1. To reform the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 to rationalize it with the 21st century by the following measure
A. Repeal any and all language from the CFAA that originated in the Espionage Act of 1918 or its amended forms such as the McCarran Internal Security Act or the Subversive Activities Control Act of the 1950s.
B. Alter the definition of "Protected Computer" so that the act only covers Federal Government and Financial computer systems, and no others.
C. Remove any and all language that creates a crime simply because a computer is involved in an activity, where otherwise the activity would not be considered a crime.
D. Specifically state that the Interstate Commerce Clause does not apply to the Act. Almost all modern communications are 1. done on a computer, and 2. interstate in nature. Whereas it is against the spirit of the Founding Fathers to have the Federal Goverment control every single communication in a Free country, this act should be adopted by the congress and signed by the President.
why you would use torrent freak when there is Amazon, Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, and dozens of other ways to get video online.
unless you are trying to find some hard to find video -- (like Aleksandr Ptushko's 1972 Russian fantasy film, Ruslan and Ludmila?.. oh wait, thats on fucking youtube for free) -- what is the point of "avoiding paying for" transformers 3 or harry potter? I mean can you not afford the massive 4 dollar price or whatever that they charge you to watch this stuff online? Is 5 bucks going to break you?
i ask because the projects you mentioned don't seem to have heavy OpenGL functionality like a game might need. a lot of games in particular are bleeding edge users of graphics effects...then there is sound.... anyways...
I used to be like you, complaining that it was 'no big deal' to release a linux game. What could possibly be so hard about it? OpenGL, write once, run anywhere! Then... I met GLX. And the documentation on opengl.org. And Gallium / LLVM. and Mesa. and... well. i just try not to think about it too much. The doctors say I should be OK... eventually...
the rise of the 'computer virus' was not as clean cut as we remember it. there were people who actively 'played' the 'news cycle' of the day to promote the idea of huge virus attacks. McAfee was just another one of these.
The problems come when some people start wondering --- where exactly did the viruses come from in the first place. Now there is no evidence that McAfee wrote viruses or spread malware --- but here we can see that he has no moral qualms about doing it. Hence - his entire 80s business was not built around protecting people, it was about something else (making money? technical challenge?).
The other parts of his history are as interesting - look up the Pow Wow software, where was involved in the creation of a corporation run by Native Americans, including it in marketing materials on the website. Turns out there were no natives on the dev team nor on the management nor anywhere else. IT was likely just for a tax break or maybe just plain old racism.
John's next feat was to become a 'spiritual adviser' and he wrote several new age books under a fake name. He would charge people huge sums of money to come be 'spiritual' with him at his retreat.
So.... to some this latest twist might be gob smacking. To others, its just fucking John being a fucking sociopath. And the thing about sociopaths? They never change.
when they allowed people to edit and modify their core code willy nilly. really, linux is terribly fragmented, as is BSD, which is why they are such utter failures in the market place (aside from a few billion smart phones, a couple million routers, millions of web servers, search engines, and other minor applications that few people use or care about)
we hear all the time on slashdot about how science is a social good, how it should be supported by taxpayers dollars, how it benefits mankind, cures disease, etc etc etc.
but whenever some case like this comes up, of scientists or engineers being amoral and contributing to awful things (or atrocities), we hear over and over that science has no responsibility for its creations, engineers arent responsible for any use of their work, etc etc etc.
you cant have it both ways. either STEM is a social good, or STEM is neutral and not responsible for anything that happens.
Most of the 'great STEM' people, like Einstein, Sahkarov, Sagan, and many others, would argue that STEM people are not only responsible, they are the vanguard and should take the lead in examining the impact their work has on society. And they did that. The Bullet of the Atomic Scientists was the output of the leading STEM thinkers of the 20th century, and the Doomsday Clock was their way of trying to warn us about what is happening.
Of cousre, STEM can make you a lot of money, and why put your career in jeopardy, and your nice house, car, gaming rig, etc etc etc? Of course it's easier to simply argue away your conscience and, of course, something like 10% of people have no conscience ('sociopaths') so we will always have some issues in this regard.
