CDs cost about the same only if you want the entire package they sell. $15 is a lot to pay for 1 song.
CDs have a higher audio quality only if the source was digitized at 41.1 kHz and not 48 kHz. Yes, CDs are uncompressed but they are also format limited to 16-bits and 41.1 kHz, regardless of the source audio, and conversion to that sampling format can also constitute a significant loss of quality.
I'm not saying there are never benefits to CDs over electronic delivery, but your opposing assertion is just as ridiculous. Like most things in life, it's about balance, not about picking the right side.
Or maybe if there were some way that you could execute a legal document and have some agent or officer of the government authenticate your identity and acceptance of the document in-person. That would be handy.
In my experience (I admit I'm no software development guru), the frameworks make for clean code in most cases. The exceptions are uses that are not planned for in the framework, or features that are poorly documented. Then you have a hugely kluged workaround or hack to the framework code itself to permit something that might otherwise be straightforward to implement.
Could it just be that people who choose the right framework for their project are more likely to write clean code in the first place, as evidenced by their ability to choose the right framework, if any? I don't doubt that there's a correlation between good code and appropriate framework use, I just doubt the causality that was implied.
And I could show you inefficiencies and poorly-formed code and design patterns in projects that do use Struts/Shale/WebWork.
That's not to say that frameworks aren't useful for some purposes, but "enforcing well-formed code and design patterns" is not one of those reasons, nor is failing to use frameworks evidence of bad design.
Both your "lax security" and your "Sony rootkit" examples are instances of business actions not employee malfeasance. In any case where the business takes official action, or fails to take reasonable precautions, both the business and its directors *are* accountable under current law, should anyone choose to sue them. I'm not saying it would be easy or cheap to win such a case, but the law allows you to sue both the business as a whole and it directors personally for anything the business chooses to do.
Even in the case of employee malfeasance, or other non-official action, you can sue the company itself. But there are important protections for business directors against things like employee malfeasance. Both the thief and the business may be held accountable, but the directors cannot be held *personally* accountable for all the actions of their employees.
I never said the companies shouldn't be held accountable for actions or even for the actions of their employees, or that the directors of companies shouldn't be held accountable for their own actions. I only said that *personal* protection of business directors afforded by incorporation is socially valuable because they are not able to control the actions of their employees.
Talk to me about "whining" when your locked car gets stolen, used in the commission of a crime, and then you get sued by the victims because of your "involvement" in the crime.
Re:This is (now) a famous number-theory integer!
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Censoring a Number
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2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 = 2^6.
2^6 is not a prime number, but 2 is and any positive integer exponent of 2 is pretty clear shorthand given the context of prime factorization. At least to most people.
Apparently you've never employed anyone, or been a member of a partnership. Employees and partners aren't slaves or children, and their boss can't control all their actions. Therefore their boss should not be held accountable for all their actions.
Let's say Joe from IT uses his access to the business systems to get the backup encryption key and then steals one of the archived DB backup tapes. When he gets home he extracts a list of credit card numbers and sells or uses them. In this scenario the business policy provided reasonable protection of the credit card numbers -- the business systems were secured from general access and the tapes were encrypted. But Joe used the access he was necessarily granted to do his job to violate the trust of his employer and steal credit card numbers. Why should the CEO be personally liable?
Or for a small-business example try this one: you and your partner start a business. You hire skilled and reliable workers, you do good work, and your customers love you. Everything is going great and you land a big contract. Then your partner takes all of your liquid assets including the contract payment and skips town. Your business now has no cash to complete the contract or issue a refund, and you didn't do anything wrong, other than trust your partner -- should you lose your home because your business partner turned out to be a thief?
There are scenarios where the directors or owners should be held accountable; any time that the management of a company makes decisions that hurt people though direct action or negligence they should be held accountable. And contrary to your apparent belief it is possible to sue the directors and owners of a company personally in any case where they were actually at fault. It's just not possible to sue them personally in cases where they were not at fault, and there are socially valid reasons for making that distinction.
