The "No Niggers Served Here" is considered an active attempt to deprive those non-whites of their Constitutional rights (primarily, of Assembly and Equal Protection). Both the actual act of refusing to serve, and the sign outside are covered. The sign is often covered under a conspiracy charge, though it may likely also be part of the main charge as well.
Likewise, burning a cross outside a house can be prohibited on a number of grounds. Normally, I see it prohibited under various incitement to riot laws, though it can also be covered under simple assault. Traditionally, the federal cases used a deprivation of Civil Rights strategy. Burning anything on a public sidewalk can be prevented by fire hazard or public nuisance laws, but there again, certain 1st Amendment considerations can allow some things - thus, I can burn an American Flag on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse. I can burn an effigy of [random political figure] there too. The law covers both location and intent, and so, I can burn a cross at a Clan rally, but not with a bunch of my Clan friends on the sidewalk in front of my Chinese neighbor's house.
Remember, we DON'T have a law which says "These Speech categories are illegal". Rather, we have the opposite - laws which prohibit some activity, but carve out exceptions for Free Speech. Thus, the statement (or court decision) that certain activities DO NOT GET the Free Speech exception define the limits of Free Speech.
We most certainly did NOT part ways with Britain over Free Speech, in any form. It was a complete non-factor. Take a good look at the Declaration of Independence; nowhere in that long enumeration of grievances is any mention of restriction of Speech.
And, no, the founders never advocated unrestricted speech. Broad Free Speech, covering things that were well beyond what was tolerated anywhere else, but never completely unrestricted speech.
If you doubt that, I refer you to both Jefferson and Adams on libel and sedition, and Hamilton, Madison, and Adams on the maintenance of public order.
Speech as a whole must be evaluated for content before consideration of its legality. Simply because speech contains some political manifesto or content does NOT ipso facto mean it is (or should be) automatically covered and protected. As a flip side, simply because a picture shows a naked form (let's say a child), does not automatically mean it's obscene (or non-protected). The speech/work must be viewed as a whole.
Please, people, take a look at the original founder's writings. No where in there is there any mention that completely unrestricted speech is a universal good or even desirable. There have always been mentions that some speech is simply worthless, and indeed, harmful to society. Free Speech is not just something to have because it's Free. The purpose of having Free Speech is to encourage an open society of ideas, thus enabling a flexible and free society. If some speech conflicts with this goal, then it should NOT be tolerated. The founders were actually quite explicit in their stated intentions behind promotion of Free Speech - they were after the benefits a much more unfettered exchange can provide, but very much mindful that certain forms of speech caused more harm than any (possible) good.
As an aside, does anyone see Free Speech mentioned in the Declaration of Independence (which, is mostly a document defining the inherent rights of people)? As a real good example of this, take a look at the Declaration of the Rights of Man - it notes the powerful good that Free Speech can provide, but also notes the EXCEPTIONS to which Free Speech must be held.
We can dicker about the societal value of an opponent's war propaganda, and pure hate speech (with no other aspects) is still protected speech, but statements to incitement (or intent) to commit violence have clearly been placed into the category of non-protected; non-protected speech is pretty much by definition that speech which has been determined to have no redeeming societal value.
"Revolutionary" speech is orthogonal to violent intention/incitement speech. You can have plenty of revolutionary speech without resorting to incitement to violence. In fact, looking at much of the pre-Revolutionary War rhetoric, I'd classify only some of Samuel Adams (and maybe a small bit of Thomas Paine) work as "incitement to violence". Pretty much everyone else was talking revolutionary terms, but not directed violence.
Example:
"In the name of Global Marxism, shoot that bourgeois lawyer!" [not protected]
"In the name of Global Marxism, throw out the lawyers and burn the law books!" [protected]
And, not all hate speech is covered by the 1st Amendment. Besides hate speech which incites violence, that hate speech which includes the stated [or directly implied] intention to deprive someone else of their rights is also non-protected. "We don't serve Niggers here" on a sign outside of a restaurant isn't protected. Nor is burning a cross on a public sidewalk in front of someone's house. Posting a sign on your front lawn with "Kikes should die" is protected.
Also, given that al-Awlaki is still an US Citizen, much of his videos come under the Treason and Sedition exceptions to the 1st Amendment.
Frankly, the request from the British government, both to YouTube (and other companies) and to the US Government is all three: reasonable , legal, and likely to happen.
Reasonable in that these videos (and, yes, I went out and looked at a couple, I'm not going to say where), have no redeeming social value. They're strictly (a) war propaganda (b) pure hate speech and (c) active statements of intent to commit violence. None of these characteristics provided any value to our societal discussion of ideas (which is what the 1st Amendment enshrines, but does not define). No one in either the US or the UK needs to see these for any reason other than military intelligence (which, we can get without allowing them to be made for public consumption).
Legal in that according to both UK and US law, these videos fit within the various exceptions to protected speech (that is, they fit into well-defined categories of speech NOT afforded protection). Thus, it's entirely likely that the UK request to the US government will see some sort of follow-through by the US Executive branch, as the content of the videos isn't reasonably up for discussion as to the legality thereof - it's not like they have to be parsed for obscene vs offensive categorization, and I don't see any court ruling in favor of these videos being protected speech (here in the US). It's actually a pretty cut-and-dried case of Incitement to Violence.
Likely as both the above cases point out, it's pretty much a no-brainer request to the US, as it doesn't run afoul of any of our laws, or even likely to produce a court case. In addition, for private providers, its very clear that they violate pretty much any T-O-S I've ever seen for posting public video or images.
Free Speech is great, but there are well-defined (for very good reasons) exceptions to protection, and this stuff very clearly fits inside those exceptions.
But, I do expect the various TLA agencies to continue to listen to al-Awalki - after all, he's giving them plenty of rope to hang himself by.
I see lots of people down on the theory - even though the original proposal was for highly-error forgiving applications - because somehow it means we can't trust the computations from the CPU anymore.
People - realize that you can't trust them NOW.
As someone who's spent way too much time in the ZFS community talking about errors, their sources and how to compensate, let me enlighten you:
modern computers are full of uncorrected errors
By that, I mean that there is a decided tradeoff between hardware support for error correction (in all the myriad places in a computer, not just RAM) and cost, and the decision has come down on the side of screw them, they don't need to worry about errors, at least for desktops. Even for better quality servers and workstations, there are still a large number of places where the hardware simply doesn't check for errors. And, in many cases, the hardware alone is unable to check for errors and data corruption.
So, to think that your wonderful computer today is some sort of accurate calculating machine is completely wrong! Bit rot and bit flipping happens very frequently for a simple reason: error rates per billion operations (or transmissions, or whatever) have essentially stayed the same for the past 30 years, while every other component (and bus design, etc.) is pretty much following Moore's Law. The ZFS community is particularly worried about disks, where the hard error rates are now within two orders of magnitude of the disk's capacity (e.g. for a 1TB disk, you will have a hard error for every 100TB or so of data read/written). But, there's problems in on-die CPU caches, bus line transmissions, SAS and FC cable noise, DRAM failures, and a whole host of other places.
Bottom line here: the more research we can do into figuring out how to cope with the increasing frequency of errors in our hardware, the better. I'm not sure that we're going to be able to force a re-write of applications, but certainly, this kind of research and possible solutions can be taken care of by the OS itself.
Frankly, I liken the situation to that of using IEEE floating point to calculate bank balances: it looks nice and a naive person would think it's a good solution, but, let me tell you, you come up wrong by a penny more often that you would think. Much more often.
The solution to both the Quality and Security issue in software is Strict Liability.
We need to make software accountable to the same standard we require for ordinary goods: no more disclaimers of harm, avoiding Warranty of Fitness, or any of the other tricks we currently accept as par-for-the-course in software.
Sure, it will slow down software development. But, we're no longer the Wild West here - we have a reasonable infrastructure in place, and it would help society as a whole to stop treating Software as some "special" case in product liability.
