Well, no, I'm arguing that saying TSA is essentially saying:
'The terminal is a secure area. To be in there, you must have to have a photo ID, which we will not record, which we will check against a piece of paper you give us, that you yourself printed, saying you can be here.'
That is not a particularly useful or even sane requirement. It is, in fact, spectacularly stupid.
They need to check people names on the IDs against some sort of actual no-fly list, or check the piece of paper against the database it should have been printed from (Which checked the name against the no fly-list), or just stop even trying.
A valid argument is that they should stop trying, either on the grounds that fake IDs are easy to get or that this entire thing is a violation of civil liberties, as you apparently would argue. I personally would argue the no-fly list itself is stupid.
But regardless of whether or not we should do it, we certainly shouldn't do it in such an idiotically defeatable manner.
Don't need to do that. Every single person who passes through security has a container large enough to max stuff in.
Namely, the resealable liter-sized clear plastic bag they were required to bring the things inside of.
And I love the idea that it would take 'multiple trips to the restroom'. So...um...security people are counting those? No? Then why the fuck is that a deterrent?
Of course, it wouldn't take that, it would just take everyone handing all the items to one guy, who puts them in his luggage. 'Oh, people will notice them trading items.' 'Um, no they won't, people traveling together do that all the time.'
He then can sit alone in a bathroom stall as long as he wants putting it together.
Watching the TSA do security is like watching a dozen 3 year-olds assemble a computer.
Is the barcode scanned at the same time ID is checked?
Mine wasn't. At Atlanta, New York, or Vegas. The first two there are two of the busiest airports in the US.
When I went through, you handed them a randomly printed piece of paper that says whatever you want it to say, and they check that your ID matches what you want it to say. (Sometimes they inexplicably check this again.)
Then, later, as you get on the plane, the airline scans the ticket you bought, presumably the same piece of paper but you had plenty of time to swap it out, to make sure it is real. This is also where the no fly list is checked. You'll notice they do not check your ID....for all they know, you just mugged someone in the restroom for that ticket.
Congrats, the name on the piece of paper you printed matches your actual name.
That's a bit like a teacher giving you a 10 points for writing your name at the top of the page.
They just checked you were an actual person...but not, you know, an actual person who bought an actual ticket. (And hence were checked against the no fly list.)
Checking 'ID' against nothing at all is not checking 'ID'. It's checking that you have a driver's license or passport, not that you're who you said you were when you bought the ticket.
They are used for other purposes. Read this. Here is the important part:
1. Joe Terrorist (whose name is on the no-fly list) buys a ticket online in the name of Joe Smith using a stolen credit card^H^H^H^H. Joe Smith is not listed on the terrorist watch list.
2. Joe Terrorist then prints his "Joe Smith" boarding pass at home, and then electronically alters it to create a second almost identical boarding pass under the name Joe Terrorist, his name.
3. Joe Terrorist then goes to the airport and goes through security with his real ID and the FAKE boarding pass. The name and face match his real driver’s license. The airport employee matches the name and face to the real ID.
4. The TSA guard at the magnetometer checks to make sure that the boarding pass looks legitimate as Joe Terrorist goes through. He or she does not scan it into the system, so there is still no hint that the name on the fake boarding pass is not the same as the name on the reservation.
5. Joe Terrorist then goes through the gate into his plane using the real Joe Smith boarding pass for the gate’s computer scanner. He is not asked for ID again to match the name on the scanner, so the fact that he does not have an ID with that name does not matter. (Since Joe Smith doesn’t actually exist it does not coincide with a name on the terrorist watch list) Joe Terrorist boards the plane, no questions asked.
TADA. A terrorist, on the no fly list, just flew without even bothering to get fake ID. (Rendering all Real ID talk total nonsense.)
And note I erased 'stolen credit card'. The credit card doesn't have to be stolen. Names of CC purchasers are not checked against the no-fly list, as far as anyone knows. If they are, there are probably ways to fly without a credit card, and if not, getting a credit card in a fake name is easy enough.
