Funny, Macs used to be faster than Pentii, but crippled by their other hardware (SCSI, memory, ADB) and OS.
I'll agree wholeheartedly about the OS (which had a superior GUI but was inferior under the hood) and maybe the memory but I wouldn't say that ADB was "crippled" compared to serial ports. And SCSI, "crippled"? SCSI was a definite advantage over Wintel machines. I WILL agree they made the peripherals more expensive but you were getting more bang for your buck (in that line item at least).
For only $1999... Do you know what kind of PC I could build for that much money??
Actually that is a pretty good question - Assuming your time is worth nothing, how much would it take to duplicate this on the PC side? A dual 2GHz proc (I don't go for steve's "PowerPC is twice as fast" but it IS at least a little faster than intel) with 802.11g, FireWire 800, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth etc. Or assuming your time IS worth something how much to buy such a configuration from Dell.
You couldn't patent patents themselves. But, you CAN patent a business model. Why not patent "a method for using patent law to extort money from legitimate businesses"? The only drawback is that (sadly) it would be trivial to come up with prior art. Still, it would make for a nice piece of political theater to illustrate the ridiculousness of the patent system. And who knows? If the system is screwed up *enough* you could win and either stop people from using your patent or get rich by forcing them to license you patent.
North Korea is a huge failure of this administration,
I just might agree - we havn't yet seen the outcome of the current crisis yet. However I would argue it is also a huge failure of the previous administration (and to a lesser extent the ones before that). The last administration faced a tremendously thorny problem so it's hard to place blame - BUT, the fact remains that N. Korea DIDN'T have nuclear weapons before and now they DO. The last administration bribed them not to develop nukes but they took our $$$ and developed them anyway. Now the situation the current administration is in (or got itself in) is much more difficult than it should be. Frankly risking a conventional war the last time around by bombing their reactor would probably have been the better choice. Clinton had the option and claims he was willing to use it but he blinked and took the extortion/diplomatic way out. The genie is at least half out of the bottle and now the stakes are exponentially higher.
For the most part, I think we dissagree on how easy it is to make and transfer nuclear weapons undetected. I consider it an exceptionally difficult and very risky proposition. Especially now with the US stance on Iraq it would mean war.
They aren't planning to make them undetected - they have publicly announced their covert program and have announced their intention to accelerate it by reactivating the Yongbyon reactor. As for selling them, that might be more difficult but a warhead isn't THAT big a thing and once they have nukes how do you intend to stop them. We haven't exactly been eager to risk war with them in the past when they DIDN'T have nukes, we are deathly afraid of them now that the MIGHT have nukes there is no way we would risk war when the DO have nukes (and lots of them).
I don't think I'm underestimating the value nukes have for them to shape US policy. I think the difference between our policy towards Iraq ("we're coming to get you") and N. Korea ("We are NOT considering a military solution") is almost entirely the result of the likelyhood they have one or maybe two atomic bombs.
*Actually, perhaps we have better intel now, or perhaps a decision has been made because a our envoy yesterday pointedly refused to rule out a military solution - something the administration had appeared to rule out last week AND he stepped up his rhetoric. Interestingly this was accompanied by progress today in the North's talks with south Korea. Hopefully they've blinked and we've turned a corner in the crisis.
Let me just point out a few flaws in your stick metaphor. You didn't give me a quarter to stop poking you with a stick - you gave me a quarter as a bribe to not buy that switchblade. I went away with my quarter but I *haven't* been "playing cool" I been buying a switchblade with money earned from selling longer and pointier sticks to everyone else in the neighborhood with a penchant for poking you.
You've been counting on the fact that I'm perfectly rational but I *am* known for some incredibly bizarre & risky behaviour (my holiday pastime is kidnapping the children of another neighborhood friend of yours who is much bigger and richer than I). I'm a compulsive control freak that is starting to lose control - you aren't exactly sure *what* risks I might run to regain control. You have to seriously consider if I'm one of those panhanders that was deinstitutionalised. Even if I *am* perfectly rational in my logic you know that my perception of reality is more than a little suspect.
Unfortunately we are at a stand-off, You've been blunt about your disdain for me (something I've always been towards you) and I'm scared about your apparent intention to kick the living shit out of me once your done with one of my stick poking buddies, so I show you my brand new switchblade. You're getting into fighting trim to beat up that other guy and don't really have time for me, and more importantly - I have a switchblade. I promise to throw away my switchblade if you promise not to beat me up and give me another quarter. You're tempted (you don't like the look of that blade) but you know now that I'm a compulsive liar who will just make more switchblades no matter what promises I make. You also know that I'm desperate for money and that my stick selling operation would be a *lot* more profitable if I started selling switchblades too (combined they make excellent spears). I'm a little afraid that one of my customers could knife me with my own product or knife somebody else and get me into trouble - BUT I'm MUCH more afraid of starving to death or losing control. It's really a no brainer, I'll threaten and curse until I get my promise and a quarter - I'm not sure myself but I think I'd even carry out some of my threats if I don't get my way. But even if I do get my way I have NO intention of keeping my promises I'm going to make more and better switchblades and I'm going to sell them when cash gets low. I'm going to make better and longer sticks, tie the blades to them for handy spears, and in the future when I'll be able to get more than a lousy quarter from you when I threaten.
So what do you do? If you roll over you know I'll put you in the same situation a few years hence but next time I'll be threating you with a nice long spear and asking for much more. And you know you'll also be facing all sorts of characters (some not too stable) who will have sticks, knives & spears that I sold them. But if you try to kick my ass and take the blade from me there is a good chance I'll knife you and anyone who helps you in my reach. You can try to get the whole neighborhood to stop tossing quarters in my hat - I'm awfully close to starving to death. But most of my immediate neighbors are too afraid of my switchblade and many don't like you that much anyway.
None of the choices facing you are palatable - It's hard to say definitively which one is the wisest. Ignoring the situation by pretending N. Korea was "playing cool" when in reality it was doing the one thing we were paying them off not to do as well as selling ballistic missiles to anyone with the cash is one option. It has many good arguments in it's favor & even appeared to be working to an extent. On the other hand they are the single biggest source of the proliferation of ballistic missiles to the most desperate and bloody regimes - a problem that gets worse & more destablising worldwide with every sale. Furthermore we have NO reason to believe that nukes wouldn't be on the price list once N. Korea had them - social unrest caused by extreme poverty is a far greater threat to the regime than Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria et al with with the bomb. The near certainty that North Korea will sell nukes has got to be part of the analysis. You could also argue that much of North Korea's "progress" was the result of a change in diplomatic tactics accompanied by Japanese & South Korean wishful thinking more than any substantive change in the nature of the North Korean regime.
But in, probably, one of the greater US intelligence successes, we managed to convince the head of the program to help us destroy it.
Or DID they?... Just the kind of misinformation you would want to spread if you had a nuclear program but didn't want that neighbor who threatend to "invade immediately" to find out. If that neighbor finds any evidence of your program - well we already revealed we had a program but it's all gone now ('e said knowingly).
More seriously (I think, hope?) any source on that - it sounds like an interesting story.
At least in my world, killing is something that should be avoided at any cost.
You live in a very simple world. Lets take some not so far fetched hypothetical situations (let me say up fron I'm not saying these have any relation to the administoin motives for going to war but they are situations that we HAVE faced in the past few years). We have quasi allies in northern Iraq called the Kurds. Kurds are the victims of occasional attempts at genocide by the governments they unhappily find themselves living under - Turkey, Iraq & Iran. It was largely to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south that rose against Saddam that the no fly zones were established. Now if you saw an Iraqi artillary unit of a few hundred men advancing that you had certain knowledge was going to attack Kurdish villages in order to kill many thousands of innocent civilians would the deaths of those innocent civillians be the "any" cost it would be worth paying to refrain from killing the Iraqis? To muddy the waters further - what if the Iraqi unit situated themselves in the middle of an Iraqi village "protected" by the presense of their own civilians? I don't know that the moral position stays so crystal clear for anyone other than a fundamentalist of one stripe or another. The moral costs of passificm can be quite as high as those of beligerence when dealing with truly brutal people. As George Orwell noted "pacifists are objectively pro-nazi" - quite a bit more harsh than any position I would take but his sentiments reveal the lack of moral consensus (on the left) on the propriety of avoiding killing at "ANY" cost.
By the way our pilots in the northern no-fly zone did face exactly that moral dilemma (though as it turned out without mustard gas) We decided NOT to attack the Iraqis and they killed a very large number of Kurd civilians. Civilians that we had given explicit promises to protect. By your reasoning still the right moral decision but I'm a little uncomfortable with it.
I am reserving judgement on the morality of the US cause in this (potential) war - if Saadam can be shown to be developing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons I think his past history (and his sponsorship of terrorists - albeit atheistic ones like Abu Nidal rather than fundamentalists like Bin Laden) create a situation with a lot more uncomfortable moral dilemmas than the "no blood for oil" crowd are willing to admit. The administrations intentions are probably quite mixed with a heavy dose of those that are "far less than noble" but I think there are other motivations in the mix that are not so purely oil black as you are willing to admit.
