Wow, you certainly aren't a lawyer! Neither are you a historian, evidently.
When you talk about copywrite law, you're actually thinking of copyright law, although what you're referring to is trademark law. Also, note that Bayer didn't lose their trademark on Aspirin through inaction--it was seized from them at the Treaty of Versailles, as part of the spoils of World War I. Regardless, none of these have much more than a passing familiarity with patent law. It's quite simple: If the patent is valid, then as long as it stands, the patent owner receives protection. They do not have to aggressively defend it as they would a registered trademark.
However, this is all moot, because the patent is demonstrably invalid.
It's an Italian article, so I'm guessing the poster is Italian. Maybe his English isn't great--how's your Italian?
Maybe you'd rather wait until the poster spent another year polishing his foreign language skills before reading this. Personally, I'm willing to overlook it for the sake of finding an interesting story.
Governments (Well, mostly the US right now) pull this sort of stuff all the time. Come up with a "noble cause" to push through a bill which purportedly can further the noble cause, and bring perpetrators to justice.
In fact, as many here have pointed out, there are a huge number of reasons this won't work. However, the MEANS by which it is supposed to work, that is the tools it places in the hands of the government, will have been put into law. This is how every anti-terrorism bill has failed to prevent terrorism, but has succeeded in reducing civil liberties.
Furthermore, by signing an international agreement they can then pressure other signing countries to limit freedoms of _their_ citizens, and also use that as a stick against non-signing countries. ("Your policy doesn't match international standards--fix it, or we'll all have to impose sanctions.")
Pirate Bay, wikileaks, any of these 'undesirable' sites are merely (a) the excuse, and (b) collateral damage.
I usually give more than two weeks. Usually it's a matter of planning my next job's start date, and then saying "All right, you've got me for a month. Get me a replacement and I'll train him/her." In a small community, this sort of behaviour goes a _long_ ways towards your reputation. Once, however, it was a defensive move. My manager was maneuvering to fire me (not justified, but I was a resident alien and appealing would have been more or less impossible) so I resigned before he got the chance--and padded my stay to four weeks, until I had my affairs in order.
Policy varies a lot, and depends on the situation. However, typically, I would expect someone to be escorted to their desk to pack up, and then to the door. No bitterness, no mistrust, just the company covering their ass. HOWEVER, keep in mind that if they accept your resignation letter and date, they have to pay you so if it happens, enjoy the paid holiday.
That said, in my last position I was working up until the very very last second of my last day of my notice. I'd been in that role long enough that they had no choice but to trust me--if I was going to do something evil, I'd have done it years ago, when they started making the job so miserable.
The other thing is that what your group/manager/department head knows to be reasonable, HR and the CEO might not accept. Just roll with it, and check your stocks for the next few weeks.
You could hit "enter" once in a while and make your posts more readable.
But here's a question: "We already have the precedent of big name hollywood movie stars voicing major roles in video games."
Do you know how these guys were paid for their voice acting? If they got paid residuals, then this guy should as well--as much as he'd get for being an unknown actor in a movie.
(Some other biggies: Margot Kidder and James Earl Jones were both in the Tex Murphy series, and Mark Hamil has been doing computer game voiceovers for almost 15 years now.)
Nah. Volume masquerading as entertainment (i.e. bigger explosions, more blood, more sex, more MORE) has a finite limit--sooner or later, everything becomes noise. One could make a direct analogy to excessive dynamic range compression in audio recording--eventually the range reduces to zero.
However, good entertainment is infinite. Maybe there are a finite number of story themes, but there are an infinite way of telling them. There may be a limited number of ways to combine the 12 notes in a scale, but as the time axis gets longer, the possibilities increase without bound.
Symphonies are still being created, but they're not major events because symphonic music is no longer dominant. There's still great rock music out there--some of it even genuinely original music--but the 'neo-classic rock' isn't all that popular, because something else is popular. (Note: Arcade Fire is one of the best rock bands in ages--and it's very cleaerly 21st century rock.)
"When everything ever made is easily available, anything new has to be better than anything done before. "
Not necessarily _better_, but different. New. Innovative. Fixing an old idea or work is definitely and end-of-the-road task, but also the path of least resistance. Creating a new work is much more difficult, and more expensive.
There are a lot of stories out there ready to be told in the movies, and CGI has the ability to bring them to life if used as a tool rather than a shiny toy. (Personally, I want to see Ellison's screenplay of I Robot.)
