The surprise isn't that Windows 8 is large - it's basically two disparate OSes
No, it isn't "two different OSes"; it's one OS with two UIs and two runtimes. Linux ships with multiple UIs and runtimes out of the box (plus tons of apps) and still fits into a fraction of this space.
I find that weird. You say you have no problem playing a violent video game featuring real guns as long as the game manufacturers don't pay licensing fees to the people holding the trademarks?
Like candy cigarettes, any advertising of an inherently dangerous/deadly product towards an adolescent target audience probably should be carefully scrutinized, regulated, or eliminated.
... because we all know that the best way of protecting children is to keep them in a bubble until they turn 18 and then can do whatever they want, right?
As for this....I don't even now what to say. It's depressing that people actually think this. I hope you're just a bit ignorant and not actually that cynical.
Well, so explain to me: what was his stunt with JSTOR actually supposed to accomplish? If successful, how would it have resulted in changes to US copyright law?
His organization, Demand Progress, were critical in organizing opposition to those acts, and have done a great deal for advancing other "progressive" causes.
I think it was a bad idea for Swartz to mix up advocacy for open access and copyright reform with progressivism. It is inconsistent with progressivism and it is off-putting to people interested in these reforms who are not progressives.
He actually had done real work to change IP law in our country, rather than you or I who just bitch about it on the internet.
So you think it was those damned progressives that caused copyright to become a federal issue?
I was making a different point, but that's true as well: the strengthening of copyright has been a key political issue of the entertainment industry, and that industry strongly favors progressive causes.
Aaron Swartz wasn't trying to take people's guns away. He was fighting for sane IP laws.
He was merely using IP law as a pretext for acting up. Even if he had succeeded and gotten off free, it wouldn't have changed anything about IP law.
Maliciously overcharging someone to further a political career is legal?
Show me the law that it would violate.
Of course, I'm just an idealistic foreigner, in a foreign land, who believes in all that "truth, justice and liberty" stuff from experiencing American cowboy and superhero literature/cinema as a child, so... well... um... dammit.
You don't seem to understand that with liberty comes risk.
And if Swartz had done what he did in Europe, Japan, China, or Australia, he'd already be serving a couple of years.
Odd, the NDAA's National Prosecution Standards says it is for the prosecutor to determine (4-2.4, Factors to Consider).
I didn't say that prosecutors should never consider it. I'm saying that in this case the acts Swartz committed were serious enough that the decision should be left up to the court. A grand jury obviously agreed.
I would say she should be investigated fairly and justly, but by your own words, isn't whether she was actually guilty and whether there were extenuating circumstances up to a court to determine, not her prosecutors?
What law do you believe she actually broke? I don't know of any. Even if she had maliciously overcharged Swartz to further her political career, that would still be legal. She might get disbarred, I suppose; good luck with that.
Seriously, are you so dumb that one has to spell this out for you in excruciating detail?
But it's Congress that is responsible for this development; you can't blame the prosecutors for the expansion of federal power
Of course, when prosecutors are corrupt, when they torture little kittens, when they cut the nose off the cheese, or when they pee on the toilet seat, you can blame them for those things. But you can't blame them for giving prosecutors too much power because it is Congress that gives prosecutors this power in the first place.
This is not justice. The legislature, the judiciary, and the executive are to blame for allowing this practice. When the government is able to "indict, and convict, virtually anyone unfortunate enough to come within their sights" we no longer have liberty.
No, the voters have themselves to blame for it: they want the federal government to do more and more. At first sight, federal civil rights legislation, legalization of abortion, drug laws, health care, gun control, environmental regulations, banking regulation, etc. seem like good ideas, but they all come with the flipside that they require enforcement, and with enforcement come vast new powers for federal prosecutors. Both parties are to blame for this to some degree, but it's more serious with the Democrats because they don't even realize it (or don't care).
Why should she? Justice, perhaps? Is that consequence acceptable to you? Do you find it "just"?
Yes, I think charging him was just. Whether he was actually guilty and whether there were extenuating circumstances was for a court to determine, not the prosecutor.
I don't find the outrage over Swartz hypocritical. We're not all those same people you refer to.