Hey, dumbass. Most airplanes only have two people in the lockable cockpit. I love the way you say 'ALL cockpit members' like it's the damn Enterprise with a half-dozen people sitting around.
And on most flights over about 4 hours, each of them, in turn, will leave to use the restroom.
No pilot has to 'attack' anyone to be left along with the airplane. They can crash the plane during the other guy's restroom break, or usually lock them entirely out of the cockpit and do whatever they want.
Even if there are three people in the cockpit, waiting until one leaves and disabling the other is pretty easy when they don't expect it. *walk up behind them* 'Hey, this navigational data looks wrong.' 'What? Let me see.' *wack them against the dash*
And, as others have pointed out, there are things you can do that will near instantly screw up the plane, like operating the controls so quickly the break, or dumping all your fuel, or all sorts of stuff. Airplane control safeties just protect people from common mistakes they make while attempting to fly the plane, they don't protect against actual malicious action. By the time the other person noticed what was going on, the entire plane would be broken.
And you can make a busy day just by doing something an hour or so before. Have some sort of screaming hysterical fit at the checkpoint, or show up with enough gunpowder on your hands to set off the explosive detector (But not an actual bomb.) Or throw a iron disk into a metal detector making it go off all the time so everyone has to go through the other ones. Arrange hairbrushes inside your luggage so they look like a gun.
Or, the easiest, call in a bomb threat.
Screw up the flow, wait until they've reopened the line again and everyone is trying to get to their plane. Then set off the bomb.
Or, as was pointed out below, just put a bomb where people are supposed to go in case of a bomb threat.
The reason terrorists don't blow people up a) either because there aren't enough of them, which only works if they don't have a single US operative, or b) they don't want to blow people up.
Yes, a barrel roll can be a 1G maneuver that causes no change at all inside the aircraft.
Or you can hold it while you're upside down, which would certainly disrupt anything going on inside a commercial airliner as it fell on the ceiling.
That actually would be pretty dangerous to all the passengers. People might be buckled in, but their laptops aren't.
A better solution would be to just roll the plane a little. 20 degree or so would let even unbuckled people remain in their seat, and cause all loose object to just slide on the floor, while making it incredibly hard to walk down the isles.
And the reason you and the ten other guys can't mix them before putting them in your confiscated water bottles?
Granted, this is more work than simply just walking in with a big explosive and setting it off in line, but, yes it is absurd to solve the problem of 'explosive liquids' by...throwing them all together in a trash bin.
I always thought what they should do is just double-layer the task bar.
The bottom is groups, and ungrouped windows. But above it is another bar where you can drag windows and make a group. Perhaps you'd have to click a + and name it or something.
I mean, I just essentially described tabs, but at the bottom of the screen, not the top, where tabs usually are assumed to be. Instead, right next to the tab groups.
You might even want to let people put them under the existing bar, or flip the paradigm around and have a new group bar above the current bar. Because hitting the bottom of screen is easier than hitting a point that isn't the bottom. This would make it easier to switch between things in the current group, at the expense of changing between groups slower.
It was an absurd 105 year sentence for a 16 year old who committed robbery.
Other people had been given 15 or so.
Huckabee reduced it to 45 years. And he did not 'pardon' him.
Like I said, I'm a Democrat. I don't like Huckabee at all. (Although I do have to admit he's the one Republican who appears to honestly believe what he says he believes.)
But this is just stupid and unfair. There are three problems with how the government handled Clemmons, and none of them were Huckabee reducing the sentence of a sane, young offender who'd be absurdly over-sentenced on account of the incompetence of his public defender. As Huckabee himself pointed out, for some reason, white well spoken youth who commit the same crime often appear to be sentenced to a fifth the time in prison Clemmons got, for some reason.
The three problems in Clemmons' treatment by the government were: a) the prosecutor not having him arrested for parole violations, b) too low a bail for a child-rapist with multiple felonies, and c) no one catching that he was insane and getting him committed.
See, even if they can't demonstrate a crazy person is a danger to themselves and others (Thus allowing them to be locked up, in theory, although there's no resources for that.), there a level of 'crazy' that should result in the offer of psychiatric counseling and some monitoring.
