For example, in the state of Queensland suicide
ceased to be a crime in 1979. However, it is
still a crime to procure, encourage or assist someone to commit suicide. I think this applies
in all states of Australia.
Interestingly, in Victoria it is not "murder" to
kill someone in a suicide pact. If the jury
finds that the accused is a survivor of a
suicide pact and was acting in good faith,
the crime commutes to "manslaughter".
What made it memorable was that it was the
only comment in a large program written in
CDC's COMPASS assembly language. IIRC, the
author was actually proud of this fact!
I'm sorry, but your arguments are just plain stupid.
You picked the wrong person to argue with on this
topic. I just happen to have implemented
the JNI interfaces in an open source Java virtual machine. By contrast, it is clear that you
haven't even read the JNI interface spec.
First of all, people use JNI for buffer and array manipulation; that JNI code wouldn't work if it weren't in the same address space. So, your claim that JNI code can run in a separate address space is just bogus.
For your information, the primary JNI 1.1 calls
for accessing the elements of an array have
the following form:
The Get... call returns a pointer to an area
of memory that contains the elements of the
Java array... as they were when the call was
made. The JNI spec says that the pointer
may refer to the actual array, or to a separate
buffer that was specially created. The JNI
sets "*isCopy" to JNI_FALSE or JNI_TRUE to
tell the caller which semantics were used.
The Release... call performs the reverse operation.
If the Get... call returned a copy, the Release
call's "mode" argument allows the native code
to controll copying of the buffer contents back
to the Java array.
To implement these JNI calls when the Java
and native code in separate address spaces,
you simply make them always perform a copy.
In JNI 1.2 they added some alternative forms
of the array operations to make it more likely
that native code can access an array contents
without a copy. But if you read the specs
carefully, you will see that it is valid for
a JNI implementation to exclusively use copy
semantics for these calls as well.
Second, even if JNI code did run in a separate address space, it would still be beyond the control of the Java security modules, so it would still be unsafe.
That is rubbish:
The distinction between "safe" versus
"unsafe" is that "safe" code cannot break
Java type safety. Java sandbox security doesn't
come into it.
Accepting your (IMO bogus) definition of
safety as including Java sandbox security, an untrusted application cannot load untrusted JNI plugins anyway. Java sandbox security forbids
this... unless you deliberately mutilate the
security policy.
Finally, even if you were prepared to take
take the risk of allowing untrusted applications
to load untrusted JNI plugins, it should be possible to implement JNI so that all relevant
JNI calls check to prevent violation of the
security model.
Third, whatever harebrained construction you cook up with JNI in your mind, you can do the same harebrained thing with C#'s unsafe code.
True... but irrelevant. My point was and is
that this approach could be made to
work. I never said it was a good idea. For
a start, the cost of typical JNI calls would
be prohibitive.
I went to the FCC website to find out. It is clear
that this is a list of domains to which
SPAM must not be sent.
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/policy/DomainNameDownload.h tml
If the JVM and (say) C code are in separate address
spaces, then the C code does not ever need to
see the physical addresses of Java objects, or
anything else in the JVM address space. Thus,
the JNI API can in theory be implemented so
as to make it impossible for the C code to
break the Java type system.
However, I've never come across a JNI API implementation that works that way. It is
just too expensive.
from the admins might have been to unleash a
fearsome monster with an insatiable appetite for
naked gnomes. Or may be just some old fashioned thunderbolts.
If a denizen of an alternative reality complains
about the nature of that reality, the gods may
get angry.
It seems to me (as well as half the other posters!)
that the a big part of the problem is the propensity of government IT to go for "big bang" projects, with huge scope/requirements, and huge cost. By virtue of the project size, these contracts can only go
to large companies, and they tend to be hard to
manage... on both sides of the fence.
If the wheels come off a big project, the gov't typically pays much more than it anticipated, and/or ends up with problematic software. The
problems are things like:
Software that is tied to particular
platforms, and/or proprietary software
products.
