The problem with having Wal*Mart be an ISP is that you'd have to send every other packet back because it'd have parts missing, and they'd just go ahead and route the returned packet to someone else.
Some time in the late eighties, farmers in Britain somehow got the idea that it was perfectly ok to feed chickens on some fish-based product, presumably because it was cheap. The result was that most chicken tasted, quite literally, fishy.
In addition to presumably millions of others, I stopped eating it for the most part, until someone came up with the bright idea of marketing corn-fed chicken. The fish-fed chicken were sold more and more cheaply, and then disappeared off the shelves completely after that.
The evidence that Clinton had to work with at the time rather clearly pointed to that factory being connected with both bin Laden and Iraq. Our intelligence operatives found a rare chemical compound in soil outside the factory that is used in the creation of VX gas. The factory was also part of the Oil-for-Food program that we now know was an utterly corrupt money laundering disaster. I don't think the case is as open-and-shut on the Sudanese factory as we'd like to believe. I think President Clinton did the right thing, based on the intelligence he had at the time
I'm aware of that and wasn't criticising Clinton for doing so, I was mentioning it as a high profile example of Clinton action.
That said, I understand your general points and am I glad we both clarified certain issues. My concern was the way you worded your original two paragraphs, it looked like it was suggesting the non-appearance of mainland America terrorist activity was something new since 9/11/2001, and it was, therefore, because of the way Bush had handled 9/11, that Clinton had somehow failed to do. I'm glad that isn't what you intended to mean.
No. Bullshit. They tried to knock over the World Trade Center in 1993 when Bill Clinton was president. Why? They bombed the USS Cole during Clinton's term. Why? They slaughtered hundreds at our embassies in Africa. Why? President Clinton mostly ignored them, why did they still want to get us? All because of Gulf 1? If there's no connection between al Qaeda and Iraq, why in the world would these terrorists be so upset about Iraq?
And, I ask you, why has there not been a single American civilian death on our own soil since 9/11? How hard would it be for just ONE al Qaeda sympathizer or sleeper cell operative to build a bomb and blow up the food court at a shopping ball? Or a zoo? An amusement park? A sporting event? A crowded bus? Why? NOT ONE. Not one in 4 years. There's almost 300,000,000 people in our borders, and NOT ONE OF THEM has done this. Why?
You appear to be judging Clinton and Bush by different yardsticks.
After Bin Laden's initial WTC attack in 1993, there were no American civilian deaths (from Ladenite terrorism) on American soil either until 9/11, which happened eight years later under a different President. So far as I'm aware, there was only one high profile attempt in the years that followed, an attempt on New Year's Eve, 1999, to blow up LAX, which was foiled by the intelligence in place at the time. We don't know what attempts have been made since 9/11, but we know that the government periodically puts the country on high alert.
Meanwhile, so far as I can see, terrorism continues to be used against the US outside of the country, most of the focus being in Iraq, for obvious reasons. Americans, civilians, government officials, and troops, are still being targetted.
But then the suggestion Clinton ignored terrorists is also false. Clinton made a number of high profile attempts to deal with Osama Bin Laden, much of which was ignored at the time because of the impeachment proceedings. The controversy over his bombing of a factory that turned out to manufacture children's asprin is one example. Clearly though, the factor that ensured there were no terrorist attacks on American soil from 1993 to 2001 had much to do with the way the government of the time managed the threat.
This isn't really a day to make political points. Your posting, at least these two paragraphs, came across as a bizarre example of Clinton bashing that were both unnecessary and highly misleading.
No, it's probably not like the IRA tried to blow up the tallest office building in the country. They blew up a truck bomb outside it.
I mean it's possible that the old joke about the intelligence of Irish terrorists is true ("one tried to blow up my car once, but he burnt his lips on the exhaust pipe") has some truth to it, but still... I question anyone would seriously think a truck bomb parked next to a tall building of any substance would actually do more than shatter windows and cause casualties on the ground.
The IRA's attack then was an attempt to terrorise people. Here was Margaret Thatcher's pride and joy, and it wasn't safe to walk around it.
It fits the technical, but not moral, definition of democracy: the legislature is answerable to the people. That is, if the people really feel pissed enough, they can sack all current members of parliament at the next election.
The US has similar problems, as the three way Reform-Republican-Democratic split in the nineties showed, and indeed Bush's 1st election, where he was the choice of the states (who, similarly, have a first past the post system), but not the people.