Martha Siegel is a spammer you won't hear from again--she died in 2000.
However, she's probably the ONLY spammer you won't hear from again. Spamford Wallace, Alan Ralsky, Scott Richter, Michael Lindsay, are all names that will keep coming back. The fact that they're not all serving life in jail doing hard labour is proof that (a) the Can-Spam law doesn't work, and (b) countries have to start working together to castrate these SOBs.
As long as they're alive, they'll try to scam people. Internet spam is the 'niche' that they're best at, but they'll do whatever it takes to steal money and then defend themselves indignantly and self-righteously.
Well it doesn't seem SO bad, simply because we're at the beginning of the wave.
Key systems "should not" be on the internet. True, but irrelevant because they ARE on the internet. One of the interesting things about the 'net is that being an academic experiment in the beginning, it had a lot of University systems on it--along with hospitals. In "The Cuckoo's Egg", Cliff Stoll wrote about a hacker who got into a control system for a cancer ward's radiation therapy unit. The governments, hospitals, and military organisations of the world are all online, like it or not.
Also, there's the question of what constitutes a "key" system. Internet providers are rapidly becoming critical infrastructure, with such offerings as VOIP and cable phone. Recently a child died here because the VOIP provider screwed up routing on a 911 call. A botnet could lead to the entire system going down. Some pieces of infrastructure HAVE to be online to function, and yet are critical. That's just the way it is.
Finally, it's becoming very difficult to truly isolate a system. A single computer can be isolated, but often you need to access it remotely from inside the organisation. Fine, you have a private non-routable network. The staff may have a valid reason to get on the internet though. The only way to accomplish this is by putting two separate computers on that person's desk, or by connecting their single computer to the internet (directly or not). Also, even if the network is isolated, it may be sharing a switch with routeable computers, and a 'bot that could exploit the VLAN controls could violate that 'isolated' network.
Can humans live without the internet? Of course we can! Can modern western society gracefully adapt to the unexpected and sudden loss of the internet? Not easily. How would we deal with losing phone service? Electricity? Natural gas to the homes? Running water? We've lived without most of these for the better part of the existence of humanity, but there WOULD be deaths if someone disrupted any one of them, and likewise, there WILL be deaths from botnets as networking in one form or another becomes a critical part of our infrastructure.
P.S. Have you read the Bill Joy article? Great reading, regardless of whether you agree with him.
Ah. Well in that case, who cares? Other than the fact, of course, that they're still buying illegal material (pirated DVDs, and presumably just being porn in Iraq--can't find the laws on that for sure, though). Aside from the legality of it, who cares if they're stupid enough to trash their personal computers?
This is absolutely the definition of a weapon of mass destruction.
"If the botnet is used in a strictly offensive manner, civilian computers may be attacked, but only if the enemy compels us."
In other words, there will be massive civilian collateral damage that we can't control. It's the electronic equivalent of nuclear, chemical, or biological warfare. How wonderful.
Bill Joy's excellent (albeit dystopian) article "Why the future doesn't need us" talked about this. He said "Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely amplified by the power of self-replication." He also pointed out that unlike NBC warfare, the tools required for KMD aren't large, expensive, or hard to get. You need a plant to build a nuclear bomb. You need a good lab to create chemical or biological weapons. You need a cheap computer and a minor internet connection to create a knowledge-based weapon, i.e. a botnet.
It's crap. The international community needs to get together and stop this nonsense before they 'try it out' a few times. With strong international laws and buy-in, they'd also have a better chance at fighting the Russian crime gangs responsible for the existing botnets.
So can someone explain to me why US soldiers are buying illegal material (bootleg DVDs) and installing it on military equipment? I would think either one of these is worthy of a severe reprimand.
First of all, this was on Engadget Mobile, so it's strictly limited to porting Java to portable devices.
That said, here's a typical question:
"Jonathan, we have videotape of you mooning the CEO of Apple and saying "Not until after hell freezes over you SOB." This seems to indicate some difficulties in getting Java on the iPhone." "Absolutely not! There aren't any technical challenges to porting Java. We can completely get it done man, just as long as Apple doesn't screw around again. There are no technical problems. Technical issues aren't there. Nope. No way."
The sooner someone smashes that pony-tailed freak in, the better.
"Yesterday, however, the justices agreed to hear arguments on whether Jaynes could challenge the anti-spam law as unconstitutional in general, even if it was constitutionally applied to him." (Emphasis mine)
So that means that he gets to present arguments that would support his ability to appeal on constitutionality. Pretty circuitous.