But if we can't afford to lock people up we've actually determined are dangerous to themselves and others, we certainly can't afford to monitor the people who aren't quite there yet.
And frankly, and I say this as Democrat, Huckabee's decision wasn't wrong. 100+ years for the crimes was crazy. Even letting him out via parole wasn't unreasonable.
He then apparently went crazy. Actual mental illness, which he didn't have any sign of when they were letting him out.
The point he should been locked up is when he ended up in police custody again a while back. It would have been nice if someone had noticed he was batshit insane at that time, held a competency hearing, and locked him up on that while he was helped.
But we stopped caring about the mentally ill in this society a while back.
Just asserting that something is violating principles does not, in fact, make you correct. You are begging the question.
It is perfectly principled to argue a specific law is so easy to violate accidentally it is unjust, and at the same time not argue that people who are unjustly effected by this law should have no punishment. To get rid of unjust laws, it is a perfectly valid principle that they should be enforced as even evenhandedly as possible.
But that is not the only principled position you can take. 'Principled' does not only mean 'The law should be applied equally'. It just means a consistent set of beliefs that apply in all directions.
For example, the punishment in this law is not proportional to how much people can handle it. Microsoft, as you said, is not going to get killed by this patent lawsuit, it will recover. Whereas other companies have, indeed, been killed.
It is perfectly reasonable and principled to hope that undue harm happen to people who can survive it best. If a heavy beam is going to fall through the ceiling, it is, indeed, best if it hits that strong looking teenager rather than that grandmother who's going to have all her bones broken. It is obviously best if it hits no one, but patent trolls are going to keep hitting people in the face, and it's best if they hit the big guy with the big guns.
Likewise, you're neglecting the fact that only a few people are actually powerful enough to change the laws, and hence only harm that comes to them will have the slightest bit of effect on the law. It is entirely principled to hope the harm clusters around them, because that results in the harm going away faster and hurting less people. For example, I wish more of the people on the no-fly list were Congresspeople...at some point, we might start having some transparency there.
If patent trolls keep hitting MS, at some point MS is just going to walk into Congress and say 'Change the law'.
And, thirdly, if patent law is going to flail around and randomly harm people, it is more 'just' that harms people who support it.
That is also a principled position, namely, people who cause other people to suffer should be punished, even if they did it within the framework of law. 'Everyone should get what they deserve' is not, in and of itself, unprincipled, although it is very easy for people to ignore what they deserved and hence become unprincipled in the application of it.
So there are plenty of entirely non-hypocritical reason to support MS losing a patent lawsuit, and some random other company willing the same lawsuit. MS is big enough to take it, MS is powerful enough to make their behavior impossible, and MS should be harmed because it has caused harm to others with patent law. As long as those are consistently applied, the argument is principled.
It's not a matter of principles. MS should be treated fairly under the law they themselves lobby for.
And, eventually, they will lose horribly on some idiotic bogus patent (As the law itself is setup to do.), and reconsider their stance of software patents.
It is not hypocritical to want everyone to get a pass under an unjust law....except the people who are pushing for said law. Who then presumably realize how dumb the law.
Yes, but that doesn't mean MS shouldn't still lose.
Not because they're 'evil', or you 'hate' them, but because MS losing a few important and destructive patent battles might actually make it realize how dangerous software patents are, and lobby congress to have them removed.
Someone need to teach Microsoft that MAD only works against companies with actual products. It doesn't work against companies that exist solely to sue others for patent infringement.
MS isn't the bad guy. MS really only uses patents defensively, like IBM.(1)
However, I wish they realize that doesn't work because patent trolls can show up who don't make a product. It doesn't matter how many patents they have then.
The best way for them to realize this is by losing a few idiotic software patent cases.
If the actual leaders of the US software industry would show up in Congress and say 'Get rid of software patents', we'd get rid of them tomorrow.
1) People, of course, are still worried about them, as MS has demonstrated in the past that it is willing to use rather unscrupulous means to remove competitors. Just because it hasn't use any patents this way doesn't mean it never will.