Thinking about it, yes, that involved more people.
Note, I'm talking about the scale involved in terms of the potential loss of lives, not the political impact. In some ways, killing political figures is less evil (though still evil) than killing ordinary, innocent, people whose only involvement in an affair may have been, at most, to pay taxes, and vote.
This isn't civil. It's also a little ignorant of British politics.
There are three major parties in the UK, the Labour party, Liberal Democrats, and Conservatives. The Lib Dems have too small a base to be likely to be elected, and usually respond to this by issuing "feel good" manifestos that are clearly unworkable in practice. The Lib Dems was the only anti-war party in the last election, and its anti-war stance was considered by many to be lukewarm.
Both the Conservatives and Labour Party are, ultimately, pro-US-alliances. While the Conservatives made a number of campaign comments criticising Blair's honesty with regards to the lead up to the Iraq war, nobody seriously believes that this party, which is far more closely aligned to Bush's ideologies and other political positions, wouldn't ally itself with Bush on being elected.
The Labour party's alliance with Bush is, by and large, bizarre, from a political standpoint. The two groups are opposites.
There's no realistic way to consider the results of the last election any kind of mandate for anything, especially as - thanks to an elected representatives first-past-the-post ballot system, no winning party has won 50% or more of the vote in my entire lifetime. British governments are almost never the popular choice of the people, largely because the people never agree upon a "right" government for them.
Erm. The UK took part in both of the invasions you mention. By what criteria are you arguing that they're "successful actions"? Particularly as the invasion of Iraq seems to have, by and large, done little but make the participants pariahs?
There are relatively few confirmed deaths and casualties. It's known by everyone on the ground, so far as I can see, that the figures are much higher, it's just the government can't say "400 people are dead" until it has a chance to examine 400 bodies.
Anarchist groups haven't been involved in terrorism since the nineteenth Century and it's hard to believe they'd suddenly start now.
I don't know if it's Al Qaeda (my understanding is that the latter is more an umbrella term anyway, see here for an interesting discussion, the four or so paragraphs starting from "That would seem to cut out Asimov"), but that said, the only other movement I can see engaging in terrorism in Britain would be some sort of break-away Irish group, a disaffected wing of the IRA or something, and I really don't recall the IRA ever doing anything so big. Their worst attrocities were two incidents where they blew up pubs.
Realistically, Bin Laden's groups are the only likely culprits at this stage. I'm not sure I want to be proven wrong, because we'd be seeing a substantial new terrorist movement, be it the revival of a more extreme IRA or a third group.
Not really. Turning the handle is like testing the security of the system. If it is locked, you could be said to be attemping to force entry by turning the handle once or more. Approaching a door that you have no previous knowledge of the security of and attempting to open that door is completely different from, say, a door on a porta-potty that says "VACANT" or "OCCUPIED" and therefore notifies you of the publicity of access/entry BEFORE you even try to access/enter it. A WAP functions like such a door: you know whether it's locked or unlocked before you ever attempt to utilize it.
That's a very poor analogy (and I criticised those using the door analogies for precisely this kind of reasoning.) Even if we take it at face value, all we know is that there is a door. Under most circumstances, seeing a door in a wall somewhere at random isn't something we'd assume we have access to. Where does the door lead? Is it private property on the other side? Why would you even consider turning the handle under normal circumstances?
However, an open WiFi hotspot does invite all connections by virtue of broadcasting its existence--whether explicitly or implicitly authorized, or not. It's like the porta-potty that says "VACANT" -- Would you, at some kind of festival, stare at the long rows of VACANT porta-potties and not make use of one to relieve yourself, because they lack signs that explicitly say either "FOR PUBLIC USE" or "NOT FOR PUBLIC USE"? It's kind of assumed that vacant porta-potties are used for relieving yourself unless otherwise indicated. (out-of-order signs, "employees only" signs, etc)
This, frankly, is insultingly awful as analogies go. The WAP is not broadcasting a signal that says "Hey, anyone, connect! My owner welcomes connections!" It's no more inviting "all" connections than a door with no notice on it. Would you pee in a closet simply because it has a door handle?
It is a required part of a WAP's operation that it negotiate with incoming connections, much as a door handle's operation requires it negotiate with the hand gripping it. To stretch this further and suggest that because it performs this negotiation stage, the owner is automatically inviting strangers to use it is absurd.