Also, I think it's great. Spam is clearly theft of services, and the sooner that gets legally solidified, the sooner the dirtbag spammers will quit being able to whinge about free speech.
Companies that (a) have their crap together, and (b) operate their own help desks are an excellent place to get your foot in the door. Companies like that are expecting to hire people to the help desk and promote the best of them out of the role in about six months. If you're good, you'll be getting out of that desk before you've even left a dent in the chair.
Something to keep in mind: The more distinct and real levels of technical staff, the easier it is to move up the chain for a bright and motivated person.
Ah, yes. Shun in the sense of boycott. I've got a list of companies that I won't do business with, period. The problem remains though: As long as people are willing to buy the cheapest or the newest or the most convenient, the company that lowers their ethics to make things cheaper, easier, or fancier, will always have enough customers. Boycotts are an individual choice, and don't generally provide any significant pressure on companies. (Which of course doesn't mean that I'm going to stop boycotting Sony. I may not be able to destroy them, but they're still not getting MY money!)
My interpretation of shunning comes from the Mennonite (and other Anabaptist groups) practice: complete excommunication from a society. "I will not buy your products" is one statement which affects their profits, but "I will not deliver your mail or sell you a cup of coffee" is a social statement.
But, nice as it would be, I don't have a lot of hope.
"If he is president of a company that owns the company that provides routing for the block, doesn't that mean he has legal ownership of that block?"
Potentially. However, this is a complete lie on Richter's part. (Surprise! The biggest spam family since Sanford Wallace is lying!)
I think I should register a company called "Enron LLC." Then I'll come along and take over the office space occupied by the former Enron. THAT'S what Media Breakaway is doing. It's absolute fucking theft.
I'm not a believer in the death penalty. Some people don't deserve to live, but I don't believe that we have any right to take it from them.
That said, I'm also a practical person. The only way that spam will stop is by the consistent and repeated use of lethal force. The Richters and everyone closely associated with them should be shot by a firing squad. The CIA should quit screwing around trying to start wars in third-world countries, and put their efforts to slaughtering the Russian crimelords who are backing most of the world's spam. A trail of 200 bodies widely publicised would reduce the appeal of spamming, and swift death to anyone newly involved would eventually stop all but the most insane.
On a larger scale, you're right--crimes against society aren't even recognised as crimes for the most part, and that's an absolute tragedy. Something needs fixing.
I expect that people will misinterpret what you mean by shun, or maybe I am. However, I agree entirely--if it could be done in a comprehensive way. Imagine if nobody would sell groceries or toilet paper to Bill Gates, because of his behaviour. Rather than being invited as guests to TV shows, the media would all collectively turn their backs on the likes of Darl McBride and Steve Ballmer at press conferences. The Richters shouldn't be able to get power, water, or gas service to their houses or businesses. People wouldn't BUY their products, people wouldn't SELL products to them, people wouldn't INTERACT with them, and people wouldn't ACCEPT them into the community. This would provide some strong incentive to behave ethically. (Both social and financial.)
Unfortunately, we need to fix humanity (or at least society) before it'll work. Cheap prices, convenience, and lying trump ethics every time. Kurt Vonnegut commented on the psychopathic behaviour of corporate leaders, and in fact being a psychopath is almost a prerequisite to being a CEO. The companies themselves behave psychopathically. Capitalism and ethics are contrary. Worst of all though, is that as a capitalistic society, we encourage and reward this behaviour, by buying cheap and convenient every time.
They're already there. In fact, they're probably the entire second chapter. This is Scott Richter and co., all over again--criminals who should be publicly hanged.
Interesting. When you say lots of pieces missing, are you reading the news summaries or the courtroom documents? The former has been pretty light on details, whereas the latter tells a more complete picture. While it's true that all of the evidence is circumstantial (i.e. no body, no witnesses), there is a lot of cohesive, consistent circumstantial evidence. Any single item can be (and was) explained away by an incident-specific hypothetical reason, but in this case every item can only be explained by a DIFFERENT reason than the last. It's as though as soon as his wife disappeared, Hans went on a rampage of exceedingly suspicious and aberrant behaviour, which his wife couldn't control or predict, if she was framing him. (Hosing down his car interior? Collecting books on police investigation of murders?) Then there's the evidence that could be explained by happenstance or framing, but instead Hans had a ready and detailed explanation of every instance (wife's blood on the sleeping bag, for instance). Then there's all of the evidence that COULD be there if he was being framed, that didn't show up. If I was framing someone, I'd plant a lot more evidence than there was.
