I recently purchased a set of quality headphones to shield my music from my neighbors - who live a thin wall of drywall away. Whenever anyone watches a movie at night or listens to their favorite songs I can hear it very well - the bass especially so.
I've complained a number of times and now the level has been brought in to check but every now and then I hear them.
I want to listen to my music, too. Sometimes loudly. But how do I listen to my music my way without being hypocritical and by being respectful to my neighbor?
My Solution: Headphones. It was an apiphany to me. While I was in the US Navy onboard a submarine, whether at sea or in the barracks, we all had headphones and peaceful bliss listening to our music without someone threatening to float test your stereo equipment or CD player.
For those of you who live in a condo, like I do, for the sake of your neighbors and yourself, buy a set of headphones. It's a whole lot easier than explaining to the Condo Association why noise complaints are being issues against you - and in my association, the bylaws are written such that noise complaints can get your sorry butt tossed out into the street. Permenently!
I've got a friend over from New Zealand. I'm American. We're both blond and blue eyed of average build. I thought it would be funny one day to introduce him to some people but instead of telling them he's from New Zealand I said he was from Australia.
The introduction went like this:
Carl(me): "Everyone, this is Jansen. He's from Australia."
Jansen: "Everyone, this is Carl. He's from Mexico."
Hrm, I didn't quite know how to react to the glowing spine thing. I figured it was just a visual clue to the audience that the woman was "not quite human."
If the cylon spine does indeed glow then yeah, he should have noticed. However, the master mechanic will learn, too, that his woman is a cylon. Now, either everyone in BG thinks missionary style is the only style or anything else is illegal. Either way, they're missing out on *a lot!*
Now the question we're all asking though, is, "Is the 'Spine-Glow' thing a bug or a feature?";o)
If you say that there are 5 presented so far then I say that there are 6. Why? No one has yet to mention it but if you look at the cylon space-fighters, IIRC, they had that 'eye' thing going on. That leads me to believe that the cylon star-fighters themselves are an individual robot.
Remember in the original series that they showed the cylons paired up piloting a cylon star-fighter. In the new version, I remember no such scene where two cylons piloted the craft from the inside. They did, however, pair two star-*fighters* whenever they were shown.
The underlying logic? Why waste three pieces of equipment (the ship, the left cylon and the right cylon) when the ship is itself capable of cylon technology and theory - which is a, well, another form of cylon.
I don't care how low the price of an individual DVD (media) is. My time invested is worth 25 times that value. (My DVDs were $3/DVD.)
I don't care how inexpensive the drives becomes. I just spent all day *burning* a DVD using Sony's "Click to DVD." When the first DVD was burned, I popped it into my DVD player and the DVD worked flawlessly. I didn't like the way the layout was created so I redesigned it and created another DVD with 12 different 'chapters.'
This DVD didn't work one bit (no pun intended) in either the burning DVD writer or the standalone DVD player. Nadda. I opened the DVD up in Hex Editor and looked at the various sectors - 99% of them were NULLs. WTGDF!?
I basically spent the whole day creating these two DVDs to have the final product, which looked fantastic in layout, turn to complete *shit* after the burn.
Time line?: 1 hour designing(importing, etc.) - DVD #1 2 hours burning first DVD - DVD #1 1.5 hours redesigning DVD layout - DVD #2 3.5 hour burning period - DVD #2
All for naught.
Moral of the story?
Who gives a rats ass what the cost of the blank DVDs are when the software burning the DVDs doesn't work properly.
I never said that they have a worse POTS service that the US. I said it wasn't as well established (thus, lessor-established).
Congratulations on your county's adoption of GSM network support. The US doesn't see the need to buy into it, just yet. Does that make them, or us, I should say, archaic? Maybe to your eyes. But "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Adopting GSM technology still has a cost to incur and companies aren't ready or willing to swallow that cost.
The US has a large area to cover and it is already covered with millions on miles of conduit that work with an existing network system. Replacing that system, even over time, is a costly venture that will have an economic impact on a country that is already experiencing an economic recession.
In the future, should the US head toward the use of GSM or the next latest-and-greatest communications system, the older equipment, lines and all, will have to be removed. These companies will have to foot the bill to pay for that removal.
Perhaps the whole story is not fully understood by those in Norway.
The United States (via a Scottish immigrant) invented the telephone and quickly built upon that technology within the country to enhance it's infrastructure. "By 1878, Alexander Graham Bell had set up the first telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut. By 1884, long distance connections were made between Boston, Massachusetts and New York City." Source
{{Fast forward 130 odd years}}
It may seem feasible, for someone living in a country with a lessor-established technological-infrastructure that never had a system in place such as the existing telephone system in the US, that the US is behind but the US already had a *huge* system established for over 130 years. An entire industry was created because of it and when you have a beast (or a burden) of such a large scale as the US does one does not just throw it out in favor of some other kind of system - such as the cell phone.