Uh-huh. Much better to save the life of one or two American pilots by killing "hundreds or thousands" of civilians.
Your problem is not with me or with the USA but with the Geneva convention, international law and every other country on the globe. To be fair to you though, in the case of a hospital you do have to give notice prior to attacking even if the enemy is using it in a way that voids it's protected status. As for the "hundreds or thousands" dying to save the life of one or two American pilots - it is to avoid that situation that this weapon is being developed. But hundreds OF thousands of innocent civilians did die in WWII because of both types of war crimes (bombing illegitimate targets, and also making otherwise protected places legitimate targets by stationing military assets there) commited by both sides. As for me those responsible for the decision to bomb Dresden should have been executed. But by the same token so should anyone using their own civilians to shield their military - while their enemy has no responsiblity to attack it and should still avoid it if possible - if it is not impossible to ignore and the target must be attacked to achieve their objectives - those deaths are firmly on the head of the person that put them in that situation.
Hey ! There some oil ! Let's bomb the bastards and put in a puppet administration to get it to us cheaply rather than reduce our fosil fuel needs
The reasons for a war are largely irrelevant to this discussion which is about the conduct of that war. The legal situation is the same when bombing a civillian neighborhood in Nazi Germany (or occupied France for that matter) back in the imprecise days when it meant hundreds of civilian deaths to take out a flak gun or taking out a SAM battery with precision munitions when it may cost no or at most a dozen civilian deaths or in the future when an EMP pulse may make it possible to take it out without even any military deaths.
Sigh, you're right about deploying a system and I actually knew that and wasn't thinking of it (From what I understand my father actually did some work on this system). To be fair though a system that was deployed and abandoned the same year doesn't really seem worth much consideration.
All of the countries out there know what the use of nuclear weapons means. None of them are so stupid as to threaten the United States with the handful of weapons that they possess. Any American retaliation would mean annihilation. Yes North Korea is run by an evil man - but he's not insane enough to fire a missile at America.
Many of the nations we are talking about are not exactly the most stable, In North Koreas case neither is the individual in charge. Sure none would intentionally precipitate a crisis that leads to a nuclear exchange but it is naive to suppose that they wouldn't under any circumstances or to suppose that they have the wisdom to avoid those circumstances. Take North Korea for one example - the population is starving off by the hundreds of thousands, China has seen a sharp increase in the number of refugees despite the fact they are repatriated as a matter of course and usually killed or tortured & put into concentration camps. The regime is strong but brittle and has never shown any concern for the deaths of millions - what desperate risks might such a regime be willing to take to preserve itself? A war might be good for moral, a successful invasion of the south might change the situation on the ground in the north? With the US and South Koreas technological superiority such a move would probably be doomed but maybe they figure sheer numbers, suprise and speed could effect a fait accompli before the US could intervene? When their strategem's flaws are revealed with a massive counter attack would they stay their hand or attempt to cauterise the invasion route with a nuclear attack? Would we be so fearful of that possiblity that we preempt? The world is not a stable place, things change in unpredictable ways - history is NOT over no matter what Franicis Fukuyama says. It's getting interesting and that is a very bad thing.
And as the Devil's Advocate in Chief here, I have to ask - why shouldn't other countries have the right to the ultimate protection?
In short, because if they get them they might nuke us, our allies or each other. As a moral issue? As an issue of "rights"? or "fairness"? Since when has international politics dealt with such issues? I'm not really so concerned about being fair to North Korea or Sadaam Hussein who don't seem to hold morality, fairness or rights in very high esteem when dealing with their own people or their neighbors. I suppose it's only "fair" that when dealing with those regimes those pleasant concepts that don't trouble their thinking don't trouble ours either.
I have a foster brother from Cambodia. He was a young teen when he escaped the killing fields - his experiences make me less sanguine about insane Maoists getting the bomb as being "only fair" and I am a little less tolerant of the moral equivalence and lack of seriousnes about the risks involved that underlay such "fair minded" reasoning.
Another argument is that many of the countries that are currently developing this technology don't have the social or political maturity to have developed it on their own without the seepage of technological advancement beyond their native capabilities from countries that ARE more socially and politically advanced. (I may be accused of racism for this argument but it is really culturalism (if there is such a term)) The technological explosion in the west that produces such weapons is made possible by social and cultural and political forces and structures that have other advantages that mitagate against the use and abuse of such weapons. If you don't believe me try having a peace march protesting government policin downtown Bagdad or Pyongyang - try casting a vote against the chosen policy in either of their parliments etc. or just try opening a business without masses of money to bribe local officials. The ideas that the law is superior to the ruler, that government is accountable to the governed, that individuals are accountable to a law superior to clan kinship, the dictates of honor or loyalty to the "supreme leader" are all ideas that on rare occasions are imperfectly realized here but are *completely* alien in some of the nations striving to master a very dangerous technology their culture could never have developed on it's own. Think of it as the "prime directive" arrogant - damn straight, but also prudent and less likely for everybody to end up glowing in the dark.
It seems sometimes that those "against" nuclear ware (as though anyone is FOR it) aren't really against it as such - they seem perfectly fine with nuclear weapons in the hands of anyone other than the western powers - especially the USA. I am deeply worried about our policy towards Iraq but it ultimately is a very aggresive policy of non-prolifieration. Our more tender non-prolifieration policy towards N. Korea obviously didn't work and our more tender non-prolifieration policy towards N. Korea now is the result of the earlier policy not working.
The USA is not the only actor on the world stage - nations are not developing Nukes just because of us but because of their own squabbles and rivalries. China developed nukes and that made it imperitive for India to have nukes which made it imperitive for Pakistan to have nukes. North Korea has nukes and if we listen to the pacifist left and isolationist right we will pull out of South Korea, without the security guarantee of a few thousand US troops on a "tripwire" and a Nuclear opponent South Korea will be tempted to develop nukes, Japan too will be tempted all of which will lead China to enlarge their stockpile. Iran is on a crash program to develop nukes. How long would it take various Arab nations to respons in kind to the shia Persian threat? What are they already doing about the more real Isreali threat" Iraq is likely doing *something* would the Saudi's sit out? Would Egypt? Regardless of what we do proliferation will increase exponentially as various rivals pop up with the nuclear option. Right now some of the most advanced nations aren't bothering because of the USA's conventional security guarantees but will that be enough now that our slaveish desire to avoid offending Pyonyang reveals such guaranatees as toothless in the face of a nuclear opponent? As proliferation increases and various complex "balances of power" are established and increasingly unstable, incompetant, corrupt regimes are involved I think it is very likely that we will see nuclear war in our lifetimes. Hopefully, it will not involve us but that is a real possiblity and one we should be prepared for.
WHuh? When's Linux a company? The companies that tried to profit off of Linux are dying/dead. Even RH is a support company. It's also quite hard to stop people from freely coding...
I think it's obvious from the article that FT is talking about IBM, HP and all the other companies that are adopting Linux as *part* of their strategy. What that sentence is saying is that Linux and it's adoption by these big technology companies isn't really affecting Microsoft yet but that it's coming. By conflict he isn't saying that Linux as the hacker created and supported OS is in any danger from Microsoft. But hobbyist OS's are not FT readers concern what is interesting to them is that Linux might/ or might not succeed in toppling M$ in the business arena.
These are hackers -- hackers in the sense we understand to be the true meaning of the word and not what the news outlets redefined it to mean
I know it's off-topic but let's get over this "hackers" "crackers" debate. Hacker has more than one perfectly legitimate meaning. As long as I can remember hearing it (which sadly is longer than most on/,) it has carried both the "skilled unconventional technician" (not restricted to computers which were somewhat rarer back in the day) and the related "clever, technologically adept prankster" which would include the popular definition of a computer hacker. Dictionaries disagree on the etymology but one has it as coming from "hack", practical joke, clever scheme (from dialectal hack, to embarrass, confuse, play a trick on) others have it from "hack" short for "hackney" as in a "hack writer" or a "political hack" or an "untalented hack" which is quite the opposite of your meaning. Sorry, but the guys the Jargon File has no more standing to declare one definition they dislike "depricated" than I do. Definitions follow usage and this fight was lost long before it even occured to anyone to bother fighting it.
I'd go beyond that and be a little less condescending about their technological ignorance. The businessmen and investors etc. shouldn't be interested in all the technological intracacies that are of interest to us. They *should* get the executive summary version and the *should* be interested in the bottom line & cost. All the technology issues we are interested in are ultimately reduced to cost - a system that doesn't scale will cost more in the long run, a system that is unreliable will cost more - at the level of decision making these guys are concerned with the technical details are less important than the outcome. They need good advice from technical experts & some knowledge on their own part of the technical issues that will effect costs is helpful but ultimately not really their concern.