We've done this cycle innumerable times in (American) history - a new industry comes along, and everyone lets it run wild for awhile, until it looks like the industry is maturing (that is, has evolved some baseline standards, processes, and generally-accepted methods for conducting business). We then start to regulate the industry to get rid of the socially-harmful aspects which inevitably have cropped up.
Software is now out of its infancy and well into adolescence. Time for us to start treating it like an adolescent and quit indulging it's whims - time for some good firm regulation like we do with every other industry.
For all those nay-sayers: sure, it would cost more time/money to produce software. But, companies would spent more time on bugs and security than (mostly) useless features; because, let's face it, the vast majority of software nowadays is 99% feature-complete. We're just gilding the lily, feature-wise, at this point. And, as pointed out elsewhere, security and quality aren't something the market has decided to reward. Companies have pushed off their costs of lax security and poor quality onto society (gee, sounds like the financial industry), and we're all paying for it.
Right now, the Software and Finance industries both live by the mantra "Privatize profits, socialize costs". It's time that we decided this isn't appropriate anymore.
As someone who has personal (and close) contacts and friendships with people in the various X-Prize contests (including the latest winner), I'm a bit biased here.
However, what Obama is talking about is really changing the ways that NASA procures it's systems. Right now, they get practically everything from one of about 3 or 4 big contractors, and essentially run like a massive Defense Contractor, complete with problems around innovation and cost-inflation.
The proposals are to quit funneling every significant contract just to these Big Space corps. Rather, the "hobbyist" rocket industry is now sufficiently mature to begin competing for real space equipment. What it needs to continue to grow and innovate are a steady, reliable supply of work. NASA is the only place this can happen right now (though, likely once the market is more mature, private space use/trips will fund more and more of industry). Breaking the grip of Big Space means that NASA can continue to use it's hard-won knowledge of manned missions as a information resource for these "space entrepreneurs", and at the same time, open up the infrastructure for better efficiencies.
Of course, Big Space sees the end of the NASA-funded (and guarantied) gravy train, so they squeal about safety and other issues that Little Space couldn't possibly (no, never!) do, forgetting (conveniently) that they themselves were once Little, and only became Big by sucking on NASA's teat. What we're talking about here is NASA enabling a new, vibrant market for space systems from a wide variety of suppliers.
To use the tired car analogy: NASA current designs the car, but farms out the manufacturing and design of the parts to SuperMegaCorp1 and GiganticConglomerate2, all of which use the notorious "cost-plus" method of development. Instead, Obama wants NASA to be deciding the PURPOSE of the car, and the desired CAPABILITIES of it, but then put out for bid all the different parts to anyone capable of making that part to the desired specs. So, perhaps we get a Volt, an Accord, and a Caravan all offered from various suppliers, rather than a Greyhound bus with all but 5 seats removed, as we would under the old system.
I hate to break it to everyone, but LEO Rocket Science is no longer, well, Rocket Science. Masten won the latest X-prize with a staff of 10, working out of a small machine shop, using only about $2 million. Putting people into orbit is not that difficult anymore (though, it's still dangerous), and it's entirely reasonable to start moving away from the single-entity agency and into a more competitive, cost-effective marketplace.
First off, to everyone who knows me: This wasn't my story submission
OK, now that's out of the way, I suffer from a related, but not quite so bad situation:
I'm pretty much the only Erik Trimble on the Internet (that's not true, but close enough).
Google me, and 90% of the first 100 returns point to me, in some way or not (FYI - the MySpace
page for "leathercladdemon" isn't me. Really.) There's nothing bad there, it's just
that my life has evolved, and having absolutely all of it retained and searchable over the past 20 years
allows people to draw incorrect assumptions about me.
This is all the privacy problems that the current young generations seem to be
completely oblivious to, and that pundits like to ignore. People's perceptions of you matter,
as much as we'd like to think otherwise. That doesn't mean it has to rule your life, but
to think that such perceptions don't matter is foolish. The problem with retaining all this
data out in the open is that it seriously harms the ability of people to change. And we
want people to change. Lots of Very Bad Things happen to society if we forbid
people (either legally, or de facto) from changing their paths in life.
For just a minor example, look at what being convicted of anything does to one's entire life.
It's not good to have complete personal transparency.
I don't have a solution. At least not a simple one. But it needs to understood
by everyone that it IS a problem.
(Disclaimer: I work for Sun, but not in the ZFS group)
The fundamental problem here isn't the RAID concept, is that the throughput and access times of spinning rust haven't changed much in 30 years. Fundamentally, today's hard drive is no more than 100 times as fast (both in throughput and latency) than a 1980s one, while it holds well over 1 million times more.
ZFS (and other advanced filesystems) will now do partial reconstruction of a failed drive (that is, they don't have to bit copy the entire drive, only the parts which are used), which helps. But there are still problems. ZFS's pathological case results in rebuild times of 2-3 WEEKS for a 1TB drive in a RAID-Z (similar to RAID-5). It's all due to the horribly small throughput, maximum IOPs, and latency of the hard drive.
SSDs, on the other hand, are no where near the problem. They've got considerably more throughput than a hard drive, and, more importantly, THOUSANDS of times better IOPS. Frankly, more than any other reason, I expect the significant IOPS of the SSD to signal the death knell of HDs in the next decade. By 2020, expect HDs to be gone from everything, even in places where HDs still have better GB/$. The rebuild rates and maintenance of HDs simply can't compete with flash.
Note: IOPS = I/O Per Second, or the number of read/write operations (irregardless of size) which a disk can service. HDs top out around 350, consumer SSDs do under 10,000, and high-end SSDs can do up to 100,000.
I work for Sun, and have been beta testing Nehalems for almost a year now.
Sun is also the PRIMARY Nehalem vendor for Intel. We got the special treatment (I don't know how), but we get to be the first real Tier-1 vendor shipping Nehalems, and let me tell you that Intel has helped us a lot in hardware integration and software tuning.
The end result is that Nehalem EP (which are dual-socket systems) is significantly faster than any of the Core2 series, and spanks even the AMD Shanghais. They've gone to the on-chip memory controller ala Opterons, and it's helped considerably. In addition, they've redone the interconnect bus to make is much more HyperTransport-ish (though HT 3.x is still superior) - it's called QuickPath Interconnect. The overall result is much better performance under load, even for single-threaded apps.
For an application such as Virtualization, Nehalems are well worth the $$$. You get considerably better loaded performance than previous Intel CPUs, and with VMs, high system utilization is the GOAL. Up until now, AMDs were considerably better than Intel chips under high load, but the Nehalems just stole the dual-socket crown back.
I'm still waiting to get my hands on the EX series (quad-socket), so I don't know how they'll compare to AMD's 8000-series. Be interesting to see.
That said, there were several pre-Cisco-announcements from HP, IBM, and Sun about how the California system is a no-go. Admittedly, they're the competitors for Cisco, but after having looked at the existing rack blade/switch systems from those three vendors, I really don't see any difference worth mentioning from current product lines.
Here's some thoughts:
IBM and Sun make much more Open systems, able to run a wide variety of vmWare, Linux, Solaris, and even AIX on all sorts of hardware (SPARC, POWER, PPC, all sorts of AMD and Intel x64). Their systems are much more flexible and honestly, much more powerful overall in what can be accomplished.
HP has much of the HW flexibility of Sun and IBM, plus the leading management tools.
Cisco has no clue as to how to run a systems support organization, which, frankly, is considerably different than running a network hardware support organization. The other big three have decades each in doing this kind of thing.
Sun in particular has extremely competitive pricing. HP and IBM are slightly more expensive, but nothing compared to the margins Cisco charges. So, exactly WHAT are people going to get for the 20-40% premium Cisco is charging over IBM?
Even for the Virtualization craze, building a completely proprietary solution flies in the face of what everyone else in the industry is doing: commoditization.