Yes, that's a stretch. However it isn't a stretch to say that the manual describes how to secure the system. It also isn't a stretch to say that the onus is on the user to secure their device, and by not doing so and broadcasting the signal on a public unregulated frequency, they are implicitly allowing access to the WAP. By their INACTION, they have LEFT IT OPEN, but they did not OPEN IT. It's not their actions which are at fault here, but their inaction. They did not deliberately open it, but rather they deliberately chose to let it remain open.
This, frankly, is irrelevent. The fact that the owner left it open is a technical detail. It means the owner shouldn't be surprised if someone creeps in and makes a mess of their network, though the hacker who does should still be prosecuted. It means that if the owner has some configuration that means someone else's private network can be accessed via their own, they should take on some of the blame if a hacker is able to access the private network via their's because of an insecure WAP.
But we're not talking about responsibility here, we're talking about the basic issue of whether you can simply assume you are allowed to use someone's network - someone's private property - simply by virtue of the fact that they haven't taken the trouble to secure it. The answer's obvious: No. There is no way a reasonable person should think they have the right to use something because they have the technical means to do so.
You first.
Huh? I didn't make any analogies. I criticised the somewhat dumbass unlocked door analogy, and made it clear why, updated to be remotely relevent, it's not a good one to use.
Hate to say it, given the general dodginess of the article, but the figures aren't as senseless as you suggest. The key word is "minimum". We don't know what an average gold earn per hour is, we just know that the minimum is 15g. We can generally believe that the "farmers" are earning much more than that, to remain comfortably far away from the risk of being fired.
$360ish is also comfortably over the $250 the farmer supposedly earns per month. This also makes sense - the farmer's employer is clearly going to set a minimum that means the employer will profit regardless of how good or bad the farmer is.
The original comment was about the fact the WAP broadcasts, not specifically about the SSID broadcast.
I also completely disagree that the presense of a broadcast SSID in any way implies the WAP is "public". Most WAPs are designed by default to broadcast the SSID. Even if a user knowingly leaves the SSID broadcast on, they may have many reasons for doing so, not the least of which is because it's easier to find their own network if they can choose it from a list. Another good reason is to ensure that neighbours can easily identify networks and deal with potential conflicts.
As far as your final comment goes, no, I think you're going too far. It's one thing to argue that a responsible person will take measures to prevent their network from unauthorized use. It's quite another to say "If someone uses the default configuration, I should consider myself to have permission to use the network."
Like I said earlier, 802.11 really needs something so that people can explicitly, unambigiously, mark their networks as public or private. Right now there are too many people who simply make assumptions - those buying consumer WAPs assume that this doesn't do anything other than add a way for they, themselves, to access their networks wirelessly. Then there's the tech-anarchists who assume that if a network isn't protected by some sort of encryption - and sometimes if it is - and is obvious and public, it's some how an open invitation.
FWIW, I personally enable WEP, and I run my own DHCP server that gives out firewalled IP addresses to unknown MACs (of course, those IP addresses can be changed, but I want it to be absolutely unambigious that someone isn't welcome if they're not welcome.); I'd be happy to run an open access point if there weren't legal liabilities with doing so. But I'm a geek, I know what I'm doing and what the full implications are. People are being sold WAPs as consumer items. It is entirely bogus to assume that just because someone has a WAP and they've not configured the security aspects that they've made a conscious decision to let you in and give you permission to use their network.
Far from it. The default should be "assume I don't have permission unless I'm explictly told otherwise". I'm amazed people would suggest that just because they technically can get in, that they have a right to do so.
I don't think it's anything like that to be quite honest, and I think the technical analogies are way off. For example, those arguing that the WAP "invited access" might just as well argue that an unlocked door "invites access" ("But, your honour! The door handle turned when my hand made a request to enter, responding by opening the door. I was clearly invited in")
A WiFi hotspot does not invite unauthorized connections by virtue of broadcasting its existance. With Wifi using radio spectrum, it's a necessary part of its operation that requires that it transmit its existance so that authorized nodes can connect to it. The best one can argue is that if the hotspot is unsecured - eg the WAP accepts connections without authentication - then we have an "unlocked door". However, as most, if not all, WAPs are sold in a default configuration where they are unlocked and broadcasting an SSID, it's a stretch to argue that the owner of the WAP has deliberately opened their network to all.
Let's stop being nerds with bad analogies and look at the real world. WAPs are consumer equipment. Most WAPs are bought with the intent that their owners use them to connect their own laptops, etc, wirelessly to their Internet connection. Most owners aren't even allowed to run open networks by their ISPs, and are well aware of the fact.