That being said it doesn't excuse outright errors. The businessman reading the article can't be expected to know or care about the technological details. The technology writer on the other hand, while he may have to reduce things down to a simplistic level, should NOT be getting things just plain wrong.
Neither was the fact that the vast majority of people who work on Linux the OS as a whole are not employed by big tech companies.
Actually the article mentioned this in a (backhanded way) but they disagree with your estimate that it is a "vast majority". It said (and I have no idea if it's true or not) that about 50% of the 1,000 or so developers that are really actively developing Linux are employees of big tech companies. I'm sure that there are many, many more non big company developers that are contributing occasionaly but the efforts of 500 full time developers doing it day in and day out for their living is probably making a pretty big impact.
I don't know about the taiwan thing. China is offering taiwan businesses crazy labour and material rates and tempting most buisness onto the mainland...
I'm sure that is their plan and it has a good chance of working BUT there is a military stick accompanying that economic carrot. China is bulking up it military across the straight and is willing to use it if that gateway to the west gets too uppity. Those pesky voters are wont to do that every few elections. The election of a more vigorously pro-independence candidate could lead to actions even more aggresive than "training excersises" by amphibious troops across the straight and "missle tests" in Tiawans airspace ("Hey Tiawan is just part of our sovereign territory - of course we can conduct missile tests there") Sure everybody wants a slow reintegration of Tiawan accompanied by slow move from mainland totalitarianism to something merely authoritarian and that seems to be what is happening. But a misstep, or a miscalculation - a little too much freedom & independence in Tiawans actions or a little too much saber rattling to keep them in line on China's part. An accidental firing during one of the periodic high tension stand-offs and all bets are off. The leaders of mainland China will tolerate a fair amount but are capable of tremendous atrocities internally and will risk war externally to keep their people in check - and they consider Tiawan their people. Tiawan for their part is willing to (and must as a matter of necessity) dance with China. But they have a first world military against China's third world one and they don't seem likely to just roll over to unreasonable demands either. Aging Chinese plutocrats accustomed to totalitarian control don't seem the best judges of when their own demands are reasonable or unreasonable - as they march towards reunification there is a lot of risk that they will misjudge the attachment that the Tiawanese have formed with democracy and political & personal freedoms and their willingness to risk war to protect them.
That treaty had an exit clause that we chose to excercise. You can disagree with the policy but we are not doing anything "despite signing a treaty" nor are we "breaking a treaty." We have fulfilled every requirement of the treaty. In either event the treaty did not bar research only deployment in more than one location. (We never deployed any ABM systems despite being allowed by the treaty to do so in one location - IN SOVIET RUSSIA they chose to protect Moscow with an ABM system)
...cause if someone believed that they can indeed survive a MAD scenario they may actually push the button.
Even before the proliferation of nuclear weapons to many more unstable and unpredictable countries there was a good argument for ABM systems to *preserve* MAD. Prior to the development of precision guidance systems you could nuke your enemies missle silos but the weapons were so imprecise and the silos so well protected that even with nuclear warheads you were unlikely to destroy them. That all changed when the USA and much later the Soviets developed dependable precision warheads. A preemptive attack could have (for the most part) worked. We could have nuked them or vise versa and had a good chance of getting their weapons on the ground - the stability of mutual suicide was already being undermined. ABM would have restored it - nobody thinks or claims it would have been 100% effective but it would have made a preemptive strike infeasible.
In todays world things are different - we are worried about a handful of countries with only a handful of nukes each - There is no MAD balance of power between us and Korea, Pakistan, India, (Iran - soon)(Iraq - fairly soon if not prevented) or even China (for the moment, they're bulking up fast) A preemptive strike on our part against any of these countries would be effective. Right now it would be our only defense against being nuked by them if a crisis turns really ugly. If you don't think our military planning regarding Korea during this current crisis doesn't include nuking the location of the one or two nukes (assuming the CIA knows their location) as a last resort during a war you are naive. And if you don't think that this president (or ANY president) wouldn't use that option if he *thought* the likely alternative was several thousand American and several million South Koreans being reduced to glowing cinders you are very much mistaken. The absense of another alternative is much likely to cause us to rush into using an nightmare option which can only work if we beat them to the punch. Our options in a really nasty crisis with a minor nuclear power could narrow down very quickly to "nuke them... it's the only way to be sure". In the next decade we have no idea what kinds of crises we may be involved in. China is very close to invading Taiwan (which is certainly advanced enough and desperate to have their own nuclear program), A nuclear war between Pakistan and India is frighteningly likely. A preemptive strike by Isreal against Iran or Iraq (whichever gets nukes first) or vise versa will be a real possiblity by the end of the decade. How will we be involved, at what risk to our troops or our mainland (China can already hit us, N. Korean missile development which they will sell to the highest bidder is getting very advanced). I for one would rather we have options other than either rolling over to who knows what nightmares or unleashing a nightmare ourselves.
How is disabling electronics completely safe for civillians?
Just imagine this being used near a busy traffic intersection, or near a hospital.
You've obviously never driven or been to a hospital in the third world. In the first case nobody pays much attention to the lights (if they exist or work) in the second electricity is unreliable even without the occasional attack by an EMP weapon.
However, I'll grant it's not *completely* safe but it certainly beats the alternative. Take the example of a battery of SAMS in downtown Bagdad. In the not-so-distant past we would bombed the neighborhood killing hundreds of innocent civilians*, With current technology we would try to take it out with a "smart" bomb maybe killing two or three innocent civilians, unless we miss in which case we may kill a few dozen innocent civillians. With this new technology we blast it with an EMP pulse and everybody's lights go out - not a big deal in most of the third world.
* in the example of bombing the neighborhood to get at those SAMS and killing hundreds (or even thousands) of innocent civilians. It's quit possible that there would be a war crime involved in this scenario, but NOT on the part of the USA. Putting military assets in civilian areas to sheild them from attack is a war crime. Legally the existance of the military assets removes any immunity that target would otherwise have had. A Mosque, church, hospital, orphanage, etc with a SAM battery or Radar installation on the roof is a legitimate target and legally (and morally IMO) the guilt for those innocent deaths is on the heads of the person that made it a legitimate target. The attacker in this situation does still have a general responsiblity to minimise civilian deaths - now that we have precision bombs it would be a war crime to use dumb ones in such a situation but prior to their invention such bombings did occur.
Re:No Offense meant, but..
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
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· Score: 2, Interesting
on a non-networked computer? WHat could he do???
What a defeatist attitude for a hacker. Come on, part of the hacker ethic is to do more than anyone could imagine with the most meagre resources. A few minutes reflection and I'm sure you could come up with a few ideas. Make a few not very far fetched assumptions #1 Assume the encrypted data is the most sensitive/incriminating/useful data that he had - secrets he drudged up in his hacking exploits, passwords maybe programs such as virii, trojan horses etc... #2 Assume he has sympathetic hacker friends out there willing engage in attacks for him. A phone call to a friend with some user names & passwords could lead to interesting results - a tap on the prosecutors phone would allow Kevin to really "assist his own defense." Something by the way WELL within the capablities of someone with information found on the UNencrypted portion of kevins hard drive. A trojan horse in a file he provides to his lawyers who open it at their location WITH net access is a little more difficult but all the more appealing because of the challenge. Blackmailing some executive that doesn't want his wife/shareholders/coworkers/competitors to know something Kevin has found during one of his exploits could be a windfall for his legal defense fund. Use some imagination.
Yes, that's paranoid, but then again this is a guy that had thoroughly compromised the systems he attacked. His control over the phone system was total, he knew when he was tapped and allegedly tapped the phones of investigators & generally screwed around with the phone service of people that pissed him off. He read the emails of the DEC security team that was tracking his exploits. He made the (credible coming from him) claim that he had screwed up the credit records of the FBI agents trailing him. And he not only refused to give prosecutors access to the files (understandable) but he also refused to tell the court *anything* about the encrypted information. I suppose if I thought his hacking was cute harmless pranks I wouldn't care but I wouldn't trust him without very stringent oversight. Which was the final result (and still the cause of great bitching and moaning)
The case against granting him bail was obvious and overwhelming on it's face.
Then spend 15 minutes to hold the hearing, deny him bail, and that's that.
I've already agreed that this would have been the best way to deal with the situation. BUT I can't get all worked up over it in this case. It would have been an empty formality given his history and Kevin has nobody but himself to blame for that history. That the judge made a summary judgement just based on the immediately obvious merits of the situation was perhaps unfair but a hearing wouldn't have changed the result nor was it's denial as grave a breach of his civil liberties as his breathless hyperbole of Kevins star-struck admirers would suggest.
Primarily because his lawyers were denied access to the information they needed in order to prepare for any trial.