Cisco doesn't have integrated solutions. All the others provide storage, network, and compute integration with large, well-trained Professional Services orgs. Cisco has CCIEs in piles, but what do they know about anything but network gear?
Overall, this looks like a stupid move. I realize that Cisco needs to look for more revenue streams in the face of the commoditizing of most network gear, but this seems like an '80s solution to a 2010 problem.
No. This is an ideological statement, in the same vein that the GPL is. Both are intended as an implementation of an ideology. The root ideology at the FSF (up until now, it seems) can be shortly summarized as follows:
It is in everyone's best interest that software be freely available and usable by everyone.
The GPL thus establishes some (in my opinion) reasonable and limited restrictions on software, in the name of protecting the Greater Good.
This guideline set (and, in that respect, it can be viewed as a License, as it will be used in the same way - to control a set of code) goes far beyond that. It makes two additional leaps that I think are enormously harmful, and would be vociferously condemned by the FSF if anyone else attempted to do so:
It makes restrictions on code that is NOT part of the original codebase - that is, programs that merely sit side by side with FSF-approved code.
It attempts to shut off free information flow, in the name of "correctness". In otherwords, this guideline is in FAVOR OF CENSORSHIP. You can't talk about other "non-Free" code in any way other than to bash it. Yep, that's what it says.
The harsh reality of this guideline set is that it is almost identical in effect to proprietary licenses, which directly contravenes the FSF's founding principle.
I've been watching the non-free blobs issue for awhile (particularly over here at Sun, where in JDK we call them "plugs"), and it's a good discussion to have.
However, looking at the new "Free Distro Guidelines" above, I'm struck by a particular section which seems extreme:
A free system distribution must not assist users in obtaining any nonfree information for practical use, or encourage them to do so. There should be no repositories or ports for nonfree software. Programs in the system should not suggest installing nonfree plugins, documentation, and so on.
and later:
All the documentation in a free system distribution must be released under an appropriate free license. Additionally, it must take care not to recommend nonfree software.
[...]
What would be unacceptable is for the documentation to give people instructions for installing a nonfree program on the system, or mention conveniences they might gain by doing so.
That's just ludicrous. Frankly, it's just a (very) small step away from requiring that you don't (or can't) run any non-free app on your "free" OS. That single clause has just blown any notion of a "free" (in any sense of trying to protect the end-user's freedoms, which is the FSF's major ideological foundation) distribution. I don't know who the manic that wrote that section is, but it's going to cause immeasurable harm to the Free Software movement.
If we go by that clause, NONE of the distros are free. You'd have to cut out a huge chunk of the Ubuntu distro, remove the entire non-free Debian archive, and I'm not even sure how to get it out of Fedora.
Honestly, the addition of those clauses take it from an entirely reasonable "Please use Free Software, and this distro contains only Free Softare" to a "Free Software! Free Software! (la-la-la there-is-no-non-Free la-la-la)" freakazoidal world.
The rest of the proposal is OK, with minor quibbles, but that clause is a show-stopper. Get rid of it right away. Or lose any credibility that the FSF has.
1. Most people who have AIDS are actually Heterosexual.
Globally, that's true. The vast majority of AIDS transmission in the 3rd World is via heterosexual sex. 2nd world transmission is primarily hetrosexual sex and IV drug use. 1st World transmission is IV drug use and Homosexual sex, though Heterosexual transmission is rapidly rising, and should overtake Homosexual soon.
2. AIDS is incurable, there is no vaccine, and treatment is generally painful and only delays the inevitable.
True, true, and false. We have no cure for an HIV-infected individual, and there is no vaccine. However, not all HIV-positive people develop AIDS, and there are striking effective theraputic treatments these days (though they're still enormously expensive). Like many other chronic diseases, even with proper anti-HIV meds, HIV reduces your lifespan noticably (to perhaps half of what you would have post-infection). Drug regimes are not painful, and HIV-positive people generally can lead full lives up until the terminal phase of the disease.
3. No one who gets AIDS ever survives it. It has a 100% kill rate.
Not really true. AIDS actually never kills anyone. In and of itself, it doesn't kill. What is does is destroy the immune system, which allows opportunistic diseases to take hold (deadly diseases which normally healthy people can easily resist). Thus, AIDS indirectly kills the host. So you can't really say that AIDS is 100% fatal, since there are a large number of factors determining when/if you get some sort of opportunistic infection.
4. While there are homosexual people who have AIDS, Homosexuality and AIDS are unrelated. However, religious groups attempt to connect AIDS to Homosexuality, when there is none.
Homosexuality does NOT cause AIDS. However, unprotected homosexual sex (e.g. anal sex) has a much higher risk factor than oral or vaginal sex, so the transmission rate for male homosexuals is significantly higher than the lesbian and heterosexual population. Unfortunately, the uneducated (or purposely evil) folks make this correlation-to-causation connection, which is false.
5. If AIDS were transferable through some other common method, such as water, or mosquitoes, and a large majority of the population, if not the entire population of the Human species, we would be extinct within a matter of a few decades.
Possible, but irrelevant. There are many factors involved in the spread of any contagious disease, and I won't pretend to be an epidemiologist. But, if you are looking for a roughly comparable deadly disease, look at malaria. It is nasty, and has many of the long-term implications as does AIDS, yet the human population has survived with malaria for several millenia, at the least.
Bottom line: it's only White Hat if the "target" asks you to perform the security audit. Pure and simple. Anything else is at best Grey Hat, and that gets you subject to prosecution at the target's discretion. Period.
This kind of stuff is in a completely different category than analyzing the theoretical weaknesses of a system. Or even cracking software/etc on your personal equipment. Or demonstrating faulty design in a [ahem] subway system WITHOUT HAVING TO SCREW WITH THE SYSTEM. Once you start abusing other people's stuff without permission, I couldn't care less if you were Mary Poppins. IT AIN'T YOURS, SO KEEP YOUR FINGERS OFF IT.
This isn't Investigative Journalism. Which at least has standards of ethics and conduct.
The embassy (or consulate) in your original country is a great place to start, and indeed should cover a wide swath of general things. I should have suggested that, too.
However, talking to a lawyer to get the important details is, well, important. I've never found a consulate that really was useful for anything more than tourist-style advice. Even embassies are not geared toward the kind of detailed info you really should have as a private citizen. Sure, if you're interested in investing (or starting a company), then an embassy is going to be really helpful. But their resources are limited, and getting the kind of info I'm referring to is something they don't have immediately on-hand. And, generally, they aren't going to care enough about 1 visitor to make the extra mile effort.
And, no, despite what everyone likes to say, a good standard lawyer will cost you $100 per hour or so, especially if you look around. Remember, it's the high-end of the lawyer profession that gets the big bucks and attention. I've consulted lawyers here in Silicon Valley, for rates under $100/hour. My parents in rural America can get rates at $50/hour or less.
Remember, you are not asking for help on a case or problem. You're just asking for a summary of local laws. It's relatively quick and simple for a lawyer to do so, and, like I said, it's often easy to get them talking over dinner.
Moving to another country, you need to familiarize yourself with the important laws and assumptions that are being made there. So, go direct to the source: find a reputable lawyer to talk to, and swallow the few $100 it will cost for several hours of his time. And, that's a LAWYER IN THE COUNTRY YOU ARE MOVING TO.
There are a variety of different topics you will want to discuss, so you might need to talk to more than one lawyer. BUT DO IT. You are no longer a visitor, so you need to understand the ins and outs of the local legal system.
Here's some topics that are important:
Work rules and labor laws. What exactly are the conditions of your visa, how much can you work, what is expected, what can be negotiated, etc. This varies even by state here in the US, so don't assume you know anything.
Housing regulations. What are renter protections and responsibilities? Does and Don'ts of your landlord? And general property law.
Free Speech Regulations. What can (and can't) be said, whether out loud, in front of your boss, or on-line.
Liability. How is liability handled?
Local court system. How does the criminal justice system work, and what are your rights under it (particularly, as a foreigner)? How does the civil system work?
