I agree, no law should be absolute. They codify acceptable behavior in common circumstances, but fail to properly address the extreme ones. A common problem exists in physics...
I saw that a lot while teaching in grad school; teaching undergrads, graduates, conducting research, writing papers and writing grants are all very different skills. It's rare to for someone to be good at more than a couple of those. I had a good friend in grad school who was brilliant, and a great help to his fellow grad students. But he got fired halfway through his first semester teaching Calculus, apparently he couldn't deal with non-mathematicians. I knew a physics prof. who was rightfully elected teacher-of-the-year for the whole campus, and was nearly derailed from tenure-track that same year because his research was not cutting edge physics, it was cutting edge physics-education (his papers and course design were impressive). It took sustained protests to reinstate him in the brand new "teaching physicist" role he got. Expecting faculty do everything is especially a problem at research universities, where they are only rewarded for research, grants, and political maneuvering. Teaching ability in the hard sciences is unrelated to career advancement, and so is neglected by most. These professors are still very useful to graduate students who are operating nearly on their level, but asking them to teach beginner undergraduate classes is a diservice to the students and the reluctant teacher.
One affect of this is to undermine the ability of individuals to disseminate data, and force them into the role of data consumers. There is no good technical reason to limit individuals from hosting or distributing data from a personal internet account, other than to place them under the control of larger corporations. I've always felt upload and download speeds should be the same, like they were in the days of modem access.
It's true, Assange's defense made me cringe. Something went very wrong in that defense; either his lawyers were poorly chosen and incompetent, they were infected by his paranoia and unnerved by the media attention, or they had other reasons to mismanage his defense.
The sciencenews article was shorter and better explained the research paper, but what I'd really prefer is to be able to read that paper. Anyone have a link for a free version?
1) Domsheit-Berg took the documents and deleted the copies out of spite, Wikileaks stole nothing, they received the documents with the higher objective of exposing corruption and wrong-doings. Morally and legally their actions are very different. Wikileaks actions are legally indistinguishable from news organizations, and they have yet to be convicted of a crime. There is plenty of precedent that taking documents from a former employer with the intent to harm them IS a crime. 2) Betraying the whistle-blowers of a rival organization is morally suspect and unlikely to encourage anyone to trust Openleaks.
I seriously doubt Domscheit-Berg purposely infiltrated Wikileaks, but I agree with you that I don't trust him or Openleaks. Compromising the security of wikileaks contributors shows he does not respect them, and is unlikely to do so at OpenLeaks. Assange is clearly loyal to his ideals and willing to take great personal risk for them. I might not trust him with my cat, but I'd trust him with my leaked data.
18.2-152.15. Encryption used in criminal activity.
Any person who willfully uses encryption to further any criminal activity shall be guilty of an offense which is separate and distinct from the predicate criminal activity and punishable as a Class 1 misdemeanor.
"Encryption" means the enciphering of intelligible data into unintelligible form or the deciphering of unintelligible data into intelligible form.
(1999, c. 455.)
Sounds broad enough that using slang would count as encryption.
There has been a lot of pathogen-specific research in the last decade, most of that data is public and is available in GenBank, which also happens to be where all the other genetic data resides. There's a European one and a Japanese one too, as well as various topic-specific and private ones, but the GenBank is the biggest. It's a whole lot to sift through, a previous employer has a great graphic for making sense of it all.
I was wondering about that. In the US there's always a mini baby boom nine months after a major power outage knocks out the TVs. 'Cause, you know, we were "protesting".
The guy doesn't have $8000, he probably is still living in his mom's basement. But it's low enough that he would still have to deal with it, and not so high that it's worth declaring bankruptcy. The pain of having to pay the fine while loudly claiming innocence would be a deterent. But $360M is high enough to interfere with his ability to go straight, and unreasonable enough for him to continue feeling like he did nothing wrong.
$360million is a meaningless number which accomplishes nothing. $8,000 would actually have an impact. I'm with the Republicans on this one, tort reform is long overdue.
Every software project I've worked has occasionally had a feature forced in without careful consideration. They rarely turn out well, but they're disastrous when a major change is not tied to a new release number. Even if the change is useful and needed, it's really hard to see who's in compliance. There are always forward- and backward-compatibility issues with the datasets (old data can't use new feature, new data won't run right on old software), and it creates a lot of unnecessary work for both customers and coders.
The tension between developers and the standards committee they belong to is an old one that comes up again and again. That's just how democracy works; a subgroup is always going to be ready to move forward on an idea before the majority approves it. It's easy to forget why we submit ourselves to this slow and annoying process, but the end result is something most people agree on and can work with.
That is a completely unsupported statistic. Suicide bombers, especially female ones, are not easily profiled. The wikipedia article on it links to a number articles and case studies where the opinion varies a great deal, but none suggest the women did it because her children were threatened.
It's one thing to post documents on-line that Governments would rather keep secret. It's another to do like Wikileaks did and edit video to fit their personal views. If these sites would just post and not add their opinion; credibility would improve.
What news organization does do that? For that matter, what other news organization would also publish the raw footage (as wikileaks did)?
Slashdot Mirror
The only reason third-parties don't gain any traction is because of your lazy, defeatist attitude.
No, it's because the U.S. uses a first-past-the-post electoral system, which makes a two-party dominant system almost inevitable.
