I'm not sure where you're going with the bulletproof vest stuff. The point I was trying to make is that there are many people liable for crimes, not just the perpetrator. That is why the legal system has various notions to express diminished liability, i.e. to punish those who did not in a literal sense commit the crime but did aid and abet the crime in some sense. Yes, the police has a responsibility to prevent crime, and as such negligence on the part of the police does translate into liability, and people get fired etcetera. But anyway.
Your point about releasing the virus in the wild is well taken though. Still I think it is ridiculous to claim that one person is responsible for 20+ million people executing a malicious attachment. There is gross negligence there as well.
It's not just the kiddies who are wasting time and money. It's the people who execute the virus as well. That is to say, the person who executes a virus and thus causes it to spread has a certain liability, although not as much as the person who originally wrote the virus. The same thing applies when someone breaks quarantine due to negligence. E.g. I could inject you with HIV infected blood; this is widely recognized as gross negligence on my part.
All software has bugs. As a result all software is insecure. As a result both users and developers should assume that they are running insecure software. Ignorance is no excuse.
People are ultimately running these viruses themselves. By analogy, I could write a book detailing how to stage an anarchistic revolution. Some madman could follow those instructions and a lot of people might die as a result. I think it is clear that in this situation at least 2 people are to blame, because the situation could have been prevented by either burning the book or by incarcerating the madman. Still the freedom to write a book is one we take for granted. Even to write malicious books.
What about if I print the Nimda source code on a T-shirt? Does that make me liable for the damages done due to someone copying and using that code? What about stuff like the DeCSS source code? Isn't the whole point of DeCSS to break security? Could I be held liable for damages caused by lost DVD sales? When I print it on a T-shirt?
If software is like speech, then how can I be held liable for writing buggy software? Barring those cases that would be analogous to yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre, yadda yadda yadda.
Look. If someone lives in a place where crime is ten times higher than in some other place, then he will have to pay a lot more for insurance. Why shouldn't the same apply to software, in that your liability depends on the relative security of the software you are running?
Uh, what does any of this have to do with the matter at hand? The fact of the matter is that Blizzard cannot prevent anybody from looking at the data that they are sending over the network. There are very good reasons why they cannot. Because for Blizzard (or anybody else) to be able to do so, strong cryptography and licensing would be to mandated. The problem with that is that it creates a privileged "programmer class": you know, people who are allowed to use debuggers and network sniffers to the exclusion of everybody else. That's unacceptable, no matter how many millions of dollars Blizzard loses or stands to lose or whatever. They will just have to come to terms with the fact that this is the medium they are producing for, and settle either for lower profits or reduce spending.
You have a point but it's not sound. Galeon and Konqueror (or even Links!) make browsing under Linux a breeze.
Of course, you will need plenty resources to run them, which kills that other Linux-zealot bullshit argument alleging Windows slowness, but they are quite stable and effective.
Lynx is a full featured piece of shit. Links is a proper text browser that renders tables and frames and doesn't discard your keybuffer when it needs to tell you something.
Isn't it obvious? Slashdot will sell vanity points. They will be selling that "louder voice". Of course only the very vain will buy into that kind of thing, but then again vanity seems to be what Slashdot was made for.
Rubbish. It costs them tons to do the subscription system. They will actually have to respond to the concerns of paying members, they will actually have to get billing right, they will actually have to listen to bug reports and, well basically, actually have to start acting like professionals and deferring to same. Also, they might actually start making money which would certainly whet VA's appetite.
Well, the US has all the lawyers that the market will bear. The way the market for legal services is structured in the US however, becoming a lawyer is simply a very attractive proposition.
This is not to say that the US legal system is broken, but the fact is that it works different from European courts. For example US courts will impose much greater fines, and award much larger damages, than European courts. This makes bounty hunting through the legal system a viable proposition.
One of the reasons why there is so much money to be made in US courts is because engaging in legal battles is so much more expensive in the US. In other words, the courts award great sums of money because it cost the winner so much money to win in the first place.
In most European courts on the other hand, the cost of the legal proceedings falls entirely on the loser -- that is, the loser (with a number of caveats and qualifications) ends up having to pay all the bills. This makes frivolous litigation a very risky proposition, and makes it palatable for expensive lawyers to take strong cases even if the client is relatively "poor". The fact that the higher taxes in most European countries generate a more egalitarian income distribution, and the heavy reliance in Anglosaxon law on precedent, these also play their part of course.
People have been trying to do that, but the effort required for an architecture that can work even as little as five years into the feature simply does not afford it (yet). Look at how expensive SCSI is, for example: this cost is a direct result of its forward-looking and comprehensive design.
Modularity comes at a cost, compatibility comes at a cost. Although we are taught the virtues of modularity in the classroom (and can of course see for ourselves how modularity is beneficial), those of us who proceed to actually build things quickly get to appreciate the subtle (and not so subtle) drawbacks as well, in the form of added complexity on virtually every level. Just imagine a five year old architecture so flexible that it can take advantage of PC133 RAM today -- the cost would be entirely prohibitive, and there are so many parts that you would need to replace that you are better off having someone else do it for you -- which it basically how things work right now.
Something that caught my attention in one of the photographs with this article is the funny squiggly PCB lines at the lower left in this image. Any hardware people who can enlighten me as to the function of these squiggly lines? Is this a timing device or some design artifact?
Grasshoppers and beetles don't have any significant ethics programs to speak of either. Still they seem to get along and we seem to get along with them -- UNLESS they go haywire, of course, and you get plagues such as in Africa. Then we don't get along. But to say that robots require ethical programs is just bunk, bien-pensant "i have no brain" kind of thinking. They just need to live.
