Define "pretty low pricing in comparison to comcast"..
By the time I'm done paying for my phone line I'll never use (I'm mobile only), AT&T gives me either REALLY slow speeds compared to comcast for not that much cheaper, or just about the same price for faster, but still slower than comcast-speed DSL.
Oh, that and everything I do that goes through AT&T is shipped to the NSA. Maybe it is with Comcast too.. but at least we don't know for sure... yet... like we do for AT&T.
What I find most interesting about this is that it lends much more faith to the argument that viruses, trojans and security exploits show up not because a device or operating system is necessarily less secure, but because there's a big enough target audience to make it "worth doing."
Mac zealots have long argued that windows sees way more viruses / malware and therefore macs are more superior.
The truth is that all devices and operating systems are hackable - it's motivation to do so that's required, and a large userbase is a huge part of that motivation.
Maybe it's just me, but my spam volume seems to have jumped at least 200% in recent months.
Are we finally going to reach a point where only trusted addresses can email us? Seems the arms race is being severely lost. I've got a pretty good spamassassin config and I can't keep up anymore, I find myself having to manually delete literally hundreds of messages a day now.
Oh, im sorry I zaped you 3 times already and you still won't move. I guess I should just let you go so you get your way. Have a nice day.
I can't believe how stupid some of you are. Seriously.
1) If 3 officers are incapable of restraining someone who is resisting verbally but isn't even resisting physically, they shouldn't have a job.
2) If 3 officers are unable to carry a guy out of there, they shouldn't have a job.
3) Tasers and other "nonlethal" weapons are meant for self defense against a threat of violence, not for passive (albeit annoying) resistors.
4) Hey, you dumb fucks wondering why he still wouldn't move after the 3rd time -- many people's muscles are immobilized to the point of being unable to walk for about 10 minutes after the first time.
Agreed. charge less, or give me a really cool product.
Tool's latest release, for example, did both. It was priced at $9.99 despite clocking in at a good 70 or so minutes, and it had some really phenomenal 3d artwork that you view through stereoscopic lenses. These are the kinds of cool things that keep music fans (who are inherently collectors at least to some degree) coming back to the store instead of to bittorrent or whatever the latest p2p filesharing tool will be.
It's going to be either that or a "fan club" type system where you pay a band X dollars per year to get all of their music and admission to one or more concerts. I don't see any other way for the industry to thrive as it once did. Well, yes I do, they could spend way less money on the overpaid producers and promoters, cut CD costs down to $6 or $7 and still make a healthy profit, but that'd put a lot of famous people out of work so it'll never happen.
It is not random. It is determined by a number of factors, a huge one of which is flying standby and/or one way.
Other factors include travel / purchasing habits etc...
At at least 2 airlines I've flown, you will see them write one "S" on your ticket for each flag you set off, which increases your likelihood of being "randomly" selected. The whole random thing is a complete misnomer. You're being profiled - not necessarily racially, but you're definitely being profiled.
What do they do for an encore? Anally rape my mother while pouring sugar in my gas tank?
One would think that after all of the PR debacles they have (suing a 12 year old, for instance), that nobody would dare do something like this. Clearly, though, that's not the case. Complete insanity.
Hey, maybe they're trying to deter suicides from people who will go broke from their lawsuits by imposing further guilt!
All of your refutations amount to "not my problem".. but they don't address the fundamental issue of human consent vs. hardware consent. They're two different things. I don't care if it's your problem or not - I care if it's ethically right to steal internet from unsuspecting people who didn't intend to leave it open.
I know people hate the analogies, but seriously: If I leave my water hose running on accident, and it's sitting on the sidewalk, you can argue all day that "hey, the water's running anyway, and it's being wasted even though he's paying for it, so I should be able to water my lawn with the hose". From an economic standpoint you'll be right. From a moral standpoint, though, you're still taking something that's not yours. The moral thing to do would be to find the owner and let him know he left it running.
Next time you get pulled over, tell the nice policeman that you didn't *know* you were speeding, and see how far that gets you.
Ignorance is not an excuse, in anything.
But leaving your wireless open isn't the thing that's a crime (be it legal or just ethical) - it's taking someone else's resources without asking. The ignorant one in this case is the victim, not the offender.
