Do you think it's a valid concept ? Ie: can it be used as a defense ?
As I tried to explain in my earlier post, I don't fully understand what is considered entrapment and what isn't. If you do a search online, you find a lot of confused people who makes claims based on a lack of understanding as well. Depending on the definition of entrapment, it's either a valid defense, or it isn't. Look at the two cases that I provided (one of which involved coercion, and the other didn't) to get an idea, or supply me with a scenario of your own and I'll tell whether I think it's a valid defense or not.
Now that's rather interesting. How do you reconcile making DUI illegal with your strong belief that only actions which actually cause harm should be illegal ?
It's a question of who holds the responsibility for the harmful action. If I incite people to violence, everyone listening to my speech has the option of either go hurt somebody else or not, so they should hold sole responsibility for their actions. If I drive drunk, I'm not giving any potential victim the option of either getting into an accident or not.
I am fully in favor of prosecuting only the hired killer, and not the guy who hired him. I know that's not how it works, but I believe it should be. If you couldn't find someone to do the crime, your wife wouldn't be harmed. Unless you did the deed yourself, in which case you're performing the harmful action.
How do you feel about entrapment ?
I might need some clarification, in the form of a scenario. It's hard to get a good definition of what constitutes entrapment, because people have weird misconceptions like, "if you ask if the person is a cop, he must answer yes." I think I understand where you're going with that question, comparing the police involvement with incitement, so I'll try to answer it.
As I understand the concept of entrapment, it's when you cause someone to commit an action they would not otherwise do without the police involvement. Depending on how you define "involvement", I either think it's bullshit, or a valid concept.
If it's true that if I ask to buy drugs from a police officer who looks like he might be dealing drugs, that's not entrapment, but it is entrapment if the officer asks me whether I want to buy some drugs and I answer yes, then I think entrapment is bullshit. I see no difference between either case. I understand the reasoning is that the entrapped person could go their entire life without anyone ever offering to sell them drugs, and they'd never commit the crime. That said, the same could be said for the cop that looks like he might selling drugs. Maybe the person would never come across someone who looks like they're selling drugs if the cop hadn't been there.
If, on the other hand, it's only entrapment if there's coercion involved ("buy these drugs from me, or I'll kill your dog"), then yes, it's a valid check on the police. It's possible the dude would not buy the drugs if he were not under duress.
For the record, I don't think drugs should be illegal (you should have the right to do whatever you want with your life, it only becomes a problem when you put other people in danger...driving under the influence of drugs should be illegal because of the risks to others), but the above scenario was the best I could come up with.
I think it is, yes. The problem is that I don't believe in universal morals.
Then you're a fucking retard.
Maybe one of us is, but let's think this through. On the one hand, I bet that for any issue that you believe depends on universal morality, I can come up with an example of a group of people that take the opposite position you do. On the other hand, can you come up with a counter-argument or are insults all you can think of?
Your world has no consequences for anyone who can find others to do their dirty work, because you're not willing to hold BOTH parties responsible for their part in it.
They're punished for the action they committed not for what someone else did but for hiring an assassin. In your world if you're rich or powerful and immoral and can find someone who feels they have nothing to lose and is immoral then you can do pretty much anything - have your wife or your mistress or a complete stranger killed - and then openly say so because hey, all you did was promise the guy a million dollars to do it. Where's the harm in that?
In my world there's a difference between saying you'll pay a million dollars for a guy to kill someone and actually paying him. Money exchanges hands, that's fulfillment of a contract, not just speech. That's like my boss paying me to code. He pays me for a service, I give him something for his money. In this world people would soon catch on to the fact that they'll never be paid for the deed, unless the powerful rich guy is willing to risk getting caught. This is functionally no different then your world.
President Nixon, did you actually carry out the break-in yourself? No? Well, no problem then, abuse your power all you like, it's other people doing the work, right?
Nixon resigned because people were pissed off and didn't think his actions were moral. He was never convicted of any crime, and was pardoned before such a thing could happen. Once again, not functionally different.
Osama bin Laden, did you fly the plane yourself? No? Well, off you go then, go ahead and find some more lackeys.
Osama bin Laden was not a citizen who was being tried for breaking any laws. The same rules don't apply in military engagements. It's the reason why such things as collateral damage where innocent people get killed can be allowed to happen. Basically, if Congress decides to declare war (or apparently if the President decides to, which is a different discussion altogether), we can send our military to do damage, and it's as simple as that. In this case we're worried about the threat he poses, not about whether or not we're violating his rights. Whether this is fair is yet another discussion.
And I am really, really glad that we don't live in a world where you have any power. At least, I hope we don't.