While the average pop song won't be improved by it, I'm sure people who appreciate classical music
I forgot, only classical music benefits from higher quality recording and encoding. All that newfangled music from kids these days sounds the same no matter how your record it.
Later will you tell us how you keep the kids off your lawn?
No, you couldn't, because control of the military and the ability to regulate interstate commerce are sufficient for the federal government to get essentially unlimited power. And the same is happening in Europe.
It's only sufficient because we decided to let "regulate interstate commerce" mean whatever the then-current federal government decided it meant. There's no reason to believe that power necessarily extends beyond enforcing open borders and prohibiting interstate tarriffs and the like. I'm reasonably confident that it also take popular support to expand the meaning of "regulate interstate commerce", but I'm willing to admit that you can sell most people almost anything with the right marketing, so popular support isn't an overwhelming hurdle.
But I stand by my original point: The specific powers granted to the federal government are not the problem, popular support of expanding federal government is the problem. If the people and the courts are willing to look the other way, no restrictions on power will prevent the growth of the government.
That's not fair -- Nixon was actually a pretty effective president. People only remember the resignation, but he was able to push through a large number of domestic policy changes and had a foreign policy that extended beyond Vietman. Whether or not you agree with his politics (and be sure you know what they are before you make that decision), and the crimes he helped cover up, you should at least respect his effectiveness in the office.
Yeah. Like the one here in the US that limits the power of the federal government to regulate the states and the People. That is, until there's popular support for granting the government such power without changing the constitution, and then the legislature will just decide that the inter-state commerce clause covers any sort of legislation that's popular, regardless of the constitutional limits.
We tried that again later, with the current constitution. It actually defines a lot of rights reserved specifically for the states and people. It's just that FDR and Lincoln (among others, but they're high on the list) decided they didn't like those limits, and popular support for breaking those limits prevented their enforcement.
Not necessarily. You could limit the scope of federal power to prevent it from being a hassle while still letting you pool resources when it is beneficial. Now if only Lincoln and FDR, or anyone since then, had respected those limits.
It's nice in theory to say "label everything" but that's obviously impractical -- you have to choose the thing you think are important to know and label those for those items. For example, I'm guessing you don't care about the particular breed or age of the cows making your milk. But someone might -- should we label for that?
The intent of pasturization is to produce a large-scale reduction in the number of micro-organisms in food. Both heat and ionizing radiation can accomplish that with proven reliabilty. I don't think it's totally unreasonable to say that two processes with the same intent and same reliablity are similar enough to warrant a standard label. There may well be other motivations behind the choice of "pasturization" over "irradiation" or something other term, but from a technical perspective I don't see the problem with a common label; standardization in labels can help people who don't know much about food safety or nutrition make better choices.
Except he didn't say talk about "everyone in inner-city neighborhoods" he specifically said "urban criminals". You're the only one here talking about bystanders, or equating them to criminals. Maybe the OP should have considered bystanders in his shooting-related post, but it's clear to me and apparently at least one other person here that he didn't -- you're the only one here who has made the assumption.
You're ranking pretty high on the attitude and hypocrisy scale by accusing the OP and his defenders of offensive comparisons when you're the only one making those comparisons. I'd end my post by accusing you of being some sort of sub-human bigot, but I think you've done enough of that for everyone already.//This is worth some karma burn.
Paper money has as much or more "intrinsic value" as gold, depending on your needs. Gold is poisonous, heavy, doesn't burn well and is difficult to write on. Paper can be used to make fires, as a form of dietary fiber, or for note taking while still being easy to transport. The difference is not the "intrinsic value", which is entirely dependent on the application, but rather the scarcity. Paper has an effectively unlimited supply, while gold gets expensive it dig up in large quantities.
