It really isn't very clear is it. Especially when the crime actually extends across the border. If I throw a rock across the US/Canadian border to hit a Canadian, where should I be prosecuted? Its a crime in both countries. Same it true if I'm sitting at a computer in the US and hack into a Canadian govermnent computer.
Would US hackers support the extradition of another hacker being extradited to France for hacking a french military network? I suspect not - no matter how stupid & obnoxious the hacker's behaviour was.
I don't know that I qualify for any given definition of "hacker", but I would have no issues with extradition in that case.
It all depends on how you add things up. Is 5 years too much of a sentence for breaking into gov/mil computer systems? Then if he's being tried for 14 separate violations, that could add up to 70 years if convicted on all counts. Even then, the judge could sentence him to the maximum 5 years for all convictions, but say all terms to be served concurrently (meaning only 5 years max). OTOH, nobody seems to note what the minimum sentence could be. Is it possible he could be found guilty and serve no prison time at all?
Just to be clear, the "5 years" was just pulled out of a hat. I don't know specifically what crimes he's being accused of, how many, or what the sentencing range is for any of them.
Wether it comes from corn or sugar cane, sugar is sugar (AFAIK its the same fructose either way). Is there some reason to think that sugar from cane is associated with fewer health risks that sugar from corn?
Yes, they do taste different, but that's because of the other stuff that's in there.
The big alternative I hear discussed is switch grass. If you google it, you'll get a page full of links to using it as a source for ethanol. Its easy to grow, easy to harvest, and produces more protein and ethanol than the alternatives (soy beans an corn respectively).
Many of these studies also leave off the fact that the "byproduct" of producing ethanol from corn is also valuable. If I can find the link to the study, I'll post it (I think it was done by the US Department of Agriculture).
In short, ethanol is produced by converting the sugars/starches in corn to ethanol. That leaves behind a protein rich by-product that is then added to corn and other feed used for raising cattle, replacing more expensive (in every sense of the word) protein supplements.
So based on the merits of EtOH production alone, corn may not be the best source. But you need to consider all the factors involved.
OTOH, if you live in the midwest, you may be hearing a lot about switch grass. Supposedly yields more protein than soy beans and more EtOH than corn. Look for some farmers to turn to that if EtOH becomes a more viable fuel alternative.
It has nothing to do with being smarter in doctors cases. It's all about being an elitist for them. They look at Mac's and say if I get one of those i'll be cool.
I work with a lot of doctors too. I can assure you, the ones I know don't use it because they are "elitist". They use it because it works. And works easily. And works reliably. They use it because they just want to get the job done, and the Mac does it.
The author of TFA wasn't very clear, so maybe I can unmuddy it a little.
As you may know, Boot Camp allows dual booting. So you're either running OS X or XP. They are on separate partitions on the drive, with OS X (typically) being on an HFS+ formatted partition. That means that when Windows is running, unless you install separate software to enable it, no program in Windows can even "see" the HFS+ partition with the Mac stuff on it. For all practical purposes, that part of the hard drive doesn't exist when XP is running.
So, as the article points out, this hypothetical virus would need to infect Windows, install software to allow it to read the HFS+ partition, then be able to properly target the OS X part of the drive. A lot of work to target the small fraction of Mac users using Boot Camp.
In my experience Mac users know bugger all about technology, and care more about furnitures than they do about computing.
In my experience, that's just as true for Windows users. Even more so for the population in general.
IMO the only "self-selection" done by Mac users is that they made a decision to go against the flow and buy a Mac. Ask someone who buys a Mac why they bought it instead of a Windows PC, and they'll give you a reason -usually centering around ease of use and security. Ask someone why they bought a Windows PC instead of a Mac, they often have no answer other than "that's what everyone else has".
Symantec, McAfee, and the like have been urging Mac users to buy antivirus software for years.
Many years. Decades even.
One of these years they may be right. In the mean time, Mac users are more likely to suffer data and/or productivity loss due to AV software than due to a virus. They certainly lose the cost of the AV software they purchased.
