I think the old precedents apply just fine in this case. Kids are stupid sometimes and do stupid things. It's a combination of lack of good parenting, natural curiosity, lack of real-world experience and rebelliousness. They don't need to spend 4-10 years of their lives in prison for it. I did stupid things as a kid. I got punished for it and after a couple times I learned my lesson. I don't see why they should be punished so severely for such a minor thing just because the government is afraid because its systems aren't secure. Maybe if the government would actually do something useful for once instead of just declaring a "war" on any activities they don't like, we might have a better society.
Sorry. I disagree. I have no sympathy because this guy is a teenager.
Nobody was asking for sympathy. Just for fair treatment. Screwing up someone's webpage is far less damaging than raping, murdering, molesting, etc. Yet, for some reason, crackers get harsher treatment. It has nothing to do with age. It has everything to do with having the punishment fit the crime. As someone else pointed out, he didn't do anything to harm national security, but he'll probably receive a lot more punishment than those who allowed nuclear secrets to be released to China. It's a sick society we live in.
Doesn't matter if you are dumb or smart, just don't break the law!
Tell that to the people who kept Mitnick in jail for so damn long without even a trial. In that case, both sides were acting criminally. I would consider Mitnick's offense to be the lesser one though.
Just like if you spray paint something on a building, that's vandalism, but if someone spraypainted something on the Vietnam Memorial, they'ed be lynched either in or out of jail...
I wouldn't compare spraypainting the Vietnam Memorial to defacing some Army webpage. More like tagging the side of the post office or army recruiting station or something.
In the future, wait until the guy's actually been SENTENCED before you go comparing his sentence to that of other types of criminals
Jeez... how long did it take them to sentence Mitnick? How long did he sit in jail before he even got to see a judge? The problem here is that they assume guilt and you can sit in jail for a long damn time before you even find out what evidence they have!
All t his cracking is really not much different than graffiti you see on buildings.
Yep. It's roughly the electronic equivalent of graffiti. The difference is that with all the paranoia in the government, they like to take the offender, lock them up for a year or 2 without a trial, blow the case all out of proportion so that the media can demonize the kid (maybe they can compare him to the Littleton killers or tell us all how this script kiddy is a serious threat to national security), confiscate anything remotely related to a computer and ban them from using computers for several years upon their release.
When was the last time anything remotely similar happened to somebody who tagged the side of a building or highway overpass?
I'm just saying that most people are NOT going to look upon books "published" on a site like this as valid or reliable information, and that there are some very good reasons for it.
People should look upon any information with some suspicion. If it's not well documented, why should it be taken seriously? I think people take what they see on tv and what they read in newspapers and magazines as fact. That's just plain wrong. They've been shown to make plenty of mistakes and even to have deliberately mislead people at times. We should always be skeptical of what we read or see until we can verify it.
That said, you're probably right that there will be a lot of unfounded garbage posted on the site. Anyone who reads the information should consider the source when they decide how much weight to give to the information, just as they should with any information they receive.
I think this is a good thing though. We need open outlets for speech and opinions. The traditional media is becoming more and more concentrated under the control of relatively few people. That's not a good thing. Perhaps things like Slashdot and this new eMatter service are steps in the right direction. Give people a voice without requiring them to pay through the nose for airtime or support the views of a network or newspaper.
There are plenty of fanatics out there. Many of them are willing to give their lives for their cause. Does the government really think they would hesitate to upload a strong encryption program to an ftp site so that it could be downloaded by someone in another country? Sure, they risk going to jail. Does that scare them? I doubt it.
The free software community should really devise its own font standard, and design a renderer with proper subpixel antialiasing and millipoint precision... Hmm, guess what we've done:-)
So Microsoft can whip out its ClearType patent, right? That's why patents are bad. We could implement it another way, but it would still violate the overly broad patent (which should never have been granted in the first place because there is plenty of prior art in the case of ClearType). This crap will never end.
And then there are those who find lots of room for complaint, but yet do nothing (including the simple act of voting) to change things.
Why does everyone say this? Voting doesn't change a damn thing. You've got an election system that heavily favors the two major parties, two major parties that are mostly indistinguishable on the important issues, a presidential election in which the people's vote doesn't really matter, and a campaign finance system that practically encourages corruption.