You're safe. I neither have a path to acquire power nor a desire to achieve it. I am quite possibly the least ambitious man on the planet. The most I'm likely to do is vote in an election here and there. That doesn't happen often, because I don't believe in "lesser of two evils" and will only vote if I find a candidate I believe is a good choice, not merely the best available choice. When I do vote, it's most likely somebody who has no chance of winning because, as you've probably surmised, my opinions are not mainstream.
I have no problem with any of that. I'm not bitter, I'm a believer in democracy. I may not agree with what others believe our society should be like, but apart from voicing my opinion, I believe it's fair that most people get to live in the society they want.
And if you don't hire a killer then she won't either.
Yeah, but to me the important question is who did the direct harmful action. I don't disagree that we're all safer in your world, I disagree on whether it is valid to increase our safety by punishing someone for an action (in this case, the murder), that somebody else committed. If you offer me money to kill someone, I'll refuse and nobody gets hurt. If I have that power, seems to me that the responsibility for the action is solely mine.
Inciting violence in a situation where it is likely to be carried out is exactly like pulling the trigger on a gun. You set events in motion with the intent of causing harm, with the reasonable expectation of causing harm, and those events do cause harm, and so you have committed evil. It really is that simple.
There's one fundamental difference. A gun isn't sentient. It can't reason and make a decision as to whether or not to fire after I incite it by pulling the trigger. People listening to my speech have an option to either act or not, so the responsibility lies solely with them.
It's morally wrong to encourage people to do violence.
I think it is, yes. The problem is that I don't believe in universal morals. Some people think that some of what happens in people's bedrooms is immoral. You and I may have an opinion about that, but neither of us should be allowed to do anything about it until it physically involves us. Some dude saying that I should be lynched may scare the crap out of me, but it's not until somebody actually attacks me that they crossed the line into breaking my rights. Sticks and stones and all that...
I can't see how you would defend it.
I don't defend the content of the speech, I defend the right of people to say whatever they want. I'm not anywhere near Aryan, I hate racists, and I will debate against neo-nazis all day while simultaneously defending their right to a public demonstration, for as long as it remains peaceful (as in, not physical).
This is apart from the reality of how mobs, stewing in emotion and adrenaline, can be triggered by hostile inciting speeches. It's been demonstrated enough times over the history of our species to indicate that there's a sound reason for making incitement unlawful.
I support harshly prosecuting those who actually engage in violent activity after being incited. Yes, you may prevent violence by quieting speech. You may also catch criminals a lot easier if you kept everyone's DNA in a database, collected at birth. I'm not willing to trade what I perceive to be human rights in order to increase safety.
I think you best look up incitement. The context is important. If you go into a volatile situation like, say, an angry crowd, and shout "Let's kill those fuckers!", that's incitement and yes, in just about every jurisdiction on the planet you have just committed a crime.
I'm aware they're breaking the law. There's a difference between the law and what is morally right. A good example of the balance between that are the hate speech laws that exist in Europe, but not it the US, where ever hate speech is protected.
And yes, I'm aware that inciting violence is a crime in the US as well. I believe it shouldn't be. I sure as hell am not going to commit violence because someone else is telling me to go do it, and if I can behave responsibly despite the incitement of others I don't think they can be held responsible for my actions.
Absolutely, and I can shout "get him Rover, kill kill!" without causing any damage at all
And if dogs were capable of the same reasoning a human being is, instead of being tools just like a firearm that can be trained to perform the work you require of it, then I'd concede the point.
I can spend all day saying "I will give you $100,000 if you kill my wife" without any consequence
I am fully in favor of prosecuting only the hired killer, and not the guy who hired him. I know that's not how it works, but I believe it should be. If you couldn't find someone to do the crime, your wife wouldn't be harmed. Unless you did the deed yourself, in which case you're performing the harmful action.
Youthful indescretion? What fucking planet are you on? They were trying to incite a riot for fucks sake. Everyone prosecuted for ANY involvement should have a permanent blot on their record. You break the law you live with the consequences.
I don't know about you, but I live in the planet where inciting a riot is a non-violent activity, as opposed to participating in a riot.
I can post, "EVERYONE GO RIOT NOW" all day long without hurting a soul. If you look at those words and you decide to be an idiot about it, that's YOU being an idiot about it.
can you really be guaranteed that no imbalanced individual will ever read some innocuous thing you've posted online and want some retribution for a perceived offense?
Well no; but I once got attacked in the street (meatspace/reality) by an unbalanced person who didn't like my t-shirt, apparently it insulted their god. It didnt make me start wearing humourless t-shirts though, or put on a false beard / Guy Fawkes mask.