Family Law. Can you marry? What if you already are? Divorce? How are your kids required to behave?
These are but the most important I can cite off the top of my head. It's more than worth the cost of a short lawyer consultation, and you might even be able to get a good conversation out of one on the cheap (like, offer to pay for a good dinner and drinks out, since there's not going to be any paperwork or case, it's just a consultation).
Knowing the lay of the land is by far the most important thing to find out. Getting the inside scoop from an expert is the fastest, best way to do it.
You (and JaredOfEuropa, above) cherry-picked a quote.
The point I was making was in response to everyone who tries to say that "synthetic child porn hurts no one", which, since we now know that much of what appears to be synthetic really isn't, it's just a color-by-numbers photoshop job of a real picture involving real people.
In any case, as the rest of my post pointed out, we're just fine with Obscenity laws, and don't need any of this random extra crap being passed off as "crucial for combating the scourge of XXX". It's all just overkill, doesn't really add any protection we don't already have, and interferes with useful actions, in any case.
I'm not sure about UK law, but here in the US, we have a nice standard for what is Obscene:
(a) It (whatever it is, photo, "artwork", film, etc.) must appeal primarily to purient interest
(b) It depicts sexual activity in a patently offensive manner (according to community standards)
(c) Taken as a whole, the work has no artistic, political, or social value.
Frankly, the article does hit on one major problem with "synthetic" child porn - it's often not really synthetic. Remember the movie "A Scanner Darkly" ? That's the kind of thing were starting to see, not the full-on synthetic of a Final Fantasy. It's damned hard to figure out which is which, and in the mean time, people get exploited.
I don't see the need for additional legislation, as this kind of "artwork" has a far easier time being considered Obscene than most other types. When considered as a whole, most of this stuff would automatically pass (a) and (b) without much of an argument, and the bar for (c) would likely be lower than if the material solely used adults.
And, you certainly don't want to outlaw all cartoon "child porn" (i.e. things depicting sexual activity in children) - we need educational materials which depict certain acts in order to help victims of such crimes, not to mention basic (preventative) education itself. Additionally, I don't want to see documentaries become illegal (synthetic actors or real people), just because some people don't like the subject matter.
I like the obscenity standard. It's tough, for a reason. The only problem with it here in the US is jurisdictional - people should be prosecuted in the place where they possess it, not in some other place. That is, if Person A makes it available in California, but person B in Kentucky downloads it, then B should be liable for the Kentucky standards, but A should only be liable for California standards.
Honestly, if we had an F.T.C. with any balls in this country, they'd spent a lot more time coordinating with the Fraud division of Justice Department and stop this kind of crap, plus all the damn astroturfing, and that stupid "guerilla marketing" stuff. It's all fraud, pure and simple.
With any sensible reading of the fraud and deceptive marketing sections of the law (sections under US Code Title 15, plus others) surely covers all the tactics used in this kind of activity. Remember, we're talking commercial speech, which has considerably different protections and limitations.
Problem, of course, is that the FTC has been stacked with appointees from industry. Foxes guarding the henhouse, again, as usual. Sadly, this has been going across multiple administrations, and I'm not sure that it will change.
I'll leave out the silliness of suing TPB for contributory copyright infringement, as I'm pretty sure we all agree that this isn't sane.
However, looking at the comments above, I see a horrible pattern: people excoriating ABBA, Prince, and TVP as "old timers" and "not producing anything recently" and therefore somehow immediately irrelevant and undeserving of receiving some compensation for their work.
Now, I realize that/. is heavily 20-somethings (which means, you weren't conscious before about 1990), but I think enough of us here are a bit older that we can recognize that music produced in the 80s and (gasp) even the 70s might still have some worth. Now, the 95+ year copyright is a bit ludicrous, but even ABBA and TVP's songs are still in their mid-30s as to date from creation. And Prince's stuff is a rather young 25 at the oldest. I think it's entirely reasonable that someone have the ability to own a copyright for 25 years. TPB may not be (rationally) responsible, but the people filesharing ABBA haven't got a legal, moral, or ethical leg to stand on.
And, to shove something back at this audience that it often trumpets: teenieboppers aren't the only music consumers! If the music industry is to survive, it has to realize that continuing to sell to 30/40/50 year olds is a viable market. And, let's face it, much of that market is interested in nostalgia. I certainly haven't finished filling out my collection of favorites from the 70s. So, (gasp) there should still be substantial value in selling music a couple of decades old to 30+ people.
So, the attitude of "what have you done for me lately" is bullshit. Nirvana hasn't produced anything in 15 years. They don't (i.e. can't) make money from touring. Does that mean I can pirate their stuff with impunity, since obviously, Kurt doesn't need any of the royalties.
It's attitudes like that that mean we're not taken seriously.
Moderate copyright, rigorously enforced, is a boon to society. Our problem is that copyright is approaching a perpetuity. The reaction to that may be widespread piracy, but let's not kid ourselves that we're somehow "better" than the opposition. Rioting for change is still rioting, even if you manage to get something changed. Vote with your dollars, as its by far the best way (ethically, morally, and socially) to effect change - support those artists willing to embrace new business models, and shun those who prop up the old channels.
One last thing. Here's a question for everyone:
Under the current copyright system, if an artist (formerly popular), who hasn't produced anything in a decade or more, and won't (or can't) tour, decides to make their catalog available digitally (as MP3, at some reasonable X per song), yet absolutely abhors filesharing, and sues everyone they can which shares their songs, asking for several thousand dollars (mostly as a deterent) per song in penalties, would you support them?
I wouldn't bet anything on GNU configure ever being supported by the Sun JDK as the build method. configure is way to hairy and broken (from the development side) to handle something as complicated as the JDK.
Look for possibly ANT to replace the hacked Make system currently used.
Pretty much all industries contribute heavily to both sides nowdays. If you look back, large industry used to be heavily a Republican donor, but after our great "finance reform", they've tended to be pretty even handend (or, at least 60/40 or so). Hedging the bet is the smart move in an environment where the balance of power swings wildly.
Unfortunately, until we realize that Corporations aren't people, and they shouldn't have political rights, we're going to be stuck with the current system.
-Erik
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...
on
Immunizing the Internet
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The paper (or article, or whatever) is actually quite well-nuanced and fairly even-handed. However, it suffers from a fatal flaw of many legal articles: a fundamental ignorance of the subject matter itself.
It's a paper written by (wannabe) lawyers, who, while they site large rafts of supposedly corroberating papers and "experts", don't understand what they (the exports and sited papers) are talking about.
This kind of approach is eminently practical (and effective) when attempting to try a case, or negotiate a settlement. However, it is absolutely the wrong way to do things when attempting to write a Public Policy piece. If one is attempting to educate the populance (or some subsection of it) about an issue, you have to actually understand the subject, not just quote others' ideas.
They are correct in the supposition that cybercrime has a different nature than that of "real world" crime. But they completely misunderstand how this difference affects people.
A classic example of not really understanding the subject matter occurs when they claim that a compromised system actually causes very little economic damage, as the system itself is not physically damaged, and the effort to repair it is theoretically comparable to a periodic security audit/update of the machine. What they perceive is a JoyRide in a "stolen" car - someone took my car out for a whirl, and if they've returned it in good shape, all I (the owner) have to do is sweep out a few of the crumbs (and maybe fix the door lock) before it is ready to go again. This isn't the true case. Rather, it is closer to the case that I, the owner, would have to completely dissassemble the entire car, and put it back together again from its component parts, just to make sure that the kids didn't screw something up (or wire a bomb to the ignition). There is a HUGE economic cost to cleaning up after even a minor intrusion. Because, frankly, there is no way to determine if something was a minor or a major intrusion, until a complete postmortem is done. And the risk associated with keeping a compromised system working is far too great to NOT do the full rebuild. In many ways, the risk analysis looks a lot like empidemiology: when a herd of cows is found to contain one case of Mad Cow, we kill the entire herd and check them all, rather than just kill the sick cow, and say "oh, we found the problem, and it is fixed now".