Moreover the problem is really the unbalanced spending, not the material we choose as a basis for trade valuations. If the federal government took in the same amount of gold/dollars/fish/whatever than it paid out it there wouldn't be a problem -- it's the unbalanced spending that creates the temptation to remove the resource scarcity limitation in the first place.
It is important to consider differences between situations when arguing by analogy, but abstraction is not the only valid use of analogy, nor does the use of a non-abstracting analogy indicate that someone is making an emotional rather than a ration comparison.
The benefit of the analog between unencrypted WiFi networks and the unlocked door is not abstractions -- it not that the unlocked door is simpler, as you note it's quite complicated -- it's that the unlocked door is a situation that people have experience with, both individually and collectively. By discussing what has and hasn't been traditionally acceptable with respect to doors and locks, both of which have been parts of society for thousands of years, we can more easily understand what is and isn't acceptable with WiFi networks, which are a brand new thing.
We shouldn't stop the discussion at the analogy, because there are differences, but it's a perfectly valid starting point for a rational discussion. First you draw an analogy. Next you note the ways in which the analogy is inaccurate. Then can discuss the importance of those differences with respect to the decision you're making. You may decide the differences are fundamental and the analogy isn't useful with respect to your current decision. Or you may decide that, while differences exist, none of the difference affect the situation at hand. Or you may decide that the analogy is mostly accurate with respect to your situation, and throw out only the portions of the analogy that are materially inaccurate. None of that needs to be an emotional process, and none of it requires that the analogy is one of abstraction.
Who the f*** decided that sentences on the Internet shall no longer be formatted with two spaces after a period?! The doubled space after after a period rule was a hack to deal with the hard-to-read mono-spaced fonts on old computer and typewriters. Set type never used a double space after a period, before or after typewriters -- they used 1.5 spaces. And if your fonts are worth anything, they should approximate that 1.5 spaces with a full stop and a single space.
What basis are you using to draw the (as far as I can tell) arbitrary distinction between the presense of an SSID and its contents? Humans can detect neither without the assistance of a radio and a computer, so I can't see how one is "human-visible" and the other is not.
You could argue that owners of unsecured networks do not intend to allow public access unless they change the SSID to indicate that intent. And that's not an unreasonably viewpoint. But you could also argue that owners of unsecured networks do not intend to allow public access unless they broadcast the SSID to indicate that intent. And I don't think that's an unreasonably viewpoint either.
At least in my jurisdiction, in order to prove breaking and entering one must show that the premises was reasonably secured; you cannnot break and enter and unlocked house. You can tresspass, but if they door was open you must be asked to leave and refuse before you've commited a crime; simply being present is not a crime in itself. Why are WiFi networks different? Why is the burden on the user to prove a right to access as opposed to the network owner to reasonably secure the network? And I'm willing to draw the bar pretty low -- just don't advertise your network -- and ignore the more pragmatically secure options avaible on almost every access point.
Certainly network owners could ask people to stop using their network, and take actions to enforce that request, regardless of their choices about securing the network. But why is use of the network a crime even without an attempt by the owner to indicate, through their reasonable security measures, that they don't want you to use the network?
Don't equate protocol-level advertisements with human-level advertisements, because they're not at all the same.
I agree that they're not completely the same. But it's a stretch at best to say they aren't the same at all.
Like I said in my original post, I'm not convinced that an unsecured access point is an invitation for use. But I'm also not sure that it's not, and the confusion has nothing to do with the language difference between WiFi, DHCP, and English.
To bring my sign analogy closer to the computer world try this:a sign on someone's front door that said "SSID: MyWiFi. Address provided via DHCP." That's a "human-level" invitation, and it's just as ambiguous as the original. It doesn't explicitly grant permission to use the network, but it makes the network and instructions for use available for all to see, and it's not totally unreasonable to assume that the intent of the sign is to grant access to the network, at least until someone tells you otherwise.
The confusion lies not in the language of the advertisement, but in the grey area between "explicitly granted permission for use" and "made publicly available".