Understandably so. However, whatever was said on your shirt is the equivalent of people throwing insults around on the internet (for varying values of insults...people's insult thresholds are different). You wish us to put a face to our words, when the default state is not to do so, because you think that associating a face to the words will cause all of us on the net to start wearing humorless shirts, that is, we'll start behaving and being more careful about what we say for fear of repercussion.
If you find that someone pointing out (with examples) the problems of pseudoanomity a bit 'Fascistic'.. how do you feel about the sentiment that a private website, run by a private company, can make whatever rules it fancies? And if it's users don't like them they can leave. Or do you want to impose rules on them; cos that sounds just a teency-weency bit fascistic to me..
Nobody is advocating for a law forcing facebook and google to accept pseudonyms. They have the right to make whatever rules they fancy (within the limits of the current laws). We have the right to leave yes, but we also have the right to bitch and protest in the hopes of being heard and cause them to change their minds. They have the right to ignore us.
There's nothing fascist about that. It's called free fucking speech.
You don't want some random internet user coming to your home to make his point without using words.
Well; I rarely say things that might make them want to do that.. Do you find you have such a problem? Maybe it's the way you express yourself?
Actually, I want to kick your ass right now. Your anti-freedom views are incredibly offensive.
Well, not really. However, can you really be guaranteed that no imbalanced individual will ever read some innocuous thing you've posted online and want some retribution for a perceived offense?
Ah; a story on how hiding behind pseudonyms is no bad thing....followed by a comment thread in which lots of people hiding behind pseudonyms insult each other in ways they would not do if their names were actually attached and the comments could follow them home.
The ability to be more honest than you're willing to while using your real name is precisely the reason why pseudonyms are important. What you're complaining of is the desired effect.
Curbing other people's freedom is too high a cost to keep you from being offended by some random troll.
No... your premise demands that the generic public has any rights whatsoever with respect to YOUR hardware. You are under ZERO obligation to facilitate me sending you 50TB of crapflood. In fact, you are under ZERO obligation to facilitate me sending you one single LEGIT byte.
Publishing my e-mail address gives the general public the right to send me e-mails. I am under absolutely no obligation to facilitate you sending me 50TB of crapflood, but it's my responsibility to administer my system so that it handle the situation where someone tries. I don't have to receive your 50TB e-mail attachment, but I sure as hell can't sue you for trying to send it to me.
If I have told you that the company car has an overheating problem, so please don't drive it at high revs, and you wilfully drive it at low gear until the engine breaks, you are to blame.
That analogy is equivalent to using a bot to mass spam them, which I already agreed with you would be a real issue. Nobody drives at a low gear for the entire trip. On the other hand, if I'm driving that car normally, and the car breaks down, even if I put it at high revs (reasonably high, not red-lining it) while accelerating during the normal course of my driving, and even if I was warned not to do that, they sure as hell can't blame me for breaking an already defective car.
The "problem" is that hacking and disrupting services is governed by the same laws, without much distinction. And it is disrupting services if the sender knew about or had reason to know about the limitation of the recipient.
No, no it's not. If the limitation of the recipient is an unreasonable limitation, you can't blame the union. If they were using a bot to mass-spam them with the intention of crashing their systems, I'd agree with you. Manual protest e-mails are a valid form of a communication with the company. If we allow considering this "disruption of services", companies will start having crappy e-mail systems on purpose just so they have the option open to sue people.
Something has to give; you (or rather, every subscriber) can't have both.
I don't think he was implying he wanted more than 5gigs at no extra cost. He wants the option of buying into a more expensive smartphone data plan that allows for more than 5 gigs a month. Then he wants to tether at no extra cost. That's a perfectly reasonable position.
The problem with wikipedia doesn't lie with the crappy contributions (those get edited out over time anyway), it lies with the people who insist on arguing about its content rather than improving it. This is why most pages [citation needed] are littered with "[citation needed]" left and right. Pointless little edit wars where a paragraph is added, removed, added again, removed again, simply because of clashing egos [citation needed] and not necessarily because the content simply wasn't up to shape [citation needed]...
I agree with you in principle, but I think you picked a bad example when you chose the [citation needed] tags. Now, you're not the first to voice the complaint, but I just don't understand it. Why are those a problem?
The way I see it, [citation needed] is no more annoying than [32] next to a sentence, and exactly as helpful. If you see an actual citation, you know where to go to to in order to do more research on the subject. If you see the [citation needed] tag, you know that the information might be right, but it reminds you that the submitter didn't back up the statement. If I see an article with a ton of [citation needed] tags, my brain is perfectly capable of filtering them out as I read, if I'm not interested in citations. I don't see them an an annoyance, I see them as a valuable service.
Spam, viruses, identity theft (oh irony!), 419 scammers, cyber-espionage and terrorism and other badnesses use internet anonymity. Again, I wouldn't turn off anonymity if I could, but it does lead to actual problems and loss along with advantages and win.