Perhaps what we need here is a way for those opting in to running open networks to flag the fact, rather than have everyone guess at intentions based upon something that has nothing to do with anything. eg Slashdotters think "This AP is open! That must mean I'm allowed to connect!"; actual owner thinks "This AP is cheap and easy to set up. I just plug it in and I can go anywhere in the house with my laptop and browse the net!"
I have to disagree with the assertion CDMA offers any long term benefits over GSM. GSM "version 2" is UMTS, which allows a variety of air-interface technologies to be used, one of which is WCDMA. So in terms of efficiency, the two aren't different.
CDMA is in practice the system that has nowhere to go. It's supported by a small minority of carriers in the world, the "biggest" supporters, Verizon and Sprint PCS, make it a point to control and limit their customers personal mobility, and it owes its limited success, for the most part, to heavy lobbying by Qualcomm of the Clinton Administration, who in turn heavily lobbied a number of governments in the far east to jump on board.
It's also interesting to hear it described here as "technically superior to GSM in every way". The codecs are no better. The air interface standard is marginally better, though not in any way that'd be noticed by an actual customer (it helps carriers save costs, in theory, by allowing them to increase cell sizes while maintaining large amounts of capacity, though the usual risks of poor reception still exist under those circumstances and reduce the number of occasions this is useful in practice to a very small amount), but the mobile network model it uses is antiquated, based on a phone=subscriber location-specific dialing world from the 1970s. In practice, my sincere belief is that the major reason it was adopted by Verizon and many other cellular companies was that this obsolete network model made upgrading their existing networks trivial.
I don't believe CDMA (that is, IS95) has ever, in practice, been technically superior to GSM. In a small number of locations (well, actually, one or two, the air interface standard and the fact the damn thing has a standardized way of transmitting the time) one can say "Yes, this particular design decision will usually have a slight advantage over the equivalent decision made with GSM", but for the most part... urgh! Where's the personal mobility? The universal network codes? The location independent dialing?
You can then get your phone independently, buying an unlocked, uncrippled, fresh from the factory, full-price, phone, and slip the SIM in it to connect it to your chosen network.
One day, perhaps, the US "CDMA" (IS-95) operators (Verizon, Sprint PCS, etc) will offer similar functionality (supposedly, some versions of IS95 used outside of the US already support SIM cards), but until then there's still an adequate choice of GSM operators for you to be unlikely to be without some kind of reasonable coverage in your area.
It's kind of funny. If Grandma's perfect PC comprises of something she can just do email and the web on, and write the occasional letter, and if all computers should be aimed at Grandma, as many GNU/Linux critics maintain, why aren't PC manufacturers bundling all their computers with FreeDOS and GEM?
I mean, GEM's a proven quantity. It's essentially the Mac's original interface with 8.3 filenames, so, unlike Windows, it's actually easy to use. The combination will run on the most stripped down PC. No Microsoft tax. Plenty of (old) apps, and I'm sure someone has a GEM implementation of a webbrowser or something.
No need for something as complex as GNU/Linux or BSD. Just bung a Free, stable, efficient, OS on the machine and if someone wants Windows, they'll no-doubt buy it.
Mac OS X may have some BSD roots, but it resembles a BSD as much as GNU/Linux does. No, it resembles BSD less than GNU/Linux, at least for desktop apps. Desktop apps are bundled within a set of directories called a.app, the root of which is entirely relocatable, and the whole of which contains binaries for each platform (I assume, I'm guessing "Universal Binaries" are done the same way as they were for NEXTSTEP), metadata, resources, etc.
Reading between the lines, I think the issue is actually that Firefox.app isn't, apparently, compiled within Apple's Xcode framework, instead being built using the same Makefiles etc as a Unix app. This means the build scripts and Makefiles would have needed to be adapted to cross-compile for the additional platform, presumably automatically (ie both platforms, OS X/PPC and OS X/ix86, would have had to be compiled for at once.) Josh says that an Intel Fink was essential to getting the project going, which is why I'm assuming this is the case.
That kind of modification isn't trivial. It's not a matter of just grepping for any gcc line with -mpowerpc (or whatever)
That's one of the arguments, but I think SCOTUS's point was that it shouldn't be involved in the argument at all.
I agree, from where I sit and the facts I've seen, that New London has probably gone too far. The residents of New London have to be the ones to take responsibility here. This means, in practice, throwing out their elected representatives and putting responsible people with the same values as they have in their place.
