I think it's obvious that deleting other people's files is a jerk thing to do.
In practical terms, though, stopping people from doing jerk things over the internet by threat of discipline or retribution is impossible. It approaches trivial (sometimes) to simply render such attacks ineffectual, though.
To use your analogy, stating that the victim could have saved himself with better locks does not implicitly excuse the attacker. The attacker's guilt is simply moot. It's a given. If your victim had been told over and over about "better locks", and was being paid to ostensibly keep the house safe, and knew that he lived in a high risk area, then yeah, he's kind of a dumb ass.
I haven't RTFA yet, so I'm not extending that statement to the admins of this particular site. However, as has been stated (over and over, now), when you have that kind of policy, this is what you get. It doesn't mean they aren't victims; it just means they didn't have to be.
You probably don't want to destroy it, but put one good long scratch on the cover with a knife, rub some sand on it to add wear and tear (be careful not to get this inside the guts), scrape away the paint at the corners, and rub dirt over part of it. Try to make it look natural, like you didn't just destroy your own laptop trying to look cool.
If they still think it's cute, at least it's not the shiny pretty kind of cute. It should look like you bought it to use it, not to look at it. (Even though you're just doing it for the sake of looking at it.)
That's a good point. You should probably keep a copy of that little piece of paper (and, if applicable, all your other little pieces of paper) on a big piece of paper at home, in a safe if it's extremely important, or more likely just some place safe, like a fireproof box.
Also it's a relatively well-known string, or a simple variation of one, even if it's a long one. Actually, I don't know whether it would be breakable even if someone were using a good dictionary of phrases and permutations, but rather than do the math, I'd personally throw in a capital letter in the middle of one of the words, and a tilde or circumflex for good measure.
I may not remember #$q%{:}, but I can remember a capital T in PeTer and a star in Pep*per.
Parent is reasonable discussion, not flamebait. It's at 0, flamebait right now.
Considering that a stranger just informed her that he somehow knows she's been sexually assaulted and that this invalidates her views, I think it's a pretty low-heat response.
On that note, how the fuck does an AC post like the GP make it to +3 insightful?
I'm not saying you're wrong (or right), but nothing in your post seemed to demonstrate "...how quickly a thriving democracy can turn into an oppresive regime, here in the US." You started an interesting story, but then your climax was just a description of your feelings.
I don't think you're paranoid, but your feelings don't prove anything to me.
They probably encouraged it. If you're getting away with something, or getting the better of someone, that's tempting. If you're just abusing the helpless, that makes most people feel like a jerk.
Hanging an open padlock on a door is going to attract a few people that would probably otherwise ignore it.
I sympathize with the guy, because he sounds a lot like me, but just to play devil's advocate, here:
Yes, the authorities were being jerks, but that's not really a surprise. He might have anticipated this and either kept the observation to himself, or at least taken a moment to explain that he'd watched it, and wasn't any kind of threat, rather than acting shady.
The gold from Fort Knox probably isn't sitting behind the door to the tarmac. Odds are that the lock is just there to keep people from wandering out there. People have an amazing ability to go places and do things that they really, obviously should not. Most security measures are not taken against geniuses but idiots.
Like I said, my heart goes out to him, because he sounds like a cool guy, but it does sound like he brought trouble on himself, probably just by momentary lack of forethought.
If, on the other hand, someone had left the door open, perhaps they would be more receptive to a quiet mention of that fact. It doesn't make him look mysterious (suspicious), and to acknowledge the pessimistic side, the cost to fix it less than the cost to punish.
Try telling their parents that enlightened comparison with pencils.
The fact that certain people wouldn't want to listen to it, or that one wouldn't want to upset them further, says nothing about the validity of the argument.
Thus illustrating the power of the real strategy, here: obfuscation. Start with a false premise, draw logically flawed conclusions, and complicate the argument as much as possible. It seems a lot of folks get taken along for the whole ride, and while some peel back a layer or two of BS, by the time anyone gets done explaining the whole bad argument down to nothing, he's lost his audience because it's been more than five minutes since anyone said an exciting word like "illegal", "criminal", or "pirate". Yo ho.
Hopefully the courts will serve as a more captive audience and hear the whole thing out soundly.
(I'm not a lawyer, a mathematician, or a philosopher, and should probably just clam up now.)
On the other side of the coin, I don't have to read a text through even once to be able to find every instance of a given word, if the text is in digital format.
I actually feel a little restrained when flipping through a hard-copy, like my brain's reaching for ctl-F.
Yeah it is, if you are lucky enough to get something BSD licensed. No guarantee that's going to happen even if all the projects it was based on were BSD, it might be all locked up proprietary when you obtain a derivative software.
