Is it reasonable to suspect people of murder just because they have in the past searched for, found, or viewed material, that might relate to methods used by the murderer?
When it is a method by which your wife was killed after you researched this, then yes, yes it is reasonable to suspect you of murder. Are you seriously saying that it's unreasonable? I mean I can't even fathom how your thought processes work here.
This is Slashdot. Many people here think of law in black and white (or, if you prefer, as a binary process), where you're either 100% provably guilty or you're innocent. Of course, in the real world things are much more - dare I say it - analog, and a reasonable person on the jury will come to the conclusion based on all the various facts, realizing that if someone had the motive (I didn't RTFA) and the opportunity, this search gives them the means to be the killer.
The part I don't understand is how does one have sex with a woman while she's asleep? [...] (and would 100% guaranteed wake her up before you got a chance to do anything at all) if you tried to fuck her dry. I'd like to hear her explain how this is physically possible.
So you click on the slashdot article about a service you would not want on a device you don't have? Then leave a comments letting us know you don't care about it?
So? Actually, what business is that of yours? This place is designed for everyone to comment on any topic. Even if you moderate him/her to -1, you can't stop them to express a point of view. That's a good thing, not a bad one.
He wasn't trying to prevent you from expressing your opinion, he was laughing at you for the obvious dichotomy between your actions and your words.
"We will no longer process payments to them because they are not consistent with our policy for who we process payments to."
This tautology neatly covers the fact that Wikileaks has been charged with precisely zero crimes over Cablegate.
Yet they have specifically threatened BoA with the leakage of sensitive information belonging to BoA. If somebody told you they were going to air your dirty laundry, would you still do business with them?
While I applaud the effort, I'm not really sure you can label this as a "monster success". A decent - though not obscenely large - number of people paid 1/5 the normal price of a single game for five games.
Nor is the absolute number - 1 million bucks - all that much money in the game development world. 10 people's salaries for a year? 20 on the outside? Hardly seems like the costs of development would be covered!
Disclaimer: I've not played the games, so maybe they're one-man jobs, I don't know.
It simply goes against their desire to get money for nothing. They want to put nothing into their infrastructure and so nothing improves. This is in sharp contrast with other businesses in other parts of the world. The difference isn't the technology or the scale of deployment. It is the mindset of the people making decisions.
At least 774,641 searched for the file (wanting to pirate it) and found this copy first. If this copy was not there, 774,641 would have searched for the file and found what was otherwise the second result for said software. What we can say is that 774,641 pirated the software, not that the uploaded caused it to be pirated 774,641 times.
I'm trying not to condonng the pirates or sympathizing with the software company. This is just (hopefully) an objective observation.
You're still applying an interpretation. What it says is that 774,641 copies of the pirated key are in use (or something similar; depending how they gathered their stats, it might be that many IP addresses, which may or may not correlate to actual installed copies, or... whatever).
When you say that 774,641 people searched for the file and found it first, you're making an assumption that is no more valid than any other guess. My own assumption, to provide a contrary point of view, is that people actively went out actively looking to get their hands on the paid version without paying for it, as when I enter a variety of Avast-related search terms in Google, I get their website, not warez sites.
In any case, I like the way they handled it, though I would have supported cancelling that license as well (after discussions with the actual owner of the license).
It seems highly unlikely that the US government would do something like this. A DoS attack is temporary, and only calls attention to Wikileaks. It seems to me that two other options are more plausible:
1) Self-proclaimed patriots doing a little wannabe-vigilantiasm. 2) Mr. "Personality" Assange has arranged for a publicity stunt. After all, if he can make it look like the big bad US is trying to stop him, and he still manages to leak the data, he can further his self-promotion as a hero.
I work seven days a week [....] Mind you, I have friends and plenty of relationships with the opposite sex, but lately it's just too much for me to handle. I come home and the last thing I want to do is talk to another human being.
Are you sure you know what these "friends" and "relationships" really are? At 7 days a week, if that's not just a one-off, you're not doing much of either.
I am, insofar as identifying the problem*. I've had exactly the same thoughts and gone through the same transition regarding Lee Greenwood's song.
However, I'm not in for the civil disobediance. Like most people, I place too high a priority on continuing my life and too low a priority on change. I vote, but we've all seen the change THAT generates. So while I agree with the sentiment, I have to stand up and admit that I'm not exactly helping reach a solution.
*I suspect, given our similar usernames, that this post is going to look a bit like agreeing with myself...
Still better than not hashing them, especially given how little additional work is required to do so.
No, because "so little work" involves changing credit card processing terminals around the world. For that kind of cost/effort, it better be a good solution.
No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.
That's the thing about the corporate system that many people fail to realize. It's very easy to get a corporation to change what they're doing if there's a coordinated effort by consumers to choose not to buy from a certain manufacturer until practices are changed.
That's the thing about the corporate system that corporate apologists people fail to realize. It's almost impossible to get a coordinated effort by consumers because the corporations have so more damn money than individuals, and can drown out any opposition to their pracices.
If they had so much money that they didn't care about people buying their product, they would stop making it. I don't know anyone who runs a business just for the sake of dealing with government headaches, angry customers, employee difficulties, etc.