I'm no expert on the case but from what I know there are a couple of issues here. One is the claim that since Kevin himself (not his lawyers) was barred from using a *computer* to review the evidence against him he wasn't able to review it. By this logic every defendant prior to the 1960's and 70's was "denied access to the evidence against them" because computers hadn't yet been invented - Come on... didn't his lawyers own a printer? The second issue is that Kevin wanted access to files he had encrypted on his hard drive because they might contain exculpatory evidence but wouldn't give the court any idea of what was in those files nor provide the password claiming that would violate his right against self-incrimination. The prosecution argued that while Kevin had a right to the evidence against him since the government couldn't read those files they obviously weren't part of the evidence against him. They also didn't want to give him access to who knows what programs with who knows what capabilities. Paranoid... perhaps & technologically clueless.. perhaps. But then while Kevin had not been particularly destructive nor profit minded in his hacking previously his ability to do such was tremendous. Sure he didn't have a net connection but I'm sure his lawyers did... a little trojan horse in a file given to his lawyers to review? With all the passwords & access he had to all sorts of government & business computers? Imagine the possiblities. Imagine the reputation he would build if he trashed all those computers he had perviously gained access to from a jail cell without a net connection. By his own testimony his hacking was compulsive and he couldn't control himself and he was skilled at it. Part of the appeal of hacking is to do a lot more than others expect with far fewer resources - I don't know that I would have trusted him if I were the judge.
And it *was* a novel legal situation - usually the prosecution has to provide evidence *they have* to make sure that the defense knows as much as they do. In this situation they had to provide evidence the *didn't really have* to make sure the defense knew much more than they did. They were perfectly willing to hand over this evidence if they got access to it as well as the defense. Legally we have to hold to the principle that we can't make any assumptions about the nature of the evidence the government couldn't see. But as a practical matter I'm sure Kevins claim that it would be self-incriminating to reveal the evidence took the time to *encrypt* was far more accurate than his conflicting claim that it was exculpatory.
It wasn't just that he was denied bail, he was denied a bail hearing.
So? Despite the 5th ammendment claims of the defense (which were obviously rejected) Bail is not a constitutional right. The case against granting him bail was obvious and overwhelming on it's face. That the judge decided not to go through the formality probably had more to do (at first) with a desire to move on than with a desire to persecute someone who didn't have a snowballs chance in hell of getting bail no matter how many hearing were held on it. In hindsight given the length of the case the judge should have simply granted the hearing, denied bail and moved on without adding the fun "longest held without a bail hearing" factoid on the Free Kevin webiste.
If he had received a 2-year sentence, you wouldn't hear a single voice speaking out on his behalf
He got about 5 years and additional time on probation without access to computers. Rather harsh but throughout his criminal history he behaved in such a manner almost guaranteed to get dealt with harshly. NOT because he was a hacker (though that added a certain high-profile sex appeal to the case that didn't help him) but because he was convicted multiple times before, ran from the law and continued to commit high profile crimes while on the run. I don't care what the nature of your crime is that kind of history is going to get you a harsh sentence. It could have been worse - in China he would have gotten the death penalty.
Did you sleep more easily while Mitnick was in jail,
It is also a fact that he was not allowed to review the evidence against him. After 4 years of illegal detention and having the alleged evidence of your crime being kept from your defense team,
He was able to review the evidence against him - he just couldn't do it on a computer - at first. Then they let him see it on a computer but he could only use the computer in the meeting room. His defense team of course could use computers whenever they wanted, and did. The argument that being bared from using a computer was tantamount to "not allowing him to review the evidence against him" seems a rather weak one. Did they not have a printer? Was every defendant prior to the invention of the computer also "not allowed to review the evidence against him"? I will concede that the prosecution and the judge were paranoid about giving Mittnick access to a computer but even though their conditions were silly and inconvenient it is just as silly to suggest that because of them Mittnick "wasn't allowed to review the evidence against him".
Re:No Offense meant, but..
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I don't think he chose to be kept in Federal prison without a trial for more than 4 years.
Actually (a little googleing reveals that) in many instances he DID - or rather his lawyers did. The trial kept getting delayed due to it's complexity - often at the request of HIS lawyers. Hiring and firing three different lawyers doesn't usually speed things up any either (though I'll grant you it is possible they were incompetant - but the real possiblity exists their client was part of their problem). As for being denied bail that whole time - well that is sort of a natural penalty for running & continuing to commit the same crimes while on the run - for some reason people just don't trust you not to it again. Wasting time in useless appeals to GET bail when no sane judge would give it to you is just another thing that drags out the time you spend waiting for trial.
I don't think he chose to have the software he downloaded (and did not distribute) valued at an amount way beyond reality because the Feds said to.
And they should have been valued at less because he & his lawyers said so? I have no idea what the real value of the damage he caused to various systems was or the value of the information he stole. I doubt HE knows it's value. I am sure his victims and the prosecution exagerated it's value. On the other hand it is not difficult at ALL to assume that the value was quite significant. Big companies worth many billions of dollars keep stuff on their computers that really do have multi-million dollar values to those companies. Those where the kinds of companies he liked to hack and the kind of information he liked to steal BECAUSE he wanted to be a big deal and make a big splash. Well he did.
I don't think he chose to have terms of his probation which kept him from using his First Amendment rights
While convicts have rights the whole point of being a convict is having certain rights taken away. As for his specifically first amendment rights - I don't know of any instance during his sentence when the government established a religion for him, forbade him to excersise his own, forbade him to speak, talk to the (or even run a) press, assemble peacably or petition the government to redress his greavances (this last I think he excersiced far more than most of us) Being forbidden to use a computer after being convicted 4 or 5 times (on multiple counts each time) of computer fraud & abuse is not much different from being forbidden to own a gun after being convicted of a gun crime. Being forbidden to use a tool that you only seem adept at using criminally seems appropriate and fitting not cruel nor unusual. Having himself argued in court before that he was compulsive and unable to control himself probably didn't help his case any on this point.
Did he choose to be the poster-boy of government corruption when it comes to prosecution of technology-related case
After being caught and convicted on numerous prior occasions and being dealt with fairly leniently by the courts at first - then doing the same thing again *while on probabation* - then running when a warrant is issued - then continuing to commit the same high profile crimes while on the run IS asking for it.
Yes, there are murderers that have been dealt with less harshly. That's a GREAT argument for harsher treatment of murderers IMO than for more lenient treatment of multiple offense fraud artist fugitives. All the time I hear on/. that online crimes should be dealt with the same as offline - well his punishment doesn't seem so out of whack for a string of multiple breakings & enterings, thefts, & frauds while on the run from the law.
No, there was never a trial. Kevin plead guilty. It took them four years to "decide" what his punishment was going to be.
Pleading guilty and going to jail is a VERY different thing from going to jail without a trial. If you plead guilty what exactly would be the purpose of a trial? I will agree that it was wrong if it took them 4 years to decide on a sentence but it is a very different thing (and somewhat less serious) from what the original comment implied. I don't know but I am guessing there was more to it than just "forgetting" to sentence him for four years - like prosecutors and defense attorneys going back and forth with motions & appeals about the final sentence.
Companies that worry about 20,000,000 are being very smart.
*sigh* I'm sure they thought about the $20m. I'm sure they worried about it in the sense that before they decided to restructure PowerSchool they weighed the costs and benefits of spending $20m to do so. I'm sure the management of PowerSchool worried *a lot* about that $20m. Still to Apple spending $20m to restructure a troubled subsidiary is NOT something that should worry anyone about the health of the company or the wisdom of the management. On the other hand FAILING to spend that $20m and just letting a problem fester & continue to drain $$$ because they're worried about showing a single quarter loss WOULD be something to worry about.
$20m is a lot in the sense that any company would think a great deal about spending that amount - it is NOT very much in the sense of representing anything very significant about a company that size. While I hope that Steve Jobs thought about that $20m and i'd imagine it was a big enough number that it needed his consideration. I would be dissapointed however if he spent a lot of time *worried* about it - he has much bigger issues to worry about and he's not paid that $1 salary (and the occasion bonus that exceeds this particular amount) to obsess over such an insignificant percentage of the companies resources.
A company thinking 20,000,000 is not a lot of money is a company that will keep losing money. No matter how you slice it, 20,000,000 is a lot of money.
Not a lot of money for what? What is so difficult about the concept of scale? You sound like my 9 year old talking about $20.00. Sure $20 is a lot of money to a child, or to spend at a greasy spoon for breakfast, but it's not very much when you are buying a car. $20 Million is a lot to you and me, it's a lot to a company with $100 million in revenues. It's not very much at all to a company with $1.7 Billion in quarterly revenues and $4 Billion in cash to take as a *one time* restructuring charge, especially if the restructuring saves them (significantly more $$$) in the coming years. Even assuming they keep losing that much every year (rather than a during an industry wide slowdown) at that "burn rate" they have 50 years to figure out a way to turn things around.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny, Macs used to be faster than Pentii, but crippled by their other hardware (SCSI, memory, ADB) and OS.
