That would probably fall foul of wiretapping statutes. But there's no such statute for visual information. In any case, he's accused of unauthorized computer access, not wiretapping. Quite obviously ridiculous, since Apple allows people to use their computers. Unless you have to agree to terms of service before you use a computer in an Apple store, there's no case against this guy.
If you don't want to be photographed in stores, you should work with your representative to make it illegal. What's happened here is that a guy doing something entirely legal is being intimidated by the authorities. No matter how much you value your privacy in semi-public places, you can't be in favor of that.
There's no expectation of privacy in public. Consider People of Walmart. So Apples customers have no legitimate complaint.
Also, Apple allows people to use their computers. They don't mention any limitations on what you're allowed to do with them. So Apple has no legitimate complaint here.
It's pretty obvious that there's no case whatsoever here. Dude is 100% in the right legally, the worst you can accuse him of is bad taste. It's so obvious that this guy is in the right that he deserves recourse against the SS thugs who took him in. He won't get it in America though.
Also, you're right "that government which governs best governs least". You just have to take into account the equivalency between economic and political power. A sufficiently large disparity in wealth becomes a de facto government. We even see this today where wealthy corporations hold more power than the government. (why do you think no one has been arrested for causing the financial crisis?)
So at some point, as you reduce the power of government, private power fills that void. In order to have the best government, you have to find the sweet spot where total power (economic and political) is minimized.
Regulators and bureaucrats are unelected and unaccountable, but so are CEOs. CEOs don't even have a mandate for doing what's in the interest of the populace at large.
No thanks, I'll take the regulators and work to make them accountable rather than suffer under the absolute rule of plutarchs.
Regulators should be like engineers, personally responsible for a failure to do their jobs. They should be paid well enough to accept those risks. This will draw more competent people away from lucrative public sector jobs, and ensure that they actually do the job they are required to by law.
As of now, if a regulator refuses to enforce regulations, what recourse do people have? They are not elected, so we can't vote them out.
Surely enough people have been burned to set up a class action lawsuit
They tried that in Canada. Out of $6 billion owed to artists, all they were able to get was $50 million.
If these contracts are known for being so bad, why do people continue to sign them
Mostly because it's their only shot at stardom. They don't pick people with talent who could hack it on their own. They pick kids from podunk towns just dying to get out and be famous.
Cynical, but absolutely correct. The two usually go hand in hand. Perhaps we need an analog to Occam's razor. When all other things are equal, the most cynical explanation is most likely correct.
If you have somewhere to be, you have somewhere to be. It's ok to let people know that your time is valuable. It makes them appreciate the time they get, and it makes it easier to extricate yourself when the time comes. If I'm in a conversation and have somewhere to be, I'll usually ask the other person if they have the time. I don't think it's ever caused offense.
Nonsense. You can get a nice watch for $30 at any department store. Comfortable, durable, and featureful. The only thing it doesn't do is serve as an ostentatious display of status, but there's nothing nice about that at all.
How can you defend sending a kit to jail for smoking pot? He's not hurting anyone but himself (if that!). Sending him to jail hurts him a lot more than pot. What sense does that make?
seriously, however cool it is to do drugs, it is still very harmful to you. and we should be trying to prevent kids from falling into the vicious cycle of drugs>poverty>prostitution>drugs and so on.
True, everyone who uses drugs ends up whoring themselves out. For instance, our last three presidents were all admitted drug users. We can't let that happen to our kids!
47 comments and no one noticed that the link was broken? Sure there's a BBC link, but it tells you exactly nothing. Doesn't even tell you what it is. I know slashdotters seldom read the articles, but come on.
Except that you can test an email platform with a limited amount of users, because those users can still email others outside of your platform, due to the way email works.
Which is exactly the way social networking should work. If they took a hint from SMTP, NNTP, and IRC they could come up with a nice, distributed social network protocol that could last for 30 years.
Sites with ratios generally have some sort of stimulus program that keeps the credits plentiful. Underground-Gamer for instance has golden torrent weekends, where the most desirable torrents on the site are free leech and 2x upload credit for seeders.
with the full support of the legislation and the public. Don't kid yourself - if the Miller test wouldn't exist, laws would have been put into place to mimic it.
Let's do it then. Draft an amendment to modify the First Amendment. If the people of the US don't like the Constitution as written, there are methods to deal with that. Blatanly disregarding the Constitution is not among them.
If one branch of the government can completely revoke a portion of its Constitution, without any input from the people, what's the point of even having a Constitution?
There is no obscenity exemption in the Constitution. I've looked. The Supreme Court invented the obscenity exemption. Only Congress is supposed to have the power to create law, and they may only modify the Constitution after ratification by the states. The Miller test hasn't passed any of these hurdles so it is quite plainly unconstitutional.
This is an absolutely crystal clear case of activist judges legislating from the bench.
Slashdot Mirror
That would probably fall foul of wiretapping statutes. But there's no such statute for visual information. In any case, he's accused of unauthorized computer access, not wiretapping. Quite obviously ridiculous, since Apple allows people to use their computers. Unless you have to agree to terms of service before you use a computer in an Apple store, there's no case against this guy.
If you don't want to be photographed in stores, you should work with your representative to make it illegal. What's happened here is that a guy doing something entirely legal is being intimidated by the authorities. No matter how much you value your privacy in semi-public places, you can't be in favor of that.