That implication may or may not be valid in a stricly legal sense due to the way the law was written.
However, from an ethical sense, it still cannot be argued that using the internet connection of some guy who bought a router at best buy and has no idea about security is "ethical" to do. Most people don't know jack about security, and if the router works right out of the box, why are they going to bother poking around the settings? They're not.
You can say that it's sad and wrong and stupid for people to do that, but their ignorance does not give you license to steal their internet connection.
I'm amazed at the amount of people insisting that an open wireless router is an implicit invitation to join, and the number of people saying "if you are doing no harm, what's the problem?"
I love the idealistic vision of information being free, of internet access being free, etc - but the "hacker ethic" is no excuse for stealing.
Problem 1: Your average person is not very tech savvy, so your average internet router comes unsecured so that it works straight out of the box for your average version. This means that the vast majority of wireless routers are open unintentionally by people who don't read instructions or know anything about security. And why read the instructions if they don't have to? If it works right out of the box, why spend time reading the damn booklet? This means that the majority of unsecured wireless connections are likely that way because people don't know any better, not because they're Just Like You(tm) and want to share.
Problem 2: Even if these people left them open for convenience, sharing, etc - their terms of service with their ISP almost always have a clause saying that service is to be used only be residents of the billing address. By using their connection, whether they want you to or not, you are aiding them in breaking their TOS.
Problem 3: No, seriously, get it through your thick skull - that network isn't open because the guy who owns it reads slashdot and agrees with you. It's open because the guy doesn't know any better. However, his "stupidity" (reality: lack of interest in technology to the degree of yours) does not give you the "right" to steal.
Problem 4: You can say "if it doesn't hurt his bandwidth usage, it's fine", but that becomes a slippery slope. How many people get to borrow Unsuspecting Bob's internet connection then?
Problem 5: If you were to win the argument that people should be free to share their connections with the world, you would kill ISPs as a business. It's tantamount to arguing that it should be perfectly legal for one guy at the top of an apartment building to pay for cable internet, and for every resident of that building to mod a Linksys router and get the whole building on a WDS mesh through one connection. I'm no fan of the cable company, believe me, but doing this is still not fair to business.
Let me see if I understand this. The law should assume than anyone who sets up a WiFi router is technologically ignorant, and has no idea how to secure the connection, or even know that the connection should be secured. But the law should assume that anyone who connects to that network is technologically knowledgable, is aware of the other persons ignorance, and is wilfully taking advantage of their ignorance to steal service from them. Is that what you're saying? Because we are talking about the law here. We're not talking about ethics or morality or what would Jesus do. We're talking about people being arrested for accessing an open network. Or are you arguing that the law should only criminalize technologically ignorant people who aren't aware that they shouldn't be accessing the network? When the cop is called out, he has to give you a TCP/IP quiz to determine if you're technically knowledgable or not so that he knows whether your actions are criminal?
Again you're missing the point. The law doesn't need to take ignorance into account - YOU DO.
Let's put this another way:
If Bob has a router, and is technologically ignorant, it is configured to be open to the public. Let's assume Bob, if he knew you were doing it, would be upset that you're leeching his bandwidth. If you use Bob's connection, you're not only doing something unethical, but you're using a service that he pays for and you do not. This is theft of service no matter how you want to slice it.
Your argument hinges upon the thought that "if Bob left it open intentionally, I'm not breaking the law because I have consent". Your argument also requires that "it is a safe assumption that open networks were left that way intentionally."
The point about routers being open by default is not about what the law should cover - it's about how tremendously flawed your assumption is. An open router does not imply consent! Without consent, you are doing something unethical and probably illegal, and this is why "default configuration" and "average technical person's ignorance" destroys your argument -- because an open network does not imply consent 100% of the time. Any number less than 100% means there is a chance you are accessing a service without consent when using some open network chosen at random. While I would argue that a sizeable percentage of open routers are that way out of ignorance, it doesn't even MATTER. If that number is greater than zero, you are doing something unethical by assuming all open connections are an open invitation for you to leech.