It's one thing to say if you break a forums rules by posting offtopic stuff you'll get disconnected. I don't agree with that, but ISPs have long been doing stuff like that.
You start acting in violation of the terms of a site, and that site complains to the ISP, they have two choices: Disconnect you, or hope that site doesn't entirely block them. So they reserve the right to disconnect you, although they usually only do it for big stuff. (I.e., if a user keeps committing click fraud at Google, and they really don't want Google to just block all their IPs)
However, this just asserts they can disconnect you from offtopic stuff even when that's not a violation of anyone's terms of service.
For example, I just went and read slashdot's terms of service, and I see absolutely nothing in there about offtopic posting. There is not the slightest rule on this site that posts be even vaguely relevant to the article at hand, or that replies to posts be even vaguely relevant to what they responded to.
Which means Verizon is taking a step well past the 'self-protection' we let them get away with, and asserting it is in charge of when it can disconnect people, even if the site they're on has no problem with their behavior.
Antispam laws were useful in exactly one way: They require 'legit' spam to be identifiable. That in and of itself was completely pointless in solving the problem.
What it did accomplish, though, was to make it where we could find 'legit' companies, and either get their ISP to cut them off, or get their ISP's ISP to cut their ISP off, etc.
So, ironically, laws that were asserted would make some forms of spamming legal have entirely resulted in 'legit' spam going away.
A lot of people still think it's 1998 and spamming is still some quasilegal thing going on, which results in completely moronic discussions here about free speech and CAN-SPAM.
Those people need to be hit with a cluebat. So here it is: PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE COMMENTING ON SPAMMING OR YOU ARE WRONG:
Almost no spam, whatsoever, is legal. And it has nothing to do with spamming laws.
It is because almost every single spam, 99% of the stuff actually defined as unsolicited bulk email (And not things people signed up for and and forget, or newsletters people didn't opt out of when giving their email.) is 100%, absolutely, unquestionable illegal, sent via an illegally hijacked computer, thus committing a felony.
PERIOD.
This isn't subject to debate, this isn't some esoteric debate about UCE vs. UBE, or free speech, or opt-out vs. opt-in vs. confirmed out-in. Almost every single message, 99.99999% of the spam out there, as part of the sending process, including committing a felony that has nothing to do with 'spamming'. A felony, I might add, that is almost certainly a felony in any random jurisdiction anywhere in the world.
That would just makes it conspiracy to commit unauthorized computer access.
But not 'creating' the botnet doesn't help. If he used the network to send out spam, or for any reason, that was unauthorized access.
If you watch someone break into a computer (and know they broke in) and they step away from the keyboard and let you use it, tada, you just also committed unauthorized computer access.
In the older days, oddly enough, there was actually a legal defense here. Worms would leap from computer to computer, installing port forwarding software that other people could use 'without realizing' such proxies were installed without permission.
But as this became a big business, it stopped working that way, and it turned into botnets that connect back to some central hub, or some decentralized control structure, but the point is, the only people who could get in were the creators of the botnet and people who those creators granted access.
Ergo, everyone who uses a botnet is using it knowing fully what's going on, as opposed to the legal loophole 'I thought J. Random User's computer was just running a public access proxy'.
Granted, in theory the spammer could have 'leased access' to a botnet he thought was legal, but a) such legal botnets for sending mail do not actually exist, so it's hard to assert he thought he was purchasing a product that isn't real, and b) that's what search warrants are for...I'm sure at some point the prosecution will be able to prove he knew what was going on.
And then, even if he didn't send any commands directly to botnet, if he paid someone to send commands to a botnet that he knew was illegal, it was conspiracy to commit such access. You can't pay people to commit felonies for you and walk away free!
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, me too. My general rule is six months, in fact. I just bought Fallout 3 GOTY, for example.
NWN is an awesome game, but I can understand why someone who got the original buggy release returned it.
I'm especially leery of Bioware first releases, especially because of NWN...it's why I'm waiting to buy Dragon Age for another few months.
Well, no, I'm arguing that saying TSA is essentially saying:
'The terminal is a secure area. To be in there, you must have to have a photo ID, which we will not record, which we will check against a piece of paper you give us, that you yourself printed, saying you can be here.'