Please note that I do not intend the following analogy to completely represent an open WiFi network; I intend only to demonstrate that the language of the advertisement, and the owner's understanding of that advertisement, cannot be used to determine the reasonableness of another party's reaction to that advertisement.
Imagine a door that said, in Spanish, "Public Restroom". Now imagine a homeowner who doesn't read Spanish who purchases and installs said door. If someone who does read Spanish enters the home and uses the bathroom, are they liable for trespassing just because the homeowner doesn't read Spanish? Of course not -- the advertisement on the door invited them in. Certainly the homeowner could ask them to leave, and they would then be required to leave, but until they refuse to leave they've committed no crime, regardless of the language skills of the homeowner.
I agree, discussions based on analogies will always be inaccurate.
But I contend that absolute accuracy in interpersonal communication is infeasible. It may even be infeasible in thought -- Dougla Hofstader argues that analogy is "the core of cognition" and he's not alone.
Even if you don't think cognition requires analogy, certainly you can see that it is the basis of language. Computers aren't all the same. Each one is unique in its state, hardware, software, location, network connections, users, etc. But for the purposes of communication we are willing to generalize all the unique computers into a single group by abstraction and analogy. Apply the same reasoning to any other noun and you'll find that any sort of categorization, abstraction, or other grouping is a form of analogy. So the only way to have a discussion without analogies is to use the exact proper noun for every single thing you discuss. Otherwise you're inaccurately describing things by ignoring their differences.
That's not to say there aren't bad analogies, or that you can ignore the differences between any two subjects. But to suggest that any form of analogy is worthless because it's inaccurate is hypocritical at best -- the very use of the word analogy is an analogy to all the specific cases of analogy you've experienced and expect others to have experienced.
I think you could construe the mere presence of packets with an SSID is the invitation. If you don't want to make your access point public you could just not broadcast the SSID; there's no technical requirement to do so, and you don't need to do any sort of encryption to stop the broadcast of the SSID. I'm not sure I would construe things that way, but it doesn't seem totally unreasonable.
Moreover you're drawing an arbitrary distinction between the DHCP on-wire protocol and English. What if the invitation was in Spanish, encoded in UTF-16. I at least couldn't read that in my packet capture, but presumably someone could. Would the invitation count then? You can argue about the intended meaning of the DHCP offer, but to argue that it can't really be an offer because it wasn't made in ASCII-encoded English is a bit silly.
Here's a situation I imagine to be analogous: There's a sign on a house that says "We have a pool" (SSID broadcast). Upon closer examination of the sign (DHCP request) you find instructions on how to access the pool (DHCP offer). I think you could make a reasonable argument either way about whether the pool was being advertised for public use. And I think a reasonable person, upon finding strangers in their pool, would simply kick them out and take down the sign and remove the ambiguity if they weren't intending to make that offer.
So we should ban any chemical compound until it has been proven safe? How do I prove that something is safe? What if the problem only shows up after 2 generations and then only in 1% of people? That's gonna be one long, expensive study.
Or what about all the things we know are dangerous but continue using because it's traditional and/or because the benefits outweigh the risks. Like cars, for example. Cars are the single most dangerous thing most people encounter in a day, but no one has ever seriously considered banning them.
Like most things in life, this is a question of balance, and blanket policies of any sort will produce less-than-ideal results. All activities entail some risks. There's a benefit to evaluating the risks, at least up to some cost (in time, dollars, etc.). There's a benefit to outlawing some activities when the risks are high and the benefit is low (love canal), or when the risks are high and there are reasonable alternatives for most uses (lead pipes). But there are also cases where we should continue in spite of the risks because the benefits are high (cars) or because no practical alternative exists (breathing ambient air). And in almost all cases the decision must be made without complete information, which may lead to a reversal of the decision later when new information, technologies, lifestyles, etc. come in to play.
