How about in the exact example you gave? Intentionally killing someone with your car while drunk will earn you (in Canada, at least) first or second degree murder. Unintentionally killing someone with your car will earn you manslaughter, or possibly a lesser charge like gross negligence, depending on the exact circumstances. In fact, many laws specifically require a criminal intent.
Bear in mind, the rules of evidence also prevent the cops from beating you for 6 hours until you confess, then calling it a day. It always surprises me how quickly slashdotters jump to the conclusion that there is some kind of Illuminati-style conspiracy guiding all manner of phenomena, from court cases, to stock prices. It gives the comment above, wherein the poster claimed that most non-CS and IT people were too stupid to sort fact from fantasy, a certain irony.
I'm Canadian, and even I thought this was a joke at first. Taxes are expensive. Everything you tax needs to be tracked by the government so they know what their income will be for the year, and tracked by the taxpayer (be it a citizen, or a corporation), so they know what to pay. Then you need to enforce all these taxes. All of this takes time and money from players in the system.
I'm not a libertarian, but I see where they are coming from. Governments are like large software projects. Giving a role to the government is like adding a feature to the software project. Sure, having lots of features is nice, and it'd be great the government could limit unnecessary paperwork, and do other helpfule things, but every time you give a role to the government, you incur overhead. Eventually, if you give the government too many roles, it becomes bloated and inefficient, like a software project with too many features.
And you bet your sweet ass I hate Christians. But then I don't admire other religions, because anyone who tends to believe in imaginary friends also thinks they're the coolest and only friends *anyone* should *ever* admire, so at the end of the day religion serves as a petri dish for growing whole cultures of bigots.
What an enlightened observation. Thank God for your bigotry against bigots, you valiant defender of tolerance. It's good to know that there are some Slashdot'ers who would never presume to know all that a person believes based solely on a vague and ambiguous self-identification. Who would never over-simplify, much less outright misconstrue, a group's beliefs in order to justify his (or her!) rigid and unmerited (one might even say, zealous) hatred of that some group. Sir, I salute you!
Data can take all day to send a 1k message to Facebook, Twitter, ect...
But if you're stuck in a stormdrain at the time, hopefully it won't!
What's with all the Darwin Award comments? I'm not normally one to complain about black humour, but Really? Walking into a stormwater drain is hardly mortal peril, and if it were, don't you think 12 year-olds are young enough to legitimately not know better?
You have it backwards. The vast majority of people read hacker as 'one who uses a computer to gain unauthorized access to data'. It is you, and others like you, who have been trying to twist the term to mean 'skilled computer technologist'. Please see here for different meanings of hack. You'll notice that your sense of the word is in the list, and it is certainly your right to use hacker to mean skilled computer technologist. But to claim that your definition is correct while everyone else is wrong is preposterous. Words take on meanings when people use and understand them to have that meaning, not when some obscure group shrilly insists it should have a certain meaning and no other.
I've never heard of anyone (prior to you) hating Jar Jar for being a 'realistic' CG character. They hate him because of his silly slapstick humour, or his caricatured portrayal of Jamaicans. In fact, the Star Wars Prequels (with Yoda), and the LOTR Trilogy (with Gollum), are a pretty good indication that fully CG characters can be embraced by audiences.
With regards to your last few statements, no one is suggesting that the US should 'rewrite' a health care system from scratch - they are suggesting that the US should adopt a different model that is already implemented in some other country, which they believe performs better. Like switching from Windows to Linux.
As for your assertion that there are simple solutions to the problems with US health care - I doubt it. I really doubt it. Anytime you see a simple solution to a controversial, intractable problem, rather than ask "What is everyone missing here?", you should ask "What am I missing here?"
No, I believe the important distinction between calling Bush a Nazi Warmonger, and calling Liskula Cohen a skank is that the former is political speech, and the latter is just speech. Contrary to popular opinion, freedom of speech is not important because you have a god-given right to say whatever the fuck you want, but because suppressing criticism is a powerful tool for brutal tyrants to stay in power.
Bush may or may not be a Nazi Warmonger, but if he were, it'd be crucially important that people be allowed to say so. Why is it important that you be able to call Liskula Cohen a skant?