And as I implied in an earlier post, if a governmental department were found to be collecting and disseminating this kind of information, we'd be having Congressional hearings tomorrow. We seem to be worried about how anti-terrorism bills cut into privacy (wether tapping phone lines or monitoring net traffick), but nobody seems to worry when big companies are doing that and more.
Don't you know, its perfectly OK for a big company to track what you do with your computer and maintain a profile on you -as long as its for profit.
But if the government wants to do it in the name of national security, that's just plain wrong!
Not saying either is right, just that people seem to be much less worried about Big Company as Big Brother than they are about Big Government as Big Brother.
For some reason, that made me about this . Hey, if tossing false positives up on the monitor keeps the TSA screeners focused, what could possibly go wrong with tossing false images up on the windshield to keep a driver awake?
One of the reasons many people upgrade Office is because they need to be able to open documents from other people who may be using a newer version. MS not only has people locked into their format, but by changing their format, they push people into upgrading too.
Now, along comes a plugin that allows all the different versions of Office, plus many 3rd party applications to work with the same document. Suddenly nobody needs to upgrade an entire Office suite just because someone somewhere bought a new computer with a new version of Office.
So now people only need to buy MS Office if they feel compelled by the features offered, not because they need to be compatible with someone else. IOW if forces MS to compete more on merit.
I hadn't really thought about it, but you're right. It would be good to see how the app fails (or not) when denied access, without having to open the firewall settings to remove it from the list when needed.
Something else that bugs me about the "we're doing it for enterprise customers" argument -how many different versions of Vista are there? Isn't the whole idea that the business/enterprise versions would have different default settings and configurations than home versions?
Of course, the challenge is explaining to consumers why Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) [eff.org] is against their interests,
That's actually very easy. You start with something they're familiar with:
"Don't you hate it when you have to sit through all that crap at the beginning of a DVD before you can watch the movie?" "That's digital rights management at work!"
Then you can explain how DVD player manufacturers are forced to sign an agreement stating that their players will allow Hollywood executives and lawyers to determine what you can and can't do in your living room. Anyone who makes a DVD player that circumvents Hollywood's protections, or otherwise helps you to do what would otherwise be perfectly legal, will run afoul of the DMCA.
Then you can move on to other things like the broadcast flag that will be used to determine wether or not you even get to record a show to watch later, or the restrictions on newer HD DVD players that will determine for you wether you get to watch the movie you bought at its full resolution on the expensive TV you bought.
In short, DRM allows movie and music producers to dictate what you can and can't do with stuff you pay for. Its not about preventing piracy (that's the herring that sells) its about controlling what the consumer can do after the sale.
Really, how many *average* home users know what ports their programs use?
They shouldn't need to. Their firewall software should do it for them. Currently, whenever my firewall sees an app try to use a closed port, it throws up a dialog telling me what app is trying to open what port, and asks me if I want to always allow it, deny it, or only allow it this one time. That's really very little hassle in getting things set up correctly.
Lastly, I think the request of the larger corporate customers and government makes sense. They don't want to micro-manage their machines.
I'm not sure it does make sense. These are customers who do micro-manage the computers. They have mechanisms in place to install everything from the OS to the most basic of apps with a preset configurations. This move does nothing for them when the first thing they do on receipt of the computer is wipe the drive and intall their in-house "flavor".
I disagree that MS stifles innovation (see OSX, Linux, OpenOffice, Apache, MySQL, etc. etc. etc.
You left off Netscape. And OpenDoc (the Apple/IBM/Sun project). And DRDOS. And the hit Quicken took when MS preannounced its competing product which took years to appear with far fewer features than advertised. MS didn't exactly do Java any favors either. These are all cases where MS didn't have anything that could compete on merit IMO. They won (where they did) because they leveraged their monopoly.
And those are just the ones that immediately spring to mind.
Slashdot Mirror
So what did McKinnon actually do?
Depends on who you ask.
Either he harmlessly hacked into a bunch of gov/mil computer systems, doing them a favor by ponting out how weak their security is.
-or-
He hacked into gov/mil computer systems resulting in the shut down of some systems and $millions lost in the ensuing panic and investigations.
Take your pick.