Seriously, what is it that makes people think there are exactly two sides to any discussion, and that those sides are opposed to each other.
Why does it have to be naturally occurring? Isn't safe good enough without also being natural? Or am I supposed to read that as natural (snake venom) == safe (not causing death)?
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CDs cost about the same only if you want the entire package they sell. $15 is a lot to pay for 1 song.
CDs have a higher audio quality only if the source was digitized at 41.1 kHz and not 48 kHz. Yes, CDs are uncompressed but they are also format limited to 16-bits and 41.1 kHz, regardless of the source audio, and conversion to that sampling format can also constitute a significant loss of quality.
I'm not saying there are never benefits to CDs over electronic delivery, but your opposing assertion is just as ridiculous. Like most things in life, it's about balance, not about picking the right side.
Yes, as long as the host system isn't Windows.
Or maybe if there were some way that you could execute a legal document and have some agent or officer of the government authenticate your identity and acceptance of the document in-person. That would be handy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notary_public
In my experience (I admit I'm no software development guru), the frameworks make for clean code in most cases. The exceptions are uses that are not planned for in the framework, or features that are poorly documented. Then you have a hugely kluged workaround or hack to the framework code itself to permit something that might otherwise be straightforward to implement.
Could it just be that people who choose the right framework for their project are more likely to write clean code in the first place, as evidenced by their ability to choose the right framework, if any? I don't doubt that there's a correlation between good code and appropriate framework use, I just doubt the causality that was implied.
And I could show you inefficiencies and poorly-formed code and design patterns in projects that do use Struts/Shale/WebWork.
That's not to say that frameworks aren't useful for some purposes, but "enforcing well-formed code and design patterns" is not one of those reasons, nor is failing to use frameworks evidence of bad design.
Both your "lax security" and your "Sony rootkit" examples are instances of business actions not employee malfeasance. In any case where the business takes official action, or fails to take reasonable precautions, both the business and its directors *are* accountable under current law, should anyone choose to sue them. I'm not saying it would be easy or cheap to win such a case, but the law allows you to sue both the business as a whole and it directors personally for anything the business chooses to do.
Even in the case of employee malfeasance, or other non-official action, you can sue the company itself. But there are important protections for business directors against things like employee malfeasance. Both the thief and the business may be held accountable, but the directors cannot be held *personally* accountable for all the actions of their employees.
I never said the companies shouldn't be held accountable for actions or even for the actions of their employees, or that the directors of companies shouldn't be held accountable for their own actions. I only said that *personal* protection of business directors afforded by incorporation is socially valuable because they are not able to control the actions of their employees.
Talk to me about "whining" when your locked car gets stolen, used in the commission of a crime, and then you get sued by the victims because of your "involvement" in the crime.
2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 = 2^6.
2^6 is not a prime number, but 2 is and any positive integer exponent of 2 is pretty clear shorthand given the context of prime factorization. At least to most people.
Apparently you've never employed anyone, or been a member of a partnership. Employees and partners aren't slaves or children, and their boss can't control all their actions. Therefore their boss should not be held accountable for all their actions.
Let's say Joe from IT uses his access to the business systems to get the backup encryption key and then steals one of the archived DB backup tapes. When he gets home he extracts a list of credit card numbers and sells or uses them. In this scenario the business policy provided reasonable protection of the credit card numbers -- the business systems were secured from general access and the tapes were encrypted. But Joe used the access he was necessarily granted to do his job to violate the trust of his employer and steal credit card numbers. Why should the CEO be personally liable?
Or for a small-business example try this one: you and your partner start a business. You hire skilled and reliable workers, you do good work, and your customers love you. Everything is going great and you land a big contract. Then your partner takes all of your liquid assets including the contract payment and skips town. Your business now has no cash to complete the contract or issue a refund, and you didn't do anything wrong, other than trust your partner -- should you lose your home because your business partner turned out to be a thief?