But when enough people just stop caring, the sociopaths can take over.
if every company on the entire planet requires you to sign some kind of oppressive contract before you can work there, then we might as well repeal the 14th amendment.
i imagine that some douchebags in the Old South had 'contracts' with their slaves, making them mark an 'X' on their own bill of sale and other such myopic horse shit.
they never 'got it' until Sherman came down and burned their fucking empire into the ground but whatever.
against your own company, and laugh at the SEC and CFTC and the New York State Insurance Commission and any other regulatory body, because they are prohibited by law from doing anything even remotely related to Credit Default Swaps.
then when your company tanks, cash in your CDS contracts and move to the caymans
ok, lets say i take your identity cards, your credit cards, your checking account information, your email password, all the data on your computer, and copy it and put it on a website with your name as the url. also all the info on your cellphone, all the pictures, every text youve ever sent, every electronic store purchase youve ever made... and on and on and on.
then would you start to believe in private property? ??
i mean, after all, who are you to stop me from using your information? if you dont want it out there, dont have any cards, dont use email, and dont use a phone. its about freedom.
thats the problem with this type of behavior, people think they can just do it 'when its needed'. . ..sooner or later they think its 'needed' when the kiddo sticks a cheese sandwich in the DVD player... (hint - its not)
its amlost like some people in the industry (on this message board) think that its 'too harsh' to fire someone, so instead they scream at them eight ways to sunday.
but in most jobs you just fire somebody, 'its not working out', no hard feelings, no screaming, see ya round the corner.
i 'gave up' on the 'system' after some rejected patches, but you just gotta keep trying.. its like applying for jobs. you send out 100 resumes, you might get 4 interviews, and no offer... so you send out another 100.
there was a time, a long time ago, when behavior used during war time was considered to be confined to war time, and when the war was over, we were supposed to revert back to being 'normal'.
Slashdot Mirror
george lucas did to star wars, what your society has done with all of nature's gifts
1. To reform the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 to rationalize it with the 21st century by the following measure
A. Repeal any and all language from the CFAA that originated in the Espionage Act of 1918 or its amended forms such as the McCarran Internal Security Act or the Subversive Activities Control Act of the 1950s.
B. Alter the definition of "Protected Computer" so that the act only covers Federal Government and Financial computer systems, and no others.
C. Remove any and all language that creates a crime simply because a computer is involved in an activity, where otherwise the activity would not be considered a crime.
D. Specifically state that the Interstate Commerce Clause does not apply to the Act. Almost all modern communications are 1. done on a computer, and 2. interstate in nature. Whereas it is against the spirit of the Founding Fathers to have the Federal Goverment control every single communication in a Free country, this act should be adopted by the congress and signed by the President.
... in fact, they disagreed so much, they had Ron write another episode!!!
Good thing he was local to Portlandia
and we won't learn about it until James Bamford writes another book. . .
why you would use torrent freak when there is Amazon, Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, and dozens of other ways to get video online.
unless you are trying to find some hard to find video -- (like Aleksandr Ptushko's 1972 Russian fantasy film, Ruslan and Ludmila?.. oh wait, thats on fucking youtube for free) -- what is the point of "avoiding paying for" transformers 3 or harry potter? I mean can you not afford the massive 4 dollar price or whatever that they charge you to watch this stuff online? Is 5 bucks going to break you?
have a whole department gaming the bitcoin system.
funny how gambling is illegal -- unless you do it with other peoples money
Graybeard: "Oh my oh my, what would Sakharov think?"
Linux Kid: "Who is Sakharov?"
what can i say. some of us are too old to play games -- arthritis, bad eye sight...
because you know, if they didnt, they might actually need Mesa.
and +5 interesting to boot.
well i guess i am done here, so many people with so much experience and knowledge.
i ask because the projects you mentioned don't seem to have heavy OpenGL functionality like a game might need. .. .then there is sound.... anyways...
a lot of games in particular are bleeding edge users of graphics effects
actually worked for Blizzard for a while... lol
inquiring minds want to know
I used to be like you, complaining that it was 'no big deal' to release a linux game. What could possibly be so hard about it? OpenGL, write once, run anywhere! Then ... I met GLX. And the documentation on opengl.org. And Gallium / LLVM. and Mesa. and ... well. i just try not to think about it too much. The doctors say I should be OK... eventually...
the rise of the 'computer virus' was not as clean cut as we remember it. there were people who actively 'played' the 'news cycle' of the day to promote the idea of huge virus attacks. McAfee was just another one of these.
