I'm not a lawyer although I do like to learn about the law and then go onto forums and pretend like I'm an expert. I don't know a lot about wire fraud but here's how I see it: clearly Aaron had a lawyer, and if Aaron hadn't actually broken the law then his lawyer would have told the prosecutors to fuck off and he'd see them in court to make fools of them. Obviously he didn't say that. Without looking at the details, the outline of the situation only makes sense if Aaron was at least technically guilty.
Yes, my guess is that all those AT&T customers were federal felons. Like I said, bad law. Bad laws are a problem.
"We live in a country where the powerless are routinely made scapegoats for the crimes of the powerful, and the powerful are almost never brought to account."
So what you are saying is, we are living in a country -- any country, anywhere, at any time in history.
I'm not sure about that. There are a zillion laws with fifty zillion violations. They have to choose an infinitesimal number of the violations to prosecute and they chose this one. To correctly point out that Aaron violated the law is to focus on an almost completely irrelevant side-detail. We are complaining that the law was bad, that's true, but our much larger complaint is that the prosecution of the bad law was very bad.
To be fair, one day in prison for you or me means the end of a career. Six months in prison for Aaron would have meant a bolstered mythos, like Kevin Mitnick (or Martha Stewart or Nelson Mandela). He would have been that brilliant hacker who stood up for what he thought was right and did time like a man, only to emerge into even greater opportunity. So I agree with your point but I think Aaron was an exception.
"So it's only a justice system when it's convenient for you?"
He didn't say that it "wasn't a justice system." He said (and I quote) "I...don't like [it]".
So, yes, [He doesn't like it] when [it fails to comport with his sense of justice]. That's frankly an unremarkable statement. Of course he doesn't like things that he doesn't like! He was complaining about some bullshit government action.
Just in case you weren't be intentionally dense, the crimes were breaking and entering, wire fraud, and unauthorized acces to a computer system. It's fine to argue whether or not he "did anything wrong" (I'm with you -- no, in fact he is a hero) but it's pretty clear that he broke the law. Since a law was broken without any wrongdoing (in our presumably shared opinion) that indicates a bad law (in our presumably shared opinion). Badness of law notwithstanding, he broke the bad laws.
"If six months is an acceptable punishment, why is 35 years even on the table?"
Because that's the law, of course. No matter what happens prosecutors don't decide how much time a person spends in jail. In all cases judges make that decision. It is most common during a plea bargain that the judge accepts the deal reached between the prosecution and the defendant but he does not have to do so and sometimes does not.
The prosecution literally cannot take 35 years off the table, even technically in a plea bargain. The legislature put it on the table, period, end of answer, and only the judge decides. The prosecution has the power only to recommend a sentence -- an important an significant power, because the recommendations are often accepted, but a recommendation only.
I assume by "no one" you mean "no politicians", and that is almost true but not quite. There is one politician in one special circumstance who has long-term vision: a President in his second term. Obama in his first term was a scared pathetic shell of lackluster wimpery; in his second term he is that same shell of wimpery, except suddenly he's found the courage to take stands for gay rights and against the Assassin's Lobby (the NRA). Bush was similar. His first term was 100% disaster -- I mean, literally 100% of everything he did was a disaster. His second term was also really bad but the Surge, shockinly, turned out to be a pretty good decision, and remember he decided it was time to go to Mars or whatever. Clinton's second term was also more forward-thinking than his first term, but in a bad way: he did things like sign the FSMA which he thought would be swell, and certainly was part of a long-term vision, but turned out to be an unbelievable disaster.
"claiming that privatization leads to "better service" or "more competitive pricing" should"
Only stupid people such as libertarians accept claims so preposterous. Unfortunately there are a metric shit-ton of stupid libertarians in America./sigh/ That's democracy, I guess.
Because that's not the real reason. The real reason is that we Americans don't think problems should be solved. We think if there is a problem then people deserve to have that problem because they are sinful. Too much pollution? Jesus wants you to cough because you are a sinner, so the government shouldn't do anything about it. Children are dying from tainted milk? Too bad, they were born with original sin and deserve whatever milk God decides to bestow upon them, so pasteurization is an abomination. Can't get from point A to point B? Too bad, only a sinner would want to travel farther than Jesus walked during his 40 days in the desert, so the nanny state must never build train tracks. MURIKA!
I live in Wisconsin. My governor turned down federal money build a modern train system because he thought federal money must be some kind of trick from President Blackenstein. I'm pretty sure the reasoning was "Jesus drove a car, therefore citizens of Wisconsin must never ride in trains. Amen."