Pointing this out is probably about as useless as pissing in the ocean to make the water level rise, but people are not stupid for not understanding how file-sharing works, they are ignorant.
Similarly, you seem to think you had permission to download sensitive files because they were shared publicly. Legally you did not, because, as you yourself pointed out, the files were possibly shared unknowingly. Using the standard of a reasonable person (for common law, at least. I'm playing the numbers and assuming you live in a common law jurisdiction), would a reasonable person conclude that your target intended to share sensitive information? No - like you, they would conclude it was an accident born of ignorance. Luckily, that does not make you stupid, just ignorant
The thing is, I see little difference between what they're doing and what Cohen does in Borat and Bruno: Exploiting other people because there's a market for it and he can make a buck/Euro off of it. Sure, Cohen is a lot more careful to stay within the law, but the intent and "morality" of it is the same. One just happens to be more extreme.
I hope you're exaggerating when you say you see little difference between Cohen and Pranknet. Sure, the only difference between the two is that what Cohen does is legal, and what Pranknet does is illegal, but you say it like that's just because of some arbitraty quirk of the legal system, and it's not. Cohen made people to look foolish. Pranknet caused thousands of dollars of damage to hotels, and landed some people in potentially serious legal trouble, among other things.
Now, I wasn't alive in 1964, so maybe I'm way off base, but I really don't think that a self opening door was pure fantasy, much less impossible. All you need is a crank with a motor attached, and a switch in front of the door that starts the motor when you step on it.
I certainly believe that each person should work with whatever tools they feel comfortable. However, the "IDE kids"...
Unbelievable. You say something, and then contradict it just four short words later! Apparently, you believe people should only use IDEs if they are inexperienced, or perhaps incompetent, programmers, which is very much different from working with whichever tools they feel most comfortable.
It's true, you don't need "hard numbers" for everything. But maybe having them for your incredibly expensive marketing campaign would be a good idea. Furthermore, a lot of knowledge that comes from simple and consistent observation is flawed. For example, when you walk outside, can you see the curvature of the Earth?
I'm not sure why you would, but it sure seems like a lot of slashdotters think the rest of the world is some combination of naive, fearful, and entitled for not wanting, much less having, governments exactly like the US:P
From the point of view of the bank, customer transactions are a zero-sum game; the bank doesn't stand to either gain or lose from them.
I don't think that term means what you think it means. Zero-sum game refers to a game between two parties in which a gain for one player is offset by an equal loss by the other player. You seem to be talking about a game between three players, in which two players (the customer and fraudster) are 'exchanging' funds, and the third player (the bank) is not affected.
The US has a long tradition of individualism, which is great. Other countries, like my native Canada, have a tradition of mixing individualism with collectivism. Or what you would call a large overbearing nanny state. Obviously, you think collectivism is wrong for the US, but do you also think it is wrong for every other country on earth? Honest question.
The point is, once you give someone access to your network and your systems, to the level that a CTO, Senior Systems Administrator, or Network Administrator might have access, you can't ever be certain of locking them out of your systems...
So Firewall has a plausible plot after all. Who knew?:P
Very long post. I stopped reading after you claimed that libertarians were the "true" right, while simultaneously being "true" democrats.
The big ideological divide here is that you, a liberal, is that you're viewing people and things by function and utility, whereas the (true) libertarian believes in rights in-and-of-themselves, rights for the sake of rights. Whereas you may believe in freedom of speech because the free exchange of ideas may lead to better ideas, the libertarian believes that people should innately just be able to say what they want to say as an individual right, with little concern over whether it benefits society or not.
Do you see nothing wrong with having rights not because they benefit society, but because some person, or group of people, arbitrarily decided they were important to have? If granting a right to people does not benefit society as a whole, why grant that right at all?
Slashdot Mirror
You are surprised that things which happen all the time don't make headlines; while something unprecedented made huge headlines? Really?
How about in the exact example you gave? Intentionally killing someone with your car while drunk will earn you (in Canada, at least) first or second degree murder. Unintentionally killing someone with your car will earn you manslaughter, or possibly a lesser charge like gross negligence, depending on the exact circumstances. In fact, many laws specifically require a criminal intent.