That is not a particularly useful or even sane requirement. It is, in fact, spectacularly stupid.
They need to check people names on the IDs against some sort of actual no-fly list, or check the piece of paper against the database it should have been printed from (Which checked the name against the no fly-list), or just stop even trying.
A valid argument is that they should stop trying, either on the grounds that fake IDs are easy to get or that this entire thing is a violation of civil liberties, as you apparently would argue. I personally would argue the no-fly list itself is stupid.
But regardless of whether or not we should do it, we certainly shouldn't do it in such an idiotically defeatable manner.
They've never scanned the barcode when I went through. They don't even have a scanner there.
Don't need to do that. Every single person who passes through security has a container large enough to max stuff in.
Namely, the resealable liter-sized clear plastic bag they were required to bring the things inside of.
And I love the idea that it would take 'multiple trips to the restroom'. So...um...security people are counting those? No? Then why the fuck is that a deterrent?
Of course, it wouldn't take that, it would just take everyone handing all the items to one guy, who puts them in his luggage. 'Oh, people will notice them trading items.' 'Um, no they won't, people traveling together do that all the time.'
He then can sit alone in a bathroom stall as long as he wants putting it together.
Watching the TSA do security is like watching a dozen 3 year-olds assemble a computer.
Is the barcode scanned at the same time ID is checked?
Mine wasn't. At Atlanta, New York, or Vegas. The first two there are two of the busiest airports in the US.
When I went through, you handed them a randomly printed piece of paper that says whatever you want it to say, and they check that your ID matches what you want it to say. (Sometimes they inexplicably check this again.)
Then, later, as you get on the plane, the airline scans the ticket you bought, presumably the same piece of paper but you had plenty of time to swap it out, to make sure it is real. This is also where the no fly list is checked. You'll notice they do not check your ID....for all they know, you just mugged someone in the restroom for that ticket.
Congrats, the name on the piece of paper you printed matches your actual name.
That's a bit like a teacher giving you a 10 points for writing your name at the top of the page.
They just checked you were an actual person...but not, you know, an actual person who bought an actual ticket. (And hence were checked against the no fly list.)
Checking 'ID' against nothing at all is not checking 'ID'. It's checking that you have a driver's license or passport, not that you're who you said you were when you bought the ticket.
They are used for other purposes. Read this. Here is the important part:
1. Joe Terrorist (whose name is on the no-fly list) buys a ticket online in the name of Joe Smith using a stolen credit card^H^H^H^H. Joe Smith is not listed on the terrorist watch list.
2. Joe Terrorist then prints his "Joe Smith" boarding pass at home, and then electronically alters it to create a second almost identical boarding pass under the name Joe Terrorist, his name.
3. Joe Terrorist then goes to the airport and goes through security with his real ID and the FAKE boarding pass. The name and face match his real driver’s license. The airport employee matches the name and face to the real ID.
4. The TSA guard at the magnetometer checks to make sure that the boarding pass looks legitimate as Joe Terrorist goes through. He or she does not scan it into the system, so there is still no hint that the name on the fake boarding pass is not the same as the name on the reservation.
5. Joe Terrorist then goes through the gate into his plane using the real Joe Smith boarding pass for the gate’s computer scanner. He is not asked for ID again to match the name on the scanner, so the fact that he does not have an ID with that name does not matter. (Since Joe Smith doesn’t actually exist it does not coincide with a name on the terrorist watch list) Joe Terrorist boards the plane, no questions asked.
TADA. A terrorist, on the no fly list, just flew without even bothering to get fake ID. (Rendering all Real ID talk total nonsense.)
And note I erased 'stolen credit card'. The credit card doesn't have to be stolen. Names of CC purchasers are not checked against the no-fly list, as far as anyone knows. If they are, there are probably ways to fly without a credit card, and if not, getting a credit card in a fake name is easy enough.
If it's a dry erase marker, the people on the internet could erase it!