Nope, I'm afraid that he's guilty. I can't imagine any other set of circumstances that would provide the same evidence unless he was actually involved in framing himself.
This thing you're feeling--it's called life. Mid-life crises take on many different guises, and dissatisfaction with your job is a big one.
There are a number of options. You can do heavy labour work like construction of oil rig work. This is probably the only place you'll be able to make as much money without the experience or training. (My former manager took two years out of computing to work as a roofer. Made GREAT money, lost 15kg, and felt better than he'd been since he was in his early 20s. Now he's back in computing, and quite happy about it.) You can take classes at night, and learn a new trade. You can send your wife to work, and be a stay-at-home dad. You can negotiate a reduction in your work hours, either within your current job or by changing companies. If you're like most of us in computing with a decade+ under our belts, you're being paid quite well (and possibly working lots of overtime) but not enough to ignore the bills. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to take a $10k cut to your pay, if the consequence is more time with the family. I changed jobs a year and a half ago, and my hours went from ~60/wk to 37.5/wk--FAR more important than the $1000/month reduction in my gross pay. (And yes, that's a lot o' cash!)
You can also consider using your computing skills in a non-computing environment. Every company out there needs computing of some sort, so find a company or field that you're interested in, and see if your existing skills can land you a job there. ('nother case study: My friend is a Unix admin, and also races cars. He wants to eventually work for BMW or something like.) Similarly, look around on University campuses, if you've got any close to you. Working in academia can be VERY different feeling than business.
Finally, keep on with what you're doing--BUT, add a hobby to the mix. When you come home at night (at 5:00pm sharp! Don't let the job take over your life!), have something else you're passionate about to dive into. Like fishing? Stargazing? Sports? Boardgames? Don't just do something, get involved in the community of the hobby, and interact with people who have different backgrounds than you.
Slashdot Mirror
...because this is part of the HTML 1.0 language specification.
There, that was pretty simple to solve. Now let's find something interesting to discuss.
Wow, you certainly aren't a lawyer! Neither are you a historian, evidently.
When you talk about copywrite law, you're actually thinking of copyright law, although what you're referring to is trademark law. Also, note that Bayer didn't lose their trademark on Aspirin through inaction--it was seized from them at the Treaty of Versailles, as part of the spoils of World War I. Regardless, none of these have much more than a passing familiarity with patent law. It's quite simple: If the patent is valid, then as long as it stands, the patent owner receives protection. They do not have to aggressively defend it as they would a registered trademark.
However, this is all moot, because the patent is demonstrably invalid.
It's an Italian article, so I'm guessing the poster is Italian. Maybe his English isn't great--how's your Italian?
Maybe you'd rather wait until the poster spent another year polishing his foreign language skills before reading this. Personally, I'm willing to overlook it for the sake of finding an interesting story.
Governments (Well, mostly the US right now) pull this sort of stuff all the time. Come up with a "noble cause" to push through a bill which purportedly can further the noble cause, and bring perpetrators to justice.
In fact, as many here have pointed out, there are a huge number of reasons this won't work. However, the MEANS by which it is supposed to work, that is the tools it places in the hands of the government, will have been put into law. This is how every anti-terrorism bill has failed to prevent terrorism, but has succeeded in reducing civil liberties.
Furthermore, by signing an international agreement they can then pressure other signing countries to limit freedoms of _their_ citizens, and also use that as a stick against non-signing countries. ("Your policy doesn't match international standards--fix it, or we'll all have to impose sanctions.")
Pirate Bay, wikileaks, any of these 'undesirable' sites are merely (a) the excuse, and (b) collateral damage.
I usually give more than two weeks. Usually it's a matter of planning my next job's start date, and then saying "All right, you've got me for a month. Get me a replacement and I'll train him/her." In a small community, this sort of behaviour goes a _long_ ways towards your reputation.
Once, however, it was a defensive move. My manager was maneuvering to fire me (not justified, but I was a resident alien and appealing would have been more or less impossible) so I resigned before he got the chance--and padded my stay to four weeks, until I had my affairs in order.