Those are not problems caused by anonymity. Spam, internet-based identity theft, and 419 scammers are an education problem. There have always been con-men. Just because it happens "on the internet" and you don't see their face anymore doesn't mean it's a new problem. Spam is pretty much a solved problem (I haven't seen any in years, thanks to the quality of gmail's filters). 419 scammers and phishing can be solved by teaching people not to trust blindly. Viruses are also mostly an education issue. If you teach people to stop opening suspect executables and to keep their system patched in order to avoid things getting executed through security holes, then you take care of most of the problem. The only thing remaining becomes unpatched security flaws, and I'm not sure how any of it has to do with anonymity.
Cyber-espionage and terrorism is also not an anonymity issue. It's a case of people not understanding that really important systems should be air-gapped from the internet.
Any who risk persecution take advantage from anonymity. This includes those who would be persecuted both unjustly and justly.
There are different types of anonymity. If I post this as an anonymous coward, you know nothing about me. If I post this as LateArthurDent, you can correlate this to other posts by LateArthurDent, but I'm still "anonymous" in that you know nothing about who I really am (but could possibly find out a lot based on what I've leaked around the net with various accounts). Finally, if we meet in person and you ask me for ID, I can give you a fake ID, and I'm essentially anonymous, even though you tried to prevent anonymity. If you're going around risking prosecution for cyber-espionage, you're not going to care that a website is asking for your identity, you're just going to try to give it a fake ID or otherwise go around it.
Again, I wouldn't turn off anonymity if I could, but it does lead to actual problems and loss along with advantages and win.
I do understand that, and I think you're taking a reasonable position. You've basically done a risk/benefit analysis that came out with anonymity being better than trying to prevent anonymity. I agree that people are generally asses when they're anonymous and there are benefits to avoiding that. However, I also do think you ascribe far too many other problems to anonymity that I don't think would be eliminated at all if you removed it from the equation.
People use anonymity on the internet to be complete pricks.
Yes, they do. So what?
It's easy to talk a pile of trash when you aren't accountable for your blathering. Doing away with anonymity adds at least SOME accountability to your online life.
It would indeed add accountability to your online life, which would be a bug, not a feature.
Random anonymous people on the net can't harm you. They can say things that you find offensive, but that's your problem not theirs. The fact that people can be complete assholes without any form of accountability is the single greatest feature of the internet. In addition to all the trolls that you hate so much, there's also a lot of unadulterated truth. I'm more than willing to put up with and ignore the trolls in order to have such a free forum.
That said, anonymity is also required in many cases, internet or not, to preserve life, liberty, etc. This is why Zuckerberg can talk all day long, but the government should NEVER get involved in any decisions about this.
I agree with that. However, if it's not illegal, someone will market to the people that want anonymity, so either the government gets involved, or we don't get rid of anonymity on the net.
Since this trojan shows that the Earth hasn't cleared its orbit, does that mean that Earth is no longer considered a planet?
Being in a Lagrange point doesn't mean that the Earth hasn't cleared its orbit. Unless you want to argue that the presence of a moon means the Earth hasn't cleared its orbit. After all, the moon also roughly follows the orbit of the earth around the Sun.
Not to antagonize here, but I am amused by someone saying "consider the source" linking to wikipedia to prove their point. (I don't necessarily doubt that Debka is "unabashedly in the hawkish camp of Israeli politics"... it's just the principle.)
Wikipedia is an excellent source of information, just like any encyclopedia, when used correctly. For example, in an internet discussion, it's absolutely fine. After all, you're not going to make any important decisions based on what andy1307 tells you. If it turns out wikipedia has incorrect information, and somebody more knowledgeable is participating in the discussion, they can cite a more reliable source that they are familiar with (and if they're nice, they can fix wikipedia while at it)
Wikipedia, on the other hand, should not be used as a source for anything that is meant to be be useful beyond the gathering knowledge stage. For example, journalists should not cite wikipedia in their articles. In fact, any encyclopedia is out of the question in that situation. One should use primary sources. A journalist unfamiliar with the subject matter can, however, start with a wikipedia search at the first stages of research. Nothing there would be directly used in the article, but can give you enough of an introduction to the topic to figure out where you need to go next.
People who complain about the reliability of wikipedia as a source just don't understand encyclopedias. Yes, by all means, complain when the New York Times uses wikipedia as a source. However, not when some dude on slashdot uses it. At least he's giving you a starting point. If you have reason to doubt him, and you really want to know, you can do your own research. Then do the rest of us a favor and fix the wikipedia article if it turns out that it was wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you think it's a valid concept ? Ie: can it be used as a defense ?