It really isn't very clear is it. Especially when the crime actually extends across the border. If I throw a rock across the US/Canadian border to hit a Canadian, where should I be prosecuted? Its a crime in both countries. Same it true if I'm sitting at a computer in the US and hack into a Canadian govermnent computer.
Would US hackers support the extradition of another hacker being extradited to France for hacking a french military network? I suspect not - no matter how stupid & obnoxious the hacker's behaviour was.
I don't know that I qualify for any given definition of "hacker", but I would have no issues with extradition in that case.
It all depends on how you add things up. Is 5 years too much of a sentence for breaking into gov/mil computer systems? Then if he's being tried for 14 separate violations, that could add up to 70 years if convicted on all counts. Even then, the judge could sentence him to the maximum 5 years for all convictions, but say all terms to be served concurrently (meaning only 5 years max). OTOH, nobody seems to note what the minimum sentence could be. Is it possible he could be found guilty and serve no prison time at all?
Just to be clear, the "5 years" was just pulled out of a hat. I don't know specifically what crimes he's being accused of, how many, or what the sentencing range is for any of them.
Thanks for the clarification. After I posted I started wondering if that was the case (complex vs. simple sugars, different isomers...).
Wether it comes from corn or sugar cane, sugar is sugar (AFAIK its the same fructose either way). Is there some reason to think that sugar from cane is associated with fewer health risks that sugar from corn?
Yes, they do taste different, but that's because of the other stuff that's in there.
The big alternative I hear discussed is switch grass. If you google it, you'll get a page full of links to using it as a source for ethanol. Its easy to grow, easy to harvest, and produces more protein and ethanol than the alternatives (soy beans an corn respectively).
Many of these studies also leave off the fact that the "byproduct" of producing ethanol from corn is also valuable. If I can find the link to the study, I'll post it (I think it was done by the US Department of Agriculture).
In short, ethanol is produced by converting the sugars/starches in corn to ethanol. That leaves behind a protein rich by-product that is then added to corn and other feed used for raising cattle, replacing more expensive (in every sense of the word) protein supplements.
So based on the merits of EtOH production alone, corn may not be the best source. But you need to consider all the factors involved.
OTOH, if you live in the midwest, you may be hearing a lot about switch grass. Supposedly yields more protein than soy beans and more EtOH than corn. Look for some farmers to turn to that if EtOH becomes a more viable fuel alternative.
It has nothing to do with being smarter in doctors cases. It's all about being an elitist for them. They look at Mac's and say if I get one of those i'll be cool.
I work with a lot of doctors too. I can assure you, the ones I know don't use it because they are "elitist". They use it because it works. And works easily. And works reliably. They use it because they just want to get the job done, and the Mac does it.
The author of TFA wasn't very clear, so maybe I can unmuddy it a little.
As you may know, Boot Camp allows dual booting. So you're either running OS X or XP. They are on separate partitions on the drive, with OS X (typically) being on an HFS+ formatted partition. That means that when Windows is running, unless you install separate software to enable it, no program in Windows can even "see" the HFS+ partition with the Mac stuff on it. For all practical purposes, that part of the hard drive doesn't exist when XP is running.
So, as the article points out, this hypothetical virus would need to infect Windows, install software to allow it to read the HFS+ partition, then be able to properly target the OS X part of the drive. A lot of work to target the small fraction of Mac users using Boot Camp.
In my experience Mac users know bugger all about technology, and care more about furnitures than they do about computing.
In my experience, that's just as true for Windows users. Even more so for the population in general.
IMO the only "self-selection" done by Mac users is that they made a decision to go against the flow and buy a Mac. Ask someone who buys a Mac why they bought it instead of a Windows PC, and they'll give you a reason -usually centering around ease of use and security. Ask someone why they bought a Windows PC instead of a Mac, they often have no answer other than "that's what everyone else has".
Is that what they call "natural selection"?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Symantec, McAfee, and the like have been urging Mac users to buy antivirus software for years.
Many years. Decades even.
One of these years they may be right. In the mean time, Mac users are more likely to suffer data and/or productivity loss due to AV software than due to a virus. They certainly lose the cost of the AV software they purchased.