There are scenarios where the directors or owners should be held accountable; any time that the management of a company makes decisions that hurt people though direct action or negligence they should be held accountable. And contrary to your apparent belief it is possible to sue the directors and owners of a company personally in any case where they were actually at fault. It's just not possible to sue them personally in cases where they were not at fault, and there are socially valid reasons for making that distinction.
I forgot, only classical music benefits from higher quality recording and encoding. All that newfangled music from kids these days sounds the same no matter how your record it.
Later will you tell us how you keep the kids off your lawn?
No, you couldn't, because control of the military and the ability to regulate interstate commerce are sufficient for the federal government to get essentially unlimited power. And the same is happening in Europe.
It's only sufficient because we decided to let "regulate interstate commerce" mean whatever the then-current federal government decided it meant. There's no reason to believe that power necessarily extends beyond enforcing open borders and prohibiting interstate tarriffs and the like. I'm reasonably confident that it also take popular support to expand the meaning of "regulate interstate commerce", but I'm willing to admit that you can sell most people almost anything with the right marketing, so popular support isn't an overwhelming hurdle.
But I stand by my original point: The specific powers granted to the federal government are not the problem, popular support of expanding federal government is the problem. If the people and the courts are willing to look the other way, no restrictions on power will prevent the growth of the government.
That's not fair -- Nixon was actually a pretty effective president. People only remember the resignation, but he was able to push through a large number of domestic policy changes and had a foreign policy that extended beyond Vietman. Whether or not you agree with his politics (and be sure you know what they are before you make that decision), and the crimes he helped cover up, you should at least respect his effectiveness in the office.
Yeah. Like the one here in the US that limits the power of the federal government to regulate the states and the People. That is, until there's popular support for granting the government such power without changing the constitution, and then the legislature will just decide that the inter-state commerce clause covers any sort of legislation that's popular, regardless of the constitutional limits.
We tried that again later, with the current constitution. It actually defines a lot of rights reserved specifically for the states and people. It's just that FDR and Lincoln (among others, but they're high on the list) decided they didn't like those limits, and popular support for breaking those limits prevented their enforcement.
Not necessarily. You could limit the scope of federal power to prevent it from being a hassle while still letting you pool resources when it is beneficial. Now if only Lincoln and FDR, or anyone since then, had respected those limits.
It's nice in theory to say "label everything" but that's obviously impractical -- you have to choose the thing you think are important to know and label those for those items. For example, I'm guessing you don't care about the particular breed or age of the cows making your milk. But someone might -- should we label for that?
The intent of pasturization is to produce a large-scale reduction in the number of micro-organisms in food. Both heat and ionizing radiation can accomplish that with proven reliabilty. I don't think it's totally unreasonable to say that two processes with the same intent and same reliablity are similar enough to warrant a standard label. There may well be other motivations behind the choice of "pasturization" over "irradiation" or something other term, but from a technical perspective I don't see the problem with a common label; standardization in labels can help people who don't know much about food safety or nutrition make better choices.
Except he didn't say talk about "everyone in inner-city neighborhoods" he specifically said "urban criminals". You're the only one here talking about bystanders, or equating them to criminals. Maybe the OP should have considered bystanders in his shooting-related post, but it's clear to me and apparently at least one other person here that he didn't -- you're the only one here who has made the assumption.
//This is worth some karma burn.
You're ranking pretty high on the attitude and hypocrisy scale by accusing the OP and his defenders of offensive comparisons when you're the only one making those comparisons. I'd end my post by accusing you of being some sort of sub-human bigot, but I think you've done enough of that for everyone already.
Paper money has as much or more "intrinsic value" as gold, depending on your needs. Gold is poisonous, heavy, doesn't burn well and is difficult to write on. Paper can be used to make fires, as a form of dietary fiber, or for note taking while still being easy to transport. The difference is not the "intrinsic value", which is entirely dependent on the application, but rather the scarcity. Paper has an effectively unlimited supply, while gold gets expensive it dig up in large quantities.