Bear in mind, the rules of evidence also prevent the cops from beating you for 6 hours until you confess, then calling it a day. It always surprises me how quickly slashdotters jump to the conclusion that there is some kind of Illuminati-style conspiracy guiding all manner of phenomena, from court cases, to stock prices. It gives the comment above, wherein the poster claimed that most non-CS and IT people were too stupid to sort fact from fantasy, a certain irony.
I'm Canadian, and even I thought this was a joke at first. Taxes are expensive. Everything you tax needs to be tracked by the government so they know what their income will be for the year, and tracked by the taxpayer (be it a citizen, or a corporation), so they know what to pay. Then you need to enforce all these taxes. All of this takes time and money from players in the system.
I'm not a libertarian, but I see where they are coming from. Governments are like large software projects. Giving a role to the government is like adding a feature to the software project. Sure, having lots of features is nice, and it'd be great the government could limit unnecessary paperwork, and do other helpfule things, but every time you give a role to the government, you incur overhead. Eventually, if you give the government too many roles, it becomes bloated and inefficient, like a software project with too many features.
And you bet your sweet ass I hate Christians. But then I don't admire other religions, because anyone who tends to believe in imaginary friends also thinks they're the coolest and only friends *anyone* should *ever* admire, so at the end of the day religion serves as a petri dish for growing whole cultures of bigots.
What an enlightened observation. Thank God for your bigotry against bigots, you valiant defender of tolerance. It's good to know that there are some Slashdot'ers who would never presume to know all that a person believes based solely on a vague and ambiguous self-identification. Who would never over-simplify, much less outright misconstrue, a group's beliefs in order to justify his (or her!) rigid and unmerited (one might even say, zealous) hatred of that some group. Sir, I salute you!
Data can take all day to send a 1k message to Facebook, Twitter, ect...
But if you're stuck in a stormdrain at the time, hopefully it won't!
What's with all the Darwin Award comments? I'm not normally one to complain about black humour, but Really? Walking into a stormwater drain is hardly mortal peril, and if it were, don't you think 12 year-olds are young enough to legitimately not know better?
I find it ironic that the [Democratic] party is now trying to restore the Sedition Act - a different name but still the same effect.
Wait, what? The article is about Canada, and Canadians. Nor is it talking about a new law being put on the books.
You have it backwards. The vast majority of people read hacker as 'one who uses a computer to gain unauthorized access to data'. It is you, and others like you, who have been trying to twist the term to mean 'skilled computer technologist'. Please see here for different meanings of hack. You'll notice that your sense of the word is in the list, and it is certainly your right to use hacker to mean skilled computer technologist. But to claim that your definition is correct while everyone else is wrong is preposterous. Words take on meanings when people use and understand them to have that meaning, not when some obscure group shrilly insists it should have a certain meaning and no other.
I've never heard of anyone (prior to you) hating Jar Jar for being a 'realistic' CG character. They hate him because of his silly slapstick humour, or his caricatured portrayal of Jamaicans. In fact, the Star Wars Prequels (with Yoda), and the LOTR Trilogy (with Gollum), are a pretty good indication that fully CG characters can be embraced by audiences.
With regards to your last few statements, no one is suggesting that the US should 'rewrite' a health care system from scratch - they are suggesting that the US should adopt a different model that is already implemented in some other country, which they believe performs better. Like switching from Windows to Linux.
As for your assertion that there are simple solutions to the problems with US health care - I doubt it. I really doubt it. Anytime you see a simple solution to a controversial, intractable problem, rather than ask "What is everyone missing here?", you should ask "What am I missing here?"
No, I believe the important distinction between calling Bush a Nazi Warmonger, and calling Liskula Cohen a skank is that the former is political speech, and the latter is just speech. Contrary to popular opinion, freedom of speech is not important because you have a god-given right to say whatever the fuck you want, but because suppressing criticism is a powerful tool for brutal tyrants to stay in power.