And as I implied in an earlier post, if a governmental department were found to be collecting and disseminating this kind of information, we'd be having Congressional hearings tomorrow. We seem to be worried about how anti-terrorism bills cut into privacy (wether tapping phone lines or monitoring net traffick), but nobody seems to worry when big companies are doing that and more.
Don't you know, its perfectly OK for a big company to track what you do with your computer and maintain a profile on you -as long as its for profit.
But if the government wants to do it in the name of national security, that's just plain wrong!
Not saying either is right, just that people seem to be much less worried about Big Company as Big Brother than they are about Big Government as Big Brother.
For some reason, that made me about this . Hey, if tossing false positives up on the monitor keeps the TSA screeners focused, what could possibly go wrong with tossing false images up on the windshield to keep a driver awake?
One of the reasons many people upgrade Office is because they need to be able to open documents from other people who may be using a newer version. MS not only has people locked into their format, but by changing their format, they push people into upgrading too.
Now, along comes a plugin that allows all the different versions of Office, plus many 3rd party applications to work with the same document. Suddenly nobody needs to upgrade an entire Office suite just because someone somewhere bought a new computer with a new version of Office.
So now people only need to buy MS Office if they feel compelled by the features offered, not because they need to be compatible with someone else. IOW if forces MS to compete more on merit.
I hadn't really thought about it, but you're right. It would be good to see how the app fails (or not) when denied access, without having to open the firewall settings to remove it from the list when needed.
Something else that bugs me about the "we're doing it for enterprise customers" argument -how many different versions of Vista are there? Isn't the whole idea that the business/enterprise versions would have different default settings and configurations than home versions?
What's going on?
Of course, the challenge is explaining to consumers why Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) [eff.org] is against their interests,
That's actually very easy. You start with something they're familiar with:
"Don't you hate it when you have to sit through all that crap at the beginning of a DVD before you can watch the movie?" "That's digital rights management at work!"
Then you can explain how DVD player manufacturers are forced to sign an agreement stating that their players will allow Hollywood executives and lawyers to determine what you can and can't do in your living room. Anyone who makes a DVD player that circumvents Hollywood's protections, or otherwise helps you to do what would otherwise be perfectly legal, will run afoul of the DMCA.
Then you can move on to other things like the broadcast flag that will be used to determine wether or not you even get to record a show to watch later, or the restrictions on newer HD DVD players that will determine for you wether you get to watch the movie you bought at its full resolution on the expensive TV you bought.
In short, DRM allows movie and music producers to dictate what you can and can't do with stuff you pay for. Its not about preventing piracy (that's the herring that sells) its about controlling what the consumer can do after the sale.
Really, how many *average* home users know what ports their programs use?
They shouldn't need to. Their firewall software should do it for them. Currently, whenever my firewall sees an app try to use a closed port, it throws up a dialog telling me what app is trying to open what port, and asks me if I want to always allow it, deny it, or only allow it this one time. That's really very little hassle in getting things set up correctly.
Lastly, I think the request of the larger corporate customers and government makes sense. They don't want to micro-manage their machines.
I'm not sure it does make sense. These are customers who do micro-manage the computers. They have mechanisms in place to install everything from the OS to the most basic of apps with a preset configurations. This move does nothing for them when the first thing they do on receipt of the computer is wipe the drive and intall their in-house "flavor".
I guess filtering software would be the next step. Its not like some companies don't do it to some degree already (for better or worse).
And a key provision also seems to be, "so long as this does not interfere with their overall work performance."
IOW if you spend too much time surfing, or talking on the phone, you can still get fired.
I disagree that MS stifles innovation (see OSX, Linux, OpenOffice, Apache, MySQL, etc. etc. etc.
You left off Netscape. And OpenDoc (the Apple/IBM/Sun project). And DRDOS. And the hit Quicken took when MS preannounced its competing product which took years to appear with far fewer features than advertised. MS didn't exactly do Java any favors either. These are all cases where MS didn't have anything that could compete on merit IMO. They won (where they did) because they leveraged their monopoly.
And those are just the ones that immediately spring to mind.
In that case, I'm moving to Finland where I can speed for free!