Hey, dumbass. Most airplanes only have two people in the lockable cockpit. I love the way you say 'ALL cockpit members' like it's the damn Enterprise with a half-dozen people sitting around.
And on most flights over about 4 hours, each of them, in turn, will leave to use the restroom.
No pilot has to 'attack' anyone to be left along with the airplane. They can crash the plane during the other guy's restroom break, or usually lock them entirely out of the cockpit and do whatever they want.
Even if there are three people in the cockpit, waiting until one leaves and disabling the other is pretty easy when they don't expect it. *walk up behind them* 'Hey, this navigational data looks wrong.' 'What? Let me see.' *wack them against the dash*
And, as others have pointed out, there are things you can do that will near instantly screw up the plane, like operating the controls so quickly the break, or dumping all your fuel, or all sorts of stuff. Airplane control safeties just protect people from common mistakes they make while attempting to fly the plane, they don't protect against actual malicious action. By the time the other person noticed what was going on, the entire plane would be broken.
Indeed. Five people walk into an airport with standard rolling suitcases, one with a suitcase full of C4 or something, the others full of BBs.
Half way through the security line, they quickly throw their suitcases around the suitcase with the explosives, and boom.
Of course, the most ironic thing to do would be to have a single bag and set it off inside the x-ray machine, which would provide instant shrapnel.
And you can make a busy day just by doing something an hour or so before. Have some sort of screaming hysterical fit at the checkpoint, or show up with enough gunpowder on your hands to set off the explosive detector (But not an actual bomb.) Or throw a iron disk into a metal detector making it go off all the time so everyone has to go through the other ones. Arrange hairbrushes inside your luggage so they look like a gun.
Or, the easiest, call in a bomb threat.
Screw up the flow, wait until they've reopened the line again and everyone is trying to get to their plane. Then set off the bomb.
Or, as was pointed out below, just put a bomb where people are supposed to go in case of a bomb threat.
The reason terrorists don't blow people up a) either because there aren't enough of them, which only works if they don't have a single US operative, or b) they don't want to blow people up.
Sigh.
Yes, a barrel roll can be a 1G maneuver that causes no change at all inside the aircraft.
Or you can hold it while you're upside down, which would certainly disrupt anything going on inside a commercial airliner as it fell on the ceiling.
That actually would be pretty dangerous to all the passengers. People might be buckled in, but their laptops aren't.
A better solution would be to just roll the plane a little. 20 degree or so would let even unbuckled people remain in their seat, and cause all loose object to just slide on the floor, while making it incredibly hard to walk down the isles.
And the reason you and the ten other guys can't mix them before putting them in your confiscated water bottles?
Granted, this is more work than simply just walking in with a big explosive and setting it off in line, but, yes it is absurd to solve the problem of 'explosive liquids' by...throwing them all together in a trash bin.
I always thought what they should do is just double-layer the task bar.
The bottom is groups, and ungrouped windows. But above it is another bar where you can drag windows and make a group. Perhaps you'd have to click a + and name it or something.
I mean, I just essentially described tabs, but at the bottom of the screen, not the top, where tabs usually are assumed to be. Instead, right next to the tab groups.
You might even want to let people put them under the existing bar, or flip the paradigm around and have a new group bar above the current bar. Because hitting the bottom of screen is easier than hitting a point that isn't the bottom. This would make it easier to switch between things in the current group, at the expense of changing between groups slower.
It was an absurd 105 year sentence for a 16 year old who committed robbery.
Other people had been given 15 or so.
Huckabee reduced it to 45 years. And he did not 'pardon' him.
Like I said, I'm a Democrat. I don't like Huckabee at all. (Although I do have to admit he's the one Republican who appears to honestly believe what he says he believes.)
But this is just stupid and unfair. There are three problems with how the government handled Clemmons, and none of them were Huckabee reducing the sentence of a sane, young offender who'd be absurdly over-sentenced on account of the incompetence of his public defender. As Huckabee himself pointed out, for some reason, white well spoken youth who commit the same crime often appear to be sentenced to a fifth the time in prison Clemmons got, for some reason.