I'll agree wholeheartedly about the OS (which had a superior GUI but was inferior under the hood) and maybe the memory but I wouldn't say that ADB was "crippled" compared to serial ports. And SCSI, "crippled"? SCSI was a definite advantage over Wintel machines. I WILL agree they made the peripherals more expensive but you were getting more bang for your buck (in that line item at least).
For only $1999 ... Do you know what kind of PC I could build for that much money??
Actually that is a pretty good question - Assuming your time is worth nothing, how much would it take to duplicate this on the PC side? A dual 2GHz proc (I don't go for steve's "PowerPC is twice as fast" but it IS at least a little faster than intel) with 802.11g, FireWire 800, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth etc. Or assuming your time IS worth something how much to buy such a configuration from Dell.
Just curious
You couldn't patent patents themselves. But, you CAN patent a business model. Why not patent "a method for using patent law to extort money from legitimate businesses"? The only drawback is that (sadly) it would be trivial to come up with prior art. Still, it would make for a nice piece of political theater to illustrate the ridiculousness of the patent system. And who knows? If the system is screwed up *enough* you could win and either stop people from using your patent or get rich by forcing them to license you patent.
Hope you checked my spelling while you were at it.
mie speling sux. Sow soo me.
North Korea is a huge failure of this administration,
I just might agree - we havn't yet seen the outcome of the current crisis yet. However I would argue it is also a huge failure of the previous administration (and to a lesser extent the ones before that). The last administration faced a tremendously thorny problem so it's hard to place blame - BUT, the fact remains that N. Korea DIDN'T have nuclear weapons before and now they DO. The last administration bribed them not to develop nukes but they took our $$$ and developed them anyway. Now the situation the current administration is in (or got itself in) is much more difficult than it should be. Frankly risking a conventional war the last time around by bombing their reactor would probably have been the better choice. Clinton had the option and claims he was willing to use it but he blinked and took the extortion/diplomatic way out. The genie is at least half out of the bottle and now the stakes are exponentially higher.
For the most part, I think we dissagree on how easy it is to make and transfer nuclear weapons undetected. I consider it an exceptionally difficult and very risky proposition. Especially now with the US stance on Iraq it would mean war.
They aren't planning to make them undetected - they have publicly announced their covert program and have announced their intention to accelerate it by reactivating the Yongbyon reactor. As for selling them, that might be more difficult but a warhead isn't THAT big a thing and once they have nukes how do you intend to stop them. We haven't exactly been eager to risk war with them in the past when they DIDN'T have nukes, we are deathly afraid of them now that the MIGHT have nukes there is no way we would risk war when the DO have nukes (and lots of them).
I don't think I'm underestimating the value nukes have for them to shape US policy. I think the difference between our policy towards Iraq ("we're coming to get you") and N. Korea ("We are NOT considering a military solution") is almost entirely the result of the likelyhood they have one or maybe two atomic bombs.
*Actually, perhaps we have better intel now, or perhaps a decision has been made because a our envoy yesterday pointedly refused to rule out a military solution - something the administration had appeared to rule out last week AND he stepped up his rhetoric. Interestingly this was accompanied by progress today in the North's talks with south Korea. Hopefully they've blinked and we've turned a corner in the crisis.
Let me just point out a few flaws in your stick metaphor. You didn't give me a quarter to stop poking you with a stick - you gave me a quarter as a bribe to not buy that switchblade. I went away with my quarter but I *haven't* been "playing cool" I been buying a switchblade with money earned from selling longer and pointier sticks to everyone else in the neighborhood with a penchant for poking you.
You've been counting on the fact that I'm perfectly rational but I *am* known for some incredibly bizarre & risky behaviour (my holiday pastime is kidnapping the children of another neighborhood friend of yours who is much bigger and richer than I). I'm a compulsive control freak that is starting to lose control - you aren't exactly sure *what* risks I might run to regain control. You have to seriously consider if I'm one of those panhanders that was deinstitutionalised. Even if I *am* perfectly rational in my logic you know that my perception of reality is more than a little suspect.
Unfortunately we are at a stand-off, You've been blunt about your disdain for me (something I've always been towards you) and I'm scared about your apparent intention to kick the living shit out of me once your done with one of my stick poking buddies, so I show you my brand new switchblade. You're getting into fighting trim to beat up that other guy and don't really have time for me, and more importantly - I have a switchblade. I promise to throw away my switchblade if you promise not to beat me up and give me another quarter. You're tempted (you don't like the look of that blade) but you know now that I'm a compulsive liar who will just make more switchblades no matter what promises I make. You also know that I'm desperate for money and that my stick selling operation would be a *lot* more profitable if I started selling switchblades too (combined they make excellent spears). I'm a little afraid that one of my customers could knife me with my own product or knife somebody else and get me into trouble - BUT I'm MUCH more afraid of starving to death or losing control. It's really a no brainer, I'll threaten and curse until I get my promise and a quarter - I'm not sure myself but I think I'd even carry out some of my threats if I don't get my way. But even if I do get my way I have NO intention of keeping my promises I'm going to make more and better switchblades and I'm going to sell them when cash gets low. I'm going to make better and longer sticks, tie the blades to them for handy spears, and in the future when I'll be able to get more than a lousy quarter from you when I threaten.
So what do you do? If you roll over you know I'll put you in the same situation a few years hence but next time I'll be threating you with a nice long spear and asking for much more. And you know you'll also be facing all sorts of characters (some not too stable) who will have sticks, knives & spears that I sold them. But if you try to kick my ass and take the blade from me there is a good chance I'll knife you and anyone who helps you in my reach. You can try to get the whole neighborhood to stop tossing quarters in my hat - I'm awfully close to starving to death. But most of my immediate neighbors are too afraid of my switchblade and many don't like you that much anyway.
None of the choices facing you are palatable - It's hard to say definitively which one is the wisest. Ignoring the situation by pretending N. Korea was "playing cool" when in reality it was doing the one thing we were paying them off not to do as well as selling ballistic missiles to anyone with the cash is one option. It has many good arguments in it's favor & even appeared to be working to an extent. On the other hand they are the single biggest source of the proliferation of ballistic missiles to the most desperate and bloody regimes - a problem that gets worse & more destablising worldwide with every sale. Furthermore we have NO reason to believe that nukes wouldn't be on the price list once N. Korea had them - social unrest caused by extreme poverty is a far greater threat to the regime than Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria et al with with the bomb. The near certainty that North Korea will sell nukes has got to be part of the analysis. You could also argue that much of North Korea's "progress" was the result of a change in diplomatic tactics accompanied by Japanese & South Korean wishful thinking more than any substantive change in the nature of the North Korean regime.
But in, probably, one of the greater US intelligence successes, we managed to convince the head of the program to help us destroy it.
Or DID they?... Just the kind of misinformation you would want to spread if you had a nuclear program but didn't want that neighbor who threatend to "invade immediately" to find out. If that neighbor finds any evidence of your program - well we already revealed we had a program but it's all gone now ('e said knowingly).
More seriously (I think, hope?) any source on that - it sounds like an interesting story.
At least in my world, killing is something that should be avoided at any cost.
You live in a very simple world. Lets take some not so far fetched hypothetical situations (let me say up fron I'm not saying these have any relation to the administoin motives for going to war but they are situations that we HAVE faced in the past few years). We have quasi allies in northern Iraq called the Kurds. Kurds are the victims of occasional attempts at genocide by the governments they unhappily find themselves living under - Turkey, Iraq & Iran. It was largely to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south that rose against Saddam that the no fly zones were established. Now if you saw an Iraqi artillary unit of a few hundred men advancing that you had certain knowledge was going to attack Kurdish villages in order to kill many thousands of innocent civilians would the deaths of those innocent civillians be the "any" cost it would be worth paying to refrain from killing the Iraqis? To muddy the waters further - what if the Iraqi unit situated themselves in the middle of an Iraqi village "protected" by the presense of their own civilians? I don't know that the moral position stays so crystal clear for anyone other than a fundamentalist of one stripe or another. The moral costs of passificm can be quite as high as those of beligerence when dealing with truly brutal people. As George Orwell noted "pacifists are objectively pro-nazi" - quite a bit more harsh than any position I would take but his sentiments reveal the lack of moral consensus (on the left) on the propriety of avoiding killing at "ANY" cost.
By the way our pilots in the northern no-fly zone did face exactly that moral dilemma (though as it turned out without mustard gas) We decided NOT to attack the Iraqis and they killed a very large number of Kurd civilians. Civilians that we had given explicit promises to protect. By your reasoning still the right moral decision but I'm a little uncomfortable with it.