Software that doesn't do the job properly.
Key software that gov't can't get its
hands on because the contract folded,
or because of contractual IP issues.
I think that there is way to avoid a lot of these problems. First off, the large IT projects need
to be broken into smaller chunks. Second, there
needs to be a much stronger emphasis on using
open standards within and between the chunks.
Third, there needs to be a strong requirement for contractors to reuse existing open software components.
Finally, (and this is the important part!),
IT project contracts need to be
written in a way that makes all software (etc)
immediately become the property of the
contracting party (e.g. the gov't in this case).
(In the current model, ownership of software is
only transferred at discrete signoff points
following an acceptance process.) This means
that if the wheels DO come off a project, the
contracting party has (and has had) better visibility on the technical problems. In addition, they have more chance of getting
someone else to put the wheels back on. Finally,
they have more leverage over a shonky contractor
who does poor quality work. (XYZ corp is less
likely to get new work if the crappy code they
develop on the "Lead Zepplin" project is put
on public display.)
Obviously, this kind of arrangement puts
extra risk on the contractor, so it would
be reasonable to reflect this in the method
of payment. For example, the contracting
organization might pay for work in smaller
increments, and possibly ahead of time. While
this would appear to push more of the project
risk back on the contracting party, it is likely
also to reduce the overall of a complete project
failure. In particular, if the contracting
party is paying in advance, it has more
incentive to adjust project scope/requirements
if the project start getting difficult. (And
they have more opportunity to see the problems
early.)
Obviously, the contracting party can still
get burned by a project meltdown. But if they
are on the ball, it should only be first
degree burns...
... I suggess we start finding a way to do what all lifeforms on the planet do.
Adapt.
Actually, the most common consequence of major environmental change for a species is extinction.
While it might not come to that (for the human species), it is likely that doing nothing about global warming in the long term would result in the end of human civilization as we know it.
I think countries India and China would follow
the lead of the West in combating global warming,
if the West (including USA and Australia) took
significant concrete action. Besides, arguing
that "the US/West should not lead since India & China might not follow" is self-defeating to the point of insanity.
It's better to deal with one issue then to not deal with any issues at all.
But it is even better to deal with all of
the important issues than just one of them.
You have to prioritize based on immediate threat.
That is dangerously wrong-headed! If you only
focus on the immediate threat, you will fail to
address important long-term problems that require
long-term solutions.
Consider this. The current "war on terror" is
aimed at preventing losses of (to be realistic)
a million or so lives. And losses of that order
of magnitude would be counter-productive for
the terrorists. By contrast, global warming
could plausibly result in losses of billions
of lives from famine, disease, wars, etcetera
over a hundred or more years. In fact, if
nothing is done about the global warming,
consequences of apololyptic proportions are probably inevitable.
Actually, people getting accidentally shot by law enforcement officers
is inevitable consequence of the following:
Law enforcement officers carry firearms.
Some people carry lethal weapons (firearms,
knives, etc), and are prepared to use them against law enforcement officers.
Law enforcement officers are expected
to protect peoples lives (including their own!!)
from unlawful killing.
Law enforcement officers, sometimes make mistakes in split second judgements about
whether they are about to be shot at, stabbed, etc.
Obviously, law enforcement officers should be trained to minimize the mistakes they make. But
the mistakes cannot be eliminated. After all, the officers are human beings.
Unfortunately, people get shot by law enforcement
all of the time. Some victims are unarmed. Some
victims are innocent bystanders.
The fact that this victim was a pirate VCD seller
is hardly relevant. He could equally have been
a drug dealer, or a shop lifter, or... someone
with a mental illness.
The MPAA ought to be proud of us.
It is illogical to blame the MPAA. It is like
saying that it is society's fault when someone
is accidentally shot while being arrested for
(actual) bank robbery. Sure, the robber doesn't
deserve to be shot, but that does not make it
society's fault for wanting laws against robbery.