The three problems in Clemmons' treatment by the government were: a) the prosecutor not having him arrested for parole violations, b) too low a bail for a child-rapist with multiple felonies, and c) no one catching that he was insane and getting him committed.
See, even if they can't demonstrate a crazy person is a danger to themselves and others (Thus allowing them to be locked up, in theory, although there's no resources for that.), there a level of 'crazy' that should result in the offer of psychiatric counseling and some monitoring.
But if we can't afford to lock people up we've actually determined are dangerous to themselves and others, we certainly can't afford to monitor the people who aren't quite there yet.
And frankly, and I say this as Democrat, Huckabee's decision wasn't wrong. 100+ years for the crimes was crazy. Even letting him out via parole wasn't unreasonable.
He then apparently went crazy. Actual mental illness, which he didn't have any sign of when they were letting him out.
The point he should been locked up is when he ended up in police custody again a while back. It would have been nice if someone had noticed he was batshit insane at that time, held a competency hearing, and locked him up on that while he was helped.
But we stopped caring about the mentally ill in this society a while back.
Just asserting that something is violating principles does not, in fact, make you correct. You are begging the question.
It is perfectly principled to argue a specific law is so easy to violate accidentally it is unjust, and at the same time not argue that people who are unjustly effected by this law should have no punishment. To get rid of unjust laws, it is a perfectly valid principle that they should be enforced as even evenhandedly as possible.
But that is not the only principled position you can take. 'Principled' does not only mean 'The law should be applied equally'. It just means a consistent set of beliefs that apply in all directions.
For example, the punishment in this law is not proportional to how much people can handle it. Microsoft, as you said, is not going to get killed by this patent lawsuit, it will recover. Whereas other companies have, indeed, been killed.
It is perfectly reasonable and principled to hope that undue harm happen to people who can survive it best. If a heavy beam is going to fall through the ceiling, it is, indeed, best if it hits that strong looking teenager rather than that grandmother who's going to have all her bones broken. It is obviously best if it hits no one, but patent trolls are going to keep hitting people in the face, and it's best if they hit the big guy with the big guns.
Likewise, you're neglecting the fact that only a few people are actually powerful enough to change the laws, and hence only harm that comes to them will have the slightest bit of effect on the law. It is entirely principled to hope the harm clusters around them, because that results in the harm going away faster and hurting less people. For example, I wish more of the people on the no-fly list were Congresspeople...at some point, we might start having some transparency there.
If patent trolls keep hitting MS, at some point MS is just going to walk into Congress and say 'Change the law'.
And, thirdly, if patent law is going to flail around and randomly harm people, it is more 'just' that harms people who support it.
That is also a principled position, namely, people who cause other people to suffer should be punished, even if they did it within the framework of law. 'Everyone should get what they deserve' is not, in and of itself, unprincipled, although it is very easy for people to ignore what they deserved and hence become unprincipled in the application of it.
So there are plenty of entirely non-hypocritical reason to support MS losing a patent lawsuit, and some random other company willing the same lawsuit. MS is big enough to take it, MS is powerful enough to make their behavior impossible, and MS should be harmed because it has caused harm to others with patent law. As long as those are consistently applied, the argument is principled.
No.
It's not a matter of principles. MS should be treated fairly under the law they themselves lobby for.
And, eventually, they will lose horribly on some idiotic bogus patent (As the law itself is setup to do.), and reconsider their stance of software patents.
It is not hypocritical to want everyone to get a pass under an unjust law....except the people who are pushing for said law. Who then presumably realize how dumb the law.
Yes, but that doesn't mean MS shouldn't still lose.
Not because they're 'evil', or you 'hate' them, but because MS losing a few important and destructive patent battles might actually make it realize how dangerous software patents are, and lobby congress to have them removed.
Someone need to teach Microsoft that MAD only works against companies with actual products. It doesn't work against companies that exist solely to sue others for patent infringement.
MS isn't the bad guy. MS really only uses patents defensively, like IBM.(1)
However, I wish they realize that doesn't work because patent trolls can show up who don't make a product. It doesn't matter how many patents they have then.
The best way for them to realize this is by losing a few idiotic software patent cases.