As I tried to explain in my earlier post, I don't fully understand what is considered entrapment and what isn't. If you do a search online, you find a lot of confused people who makes claims based on a lack of understanding as well. Depending on the definition of entrapment, it's either a valid defense, or it isn't. Look at the two cases that I provided (one of which involved coercion, and the other didn't) to get an idea, or supply me with a scenario of your own and I'll tell whether I think it's a valid defense or not.
Now that's rather interesting. How do you reconcile making DUI illegal with your strong belief that only actions which actually cause harm should be illegal ?
It's a question of who holds the responsibility for the harmful action. If I incite people to violence, everyone listening to my speech has the option of either go hurt somebody else or not, so they should hold sole responsibility for their actions. If I drive drunk, I'm not giving any potential victim the option of either getting into an accident or not.
How do you feel about entrapment ?
I might need some clarification, in the form of a scenario. It's hard to get a good definition of what constitutes entrapment, because people have weird misconceptions like, "if you ask if the person is a cop, he must answer yes." I think I understand where you're going with that question, comparing the police involvement with incitement, so I'll try to answer it.
As I understand the concept of entrapment, it's when you cause someone to commit an action they would not otherwise do without the police involvement. Depending on how you define "involvement", I either think it's bullshit, or a valid concept.
If it's true that if I ask to buy drugs from a police officer who looks like he might be dealing drugs, that's not entrapment, but it is entrapment if the officer asks me whether I want to buy some drugs and I answer yes, then I think entrapment is bullshit. I see no difference between either case. I understand the reasoning is that the entrapped person could go their entire life without anyone ever offering to sell them drugs, and they'd never commit the crime. That said, the same could be said for the cop that looks like he might selling drugs. Maybe the person would never come across someone who looks like they're selling drugs if the cop hadn't been there.
If, on the other hand, it's only entrapment if there's coercion involved ("buy these drugs from me, or I'll kill your dog"), then yes, it's a valid check on the police. It's possible the dude would not buy the drugs if he were not under duress.
For the record, I don't think drugs should be illegal (you should have the right to do whatever you want with your life, it only becomes a problem when you put other people in danger...driving under the influence of drugs should be illegal because of the risks to others), but the above scenario was the best I could come up with.
I think it is, yes. The problem is that I don't believe in universal morals.
Then you're a fucking retard.
Maybe one of us is, but let's think this through. On the one hand, I bet that for any issue that you believe depends on universal morality, I can come up with an example of a group of people that take the opposite position you do. On the other hand, can you come up with a counter-argument or are insults all you can think of?
Your world has no consequences for anyone who can find others to do their dirty work, because you're not willing to hold BOTH parties responsible for their part in it.
They're punished for the action they committed not for what someone else did but for hiring an assassin. In your world if you're rich or powerful and immoral and can find someone who feels they have nothing to lose and is immoral then you can do pretty much anything - have your wife or your mistress or a complete stranger killed - and then openly say so because hey, all you did was promise the guy a million dollars to do it. Where's the harm in that?
In my world there's a difference between saying you'll pay a million dollars for a guy to kill someone and actually paying him. Money exchanges hands, that's fulfillment of a contract, not just speech. That's like my boss paying me to code. He pays me for a service, I give him something for his money. In this world people would soon catch on to the fact that they'll never be paid for the deed, unless the powerful rich guy is willing to risk getting caught. This is functionally no different then your world.
President Nixon, did you actually carry out the break-in yourself? No? Well, no problem then, abuse your power all you like, it's other people doing the work, right?
Nixon resigned because people were pissed off and didn't think his actions were moral. He was never convicted of any crime, and was pardoned before such a thing could happen. Once again, not functionally different.
Osama bin Laden, did you fly the plane yourself? No? Well, off you go then, go ahead and find some more lackeys.
Osama bin Laden was not a citizen who was being tried for breaking any laws. The same rules don't apply in military engagements. It's the reason why such things as collateral damage where innocent people get killed can be allowed to happen. Basically, if Congress decides to declare war (or apparently if the President decides to, which is a different discussion altogether), we can send our military to do damage, and it's as simple as that. In this case we're worried about the threat he poses, not about whether or not we're violating his rights. Whether this is fair is yet another discussion.
And I am really, really glad that we don't live in a world where you have any power. At least, I hope we don't.
You're safe. I neither have a path to acquire power nor a desire to achieve it. I am quite possibly the least ambitious man on the planet. The most I'm likely to do is vote in an election here and there. That doesn't happen often, because I don't believe in "lesser of two evils" and will only vote if I find a candidate I believe is a good choice, not merely the best available choice. When I do vote, it's most likely somebody who has no chance of winning because, as you've probably surmised, my opinions are not mainstream.