I am reserving judgement on the morality of the US cause in this (potential) war - if Saadam can be shown to be developing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons I think his past history (and his sponsorship of terrorists - albeit atheistic ones like Abu Nidal rather than fundamentalists like Bin Laden) create a situation with a lot more uncomfortable moral dilemmas than the "no blood for oil" crowd are willing to admit. The administrations intentions are probably quite mixed with a heavy dose of those that are "far less than noble" but I think there are other motivations in the mix that are not so purely oil black as you are willing to admit.
Uh-huh. Much better to save the life of one or two American pilots by killing "hundreds or thousands" of civilians.
Your problem is not with me or with the USA but with the Geneva convention, international law and every other country on the globe. To be fair to you though, in the case of a hospital you do have to give notice prior to attacking even if the enemy is using it in a way that voids it's protected status. As for the "hundreds or thousands" dying to save the life of one or two American pilots - it is to avoid that situation that this weapon is being developed. But hundreds OF thousands of innocent civilians did die in WWII because of both types of war crimes (bombing illegitimate targets, and also making otherwise protected places legitimate targets by stationing military assets there) commited by both sides. As for me those responsible for the decision to bomb Dresden should have been executed. But by the same token so should anyone using their own civilians to shield their military - while their enemy has no responsiblity to attack it and should still avoid it if possible - if it is not impossible to ignore and the target must be attacked to achieve their objectives - those deaths are firmly on the head of the person that put them in that situation.
Hey ! There some oil ! Let's bomb the bastards and put in a puppet administration to get it to us cheaply rather than reduce our fosil fuel needs
The reasons for a war are largely irrelevant to this discussion which is about the conduct of that war. The legal situation is the same when bombing a civillian neighborhood in Nazi Germany (or occupied France for that matter) back in the imprecise days when it meant hundreds of civilian deaths to take out a flak gun or taking out a SAM battery with precision munitions when it may cost no or at most a dozen civilian deaths or in the future when an EMP pulse may make it possible to take it out without even any military deaths.
Sigh, you're right about deploying a system and I actually knew that and wasn't thinking of it (From what I understand my father actually did some work on this system). To be fair though a system that was deployed and abandoned the same year doesn't really seem worth much consideration.
All of the countries out there know what the use of nuclear weapons means. None of them are so stupid as to threaten the United States with the handful of weapons that they possess. Any American retaliation would mean annihilation. Yes North Korea is run by an evil man - but he's not insane enough to fire a missile at America.
Many of the nations we are talking about are not exactly the most stable, In North Koreas case neither is the individual in charge. Sure none would intentionally precipitate a crisis that leads to a nuclear exchange but it is naive to suppose that they wouldn't under any circumstances or to suppose that they have the wisdom to avoid those circumstances. Take North Korea for one example - the population is starving off by the hundreds of thousands, China has seen a sharp increase in the number of refugees despite the fact they are repatriated as a matter of course and usually killed or tortured & put into concentration camps. The regime is strong but brittle and has never shown any concern for the deaths of millions - what desperate risks might such a regime be willing to take to preserve itself? A war might be good for moral, a successful invasion of the south might change the situation on the ground in the north? With the US and South Koreas technological superiority such a move would probably be doomed but maybe they figure sheer numbers, suprise and speed could effect a fait accompli before the US could intervene? When their strategem's flaws are revealed with a massive counter attack would they stay their hand or attempt to cauterise the invasion route with a nuclear attack? Would we be so fearful of that possiblity that we preempt? The world is not a stable place, things change in unpredictable ways - history is NOT over no matter what Franicis Fukuyama says. It's getting interesting and that is a very bad thing.
And as the Devil's Advocate in Chief here, I have to ask - why shouldn't other countries have the right to the ultimate protection?
In short, because if they get them they might nuke us, our allies or each other. As a moral issue? As an issue of "rights"? or "fairness"? Since when has international politics dealt with such issues? I'm not really so concerned about being fair to North Korea or Sadaam Hussein who don't seem to hold morality, fairness or rights in very high esteem when dealing with their own people or their neighbors. I suppose it's only "fair" that when dealing with those regimes those pleasant concepts that don't trouble their thinking don't trouble ours either.
I have a foster brother from Cambodia. He was a young teen when he escaped the killing fields - his experiences make me less sanguine about insane Maoists getting the bomb as being "only fair" and I am a little less tolerant of the moral equivalence and lack of seriousnes about the risks involved that underlay such "fair minded" reasoning.
Another argument is that many of the countries that are currently developing this technology don't have the social or political maturity to have developed it on their own without the seepage of technological advancement beyond their native capabilities from countries that ARE more socially and politically advanced. (I may be accused of racism for this argument but it is really culturalism (if there is such a term)) The technological explosion in the west that produces such weapons is made possible by social and cultural and political forces and structures that have other advantages that mitagate against the use and abuse of such weapons. If you don't believe me try having a peace march protesting government policin downtown Bagdad or Pyongyang - try casting a vote against the chosen policy in either of their parliments etc. or just try opening a business without masses of money to bribe local officials. The ideas that the law is superior to the ruler, that government is accountable to the governed, that individuals are accountable to a law superior to clan kinship, the dictates of honor or loyalty to the "supreme leader" are all ideas that on rare occasions are imperfectly realized here but are *completely* alien in some of the nations striving to master a very dangerous technology their culture could never have developed on it's own. Think of it as the "prime directive" arrogant - damn straight, but also prudent and less likely for everybody to end up glowing in the dark.
It seems sometimes that those "against" nuclear ware (as though anyone is FOR it) aren't really against it as such - they seem perfectly fine with nuclear weapons in the hands of anyone other than the western powers - especially the USA. I am deeply worried about our policy towards Iraq but it ultimately is a very aggresive policy of non-prolifieration. Our more tender non-prolifieration policy towards N. Korea obviously didn't work and our more tender non-prolifieration policy towards N. Korea now is the result of the earlier policy not working.
The USA is not the only actor on the world stage - nations are not developing Nukes just because of us but because of their own squabbles and rivalries. China developed nukes and that made it imperitive for India to have nukes which made it imperitive for Pakistan to have nukes. North Korea has nukes and if we listen to the pacifist left and isolationist right we will pull out of South Korea, without the security guarantee of a few thousand US troops on a "tripwire" and a Nuclear opponent South Korea will be tempted to develop nukes, Japan too will be tempted all of which will lead China to enlarge their stockpile. Iran is on a crash program to develop nukes. How long would it take various Arab nations to respons in kind to the shia Persian threat? What are they already doing about the more real Isreali threat" Iraq is likely doing *something* would the Saudi's sit out? Would Egypt? Regardless of what we do proliferation will increase exponentially as various rivals pop up with the nuclear option. Right now some of the most advanced nations aren't bothering because of the USA's conventional security guarantees but will that be enough now that our slaveish desire to avoid offending Pyonyang reveals such guaranatees as toothless in the face of a nuclear opponent? As proliferation increases and various complex "balances of power" are established and increasingly unstable, incompetant, corrupt regimes are involved I think it is very likely that we will see nuclear war in our lifetimes. Hopefully, it will not involve us but that is a real possiblity and one we should be prepared for.
WHuh? When's Linux a company? The companies that tried to profit off of Linux are dying/dead. Even RH is a support company. It's also quite hard to stop people from freely coding...
I think it's obvious from the article that FT is talking about IBM, HP and all the other companies that are adopting Linux as *part* of their strategy. What that sentence is saying is that Linux and it's adoption by these big technology companies isn't really affecting Microsoft yet but that it's coming. By conflict he isn't saying that Linux as the hacker created and supported OS is in any danger from Microsoft. But hobbyist OS's are not FT readers concern what is interesting to them is that Linux might/ or might not succeed in toppling M$ in the business arena.
These are hackers -- hackers in the sense we understand to be the true meaning of the word and not what the news outlets redefined it to mean
/,) it has carried both the "skilled unconventional technician" (not restricted to computers which were somewhat rarer back in the day) and the related "clever, technologically adept prankster" which would include the popular definition of a computer hacker. Dictionaries disagree on the etymology but one has it as coming from "hack", practical joke, clever scheme (from dialectal hack, to embarrass, confuse, play a trick on) others have it from "hack" short for "hackney" as in a "hack writer" or a "political hack" or an "untalented hack" which is quite the opposite of your meaning. Sorry, but the guys the Jargon File has no more standing to declare one definition they dislike "depricated" than I do. Definitions follow usage and this fight was lost long before it even occured to anyone to bother fighting it.
I know it's off-topic but let's get over this "hackers" "crackers" debate. Hacker has more than one perfectly legitimate meaning. As long as I can remember hearing it (which sadly is longer than most on
I'd go beyond that and be a little less condescending about their technological ignorance. The businessmen and investors etc. shouldn't be interested in all the technological intracacies that are of interest to us. They *should* get the executive summary version and the *should* be interested in the bottom line & cost. All the technology issues we are interested in are ultimately reduced to cost - a system that doesn't scale will cost more in the long run, a system that is unreliable will cost more - at the level of decision making these guys are concerned with the technical details are less important than the outcome. They need good advice from technical experts & some knowledge on their own part of the technical issues that will effect costs is helpful but ultimately not really their concern.