"The temporal movement of bits to allow sound reproduction does not constitute 'fixing.'"
It doesn't? If they aren't fixed on the hard drive using a method, then what are they? They sure seem fixed to a hard drive by a method to me. I mean, the bits weren't on the hard drive, then they were, so it seems like they were fixed there. Bits are composed of magnetized materials, thus they are material objects. It's pretty hard for me to see this the way you and the judge describe it. It's like crazy talk: "the MP3s aren't material objects" and yet they exist in the universe; things that exist in the universe are made of materials.
Yes, that is true, and that is why it is a pro-consumer evolution of technology. Consumers now have an increased potential to engage in the secondary market, hence it improves the world. I am ashamed that any of my countrymen would advocate against improving the world or that any judge or policymaker would side with such jerks.
By that logic it is illegal to play CDs in a CD player because the bits are "copied" from the disc to the player's memory. In fact by that logic it's illegal to play a casette because the magnetic squiggles are copied into the reproduction hardware.
Look, it's just a stupid way to define copyright and it fails any standard of unreasonableness. What I'm saying is that an unreasonable judge sided with unreasonable plaintiffs.
You are way too optimistic. Naturalism was proposed before Jesus was alive, why do you think that today we are experiencing the end of human religious folly? I do think that religion will wane -- but I think it will wane from 99.999% to about 70% (today we're at, what, 96% or so), then level off for the next fifty thousand years. At the end of that time there will still be people talking about how Joseph Smith translated magical plates, and also how sticking needles in your skin cures diabetes.
"The whole bedrock of religion is faith -- to believe that some things are true regardless of whether there is evidence for them or not."
If there is evidence for a claim then you don't need to have faith in it. Faith is for when there is no evidence at all, or evidence against the claim. And that is why faith is stupid. Faith is an embarrassing failure of skepticism.
"Can someone PLEASE let me know where this whole "God testing us" crap came from?"
From a brain experiencing cognitive dissonance.
"the rest of us are of the persuasion that much of the fossil record is in much of the state it's in due to the Genesis Flood"
Are you of the persuasion that the fossil record is arranged in perfect worldwide strata due to an unlikely coincidence? That all those animals died at the same time, but just happened to stack up on top of each other in such a way as to coincidentally imply directional evolution? Seriously that might be the craziest thing I've ever heard a creationist say. No, wait, I take it back, that's actually not even close to the craziest thing I've heard a creationist say, but it is still totally crazy.
Not so fast, smartypants. It's not hard to refute any scientific evidence or argument when you can simply fall back on "nuh uh, because magic".
God is magic. Magic does not falter in the face of reason or evidence. Therefore anything can be refuted with "nuh uh, God." You think just because the Bible contradicts itself (over and over and over) means that the Bible can't be literally true? "Nuh uh, because magic." See how easy that was?
Yes, scrambling to me implies some kind of hurry. For instance, hurry up because you only have a few months to find a replacement. That's hurrying but I don't agree with the rest of what you said:
* essential to your life * disappeared overnight * put everything aside * terrible hardships.
It's okay I just think you overreacted a little bit. I think 'scramble' was an appropriate word to use.
I agree with this. The #1 reason I started using Google, lo those many years ago, was because when I search for a word I want that word in 100% of the results returned. To be honest, this is so fucking obvious that I was amazed all search engines at the time didn't work that way. Now, I'm amazed that Google doesn't work that way. I've tried to switch to Duck Duck Go, which is not too bad but their results leave something to be desired. Today, in 2013, the world wide web does not have a very good search engine. We're back to the Clinton era of searching the web, which makes me sad.
I wish they would offer Google Classic: one search box in the middle of the page, no other bullshit links to "bars" or "social" or whatever, no autocomplete, and every single search term I provide is on every single page they return.
Is that what scramble means to you? That isn't what it means to me. I just looked it up in my dictionary and the dictionary has pretty much the definition that I have. To scramble is to hurriedly and haphazardly overcome an obstacle. The obstacle doesn't have to be a 'terrible hardship', in fact to me the word implies a not-so-terrible hardship. Without looking it up in a dictionary, how would you define "scramble"?
Slashdot Mirror
"We have tried using a Linux boot CD but usually get funny looks or confused users."
So, then, you already solved your problem. Why are you posting to Slashdot?
"would you trust your $10,000 more on a server somewhere or in an FDIC-covered bank?"
That depends, am I a reasonable person or am I a libertarian?