The real solution is not to allow "ethical hackers", but rather to provide economic incentives for companies to protect their data. If this were the case, then companies would take security seriously, and there would be a whole thriving sector of legal security probing companies (which exists in a very tiny manner today). If companies were held to multimillion dollar fines every time private data was compromised, you could be damned well sure that security would rank somewhere above "oh, and empty the trash before you leave tonight", which is where it currently resides. And security checks would be done by true professionals, complete with after-incident reports and improvement suggestions.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup to both.
The "No Niggers Served Here" is considered an active attempt to deprive those non-whites of their Constitutional rights (primarily, of Assembly and Equal Protection). Both the actual act of refusing to serve, and the sign outside are covered. The sign is often covered under a conspiracy charge, though it may likely also be part of the main charge as well.
Likewise, burning a cross outside a house can be prohibited on a number of grounds. Normally, I see it prohibited under various incitement to riot laws, though it can also be covered under simple assault. Traditionally, the federal cases used a deprivation of Civil Rights strategy. Burning anything on a public sidewalk can be prevented by fire hazard or public nuisance laws, but there again, certain 1st Amendment considerations can allow some things - thus, I can burn an American Flag on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse. I can burn an effigy of [random political figure] there too. The law covers both location and intent, and so, I can burn a cross at a Clan rally, but not with a bunch of my Clan friends on the sidewalk in front of my Chinese neighbor's house.
Remember, we DON'T have a law which says "These Speech categories are illegal". Rather, we have the opposite - laws which prohibit some activity, but carve out exceptions for Free Speech. Thus, the statement (or court decision) that certain activities DO NOT GET the Free Speech exception define the limits of Free Speech.
-Erik
Go look at my other posts in this thread.
We most certainly did NOT part ways with Britain over Free Speech, in any form. It was a complete non-factor. Take a good look at the Declaration of Independence; nowhere in that long enumeration of grievances is any mention of restriction of Speech.
And, no, the founders never advocated unrestricted speech. Broad Free Speech, covering things that were well beyond what was tolerated anywhere else, but never completely unrestricted speech.
If you doubt that, I refer you to both Jefferson and Adams on libel and sedition, and Hamilton, Madison, and Adams on the maintenance of public order.
-Erik
No, no, NO.
Speech as a whole must be evaluated for content before consideration of its legality. Simply because speech contains some political manifesto or content does NOT ipso facto mean it is (or should be) automatically covered and protected. As a flip side, simply because a picture shows a naked form (let's say a child), does not automatically mean it's obscene (or non-protected). The speech/work must be viewed as a whole.
Please, people, take a look at the original founder's writings. No where in there is there any mention that completely unrestricted speech is a universal good or even desirable. There have always been mentions that some speech is simply worthless, and indeed, harmful to society. Free Speech is not just something to have because it's Free. The purpose of having Free Speech is to encourage an open society of ideas, thus enabling a flexible and free society. If some speech conflicts with this goal, then it should NOT be tolerated. The founders were actually quite explicit in their stated intentions behind promotion of Free Speech - they were after the benefits a much more unfettered exchange can provide, but very much mindful that certain forms of speech caused more harm than any (possible) good.
As an aside, does anyone see Free Speech mentioned in the Declaration of Independence (which, is mostly a document defining the inherent rights of people)? As a real good example of this, take a look at the Declaration of the Rights of Man - it notes the powerful good that Free Speech can provide, but also notes the EXCEPTIONS to which Free Speech must be held.
-Erik
We can dicker about the societal value of an opponent's war propaganda, and pure hate speech (with no other aspects) is still protected speech, but statements to incitement (or intent) to commit violence have clearly been placed into the category of non-protected; non-protected speech is pretty much by definition that speech which has been determined to have no redeeming societal value.
"Revolutionary" speech is orthogonal to violent intention/incitement speech. You can have plenty of revolutionary speech without resorting to incitement to violence. In fact, looking at much of the pre-Revolutionary War rhetoric, I'd classify only some of Samuel Adams (and maybe a small bit of Thomas Paine) work as "incitement to violence". Pretty much everyone else was talking revolutionary terms, but not directed violence.
Example:
"In the name of Global Marxism, shoot that bourgeois lawyer!" [not protected]
"In the name of Global Marxism, throw out the lawyers and burn the law books!" [protected]
And, not all hate speech is covered by the 1st Amendment. Besides hate speech which incites violence, that hate speech which includes the stated [or directly implied] intention to deprive someone else of their rights is also non-protected. "We don't serve Niggers here" on a sign outside of a restaurant isn't protected. Nor is burning a cross on a public sidewalk in front of someone's house. Posting a sign on your front lawn with "Kikes should die" is protected.
Also, given that al-Awlaki is still an US Citizen, much of his videos come under the Treason and Sedition exceptions to the 1st Amendment.
-Erik
Frankly, the request from the British government, both to YouTube (and other companies) and to the US Government is all three: reasonable , legal, and likely to happen.
Reasonable in that these videos (and, yes, I went out and looked at a couple, I'm not going to say where), have no redeeming social value. They're strictly (a) war propaganda (b) pure hate speech and (c) active statements of intent to commit violence. None of these characteristics provided any value to our societal discussion of ideas (which is what the 1st Amendment enshrines, but does not define). No one in either the US or the UK needs to see these for any reason other than military intelligence (which, we can get without allowing them to be made for public consumption).
Legal in that according to both UK and US law, these videos fit within the various exceptions to protected speech (that is, they fit into well-defined categories of speech NOT afforded protection). Thus, it's entirely likely that the UK request to the US government will see some sort of follow-through by the US Executive branch, as the content of the videos isn't reasonably up for discussion as to the legality thereof - it's not like they have to be parsed for obscene vs offensive categorization, and I don't see any court ruling in favor of these videos being protected speech (here in the US). It's actually a pretty cut-and-dried case of Incitement to Violence.
Likely as both the above cases point out, it's pretty much a no-brainer request to the US, as it doesn't run afoul of any of our laws, or even likely to produce a court case. In addition, for private providers, its very clear that they violate pretty much any T-O-S I've ever seen for posting public video or images.
Free Speech is great, but there are well-defined (for very good reasons) exceptions to protection, and this stuff very clearly fits inside those exceptions.
But, I do expect the various TLA agencies to continue to listen to al-Awalki - after all, he's giving them plenty of rope to hang himself by.
I see lots of people down on the theory - even though the original proposal was for highly-error forgiving applications - because somehow it means we can't trust the computations from the CPU anymore.
People - realize that you can't trust them NOW.
As someone who's spent way too much time in the ZFS community talking about errors, their sources and how to compensate, let me enlighten you:
modern computers are full of uncorrected errors
By that, I mean that there is a decided tradeoff between hardware support for error correction (in all the myriad places in a computer, not just RAM) and cost, and the decision has come down on the side of screw them, they don't need to worry about errors, at least for desktops. Even for better quality servers and workstations, there are still a large number of places where the hardware simply doesn't check for errors. And, in many cases, the hardware alone is unable to check for errors and data corruption.
So, to think that your wonderful computer today is some sort of accurate calculating machine is completely wrong! Bit rot and bit flipping happens very frequently for a simple reason: error rates per billion operations (or transmissions, or whatever) have essentially stayed the same for the past 30 years, while every other component (and bus design, etc.) is pretty much following Moore's Law. The ZFS community is particularly worried about disks, where the hard error rates are now within two orders of magnitude of the disk's capacity (e.g. for a 1TB disk, you will have a hard error for every 100TB or so of data read/written). But, there's problems in on-die CPU caches, bus line transmissions, SAS and FC cable noise, DRAM failures, and a whole host of other places.
Bottom line here: the more research we can do into figuring out how to cope with the increasing frequency of errors in our hardware, the better. I'm not sure that we're going to be able to force a re-write of applications, but certainly, this kind of research and possible solutions can be taken care of by the OS itself.