At the same time, the State of Connecticut also has to take action. The legislature has to draft rules that rein in such behaviour.
I think it was reasonable for SCOTUS to say "We can't judge" on this. What's for the "public" good in any area is going to depend largely on the people living there. Note that SCOTUS did not define "public", as some people have argued, to mean "whatever the local government wants it to mean", it's said instead that the local governments are much better equipped to judge than it is.
Rather than stupid stunts like this, the opponents of what New London is doing should be getting their legislatures involved and providing the assistance needed to the people affected. Everyone seems to want to waste money here to attack the wrong people. It's a mess.
The constitution, 5th amendment, gives the government the power to take land for public use in return for fair compensation. That's the constitution. And public has never meant "must be owned by the government", the most famous example of its use has been to build railroads, which in the US were and are privately owned.
It's the law. It sucks. Arguably there should be tighter restrictions. But to say SCOTUS should have ignored the constitution and instead decreed what they think is fair is to promote judicial activism.
I'd say it's ironic that right wingers are smugly claiming "liberal judges" should have done this, but actually for the most part most of the claims of "judicial activism" they've made against judges for making decisions they don't like have been bogus anyway.
In the mean time, stop expecting the judiciary to bail you out of bad laws. You need to start voting, not relying upon a 250 year old document with limitations.
Well, you hit the nail on the head with your second sentence: some of the code in OS/2 was indeed written by Microsoft. While IBM may have the rights to sell OS/2, they may have problems getting permission to distribute the source code without Microsoft's additional permission. Microsoft is probably only one of the contributors too.
This is precisely why proprietary software sucks - it's viral!
Unlikely. The OS/2 thing concerns Microsoft's attacks on IBM during 1995 when IBM started making a serious attempt to market OS/2. This culminated with IBM not getting what they needed to test Windows 95 on their own machines until the night before release, and having to pay retail for copies. IBM capitulated and dropped all marketing of OS/2 and Lotus Smartsuite in return for getting the same treatment as companies like Dell, Compaq, and Gateway were getting.
My guess is Microsoft basically said: "Ok, we'll give you lots of money, and if you want, you can start marketing OS/2 again... but hold on... nobody's going to want to buy OS/2, not now in 2005, and you don't make PCs any more so you can't bundle OS/2 with them, so, this doesn't mean a whole lot now does it?"
1. You've swapped Burger King and McDonalds around in my analogy;-)
2. Nobody's talking about suing the competitor. The issue is the maker of the robot. Burger King wasn't suing McDonalds, they were suing ACME Advertising Robots Inc, the company that funded the free tire installation and who operate the robot concerned.
3. There's nothing about "willingly and knowingly" in the entire thing.
So I stand by my analogy. Nuh nuh. The only person who might have a case against ACME Advertising Robots Inc is the person whose car it was, not some other business.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with having Wal*Mart be an ISP is that you'd have to send every other packet back because it'd have parts missing, and they'd just go ahead and route the returned packet to someone else.
Some time in the late eighties, farmers in Britain somehow got the idea that it was perfectly ok to feed chickens on some fish-based product, presumably because it was cheap. The result was that most chicken tasted, quite literally, fishy.
In addition to presumably millions of others, I stopped eating it for the most part, until someone came up with the bright idea of marketing corn-fed chicken. The fish-fed chicken were sold more and more cheaply, and then disappeared off the shelves completely after that.
That said, I understand your general points and am I glad we both clarified certain issues. My concern was the way you worded your original two paragraphs, it looked like it was suggesting the non-appearance of mainland America terrorist activity was something new since 9/11/2001, and it was, therefore, because of the way Bush had handled 9/11, that Clinton had somehow failed to do. I'm glad that isn't what you intended to mean.
After Bin Laden's initial WTC attack in 1993, there were no American civilian deaths (from Ladenite terrorism) on American soil either until 9/11, which happened eight years later under a different President. So far as I'm aware, there was only one high profile attempt in the years that followed, an attempt on New Year's Eve, 1999, to blow up LAX, which was foiled by the intelligence in place at the time. We don't know what attempts have been made since 9/11, but we know that the government periodically puts the country on high alert.
Meanwhile, so far as I can see, terrorism continues to be used against the US outside of the country, most of the focus being in Iraq, for obvious reasons. Americans, civilians, government officials, and troops, are still being targetted.