[The previous poster did not explicitly mention "free speech". We are assuming that is what he/she meant.]
The concept of "free speech" as
enshrined in the American constitition is
about peoples' rights to express unpopular /
dissenting opinions. It flies in the face
of logic to say that "free speech" also
implies a blanket "right" to distribute material over P2P networks; e.g. in violation of
copyright law.
Even if you believe that the doctrine
of "free speech" should allow uncontrolled
redistribution of music, movies, software, etc,
no US judge is likely to agree with you. There
are 100's of years of US legal precedent on the
bounds of free speech. If your interpretation
were true, "free speech" plus the advent of photocopiers (for example) would have made it
legal to photocopy entire (copyrighted) books.
That clearly isn't so.
Finally, the American constitution has no force
in Hong Kong.
Actually, it IS about privacy, even if the
judge did not explicitly mention this issue.
(And without the court record, we don't know!)
One of the aims of the politician who brought
the lawsuit would have been to unmask the poster. I guess he/his lawyers thought it would be a significant detterent to critics if an anonymous email poster's identity could be revealed (and hence his privacy could be breached) by means a bogus defamation lawsuit.
It is newsworthy that this tactic was tried,
and newsworthy that the courts barred it.
Maybe you (and spammers, or possibly you as a spammer) would like that expectation, but that is not the reality any longer; spammers ruined it long ago.
Nonsense. In this context, all spammers have done
is drastically reduced the chance that you will read email from someone you don't recognize. Nothing (apart from good manners and
common sense) stops them emailing you regardless.
(BTW: I'm not a spammer, and I've been regularly
using email since the mid 1980's.)
An email these days is to be treated like a "web of trust". Just because I give my friend an email doesn't mean they get to share it with their friends.
This simply good email ettiquette. Don't imagine that any judge is going to let you sue someone for bad email ettiquete. Any more than a judge is going to let you sue someone for farting in a lift.
Just because I mistakenly get sent a CC instead of a BCC with 922 business contacts (as has happened to me personally) doesn't mean I can treat those addresses as my own personal urinal to piss on.
Again... it would (probably) be bad manners to send email to someone whose email address you received by accident. But that's all.
Frankly, people who think that an email address
is private are simply kidding themselves. They
may want this to be the case, but its
not the way that most email users understand the
world.
If you want a private email address, there are
various ways to achieve this; e.g. private
email networks, sender whitelists, getting a
secretary to screen your email, etc. But if
you choose not to use these, you won't get any
sympathy from me... or from a judge... if
someone does not respect your theories of email
address privacy.
I most certainly can sue you both. The only interesting question is whether or not I would win. I think a jury can be convinced that friendship is not transitive.
If you sued someone for simply sending you
an email, your case would be dismissed by the
judge before you got to talk to a jury. There
is simply no law that forbids some person you
don't know from emailing you.
Obviously there ARE laws that forbid someone
from harassing you (e.g. by email), sending
you SPAM, etc. But you cannot make a case
that every unsolicited email is harassment,
SPAM or whatever. It is just plain nonsense.
... but all email addresses should be considered non-transferable, even without those special measures
You may want this to be the case, but it just
ain't so.
The reality is that email addresses are free
to be used once discovered. If I discover your email address, there is an expectation that
I can use it. The only cases where your
model might have some force is when you
explicitly gave your email to me with the express condition that it not be passed on.
If I "leak" the email address, you might be
able to sue me, but you cannot sue the third
party I leak it to for simply emailing you.
This is not to say that anyone is free to use
your email address any way that they want.
For example, CAN-SPAM and other laws place
some (albeit insufficient) restrictions on
sending you some kinds of email.
I think you may be referring to the Heckenkamp
case where the hacker's lawyers were going to
challenge the constitutionality of pre-trial
restrictions. For example,
here
(Apparently he/they were challenging on the
grounds of restriction of free speech. That
sounds dubious to me... after all he could
easily write down what he wanted said on paper
and get someone else to 'post' it.)