That could be a valid response, but I don't think it is in this case. I think failure to even acknowledge and identify the more general problem while condemning the prosecutor harshly in this particular case itself constitutes hypocrisy.
What happened to him just helped make it a little more obvious to us sheep, that the exception he (and many others) didn't get should in fact be the rule.
No, unfortunately that's not the case. There hasn't been a groundswell of opposition to gun control, the war on drugs, or federal laws on abortion, or any of the other heavy-handed federal laws that make lots of people subject to arbitrary prosecution. All these supposedly beneficial federal activities ultimately translate into punitive laws with strong penalties to back them up.
Indeed, the prosecutor could have chosen to let him get off free. But why should she?
So no matter how short or long he was in a physical prison for, he'd be stuck with that felony record for the rest of his life, yes?
Yes, that's the consequence when you break a federal law with a potential penalty of more than one year.
I find the outrage over Swartz hypocritical. The same people who couldn't give a f*ck over prosecutorial overreach and an encroachment of federal laws on states' rights for decades, many of the same people who are still busy creating laws strengthening this overreach and encroachment, want a special exception for someone because they like his politics and ideology. I don't think so.
Of course, it is "sickening" that federal prosecutors overcharge, that they have so much power, and that so many cases end up in federal court to begin with. But it's Congress that is responsible for this development; you can't blame the prosecutors (for many years, they were required to charge everything they reasonably could).
It's ironic that Swartz is becoming a poster boy for this, given how linked to progressive causes he was. A large reason for the huge transfer of power to the federal government is due to progressive causes. You want less of this kind of heavy-handed federal government action? Stop handing more power to the federal government and take it back to the states. Of course, you the have to live with the fact that people in Tennessee may not share your views on gay marriage, abortion, weed, evolution, guns, or welfare. But then, you don't have to live there (and fortunately neither do I).
There are plenty of sources you can read up on. Jennifer Granick is very sympathetic to Swartz, and even she admits:
For Aaron, with such a fungible numbers in hand and such a low burden of proof, the government could have argued for almost any sentence it wanted. Using just the base level of 6 and $70K in loss, Aaron would not be eligible to serve any of his sentence in a halfway house or on home confinement. He would be looking at 15 to 21 months of incarceration. That number could get higher quickly. Section 2B1.1 increases the base offense level to 12 if the conduct involved use of an "authentication feature" or "unauthorized access device". Alternatively, upwards adjustments may be warranted if the defendant used a special skill, abused a position of trust, or tried to obstruct justice. True, 35 years wasn't in the cards, despite the fact that's the sentence the government publicly waived over Aaron's head. Neither was a maximum of 50 years, which was what the government arrived at after its perplexing choice to get a superceding indictment. But Aaron could easily have come out to over a year in his guideline calculation.
If you want to know the exact maxima, you have to look at the sentencing guidelines (I get 2-3 years as a maximum).
Do it again here. And further explain why he should have had to spend day 1 in jail for the 'crime' he committed.
The above reference contains more info.
Why should he spend time in prison? If a court finds him guilty, because he violated a law that clearly applies to his case, was passed by both parties, signed into law, and is intended to apply to these kinds of cases. I believe CFAA is a badly written law that should be changed, but it isn't the job of prosecutors or judges to ignore laws just because they like the defendant or his politics.
Oh, and you might consider being less rude, in particular if you simply don't know the facts.
You can't spend three years in prison without a felony record; a felony is defined as any crime that potentially carries a prison term of longer than one year. If he was convicted under CFAA at all, he would have been a felon, no matter how long he served.
If he had been found guilty, I assume it would have had an effect. What does that have to do with the sentence the prosecutor asked for? Why shouldn't it have "an effect" if he had been found guilty?
A prolific self-promoter, Kurzweil claims to have created the first CCD flatbed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, and the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments
You can't total up times that way. It isn't merely unlikely that he would have received such a sentence, it is impossible under federal sentencing guidelines. Saying that he faced a "maximum sentence of 65 years" is wrong, plain and simple. To put it differently, people who actually get 65 years usually face a maximum sentence of hundreds of years.
Swartz actually faced a maximum sentence of about three years. He had been offered a deal of six months in a minimum security prison by the prosecutor. Realistically, that's also about the maximum term a court would have imposed anyway.