If the actual leaders of the US software industry would show up in Congress and say 'Get rid of software patents', we'd get rid of them tomorrow.
1) People, of course, are still worried about them, as MS has demonstrated in the past that it is willing to use rather unscrupulous means to remove competitors. Just because it hasn't use any patents this way doesn't mean it never will.
It's one thing to say if you break a forums rules by posting offtopic stuff you'll get disconnected. I don't agree with that, but ISPs have long been doing stuff like that.
You start acting in violation of the terms of a site, and that site complains to the ISP, they have two choices: Disconnect you, or hope that site doesn't entirely block them. So they reserve the right to disconnect you, although they usually only do it for big stuff. (I.e., if a user keeps committing click fraud at Google, and they really don't want Google to just block all their IPs)
However, this just asserts they can disconnect you from offtopic stuff even when that's not a violation of anyone's terms of service.
For example, I just went and read slashdot's terms of service, and I see absolutely nothing in there about offtopic posting. There is not the slightest rule on this site that posts be even vaguely relevant to the article at hand, or that replies to posts be even vaguely relevant to what they responded to.
Which means Verizon is taking a step well past the 'self-protection' we let them get away with, and asserting it is in charge of when it can disconnect people, even if the site they're on has no problem with their behavior.
You are 100 correct.
Antispam laws were useful in exactly one way: They require 'legit' spam to be identifiable. That in and of itself was completely pointless in solving the problem.
What it did accomplish, though, was to make it where we could find 'legit' companies, and either get their ISP to cut them off, or get their ISP's ISP to cut their ISP off, etc.
So, ironically, laws that were asserted would make some forms of spamming legal have entirely resulted in 'legit' spam going away.
A lot of people still think it's 1998 and spamming is still some quasilegal thing going on, which results in completely moronic discussions here about free speech and CAN-SPAM.
Those people need to be hit with a cluebat. So here it is:
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE COMMENTING ON SPAMMING OR YOU ARE WRONG:
Almost no spam, whatsoever, is legal. And it has nothing to do with spamming laws.
It is because almost every single spam, 99% of the stuff actually defined as unsolicited bulk email (And not things people signed up for and and forget, or newsletters people didn't opt out of when giving their email.) is 100%, absolutely, unquestionable illegal, sent via an illegally hijacked computer, thus committing a felony.
PERIOD.
This isn't subject to debate, this isn't some esoteric debate about UCE vs. UBE, or free speech, or opt-out vs. opt-in vs. confirmed out-in. Almost every single message, 99.99999% of the spam out there, as part of the sending process, including committing a felony that has nothing to do with 'spamming'. A felony, I might add, that is almost certainly a felony in any random jurisdiction anywhere in the world.
Almost all crimes are economic problems, you loon.
That would just makes it conspiracy to commit unauthorized computer access.
But not 'creating' the botnet doesn't help. If he used the network to send out spam, or for any reason, that was unauthorized access.
If you watch someone break into a computer (and know they broke in) and they step away from the keyboard and let you use it, tada, you just also committed unauthorized computer access.
In the older days, oddly enough, there was actually a legal defense here. Worms would leap from computer to computer, installing port forwarding software that other people could use 'without realizing' such proxies were installed without permission.
But as this became a big business, it stopped working that way, and it turned into botnets that connect back to some central hub, or some decentralized control structure, but the point is, the only people who could get in were the creators of the botnet and people who those creators granted access.
Ergo, everyone who uses a botnet is using it knowing fully what's going on, as opposed to the legal loophole 'I thought J. Random User's computer was just running a public access proxy'.
Granted, in theory the spammer could have 'leased access' to a botnet he thought was legal, but a) such legal botnets for sending mail do not actually exist, so it's hard to assert he thought he was purchasing a product that isn't real, and b) that's what search warrants are for...I'm sure at some point the prosecution will be able to prove he knew what was going on.
And then, even if he didn't send any commands directly to botnet, if he paid someone to send commands to a botnet that he knew was illegal, it was conspiracy to commit such access. You can't pay people to commit felonies for you and walk away free!