But then the suggestion Clinton ignored terrorists is also false. Clinton made a number of high profile attempts to deal with Osama Bin Laden, much of which was ignored at the time because of the impeachment proceedings. The controversy over his bombing of a factory that turned out to manufacture children's asprin is one example. Clearly though, the factor that ensured there were no terrorist attacks on American soil from 1993 to 2001 had much to do with the way the government of the time managed the threat.
This isn't really a day to make political points. Your posting, at least these two paragraphs, came across as a bizarre example of Clinton bashing that were both unnecessary and highly misleading.
I mean it's possible that the old joke about the intelligence of Irish terrorists is true ("one tried to blow up my car once, but he burnt his lips on the exhaust pipe") has some truth to it, but still... I question anyone would seriously think a truck bomb parked next to a tall building of any substance would actually do more than shatter windows and cause casualties on the ground.
The IRA's attack then was an attempt to terrorise people. Here was Margaret Thatcher's pride and joy, and it wasn't safe to walk around it.
The US has similar problems, as the three way Reform-Republican-Democratic split in the nineties showed, and indeed Bush's 1st election, where he was the choice of the states (who, similarly, have a first past the post system), but not the people.
Note, I'm talking about the scale involved in terms of the potential loss of lives, not the political impact. In some ways, killing political figures is less evil (though still evil) than killing ordinary, innocent, people whose only involvement in an affair may have been, at most, to pay taxes, and vote.
- There are three major parties in the UK, the Labour party, Liberal Democrats, and Conservatives. The Lib Dems have too small a base to be likely to be elected, and usually respond to this by issuing "feel good" manifestos that are clearly unworkable in practice. The Lib Dems was the only anti-war party in the last election, and its anti-war stance was considered by many to be lukewarm.
- Both the Conservatives and Labour Party are, ultimately, pro-US-alliances. While the Conservatives made a number of campaign comments criticising Blair's honesty with regards to the lead up to the Iraq war, nobody seriously believes that this party, which is far more closely aligned to Bush's ideologies and other political positions, wouldn't ally itself with Bush on being elected.
- The Labour party's alliance with Bush is, by and large, bizarre, from a political standpoint. The two groups are opposites.
There's no realistic way to consider the results of the last election any kind of mandate for anything, especially as - thanks to an elected representatives first-past-the-post ballot system, no winning party has won 50% or more of the vote in my entire lifetime. British governments are almost never the popular choice of the people, largely because the people never agree upon a "right" government for them.Erm. The UK took part in both of the invasions you mention. By what criteria are you arguing that they're "successful actions"? Particularly as the invasion of Iraq seems to have, by and large, done little but make the participants pariahs?
Anarchist groups haven't been involved in terrorism since the nineteenth Century and it's hard to believe they'd suddenly start now.
I don't know if it's Al Qaeda (my understanding is that the latter is more an umbrella term anyway, see here for an interesting discussion, the four or so paragraphs starting from "That would seem to cut out Asimov"), but that said, the only other movement I can see engaging in terrorism in Britain would be some sort of break-away Irish group, a disaffected wing of the IRA or something, and I really don't recall the IRA ever doing anything so big. Their worst attrocities were two incidents where they blew up pubs.
Realistically, Bin Laden's groups are the only likely culprits at this stage. I'm not sure I want to be proven wrong, because we'd be seeing a substantial new terrorist movement, be it the revival of a more extreme IRA or a third group.
That's a very poor analogy (and I criticised those using the door analogies for precisely this kind of reasoning.) Even if we take it at face value, all we know is that there is a door. Under most circumstances, seeing a door in a wall somewhere at random isn't something we'd assume we have access to. Where does the door lead? Is it private property on the other side? Why would you even consider turning the handle under normal circumstances?
This, frankly, is insultingly awful as analogies go. The WAP is not broadcasting a signal that says "Hey, anyone, connect! My owner welcomes connections!" It's no more inviting "all" connections than a door with no notice on it. Would you pee in a closet simply because it has a door handle?
It is a required part of a WAP's operation that it negotiate with incoming connections, much as a door handle's operation requires it negotiate with the hand gripping it. To stretch this further and suggest that because it performs this negotiation stage, the owner is automatically inviting strangers to use it is absurd.
This, frankly, is irrelevent. The fact that the owner left it open is a technical detail. It means the owner shouldn't be surprised if someone creeps in and makes a mess of their network, though the hacker who does should still be prosecuted. It means that if the owner has some configuration that means someone else's private network can be accessed via their own, they should take on some of the blame if a hacker is able to access the private network via their's because of an insecure WAP.