Theoretically, that holds water. Code A could be licensed under BSD, adopted by a company, and released as a binary blob as Code B.
After that, there is a range of possibilities. One is that B is basically a rebranded version of A, without much noticeable improvement. In this case, end users can just grab A instead. The other end of the spectrum is that A was a half-baked mess, and the company overhauled it to produce a great product. In this case, I'd be pleased if they released B under a similarly free license, but if they did 90% of the work on the project, then it's about 90% as fair for them to be able to keep it locked up as it is for a completely in-house proprietary project.
Basically, as the amount of "stealing" increases, the company's relevance in the market decreases.
That said, I could see an argument in the middle range, where A was pretty good, and B was just a lot better, that the company has let the community do the bulk of its work, but holds control over the best-in-class product. That strikes me as somewhat unfair. On the other hand, everyone who contributed to the BSD licensed code knew that could happen, which would seem to make it fair.
Back in reality, though: Can you site an example of BSD licensed software getting gobbled up by suits, and the end users left without free options?
I guess there's OS X -- then again, I'm using FreeBSD today, and enjoying it quite thoroughly.
Honestly, I can't see why people bitch so much about which license is superior.
At least in terms of what's best for the software, and therefore for the users of the software, they present different and mutually exclusive benefits. GPL forces anyone who makes improvements to the code (and releases them) to provide source, thereby giving back to the community. BSD allows those who can't (or won't, or think they can't) release their own work to use and modify the open code. These folks might give back in the form of binary-only programs based on the original (a mixed blessing, in my opinion), or by releasing select patches to the community, while retaining whatever secrets they wish.
As for which is better for a given piece of software, you'd probably have to take circumstances into account and apply a bit of game theory. I think how much freedom you end up giving, either to the users or to the software, is more a question of math than ethics.
The only ethical dilemma I see is whether ideas can be owned, and to what extent -- and if you're applying licenses, there's at least some implicit acceptance of the idea of IP. After that, it's just up to your personal preference what you'd like to see done with your code.
Now it's my turn to get modded into oblivion for not being fond of the GPL. Sigh. If I had mod points, I would mod you down. Not for the entire post, but for this sentence alone. I do have mod points, but somehow a tick up or down wouldn't seem to get the point across.
Right now, the AC "troll" is at 2, and mister "now it's my turn" is at 5. I can't judge the inner intentions of the poster, but it looks like a cheap psychological trick to try to avoid getting the mod you anticipate.
I was tempted to mod the "troll" down, but I wouldn't think of modding down Teckla, because he gave some information and made an interesting point.
To reverse a common complaint around here, being in agreement with the group or factually correct doesn't make you insightful. Calling your score in advance doesn't change the content of your post, either, but makes you look childish.
As long as we're twisting the lion's tail, you might instead say that the more people and companies who desire common progress share their work, the more people and companies who want to isolate themselves and their work for the sake of competition will be unable to keep up. Therefore, the more Google publishes, the harder they will be able to fight (our antagonist) MS.
In reality, I'm sure Google's leadership has done some heavy analysis on exactly how much openness benefits them.
My first thought is that at this point, it's not practical to stop doing business with everyone I'd like to boycott. I try to take the positive approach, and keep an eye out for companies that actually do things I respect. I'll refrain from examples, because any "X is good because Y" argument can be countered with "X is evil because Z". In concept, though, I try to give as much of my business as possible to the good guys.
As parent says, the product doesn't have to gain great popularity to have a great effect on the field, especially after a few years.
Plan 9 never "made it big", but it wasn't supposed to. Now most Unix systems have adopted ideas from Plan 9, like the/proc filesystem, and more concepts are being ported still, such as PortalFS, applying the theory that everything should be a file to network sockets.
Plan 9 isn't a superstar, and in my personal opinion it's a pain to try to use, but it's considered a highly successful project. I'd like to try this browser, just because it sounds cool, even if it isn't my new browser of choice. I hear people praise Firefox, not because it's the best browser ever, but because it put pressure on Explorer to keep up with the market.
You know, most of the +4/+5 comments I see at a glance, on this thread, are complaints about how anything bad about Apple gets modded down. (A few are Apple fans pointing out that they're not crazy, and Apple products have flaws.) If the iGestapo is really running the place, why are there no visible comments displaying this passion for Apple, and how has the criticism of not just the products, but the biased fan-base itself, floated to the top?
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's obvious that deleting other people's files is a jerk thing to do.
In practical terms, though, stopping people from doing jerk things over the internet by threat of discipline or retribution is impossible. It approaches trivial (sometimes) to simply render such attacks ineffectual, though.