The fact is, if you can't get a large chunk of the country to hear you, you don't have a prayer of making a difference. If you can't get yourself on tv where people will notice you, you can't be heard. The current system makes it real tough to be heard unless you have a big pile of cash. I guess my real question is: Who are we gonna vote for that will make a difference? We end up throwing away our vote because the election system sucks.
"They're not Aryan, they try to take over the world and subjugate Aryans, they are filthy and spread disease" These are all either false -- and we take it that these questions are answerable in principle -- or irrelevant (what the hell does being Aryan have to do with superiority?)
Ok, but just because most of the reasons that were spread among the masses were easily proven to be false doesn't prove that the Holocaust was objectively wrong. It just shows that people can be duped into doing anything. In other words, it doesn't prove that the act of exterminating the Jews was in and of itself wrong, just that people went along with it for stupid reasons. I don't know that it's even possible to prove any act to be right or wrong.
The Holocaust was wrong whether or not we won. Slavery was wrong whether or not we won. Just because people's beliefs would have been different had things turned out differently doesn't show that the things those beliefs were about would have been different.
How do you prove that the Holocaust or slavery were actually wrong, rather than just being perceived as wrong?
Which is probably why our "authority figures" get away with so much. People like you and the previous poster hold them above suspicion. If we believe they are behaving in a criminal manner, people like you tell us that we are paranoid and should get a life. I wonder who the real delusional person is...
How can you tax people based on the reasoning that they're going to do something illegal? It's either illegal and they should be punished for it, or it's legal and you tax it. It shouldn't be both.
As for your arguement, well let me see.... vmlinux 1.0 had some bugs - it worked just enough to get some people to "invest" their time and expertise to make it all the way to vmlinux 2.10, which argueable works much better than it's predessesors but could still use some work....
The difference is that Linux was never marketed as a fully functional product. You didn't have to pay to find this out either. The fact that you could improve Linux by devoting some time and effort to it is not a drawback. With Microsoft's products, you buy it and are stuck with it whether it works or not. They've already got your money.
Companies will always make crappy stuff. They'll always put profit first. With Linux, we don't have to worry about that right now because we have many choices when it comes to picking a distro. We can even make our own.
The real problem is when big business uses its muscle to influence the law. When they start filing lawsuits and lobbying for new laws that will give them an edge in their industry, that's when we really have problems. That's what I'm really worried about.
The part that is not obvious is why people have to bitch about something they don't even want to use. As the previous poster said, you don't have to use it, so why are you bitching about it?
Re:before we put the cart before the horse . . .
on
The Future of GNOME
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· Score: 1
I think the poster was being sarcastic. You took it a bit too literally... except for the part about the root menus.. I think he was serious about that.
As it exists now, there is no authentication. Therefore, impersonation is trivial.
Yeah... I get a message or two every week that appear to be coming from someone on one of my lists that tell me to forward it to everyone else on my lists or my ICQ account will be deleted. Now I know that nobody on my list (only 4 people) sent me that message, so it's obviously faked.
Blindly supporting Microsoft in its attempt to co-opt AOL's user base is extremely shortsighted and does nothing to further the goals of the open source community.
We might win a small moral victory by showing that we can put aside prejudices and support our greatest foe, but we will lose the war when Microsoft has completed its decimation of AOL. Then they will go back to doing things their way and nobody will be left to stop them.
Look at Netscape. When they started adding stuff to HTML, Microsoft yelled and screamed that Netscape was bad for not following the standard. Now that MS is on top, they do whatever the hell they want with the standard because nobody can stop them. Let's not repeat history again for the sake of a minor boost to our image. Let's instead show that we are able to think rather than blindly follow our basic principles even when we see that they will lead us off a cliff. Following principles even when they lead to certain death just makes martyrs. That may inspire others, or it may not. I'm not sure martyrs will be enough to fight off Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd answer this, but it was already answered here.