But we're not talking about responsibility here, we're talking about the basic issue of whether you can simply assume you are allowed to use someone's network - someone's private property - simply by virtue of the fact that they haven't taken the trouble to secure it. The answer's obvious: No. There is no way a reasonable person should think they have the right to use something because they have the technical means to do so.
Huh? I didn't make any analogies. I criticised the somewhat dumbass unlocked door analogy, and made it clear why, updated to be remotely relevent, it's not a good one to use.
$360ish is also comfortably over the $250 the farmer supposedly earns per month. This also makes sense - the farmer's employer is clearly going to set a minimum that means the employer will profit regardless of how good or bad the farmer is.
I also completely disagree that the presense of a broadcast SSID in any way implies the WAP is "public". Most WAPs are designed by default to broadcast the SSID. Even if a user knowingly leaves the SSID broadcast on, they may have many reasons for doing so, not the least of which is because it's easier to find their own network if they can choose it from a list. Another good reason is to ensure that neighbours can easily identify networks and deal with potential conflicts.
As far as your final comment goes, no, I think you're going too far. It's one thing to argue that a responsible person will take measures to prevent their network from unauthorized use. It's quite another to say "If someone uses the default configuration, I should consider myself to have permission to use the network."
Like I said earlier, 802.11 really needs something so that people can explicitly, unambigiously, mark their networks as public or private. Right now there are too many people who simply make assumptions - those buying consumer WAPs assume that this doesn't do anything other than add a way for they, themselves, to access their networks wirelessly. Then there's the tech-anarchists who assume that if a network isn't protected by some sort of encryption - and sometimes if it is - and is obvious and public, it's some how an open invitation.
FWIW, I personally enable WEP, and I run my own DHCP server that gives out firewalled IP addresses to unknown MACs (of course, those IP addresses can be changed, but I want it to be absolutely unambigious that someone isn't welcome if they're not welcome.); I'd be happy to run an open access point if there weren't legal liabilities with doing so. But I'm a geek, I know what I'm doing and what the full implications are. People are being sold WAPs as consumer items. It is entirely bogus to assume that just because someone has a WAP and they've not configured the security aspects that they've made a conscious decision to let you in and give you permission to use their network.
Far from it. The default should be "assume I don't have permission unless I'm explictly told otherwise". I'm amazed people would suggest that just because they technically can get in, that they have a right to do so.
A WiFi hotspot does not invite unauthorized connections by virtue of broadcasting its existance. With Wifi using radio spectrum, it's a necessary part of its operation that requires that it transmit its existance so that authorized nodes can connect to it. The best one can argue is that if the hotspot is unsecured - eg the WAP accepts connections without authentication - then we have an "unlocked door". However, as most, if not all, WAPs are sold in a default configuration where they are unlocked and broadcasting an SSID, it's a stretch to argue that the owner of the WAP has deliberately opened their network to all.
Let's stop being nerds with bad analogies and look at the real world. WAPs are consumer equipment. Most WAPs are bought with the intent that their owners use them to connect their own laptops, etc, wirelessly to their Internet connection. Most owners aren't even allowed to run open networks by their ISPs, and are well aware of the fact.
Perhaps what we need here is a way for those opting in to running open networks to flag the fact, rather than have everyone guess at intentions based upon something that has nothing to do with anything. eg Slashdotters think "This AP is open! That must mean I'm allowed to connect!"; actual owner thinks "This AP is cheap and easy to set up. I just plug it in and I can go anywhere in the house with my laptop and browse the net!"
CDMA is in practice the system that has nowhere to go. It's supported by a small minority of carriers in the world, the "biggest" supporters, Verizon and Sprint PCS, make it a point to control and limit their customers personal mobility, and it owes its limited success, for the most part, to heavy lobbying by Qualcomm of the Clinton Administration, who in turn heavily lobbied a number of governments in the far east to jump on board.
It's also interesting to hear it described here as "technically superior to GSM in every way". The codecs are no better. The air interface standard is marginally better, though not in any way that'd be noticed by an actual customer (it helps carriers save costs, in theory, by allowing them to increase cell sizes while maintaining large amounts of capacity, though the usual risks of poor reception still exist under those circumstances and reduce the number of occasions this is useful in practice to a very small amount), but the mobile network model it uses is antiquated, based on a phone=subscriber location-specific dialing world from the 1970s. In practice, my sincere belief is that the major reason it was adopted by Verizon and many other cellular companies was that this obsolete network model made upgrading their existing networks trivial.