To use your analogy, stating that the victim could have saved himself with better locks does not implicitly excuse the attacker. The attacker's guilt is simply moot. It's a given. If your victim had been told over and over about "better locks", and was being paid to ostensibly keep the house safe, and knew that he lived in a high risk area, then yeah, he's kind of a dumb ass.
I haven't RTFA yet, so I'm not extending that statement to the admins of this particular site. However, as has been stated (over and over, now), when you have that kind of policy, this is what you get. It doesn't mean they aren't victims; it just means they didn't have to be.
I wonder why I haven't ever had a rootkit on my Linux installations but ...
A well written rootkit leaves one marveling at its absence.
You probably don't want to destroy it, but put one good long scratch on the cover with a knife, rub some sand on it to add wear and tear (be careful not to get this inside the guts), scrape away the paint at the corners, and rub dirt over part of it. Try to make it look natural, like you didn't just destroy your own laptop trying to look cool.
If they still think it's cute, at least it's not the shiny pretty kind of cute. It should look like you bought it to use it, not to look at it. (Even though you're just doing it for the sake of looking at it.)
That's a good point. You should probably keep a copy of that little piece of paper (and, if applicable, all your other little pieces of paper) on a big piece of paper at home, in a safe if it's extremely important, or more likely just some place safe, like a fireproof box.
Also it's a relatively well-known string, or a simple variation of one, even if it's a long one. Actually, I don't know whether it would be breakable even if someone were using a good dictionary of phrases and permutations, but rather than do the math, I'd personally throw in a capital letter in the middle of one of the words, and a tilde or circumflex for good measure.
I may not remember #$q%{:}, but I can remember a capital T in PeTer and a star in Pep*per.
Parent is reasonable discussion, not flamebait. It's at 0, flamebait right now.
Considering that a stranger just informed her that he somehow knows she's been sexually assaulted and that this invalidates her views, I think it's a pretty low-heat response.
On that note, how the fuck does an AC post like the GP make it to +3 insightful?
I'm not saying you're wrong (or right), but nothing in your post seemed to demonstrate "...how quickly a thriving democracy can turn into an oppresive regime, here in the US." You started an interesting story, but then your climax was just a description of your feelings.
I don't think you're paranoid, but your feelings don't prove anything to me.
Just like the answer to the riddle about the unstoppable force and the immovable object, they can't exist in the same universe.
They probably encouraged it. If you're getting away with something, or getting the better of someone, that's tempting. If you're just abusing the helpless, that makes most people feel like a jerk.
Hanging an open padlock on a door is going to attract a few people that would probably otherwise ignore it.
I sympathize with the guy, because he sounds a lot like me, but just to play devil's advocate, here:
Yes, the authorities were being jerks, but that's not really a surprise. He might have anticipated this and either kept the observation to himself, or at least taken a moment to explain that he'd watched it, and wasn't any kind of threat, rather than acting shady.
The gold from Fort Knox probably isn't sitting behind the door to the tarmac. Odds are that the lock is just there to keep people from wandering out there. People have an amazing ability to go places and do things that they really, obviously should not. Most security measures are not taken against geniuses but idiots.
Like I said, my heart goes out to him, because he sounds like a cool guy, but it does sound like he brought trouble on himself, probably just by momentary lack of forethought.
If, on the other hand, someone had left the door open, perhaps they would be more receptive to a quiet mention of that fact. It doesn't make him look mysterious (suspicious), and to acknowledge the pessimistic side, the cost to fix it less than the cost to punish.
Try telling their parents that enlightened comparison with pencils.
The fact that certain people wouldn't want to listen to it, or that one wouldn't want to upset them further, says nothing about the validity of the argument.
Thus illustrating the power of the real strategy, here: obfuscation. Start with a false premise, draw logically flawed conclusions, and complicate the argument as much as possible. It seems a lot of folks get taken along for the whole ride, and while some peel back a layer or two of BS, by the time anyone gets done explaining the whole bad argument down to nothing, he's lost his audience because it's been more than five minutes since anyone said an exciting word like "illegal", "criminal", or "pirate". Yo ho.
Hopefully the courts will serve as a more captive audience and hear the whole thing out soundly.
(I'm not a lawyer, a mathematician, or a philosopher, and should probably just clam up now.)
On the other side of the coin, I don't have to read a text through even once to be able to find every instance of a given word, if the text is in digital format.
I actually feel a little restrained when flipping through a hard-copy, like my brain's reaching for ctl-F.
If the code works as designed, and that's how it's designed, then that's a mental defect.