Moreover the problem is really the unbalanced spending, not the material we choose as a basis for trade valuations. If the federal government took in the same amount of gold/dollars/fish/whatever than it paid out it there wouldn't be a problem -- it's the unbalanced spending that creates the temptation to remove the resource scarcity limitation in the first place.
It is important to consider differences between situations when arguing by analogy, but abstraction is not the only valid use of analogy, nor does the use of a non-abstracting analogy indicate that someone is making an emotional rather than a ration comparison.
The benefit of the analog between unencrypted WiFi networks and the unlocked door is not abstractions -- it not that the unlocked door is simpler, as you note it's quite complicated -- it's that the unlocked door is a situation that people have experience with, both individually and collectively. By discussing what has and hasn't been traditionally acceptable with respect to doors and locks, both of which have been parts of society for thousands of years, we can more easily understand what is and isn't acceptable with WiFi networks, which are a brand new thing.
We shouldn't stop the discussion at the analogy, because there are differences, but it's a perfectly valid starting point for a rational discussion. First you draw an analogy. Next you note the ways in which the analogy is inaccurate. Then can discuss the importance of those differences with respect to the decision you're making. You may decide the differences are fundamental and the analogy isn't useful with respect to your current decision. Or you may decide that, while differences exist, none of the difference affect the situation at hand. Or you may decide that the analogy is mostly accurate with respect to your situation, and throw out only the portions of the analogy that are materially inaccurate. None of that needs to be an emotional process, and none of it requires that the analogy is one of abstraction.
What basis are you using to draw the (as far as I can tell) arbitrary distinction between the presense of an SSID and its contents? Humans can detect neither without the assistance of a radio and a computer, so I can't see how one is "human-visible" and the other is not.
You could argue that owners of unsecured networks do not intend to allow public access unless they change the SSID to indicate that intent. And that's not an unreasonably viewpoint. But you could also argue that owners of unsecured networks do not intend to allow public access unless they broadcast the SSID to indicate that intent. And I don't think that's an unreasonably viewpoint either.
At least in my jurisdiction, in order to prove breaking and entering one must show that the premises was reasonably secured; you cannnot break and enter and unlocked house. You can tresspass, but if they door was open you must be asked to leave and refuse before you've commited a crime; simply being present is not a crime in itself. Why are WiFi networks different? Why is the burden on the user to prove a right to access as opposed to the network owner to reasonably secure the network? And I'm willing to draw the bar pretty low -- just don't advertise your network -- and ignore the more pragmatically secure options avaible on almost every access point.
Certainly network owners could ask people to stop using their network, and take actions to enforce that request, regardless of their choices about securing the network. But why is use of the network a crime even without an attempt by the owner to indicate, through their reasonable security measures, that they don't want you to use the network?
Don't equate protocol-level advertisements with human-level advertisements, because they're not at all the same.
I agree that they're not completely the same. But it's a stretch at best to say they aren't the same at all.
Like I said in my original post, I'm not convinced that an unsecured access point is an invitation for use. But I'm also not sure that it's not, and the confusion has nothing to do with the language difference between WiFi, DHCP, and English.
To bring my sign analogy closer to the computer world try this:a sign on someone's front door that said "SSID: MyWiFi. Address provided via DHCP." That's a "human-level" invitation, and it's just as ambiguous as the original. It doesn't explicitly grant permission to use the network, but it makes the network and instructions for use available for all to see, and it's not totally unreasonable to assume that the intent of the sign is to grant access to the network, at least until someone tells you otherwise.
The confusion lies not in the language of the advertisement, but in the grey area between "explicitly granted permission for use" and "made publicly available".
Please note that I do not intend the following analogy to completely represent an open WiFi network; I intend only to demonstrate that the language of the advertisement, and the owner's understanding of that advertisement, cannot be used to determine the reasonableness of another party's reaction to that advertisement.