That being said it doesn't excuse outright errors. The businessman reading the article can't be expected to know or care about the technological details. The technology writer on the other hand, while he may have to reduce things down to a simplistic level, should NOT be getting things just plain wrong.
Neither was the fact that the vast majority of people who work on Linux the OS as a whole are not employed by big tech companies.
Actually the article mentioned this in a (backhanded way) but they disagree with your estimate that it is a "vast majority". It said (and I have no idea if it's true or not) that about 50% of the 1,000 or so developers that are really actively developing Linux are employees of big tech companies. I'm sure that there are many, many more non big company developers that are contributing occasionaly but the efforts of 500 full time developers doing it day in and day out for their living is probably making a pretty big impact.
I don't know about the taiwan thing. China is offering taiwan businesses crazy labour and material rates and tempting most buisness onto the mainland...
I'm sure that is their plan and it has a good chance of working BUT there is a military stick accompanying that economic carrot. China is bulking up it military across the straight and is willing to use it if that gateway to the west gets too uppity. Those pesky voters are wont to do that every few elections. The election of a more vigorously pro-independence candidate could lead to actions even more aggresive than "training excersises" by amphibious troops across the straight and "missle tests" in Tiawans airspace ("Hey Tiawan is just part of our sovereign territory - of course we can conduct missile tests there") Sure everybody wants a slow reintegration of Tiawan accompanied by slow move from mainland totalitarianism to something merely authoritarian and that seems to be what is happening. But a misstep, or a miscalculation - a little too much freedom & independence in Tiawans actions or a little too much saber rattling to keep them in line on China's part. An accidental firing during one of the periodic high tension stand-offs and all bets are off. The leaders of mainland China will tolerate a fair amount but are capable of tremendous atrocities internally and will risk war externally to keep their people in check - and they consider Tiawan their people. Tiawan for their part is willing to (and must as a matter of necessity) dance with China. But they have a first world military against China's third world one and they don't seem likely to just roll over to unreasonable demands either. Aging Chinese plutocrats accustomed to totalitarian control don't seem the best judges of when their own demands are reasonable or unreasonable - as they march towards reunification there is a lot of risk that they will misjudge the attachment that the Tiawanese have formed with democracy and political & personal freedoms and their willingness to risk war to protect them.
despite the fact that the US has signed treaties
...cause if someone believed that they can indeed survive a MAD scenario they may actually push the button.
That treaty had an exit clause that we chose to excercise. You can disagree with the policy but we are not doing anything "despite signing a treaty" nor are we "breaking a treaty." We have fulfilled every requirement of the treaty. In either event the treaty did not bar research only deployment in more than one location. (We never deployed any ABM systems despite being allowed by the treaty to do so in one location - IN SOVIET RUSSIA they chose to protect Moscow with an ABM system)
Even before the proliferation of nuclear weapons to many more unstable and unpredictable countries there was a good argument for ABM systems to *preserve* MAD. Prior to the development of precision guidance systems you could nuke your enemies missle silos but the weapons were so imprecise and the silos so well protected that even with nuclear warheads you were unlikely to destroy them. That all changed when the USA and much later the Soviets developed dependable precision warheads. A preemptive attack could have (for the most part) worked. We could have nuked them or vise versa and had a good chance of getting their weapons on the ground - the stability of mutual suicide was already being undermined. ABM would have restored it - nobody thinks or claims it would have been 100% effective but it would have made a preemptive strike infeasible.
In todays world things are different - we are worried about a handful of countries with only a handful of nukes each - There is no MAD balance of power between us and Korea, Pakistan, India, (Iran - soon)(Iraq - fairly soon if not prevented) or even China (for the moment, they're bulking up fast) A preemptive strike on our part against any of these countries would be effective. Right now it would be our only defense against being nuked by them if a crisis turns really ugly. If you don't think our military planning regarding Korea during this current crisis doesn't include nuking the location of the one or two nukes (assuming the CIA knows their location) as a last resort during a war you are naive. And if you don't think that this president (or ANY president) wouldn't use that option if he *thought* the likely alternative was several thousand American and several million South Koreans being reduced to glowing cinders you are very much mistaken. The absense of another alternative is much likely to cause us to rush into using an nightmare option which can only work if we beat them to the punch. Our options in a really nasty crisis with a minor nuclear power could narrow down very quickly to "nuke them... it's the only way to be sure". In the next decade we have no idea what kinds of crises we may be involved in. China is very close to invading Taiwan (which is certainly advanced enough and desperate to have their own nuclear program), A nuclear war between Pakistan and India is frighteningly likely. A preemptive strike by Isreal against Iran or Iraq (whichever gets nukes first) or vise versa will be a real possiblity by the end of the decade. How will we be involved, at what risk to our troops or our mainland (China can already hit us, N. Korean missile development which they will sell to the highest bidder is getting very advanced). I for one would rather we have options other than either rolling over to who knows what nightmares or unleashing a nightmare ourselves.
How is disabling electronics completely safe for civillians?
Just imagine this being used near a busy traffic intersection, or near a hospital.
You've obviously never driven or been to a hospital in the third world. In the first case nobody pays much attention to the lights (if they exist or work) in the second electricity is unreliable even without the occasional attack by an EMP weapon.
However, I'll grant it's not *completely* safe but it certainly beats the alternative. Take the example of a battery of SAMS in downtown Bagdad. In the not-so-distant past we would bombed the neighborhood killing hundreds of innocent civilians*, With current technology we would try to take it out with a "smart" bomb maybe killing two or three innocent civilians, unless we miss in which case we may kill a few dozen innocent civillians. With this new technology we blast it with an EMP pulse and everybody's lights go out - not a big deal in most of the third world.
* in the example of bombing the neighborhood to get at those SAMS and killing hundreds (or even thousands) of innocent civilians. It's quit possible that there would be a war crime involved in this scenario, but NOT on the part of the USA. Putting military assets in civilian areas to sheild them from attack is a war crime. Legally the existance of the military assets removes any immunity that target would otherwise have had. A Mosque, church, hospital, orphanage, etc with a SAM battery or Radar installation on the roof is a legitimate target and legally (and morally IMO) the guilt for those innocent deaths is on the heads of the person that made it a legitimate target. The attacker in this situation does still have a general responsiblity to minimise civilian deaths - now that we have precision bombs it would be a war crime to use dumb ones in such a situation but prior to their invention such bombings did occur.
on a non-networked computer? WHat could he do???
What a defeatist attitude for a hacker. Come on, part of the hacker ethic is to do more than anyone could imagine with the most meagre resources. A few minutes reflection and I'm sure you could come up with a few ideas. Make a few not very far fetched assumptions #1 Assume the encrypted data is the most sensitive/incriminating/useful data that he had - secrets he drudged up in his hacking exploits, passwords maybe programs such as virii, trojan horses etc... #2 Assume he has sympathetic hacker friends out there willing engage in attacks for him. A phone call to a friend with some user names & passwords could lead to interesting results - a tap on the prosecutors phone would allow Kevin to really "assist his own defense." Something by the way WELL within the capablities of someone with information found on the UNencrypted portion of kevins hard drive. A trojan horse in a file he provides to his lawyers who open it at their location WITH net access is a little more difficult but all the more appealing because of the challenge. Blackmailing some executive that doesn't want his wife/shareholders/coworkers/competitors to know something Kevin has found during one of his exploits could be a windfall for his legal defense fund. Use some imagination.
Yes, that's paranoid, but then again this is a guy that had thoroughly compromised the systems he attacked. His control over the phone system was total, he knew when he was tapped and allegedly tapped the phones of investigators & generally screwed around with the phone service of people that pissed him off. He read the emails of the DEC security team that was tracking his exploits. He made the (credible coming from him) claim that he had screwed up the credit records of the FBI agents trailing him. And he not only refused to give prosecutors access to the files (understandable) but he also refused to tell the court *anything* about the encrypted information. I suppose if I thought his hacking was cute harmless pranks I wouldn't care but I wouldn't trust him without very stringent oversight. Which was the final result (and still the cause of great bitching and moaning)
The case against granting him bail was obvious and overwhelming on it's face.
Then spend 15 minutes to hold the hearing, deny him bail, and that's that.
I've already agreed that this would have been the best way to deal with the situation. BUT I can't get all worked up over it in this case. It would have been an empty formality given his history and Kevin has nobody but himself to blame for that history. That the judge made a summary judgement just based on the immediately obvious merits of the situation was perhaps unfair but a hearing wouldn't have changed the result nor was it's denial as grave a breach of his civil liberties as his breathless hyperbole of Kevins star-struck admirers would suggest.
Primarily because his lawyers were denied access to the information they needed in order to prepare for any trial.