You're completely wrong, B'Trey, and I fully understand all sorts of "basic principles", such as the one where "what I pay for is mine", and the one where "assuming makes an ass out of 'u and me'".
You say right in your post that it's "reasonable to assume it's fair for open use." First and foremost, you're admitting you're making an ASSUMPTION, and you're not 100% sure it's meant for open use. If you're even 1% uncertain as to whether or not it's intended for open use, you're making an unethical decision to use it!
Furthermore, assuming an open connection is meant to be so intentionally is completely ignorant. Nearly 100% of WiFi routers sold to end users are configured to work "out of the box", and their default is to have no password. Being the technically minded person you are, if you've had any experience whatsoever in the real world with the average person, you'd know that the average person is completely ignorant to how technology works. A safer assumption is that your average idiot has no idea he/she is sitting there with an open network.
With respect to the coffeehouse in TFA, however, they actually asked the person to stop using it. Still, even in a random residential environment your assertion that it's safe to assume "open = intentional" is not only inaccurate, but doesn't make any sort of case whatsoever for it being ethically OK to use the connection.
You need to RTFA: He was asked by the coffeeshop to stop using their WiFi, and to make matters worse for him, was parked in their parking lot, which is not public property.
Even if your argument that "hey, it's open, that's an invitation for me to use it" was valid, which I don't believe it is -- it doesn't matter. Once you're asked not to use it, the invitation you speak of has been revoked.
I don't need to make it impossible for you to tresspass for tresspassing to be illegal, all I need to do is ask you to stop. I don't see why it would be any different for using my supposedly "open to the public" resources.
And no, posting a TOS inside your business isn't the same thing. I can easily access the signal without ever seeing that TOS. Suppose I hang a picture up that's visible through my plate glass window, and beside it post a sign that says that I own this picture and if you look at it, you agree to pay me the sum of $100. If you walk by and look at my picture through the window, are you bound by those TOS? And if you're going to claim that that's different, you need to specify exactly why I should be bound by a TOS posted inside your business that I've never seen when I access a public, unencrypted signal.
Ok, here's why it's different:
1) You have a choice as to whether or not to use a wireless connection. This isn't just about RECEIVING a signal - it's about configuring your computer to receive it, and transmitting signals back as well. This is nothing at all like walking by and "seeing" a picture.
2) Being a technically minded person, it can easily be argued in a court of law that you were aware this "magical free wireless" connection was owned by someone, and was probably owned by the coffeeshop. If someone leaves their bike out on the public sidewalk unattended, are you free to take it for a spin? No. Illegal. Not yours despite someone being ignorant enough to leave it unlocked. The fact it's on public property is meaningless.
3) Not only do you know the signal comes from some owner, but there's not just the TOS of the "wireless connection" (which may be posted inside, or may be nonexistent) -- there is the TOS of the ISP serving bandwidth to the coffeeshop.
I'm growing really tired of the way people are trying to justify what they know is stealing by arguing that because a wireless signal is "intangible" or "encroaches public property", it's somehow public domain. It's not. Someone owns the device that's transmitting it, and someone pays for the connection to the internet that it's using.
Some plugins have been worth the hassle. Love it or hate it, Flash, when not abused, is a spectacular addition to enhance the web. It now comes standard or damn close to it in every browser.
With all the buzz about "web 2.0" (again, love it or hate it) - this would be the perfect application to make a plugin.
Granted, it just so happens that such a plugin would vastly improve a project I'm working on because it would take load off of my server - but I know that many others are working on projects that would benefit from this as well.
The next step in the internet is aggregating and compartmentalizing information -- making it easier to consolidate a nice little pile of only the things you want. The problem is, the web is a mostly one-way architecture and certainly doesn't work in any sort of a p2p fashion. A plugin like this would make a whole slew of things feasible on the web that, to date, are either incredibly system intensive for the poor server on the other end, or are wholly impossible.
I don't disagree with you about plugin bloat, but done right, this could be an amazing thing.
Now how do we get a plugin for something like this mass installed into browsers like that of flash, so that a web app like google reader (but independently developed, maybe specialized to other things) can take advantage of this idea?
That would make for a real nice way of creating awesome web based feed aggregation tools...