I have no problem with any of that. I'm not bitter, I'm a believer in democracy. I may not agree with what others believe our society should be like, but apart from voicing my opinion, I believe it's fair that most people get to live in the society they want.
And if you don't hire a killer then she won't either.
Yeah, but to me the important question is who did the direct harmful action. I don't disagree that we're all safer in your world, I disagree on whether it is valid to increase our safety by punishing someone for an action (in this case, the murder), that somebody else committed. If you offer me money to kill someone, I'll refuse and nobody gets hurt. If I have that power, seems to me that the responsibility for the action is solely mine.
Inciting violence in a situation where it is likely to be carried out is exactly like pulling the trigger on a gun. You set events in motion with the intent of causing harm, with the reasonable expectation of causing harm, and those events do cause harm, and so you have committed evil. It really is that simple.
There's one fundamental difference. A gun isn't sentient. It can't reason and make a decision as to whether or not to fire after I incite it by pulling the trigger. People listening to my speech have an option to either act or not, so the responsibility lies solely with them.
It's morally wrong to encourage people to do violence.
I think it is, yes. The problem is that I don't believe in universal morals. Some people think that some of what happens in people's bedrooms is immoral. You and I may have an opinion about that, but neither of us should be allowed to do anything about it until it physically involves us. Some dude saying that I should be lynched may scare the crap out of me, but it's not until somebody actually attacks me that they crossed the line into breaking my rights. Sticks and stones and all that...
I can't see how you would defend it.
I don't defend the content of the speech, I defend the right of people to say whatever they want. I'm not anywhere near Aryan, I hate racists, and I will debate against neo-nazis all day while simultaneously defending their right to a public demonstration, for as long as it remains peaceful (as in, not physical).
This is apart from the reality of how mobs, stewing in emotion and adrenaline, can be triggered by hostile inciting speeches. It's been demonstrated enough times over the history of our species to indicate that there's a sound reason for making incitement unlawful.
I support harshly prosecuting those who actually engage in violent activity after being incited. Yes, you may prevent violence by quieting speech. You may also catch criminals a lot easier if you kept everyone's DNA in a database, collected at birth. I'm not willing to trade what I perceive to be human rights in order to increase safety.
That's not a computer.
But it is an "apple device" which was the wording used in the summary.
I think you best look up incitement. The context is important. If you go into a volatile situation like, say, an angry crowd, and shout "Let's kill those fuckers!", that's incitement and yes, in just about every jurisdiction on the planet you have just committed a crime.
I'm aware they're breaking the law. There's a difference between the law and what is morally right. A good example of the balance between that are the hate speech laws that exist in Europe, but not it the US, where ever hate speech is protected.
And yes, I'm aware that inciting violence is a crime in the US as well. I believe it shouldn't be. I sure as hell am not going to commit violence because someone else is telling me to go do it, and if I can behave responsibly despite the incitement of others I don't think they can be held responsible for my actions.
Absolutely, and I can shout "get him Rover, kill kill!" without causing any damage at all
And if dogs were capable of the same reasoning a human being is, instead of being tools just like a firearm that can be trained to perform the work you require of it, then I'd concede the point.
I can spend all day saying "I will give you $100,000 if you kill my wife" without any consequence
I am fully in favor of prosecuting only the hired killer, and not the guy who hired him. I know that's not how it works, but I believe it should be. If you couldn't find someone to do the crime, your wife wouldn't be harmed. Unless you did the deed yourself, in which case you're performing the harmful action.
Youthful indescretion? What fucking planet are you on? They were trying to incite a riot for fucks sake. Everyone prosecuted for ANY involvement should have a permanent blot on their record. You break the law you live with the consequences.
I don't know about you, but I live in the planet where inciting a riot is a non-violent activity, as opposed to participating in a riot.
I can post, "EVERYONE GO RIOT NOW" all day long without hurting a soul. If you look at those words and you decide to be an idiot about it, that's YOU being an idiot about it.
can you really be guaranteed that no imbalanced individual will ever read some innocuous thing you've posted online and want some retribution for a perceived offense?
Well no; but I once got attacked in the street (meatspace/reality) by an unbalanced person who didn't like my t-shirt, apparently it insulted their god. It didnt make me start wearing humourless t-shirts though, or put on a false beard / Guy Fawkes mask.
Understandably so. However, whatever was said on your shirt is the equivalent of people throwing insults around on the internet (for varying values of insults...people's insult thresholds are different). You wish us to put a face to our words, when the default state is not to do so, because you think that associating a face to the words will cause all of us on the net to start wearing humorless shirts, that is, we'll start behaving and being more careful about what we say for fear of repercussion.