Policy varies a lot, and depends on the situation. However, typically, I would expect someone to be escorted to their desk to pack up, and then to the door. No bitterness, no mistrust, just the company covering their ass. HOWEVER, keep in mind that if they accept your resignation letter and date, they have to pay you so if it happens, enjoy the paid holiday.
That said, in my last position I was working up until the very very last second of my last day of my notice. I'd been in that role long enough that they had no choice but to trust me--if I was going to do something evil, I'd have done it years ago, when they started making the job so miserable.
The other thing is that what your group/manager/department head knows to be reasonable, HR and the CEO might not accept. Just roll with it, and check your stocks for the next few weeks.
You could hit "enter" once in a while and make your posts more readable.
But here's a question:
"We already have the precedent of big name hollywood movie stars voicing major roles in video games."
Do you know how these guys were paid for their voice acting? If they got paid residuals, then this guy should as well--as much as he'd get for being an unknown actor in a movie.
(Some other biggies: Margot Kidder and James Earl Jones were both in the Tex Murphy series, and Mark Hamil has been doing computer game voiceovers for almost 15 years now.)
"Entertainment may be a depletable resource."
Nah. Volume masquerading as entertainment (i.e. bigger explosions, more blood, more sex, more MORE) has a finite limit--sooner or later, everything becomes noise. One could make a direct analogy to excessive dynamic range compression in audio recording--eventually the range reduces to zero.
However, good entertainment is infinite. Maybe there are a finite number of story themes, but there are an infinite way of telling them. There may be a limited number of ways to combine the 12 notes in a scale, but as the time axis gets longer, the possibilities increase without bound.
Symphonies are still being created, but they're not major events because symphonic music is no longer dominant. There's still great rock music out there--some of it even genuinely original music--but the 'neo-classic rock' isn't all that popular, because something else is popular. (Note: Arcade Fire is one of the best rock bands in ages--and it's very cleaerly 21st century rock.)
"When everything ever made is easily available, anything new has to be better than anything done before. "
Not necessarily _better_, but different. New. Innovative. Fixing an old idea or work is definitely and end-of-the-road task, but also the path of least resistance. Creating a new work is much more difficult, and more expensive.
There are a lot of stories out there ready to be told in the movies, and CGI has the ability to bring them to life if used as a tool rather than a shiny toy. (Personally, I want to see Ellison's screenplay of I Robot.)
Martha Siegel is a spammer you won't hear from again--she died in 2000.
However, she's probably the ONLY spammer you won't hear from again. Spamford Wallace, Alan Ralsky, Scott Richter, Michael Lindsay, are all names that will keep coming back. The fact that they're not all serving life in jail doing hard labour is proof that (a) the Can-Spam law doesn't work, and (b) countries have to start working together to castrate these SOBs.
As long as they're alive, they'll try to scam people. Internet spam is the 'niche' that they're best at, but they'll do whatever it takes to steal money and then defend themselves indignantly and self-righteously.
Well it doesn't seem SO bad, simply because we're at the beginning of the wave.
Key systems "should not" be on the internet. True, but irrelevant because they ARE on the internet. One of the interesting things about the 'net is that being an academic experiment in the beginning, it had a lot of University systems on it--along with hospitals. In "The Cuckoo's Egg", Cliff Stoll wrote about a hacker who got into a control system for a cancer ward's radiation therapy unit. The governments, hospitals, and military organisations of the world are all online, like it or not.
Also, there's the question of what constitutes a "key" system. Internet providers are rapidly becoming critical infrastructure, with such offerings as VOIP and cable phone. Recently a child died here because the VOIP provider screwed up routing on a 911 call. A botnet could lead to the entire system going down. Some pieces of infrastructure HAVE to be online to function, and yet are critical. That's just the way it is.
Finally, it's becoming very difficult to truly isolate a system. A single computer can be isolated, but often you need to access it remotely from inside the organisation. Fine, you have a private non-routable network. The staff may have a valid reason to get on the internet though. The only way to accomplish this is by putting two separate computers on that person's desk, or by connecting their single computer to the internet (directly or not). Also, even if the network is isolated, it may be sharing a switch with routeable computers, and a 'bot that could exploit the VLAN controls could violate that 'isolated' network.
Can humans live without the internet? Of course we can! Can modern western society gracefully adapt to the unexpected and sudden loss of the internet? Not easily. How would we deal with losing phone service? Electricity? Natural gas to the homes? Running water? We've lived without most of these for the better part of the existence of humanity, but there WOULD be deaths if someone disrupted any one of them, and likewise, there WILL be deaths from botnets as networking in one form or another becomes a critical part of our infrastructure.