Given that almost every mobile phone company has either in their TOS, or in disclaimers, that they cannot guarantee the arrival of text messages, I don't see how this could work reliably. Arguments could constantly be made that "the message never came", etc.
Also, there are still a lot of people without cell phones, or with older ones that won't display high-res enough graphics for the bar codes to be scanned.
So, it's just a clone of MSN written by someone else, still for windows?
Why is this a big deal?
If it offered multiple clients like Trillian does, or had some snazzy features that MSN didn't already have, I could see it being big news...
Strange indeed, seeing as MSN is probably the least popular messenger between AIM/Yahoo/MSN... I just don't understand the motivation behind writing a clone. Anyone see something I'm missing?
I thought they had given a bunch of supposed code a long time ago that was supposedly "lifted" from them, and it was pretty much proven on all counts that prior art existed, etc etc...
Yes - they have just launched the infrastructure. It's called "Power Vision", which is their cheesy name for EVDO. It's a much faster network infrastructure than their really crappy slow data service they currently offer. It was launched today in concert with this music stuff.
For all the naysayers about the price: I agree with you, $2.50 is insane. However, people are paying that much for ringtones, etc now. The public is not as tech-savvy as you are, and the sheer convenience of downloading music via wireless phone and being able to listen to it in seconds is huge. Is it worth $1.50 more than an iTunes song? No - not to me. However, people can and will pay it - they're already paying that much for ringtones and other garbage. Just look at the success of Jamster.
Unfortunately, a mass of people are going to vote "yes" with their wallets for this, keeping the price high, and a potentially really cool service/application unusable for those of us who can't justify paying that premium.
I figured being on slashdot that clicking the comments would reveal stuff just like this snarky ass response. After all, it's mostly read by computer science and engineering type people. They went through the schooling, so obviously they're badasses, and the guy who wrote the article is just "weak" or unintelligent.
I've got news for you, folks:
I went to one of the "top" Computer Science schools in the country and the TA's and Professors there, with a few exceptions, were atrociously bad. I had Profs who couldn't speak english, TA's who couldn't speak english and had no experience whatsoever in teaching, and I had to compete with a bunch of stinky, non showering people who would have learned all this stuff on their own regardless of the piece of paper they're earning at Smartypants U.
Guess what?
If you want to cultivate a culture of science - you're not going to do it by crushing morale and making people hate it. You can sit here and say "good, I'm glad your dumb ass got weeded out!" all you want - but that makes you nothing but an arrogant ass who doesn't have any concept of where this country is going.
We're in line for a mass retirement of engineers that we have NO way to make up for - and you're cheering on your elitist selves because someone who showers regularly and wants to have a social life in addition to his education got "weeded out".
Believe me - the material itself is hard enough to weed out people who are not worthy of the professions they're studying for. Discrete math is tough stuff even with a good teacher, and forget about classes like combinatorial math - no slacker is going to get through that class alive.
You shouldn't be cheering that someone got discouraged by crappy teachers and demoralizing grading scales. In my high school, if the entire class did so badly on a test that a 50% would be curved to an "A", it was deemed that the teacher either A) wasn't doing his/her job to teach the material, or B) wrote the test poorly, because it's supposed to measure a grasp of the material to a certain point.
Something truly needs to be done about our colleges. They suck supremely.
The biggest culprit at MY school was that many Profs wanted to do research and had no interest in teaching - but they had to teach in order to be there. It showed very strongly in their classes. We either need to create separate research and teaching jobs, or be more selective about who we let do research (i.e. make sure they can teach well).
In any case - the bottom line is that there's major problems with our engineering curriculae these days. Just because you got your degree and he decided to change majors doesn't make him stupid, or you superior. What it DOES do, however, is strike a blow to our population of potential engineers - which is in DIRE need of growth.
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Define "pretty low pricing in comparison to comcast"..
By the time I'm done paying for my phone line I'll never use (I'm mobile only), AT&T gives me either REALLY slow speeds compared to comcast for not that much cheaper, or just about the same price for faster, but still slower than comcast-speed DSL.
Oh, that and everything I do that goes through AT&T is shipped to the NSA. Maybe it is with Comcast too.. but at least we don't know for sure... yet... like we do for AT&T.