I'm not a lawyer although I do like to learn about the law and then go onto forums and pretend like I'm an expert. I don't know a lot about wire fraud but here's how I see it: clearly Aaron had a lawyer, and if Aaron hadn't actually broken the law then his lawyer would have told the prosecutors to fuck off and he'd see them in court to make fools of them. Obviously he didn't say that. Without looking at the details, the outline of the situation only makes sense if Aaron was at least technically guilty.
Yes, my guess is that all those AT&T customers were federal felons. Like I said, bad law. Bad laws are a problem.
"We live in a country where the powerless are routinely made scapegoats for the crimes of the powerful, and the powerful are almost never brought to account."
So what you are saying is, we are living in a country -- any country, anywhere, at any time in history.
I'm not sure about that. There are a zillion laws with fifty zillion violations. They have to choose an infinitesimal number of the violations to prosecute and they chose this one. To correctly point out that Aaron violated the law is to focus on an almost completely irrelevant side-detail. We are complaining that the law was bad, that's true, but our much larger complaint is that the prosecution of the bad law was very bad.
To be fair, one day in prison for you or me means the end of a career. Six months in prison for Aaron would have meant a bolstered mythos, like Kevin Mitnick (or Martha Stewart or Nelson Mandela). He would have been that brilliant hacker who stood up for what he thought was right and did time like a man, only to emerge into even greater opportunity. So I agree with your point but I think Aaron was an exception.
"So it's only a justice system when it's convenient for you?"
He didn't say that it "wasn't a justice system." He said (and I quote) "I...don't like [it]".
So, yes, [He doesn't like it] when [it fails to comport with his sense of justice]. That's frankly an unremarkable statement. Of course he doesn't like things that he doesn't like! He was complaining about some bullshit government action.
Just in case you weren't be intentionally dense, the crimes were breaking and entering, wire fraud, and unauthorized acces to a computer system. It's fine to argue whether or not he "did anything wrong" (I'm with you -- no, in fact he is a hero) but it's pretty clear that he broke the law. Since a law was broken without any wrongdoing (in our presumably shared opinion) that indicates a bad law (in our presumably shared opinion). Badness of law notwithstanding, he broke the bad laws.
"If six months is an acceptable punishment, why is 35 years even on the table?"
Because that's the law, of course. No matter what happens prosecutors don't decide how much time a person spends in jail. In all cases judges make that decision. It is most common during a plea bargain that the judge accepts the deal reached between the prosecution and the defendant but he does not have to do so and sometimes does not.
The prosecution literally cannot take 35 years off the table, even technically in a plea bargain. The legislature put it on the table, period, end of answer, and only the judge decides. The prosecution has the power only to recommend a sentence -- an important an significant power, because the recommendations are often accepted, but a recommendation only.
Indeed. He probably should have stood in front of a judge for three minutes and been ordered to pay a $250 fine for all of the actions he took.
Anything beyond that is a travesty of justice. And that's the part we're complaining about.
I assume by "no one" you mean "no politicians", and that is almost true but not quite. There is one politician in one special circumstance who has long-term vision: a President in his second term. Obama in his first term was a scared pathetic shell of lackluster wimpery; in his second term he is that same shell of wimpery, except suddenly he's found the courage to take stands for gay rights and against the Assassin's Lobby (the NRA). Bush was similar. His first term was 100% disaster -- I mean, literally 100% of everything he did was a disaster. His second term was also really bad but the Surge, shockinly, turned out to be a pretty good decision, and remember he decided it was time to go to Mars or whatever. Clinton's second term was also more forward-thinking than his first term, but in a bad way: he did things like sign the FSMA which he thought would be swell, and certainly was part of a long-term vision, but turned out to be an unbelievable disaster.
"claiming that privatization leads to "better service" or "more competitive pricing" should"
Only stupid people such as libertarians accept claims so preposterous. Unfortunately there are a metric shit-ton of stupid libertarians in America. /sigh/ That's democracy, I guess.
Because that's not the real reason. The real reason is that we Americans don't think problems should be solved. We think if there is a problem then people deserve to have that problem because they are sinful. Too much pollution? Jesus wants you to cough because you are a sinner, so the government shouldn't do anything about it. Children are dying from tainted milk? Too bad, they were born with original sin and deserve whatever milk God decides to bestow upon them, so pasteurization is an abomination. Can't get from point A to point B? Too bad, only a sinner would want to travel farther than Jesus walked during his 40 days in the desert, so the nanny state must never build train tracks. MURIKA!