I suggest an alternative view: that not enough people find the actions of the companies you're referring to offensive, and therefore not enough people participate in your coordinated efforts. i.e. it's just not important to most other people.
Do you really suppose that young Internet geeks have a better idea of "how serious" such a crime is than "old people" in the courts? This has almost nothing to do with technology, beyond the fact that technology was an enabling medium - the crime was incredibly anti-social behavior in the form of harassment. I'm not convinced this was the right law to try him under, but tossing someone in a cell for 4 months for harassing grieving families - with the sole purpose of that harassment - doesn't seem all that off to me.
Threatening someone would have made it worse, yes, but harassment is a crime itself.
roll your eyes and mock all you want, but don't forget that a lot of these guys had Top Secret SCI clearances they don't exactly hand out to every random Jethro. There was a Disclosure Project event at the National Press Club in early 2001 that had well over a hundred witnesses that were pilots, former military officers, etc... that were willing to break their oaths and testify in front of congress if called about these events.
But if people are willing to break their sworn oath to secrecy for the purpose of releasing a book, how can you trust their word anyway? I'll go back to mocking and rolling my eyes, thanks.
Sorry, buddy, but I have not seen James Cameraschlock's Space Smurf Pocahantas and I never will. There are plenty of us who actually, really and truly do not like crap Science Fiction, will not see it, will not buy the Blue-Ray and won't mention it until some idiot tries to defend it or imply that, actually, I really really like it but I'm too much of a snob to admit it.
Um, not to disagree or anything, but how do you know it's crap if you haven't bothered to watch it?
Slashdot Mirror
Is it reasonable to suspect people of murder just because they have in the past searched for, found, or viewed material, that might relate to methods used by the murderer?
When it is a method by which your wife was killed after you researched this, then yes, yes it is reasonable to suspect you of murder. Are you seriously saying that it's unreasonable? I mean I can't even fathom how your thought processes work here.
This is Slashdot. Many people here think of law in black and white (or, if you prefer, as a binary process), where you're either 100% provably guilty or you're innocent. Of course, in the real world things are much more - dare I say it - analog, and a reasonable person on the jury will come to the conclusion based on all the various facts, realizing that if someone had the motive (I didn't RTFA) and the opportunity, this search gives them the means to be the killer.
Risky. Some people could take such a request badly, even respond violently, and there is no way to know before asking.
Some people are known to response to "hello" badly, too. That doesn't make the GPs statement any less true.
The part I don't understand is how does one have sex with a woman while she's asleep? [...] (and would 100% guaranteed wake her up before you got a chance to do anything at all) if you tried to fuck her dry. I'd like to hear her explain how this is physically possible.
Depends on his... ... size, doesn't it?
Because they hope that the example will encourage people not to become fat impotent nerds on Slashdot?
Get over it man - most of America loves college sports, and your bit of nerd ragin' isn't going to change that.
So you click on the slashdot article about a service you would not want on a device you don't have? Then leave a comments letting us know you don't care about it?
So? Actually, what business is that of yours? This place is designed for everyone to comment on any topic. Even if you moderate him/her to -1, you can't stop them to express a point of view. That's a good thing, not a bad one.
He wasn't trying to prevent you from expressing your opinion, he was laughing at you for the obvious dichotomy between your actions and your words.
"We will no longer process payments to them because they are not consistent with our policy for who we process payments to."
This tautology neatly covers the fact that Wikileaks has been charged with precisely zero crimes over Cablegate.
Yet they have specifically threatened BoA with the leakage of sensitive information belonging to BoA. If somebody told you they were going to air your dirty laundry, would you still do business with them?
While I applaud the effort, I'm not really sure you can label this as a "monster success". A decent - though not obscenely large - number of people paid 1/5 the normal price of a single game for five games.
Nor is the absolute number - 1 million bucks - all that much money in the game development world. 10 people's salaries for a year? 20 on the outside? Hardly seems like the costs of development would be covered!
Disclaimer: I've not played the games, so maybe they're one-man jobs, I don't know.
It simply goes against their desire to get money for nothing. They want to put nothing into their infrastructure and so nothing improves. This is in sharp contrast with other businesses in other parts of the world. The difference isn't the technology or the scale of deployment. It is the mindset of the people making decisions.
Wait, you think people over here work for FUN???
In 1990, there was no youtube, and 256k was a pretty damn decent connection.
You weren't around in 1990, were you? A 256k then went pretty far beyond decent!
Really, it didn't even have to be offensive or explicit or illegal. It could be something as indirect as asking which Linux distro has IE.
You don't find that offensive???
At least 774,641 searched for the file (wanting to pirate it) and found this copy first. If this copy was not there, 774,641 would have searched for the file and found what was otherwise the second result for said software. What we can say is that 774,641 pirated the software, not that the uploaded caused it to be pirated 774,641 times.
I'm trying not to condonng the pirates or sympathizing with the software company. This is just (hopefully) an objective observation.
You're still applying an interpretation. What it says is that 774,641 copies of the pirated key are in use (or something similar; depending how they gathered their stats, it might be that many IP addresses, which may or may not correlate to actual installed copies, or... whatever).