What I find most interesting about this is that it lends much more faith to the argument that viruses, trojans and security exploits show up not because a device or operating system is necessarily less secure, but because there's a big enough target audience to make it "worth doing."
Mac zealots have long argued that windows sees way more viruses / malware and therefore macs are more superior.
The truth is that all devices and operating systems are hackable - it's motivation to do so that's required, and a large userbase is a huge part of that motivation.
I appreciate the suggestion, but I host my own email, and I don't have the time/resources of someone like Google, unfortunately.
Maybe it's just me, but my spam volume seems to have jumped at least 200% in recent months.
Are we finally going to reach a point where only trusted addresses can email us? Seems the arms race is being severely lost. I've got a pretty good spamassassin config and I can't keep up anymore, I find myself having to manually delete literally hundreds of messages a day now.
Oh, im sorry I zaped you 3 times already and you still won't move. I guess I should just let you go so you get your way. Have a nice day.
I can't believe how stupid some of you are. Seriously.
1) If 3 officers are incapable of restraining someone who is resisting verbally but isn't even resisting physically, they shouldn't have a job.
2) If 3 officers are unable to carry a guy out of there, they shouldn't have a job.
3) Tasers and other "nonlethal" weapons are meant for self defense against a threat of violence, not for passive (albeit annoying) resistors.
4) Hey, you dumb fucks wondering why he still wouldn't move after the 3rd time -- many people's muscles are immobilized to the point of being unable to walk for about 10 minutes after the first time.
Agreed. charge less, or give me a really cool product.
Tool's latest release, for example, did both. It was priced at $9.99 despite clocking in at a good 70 or so minutes, and it had some really phenomenal 3d artwork that you view through stereoscopic lenses. These are the kinds of cool things that keep music fans (who are inherently collectors at least to some degree) coming back to the store instead of to bittorrent or whatever the latest p2p filesharing tool will be.
It's going to be either that or a "fan club" type system where you pay a band X dollars per year to get all of their music and admission to one or more concerts. I don't see any other way for the industry to thrive as it once did. Well, yes I do, they could spend way less money on the overpaid producers and promoters, cut CD costs down to $6 or $7 and still make a healthy profit, but that'd put a lot of famous people out of work so it'll never happen.
It is not random. It is determined by a number of factors, a huge one of which is flying standby and/or one way.
Other factors include travel / purchasing habits etc...
At at least 2 airlines I've flown, you will see them write one "S" on your ticket for each flag you set off, which increases your likelihood of being "randomly" selected. The whole random thing is a complete misnomer. You're being profiled - not necessarily racially, but you're definitely being profiled.
You don't.. you sell something other than the tracks.
You create a completely different model now that people expect the tracks in digital form for free (or will risk an RIAA lawsuit to get them).
you make your money on tours, tshirts, or making amazingly badass CD packaging (see: Tool - 10,000 Days) that makes it worth picking up a hard copy.
Or, you make your money by giving people valuable merchandise or preferred seating at concerts for joining your fan club.
You can't create demand for something that can be infinitely and freely copied.
What do they do for an encore? Anally rape my mother while pouring sugar in my gas tank?
One would think that after all of the PR debacles they have (suing a 12 year old, for instance), that nobody would dare do something like this. Clearly, though, that's not the case. Complete insanity.
Hey, maybe they're trying to deter suicides from people who will go broke from their lawsuits by imposing further guilt!
All of your refutations amount to "not my problem".. but they don't address the fundamental issue of human consent vs. hardware consent. They're two different things. I don't care if it's your problem or not - I care if it's ethically right to steal internet from unsuspecting people who didn't intend to leave it open.
I know people hate the analogies, but seriously: If I leave my water hose running on accident, and it's sitting on the sidewalk, you can argue all day that "hey, the water's running anyway, and it's being wasted even though he's paying for it, so I should be able to water my lawn with the hose". From an economic standpoint you'll be right. From a moral standpoint, though, you're still taking something that's not yours. The moral thing to do would be to find the owner and let him know he left it running.
Next time you get pulled over, tell the nice policeman that you didn't *know* you were speeding, and see how far that gets you.