Imagine a door that said, in Spanish, "Public Restroom". Now imagine a homeowner who doesn't read Spanish who purchases and installs said door. If someone who does read Spanish enters the home and uses the bathroom, are they liable for trespassing just because the homeowner doesn't read Spanish? Of course not -- the advertisement on the door invited them in. Certainly the homeowner could ask them to leave, and they would then be required to leave, but until they refuse to leave they've committed no crime, regardless of the language skills of the homeowner.
I agree, discussions based on analogies will always be inaccurate.
But I contend that absolute accuracy in interpersonal communication is infeasible. It may even be infeasible in thought -- Dougla Hofstader argues that analogy is "the core of cognition" and he's not alone.
Even if you don't think cognition requires analogy, certainly you can see that it is the basis of language. Computers aren't all the same. Each one is unique in its state, hardware, software, location, network connections, users, etc. But for the purposes of communication we are willing to generalize all the unique computers into a single group by abstraction and analogy. Apply the same reasoning to any other noun and you'll find that any sort of categorization, abstraction, or other grouping is a form of analogy. So the only way to have a discussion without analogies is to use the exact proper noun for every single thing you discuss. Otherwise you're inaccurately describing things by ignoring their differences.
That's not to say there aren't bad analogies, or that you can ignore the differences between any two subjects. But to suggest that any form of analogy is worthless because it's inaccurate is hypocritical at best -- the very use of the word analogy is an analogy to all the specific cases of analogy you've experienced and expect others to have experienced.
I think you could construe the mere presence of packets with an SSID is the invitation. If you don't want to make your access point public you could just not broadcast the SSID; there's no technical requirement to do so, and you don't need to do any sort of encryption to stop the broadcast of the SSID. I'm not sure I would construe things that way, but it doesn't seem totally unreasonable.
Moreover you're drawing an arbitrary distinction between the DHCP on-wire protocol and English. What if the invitation was in Spanish, encoded in UTF-16. I at least couldn't read that in my packet capture, but presumably someone could. Would the invitation count then? You can argue about the intended meaning of the DHCP offer, but to argue that it can't really be an offer because it wasn't made in ASCII-encoded English is a bit silly.
Here's a situation I imagine to be analogous: There's a sign on a house that says "We have a pool" (SSID broadcast). Upon closer examination of the sign (DHCP request) you find instructions on how to access the pool (DHCP offer). I think you could make a reasonable argument either way about whether the pool was being advertised for public use. And I think a reasonable person, upon finding strangers in their pool, would simply kick them out and take down the sign and remove the ambiguity if they weren't intending to make that offer.
So we should ban any chemical compound until it has been proven safe? How do I prove that something is safe? What if the problem only shows up after 2 generations and then only in 1% of people? That's gonna be one long, expensive study.
Or what about all the things we know are dangerous but continue using because it's traditional and/or because the benefits outweigh the risks. Like cars, for example. Cars are the single most dangerous thing most people encounter in a day, but no one has ever seriously considered banning them.
Like most things in life, this is a question of balance, and blanket policies of any sort will produce less-than-ideal results. All activities entail some risks. There's a benefit to evaluating the risks, at least up to some cost (in time, dollars, etc.). There's a benefit to outlawing some activities when the risks are high and the benefit is low (love canal), or when the risks are high and there are reasonable alternatives for most uses (lead pipes). But there are also cases where we should continue in spite of the risks because the benefits are high (cars) or because no practical alternative exists (breathing ambient air). And in almost all cases the decision must be made without complete information, which may lead to a reversal of the decision later when new information, technologies, lifestyles, etc. come in to play.
Seriously, what is it that makes people think there are exactly two sides to any discussion, and that those sides are opposed to each other.
Why does it have to be naturally occurring? Isn't safe good enough without also being natural? Or am I supposed to read that as natural (snake venom) == safe (not causing death)?