I live in Wisconsin. My governor turned down federal money build a modern train system because he thought federal money must be some kind of trick from President Blackenstein. I'm pretty sure the reasoning was "Jesus drove a car, therefore citizens of Wisconsin must never ride in trains. Amen."
"The temporal movement of bits to allow sound reproduction does not constitute 'fixing.'"
It doesn't? If they aren't fixed on the hard drive using a method, then what are they? They sure seem fixed to a hard drive by a method to me. I mean, the bits weren't on the hard drive, then they were, so it seems like they were fixed there. Bits are composed of magnetized materials, thus they are material objects. It's pretty hard for me to see this the way you and the judge describe it. It's like crazy talk: "the MP3s aren't material objects" and yet they exist in the universe; things that exist in the universe are made of materials.
Yes, that is true, and that is why it is a pro-consumer evolution of technology. Consumers now have an increased potential to engage in the secondary market, hence it improves the world. I am ashamed that any of my countrymen would advocate against improving the world or that any judge or policymaker would side with such jerks.
By that logic it is illegal to play CDs in a CD player because the bits are "copied" from the disc to the player's memory. In fact by that logic it's illegal to play a casette because the magnetic squiggles are copied into the reproduction hardware.
Look, it's just a stupid way to define copyright and it fails any standard of unreasonableness. What I'm saying is that an unreasonable judge sided with unreasonable plaintiffs.
You are way too optimistic. Naturalism was proposed before Jesus was alive, why do you think that today we are experiencing the end of human religious folly? I do think that religion will wane -- but I think it will wane from 99.999% to about 70% (today we're at, what, 96% or so), then level off for the next fifty thousand years. At the end of that time there will still be people talking about how Joseph Smith translated magical plates, and also how sticking needles in your skin cures diabetes.
"The whole bedrock of religion is faith -- to believe that some things are true regardless of whether there is evidence for them or not."
If there is evidence for a claim then you don't need to have faith in it. Faith is for when there is no evidence at all, or evidence against the claim. And that is why faith is stupid. Faith is an embarrassing failure of skepticism.
"Can someone PLEASE let me know where this whole "God testing us" crap came from?"
From a brain experiencing cognitive dissonance.
"the rest of us are of the persuasion that much of the fossil record is in much of the state it's in due to the Genesis Flood"
Are you of the persuasion that the fossil record is arranged in perfect worldwide strata due to an unlikely coincidence? That all those animals died at the same time, but just happened to stack up on top of each other in such a way as to coincidentally imply directional evolution? Seriously that might be the craziest thing I've ever heard a creationist say. No, wait, I take it back, that's actually not even close to the craziest thing I've heard a creationist say, but it is still totally crazy.
Not so fast, smartypants. It's not hard to refute any scientific evidence or argument when you can simply fall back on "nuh uh, because magic".
God is magic. Magic does not falter in the face of reason or evidence. Therefore anything can be refuted with "nuh uh, God." You think just because the Bible contradicts itself (over and over and over) means that the Bible can't be literally true? "Nuh uh, because magic." See how easy that was?
Yes, scrambling to me implies some kind of hurry. For instance, hurry up because you only have a few months to find a replacement. That's hurrying but I don't agree with the rest of what you said:
* essential to your life
* disappeared overnight
* put everything aside
* terrible hardships.
It's okay I just think you overreacted a little bit. I think 'scramble' was an appropriate word to use.
"if you're going to get angry every time someone tells you you should do something, you're going to have a lot of problems."
In America we have an entire major political party dedicated to exactly that. But you're right, they do cause a lot of problems.
I agree with this. The #1 reason I started using Google, lo those many years ago, was because when I search for a word I want that word in 100% of the results returned. To be honest, this is so fucking obvious that I was amazed all search engines at the time didn't work that way. Now, I'm amazed that Google doesn't work that way. I've tried to switch to Duck Duck Go, which is not too bad but their results leave something to be desired. Today, in 2013, the world wide web does not have a very good search engine. We're back to the Clinton era of searching the web, which makes me sad.
I wish they would offer Google Classic: one search box in the middle of the page, no other bullshit links to "bars" or "social" or whatever, no autocomplete, and every single search term I provide is on every single page they return.
Is that what scramble means to you? That isn't what it means to me. I just looked it up in my dictionary and the dictionary has pretty much the definition that I have. To scramble is to hurriedly and haphazardly overcome an obstacle. The obstacle doesn't have to be a 'terrible hardship', in fact to me the word implies a not-so-terrible hardship. Without looking it up in a dictionary, how would you define "scramble"?
Poor people rationalize their lives by believing that myth.