Bush may or may not be a Nazi Warmonger, but if he were, it'd be crucially important that people be allowed to say so. Why is it important that you be able to call Liskula Cohen a skant?
Of course you kick your whole class' ass at the academic bowl - you're in a generation of ignorant conformists! :P
Pointing this out is probably about as useless as pissing in the ocean to make the water level rise, but people are not stupid for not understanding how file-sharing works, they are ignorant.
Similarly, you seem to think you had permission to download sensitive files because they were shared publicly. Legally you did not, because, as you yourself pointed out, the files were possibly shared unknowingly. Using the standard of a reasonable person (for common law, at least. I'm playing the numbers and assuming you live in a common law jurisdiction), would a reasonable person conclude that your target intended to share sensitive information? No - like you, they would conclude it was an accident born of ignorance. Luckily, that does not make you stupid, just ignorant
The thing is, I see little difference between what they're doing and what Cohen does in Borat and Bruno: Exploiting other people because there's a market for it and he can make a buck/Euro off of it. Sure, Cohen is a lot more careful to stay within the law, but the intent and "morality" of it is the same. One just happens to be more extreme.
I hope you're exaggerating when you say you see little difference between Cohen and Pranknet. Sure, the only difference between the two is that what Cohen does is legal, and what Pranknet does is illegal, but you say it like that's just because of some arbitraty quirk of the legal system, and it's not. Cohen made people to look foolish. Pranknet caused thousands of dollars of damage to hotels, and landed some people in potentially serious legal trouble, among other things.
Now, I wasn't alive in 1964, so maybe I'm way off base, but I really don't think that a self opening door was pure fantasy, much less impossible. All you need is a crank with a motor attached, and a switch in front of the door that starts the motor when you step on it.
Fake marketing page
Fake UK Asus website you linked to
Real UK Asus website
I certainly believe that each person should work with whatever tools they feel comfortable. However, the "IDE kids"...
Unbelievable. You say something, and then contradict it just four short words later! Apparently, you believe people should only use IDEs if they are inexperienced, or perhaps incompetent, programmers, which is very much different from working with whichever tools they feel most comfortable.
It's true, you don't need "hard numbers" for everything. But maybe having them for your incredibly expensive marketing campaign would be a good idea. Furthermore, a lot of knowledge that comes from simple and consistent observation is flawed. For example, when you walk outside, can you see the curvature of the Earth?
Privateers were not pirate hunters. They were private warships sponsored by a country's government to attack some other country's shipping.
I'm not sure why you would, but it sure seems like a lot of slashdotters think the rest of the world is some combination of naive, fearful, and entitled for not wanting, much less having, governments exactly like the US :P
From the point of view of the bank, customer transactions are a zero-sum game; the bank doesn't stand to either gain or lose from them.
I don't think that term means what you think it means. Zero-sum game refers to a game between two parties in which a gain for one player is offset by an equal loss by the other player. You seem to be talking about a game between three players, in which two players (the customer and fraudster) are 'exchanging' funds, and the third player (the bank) is not affected.
The US has a long tradition of individualism, which is great. Other countries, like my native Canada, have a tradition of mixing individualism with collectivism. Or what you would call a large overbearing nanny state. Obviously, you think collectivism is wrong for the US, but do you also think it is wrong for every other country on earth? Honest question.
How can you prove someone lied on an immigration form about (for example) being a terrorist without first proving he or she is in fact a terrorist?
The point is, once you give someone access to your network and your systems, to the level that a CTO, Senior Systems Administrator, or Network Administrator might have access, you can't ever be certain of locking them out of your systems...
So Firewall has a plausible plot after all. Who knew? :P
The big ideological divide here is that you, a liberal, is that you're viewing people and things by function and utility, whereas the (true) libertarian believes in rights in-and-of-themselves, rights for the sake of rights. Whereas you may believe in freedom of speech because the free exchange of ideas may lead to better ideas, the libertarian believes that people should innately just be able to say what they want to say as an individual right, with little concern over whether it benefits society or not.
Do you see nothing wrong with having rights not because they benefit society, but because some person, or group of people, arbitrarily decided they were important to have? If granting a right to people does not benefit society as a whole, why grant that right at all?