I think the old precedents apply just fine in this case. Kids are stupid sometimes and do stupid things. It's a combination of lack of good parenting, natural curiosity, lack of real-world experience and rebelliousness. They don't need to spend 4-10 years of their lives in prison for it. I did stupid things as a kid. I got punished for it and after a couple times I learned my lesson. I don't see why they should be punished so severely for such a minor thing just because the government is afraid because its systems aren't secure. Maybe if the government would actually do something useful for once instead of just declaring a "war" on any activities they don't like, we might have a better society.
Sorry. I disagree. I have no sympathy because this guy is a teenager.
Nobody was asking for sympathy. Just for fair treatment. Screwing up someone's webpage is far less damaging than raping, murdering, molesting, etc. Yet, for some reason, crackers get harsher treatment. It has nothing to do with age. It has everything to do with having the punishment fit the crime. As someone else pointed out, he didn't do anything to harm national security, but he'll probably receive a lot more punishment than those who allowed nuclear secrets to be released to China. It's a sick society we live in.
Doesn't matter if you are dumb or smart, just don't break the law!
Tell that to the people who kept Mitnick in jail for so damn long without even a trial. In that case, both sides were acting criminally. I would consider Mitnick's offense to be the lesser one though.
Just like if you spray paint something on a building, that's vandalism, but if someone spraypainted something on the Vietnam Memorial, they'ed be lynched either in or out of jail...
I wouldn't compare spraypainting the Vietnam Memorial to defacing some Army webpage. More like tagging the side of the post office or army recruiting station or something.
In the future, wait until the guy's actually been SENTENCED before you go comparing his sentence to that of other types of criminals
Jeez... how long did it take them to sentence Mitnick? How long did he sit in jail before he even got to see a judge? The problem here is that they assume guilt and you can sit in jail for a long damn time before you even find out what evidence they have!
All t his cracking is really not much different than graffiti you see on buildings.
Yep. It's roughly the electronic equivalent of graffiti. The difference is that with all the paranoia in the government, they like to take the offender, lock them up for a year or 2 without a trial, blow the case all out of proportion so that the media can demonize the kid (maybe they can compare him to the Littleton killers or tell us all how this script kiddy is a serious threat to national security), confiscate anything remotely related to a computer and ban them from using computers for several years upon their release.
When was the last time anything remotely similar happened to somebody who tagged the side of a building or highway overpass?
I'm just saying that most people are NOT going to look upon books "published" on a site like this as valid or reliable information, and that there are some very good reasons for it.
People should look upon any information with some suspicion. If it's not well documented, why should it be taken seriously? I think people take what they see on tv and what they read in newspapers and magazines as fact. That's just plain wrong. They've been shown to make plenty of mistakes and even to have deliberately mislead people at times. We should always be skeptical of what we read or see until we can verify it.
That said, you're probably right that there will be a lot of unfounded garbage posted on the site. Anyone who reads the information should consider the source when they decide how much weight to give to the information, just as they should with any information they receive.
I think this is a good thing though. We need open outlets for speech and opinions. The traditional media is becoming more and more concentrated under the control of relatively few people. That's not a good thing. Perhaps things like Slashdot and this new eMatter service are steps in the right direction. Give people a voice without requiring them to pay through the nose for airtime or support the views of a network or newspaper.
There are plenty of fanatics out there. Many of them are willing to give their lives for their cause. Does the government really think they would hesitate to upload a strong encryption program to an ftp site so that it could be downloaded by someone in another country? Sure, they risk going to jail. Does that scare them? I doubt it.
The free software community should really devise its own font standard, and design a renderer with proper subpixel antialiasing and millipoint precision... Hmm, guess what we've done :-)
So Microsoft can whip out its ClearType patent, right? That's why patents are bad. We could implement it another way, but it would still violate the overly broad patent (which should never have been granted in the first place because there is plenty of prior art in the case of ClearType). This crap will never end.
And then there are those who find lots of room for complaint, but yet do nothing (including the simple act of voting) to change things.
Why does everyone say this? Voting doesn't change a damn thing. You've got an election system that heavily favors the two major parties, two major parties that are mostly indistinguishable on the important issues, a presidential election in which the people's vote doesn't really matter, and a campaign finance system that practically encourages corruption.