Anyway, I could not find any material on the web that mentioned whether the challenge succeeded
or not. Somehow I doubt it.
Interestingly, the article linked above also
mentions other cases of internet restrictions imposed by judges during sentencing.
I'm sure that your Constitution does not guarantee a "right" to make a phone call. It is historically implausible. But (IIRC) your constitution does guarantee a citizen the
right to be interviewed in the presence of
an "advocate" of his/her choice.
If Mitnick was simply refused a phone call, his
rights were not violated... provided that he
was able to talk to his lawyer before / during
his police interviews.
If the police did refuse Mitnick access
to a lawyer during his interviews, I think
you would find that anything the police
learned during the interview would not have
been admissible as evidence in his trial.
We have the presumption of innocence in this country...
But when you have been found guilty by the law
courts, this obviously does not apply.
Anyhow, it is irrelevant. The authorities are
allowed to draw conclusions on the likelihood
that someone may do something, and act on those
conclusions... within the law. In this case,
the restrictions placed on Kevin Mitkin by the judge and the prison authorities were legal,
prudent and (IMO) fair. As a convicted felon,
he did not have all of the privileges of a
normal citizen.
I think you are right. I am not an HTML spec
lawyer, but the HTML 4.0.1 spec does not mandate an
algorithm for resolving target names. Instead,
it recommends an algorithm which does not take
account of frame ownership.
One could argue that because the HTML spec does
not mandate a target name resolution
algorithm it is not to blame for this problem.
(A web browser implementor ought to have the foresight to get the security right...)
However, I don't buy that.
IMO, the target name resolution algorithm
should be mandated (to
improve script portability) and it should
specifically address this security issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Well unsurprise yourself. Suicide is NOT a crime in Australia.
Interestingly, in Victoria it is not "murder" to kill someone in a suicide pact. If the jury finds that the accused is a survivor of a suicide pact and was acting in good faith, the crime commutes to "manslaughter".
But they do know what the one remaining survivor says was happening.
No, no, no. The guy was Pewter Fellers the famous typing error.
... Benson and Hedges announce the availability of a new line of carrot-tipped health cigarettes.
You picked the wrong person to argue with on this topic. I just happen to have implemented the JNI interfaces in an open source Java virtual machine. By contrast, it is clear that you haven't even read the JNI interface spec.
First of all, people use JNI for buffer and array manipulation; that JNI code wouldn't work if it weren't in the same address space. So, your claim that JNI code can run in a separate address space is just bogus.
For your information, the primary JNI 1.1 calls for accessing the elements of an array have the following form:
The Get... call returns a pointer to an area of memory that contains the elements of the Java arrayTo implement these JNI calls when the Java and native code in separate address spaces, you simply make them always perform a copy.
In JNI 1.2 they added some alternative forms of the array operations to make it more likely that native code can access an array contents without a copy. But if you read the specs carefully, you will see that it is valid for a JNI implementation to exclusively use copy semantics for these calls as well. Second, even if JNI code did run in a separate address space, it would still be beyond the control of the Java security modules, so it would still be unsafe.
That is rubbish:
Third, whatever harebrained construction you cook up with JNI in your mind, you can do the same harebrained thing with C#'s unsafe code.
True ... but irrelevant. My point was and is
that this approach could be made to
work. I never said it was a good idea. For
a start, the cost of typical JNI calls would
be prohibitive.
I went to the FCC website to find out. It is clear that this is a list of domains to which SPAM must not be sent. http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/policy/DomainNameDownload.h tml
If the JVM and (say) C code are in separate address spaces, then the C code does not ever need to see the physical addresses of Java objects, or anything else in the JVM address space. Thus, the JNI API can in theory be implemented so as to make it impossible for the C code to break the Java type system.
However, I've never come across a JNI API implementation that works that way. It is just too expensive.
Of course you don't. Dark matter is painted black so that you can't see it.
