you know how easy or hard it will be to get past that.
It is like making dynamite illegal for civil engineers or morphine forbidden to medical practitioners or hammers and chisels denied to cabinet makers because they might hurt themselves. Ridiculous!
> It is like making dynamite illegal for civil engineers or morphine forbidden to medical practitioners or hammers and chisels denied to cabinet makers because they might hurt themselves. Ridiculous!
Described in those terms, what would you say to an exception that permitted possession by authorised information security personnel?
That's akin to the legislation we have in the UK with regards to explosives and controlled substances.
The problem with regulating possession of specific kinds of software is that they are entirely a product of the mind. You need specific precursor materials to create explosives and controlled substances, but anybody can imagine and create a good system administration tool.
There should never be a legal concept of an "authorized" information security person. It's about like defining a concept of an "authorized" painter or musician, since all are talents that can be developed in isolation.
There are no legal definitions for being a programmer. There are for being a medical practitioner or a civil engineer. Only practising doctors who are certified to practice may prescribe. Only legally certified civil engineers who after prerequisite training and certification are permitted to handle high explosives and blow things up. Having a degree alone in either of those two professions does most certainly NOT on its own qualify you to do either. Or anything much. So maybe a bad example.
But that's a whole different argument. At present it is "programmers" (self-taught or academic or industrially trained) who make things and routinely test them for hardness. You can't suddenly invent rules that say only certain types of programmer may use and deploy "hacking" tools. That won't work because there is no defined path to test suitability or career fitness in the majority of people who define themselves as "programmers". Too broad a church. Too many disciplines and areas of specialisation. And too few people qualified to legitimately or meaningfully assess that either way. Or are we going to say, for example, only Microsoft Certified Pros are allowed to test? God in heaven forbid!
Reputation (from both peers and clients) and demonstrated output that works is the only test for whether someone is a good or bad (read, fit or unfit) programmer.
And no, in answer to your question, we don't allow only certain government regulated individuals to have legal access to perfectly ordinary systems analysis tools. They are probably the last people you want doing it.
port scanners, password crackers, vulnerability identification tools, all have legitimate system engineering uses.
consider the black hole exploit kit, or the poison ivy RAT, or zeus. these are tools that have one purpose: exploit specific vulnerabilities, some of them unreported, and install monitoring software that allows a third party to take control of a system without that systems user or owners knowledge or consent.
surely the number of times that activity is going to be part of perfectly legitimate system engineering would be vanishingly small? when would you need to exploit a 0day vulnerability as part of legitimate system engineering?
okay, when would you need to purchase a 0day vulnerability from someone else to exploit thousands of other systems as part of legitimate system engineering?
Well, if working for a company where you are in charge of the security of thousands of systems, you might be asked to do exactly this.
If I was running a massive company, I would want my network security team to be buying up the latest cracking tech and checking it against as much of the corporate systems as possible.
Any corporation with any sense and lots of stuff they need to secure pays people to attack their corporate networks with anything and everything available, and then report back.
Huh? Same as what? We are talking about 0-day vulns. By definition if you think you have found a 0-day, you have little to compare it to.
Exploiting a bug on your system to verify that it is a bug that can be exploited would seem to be one of the very first things to do after verifying your backups, if you think you have found a 0-day vuln.
Otherwise, how would you know that it is what you think it is?
There is no general procedure you can run on code to check this for you other than actually checking it and seeing what it does.
When we had fiscal oversight and corporate law.