Ignorance is not an excuse, in anything.
But leaving your wireless open isn't the thing that's a crime (be it legal or just ethical) - it's taking someone else's resources without asking. The ignorant one in this case is the victim, not the offender.
That implication may or may not be valid in a stricly legal sense due to the way the law was written.
However, from an ethical sense, it still cannot be argued that using the internet connection of some guy who bought a router at best buy and has no idea about security is "ethical" to do. Most people don't know jack about security, and if the router works right out of the box, why are they going to bother poking around the settings? They're not.
You can say that it's sad and wrong and stupid for people to do that, but their ignorance does not give you license to steal their internet connection.
His argument works fine, because you pay for your ADSL connection and you have HUMAN permission to connect.
Bits and bytes do not denote human intent, they only dictate technological switches on and off.
I'm amazed at the amount of people insisting that an open wireless router is an implicit invitation to join, and the number of people saying "if you are doing no harm, what's the problem?"
I love the idealistic vision of information being free, of internet access being free, etc - but the "hacker ethic" is no excuse for stealing.
Problem 1: Your average person is not very tech savvy, so your average internet router comes unsecured so that it works straight out of the box for your average version. This means that the vast majority of wireless routers are open unintentionally by people who don't read instructions or know anything about security. And why read the instructions if they don't have to? If it works right out of the box, why spend time reading the damn booklet? This means that the majority of unsecured wireless connections are likely that way because people don't know any better, not because they're Just Like You(tm) and want to share.
Problem 2: Even if these people left them open for convenience, sharing, etc - their terms of service with their ISP almost always have a clause saying that service is to be used only be residents of the billing address. By using their connection, whether they want you to or not, you are aiding them in breaking their TOS.
Problem 3: No, seriously, get it through your thick skull - that network isn't open because the guy who owns it reads slashdot and agrees with you. It's open because the guy doesn't know any better. However, his "stupidity" (reality: lack of interest in technology to the degree of yours) does not give you the "right" to steal.
Problem 4: You can say "if it doesn't hurt his bandwidth usage, it's fine", but that becomes a slippery slope. How many people get to borrow Unsuspecting Bob's internet connection then?
Problem 5: If you were to win the argument that people should be free to share their connections with the world, you would kill ISPs as a business. It's tantamount to arguing that it should be perfectly legal for one guy at the top of an apartment building to pay for cable internet, and for every resident of that building to mod a Linksys router and get the whole building on a WDS mesh through one connection. I'm no fan of the cable company, believe me, but doing this is still not fair to business.
Let me see if I understand this. The law should assume than anyone who sets up a WiFi router is technologically ignorant, and has no idea how to secure the connection, or even know that the connection should be secured. But the law should assume that anyone who connects to that network is technologically knowledgable, is aware of the other persons ignorance, and is wilfully taking advantage of their ignorance to steal service from them. Is that what you're saying? Because we are talking about the law here. We're not talking about ethics or morality or what would Jesus do. We're talking about people being arrested for accessing an open network. Or are you arguing that the law should only criminalize technologically ignorant people who aren't aware that they shouldn't be accessing the network? When the cop is called out, he has to give you a TCP/IP quiz to determine if you're technically knowledgable or not so that he knows whether your actions are criminal?
Again you're missing the point. The law doesn't need to take ignorance into account - YOU DO.
Let's put this another way:
If Bob has a router, and is technologically ignorant, it is configured to be open to the public. Let's assume Bob, if he knew you were doing it, would be upset that you're leeching his bandwidth. If you use Bob's connection, you're not only doing something unethical, but you're using a service that he pays for and you do not. This is theft of service no matter how you want to slice it.
Your argument hinges upon the thought that "if Bob left it open intentionally, I'm not breaking the law because I have consent". Your argument also requires that "it is a safe assumption that open networks were left that way intentionally."
The point about routers being open by default is not about what the law should cover - it's about how tremendously flawed your assumption is. An open router does not imply consent! Without consent, you are doing something unethical and probably illegal, and this is why "default configuration" and "average technical person's ignorance" destroys your argument -- because an open network does not imply consent 100% of the time. Any number less than 100% means there is a chance you are accessing a service without consent when using some open network chosen at random. While I would argue that a sizeable percentage of open routers are that way out of ignorance, it doesn't even MATTER. If that number is greater than zero, you are doing something unethical by assuming all open connections are an open invitation for you to leech.