P.S. Have you read the Bill Joy article? Great reading, regardless of whether you agree with him.
Ah. Well in that case, who cares? Other than the fact, of course, that they're still buying illegal material (pirated DVDs, and presumably just being porn in Iraq--can't find the laws on that for sure, though). Aside from the legality of it, who cares if they're stupid enough to trash their personal computers?
This is absolutely the definition of a weapon of mass destruction.
"If the botnet is used in a strictly offensive manner, civilian computers may be attacked, but only if the enemy compels us."
In other words, there will be massive civilian collateral damage that we can't control. It's the electronic equivalent of nuclear, chemical, or biological warfare. How wonderful.
Bill Joy's excellent (albeit dystopian) article "Why the future doesn't need us" talked about this. He said "Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely amplified by the power of self-replication." He also pointed out that unlike NBC warfare, the tools required for KMD aren't large, expensive, or hard to get. You need a plant to build a nuclear bomb. You need a good lab to create chemical or biological weapons. You need a cheap computer and a minor internet connection to create a knowledge-based weapon, i.e. a botnet.
It's crap. The international community needs to get together and stop this nonsense before they 'try it out' a few times. With strong international laws and buy-in, they'd also have a better chance at fighting the Russian crime gangs responsible for the existing botnets.
So can someone explain to me why US soldiers are buying illegal material (bootleg DVDs) and installing it on military equipment? I would think either one of these is worthy of a severe reprimand.
Not enough, evidently. :-)
First of all, this was on Engadget Mobile, so it's strictly limited to porting Java to portable devices.
That said, here's a typical question:
"Jonathan, we have videotape of you mooning the CEO of Apple and saying "Not until after hell freezes over you SOB." This seems to indicate some difficulties in getting Java on the iPhone."
"Absolutely not! There aren't any technical challenges to porting Java. We can completely get it done man, just as long as Apple doesn't screw around again. There are no technical problems. Technical issues aren't there. Nope. No way."
The sooner someone smashes that pony-tailed freak in, the better.
Here's an excerpt from the article:
"Yesterday, however, the justices agreed to hear arguments on whether Jaynes could challenge the anti-spam law as unconstitutional in general, even if it was constitutionally applied to him." (Emphasis mine)
So that means that he gets to present arguments that would support his ability to appeal on constitutionality. Pretty circuitous.
Also, I think it's great. Spam is clearly theft of services, and the sooner that gets legally solidified, the sooner the dirtbag spammers will quit being able to whinge about free speech.
The fact that it's a component, rather than a circuit.
Companies that (a) have their crap together, and (b) operate their own help desks are an excellent place to get your foot in the door. Companies like that are expecting to hire people to the help desk and promote the best of them out of the role in about six months. If you're good, you'll be getting out of that desk before you've even left a dent in the chair.
Something to keep in mind: The more distinct and real levels of technical staff, the easier it is to move up the chain for a bright and motivated person.
Ah, yes. Shun in the sense of boycott. I've got a list of companies that I won't do business with, period. The problem remains though: As long as people are willing to buy the cheapest or the newest or the most convenient, the company that lowers their ethics to make things cheaper, easier, or fancier, will always have enough customers. Boycotts are an individual choice, and don't generally provide any significant pressure on companies. (Which of course doesn't mean that I'm going to stop boycotting Sony. I may not be able to destroy them, but they're still not getting MY money!)
My interpretation of shunning comes from the Mennonite (and other Anabaptist groups) practice: complete excommunication from a society. "I will not buy your products" is one statement which affects their profits, but "I will not deliver your mail or sell you a cup of coffee" is a social statement.
But, nice as it would be, I don't have a lot of hope.
"If he is president of a company that owns the company that provides routing for the block, doesn't that mean he has legal ownership of that block?"
Potentially. However, this is a complete lie on Richter's part. (Surprise! The biggest spam family since Sanford Wallace is lying!)
I think I should register a company called "Enron LLC." Then I'll come along and take over the office space occupied by the former Enron. THAT'S what Media Breakaway is doing. It's absolute fucking theft.
I'm not a believer in the death penalty. Some people don't deserve to live, but I don't believe that we have any right to take it from them.