There's no expectation of privacy in public. Consider People of Walmart. So Apples customers have no legitimate complaint.
Also, Apple allows people to use their computers. They don't mention any limitations on what you're allowed to do with them. So Apple has no legitimate complaint here.
It's pretty obvious that there's no case whatsoever here. Dude is 100% in the right legally, the worst you can accuse him of is bad taste. It's so obvious that this guy is in the right that he deserves recourse against the SS thugs who took him in. He won't get it in America though.
Also, you're right "that government which governs best governs least". You just have to take into account the equivalency between economic and political power. A sufficiently large disparity in wealth becomes a de facto government. We even see this today where wealthy corporations hold more power than the government. (why do you think no one has been arrested for causing the financial crisis?)
So at some point, as you reduce the power of government, private power fills that void. In order to have the best government, you have to find the sweet spot where total power (economic and political) is minimized.
Regulators and bureaucrats are unelected and unaccountable, but so are CEOs. CEOs don't even have a mandate for doing what's in the interest of the populace at large.
No thanks, I'll take the regulators and work to make them accountable rather than suffer under the absolute rule of plutarchs.
Regulators should be like engineers, personally responsible for a failure to do their jobs. They should be paid well enough to accept those risks. This will draw more competent people away from lucrative public sector jobs, and ensure that they actually do the job they are required to by law.
As of now, if a regulator refuses to enforce regulations, what recourse do people have? They are not elected, so we can't vote them out.
Surely enough people have been burned to set up a class action lawsuit
They tried that in Canada. Out of $6 billion owed to artists, all they were able to get was $50 million.
If these contracts are known for being so bad, why do people continue to sign them
Mostly because it's their only shot at stardom. They don't pick people with talent who could hack it on their own. They pick kids from podunk towns just dying to get out and be famous.
Can't you just run your code through a pretty printer before you submit it for review? The only thing that really needs to be reviewed is the logic.
Cynical, but absolutely correct. The two usually go hand in hand. Perhaps we need an analog to Occam's razor. When all other things are equal, the most cynical explanation is most likely correct.
If you have somewhere to be, you have somewhere to be. It's ok to let people know that your time is valuable. It makes them appreciate the time they get, and it makes it easier to extricate yourself when the time comes. If I'm in a conversation and have somewhere to be, I'll usually ask the other person if they have the time. I don't think it's ever caused offense.
Nonsense. You can get a nice watch for $30 at any department store. Comfortable, durable, and featureful. The only thing it doesn't do is serve as an ostentatious display of status, but there's nothing nice about that at all.
Brute forcing and social engineering all fall within the realm of hacking techniques. There's no reason this shouldn't count.
how can you defend a kid smoking pot?
How can you defend sending a kit to jail for smoking pot? He's not hurting anyone but himself (if that!). Sending him to jail hurts him a lot more than pot. What sense does that make?
seriously, however cool it is to do drugs, it is still very harmful to you. and we should be trying to prevent kids from falling into the vicious cycle of drugs>poverty>prostitution>drugs and so on.
True, everyone who uses drugs ends up whoring themselves out. For instance, our last three presidents were all admitted drug users. We can't let that happen to our kids!
If you flash it with custom firmware it makes a fine paperweight. I pretty much never have to reboot mine.
It's the UK. If the police don't like it, it's illegal. You can get an ASBO for anything.
47 comments and no one noticed that the link was broken? Sure there's a BBC link, but it tells you exactly nothing. Doesn't even tell you what it is. I know slashdotters seldom read the articles, but come on.
Of course it is. You can technically secure a computer all you want, but there's no defense against fraud.
The NYT is written by rich people for rich people, what do you expect?
Except that you can test an email platform with a limited amount of users, because those users can still email others outside of your platform, due to the way email works.
Which is exactly the way social networking should work. If they took a hint from SMTP, NNTP, and IRC they could come up with a nice, distributed social network protocol that could last for 30 years.
The so called "reasonable man" test is used as the basis for interpreting just about everything.
Then why are so many unreasonable laws applied unreasonably? I'd like to meet this "reasonable man", and tell him to lay off the crack.
Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Sites with ratios generally have some sort of stimulus program that keeps the credits plentiful. Underground-Gamer for instance has golden torrent weekends, where the most desirable torrents on the site are free leech and 2x upload credit for seeders.
The SCOTUS is charged with interpreting the law. The First Amendment has been found to not hold with obscene material
Creating exemptions is not interpretation. Interpretation is restating what has always been there. There's nothing in there about obscenity.
The Constitution is not set in stone
Agreed. When it needs to be changed, it provides methods to do so. Is it too much to ask that the government use them?
with the full support of the legislation and the public. Don't kid yourself - if the Miller test wouldn't exist, laws would have been put into place to mimic it.
Let's do it then. Draft an amendment to modify the First Amendment. If the people of the US don't like the Constitution as written, there are methods to deal with that. Blatanly disregarding the Constitution is not among them.
If one branch of the government can completely revoke a portion of its Constitution, without any input from the people, what's the point of even having a Constitution?
There is no obscenity exemption in the Constitution. I've looked. The Supreme Court invented the obscenity exemption. Only Congress is supposed to have the power to create law, and they may only modify the Constitution after ratification by the states. The Miller test hasn't passed any of these hurdles so it is quite plainly unconstitutional.
This is an absolutely crystal clear case of activist judges legislating from the bench.