No. To a dispassionate and disinterested outside observer, someone was being punished much more harshly than whatever he deserved.
He hadn't been punished at all yet. He would likely have received a sentence somewhere between zero and six months. Federal sentencing guidelines wouldn't have allowed a maximum of more than three years. All of that is completely normal, both within the US and compared to other nations.
"Them" being the elected representatives. They decided that even if you don't profit from copyright violation, you should still have the book thrown at you. I believe the NET Act passed the house and senate unanimously and was signed into law by Bill Clinton.
Did you take your senator and representative to task when it passed? I bet you didn't. You don't like it? Become politically active.
What he was charged with, was copyright infringement (possibly trespass)
No, that's not what Swartz was charged with. Swartz was charged with wire fraud, computer fraud, unauthorized access, and computer damage.
MIT are concerned that they may be a conspirator to this inflation-for-political-gain
I seriously doubt it. You may question the political wisdom or morality of what the prosecutor did, but she was operating within standard federal guidelines. In fact, until a few years ago, she would have been obligated to (not just free to) file the maximum possible charges.
And MIT certainly has a right to report people who may have accessed their networks without authorization to the police and prosecutor. As long as MIT doesn't conceal or exaggerate charges, they are automatically in the clear.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it isn't "two different OSes"; it's one OS with two UIs and two runtimes. Linux ships with multiple UIs and runtimes out of the box (plus tons of apps) and still fits into a fraction of this space.
if it's actually significantly better and backed by a big company, it could.
I don't see anything like that on the horizon. I don't think Ubuntu, Firefox, or Blackberry for phones are sufficiently better to be able to compete.
I find that weird. You say you have no problem playing a violent video game featuring real guns as long as the game manufacturers don't pay licensing fees to the people holding the trademarks?
Then they should perhaps not buy those games? Just a thought.
A minute on Google would have let you check the facts yourself. Yes, you're intellectually lazy and rude.
Well, so explain to me: what was his stunt with JSTOR actually supposed to accomplish? If successful, how would it have resulted in changes to US copyright law?
I think it was a bad idea for Swartz to mix up advocacy for open access and copyright reform with progressivism. It is inconsistent with progressivism and it is off-putting to people interested in these reforms who are not progressives.
You have absolutely no idea what I do.
I was making a different point, but that's true as well: the strengthening of copyright has been a key political issue of the entertainment industry, and that industry strongly favors progressive causes.
He was merely using IP law as a pretext for acting up. Even if he had succeeded and gotten off free, it wouldn't have changed anything about IP law.
Show me the law that it would violate.
You don't seem to understand that with liberty comes risk.
And if Swartz had done what he did in Europe, Japan, China, or Australia, he'd already be serving a couple of years.
I didn't say that prosecutors should never consider it. I'm saying that in this case the acts Swartz committed were serious enough that the decision should be left up to the court. A grand jury obviously agreed.
What law do you believe she actually broke? I don't know of any. Even if she had maliciously overcharged Swartz to further her political career, that would still be legal. She might get disbarred, I suppose; good luck with that.
Seriously, are you so dumb that one has to spell this out for you in excruciating detail?
Of course, when prosecutors are corrupt, when they torture little kittens, when they cut the nose off the cheese, or when they pee on the toilet seat, you can blame them for those things. But you can't blame them for giving prosecutors too much power because it is Congress that gives prosecutors this power in the first place.
No, the voters have themselves to blame for it: they want the federal government to do more and more. At first sight, federal civil rights legislation, legalization of abortion, drug laws, health care, gun control, environmental regulations, banking regulation, etc. seem like good ideas, but they all come with the flipside that they require enforcement, and with enforcement come vast new powers for federal prosecutors. Both parties are to blame for this to some degree, but it's more serious with the Democrats because they don't even realize it (or don't care).
Yes, I think charging him was just. Whether he was actually guilty and whether there were extenuating circumstances was for a court to determine, not the prosecutor.
That could be a valid response, but I don't think it is in this case. I think failure to even acknowledge and identify the more general problem while condemning the prosecutor harshly in this particular case itself constitutes hypocrisy.
