Bad law is a matter of opinion. And, in a democracy, 51% is enough to call the shots. If you think your opinion is so wonderful, it shouldn't take much to convince a few of you fellows.
If you have the guts to violate a law you think is wrong, fine. But please stop whining when you get arrested. The rest of us don't agree with you.
In the end, what's mine is mine. Call it property if you will, but it doesn't belong to you.
Intuit might have been smarter to try to sell annual subscriptions to the new capability to both banks and individual customers. Or simply package the new code in the form of a nonfree upgrade.
I agree with you, but if you bought software that needs to call back to a server, you might own the software, but you don't own the server. If the company, or the FOSS developer, takes the server down or otherwise changes it so you can't call back, that's life. You bought software that needs that server to work properly. That was a risk.
What extortion? Did Intuit promise they'd never change anything, that all their products would work, as is, in perpetuity?
Seems to me that Intuit might just as easily have altered their protocol and allowed its older products to function normally. Not to do so seems a bad business decision that's certain to annoy customers, but it remains their choice to do it and their customers' choice to go elsewhere.
>> They disabled the old protocol in the 2005 version, and have decided to charge both the customer for the upgrade and the banks for the privilege of using the new protocol.
That's Intuit's decision, and they have every right to make it. Quicken customers have every right to stop buying Intuit products. Banks have every right to not buy the Quicken protocol.
The market will determine if Intuit's move was right or wrong, but there is no reason to believe Intuit had some kind of ethical obligation to do otherwise.
Doctorow, et al, are exercising their free market power by switching to something else. That's how competition works. Intuit did something that they don't like and they are going elsewhere. What subsequently happens to Intuit is irrelevant to them, even if they agree with you that it is "a blood thirsty, morally defunct, money grabing ass".
Unless Doctorow signed a contract with Intuit obligating it to maintain that service forever, without change, there's little he can do about it other than go elsewhere.
The equivalent ahppens in FOSS every day as developers abandon projects and leave behind orphaned software. Cooperation doesn't get you much when no one wants to coppoerate.
I don't use Quicken, but if the communication involved is, literally, only between the user and a financial institution, then I'm not sure how that capability could be disabled by Intuit.
If the Quicken relays data to a financial institution via Intuit (why?), then Intuit is within its rights to alter or eliminate that capability. (Doctorow should check the terms of his Terms of Use agreement. I'd be surprised that Intuit agreed to maintain that facility, without change, in perpetuity.)
The same thing could happen in an open source version of Quicken if data was sent to banks via a single central facility, if a code upgrade or rewrite was frustrated by the need to maintain the old code at that real point.
Beats me what "Absolute Truth" is. I don't care. If you think your views of "Absolute Truth" is enoigh to get this guy off the hook, why don't you defend him?
The law is the law, and truth is something else.
Women should be able to exercise their right, no one should be held in slavery, and no one should be allowed to steal. This guy helped others steal, as does anyone else who links to an illegally copied file. The fact that you believe you ought to be able to copy whatever you want -- to steal -- is of no interest to me.
You can say whatever you want. If what you say is an attempt to aid and abet a crime, you've used your right to speak freely to commit a crime.
Even spoiled/. brats like you ought to be able to understand that free speech isn't a defense when the speech is criminal. But, hey, with folks lke you around, at least the right people will win.
Linking to a file is not merely speech. The link does more than identify a file's location, it enables anyone to make an additional illegal copy. Links to files are deliberately created to allow other people to acquire those files.
So, sounds like you think the best way to change laws is to violate them?
Why should those of use who disgree with that allow you to break the law with impunity?
If you want the law to be different, get busy and talk the rest of us into agreeing with you. Start with cogent arguments, not kneejerk insults and unwarranted assumptions.
Making unauthorized copies of copyrighted material is illegal. Hosting that material on a server in order to allow others to make additional illegal copies is illegal. Running a web site with links pointing to illegally copied material is as much of a crime -- civil or criminal, it makes no difference -- as selling maps pointing to counterfeit currency and fake Rolexes.
Of course, thet should go after the people distributing the files, but that includes anyone linking to them, not just the guy running the server that hosts the files.
He linked to illegally copied files. That means he told people where the illegal files were and enabled them to acquire them.
Except for the technology, this is equivalent to knowing where stolen property is being sold, directing traffic to it, and helping people carry away their new purchases.