If a denizen of an alternative reality complains about the nature of that reality, the gods may get angry.
If the wheels come off a big project, the gov't typically pays much more than it anticipated, and/or ends up with problematic software. The problems are things like:
I think that there is way to avoid a lot of these problems. First off, the large IT projects need to be broken into smaller chunks. Second, there needs to be a much stronger emphasis on using open standards within and between the chunks. Third, there needs to be a strong requirement for contractors to reuse existing open software components.
Finally, (and this is the important part!), IT project contracts need to be written in a way that makes all software (etc) immediately become the property of the contracting party (e.g. the gov't in this case). (In the current model, ownership of software is only transferred at discrete signoff points following an acceptance process.) This means that if the wheels DO come off a project, the contracting party has (and has had) better visibility on the technical problems. In addition, they have more chance of getting someone else to put the wheels back on. Finally, they have more leverage over a shonky contractor who does poor quality work. (XYZ corp is less likely to get new work if the crappy code they develop on the "Lead Zepplin" project is put on public display.)
Obviously, this kind of arrangement puts extra risk on the contractor, so it would be reasonable to reflect this in the method of payment. For example, the contracting organization might pay for work in smaller increments, and possibly ahead of time. While this would appear to push more of the project risk back on the contracting party, it is likely also to reduce the overall of a complete project failure. In particular, if the contracting party is paying in advance, it has more incentive to adjust project scope/requirements if the project start getting difficult. (And they have more opportunity to see the problems early.)
Obviously, the contracting party can still get burned by a project meltdown. But if they are on the ball, it should only be first degree burns ...
Adapt.
Actually, the most common consequence of major environmental change for a species is extinction. While it might not come to that (for the human species), it is likely that doing nothing about global warming in the long term would result in the end of human civilization as we know it.
I think countries India and China would follow the lead of the West in combating global warming, if the West (including USA and Australia) took significant concrete action. Besides, arguing that "the US/West should not lead since India & China might not follow" is self-defeating to the point of insanity.
But it is even better to deal with all of the important issues than just one of them.
You have to prioritize based on immediate threat.
That is dangerously wrong-headed! If you only focus on the immediate threat, you will fail to address important long-term problems that require long-term solutions.
Consider this. The current "war on terror" is aimed at preventing losses of (to be realistic) a million or so lives. And losses of that order of magnitude would be counter-productive for the terrorists. By contrast, global warming could plausibly result in losses of billions of lives from famine, disease, wars, etcetera over a hundred or more years. In fact, if nothing is done about the global warming, consequences of apololyptic proportions are probably inevitable.
- Law enforcement officers carry firearms.
- Some people carry lethal weapons (firearms,
knives, etc), and are prepared to use them against law enforcement officers.
- Law enforcement officers are expected
to protect peoples lives (including their own!!)
from unlawful killing.
- Law enforcement officers, sometimes make mistakes in split second judgements about
whether they are about to be shot at, stabbed, etc.
Obviously, law enforcement officers should be trained to minimize the mistakes they make. But the mistakes cannot be eliminated. After all, the officers are human beings.The fact that this victim was a pirate VCD seller is hardly relevant. He could equally have been a drug dealer, or a shop lifter, or ... someone
with a mental illness.
The MPAA ought to be proud of us.
It is illogical to blame the MPAA. It is like saying that it is society's fault when someone is accidentally shot while being arrested for (actual) bank robbery. Sure, the robber doesn't deserve to be shot, but that does not make it society's fault for wanting laws against robbery.
The concept of "free speech" as enshrined in the American constitition is about peoples' rights to express unpopular / dissenting opinions. It flies in the face of logic to say that "free speech" also implies a blanket "right" to distribute material over P2P networks; e.g. in violation of copyright law.