When you say that 774,641 people searched for the file and found it first, you're making an assumption that is no more valid than any other guess. My own assumption, to provide a contrary point of view, is that people actively went out actively looking to get their hands on the paid version without paying for it, as when I enter a variety of Avast-related search terms in Google, I get their website, not warez sites.
In any case, I like the way they handled it, though I would have supported cancelling that license as well (after discussions with the actual owner of the license).
And in related news ... Ford Cars use only Ford Engines and Parts ... unless you root it.
Sure if I go to the ford dealership I am sold ford approved parts.
But I don't have to buy parts at the ford dealership. And I don't need fords permission to install them.
And I don't have to do anything special to install non-ford parts.
No. You just have to obtain them and figure out how to get them in your car. Same as jailbreaking an iPhone.
It seems highly unlikely that the US government would do something like this. A DoS attack is temporary, and only calls attention to Wikileaks. It seems to me that two other options are more plausible:
1) Self-proclaimed patriots doing a little wannabe-vigilantiasm.
2) Mr. "Personality" Assange has arranged for a publicity stunt. After all, if he can make it look like the big bad US is trying to stop him, and he still manages to leak the data, he can further his self-promotion as a hero.
I guess time will tell, though.
I work seven days a week [....] Mind you, I have friends and plenty of relationships with the opposite sex, but lately it's just too much for me to handle. I come home and the last thing I want to do is talk to another human being.
Are you sure you know what these "friends" and "relationships" really are? At 7 days a week, if that's not just a one-off, you're not doing much of either.
Who's with me?
I am, insofar as identifying the problem*. I've had exactly the same thoughts and gone through the same transition regarding Lee Greenwood's song.
However, I'm not in for the civil disobediance. Like most people, I place too high a priority on continuing my life and too low a priority on change. I vote, but we've all seen the change THAT generates. So while I agree with the sentiment, I have to stand up and admit that I'm not exactly helping reach a solution.
*I suspect, given our similar usernames, that this post is going to look a bit like agreeing with myself...
Still better than not hashing them, especially given how little additional work is required to do so.
No, because "so little work" involves changing credit card processing terminals around the world. For that kind of cost/effort, it better be a good solution.
No holiday time, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no restrictions on hours worked, no mandated breaks, few health and safety regulations, can be fired without notice or reason, can legally discriminate, etc. It is like working in the third world. Between this and health care the US is low on my list of places I wish to work.
Spoken like someone who's never worked in the US.
Anyone who needed ZDNet to tell them this clearly hasn't been on Slashdot very long.
I don't think it has ever been on the App store?
Sure it's there. It was in the top free list this morning, and I downloaded it. Works fine.
That's the thing about the corporate system that many people fail to realize. It's very easy to get a corporation to change what they're doing if there's a coordinated effort by consumers to choose not to buy from a certain manufacturer until practices are changed.
That's the thing about the corporate system that corporate apologists people fail to realize. It's almost impossible to get a coordinated effort by consumers because the corporations have so more damn money than individuals, and can drown out any opposition to their pracices.
If they had so much money that they didn't care about people buying their product, they would stop making it. I don't know anyone who runs a business just for the sake of dealing with government headaches, angry customers, employee difficulties, etc.
I suggest an alternative view: that not enough people find the actions of the companies you're referring to offensive, and therefore not enough people participate in your coordinated efforts. i.e. it's just not important to most other people.
Do you really suppose that young Internet geeks have a better idea of "how serious" such a crime is than "old people" in the courts? This has almost nothing to do with technology, beyond the fact that technology was an enabling medium - the crime was incredibly anti-social behavior in the form of harassment. I'm not convinced this was the right law to try him under, but tossing someone in a cell for 4 months for harassing grieving families - with the sole purpose of that harassment - doesn't seem all that off to me.
Threatening someone would have made it worse, yes, but harassment is a crime itself.
roll your eyes and mock all you want, but don't forget that a lot of these guys had Top Secret SCI clearances they don't exactly hand out to every random Jethro.
There was a Disclosure Project event at the National Press Club in early 2001 that had well over a hundred witnesses that were pilots, former military officers, etc... that were willing to break their oaths and testify in front of congress if called about these events.
But if people are willing to break their sworn oath to secrecy for the purpose of releasing a book, how can you trust their word anyway? I'll go back to mocking and rolling my eyes, thanks.
TechDirt typically has insightful commentary,
Unlike Timothy's posts, then.
Sorry, buddy, but I have not seen James Cameraschlock's Space Smurf Pocahantas and I never will. There are plenty of us who actually, really and truly do not like crap Science Fiction, will not see it, will not buy the Blue-Ray and won't mention it until some idiot tries to defend it or imply that, actually, I really really like it but I'm too much of a snob to admit it.
Um, not to disagree or anything, but how do you know it's crap if you haven't bothered to watch it?
He has earned the right to speak in support of those principles...
So has every American citizen.
Um, have to argue that. Every American has the right; rather few have earned it! And no, I'm not saying soldiering is the/a/the-only way to do that.