The problems come when some people start wondering --- where exactly did the viruses come from in the first place. Now there is no evidence that McAfee wrote viruses or spread malware --- but here we can see that he has no moral qualms about doing it. Hence - his entire 80s business was not built around protecting people, it was about something else (making money? technical challenge?).
The other parts of his history are as interesting - look up the Pow Wow software, where was involved in the creation of a corporation run by Native Americans, including it in marketing materials on the website. Turns out there were no natives on the dev team nor on the management nor anywhere else. IT was likely just for a tax break or maybe just plain old racism.
John's next feat was to become a 'spiritual adviser' and he wrote several new age books under a fake name. He would charge people huge sums of money to come be 'spiritual' with him at his retreat.
So .... to some this latest twist might be gob smacking. To others, its just fucking John being a fucking sociopath. And the thing about sociopaths? They never change.
when they allowed people to edit and modify their core code willy nilly. really, linux is terribly fragmented, as is BSD, which is why they are such utter failures in the market place (aside from a few billion smart phones, a couple million routers, millions of web servers, search engines, and other minor applications that few people use or care about)
just like the bailed out Goldman on it's CDS related to AIG
we hear all the time on slashdot about how science is a social good, how it should be supported by taxpayers dollars, how it benefits mankind, cures disease, etc etc etc.
but whenever some case like this comes up, of scientists or engineers being amoral and contributing to awful things (or atrocities), we hear over and over that science has no responsibility for its creations, engineers arent responsible for any use of their work, etc etc etc.
you cant have it both ways. either STEM is a social good, or STEM is neutral and not responsible for anything that happens.
Most of the 'great STEM' people, like Einstein, Sahkarov, Sagan, and many others, would argue that STEM people are not only responsible, they are the vanguard and should take the lead in examining the impact their work has on society. And they did that. The Bullet of the Atomic Scientists was the output of the leading STEM thinkers of the 20th century, and the Doomsday Clock was their way of trying to warn us about what is happening.
Of cousre, STEM can make you a lot of money, and why put your career in jeopardy, and your nice house, car, gaming rig, etc etc etc? Of course it's easier to simply argue away your conscience and, of course, something like 10% of people have no conscience ('sociopaths') so we will always have some issues in this regard.
But when enough people just stop caring, the sociopaths can take over.
if every company on the entire planet requires you to sign some kind of oppressive contract before you can work there, then we might as well repeal the 14th amendment.
i imagine that some douchebags in the Old South had 'contracts' with their slaves, making them mark an 'X' on their own bill of sale and other such myopic horse shit.
they never 'got it' until Sherman came down and burned their fucking empire into the ground but whatever.
against your own company, and laugh at the SEC and CFTC and the New York State Insurance Commission and any other regulatory body, because they are prohibited by law from doing anything even remotely related to Credit Default Swaps.
then when your company tanks, cash in your CDS contracts and move to the caymans
ok, lets say i take your identity cards, your credit cards, your checking account information, your email password, all the data on your computer, and copy it and put it on a website with your name as the url. also all the info on your cellphone, all the pictures, every text youve ever sent, every electronic store purchase youve ever made... and on and on and on.
then would you start to believe in private property? ??
i mean, after all, who are you to stop me from using your information? if you dont want it out there, dont have any cards, dont use email, and dont use a phone. its about freedom.
thats the problem with this type of behavior, people think they can just do it 'when its needed'. . . .sooner or later they think its 'needed' when the kiddo sticks a cheese sandwich in the DVD player... (hint - its not)
its amlost like some people in the industry (on this message board) think that its 'too harsh' to fire someone, so instead they scream at them eight ways to sunday.
but in most jobs you just fire somebody, 'its not working out', no hard feelings, no screaming, see ya round the corner.
i 'gave up' on the 'system' after some rejected patches, but you just gotta keep trying .. its like applying for jobs. you send out 100 resumes, you might get 4 interviews, and no offer... so you send out another 100.
there was a time, a long time ago, when behavior used during war time was considered to be confined to war time, and when the war was over, we were supposed to revert back to being 'normal'.