Well, one thing which strikes me is that the guy is not under US jurisdiction. He's taking a job in China.
One thing is worth noting, nowhere is MSFT or anyone else forcing this person to be jobless.
Multi-billion company on one side, lone individual on the other side, not exactly fair. That nobody is forcing him is only true if you see physical violence as the only type of force, otherwise economic pressure would be a force, too.
Judith Miller is not special. She does not have the right or privilege to withhold information about crimes that have been committed.
Well, she's a bit special, she is a journalist, and for a democracy a free press is very important. As for the right to protect their sources - it seems to me that there is a lot of legal precedent where journalists have been given the right to remain silent about their sources. However regardless whether the court will find against her or not, I think it would be desirable to grant journalists that right.
Or looked at from another angle - what is the benefit for society if journalists are not able to protect their sources? They then either have to go to prison because they refuse to reveal their sources anyway (as has happened a few times already) or they stop being able to talk with these sources. In the latter case, of course the benefit for the courts is zero, as the journalist doesn't have the information they try to extract in the first place.
So really, why shouldn't society grant that right? (I accept that the exact definition of a journalist might be tough.)
The attitude of chinese people is luckily a more mellow attitude than that of the US or western world, giving them the time to get those changes without a lot of blood shed.
Discounting the bloodshed which has already happened on Tianamen Square.
I don't think it's possible to regulate morals in the way you suggest. Think about the failure of the centrally planned economies of eastern Europe - it's just not possible to plan for every contingency from one central point without building an administrative aparatus which will collapse under it's own weight.
Similarly it will not be possible to put so many laws in force that corporations will automatically behave in a moral way merely by not breaking the law.
So if it's not possible to handle this in a centralized fashion (and I think that has become quite clear) then it must be decentralized. That means we must lay the blame on each individual corporation which behaves unethically, and we can not accept the mere absence of a law banning this as an excuse.
This never really took off, so IBM and Motorola were stuck with having to compete with Intel for price/performance for a single customer that would only buy a fraction of what Intel and AMD would churn out.
Well, what goes against this theory is that both Intel and Freescale (formerly Motorola's semiconductor branch) were not hit by Apple's announcement. They both keep their PowerPC lines, and the desktop sales were never particularly important to them. What's interesting is that the market agrees, there was no hit on Freescale's stock price. BTW: there are a lot of embedded PowerPCs - they are heavily in use in automotive electronics (I design embedded devices in that particular market).
it's like iTunes, you only have to discourage the average casual users
I'm not sure whether iTunes is a good example - did it really make a dent into filesharing? Also I suspect the only reason we don't see a lot of iTunes-hacking is that it's way easier to rip CDs. If somehow you weren't able to rip CDs anymore, maybe we'd see a lot of copies coming the iTunes route.
Ouch - how about a little reading comprehension for you? The US is supposed to have murdered more people in a 50 year period than anyone else *before*. Do you see how that "before" refers to the time before that 50 year period? Or is the meaning of "before" somehow in doubt?
Democracy. That form of government in which the sovereign power resides in and is exercised by the whole body of free citizens directly or indirectly through a system of representation, as distinguished from a monarchy, aristocracy, or oligarchy. Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, pp. 388-389.
So in the US system the sovereign power is exercised indirectly through a system of representation, correct? According to the definition you posted that would mean the US is a democracy. It's also a republic, yes, but the way you started your post I had the impression you argued that it being one means it can't be the other?
No it isn't. Yes there is some truth there, but quite a few exaggerations and obmissions, too.
I doubt that the US "... murdered more
humans in a 50 year period than anyone else before..." - WW2 cost roughly 50 million lives.
And while the US-Americans could certainly do with taking some responsibility for the actions of their government and look honestly at the crimes which were commited and mistakes which were made, other countries should do the very same.
The US might be the biggest polluter, but the EU and Canada are not that far behind. The US is not the only country selling military technology to corrupt dictatorships and propping up criminal regimes. The US is not the only country who stands by when genocide occurs in Dafur or Rwanda. It's pathetic that the US refuses to do anything about global warming, but the little the rest of us does about it is pathetic, too.