On a related note, one of the women accusing Assange of sexual misconduct works for USAID and had been kicked out of Cuba for her activities.
http://www.infowars.com/cia-honeytrap-ardin-deleted-twitter-posts-praising-assange/
That's the heart of the matter right there.
I agree, no law should be absolute. They codify acceptable behavior in common circumstances, but fail to properly address the extreme ones. A common problem exists in physics...
I saw that a lot while teaching in grad school; teaching undergrads, graduates, conducting research, writing papers and writing grants are all very different skills. It's rare to for someone to be good at more than a couple of those. I had a good friend in grad school who was brilliant, and a great help to his fellow grad students. But he got fired halfway through his first semester teaching Calculus, apparently he couldn't deal with non-mathematicians. I knew a physics prof. who was rightfully elected teacher-of-the-year for the whole campus, and was nearly derailed from tenure-track that same year because his research was not cutting edge physics, it was cutting edge physics-education (his papers and course design were impressive). It took sustained protests to reinstate him in the brand new "teaching physicist" role he got.
Expecting faculty do everything is especially a problem at research universities, where they are only rewarded for research, grants, and political maneuvering. Teaching ability in the hard sciences is unrelated to career advancement, and so is neglected by most. These professors are still very useful to graduate students who are operating nearly on their level, but asking them to teach beginner undergraduate classes is a diservice to the students and the reluctant teacher.
One affect of this is to undermine the ability of individuals to disseminate data, and force them into the role of data consumers. There is no good technical reason to limit individuals from hosting or distributing data from a personal internet account, other than to place them under the control of larger corporations. I've always felt upload and download speeds should be the same, like they were in the days of modem access.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/10/19/x-ray-vans-security-measure-invasion-privacy/
Isn't Intel's Sandy Bridge chipset the one with the controversial proprietary DRM built in?
It's true, Assange's defense made me cringe. Something went very wrong in that defense; either his lawyers were poorly chosen and incompetent, they were infected by his paranoia and unnerved by the media attention, or they had other reasons to mismanage his defense.
The sciencenews article was shorter and better explained the research paper, but what I'd really prefer is to be able to read that paper. Anyone have a link for a free version?
I have the same experience..
The Egyptians sure seem distracted ;-)
1) Domsheit-Berg took the documents and deleted the copies out of spite, Wikileaks stole nothing, they received the documents with the higher objective of exposing corruption and wrong-doings. Morally and legally their actions are very different. Wikileaks actions are legally indistinguishable from news organizations, and they have yet to be convicted of a crime. There is plenty of precedent that taking documents from a former employer with the intent to harm them IS a crime.
2) Betraying the whistle-blowers of a rival organization is morally suspect and unlikely to encourage anyone to trust Openleaks.
I seriously doubt Domscheit-Berg purposely infiltrated Wikileaks, but I agree with you that I don't trust him or Openleaks. Compromising the security of wikileaks contributors shows he does not respect them, and is unlikely to do so at OpenLeaks. Assange is clearly loyal to his ideals and willing to take great personal risk for them. I might not trust him with my cat, but I'd trust him with my leaked data.
Sounds broad enough that using slang would count as encryption.
Pfft. This is what self-taught science education lets you do. Schools teach theories based on experiments the teachers never did.
Useful, thanks!
I'm sure Cole knows all publicity is good publicity. It won't hurt sales one bit.
There has been a lot of pathogen-specific research in the last decade, most of that data is public and is available in GenBank, which also happens to be where all the other genetic data resides. There's a European one and a Japanese one too, as well as various topic-specific and private ones, but the GenBank is the biggest. It's a whole lot to sift through, a previous employer has a great graphic for making sense of it all.
I was wondering about that. In the US there's always a mini baby boom nine months after a major power outage knocks out the TVs. 'Cause, you know, we were "protesting".
The guy doesn't have $8000, he probably is still living in his mom's basement. But it's low enough that he would still have to deal with it, and not so high that it's worth declaring bankruptcy. The pain of having to pay the fine while loudly claiming innocence would be a deterent. But $360M is high enough to interfere with his ability to go straight, and unreasonable enough for him to continue feeling like he did nothing wrong.
$360million is a meaningless number which accomplishes nothing. $8,000 would actually have an impact. I'm with the Republicans on this one, tort reform is long overdue.
Every software project I've worked has occasionally had a feature forced in without careful consideration. They rarely turn out well, but they're disastrous when a major change is not tied to a new release number. Even if the change is useful and needed, it's really hard to see who's in compliance. There are always forward- and backward-compatibility issues with the datasets (old data can't use new feature, new data won't run right on old software), and it creates a lot of unnecessary work for both customers and coders.
The tension between developers and the standards committee they belong to is an old one that comes up again and again. That's just how democracy works; a subgroup is always going to be ready to move forward on an idea before the majority approves it. It's easy to forget why we submit ourselves to this slow and annoying process, but the end result is something most people agree on and can work with.
That is a completely unsupported statistic. Suicide bombers, especially female ones, are not easily profiled. The wikipedia article on it links to a number articles and case studies where the opinion varies a great deal, but none suggest the women did it because her children were threatened.
And it's no excuse even if they did.
It's one thing to post documents on-line that Governments would rather keep secret. It's another to do like Wikileaks did and edit video to fit their personal views. If these sites would just post and not add their opinion; credibility would improve.
What news organization does do that? For that matter, what other news organization would also publish the raw footage (as wikileaks did)?