The problem isn't the technology or the Internet of the freedom to use it. It is the wilingness of a lot of people to break the law.
And yet,/. chooses to splash it as a story complete with conspiracy, evil coorporations, and authoritarian governments.
If they had any pretensions at all to being responsible (not responsible journalists, just simply responsible adults) the/. staff might have asked the ISP to explain their action. They might have asked ISNA for a statement. They might have asked how ISNA is funded, what it's editorial policy is, and what kind of relationship it has with IRNA? They might have asked how any news organization based in an authoritarian regime like Iran can manage to be anything other than complicit in the regime's actions, if it isn't directly controlled by the regime?
Don't Sell Out Your Staff for Personal Benefit
on
Geeks in Management?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Follwing up on the "protect your people" admonition, never, ever, sell out your staff for your own benefit. Never give that impression.
If your staff thinks you've offered them up as sacrificial lambs, your are dead meat. If you've actually done that, your deserve to be dead meat.
If I am not allowed to express my approval or disapproval of those who govern me, then how can that government be consider legitimate? Clearly, it cannot, unless one accepts a standard of legitimacy that does not consider the needs and rights of the governed. However, that would be tantamount to arguing that governments exist to benefit the interests of the few who govern. That is morally unacceptable.
The question of a government's legitimacy is not a question of opinion or of correctness. It is a moral and ethical question. We are all born free and independent actors. That freedom is not a gift of any government. Any authority held by any government can exist only because it is granted by the governed, or because it is stolen from the governed.
I frequently get the impression that many people believe their rights are provided by the government. Nothing could be further from the truth. Or more dangerous. No one in the U.S. and other Western democracies believes the government or their country's constitution created the rights they possess. We possess those rights by simple virtue of our birth. Our constitutions recognize and protect those rights, but they are not the agents of their creation. I was born an American, but my rights and freedoms would be the same had I been born in Beijing in 1949 or in Moscow in 1917 or as a Jew in Berlin in 1933 or anywhere else at any time.
>> Why does it matter that China is not a "real democracy"?
China's government denies the Chinese people their aboslute right to govern themselves. Any and all governments not elected by the people are illegitimate. No one has any obligation to obey the edicts of those governments. That's why they resort to force to compel behavior. (See the Declaration of Indepenence. All this is nicely articulated there, in much better prose than I can create.)
>> Do you really think people in the U.S. "value prosperity more than their freedom"?
No. That's why I did not say that.
>> What would the people vote for if given the choice between tax cuts plus less "freedom" and tax hikes and more "freedom"?
Depends on where each voter stands politically and whether they perceive the tax cut will benefit them or won't. If the cut reduces or eliminates government activities that you need or want and cannot fund by yourself or that the private sector does not provide, then the cut will reduce your freedom.
>>...the purpose of any government (and any organized institution such as most religions) IS to control people and reduce their freedoms.
Absolutely wrong. The purpose of a democratic government is to protect and sustain the freedoms of the governed. This is not equivalent to allowing anyone to do anything they want at any time. That is anarchy, which is directly opposed to freedom.
1. Militarization, by itself, is not bad. Human history amply demonstrates that some of us are quite capable of killing many of us to advance our own aims. Turning the other cheek often results in a temporary, and false, sense of moral superiority, followed by violent death.
2. Soviet militatization of space, or anything else, was bad.
3. The U.S. has everything to lose and nothing to gain by cooperating with China in space. It amounts to little more than an invitation to share technology with China's 1960's-era program.
4. If China wants something, let them become a real democracy first. If the Chinese people, at least the Chinese people in Beijing and other large cities, value prosperity more than their freedom, we should walk away until they come to their senses.
I suspect the House, led by representatives with Hubble facilities in their districts, will retain money for a repair mission. I Bush will use his line item veto to kill that funding. But, I do expect him to lobby hard, out of the public eye, if the Hubble money comes at the expense of the human space exploration programs.
And, he'd be right. Better to build the capacity to put telescopes and astonomers on the Moon than try to fix an aging robot telescope of less capacity.
I don't live in a "constant suspicion". But, I also don't take everything people say, in private or in public, at face value. Certainly, there is no reason to believe that the veracity of a statement is increased if it is made in public.