BSD is truly free license
Yeah it is, if you are lucky enough to get something BSD licensed. No guarantee that's going to happen even if all the projects it was based on were BSD, it might be all locked up proprietary when you obtain a derivative software.
Theoretically, that holds water. Code A could be licensed under BSD, adopted by a company, and released as a binary blob as Code B.
After that, there is a range of possibilities. One is that B is basically a rebranded version of A, without much noticeable improvement. In this case, end users can just grab A instead. The other end of the spectrum is that A was a half-baked mess, and the company overhauled it to produce a great product. In this case, I'd be pleased if they released B under a similarly free license, but if they did 90% of the work on the project, then it's about 90% as fair for them to be able to keep it locked up as it is for a completely in-house proprietary project.
Basically, as the amount of "stealing" increases, the company's relevance in the market decreases.
That said, I could see an argument in the middle range, where A was pretty good, and B was just a lot better, that the company has let the community do the bulk of its work, but holds control over the best-in-class product. That strikes me as somewhat unfair. On the other hand, everyone who contributed to the BSD licensed code knew that could happen, which would seem to make it fair.
Back in reality, though: Can you site an example of BSD licensed software getting gobbled up by suits, and the end users left without free options?
I guess there's OS X -- then again, I'm using FreeBSD today, and enjoying it quite thoroughly.
Honestly, I can't see why people bitch so much about which license is superior.
At least in terms of what's best for the software, and therefore for the users of the software, they present different and mutually exclusive benefits. GPL forces anyone who makes improvements to the code (and releases them) to provide source, thereby giving back to the community. BSD allows those who can't (or won't, or think they can't) release their own work to use and modify the open code. These folks might give back in the form of binary-only programs based on the original (a mixed blessing, in my opinion), or by releasing select patches to the community, while retaining whatever secrets they wish.
As for which is better for a given piece of software, you'd probably have to take circumstances into account and apply a bit of game theory. I think how much freedom you end up giving, either to the users or to the software, is more a question of math than ethics.
The only ethical dilemma I see is whether ideas can be owned, and to what extent -- and if you're applying licenses, there's at least some implicit acceptance of the idea of IP. After that, it's just up to your personal preference what you'd like to see done with your code.
Right now, the AC "troll" is at 2, and mister "now it's my turn" is at 5. I can't judge the inner intentions of the poster, but it looks like a cheap psychological trick to try to avoid getting the mod you anticipate.
I was tempted to mod the "troll" down, but I wouldn't think of modding down Teckla, because he gave some information and made an interesting point.
To reverse a common complaint around here, being in agreement with the group or factually correct doesn't make you insightful. Calling your score in advance doesn't change the content of your post, either, but makes you look childish.
Now mod me off topic.
As long as we're twisting the lion's tail, you might instead say that the more people and companies who desire common progress share their work, the more people and companies who want to isolate themselves and their work for the sake of competition will be unable to keep up. Therefore, the more Google publishes, the harder they will be able to fight (our antagonist) MS.
In reality, I'm sure Google's leadership has done some heavy analysis on exactly how much openness benefits them.
My first thought is that at this point, it's not practical to stop doing business with everyone I'd like to boycott. I try to take the positive approach, and keep an eye out for companies that actually do things I respect. I'll refrain from examples, because any "X is good because Y" argument can be countered with "X is evil because Z". In concept, though, I try to give as much of my business as possible to the good guys.
Whitelisting, as they say.
I resent that.
...Mr. Gore allowed his wife...Allowed?
As parent says, the product doesn't have to gain great popularity to have a great effect on the field, especially after a few years.
/proc filesystem, and more concepts are being ported still, such as PortalFS, applying the theory that everything should be a file to network sockets.
Plan 9 never "made it big", but it wasn't supposed to. Now most Unix systems have adopted ideas from Plan 9, like the
Plan 9 isn't a superstar, and in my personal opinion it's a pain to try to use, but it's considered a highly successful project. I'd like to try this browser, just because it sounds cool, even if it isn't my new browser of choice. I hear people praise Firefox, not because it's the best browser ever, but because it put pressure on Explorer to keep up with the market.
Proof of concept is worth a lot.
You know, most of the +4/+5 comments I see at a glance, on this thread, are complaints about how anything bad about Apple gets modded down. (A few are Apple fans pointing out that they're not crazy, and Apple products have flaws.) If the iGestapo is really running the place, why are there no visible comments displaying this passion for Apple, and how has the criticism of not just the products, but the biased fan-base itself, floated to the top?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QTFairUse http://hymn-project.org/download.php Looks like they got a DMCA "cease and desist order", whatever that means.