Frankly, I liken the situation to that of using IEEE floating point to calculate bank balances: it looks nice and a naive person would think it's a good solution, but, let me tell you, you come up wrong by a penny more often that you would think. Much more often.
-Erik
We don't even need to go this far.
The solution to both the Quality and Security issue in software is Strict Liability.
We need to make software accountable to the same standard we require for ordinary goods: no more disclaimers of harm, avoiding Warranty of Fitness, or any of the other tricks we currently accept as par-for-the-course in software.
Sure, it will slow down software development. But, we're no longer the Wild West here - we have a reasonable infrastructure in place, and it would help society as a whole to stop treating Software as some "special" case in product liability.
We've done this cycle innumerable times in (American) history - a new industry comes along, and everyone lets it run wild for awhile, until it looks like the industry is maturing (that is, has evolved some baseline standards, processes, and generally-accepted methods for conducting business). We then start to regulate the industry to get rid of the socially-harmful aspects which inevitably have cropped up.
Software is now out of its infancy and well into adolescence. Time for us to start treating it like an adolescent and quit indulging it's whims - time for some good firm regulation like we do with every other industry.
For all those nay-sayers: sure, it would cost more time/money to produce software. But, companies would spent more time on bugs and security than (mostly) useless features; because, let's face it, the vast majority of software nowadays is 99% feature-complete. We're just gilding the lily, feature-wise, at this point. And, as pointed out elsewhere, security and quality aren't something the market has decided to reward. Companies have pushed off their costs of lax security and poor quality onto society (gee, sounds like the financial industry), and we're all paying for it.
Right now, the Software and Finance industries both live by the mantra "Privatize profits, socialize costs". It's time that we decided this isn't appropriate anymore.
-Erik
As someone who has personal (and close) contacts and friendships with people in the various X-Prize contests (including the latest winner), I'm a bit biased here.
However, what Obama is talking about is really changing the ways that NASA procures it's systems. Right now, they get practically everything from one of about 3 or 4 big contractors, and essentially run like a massive Defense Contractor, complete with problems around innovation and cost-inflation.
The proposals are to quit funneling every significant contract just to these Big Space corps. Rather, the "hobbyist" rocket industry is now sufficiently mature to begin competing for real space equipment. What it needs to continue to grow and innovate are a steady, reliable supply of work. NASA is the only place this can happen right now (though, likely once the market is more mature, private space use/trips will fund more and more of industry). Breaking the grip of Big Space means that NASA can continue to use it's hard-won knowledge of manned missions as a information resource for these "space entrepreneurs", and at the same time, open up the infrastructure for better efficiencies.
Of course, Big Space sees the end of the NASA-funded (and guarantied) gravy train, so they squeal about safety and other issues that Little Space couldn't possibly (no, never!) do, forgetting (conveniently) that they themselves were once Little, and only became Big by sucking on NASA's teat. What we're talking about here is NASA enabling a new, vibrant market for space systems from a wide variety of suppliers.
To use the tired car analogy: NASA current designs the car, but farms out the manufacturing and design of the parts to SuperMegaCorp1 and GiganticConglomerate2, all of which use the notorious "cost-plus" method of development. Instead, Obama wants NASA to be deciding the PURPOSE of the car, and the desired CAPABILITIES of it, but then put out for bid all the different parts to anyone capable of making that part to the desired specs. So, perhaps we get a Volt, an Accord, and a Caravan all offered from various suppliers, rather than a Greyhound bus with all but 5 seats removed, as we would under the old system.
I hate to break it to everyone, but LEO Rocket Science is no longer, well, Rocket Science. Masten won the latest X-prize with a staff of 10, working out of a small machine shop, using only about $2 million. Putting people into orbit is not that difficult anymore (though, it's still dangerous), and it's entirely reasonable to start moving away from the single-entity agency and into a more competitive, cost-effective marketplace.
First off, to everyone who knows me: This wasn't my story submission
OK, now that's out of the way, I suffer from a related, but not quite so bad situation: I'm pretty much the only Erik Trimble on the Internet (that's not true, but close enough). Google me, and 90% of the first 100 returns point to me, in some way or not (FYI - the MySpace page for "leathercladdemon" isn't me. Really.) There's nothing bad there, it's just that my life has evolved, and having absolutely all of it retained and searchable over the past 20 years allows people to draw incorrect assumptions about me.
This is all the privacy problems that the current young generations seem to be completely oblivious to, and that pundits like to ignore. People's perceptions of you matter, as much as we'd like to think otherwise. That doesn't mean it has to rule your life, but to think that such perceptions don't matter is foolish. The problem with retaining all this data out in the open is that it seriously harms the ability of people to change. And we want people to change. Lots of Very Bad Things happen to society if we forbid people (either legally, or de facto) from changing their paths in life. For just a minor example, look at what being convicted of anything does to one's entire life. It's not good to have complete personal transparency.
I don't have a solution. At least not a simple one. But it needs to understood by everyone that it IS a problem.
-Erik
As others have mentioned, this is something that is discussed on the ZFS mailing lists frequently.
For more info there, check out the digest for zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org
and, in particular, check out Richard Elling's blog
(Disclaimer: I work for Sun, but not in the ZFS group)
The fundamental problem here isn't the RAID concept, is that the throughput and access times of spinning rust haven't changed much in 30 years. Fundamentally, today's hard drive is no more than 100 times as fast (both in throughput and latency) than a 1980s one, while it holds well over 1 million times more.
ZFS (and other advanced filesystems) will now do partial reconstruction of a failed drive (that is, they don't have to bit copy the entire drive, only the parts which are used), which helps. But there are still problems. ZFS's pathological case results in rebuild times of 2-3 WEEKS for a 1TB drive in a RAID-Z (similar to RAID-5). It's all due to the horribly small throughput, maximum IOPs, and latency of the hard drive.
SSDs, on the other hand, are no where near the problem. They've got considerably more throughput than a hard drive, and, more importantly, THOUSANDS of times better IOPS. Frankly, more than any other reason, I expect the significant IOPS of the SSD to signal the death knell of HDs in the next decade. By 2020, expect HDs to be gone from everything, even in places where HDs still have better GB/$. The rebuild rates and maintenance of HDs simply can't compete with flash.
Note: IOPS = I/O Per Second, or the number of read/write operations (irregardless of size) which a disk can service. HDs top out around 350, consumer SSDs do under 10,000, and high-end SSDs can do up to 100,000.
-Erik
I work for Sun, and have been beta testing Nehalems for almost a year now.
Sun is also the PRIMARY Nehalem vendor for Intel. We got the special treatment (I don't know how), but we get to be the first real Tier-1 vendor shipping Nehalems, and let me tell you that Intel has helped us a lot in hardware integration and software tuning.
The end result is that Nehalem EP (which are dual-socket systems) is significantly faster than any of the Core2 series, and spanks even the AMD Shanghais. They've gone to the on-chip memory controller ala Opterons, and it's helped considerably. In addition, they've redone the interconnect bus to make is much more HyperTransport-ish (though HT 3.x is still superior) - it's called QuickPath Interconnect. The overall result is much better performance under load, even for single-threaded apps.
For an application such as Virtualization, Nehalems are well worth the $$$. You get considerably better loaded performance than previous Intel CPUs, and with VMs, high system utilization is the GOAL. Up until now, AMDs were considerably better than Intel chips under high load, but the Nehalems just stole the dual-socket crown back.
I'm still waiting to get my hands on the EX series (quad-socket), so I don't know how they'll compare to AMD's 8000-series. Be interesting to see.
-Erik
OK. My bias up front - I work for Sun.
That said, there were several pre-Cisco-announcements from HP, IBM, and Sun about how the California system is a no-go. Admittedly, they're the competitors for Cisco, but after having looked at the existing rack blade/switch systems from those three vendors, I really don't see any difference worth mentioning from current product lines.