We apparently have no statement from AA that this is their policy. We have no statement from the TSA. We have no statements from other airlines. All we have is Doctorow's blog piece. Even if I knew him personally, I would still not take it at face value.He has alleged that AA is deliberately misleading passengers to collect information about their activities. That's a significant charge that requires additional evidence before reasonable people can be expected to believe it.
Many bloggers claim superiority over traditional news organizations in terms of accuracy and lack of bias. Here's a perfect chance for them to prove it.
This has nothing to do with trust. There's no more, or less reason to trust the AA employees than Doctorow. Doctorow's account of events hasn't been verified. AA's account has neither been acquired independently or verified. Both could be telling the complete truth. Both could be lieing. Both could be misinterpreting what actually happened.
Whatever Doctorow's intended point (I took it that he simply wanted to leverage his blog to blow off steam in public), I've no reason to take his, or AA's, version of events at face value.
I'm talking about Doctorow, not the EFF. In any case, I don't consider a number of the things the EFF supports to be civil, or any other kind of, rights.
Bottom line: We only have Doctorow's word that this incident took place, and took place in the way that he described. We have no confirmation that this AA was acting to enforce a TSA regulation, or that such a regulation even exists.
Admiration of an individual should not color our perception about what may or may not have happened.
Yeah, I read the article. I said "if", which is a rational thing to do since we only have Doctorow's word on this. I don't know for a fact if this is a TSA rule or not.
And, your notion of Doctorow as a "civil rights crusader" is laughable. Since when has running a web site and wanting to let people steal things that don't belong to them amounted to crusading for civil rights?
It's insurance that's behind those different rental car fees. If you buy their CDW, LDW, etc., it protects you only in the states you specify you will be driving in. If you have an accident in a state that you had agreed you weren't going to be in, you are liable.
I disagree. If this is a TSA reg, and if it is a requirement for entry, then the request should be made via a standarized form, similar to the customs declarations every passenger on an international flight is required to complete. That form should state the basis of the request, and the consequences of not complying. If Doctorow refused to complete such a form, he would be reponsible for the consequences (e.g., being refused entry).
Slashdot Mirror
Bad law is a matter of opinion. And, in a democracy, 51% is enough to call the shots. If you think your opinion is so wonderful, it shouldn't take much to convince a few of you fellows.
If you have the guts to violate a law you think is wrong, fine. But please stop whining when you get arrested. The rest of us don't agree with you.
In the end, what's mine is mine. Call it property if you will, but it doesn't belong to you.
Intuit might have been smarter to try to sell annual subscriptions to the new capability to both banks and individual customers. Or simply package the new code in the form of a nonfree upgrade.
I agree with you, but if you bought software that needs to call back to a server, you might own the software, but you don't own the server. If the company, or the FOSS developer, takes the server down or otherwise changes it so you can't call back, that's life. You bought software that needs that server to work properly. That was a risk.
What extortion? Did Intuit promise they'd never change anything, that all their products would work, as is, in perpetuity?
Seems to me that Intuit might just as easily have altered their protocol and allowed its older products to function normally. Not to do so seems a bad business decision that's certain to annoy customers, but it remains their choice to do it and their customers' choice to go elsewhere.
>> They disabled the old protocol in the 2005 version, and have decided to charge both the customer for the upgrade and the banks for the privilege of using the new protocol.
That's Intuit's decision, and they have every right to make it. Quicken customers have every right to stop buying Intuit products. Banks have every right to not buy the Quicken protocol.
The market will determine if Intuit's move was right or wrong, but there is no reason to believe Intuit had some kind of ethical obligation to do otherwise.
Doctorow, et al, are exercising their free market power by switching to something else. That's how competition works. Intuit did something that they don't like and they are going elsewhere. What subsequently happens to Intuit is irrelevant to them, even if they agree with you that it is "a blood thirsty, morally defunct, money grabing ass".
Unless Doctorow signed a contract with Intuit obligating it to maintain that service forever, without change, there's little he can do about it other than go elsewhere.
The equivalent ahppens in FOSS every day as developers abandon projects and leave behind orphaned software. Cooperation doesn't get you much when no one wants to coppoerate.
Might be bait and switch, might not be.
I don't use Quicken, but if the communication involved is, literally, only between the user and a financial institution, then I'm not sure how that capability could be disabled by Intuit.