You're completely wrong, B'Trey, and I fully understand all sorts of "basic principles", such as the one where "what I pay for is mine", and the one where "assuming makes an ass out of 'u and me'".
You say right in your post that it's "reasonable to assume it's fair for open use." First and foremost, you're admitting you're making an ASSUMPTION, and you're not 100% sure it's meant for open use. If you're even 1% uncertain as to whether or not it's intended for open use, you're making an unethical decision to use it!
Furthermore, assuming an open connection is meant to be so intentionally is completely ignorant. Nearly 100% of WiFi routers sold to end users are configured to work "out of the box", and their default is to have no password. Being the technically minded person you are, if you've had any experience whatsoever in the real world with the average person, you'd know that the average person is completely ignorant to how technology works. A safer assumption is that your average idiot has no idea he/she is sitting there with an open network.
With respect to the coffeehouse in TFA, however, they actually asked the person to stop using it. Still, even in a random residential environment your assertion that it's safe to assume "open = intentional" is not only inaccurate, but doesn't make any sort of case whatsoever for it being ethically OK to use the connection.
You need to RTFA: He was asked by the coffeeshop to stop using their WiFi, and to make matters worse for him, was parked in their parking lot, which is not public property.
Even if your argument that "hey, it's open, that's an invitation for me to use it" was valid, which I don't believe it is -- it doesn't matter. Once you're asked not to use it, the invitation you speak of has been revoked.
I don't need to make it impossible for you to tresspass for tresspassing to be illegal, all I need to do is ask you to stop. I don't see why it would be any different for using my supposedly "open to the public" resources.
And no, posting a TOS inside your business isn't the same thing. I can easily access the signal without ever seeing that TOS. Suppose I hang a picture up that's visible through my plate glass window, and beside it post a sign that says that I own this picture and if you look at it, you agree to pay me the sum of $100. If you walk by and look at my picture through the window, are you bound by those TOS? And if you're going to claim that that's different, you need to specify exactly why I should be bound by a TOS posted inside your business that I've never seen when I access a public, unencrypted signal.
Ok, here's why it's different:
1) You have a choice as to whether or not to use a wireless connection. This isn't just about RECEIVING a signal - it's about configuring your computer to receive it, and transmitting signals back as well. This is nothing at all like walking by and "seeing" a picture.
2) Being a technically minded person, it can easily be argued in a court of law that you were aware this "magical free wireless" connection was owned by someone, and was probably owned by the coffeeshop. If someone leaves their bike out on the public sidewalk unattended, are you free to take it for a spin? No. Illegal. Not yours despite someone being ignorant enough to leave it unlocked. The fact it's on public property is meaningless.
3) Not only do you know the signal comes from some owner, but there's not just the TOS of the "wireless connection" (which may be posted inside, or may be nonexistent) -- there is the TOS of the ISP serving bandwidth to the coffeeshop.
I'm growing really tired of the way people are trying to justify what they know is stealing by arguing that because a wireless signal is "intangible" or "encroaches public property", it's somehow public domain. It's not. Someone owns the device that's transmitting it, and someone pays for the connection to the internet that it's using.
Some plugins have been worth the hassle. Love it or hate it, Flash, when not abused, is a spectacular addition to enhance the web. It now comes standard or damn close to it in every browser.
With all the buzz about "web 2.0" (again, love it or hate it) - this would be the perfect application to make a plugin.
Granted, it just so happens that such a plugin would vastly improve a project I'm working on because it would take load off of my server - but I know that many others are working on projects that would benefit from this as well.
The next step in the internet is aggregating and compartmentalizing information -- making it easier to consolidate a nice little pile of only the things you want. The problem is, the web is a mostly one-way architecture and certainly doesn't work in any sort of a p2p fashion. A plugin like this would make a whole slew of things feasible on the web that, to date, are either incredibly system intensive for the poor server on the other end, or are wholly impossible.