No, unfortunately that's not the case. There hasn't been a groundswell of opposition to gun control, the war on drugs, or federal laws on abortion, or any of the other heavy-handed federal laws that make lots of people subject to arbitrary prosecution. All these supposedly beneficial federal activities ultimately translate into punitive laws with strong penalties to back them up.
Indeed, the prosecutor could have chosen to let him get off free. But why should she?
Yes, that's the consequence when you break a federal law with a potential penalty of more than one year.
I find the outrage over Swartz hypocritical. The same people who couldn't give a f*ck over prosecutorial overreach and an encroachment of federal laws on states' rights for decades, many of the same people who are still busy creating laws strengthening this overreach and encroachment, want a special exception for someone because they like his politics and ideology. I don't think so.
Of course, it is "sickening" that federal prosecutors overcharge, that they have so much power, and that so many cases end up in federal court to begin with. But it's Congress that is responsible for this development; you can't blame the prosecutors (for many years, they were required to charge everything they reasonably could).
It's ironic that Swartz is becoming a poster boy for this, given how linked to progressive causes he was. A large reason for the huge transfer of power to the federal government is due to progressive causes. You want less of this kind of heavy-handed federal government action? Stop handing more power to the federal government and take it back to the states. Of course, you the have to live with the fact that people in Tennessee may not share your views on gay marriage, abortion, weed, evolution, guns, or welfare. But then, you don't have to live there (and fortunately neither do I).
I don't see how that is relevant to anything. All violations of the CFAA are automatically felonies; the prosecutor didn't have a choice.
There are plenty of sources you can read up on. Jennifer Granick is very sympathetic to Swartz, and even she admits:
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/01/towards-learning-losing-aaron-swartz-part-2
If you want to know the exact maxima, you have to look at the sentencing guidelines (I get 2-3 years as a maximum).
The above reference contains more info.
Why should he spend time in prison? If a court finds him guilty, because he violated a law that clearly applies to his case, was passed by both parties, signed into law, and is intended to apply to these kinds of cases. I believe CFAA is a badly written law that should be changed, but it isn't the job of prosecutors or judges to ignore laws just because they like the defendant or his politics.
Oh, and you might consider being less rude, in particular if you simply don't know the facts.
You can't spend three years in prison without a felony record; a felony is defined as any crime that potentially carries a prison term of longer than one year. If he was convicted under CFAA at all, he would have been a felon, no matter how long he served.
If he had been found guilty, I assume it would have had an effect. What does that have to do with the sentence the prosecutor asked for? Why shouldn't it have "an effect" if he had been found guilty?
on second thought, I don't actually.
That should be:
Most of these claims are actually rather dubious.
You can't total up times that way. It isn't merely unlikely that he would have received such a sentence, it is impossible under federal sentencing guidelines. Saying that he faced a "maximum sentence of 65 years" is wrong, plain and simple. To put it differently, people who actually get 65 years usually face a maximum sentence of hundreds of years.
Swartz actually faced a maximum sentence of about three years. He had been offered a deal of six months in a minimum security prison by the prosecutor. Realistically, that's also about the maximum term a court would have imposed anyway.
He hadn't been punished at all yet. He would likely have received a sentence somewhere between zero and six months. Federal sentencing guidelines wouldn't have allowed a maximum of more than three years. All of that is completely normal, both within the US and compared to other nations.
"Them" being the elected representatives. They decided that even if you don't profit from copyright violation, you should still have the book thrown at you. I believe the NET Act passed the house and senate unanimously and was signed into law by Bill Clinton.
Did you take your senator and representative to task when it passed? I bet you didn't. You don't like it? Become politically active.
No, that's not what Swartz was charged with. Swartz was charged with wire fraud, computer fraud, unauthorized access, and computer damage.
I seriously doubt it. You may question the political wisdom or morality of what the prosecutor did, but she was operating within standard federal guidelines. In fact, until a few years ago, she would have been obligated to (not just free to) file the maximum possible charges.
And MIT certainly has a right to report people who may have accessed their networks without authorization to the police and prosecutor. As long as MIT doesn't conceal or exaggerate charges, they are automatically in the clear.