Here's some thoughts:
Overall, this looks like a stupid move. I realize that Cisco needs to look for more revenue streams in the face of the commoditizing of most network gear, but this seems like an '80s solution to a 2010 problem.
-Erik
No. This is an ideological statement, in the same vein that the GPL is. Both are intended as an implementation of an ideology. The root ideology at the FSF (up until now, it seems) can be shortly summarized as follows:
It is in everyone's best interest that software be freely available and usable by everyone.
The GPL thus establishes some (in my opinion) reasonable and limited restrictions on software, in the name of protecting the Greater Good.
This guideline set (and, in that respect, it can be viewed as a License, as it will be used in the same way - to control a set of code) goes far beyond that. It makes two additional leaps that I think are enormously harmful, and would be vociferously condemned by the FSF if anyone else attempted to do so:
The harsh reality of this guideline set is that it is almost identical in effect to proprietary licenses, which directly contravenes the FSF's founding principle.
take a look at the FSF's own words on what is Free Software.
This guideline is in direct conflict with Freedom 0, and places severe impediments on Freedom 1.
I honestly don't understand who thought these clauses were a good idea. Clearly, they weren't thought through.
-Erik
I've been watching the non-free blobs issue for awhile (particularly over here at Sun, where in JDK we call them "plugs"), and it's a good discussion to have.
However, looking at the new "Free Distro Guidelines" above, I'm struck by a particular section which seems extreme:
A free system distribution must not assist users in obtaining any nonfree information for practical use, or encourage them to do so. There should be no repositories or ports for nonfree software. Programs in the system should not suggest installing nonfree plugins, documentation, and so on.
and later:
All the documentation in a free system distribution must be released under an appropriate free license. Additionally, it must take care not to recommend nonfree software. [...] What would be unacceptable is for the documentation to give people instructions for installing a nonfree program on the system, or mention conveniences they might gain by doing so.
That's just ludicrous. Frankly, it's just a (very) small step away from requiring that you don't (or can't) run any non-free app on your "free" OS. That single clause has just blown any notion of a "free" (in any sense of trying to protect the end-user's freedoms, which is the FSF's major ideological foundation) distribution. I don't know who the manic that wrote that section is, but it's going to cause immeasurable harm to the Free Software movement.
If we go by that clause, NONE of the distros are free. You'd have to cut out a huge chunk of the Ubuntu distro, remove the entire non-free Debian archive, and I'm not even sure how to get it out of Fedora.
Honestly, the addition of those clauses take it from an entirely reasonable "Please use Free Software, and this distro contains only Free Softare" to a "Free Software! Free Software! (la-la-la there-is-no-non-Free la-la-la)" freakazoidal world.
The rest of the proposal is OK, with minor quibbles, but that clause is a show-stopper. Get rid of it right away. Or lose any credibility that the FSF has.
-Erik
Here's a quick rundown:
1. Most people who have AIDS are actually Heterosexual.
Globally, that's true. The vast majority of AIDS transmission in the 3rd World is via heterosexual sex. 2nd world transmission is primarily hetrosexual sex and IV drug use. 1st World transmission is IV drug use and Homosexual sex, though Heterosexual transmission is rapidly rising, and should overtake Homosexual soon.
2. AIDS is incurable, there is no vaccine, and treatment is generally painful and only delays the inevitable.
True, true, and false. We have no cure for an HIV-infected individual, and there is no vaccine. However, not all HIV-positive people develop AIDS, and there are striking effective theraputic treatments these days (though they're still enormously expensive). Like many other chronic diseases, even with proper anti-HIV meds, HIV reduces your lifespan noticably (to perhaps half of what you would have post-infection). Drug regimes are not painful, and HIV-positive people generally can lead full lives up until the terminal phase of the disease.
3. No one who gets AIDS ever survives it. It has a 100% kill rate.
Not really true. AIDS actually never kills anyone. In and of itself, it doesn't kill. What is does is destroy the immune system, which allows opportunistic diseases to take hold (deadly diseases which normally healthy people can easily resist). Thus, AIDS indirectly kills the host. So you can't really say that AIDS is 100% fatal, since there are a large number of factors determining when/if you get some sort of opportunistic infection.
4. While there are homosexual people who have AIDS, Homosexuality and AIDS are unrelated. However, religious groups attempt to connect AIDS to Homosexuality, when there is none.
Homosexuality does NOT cause AIDS. However, unprotected homosexual sex (e.g. anal sex) has a much higher risk factor than oral or vaginal sex, so the transmission rate for male homosexuals is significantly higher than the lesbian and heterosexual population. Unfortunately, the uneducated (or purposely evil) folks make this correlation-to-causation connection, which is false.
5. If AIDS were transferable through some other common method, such as water, or mosquitoes, and a large majority of the population, if not the entire population of the Human species, we would be extinct within a matter of a few decades.
Possible, but irrelevant. There are many factors involved in the spread of any contagious disease, and I won't pretend to be an epidemiologist. But, if you are looking for a roughly comparable deadly disease, look at malaria. It is nasty, and has many of the long-term implications as does AIDS, yet the human population has survived with malaria for several millenia, at the least.
-Erik
Bottom line: it's only White Hat if the "target" asks you to perform the security audit. Pure and simple. Anything else is at best Grey Hat, and that gets you subject to prosecution at the target's discretion. Period.
This kind of stuff is in a completely different category than analyzing the theoretical weaknesses of a system. Or even cracking software/etc on your personal equipment. Or demonstrating faulty design in a [ahem] subway system WITHOUT HAVING TO SCREW WITH THE SYSTEM. Once you start abusing other people's stuff without permission, I couldn't care less if you were Mary Poppins. IT AIN'T YOURS, SO KEEP YOUR FINGERS OFF IT.
This isn't Investigative Journalism. Which at least has standards of ethics and conduct.
People, quit glorifying these idiots.
The embassy (or consulate) in your original country is a great place to start, and indeed should cover a wide swath of general things. I should have suggested that, too.
However, talking to a lawyer to get the important details is, well, important. I've never found a consulate that really was useful for anything more than tourist-style advice. Even embassies are not geared toward the kind of detailed info you really should have as a private citizen. Sure, if you're interested in investing (or starting a company), then an embassy is going to be really helpful. But their resources are limited, and getting the kind of info I'm referring to is something they don't have immediately on-hand. And, generally, they aren't going to care enough about 1 visitor to make the extra mile effort.
And, no, despite what everyone likes to say, a good standard lawyer will cost you $100 per hour or so, especially if you look around. Remember, it's the high-end of the lawyer profession that gets the big bucks and attention. I've consulted lawyers here in Silicon Valley, for rates under $100/hour. My parents in rural America can get rates at $50/hour or less.
Remember, you are not asking for help on a case or problem. You're just asking for a summary of local laws. It's relatively quick and simple for a lawyer to do so, and, like I said, it's often easy to get them talking over dinner.
-Erik
Moving to another country, you need to familiarize yourself with the important laws and assumptions that are being made there. So, go direct to the source: find a reputable lawyer to talk to, and swallow the few $100 it will cost for several hours of his time. And, that's a LAWYER IN THE COUNTRY YOU ARE MOVING TO.
There are a variety of different topics you will want to discuss, so you might need to talk to more than one lawyer. BUT DO IT. You are no longer a visitor, so you need to understand the ins and outs of the local legal system.
Here's some topics that are important:
These are but the most important I can cite off the top of my head. It's more than worth the cost of a short lawyer consultation, and you might even be able to get a good conversation out of one on the cheap (like, offer to pay for a good dinner and drinks out, since there's not going to be any paperwork or case, it's just a consultation).
Knowing the lay of the land is by far the most important thing to find out. Getting the inside scoop from an expert is the fastest, best way to do it.
-Erik
You (and JaredOfEuropa, above) cherry-picked a quote.