Even if you believe that the doctrine of "free speech" should allow uncontrolled redistribution of music, movies, software, etc, no US judge is likely to agree with you. There are 100's of years of US legal precedent on the bounds of free speech. If your interpretation were true, "free speech" plus the advent of photocopiers (for example) would have made it legal to photocopy entire (copyrighted) books. That clearly isn't so.
Finally, the American constitution has no force in Hong Kong.
One of the aims of the politician who brought the lawsuit would have been to unmask the poster. I guess he/his lawyers thought it would be a significant detterent to critics if an anonymous email poster's identity could be revealed (and hence his privacy could be breached) by means a bogus defamation lawsuit.
It is newsworthy that this tactic was tried, and newsworthy that the courts barred it.
Nonsense. In this context, all spammers have done is drastically reduced the chance that you will read email from someone you don't recognize. Nothing (apart from good manners and common sense) stops them emailing you regardless.
(BTW: I'm not a spammer, and I've been regularly using email since the mid 1980's.)
An email these days is to be treated like a "web of trust". Just because I give my friend an email doesn't mean they get to share it with their friends.
This simply good email ettiquette. Don't imagine that any judge is going to let you sue someone for bad email ettiquete. Any more than a judge is going to let you sue someone for farting in a lift.
Just because I mistakenly get sent a CC instead of a BCC with 922 business contacts (as has happened to me personally) doesn't mean I can treat those addresses as my own personal urinal to piss on.
Again ... it would (probably) be bad manners to send email to someone whose email address you received by accident. But that's all.
Frankly, people who think that an email address is private are simply kidding themselves. They may want this to be the case, but its not the way that most email users understand the world.
If you want a private email address, there are various ways to achieve this; e.g. private email networks, sender whitelists, getting a secretary to screen your email, etc. But if you choose not to use these, you won't get any sympathy from me ... or from a judge ... if
someone does not respect your theories of email
address privacy.
If you sued someone for simply sending you an email, your case would be dismissed by the judge before you got to talk to a jury. There is simply no law that forbids some person you don't know from emailing you.
Obviously there ARE laws that forbid someone from harassing you (e.g. by email), sending you SPAM, etc. But you cannot make a case that every unsolicited email is harassment, SPAM or whatever. It is just plain nonsense.
You may want this to be the case, but it just ain't so.
The reality is that email addresses are free to be used once discovered. If I discover your email address, there is an expectation that I can use it. The only cases where your model might have some force is when you explicitly gave your email to me with the express condition that it not be passed on. If I "leak" the email address, you might be able to sue me, but you cannot sue the third party I leak it to for simply emailing you.
This is not to say that anyone is free to use your email address any way that they want. For example, CAN-SPAM and other laws place some (albeit insufficient) restrictions on sending you some kinds of email.
Interestingly, the article linked above also mentions other cases of internet restrictions imposed by judges during sentencing.
I'm sure that your Constitution does not guarantee a "right" to make a phone call. It is historically implausible. But (IIRC) your constitution does guarantee a citizen the right to be interviewed in the presence of an "advocate" of his/her choice.
If Mitnick was simply refused a phone call, his rights were not violated ... provided that he
was able to talk to his lawyer before / during
his police interviews.
If the police did refuse Mitnick access to a lawyer during his interviews, I think you would find that anything the police learned during the interview would not have been admissible as evidence in his trial.
But when you have been found guilty by the law courts, this obviously does not apply.
Anyhow, it is irrelevant. The authorities are allowed to draw conclusions on the likelihood that someone may do something, and act on those conclusions ... within the law. In this case,
the restrictions placed on Kevin Mitkin by the judge and the prison authorities were legal,
prudent and (IMO) fair. As a convicted felon,
he did not have all of the privileges of a
normal citizen.
The relevant section is here
One could argue that because the HTML spec does not mandate a target name resolution algorithm it is not to blame for this problem. (A web browser implementor ought to have the foresight to get the security right ...)
However, I don't buy that.
IMO, the target name resolution algorithm
should be mandated (to
improve script portability) and it should
specifically address this security issue.