If the Quicken relays data to a financial institution via Intuit (why?), then Intuit is within its rights to alter or eliminate that capability. (Doctorow should check the terms of his Terms of Use agreement. I'd be surprised that Intuit agreed to maintain that facility, without change, in perpetuity.)
The same thing could happen in an open source version of Quicken if data was sent to banks via a single central facility, if a code upgrade or rewrite was frustrated by the need to maintain the old code at that real point.
Beats me what "Absolute Truth" is. I don't care. If you think your views of "Absolute Truth" is enoigh to get this guy off the hook, why don't you defend him?
The law is the law, and truth is something else.
Women should be able to exercise their right, no one should be held in slavery, and no one should be allowed to steal. This guy helped others steal, as does anyone else who links to an illegally copied file. The fact that you believe you ought to be able to copy whatever you want -- to steal -- is of no interest to me.
A link isn't speech.
/. brats like you ought to be able to understand that free speech isn't a defense when the speech is criminal. But, hey, with folks lke you around, at least the right people will win.
You can say whatever you want. If what you say is an attempt to aid and abet a crime, you've used your right to speak freely to commit a crime.
Even spoiled
Linking to a file is not merely speech. The link does more than identify a file's location, it enables anyone to make an additional illegal copy. Links to files are deliberately created to allow other people to acquire those files.
So, sounds like you think the best way to change laws is to violate them?
Why should those of use who disgree with that allow you to break the law with impunity?
If you want the law to be different, get busy and talk the rest of us into agreeing with you. Start with cogent arguments, not kneejerk insults and unwarranted assumptions.
>> Legal is generally associated with MIGHT...
Last I knew, people could vote in Scandanavian countries.
But, I assume you're one of the mindless and indoctrinated.
Making unauthorized copies of copyrighted material is illegal. Hosting that material on a server in order to allow others to make additional illegal copies is illegal. Running a web site with links pointing to illegally copied material is as much of a crime -- civil or criminal, it makes no difference -- as selling maps pointing to counterfeit currency and fake Rolexes.
Of course, thet should go after the people distributing the files, but that includes anyone linking to them, not just the guy running the server that hosts the files.
Not sad, unless you like helping criminals.
He linked to illegally copied files. That means he told people where the illegal files were and enabled them to acquire them.
Except for the technology, this is equivalent to knowing where stolen property is being sold, directing traffic to it, and helping people carry away their new purchases.
The problem isn't the technology or the Internet of the freedom to use it. It is the wilingness of a lot of people to break the law.
>> ... details are virtually unknown about this...
/. chooses to splash it as a story complete with conspiracy, evil coorporations, and authoritarian governments.
/. staff might have asked the ISP to explain their action. They might have asked ISNA for a statement. They might have asked how ISNA is funded, what it's editorial policy is, and what kind of relationship it has with IRNA? They might have asked how any news organization based in an authoritarian regime like Iran can manage to be anything other than complicit in the regime's actions, if it isn't directly controlled by the regime?
And yet,
If they had any pretensions at all to being responsible (not responsible journalists, just simply responsible adults) the
Follwing up on the "protect your people" admonition, never, ever, sell out your staff for your own benefit. Never give that impression.
If your staff thinks you've offered them up as sacrificial lambs, your are dead meat. If you've actually done that, your deserve to be dead meat.
If I am not allowed to express my approval or disapproval of those who govern me, then how can that government be consider legitimate? Clearly, it cannot, unless one accepts a standard of legitimacy that does not consider the needs and rights of the governed. However, that would be tantamount to arguing that governments exist to benefit the interests of the few who govern. That is morally unacceptable.
The question of a government's legitimacy is not a question of opinion or of correctness. It is a moral and ethical question. We are all born free and independent actors. That freedom is not a gift of any government. Any authority held by any government can exist only because it is granted by the governed, or because it is stolen from the governed.
I frequently get the impression that many people believe their rights are provided by the government. Nothing could be further from the truth. Or more dangerous. No one in the U.S. and other Western democracies believes the government or their country's constitution created the rights they possess. We possess those rights by simple virtue of our birth. Our constitutions recognize and protect those rights, but they are not the agents of their creation. I was born an American, but my rights and freedoms would be the same had I been born in Beijing in 1949 or in Moscow in 1917 or as a Jew in Berlin in 1933 or anywhere else at any time.