No the main problem is people think we are *or ever were* intended to be a democracy when infact we are a republic!
That's correct as long as you want to use a definition of the word democracy which is used solely in the context of the soundbite "we are not a democracy we are a republic". Other than that the US system is that of a representative democracy. See e.g. here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democr acy
We need another revolution and complaining about tiny infractions like this story is just prolonging the inevitable.
Historically, you often don't get a revolution when you need one. You just had one once - not exactly much statistal evidence that you'll get one whenever you are in need for it.
But then think about it. what does "at risk" mean anyway.
I think in this context it would mean: the number has been on the infiltrated system at one time - it may or may not have been in the file which the attacker downloaded. Once you know which numbers were in the file a lot of the other numbers could be considered to be not at risk anymore. Of course that assumes:
1 - that this file was the only file downloaded
2 - that they are not lying about this
A record stores an analog waveform of the original sound with much more detail than the quantized digital data on a CD.
Is that true anymore? AFAIK the recording these days uses digital media for the first storage.
So any conversion to analog storage will be lossy. Not that there was a way to accurately store the original sound on an analog media, anyway.
Yes theorectically the data on the record could be accurate, but in pratice there is no way to produce it so that it is an exact copy of the original. Just pressing the record will cause information loss.
This is very sad news that they are working on taking this away from us...
No they are not, you'll be able to buy your tools, as long as there are enough people out there who are interested in doing this. And of course the time might come when some people will feel nostalgic and feel sorry that they can't do this anymore - even though they haven't done it for years out of their own choice.
the dark room is one of the few places that magic still occurs... there is something amazing about placeing a piece of blank paper and shining a light on it.. dipping it in a chemical and seeing an image appear before you...
You press a button and a picture is recorded - ready to be sent electronically around the world or to be displayed on a TV screen. That's magic occuring. Liking to dip stuff into chemicals - that's nostalgia, and there is nothing wrong with that.
My grandfather was an avid photographer, and because of that I have a photograph of my great-great-grandfather, which I cherish. I only have a fraction of my grandfather's photographs though.
There used to be a huge stack - mostly he used glass plates. Very durable this stuff, but heavy - so of course some 20 years after his death someone threw them away. Most of the pictures were lost, only the slowly-fading paper prints were left. My uncle painstakingly scanned all these and put them on CDROM. Now almost everybody in my family has the CD.
Sure, the CD-format won't be around forever, but once the next format comes around I can easily copy stuff over - it will be very little work (especially compared with the first conversion to digital). As long as somebody cares enough about the pictures, it will be easy to preserve them. And of course, if nobody cares about the pictures enough anymore they will be lost eventually - just as happened with those glass plates.
I'm not using Linux to "compete with Windows and OSX".
Which is your priviledge. However many others take a keen interest in Linux to compete with Windows because they feel strongly about the freedom of the users. So I think many readers on slashdot will be interested in this angle.
Exactly - corporate desktop users could buy a Mac now if they wanted. If they don't want to replace their x86-PCs with PPC-Macs now, why would they want to replace them with x86-Macs? They still can't keep their old hardware.
It would be a different issue if Apple would offer OSX standalone, however their business model is all about selling systems in which they control all components. I doubt they are willing to change this soon. I'm not sure whether it would be beneficial to them, either.
Here is Dvorak's problem: Linux was the only X86 alternative to Microsoft and now it has both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to contend with. He seems to think that the x86-PC market is somehow separate from the PC market. Of course it isn't, and Apple's switching from one CPU to another will not by itself change their share of the PC market.
Harm? How? Apple makes proprietary systems, composed of proprietary hardware and proprietary software. Now they'll switch from PowerPC to Intel CPUs - this doesn't mean they'll give up on their own hardware, just that they'll switch to a different supplier for one of the parts. So the question is not whether this can kill or harm Linux, but how this would have any effect at all for Linux.
Dvorak's idea is that people would now fork out the money to buy a Mac, then buy a license and install Windows on it. Hardware vendors and Linux would suffer from that.
Seriously, that's his argument.
This is supposed to impact a market which buys standard PCs and installs Linux instead of Windows, i.e. a market of people who don't want Windows to run on their machine...