The fact is, if you can't get a large chunk of the country to hear you, you don't have a prayer of making a difference. If you can't get yourself on tv where people will notice you, you can't be heard. The current system makes it real tough to be heard unless you have a big pile of cash. I guess my real question is: Who are we gonna vote for that will make a difference? We end up throwing away our vote because the election system sucks.
"They're not Aryan, they try to take over the world and subjugate Aryans, they are filthy and spread disease" These are all either false -- and we take it that these questions are answerable in principle -- or irrelevant (what the hell does being Aryan have to do with superiority?)
Ok, but just because most of the reasons that were spread among the masses were easily proven to be false doesn't prove that the Holocaust was objectively wrong. It just shows that people can be duped into doing anything. In other words, it doesn't prove that the act of exterminating the Jews was in and of itself wrong, just that people went along with it for stupid reasons. I don't know that it's even possible to prove any act to be right or wrong.
The Holocaust was wrong whether or not we won. Slavery was wrong whether or not we won. Just because people's beliefs would have been different had things turned out differently doesn't show that the things those beliefs were about would have been different.
How do you prove that the Holocaust or slavery were actually wrong, rather than just being perceived as wrong?
Which is probably why our "authority figures" get away with so much. People like you and the previous poster hold them above suspicion. If we believe they are behaving in a criminal manner, people like you tell us that we are paranoid and should get a life. I wonder who the real delusional person is...
How can you tax people based on the reasoning that they're going to do something illegal? It's either illegal and they should be punished for it, or it's legal and you tax it. It shouldn't be both.
As for your arguement, well let me see.... vmlinux 1.0 had some bugs - it worked just enough to get some people to "invest" their time and expertise to make it all the way to vmlinux 2.10, which argueable works much better than it's predessesors but could still use some work....
The difference is that Linux was never marketed as a fully functional product. You didn't have to pay to find this out either. The fact that you could improve Linux by devoting some time and effort to it is not a drawback. With Microsoft's products, you buy it and are stuck with it whether it works or not. They've already got your money.
There's also the various add-ons that make changes to the OS. IE is a prime example. VB makes some changes as well. I'm sure there are others.
Nebulous, intrusive document? You mean like... oh, say... a EULA?? Those have been upheld. I don't see why the GPL wouldn't be.
Companies will always make crappy stuff. They'll always put profit first. With Linux, we don't have to worry about that right now because we have many choices when it comes to picking a distro. We can even make our own.
The real problem is when big business uses its muscle to influence the law. When they start filing lawsuits and lobbying for new laws that will give them an edge in their industry, that's when we really have problems. That's what I'm really worried about.
So Apple should have the exclusive right to make translucent computers with integrated monitors? That's ridiculous. So is the lawsuit.
The part that is not obvious is why people have to bitch about something they don't even want to use. As the previous poster said, you don't have to use it, so why are you bitching about it?
I think the poster was being sarcastic. You took it a bit too literally... except for the part about the root menus.. I think he was serious about that.
As it exists now, there is no authentication. Therefore, impersonation is trivial.
Yeah... I get a message or two every week that appear to be coming from someone on one of my lists that tell me to forward it to everyone else on my lists or my ICQ account will be deleted. Now I know that nobody on my list (only 4 people) sent me that message, so it's obviously faked.
Blindly supporting Microsoft in its attempt to co-opt AOL's user base is extremely shortsighted and does nothing to further the goals of the open source community.
We might win a small moral victory by showing that we can put aside prejudices and support our greatest foe, but we will lose the war when Microsoft has completed its decimation of AOL. Then they will go back to doing things their way and nobody will be left to stop them.
Look at Netscape. When they started adding stuff to HTML, Microsoft yelled and screamed that Netscape was bad for not following the standard. Now that MS is on top, they do whatever the hell they want with the standard because nobody can stop them. Let's not repeat history again for the sake of a minor boost to our image. Let's instead show that we are able to think rather than blindly follow our basic principles even when we see that they will lead us off a cliff. Following principles even when they lead to certain death just makes martyrs. That may inspire others, or it may not. I'm not sure martyrs will be enough to fight off Microsoft.
If they pull out completely, then ICQ would go down with them too, right?