You forgot your age and SSID..
If you find that someone pointing out (with examples) the problems of pseudoanomity a bit 'Fascistic'.. how do you feel about the sentiment that a private website, run by a private company, can make whatever rules it fancies? And if it's users don't like them they can leave. Or do you want to impose rules on them; cos that sounds just a teency-weency bit fascistic to me..
Nobody is advocating for a law forcing facebook and google to accept pseudonyms. They have the right to make whatever rules they fancy (within the limits of the current laws). We have the right to leave yes, but we also have the right to bitch and protest in the hopes of being heard and cause them to change their minds. They have the right to ignore us.
There's nothing fascist about that. It's called free fucking speech.
You don't want some random internet user coming to your home to make his point without using words.
Well; I rarely say things that might make them want to do that.. Do you find you have such a problem? Maybe it's the way you express yourself?
Actually, I want to kick your ass right now. Your anti-freedom views are incredibly offensive.
Well, not really. However, can you really be guaranteed that no imbalanced individual will ever read some innocuous thing you've posted online and want some retribution for a perceived offense?
Ah; a story on how hiding behind pseudonyms is no bad thing.. ..followed by a comment thread in which lots of people hiding behind pseudonyms insult each other in ways they would not do if their names were actually attached and the comments could follow them home.
The ability to be more honest than you're willing to while using your real name is precisely the reason why pseudonyms are important. What you're complaining of is the desired effect.
Curbing other people's freedom is too high a cost to keep you from being offended by some random troll.
No... your premise demands that the generic public has any rights whatsoever with respect to YOUR hardware. You are under ZERO obligation to facilitate me sending you 50TB of crapflood. In fact, you are under ZERO obligation to facilitate me sending you one single LEGIT byte.
Publishing my e-mail address gives the general public the right to send me e-mails. I am under absolutely no obligation to facilitate you sending me 50TB of crapflood, but it's my responsibility to administer my system so that it handle the situation where someone tries. I don't have to receive your 50TB e-mail attachment, but I sure as hell can't sue you for trying to send it to me.
If I have told you that the company car has an overheating problem, so please don't drive it at high revs, and you wilfully drive it at low gear until the engine breaks, you are to blame.
That analogy is equivalent to using a bot to mass spam them, which I already agreed with you would be a real issue. Nobody drives at a low gear for the entire trip. On the other hand, if I'm driving that car normally, and the car breaks down, even if I put it at high revs (reasonably high, not red-lining it) while accelerating during the normal course of my driving, and even if I was warned not to do that, they sure as hell can't blame me for breaking an already defective car.
The "problem" is that hacking and disrupting services is governed by the same laws, without much distinction. And it is disrupting services if the sender knew about or had reason to know about the limitation of the recipient.
No, no it's not. If the limitation of the recipient is an unreasonable limitation, you can't blame the union. If they were using a bot to mass-spam them with the intention of crashing their systems, I'd agree with you. Manual protest e-mails are a valid form of a communication with the company. If we allow considering this "disruption of services", companies will start having crappy e-mail systems on purpose just so they have the option open to sue people.
Something has to give; you (or rather, every subscriber) can't have both.
I don't think he was implying he wanted more than 5gigs at no extra cost. He wants the option of buying into a more expensive smartphone data plan that allows for more than 5 gigs a month. Then he wants to tether at no extra cost. That's a perfectly reasonable position.
The problem with wikipedia doesn't lie with the crappy contributions (those get edited out over time anyway), it lies with the people who insist on arguing about its content rather than improving it. This is why most pages [citation needed] are littered with "[citation needed]" left and right. Pointless little edit wars where a paragraph is added, removed, added again, removed again, simply because of clashing egos [citation needed] and not necessarily because the content simply wasn't up to shape [citation needed]...
I agree with you in principle, but I think you picked a bad example when you chose the [citation needed] tags. Now, you're not the first to voice the complaint, but I just don't understand it. Why are those a problem?
The way I see it, [citation needed] is no more annoying than [32] next to a sentence, and exactly as helpful. If you see an actual citation, you know where to go to to in order to do more research on the subject. If you see the [citation needed] tag, you know that the information might be right, but it reminds you that the submitter didn't back up the statement. If I see an article with a ton of [citation needed] tags, my brain is perfectly capable of filtering them out as I read, if I'm not interested in citations. I don't see them an an annoyance, I see them as a valuable service.
Spam, viruses, identity theft (oh irony!), 419 scammers, cyber-espionage and terrorism and other badnesses use internet anonymity. Again, I wouldn't turn off anonymity if I could, but it does lead to actual problems and loss along with advantages and win.