So some people would still complain if something had gone wrong even if they'd used good encryption. These people are obviously unreasonable and the company should be forgiven.
Hence it follows that they'd also have to be forgiven in case they'd used a simple encryption scheme. After all the same unreasonable people would complain.
Hence they'd have to be forgiven if they'd used no encryption.... Basically, because someone would always complain they are always guiltless, no matter how careless they were.:-)
A continent has more zombie PCs than a country... Shocking that..
Well, given that Europe and the US are roughly in the same league in terms of numbers of PCs and numbers of people, the comparison seems fair.
However, just as you point out, the number of zombie PCs in Europe and in the US is (as expected) in the same range, too. So nothing surprising in that.
Slashdot Mirror
With the former employee out of US jurisdiction they probably figure they have a snowballs change in hell on that one. So they go after the employer.
Of course I can't, I would be dead! :-)
One thing is worth noting, nowhere is MSFT or anyone else forcing this person to be jobless.
Multi-billion company on one side, lone individual on the other side, not exactly fair. That nobody is forcing him is only true if you see physical violence as the only type of force, otherwise economic pressure would be a force, too.
Well, she's a bit special, she is a journalist, and for a democracy a free press is very important. As for the right to protect their sources - it seems to me that there is a lot of legal precedent where journalists have been given the right to remain silent about their sources. However regardless whether the court will find against her or not, I think it would be desirable to grant journalists that right.
Or looked at from another angle - what is the benefit for society if journalists are not able to protect their sources? They then either have to go to prison because they refuse to reveal their sources anyway (as has happened a few times already) or they stop being able to talk with these sources. In the latter case, of course the benefit for the courts is zero, as the journalist doesn't have the information they try to extract in the first place.
So really, why shouldn't society grant that right? (I accept that the exact definition of a journalist might be tough.)
Discounting the bloodshed which has already happened on Tianamen Square.
Similarly it will not be possible to put so many laws in force that corporations will automatically behave in a moral way merely by not breaking the law.
So if it's not possible to handle this in a centralized fashion (and I think that has become quite clear) then it must be decentralized. That means we must lay the blame on each individual corporation which behaves unethically, and we can not accept the mere absence of a law banning this as an excuse.
No you don't. You do put people down when you tell them how to speak.
Well, what goes against this theory is that both Intel and Freescale (formerly Motorola's semiconductor branch) were not hit by Apple's announcement. They both keep their PowerPC lines, and the desktop sales were never particularly important to them. What's interesting is that the market agrees, there was no hit on Freescale's stock price. BTW: there are a lot of embedded PowerPCs - they are heavily in use in automotive electronics (I design embedded devices in that particular market).
Well let's face it, programming a virus doesn't take much skill these days, so I guess he's just not a real geek. ;-)
I'm not sure whether iTunes is a good example - did it really make a dent into filesharing? Also I suspect the only reason we don't see a lot of iTunes-hacking is that it's way easier to rip CDs. If somehow you weren't able to rip CDs anymore, maybe we'd see a lot of copies coming the iTunes route.
Ouch - how about a little reading comprehension for you? The US is supposed to have murdered more people in a 50 year period than anyone else *before*. Do you see how that "before" refers to the time before that 50 year period? Or is the meaning of "before" somehow in doubt?
So in the US system the sovereign power is exercised indirectly through a system of representation, correct? According to the definition you posted that would mean the US is a democracy. It's also a republic, yes, but the way you started your post I had the impression you argued that it being one means it can't be the other?
No it isn't. Yes there is some truth there, but quite a few exaggerations and obmissions, too.
I doubt that the US "... murdered more humans in a 50 year period than anyone else before ..." - WW2 cost roughly 50 million lives.
And while the US-Americans could certainly do with taking some responsibility for the actions of their government and look honestly at the crimes which were commited and mistakes which were made, other countries should do the very same.
The US might be the biggest polluter, but the EU and Canada are not that far behind. The US is not the only country selling military technology to corrupt dictatorships and propping up criminal regimes. The US is not the only country who stands by when genocide occurs in Dafur or Rwanda. It's pathetic that the US refuses to do anything about global warming, but the little the rest of us does about it is pathetic, too.