This is fascinating... why? Millions of people show up at work at the same time every day. That is a conscious, voluntary act. But why is it any more surprising when an unconscious, involuntary act is involved?
Slashdot Mirror
Then why is the US waging war in Afghanistan, looking for a man who most certainly did not board any of the airplanes that crashed into the WTC?
Your point about releasing the virus in the wild is well taken though. Still I think it is ridiculous to claim that one person is responsible for 20+ million people executing a malicious attachment. There is gross negligence there as well.
It's not just the kiddies who are wasting time and money. It's the people who execute the virus as well. That is to say, the person who executes a virus and thus causes it to spread has a certain liability, although not as much as the person who originally wrote the virus. The same thing applies when someone breaks quarantine due to negligence. E.g. I could inject you with HIV infected blood; this is widely recognized as gross negligence on my part.
All software has bugs. As a result all software is insecure. As a result both users and developers should assume that they are running insecure software. Ignorance is no excuse.
Why can't people write malicious programs?
What about if I print the Nimda source code on a T-shirt? Does that make me liable for the damages done due to someone copying and using that code? What about stuff like the DeCSS source code? Isn't the whole point of DeCSS to break security? Could I be held liable for damages caused by lost DVD sales? When I print it on a T-shirt?
If software is like speech, then how can I be held liable for writing buggy software? Barring those cases that would be analogous to yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre, yadda yadda yadda.
Look. If someone lives in a place where crime is ten times higher than in some other place, then he will have to pay a lot more for insurance. Why shouldn't the same apply to software, in that your liability depends on the relative security of the software you are running?
Hm? Oh. I see. Well. Never mind, indeed.
Uh, what does any of this have to do with the matter at hand? The fact of the matter is that Blizzard cannot prevent anybody from looking at the data that they are sending over the network. There are very good reasons why they cannot. Because for Blizzard (or anybody else) to be able to do so, strong cryptography and licensing would be to mandated. The problem with that is that it creates a privileged "programmer class": you know, people who are allowed to use debuggers and network sniffers to the exclusion of everybody else. That's unacceptable, no matter how many millions of dollars Blizzard loses or stands to lose or whatever. They will just have to come to terms with the fact that this is the medium they are producing for, and settle either for lower profits or reduce spending.
Probably. And as with DeCSS (where the question was, who owns the bits in memory) it will probably turn out to be the "content owner".
As other posters have commented: the wipe in wasn't. I'd just like to add: to the man who has only a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.
In case you failed to notice, GNU isn't about subverting property. It's about creating our own.
Of course, you will need plenty resources to run them, which kills that other Linux-zealot bullshit argument alleging Windows slowness, but they are quite stable and effective.
A year ago this would have been GREAT if not WONDERFUL news. Now that we have mplayer, it's just great. TIMTOWTDI.
Forget about improving the system. Forget about fighting the system. Take the money. Run.
Lynx is a full featured piece of shit. Links is a proper text browser that renders tables and frames and doesn't discard your keybuffer when it needs to tell you something.
Isn't it obvious? Slashdot will sell vanity points. They will be selling that "louder voice". Of course only the very vain will buy into that kind of thing, but then again vanity seems to be what Slashdot was made for.
"Links" is not "Lynx" you idiot. Try it sometime. It is pretty good.
Rubbish. It costs them tons to do the subscription system. They will actually have to respond to the concerns of paying members, they will actually have to get billing right, they will actually have to listen to bug reports and, well basically, actually have to start acting like professionals and deferring to same. Also, they might actually start making money which would certainly whet VA's appetite.
This is not to say that the US legal system is broken, but the fact is that it works different from European courts. For example US courts will impose much greater fines, and award much larger damages, than European courts. This makes bounty hunting through the legal system a viable proposition.
One of the reasons why there is so much money to be made in US courts is because engaging in legal battles is so much more expensive in the US. In other words, the courts award great sums of money because it cost the winner so much money to win in the first place.
In most European courts on the other hand, the cost of the legal proceedings falls entirely on the loser -- that is, the loser (with a number of caveats and qualifications) ends up having to pay all the bills. This makes frivolous litigation a very risky proposition, and makes it palatable for expensive lawyers to take strong cases even if the client is relatively "poor". The fact that the higher taxes in most European countries generate a more egalitarian income distribution, and the heavy reliance in Anglosaxon law on precedent, these also play their part of course.
Modularity comes at a cost, compatibility comes at a cost. Although we are taught the virtues of modularity in the classroom (and can of course see for ourselves how modularity is beneficial), those of us who proceed to actually build things quickly get to appreciate the subtle (and not so subtle) drawbacks as well, in the form of added complexity on virtually every level. Just imagine a five year old architecture so flexible that it can take advantage of PC133 RAM today -- the cost would be entirely prohibitive, and there are so many parts that you would need to replace that you are better off having someone else do it for you -- which it basically how things work right now.
Something that caught my attention in one of the photographs with this article is the funny squiggly PCB lines at the lower left in this image. Any hardware people who can enlighten me as to the function of these squiggly lines? Is this a timing device or some design artifact?
Grasshoppers and beetles don't have any significant ethics programs to speak of either. Still they seem to get along and we seem to get along with them -- UNLESS they go haywire, of course, and you get plagues such as in Africa. Then we don't get along. But to say that robots require ethical programs is just bunk, bien-pensant "i have no brain" kind of thinking. They just need to live.
This is fascinating... why? Millions of people show up at work at the same time every day. That is a conscious, voluntary act. But why is it any more surprising when an unconscious, involuntary act is involved?