>> Why does it matter that China is not a "real democracy"?
...the purpose of any government (and any organized institution such as most religions) IS to control people and reduce their freedoms.
China's government denies the Chinese people their aboslute right to govern themselves. Any and all governments not elected by the people are illegitimate. No one has any obligation to obey the edicts of those governments. That's why they resort to force to compel behavior. (See the Declaration of Indepenence. All this is nicely articulated there, in much better prose than I can create.)
>> Do you really think people in the U.S. "value prosperity more than their freedom"?
No. That's why I did not say that.
>> What would the people vote for if given the choice between tax cuts plus less "freedom" and tax hikes and more "freedom"?
Depends on where each voter stands politically and whether they perceive the tax cut will benefit them or won't. If the cut reduces or eliminates government activities that you need or want and cannot fund by yourself or that the private sector does not provide, then the cut will reduce your freedom.
>>
Absolutely wrong. The purpose of a democratic government is to protect and sustain the freedoms of the governed. This is not equivalent to allowing anyone to do anything they want at any time. That is anarchy, which is directly opposed to freedom.
1. Militarization, by itself, is not bad. Human history amply demonstrates that some of us are quite capable of killing many of us to advance our own aims. Turning the other cheek often results in a temporary, and false, sense of moral superiority, followed by violent death.
2. Soviet militatization of space, or anything else, was bad.
3. The U.S. has everything to lose and nothing to gain by cooperating with China in space. It amounts to little more than an invitation to share technology with China's 1960's-era program.
4. If China wants something, let them become a real democracy first. If the Chinese people, at least the Chinese people in Beijing and other large cities, value prosperity more than their freedom, we should walk away until they come to their senses.
I suspect the House, led by representatives with Hubble facilities in their districts, will retain money for a repair mission. I Bush will use his line item veto to kill that funding. But, I do expect him to lobby hard, out of the public eye, if the Hubble money comes at the expense of the human space exploration programs.
And, he'd be right. Better to build the capacity to put telescopes and astonomers on the Moon than try to fix an aging robot telescope of less capacity.
I don't live in a "constant suspicion". But, I also don't take everything people say, in private or in public, at face value. Certainly, there is no reason to believe that the veracity of a statement is increased if it is made in public.
We apparently have no statement from AA that this is their policy. We have no statement from the TSA. We have no statements from other airlines. All we have is Doctorow's blog piece. Even if I knew him personally, I would still not take it at face value.He has alleged that AA is deliberately misleading passengers to collect information about their activities. That's a significant charge that requires additional evidence before reasonable people can be expected to believe it.
Many bloggers claim superiority over traditional news organizations in terms of accuracy and lack of bias. Here's a perfect chance for them to prove it.
This has nothing to do with trust. There's no more, or less reason to trust the AA employees than Doctorow. Doctorow's account of events hasn't been verified. AA's account has neither been acquired independently or verified. Both could be telling the complete truth. Both could be lieing. Both could be misinterpreting what actually happened.
Whatever Doctorow's intended point (I took it that he simply wanted to leverage his blog to blow off steam in public), I've no reason to take his, or AA's, version of events at face value.
I'm talking about Doctorow, not the EFF. In any case, I don't consider a number of the things the EFF supports to be civil, or any other kind of, rights.
Bottom line: We only have Doctorow's word that this incident took place, and took place in the way that he described. We have no confirmation that this AA was acting to enforce a TSA regulation, or that such a regulation even exists.
Admiration of an individual should not color our perception about what may or may not have happened.
Yeah, I read the article. I said "if", which is a rational thing to do since we only have Doctorow's word on this. I don't know for a fact if this is a TSA rule or not.
And, your notion of Doctorow as a "civil rights crusader" is laughable. Since when has running a web site and wanting to let people steal things that don't belong to them amounted to crusading for civil rights?
It's insurance that's behind those different rental car fees. If you buy their CDW, LDW, etc., it protects you only in the states you specify you will be driving in. If you have an accident in a state that you had agreed you weren't going to be in, you are liable.
I disagree. If this is a TSA reg, and if it is a requirement for entry, then the request should be made via a standarized form, similar to the customs declarations every passenger on an international flight is required to complete. That form should state the basis of the request, and the consequences of not complying. If Doctorow refused to complete such a form, he would be reponsible for the consequences (e.g., being refused entry).