That's correct as long as you want to use a definition of the word democracy which is used solely in the context of the soundbite "we are not a democracy we are a republic". Other than that the US system is that of a representative democracy. See e.g. here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democr acy
Historically, you often don't get a revolution when you need one. You just had one once - not exactly much statistal evidence that you'll get one whenever you are in need for it.
I think in this context it would mean: the number has been on the infiltrated system at one time - it may or may not have been in the file which the attacker downloaded. Once you know which numbers were in the file a lot of the other numbers could be considered to be not at risk anymore. Of course that assumes:
1 - that this file was the only file downloaded
2 - that they are not lying about this
Don't know how likely either of these points are.
Is that true anymore? AFAIK the recording these days uses digital media for the first storage. So any conversion to analog storage will be lossy. Not that there was a way to accurately store the original sound on an analog media, anyway.
Yes theorectically the data on the record could be accurate, but in pratice there is no way to produce it so that it is an exact copy of the original. Just pressing the record will cause information loss.
No they are not, you'll be able to buy your tools, as long as there are enough people out there who are interested in doing this. And of course the time might come when some people will feel nostalgic and feel sorry that they can't do this anymore - even though they haven't done it for years out of their own choice.
the dark room is one of the few places that magic still occurs... there is something amazing about placeing a piece of blank paper and shining a light on it.. dipping it in a chemical and seeing an image appear before you...
You press a button and a picture is recorded - ready to be sent electronically around the world or to be displayed on a TV screen. That's magic occuring. Liking to dip stuff into chemicals - that's nostalgia, and there is nothing wrong with that.
There used to be a huge stack - mostly he used glass plates. Very durable this stuff, but heavy - so of course some 20 years after his death someone threw them away. Most of the pictures were lost, only the slowly-fading paper prints were left. My uncle painstakingly scanned all these and put them on CDROM. Now almost everybody in my family has the CD.
Sure, the CD-format won't be around forever, but once the next format comes around I can easily copy stuff over - it will be very little work (especially compared with the first conversion to digital). As long as somebody cares enough about the pictures, it will be easy to preserve them. And of course, if nobody cares about the pictures enough anymore they will be lost eventually - just as happened with those glass plates.
Which is your priviledge. However many others take a keen interest in Linux to compete with Windows because they feel strongly about the freedom of the users. So I think many readers on slashdot will be interested in this angle.
Exactly - corporate desktop users could buy a Mac now if they wanted. If they don't want to replace their x86-PCs with PPC-Macs now, why would they want to replace them with x86-Macs? They still can't keep their old hardware.
It would be a different issue if Apple would offer OSX standalone, however their business model is all about selling systems in which they control all components. I doubt they are willing to change this soon. I'm not sure whether it would be beneficial to them, either.
Here is Dvorak's problem: Linux was the only X86 alternative to Microsoft and now it has both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to contend with. He seems to think that the x86-PC market is somehow separate from the PC market. Of course it isn't, and Apple's switching from one CPU to another will not by itself change their share of the PC market.
Harm? How? Apple makes proprietary systems, composed of proprietary hardware and proprietary software. Now they'll switch from PowerPC to Intel CPUs - this doesn't mean they'll give up on their own hardware, just that they'll switch to a different supplier for one of the parts. So the question is not whether this can kill or harm Linux, but how this would have any effect at all for Linux.
Dvorak's idea is that people would now fork out the money to buy a Mac, then buy a license and install Windows on it. Hardware vendors and Linux would suffer from that.
Seriously, that's his argument.
This is supposed to impact a market which buys standard PCs and installs Linux instead of Windows, i.e. a market of people who don't want Windows to run on their machine...
Hence it follows that they'd also have to be forgiven in case they'd used a simple encryption scheme. After all the same unreasonable people would complain.
Hence they'd have to be forgiven if they'd used no encryption .... Basically, because someone would always complain they are always guiltless, no matter how careless they were. :-)
Well, given that Europe and the US are roughly in the same league in terms of numbers of PCs and numbers of people, the comparison seems fair.
However, just as you point out, the number of zombie PCs in Europe and in the US is (as expected) in the same range, too. So nothing surprising in that.