That said, I'm also a practical person. The only way that spam will stop is by the consistent and repeated use of lethal force. The Richters and everyone closely associated with them should be shot by a firing squad. The CIA should quit screwing around trying to start wars in third-world countries, and put their efforts to slaughtering the Russian crimelords who are backing most of the world's spam. A trail of 200 bodies widely publicised would reduce the appeal of spamming, and swift death to anyone newly involved would eventually stop all but the most insane.
On a larger scale, you're right--crimes against society aren't even recognised as crimes for the most part, and that's an absolute tragedy. Something needs fixing.
I expect that people will misinterpret what you mean by shun, or maybe I am. However, I agree entirely--if it could be done in a comprehensive way. Imagine if nobody would sell groceries or toilet paper to Bill Gates, because of his behaviour. Rather than being invited as guests to TV shows, the media would all collectively turn their backs on the likes of Darl McBride and Steve Ballmer at press conferences. The Richters shouldn't be able to get power, water, or gas service to their houses or businesses. People wouldn't BUY their products, people wouldn't SELL products to them, people wouldn't INTERACT with them, and people wouldn't ACCEPT them into the community. This would provide some strong incentive to behave ethically. (Both social and financial.)
Unfortunately, we need to fix humanity (or at least society) before it'll work. Cheap prices, convenience, and lying trump ethics every time. Kurt Vonnegut commented on the psychopathic behaviour of corporate leaders, and in fact being a psychopath is almost a prerequisite to being a CEO. The companies themselves behave psychopathically. Capitalism and ethics are contrary. Worst of all though, is that as a capitalistic society, we encourage and reward this behaviour, by buying cheap and convenient every time.
They're already there. In fact, they're probably the entire second chapter.
This is Scott Richter and co., all over again--criminals who should be publicly hanged.
Interesting. When you say lots of pieces missing, are you reading the news summaries or the courtroom documents? The former has been pretty light on details, whereas the latter tells a more complete picture. While it's true that all of the evidence is circumstantial (i.e. no body, no witnesses), there is a lot of cohesive, consistent circumstantial evidence. Any single item can be (and was) explained away by an incident-specific hypothetical reason, but in this case every item can only be explained by a DIFFERENT reason than the last. It's as though as soon as his wife disappeared, Hans went on a rampage of exceedingly suspicious and aberrant behaviour, which his wife couldn't control or predict, if she was framing him. (Hosing down his car interior? Collecting books on police investigation of murders?) Then there's the evidence that could be explained by happenstance or framing, but instead Hans had a ready and detailed explanation of every instance (wife's blood on the sleeping bag, for instance). Then there's all of the evidence that COULD be there if he was being framed, that didn't show up. If I was framing someone, I'd plant a lot more evidence than there was.
Nope, I'm afraid that he's guilty. I can't imagine any other set of circumstances that would provide the same evidence unless he was actually involved in framing himself.
This thing you're feeling--it's called life. Mid-life crises take on many different guises, and dissatisfaction with your job is a big one.
There are a number of options. You can do heavy labour work like construction of oil rig work. This is probably the only place you'll be able to make as much money without the experience or training. (My former manager took two years out of computing to work as a roofer. Made GREAT money, lost 15kg, and felt better than he'd been since he was in his early 20s. Now he's back in computing, and quite happy about it.) You can take classes at night, and learn a new trade. You can send your wife to work, and be a stay-at-home dad. You can negotiate a reduction in your work hours, either within your current job or by changing companies. If you're like most of us in computing with a decade+ under our belts, you're being paid quite well (and possibly working lots of overtime) but not enough to ignore the bills. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to take a $10k cut to your pay, if the consequence is more time with the family. I changed jobs a year and a half ago, and my hours went from ~60/wk to 37.5/wk--FAR more important than the $1000/month reduction in my gross pay. (And yes, that's a lot o' cash!)
You can also consider using your computing skills in a non-computing environment. Every company out there needs computing of some sort, so find a company or field that you're interested in, and see if your existing skills can land you a job there. ('nother case study: My friend is a Unix admin, and also races cars. He wants to eventually work for BMW or something like.) Similarly, look around on University campuses, if you've got any close to you. Working in academia can be VERY different feeling than business.
Finally, keep on with what you're doing--BUT, add a hobby to the mix. When you come home at night (at 5:00pm sharp! Don't let the job take over your life!), have something else you're passionate about to dive into. Like fishing? Stargazing? Sports? Boardgames? Don't just do something, get involved in the community of the hobby, and interact with people who have different backgrounds than you.