I'm no expert on the case but from what I know there are a couple of issues here. One is the claim that since Kevin himself (not his lawyers) was barred from using a *computer* to review the evidence against him he wasn't able to review it. By this logic every defendant prior to the 1960's and 70's was "denied access to the evidence against them" because computers hadn't yet been invented - Come on... didn't his lawyers own a printer? The second issue is that Kevin wanted access to files he had encrypted on his hard drive because they might contain exculpatory evidence but wouldn't give the court any idea of what was in those files nor provide the password claiming that would violate his right against self-incrimination. The prosecution argued that while Kevin had a right to the evidence against him since the government couldn't read those files they obviously weren't part of the evidence against him. They also didn't want to give him access to who knows what programs with who knows what capabilities. Paranoid... perhaps & technologically clueless.. perhaps. But then while Kevin had not been particularly destructive nor profit minded in his hacking previously his ability to do such was tremendous. Sure he didn't have a net connection but I'm sure his lawyers did... a little trojan horse in a file given to his lawyers to review? With all the passwords & access he had to all sorts of government & business computers? Imagine the possiblities. Imagine the reputation he would build if he trashed all those computers he had perviously gained access to from a jail cell without a net connection. By his own testimony his hacking was compulsive and he couldn't control himself and he was skilled at it. Part of the appeal of hacking is to do a lot more than others expect with far fewer resources - I don't know that I would have trusted him if I were the judge.
And it *was* a novel legal situation - usually the prosecution has to provide evidence *they have* to make sure that the defense knows as much as they do. In this situation they had to provide evidence the *didn't really have* to make sure the defense knew much more than they did. They were perfectly willing to hand over this evidence if they got access to it as well as the defense. Legally we have to hold to the principle that we can't make any assumptions about the nature of the evidence the government couldn't see. But as a practical matter I'm sure Kevins claim that it would be self-incriminating to reveal the evidence took the time to *encrypt* was far more accurate than his conflicting claim that it was exculpatory.
It wasn't just that he was denied bail, he was denied a bail hearing.
So? Despite the 5th ammendment claims of the defense (which were obviously rejected) Bail is not a constitutional right. The case against granting him bail was obvious and overwhelming on it's face. That the judge decided not to go through the formality probably had more to do (at first) with a desire to move on than with a desire to persecute someone who didn't have a snowballs chance in hell of getting bail no matter how many hearing were held on it. In hindsight given the length of the case the judge should have simply granted the hearing, denied bail and moved on without adding the fun "longest held without a bail hearing" factoid on the Free Kevin webiste.
If he had received a 2-year sentence, you wouldn't hear a single voice speaking out on his behalf
He got about 5 years and additional time on probation without access to computers. Rather harsh but throughout his criminal history he behaved in such a manner almost guaranteed to get dealt with harshly. NOT because he was a hacker (though that added a certain high-profile sex appeal to the case that didn't help him) but because he was convicted multiple times before, ran from the law and continued to commit high profile crimes while on the run. I don't care what the nature of your crime is that kind of history is going to get you a harsh sentence. It could have been worse - in China he would have gotten the death penalty.
Did you sleep more easily while Mitnick was in jail,
I'll bet more than a few sysadmins did.
It is also a fact that he was not allowed to review the evidence against him. After 4 years of illegal detention and having the alleged evidence of your crime being kept from your defense team,
He was able to review the evidence against him - he just couldn't do it on a computer - at first. Then they let him see it on a computer but he could only use the computer in the meeting room. His defense team of course could use computers whenever they wanted, and did. The argument that being bared from using a computer was tantamount to "not allowing him to review the evidence against him" seems a rather weak one. Did they not have a printer? Was every defendant prior to the invention of the computer also "not allowed to review the evidence against him"? I will concede that the prosecution and the judge were paranoid about giving Mittnick access to a computer but even though their conditions were silly and inconvenient it is just as silly to suggest that because of them Mittnick "wasn't allowed to review the evidence against him".
I don't think he chose to be kept in Federal prison without a trial for more than 4 years.
/. that online crimes should be dealt with the same as offline - well his punishment doesn't seem so out of whack for a string of multiple breakings & enterings, thefts, & frauds while on the run from the law.
Actually (a little googleing reveals that) in many instances he DID - or rather his lawyers did. The trial kept getting delayed due to it's complexity - often at the request of HIS lawyers. Hiring and firing three different lawyers doesn't usually speed things up any either (though I'll grant you it is possible they were incompetant - but the real possiblity exists their client was part of their problem). As for being denied bail that whole time - well that is sort of a natural penalty for running & continuing to commit the same crimes while on the run - for some reason people just don't trust you not to it again. Wasting time in useless appeals to GET bail when no sane judge would give it to you is just another thing that drags out the time you spend waiting for trial.
I don't think he chose to have the software he downloaded (and did not distribute) valued at an amount way beyond reality because the Feds said to.
And they should have been valued at less because he & his lawyers said so? I have no idea what the real value of the damage he caused to various systems was or the value of the information he stole. I doubt HE knows it's value. I am sure his victims and the prosecution exagerated it's value. On the other hand it is not difficult at ALL to assume that the value was quite significant. Big companies worth many billions of dollars keep stuff on their computers that really do have multi-million dollar values to those companies. Those where the kinds of companies he liked to hack and the kind of information he liked to steal BECAUSE he wanted to be a big deal and make a big splash. Well he did.
I don't think he chose to have terms of his probation which kept him from using his First Amendment rights
While convicts have rights the whole point of being a convict is having certain rights taken away. As for his specifically first amendment rights - I don't know of any instance during his sentence when the government established a religion for him, forbade him to excersise his own, forbade him to speak, talk to the (or even run a) press, assemble peacably or petition the government to redress his greavances (this last I think he excersiced far more than most of us) Being forbidden to use a computer after being convicted 4 or 5 times (on multiple counts each time) of computer fraud & abuse is not much different from being forbidden to own a gun after being convicted of a gun crime. Being forbidden to use a tool that you only seem adept at using criminally seems appropriate and fitting not cruel nor unusual. Having himself argued in court before that he was compulsive and unable to control himself probably didn't help his case any on this point.
Did he choose to be the poster-boy of government corruption when it comes to prosecution of technology-related case
After being caught and convicted on numerous prior occasions and being dealt with fairly leniently by the courts at first - then doing the same thing again *while on probabation* - then running when a warrant is issued - then continuing to commit the same high profile crimes while on the run IS asking for it.
Yes, there are murderers that have been dealt with less harshly. That's a GREAT argument for harsher treatment of murderers IMO than for more lenient treatment of multiple offense fraud artist fugitives. All the time I hear on
No, there was never a trial. Kevin plead guilty. It took them four years to "decide" what his punishment was going to be.
Pleading guilty and going to jail is a VERY different thing from going to jail without a trial. If you plead guilty what exactly would be the purpose of a trial? I will agree that it was wrong if it took them 4 years to decide on a sentence but it is a very different thing (and somewhat less serious) from what the original comment implied. I don't know but I am guessing there was more to it than just "forgetting" to sentence him for four years - like prosecutors and defense attorneys going back and forth with motions & appeals about the final sentence.
Companies that worry about 20,000,000 are being very smart.
*sigh* I'm sure they thought about the $20m. I'm sure they worried about it in the sense that before they decided to restructure PowerSchool they weighed the costs and benefits of spending $20m to do so. I'm sure the management of PowerSchool worried *a lot* about that $20m. Still to Apple spending $20m to restructure a troubled subsidiary is NOT something that should worry anyone about the health of the company or the wisdom of the management. On the other hand FAILING to spend that $20m and just letting a problem fester & continue to drain $$$ because they're worried about showing a single quarter loss WOULD be something to worry about.
$20m is a lot in the sense that any company would think a great deal about spending that amount - it is NOT very much in the sense of representing anything very significant about a company that size. While I hope that Steve Jobs thought about that $20m and i'd imagine it was a big enough number that it needed his consideration. I would be dissapointed however if he spent a lot of time *worried* about it - he has much bigger issues to worry about and he's not paid that $1 salary (and the occasion bonus that exceeds this particular amount) to obsess over such an insignificant percentage of the companies resources.
A company thinking 20,000,000 is not a lot of money is a company that will keep losing money. No matter how you slice it, 20,000,000 is a lot of money.
Not a lot of money for what? What is so difficult about the concept of scale? You sound like my 9 year old talking about $20.00. Sure $20 is a lot of money to a child, or to spend at a greasy spoon for breakfast, but it's not very much when you are buying a car. $20 Million is a lot to you and me, it's a lot to a company with $100 million in revenues. It's not very much at all to a company with $1.7 Billion in quarterly revenues and $4 Billion in cash to take as a *one time* restructuring charge, especially if the restructuring saves them (significantly more $$$) in the coming years. Even assuming they keep losing that much every year (rather than a during an industry wide slowdown) at that "burn rate" they have 50 years to figure out a way to turn things around.
We really need a score:-1 humor impared.