I don't disagree with you about plugin bloat, but done right, this could be an amazing thing.
Now how do we get a plugin for something like this mass installed into browsers like that of flash, so that a web app like google reader (but independently developed, maybe specialized to other things) can take advantage of this idea?
That would make for a real nice way of creating awesome web based feed aggregation tools...
Given that almost every mobile phone company has either in their TOS, or in disclaimers, that they cannot guarantee the arrival of text messages, I don't see how this could work reliably. Arguments could constantly be made that "the message never came", etc.
Also, there are still a lot of people without cell phones, or with older ones that won't display high-res enough graphics for the bar codes to be scanned.
Bad idea jeans, IMHO.
So, it's just a clone of MSN written by someone else, still for windows?
Why is this a big deal?
If it offered multiple clients like Trillian does, or had some snazzy features that MSN didn't already have, I could see it being big news...
Strange indeed, seeing as MSN is probably the least popular messenger between AIM/Yahoo/MSN... I just don't understand the motivation behind writing a clone. Anyone see something I'm missing?
Oh. This is still going on?
I thought they had given a bunch of supposed code a long time ago that was supposedly "lifted" from them, and it was pretty much proven on all counts that prior art existed, etc etc...
Won't SCO just keel over and die already?
Yes - they have just launched the infrastructure. It's called "Power Vision", which is their cheesy name for EVDO. It's a much faster network infrastructure than their really crappy slow data service they currently offer. It was launched today in concert with this music stuff.
For all the naysayers about the price: I agree with you, $2.50 is insane. However, people are paying that much for ringtones, etc now. The public is not as tech-savvy as you are, and the sheer convenience of downloading music via wireless phone and being able to listen to it in seconds is huge. Is it worth $1.50 more than an iTunes song? No - not to me. However, people can and will pay it - they're already paying that much for ringtones and other garbage. Just look at the success of Jamster.
Unfortunately, a mass of people are going to vote "yes" with their wallets for this, keeping the price high, and a potentially really cool service/application unusable for those of us who can't justify paying that premium.
I figured being on slashdot that clicking the comments would reveal stuff just like this snarky ass response. After all, it's mostly read by computer science and engineering type people. They went through the schooling, so obviously they're badasses, and the guy who wrote the article is just "weak" or unintelligent.
I've got news for you, folks:
I went to one of the "top" Computer Science schools in the country and the TA's and Professors there, with a few exceptions, were atrociously bad. I had Profs who couldn't speak english, TA's who couldn't speak english and had no experience whatsoever in teaching, and I had to compete with a bunch of stinky, non showering people who would have learned all this stuff on their own regardless of the piece of paper they're earning at Smartypants U.
Guess what?
If you want to cultivate a culture of science - you're not going to do it by crushing morale and making people hate it. You can sit here and say "good, I'm glad your dumb ass got weeded out!" all you want - but that makes you nothing but an arrogant ass who doesn't have any concept of where this country is going.
We're in line for a mass retirement of engineers that we have NO way to make up for - and you're cheering on your elitist selves because someone who showers regularly and wants to have a social life in addition to his education got "weeded out".
Believe me - the material itself is hard enough to weed out people who are not worthy of the professions they're studying for. Discrete math is tough stuff even with a good teacher, and forget about classes like combinatorial math - no slacker is going to get through that class alive.
You shouldn't be cheering that someone got discouraged by crappy teachers and demoralizing grading scales. In my high school, if the entire class did so badly on a test that a 50% would be curved to an "A", it was deemed that the teacher either A) wasn't doing his/her job to teach the material, or B) wrote the test poorly, because it's supposed to measure a grasp of the material to a certain point.
Something truly needs to be done about our colleges. They suck supremely.
The biggest culprit at MY school was that many Profs wanted to do research and had no interest in teaching - but they had to teach in order to be there. It showed very strongly in their classes. We either need to create separate research and teaching jobs, or be more selective about who we let do research (i.e. make sure they can teach well).
In any case - the bottom line is that there's major problems with our engineering curriculae these days. Just because you got your degree and he decided to change majors doesn't make him stupid, or you superior. What it DOES do, however, is strike a blow to our population of potential engineers - which is in DIRE need of growth.