The point I was making was in response to everyone who tries to say that "synthetic child porn hurts no one", which, since we now know that much of what appears to be synthetic really isn't, it's just a color-by-numbers photoshop job of a real picture involving real people.
In any case, as the rest of my post pointed out, we're just fine with Obscenity laws, and don't need any of this random extra crap being passed off as "crucial for combating the scourge of XXX". It's all just overkill, doesn't really add any protection we don't already have, and interferes with useful actions, in any case.
-Erik
I'm not sure about UK law, but here in the US, we have a nice standard for what is Obscene:
(a) It (whatever it is, photo, "artwork", film, etc.) must appeal primarily to purient interest
(b) It depicts sexual activity in a patently offensive manner (according to community standards)
(c) Taken as a whole, the work has no artistic, political, or social value.
Frankly, the article does hit on one major problem with "synthetic" child porn - it's often not really synthetic. Remember the movie "A Scanner Darkly" ? That's the kind of thing were starting to see, not the full-on synthetic of a Final Fantasy. It's damned hard to figure out which is which, and in the mean time, people get exploited.
I don't see the need for additional legislation, as this kind of "artwork" has a far easier time being considered Obscene than most other types. When considered as a whole, most of this stuff would automatically pass (a) and (b) without much of an argument, and the bar for (c) would likely be lower than if the material solely used adults.
And, you certainly don't want to outlaw all cartoon "child porn" (i.e. things depicting sexual activity in children) - we need educational materials which depict certain acts in order to help victims of such crimes, not to mention basic (preventative) education itself. Additionally, I don't want to see documentaries become illegal (synthetic actors or real people), just because some people don't like the subject matter.
I like the obscenity standard. It's tough, for a reason. The only problem with it here in the US is jurisdictional - people should be prosecuted in the place where they possess it, not in some other place. That is, if Person A makes it available in California, but person B in Kentucky downloads it, then B should be liable for the Kentucky standards, but A should only be liable for California standards.
-Erik
Honestly, if we had an F.T.C. with any balls in this country, they'd spent a lot more time coordinating with the Fraud division of Justice Department and stop this kind of crap, plus all the damn astroturfing, and that stupid "guerilla marketing" stuff. It's all fraud, pure and simple.
With any sensible reading of the fraud and deceptive marketing sections of the law (sections under US Code Title 15, plus others) surely covers all the tactics used in this kind of activity. Remember, we're talking commercial speech, which has considerably different protections and limitations.
Problem, of course, is that the FTC has been stacked with appointees from industry. Foxes guarding the henhouse, again, as usual. Sadly, this has been going across multiple administrations, and I'm not sure that it will change.
-Erik
I'll leave out the silliness of suing TPB for contributory copyright infringement, as I'm pretty sure we all agree that this isn't sane.
However, looking at the comments above, I see a horrible pattern: people excoriating ABBA, Prince, and TVP as "old timers" and "not producing anything recently" and therefore somehow immediately irrelevant and undeserving of receiving some compensation for their work.
Now, I realize that /. is heavily 20-somethings (which means, you weren't conscious before about 1990), but I think enough of us here are a bit older that we can recognize that music produced in the 80s and (gasp) even the 70s might still have some worth. Now, the 95+ year copyright is a bit ludicrous, but even ABBA and TVP's songs are still in their mid-30s as to date from creation. And Prince's stuff is a rather young 25 at the oldest. I think it's entirely reasonable that someone have the ability to own a copyright for 25 years. TPB may not be (rationally) responsible, but the people filesharing ABBA haven't got a legal, moral, or ethical leg to stand on.
And, to shove something back at this audience that it often trumpets: teenieboppers aren't the only music consumers! If the music industry is to survive, it has to realize that continuing to sell to 30/40/50 year olds is a viable market. And, let's face it, much of that market is interested in nostalgia. I certainly haven't finished filling out my collection of favorites from the 70s. So, (gasp) there should still be substantial value in selling music a couple of decades old to 30+ people.
So, the attitude of "what have you done for me lately" is bullshit. Nirvana hasn't produced anything in 15 years. They don't (i.e. can't) make money from touring. Does that mean I can pirate their stuff with impunity, since obviously, Kurt doesn't need any of the royalties.
It's attitudes like that that mean we're not taken seriously.
Moderate copyright, rigorously enforced, is a boon to society. Our problem is that copyright is approaching a perpetuity. The reaction to that may be widespread piracy, but let's not kid ourselves that we're somehow "better" than the opposition. Rioting for change is still rioting, even if you manage to get something changed. Vote with your dollars, as its by far the best way (ethically, morally, and socially) to effect change - support those artists willing to embrace new business models, and shun those who prop up the old channels.
One last thing. Here's a question for everyone:
Under the current copyright system, if an artist (formerly popular), who hasn't produced anything in a decade or more, and won't (or can't) tour, decides to make their catalog available digitally (as MP3, at some reasonable X per song), yet absolutely abhors filesharing, and sues everyone they can which shares their songs, asking for several thousand dollars (mostly as a deterent) per song in penalties, would you support them?
-Erik
I wouldn't bet anything on GNU configure ever being supported by the Sun JDK as the build method. configure is way to hairy and broken (from the development side) to handle something as complicated as the JDK. Look for possibly ANT to replace the hacked Make system currently used.
Pretty much all industries contribute heavily to both sides nowdays. If you look back, large industry used to be heavily a Republican donor, but after our great "finance reform", they've tended to be pretty even handend (or, at least 60/40 or so). Hedging the bet is the smart move in an environment where the balance of power swings wildly.
Unfortunately, until we realize that Corporations aren't people, and they shouldn't have political rights, we're going to be stuck with the current system.
-Erik
The paper (or article, or whatever) is actually quite well-nuanced and fairly even-handed. However, it suffers from a fatal flaw of many legal articles: a fundamental ignorance of the subject matter itself.
It's a paper written by (wannabe) lawyers, who, while they site large rafts of supposedly corroberating papers and "experts", don't understand what they (the exports and sited papers) are talking about.
This kind of approach is eminently practical (and effective) when attempting to try a case, or negotiate a settlement. However, it is absolutely the wrong way to do things when attempting to write a Public Policy piece. If one is attempting to educate the populance (or some subsection of it) about an issue, you have to actually understand the subject, not just quote others' ideas.
They are correct in the supposition that cybercrime has a different nature than that of "real world" crime. But they completely misunderstand how this difference affects people.
A classic example of not really understanding the subject matter occurs when they claim that a compromised system actually causes very little economic damage, as the system itself is not physically damaged, and the effort to repair it is theoretically comparable to a periodic security audit/update of the machine. What they perceive is a JoyRide in a "stolen" car - someone took my car out for a whirl, and if they've returned it in good shape, all I (the owner) have to do is sweep out a few of the crumbs (and maybe fix the door lock) before it is ready to go again. This isn't the true case. Rather, it is closer to the case that I, the owner, would have to completely dissassemble the entire car, and put it back together again from its component parts, just to make sure that the kids didn't screw something up (or wire a bomb to the ignition). There is a HUGE economic cost to cleaning up after even a minor intrusion. Because, frankly, there is no way to determine if something was a minor or a major intrusion, until a complete postmortem is done. And the risk associated with keeping a compromised system working is far too great to NOT do the full rebuild. In many ways, the risk analysis looks a lot like empidemiology: when a herd of cows is found to contain one case of Mad Cow, we kill the entire herd and check them all, rather than just kill the sick cow, and say "oh, we found the problem, and it is fixed now".
The real solution is not to allow "ethical hackers", but rather to provide economic incentives for companies to protect their data. If this were the case, then companies would take security seriously, and there would be a whole thriving sector of legal security probing companies (which exists in a very tiny manner today). If companies were held to multimillion dollar fines every time private data was compromised, you could be damned well sure that security would rank somewhere above "oh, and empty the trash before you leave tonight", which is where it currently resides. And security checks would be done by true professionals, complete with after-incident reports and improvement suggestions.
-Erik