Those are not problems caused by anonymity. Spam, internet-based identity theft, and 419 scammers are an education problem. There have always been con-men. Just because it happens "on the internet" and you don't see their face anymore doesn't mean it's a new problem. Spam is pretty much a solved problem (I haven't seen any in years, thanks to the quality of gmail's filters). 419 scammers and phishing can be solved by teaching people not to trust blindly. Viruses are also mostly an education issue. If you teach people to stop opening suspect executables and to keep their system patched in order to avoid things getting executed through security holes, then you take care of most of the problem. The only thing remaining becomes unpatched security flaws, and I'm not sure how any of it has to do with anonymity.
Cyber-espionage and terrorism is also not an anonymity issue. It's a case of people not understanding that really important systems should be air-gapped from the internet.
Any who risk persecution take advantage from anonymity. This includes those who would be persecuted both unjustly and justly.
There are different types of anonymity. If I post this as an anonymous coward, you know nothing about me. If I post this as LateArthurDent, you can correlate this to other posts by LateArthurDent, but I'm still "anonymous" in that you know nothing about who I really am (but could possibly find out a lot based on what I've leaked around the net with various accounts). Finally, if we meet in person and you ask me for ID, I can give you a fake ID, and I'm essentially anonymous, even though you tried to prevent anonymity. If you're going around risking prosecution for cyber-espionage, you're not going to care that a website is asking for your identity, you're just going to try to give it a fake ID or otherwise go around it.
Again, I wouldn't turn off anonymity if I could, but it does lead to actual problems and loss along with advantages and win.
I do understand that, and I think you're taking a reasonable position. You've basically done a risk/benefit analysis that came out with anonymity being better than trying to prevent anonymity. I agree that people are generally asses when they're anonymous and there are benefits to avoiding that. However, I also do think you ascribe far too many other problems to anonymity that I don't think would be eliminated at all if you removed it from the equation.
People use anonymity on the internet to be complete pricks.
Yes, they do. So what?
It's easy to talk a pile of trash when you aren't accountable for your blathering. Doing away with anonymity adds at least SOME accountability to your online life.
It would indeed add accountability to your online life, which would be a bug, not a feature.
Random anonymous people on the net can't harm you. They can say things that you find offensive, but that's your problem not theirs. The fact that people can be complete assholes without any form of accountability is the single greatest feature of the internet. In addition to all the trolls that you hate so much, there's also a lot of unadulterated truth. I'm more than willing to put up with and ignore the trolls in order to have such a free forum.
That said, anonymity is also required in many cases, internet or not, to preserve life, liberty, etc. This is why Zuckerberg can talk all day long, but the government should NEVER get involved in any decisions about this.
I agree with that. However, if it's not illegal, someone will market to the people that want anonymity, so either the government gets involved, or we don't get rid of anonymity on the net.
Since this trojan shows that the Earth hasn't cleared its orbit, does that mean that Earth is no longer considered a planet?
Being in a Lagrange point doesn't mean that the Earth hasn't cleared its orbit. Unless you want to argue that the presence of a moon means the Earth hasn't cleared its orbit. After all, the moon also roughly follows the orbit of the earth around the Sun.
So we should march on D.C. this week? What should I put on my sign? "More Debt NOW!"?
How about, "Read my sign: No more tax cuts (at least until we've got this debt thing under control. In the meantime, it's necessary to raise taxes)."
Not to antagonize here, but I am amused by someone saying "consider the source" linking to wikipedia to prove their point. (I don't necessarily doubt that Debka is "unabashedly in the hawkish camp of Israeli politics"... it's just the principle.)
Wikipedia is an excellent source of information, just like any encyclopedia, when used correctly. For example, in an internet discussion, it's absolutely fine. After all, you're not going to make any important decisions based on what andy1307 tells you. If it turns out wikipedia has incorrect information, and somebody more knowledgeable is participating in the discussion, they can cite a more reliable source that they are familiar with (and if they're nice, they can fix wikipedia while at it)
Wikipedia, on the other hand, should not be used as a source for anything that is meant to be be useful beyond the gathering knowledge stage. For example, journalists should not cite wikipedia in their articles. In fact, any encyclopedia is out of the question in that situation. One should use primary sources. A journalist unfamiliar with the subject matter can, however, start with a wikipedia search at the first stages of research. Nothing there would be directly used in the article, but can give you enough of an introduction to the topic to figure out where you need to go next.
People who complain about the reliability of wikipedia as a source just don't understand encyclopedias. Yes, by all means, complain when the New York Times uses wikipedia as a source. However, not when some dude on slashdot uses it. At least he's giving you a starting point. If you have reason to doubt him, and you really want to know, you can do your own research. Then do the rest of us a favor and fix the wikipedia article if it turns out that it was wrong.