I don't believe CDMA (that is, IS95) has ever, in practice, been technically superior to GSM. In a small number of locations (well, actually, one or two, the air interface standard and the fact the damn thing has a standardized way of transmitting the time) one can say "Yes, this particular design decision will usually have a slight advantage over the equivalent decision made with GSM", but for the most part... urgh! Where's the personal mobility? The universal network codes? The location independent dialing?
You can then get your phone independently, buying an unlocked, uncrippled, fresh from the factory, full-price, phone, and slip the SIM in it to connect it to your chosen network.
One day, perhaps, the US "CDMA" (IS-95) operators (Verizon, Sprint PCS, etc) will offer similar functionality (supposedly, some versions of IS95 used outside of the US already support SIM cards), but until then there's still an adequate choice of GSM operators for you to be unlikely to be without some kind of reasonable coverage in your area.
I mean, GEM's a proven quantity. It's essentially the Mac's original interface with 8.3 filenames, so, unlike Windows, it's actually easy to use. The combination will run on the most stripped down PC. No Microsoft tax. Plenty of (old) apps, and I'm sure someone has a GEM implementation of a webbrowser or something.
No need for something as complex as GNU/Linux or BSD. Just bung a Free, stable, efficient, OS on the machine and if someone wants Windows, they'll no-doubt buy it.
Is this why she's suing? Because, thanks to NASA, she doesn't have any morals, and therefore is absolutely fine with the idea of frivolous lawsuits?
Is this what happened to Jeffrey Vernon Merkey too?
Reading between the lines, I think the issue is actually that Firefox.app isn't, apparently, compiled within Apple's Xcode framework, instead being built using the same Makefiles etc as a Unix app. This means the build scripts and Makefiles would have needed to be adapted to cross-compile for the additional platform, presumably automatically (ie both platforms, OS X/PPC and OS X/ix86, would have had to be compiled for at once.) Josh says that an Intel Fink was essential to getting the project going, which is why I'm assuming this is the case.
That kind of modification isn't trivial. It's not a matter of just grepping for any gcc line with -mpowerpc (or whatever)
I agree, from where I sit and the facts I've seen, that New London has probably gone too far. The residents of New London have to be the ones to take responsibility here. This means, in practice, throwing out their elected representatives and putting responsible people with the same values as they have in their place.
At the same time, the State of Connecticut also has to take action. The legislature has to draft rules that rein in such behaviour.
I think it was reasonable for SCOTUS to say "We can't judge" on this. What's for the "public" good in any area is going to depend largely on the people living there. Note that SCOTUS did not define "public", as some people have argued, to mean "whatever the local government wants it to mean", it's said instead that the local governments are much better equipped to judge than it is.
Rather than stupid stunts like this, the opponents of what New London is doing should be getting their legislatures involved and providing the assistance needed to the people affected. Everyone seems to want to waste money here to attack the wrong people. It's a mess.
It's the law. It sucks. Arguably there should be tighter restrictions. But to say SCOTUS should have ignored the constitution and instead decreed what they think is fair is to promote judicial activism.
I'd say it's ironic that right wingers are smugly claiming "liberal judges" should have done this, but actually for the most part most of the claims of "judicial activism" they've made against judges for making decisions they don't like have been bogus anyway.
In the mean time, stop expecting the judiciary to bail you out of bad laws. You need to start voting, not relying upon a 250 year old document with limitations.
This is precisely why proprietary software sucks - it's viral!
My guess is Microsoft basically said: "Ok, we'll give you lots of money, and if you want, you can start marketing OS/2 again... but hold on... nobody's going to want to buy OS/2, not now in 2005, and you don't make PCs any more so you can't bundle OS/2 with them, so, this doesn't mean a whole lot now does it?"
1. You've swapped Burger King and McDonalds around in my analogy ;-)
2. Nobody's talking about suing the competitor. The issue is the maker of the robot. Burger King wasn't suing McDonalds, they were suing ACME Advertising Robots Inc, the company that funded the free tire installation and who operate the robot concerned.
3. There's nothing about "willingly and knowingly" in the entire thing.
So I stand by my analogy. Nuh nuh. The only person who might have a case against ACME Advertising Robots Inc is the person whose car it was, not some other business.
And I think it's a reasonable decision.