In the US, and correct me if I'm wrong, only something like 20-30% of household use cellphones in their daily lives. Look at Indonesia; 95-98% of their populace uses cellphone technology. Does that make them a world leader? In cell phone usage yes. Why? Cell towers. No one needs to spend billions (if not trillions!) of dollars (or dinars, or Euroes) and lay millions of miles of cable to communicate. Erect a few cell phone towers and you've connected thousands of people. Erect a few more and you've connected an entire nation in a mere fraction of the time as it took for technology to advance enough for it to become feasible for these coutries. Even in Norway.
I'm a US citizen and I cut the cord 3 years ago. Cell phone and e-mail only for me.
You want to harp on the US. Go ahead. But while you're harping, look down your nose and see that you're standing on the shoulders of giants.
Regardless of what you, or the IRA, believes, bombs do not solve the world's problems.
However, an uprising saying, "We the governed have had enough!", may be inevitiable in order to win our country back. Call me overly dramatic; but, I fear for that day.
I think that is Microsoft's point - to make it as painful as possible to switch.
Since, just about, every PC or laptop comes with the "Microsoft Tax" preinstalled they already know that the purchaser has to remove (or dual-boot) the system in order to get linux installed. Businesses make their decisions on how much money they will save when purchasing equipment. If dual-booting is appealing to them and they know it's going to take great effort to switch/setup the company may think twice about switching to linux and dual booting their shiney new laptops/PCs.
For the home user, say some kid gets a new laptop/pc and begins to experiment. If he's not of the Type-'A' personality, he might just give up on switching or be told by his unknowledgable parents that linux is evil (or just plain 'No' to installing Linux on the pc - thereby creating another MS-Droid(tm).
Make something painful to do and people will stop doing it. Granted, there are those of us who, if we want to do something with our computers we are going to do it, software/hardware protection or not.
End result, more people use Microsoft products and the few that switch are incredible people indeed.
Dammit!;) I almost said yellow feet, too! Of course, I had to think of Emperor Penguins, which have black feet.
Oh, well. Thanks for pointing it out.
It's *art* people!
on
Alien Case Mod
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
OK, after reading all the comments and seeing the case for myself I've got to say that the commercials on TV about kids not getting enough art are true.
You know, the one where the little girl wants her father to read to her a history lesson, one where a girl reads CS books to relax and the one where the boy tells the acordian player to 'get a job.'
So this guys case mod can't be made by most of the slashdot crowd even if they did have the knowledge of how use the tools to create it. It's the creative ability of the artist that makes a medium art.
I'm not surprised, though, that the/. crowd just didn't get this one. On one hand we have very creative & clever IT people. On the other, they can't see the beauty in something that doesn't have two black webbed feet dressed in a tuxedo that doesn't compile the lastest kernel.
This same thing happened to me when I bought my mother a desktop and myself a laptop April 2002. They charged a penny to my best buy bill, too, for a 6-month trial experience - which as far as I remember, I did not give/sign for anything saying I'll pay for MSN after the time (6 months is over). When I asked why they said, "Inventory Tracking purposes." Just like the plantiff in the original story.
I, absentmindedly, said, "Oh. OK." and shrug it off. A month later, I say, "Hey what's this MSN experience like and throw in the disk." Know that I already had cable interent via COX.
Not being able to connect to MSN through cable, I called their customer support hot-line and spoke to a rep who informed me that MSN is not available through cable internet. Then, she suggests that I purchase a DSL line through MSN.
A) I haven't used a land line since Y2K. B) Why would I want to have two sources of internet hooked up in my place? I wouldn't. C) Too costly!
Land Line ($45/month)
Cable Internet ($39.99/month)
DSL Subsciber ($39.99/month)
MSN Account ($22.95/month) OUCH!
So I tell her no thanks and hang up, feeling rather refreshed for having gotten off the phone with MSN - butterfly or no.
Well, five months later I get a charge on my charge card for MSN Service. WTF!?
I called and called and called. It took almost two weeks to get in contact with the correct person to remove the charges. When they did remove the charges, it took them two months to do so!
Math Class!
Let's see:
My bill 22.95 @ 12 %interest = x
Microsoft's bill (Hrm) 22.95 times (like) 8000 customers who don't know their being billed ($22.95) + the interest earned on those 8K peeps + MSNs delay time of two months = one helluva chunk of ka-ching via interest alone EVEN IF THOSE SAME PEEPS WERE SEEKING TO STOP MSNs "service."
To make matters worse, they did the same to my mother. If I hadn't mentioned it to her, she might still be paying that bill.
I've bought a number of items from Best Buy, not to push a store, and I've had very good results. Fantastic results even. Contrary to the topics thesis of everything being %100 correct or the company refuses to process the rebate, I've actually had Best Buy mail my rebate back to me denoting the error and pleasently, respectfully even, asking me to correct it in order to process the rebate.
It was a month after the rebate deadline for the second processing but they still honored my rebate and I received a $100 check in the mail 2-6 weeks later. I count myself lucky and I'll shop at Best Buy before going to others.
Of course, I also remember, when a child, that my mother sent out for an item on the back of a cerial box and it never arrived. Buyer beware, I guess.
It is not a question of *how* people use the software it is a question of how Intuit deceived their customers by covertly installing Macrovision C-Dilla.
"In all the test systems they set up, they didn't find any appreciable deterioration in performance for any of the computer systems they tested," Allanson said.
Excuse me? I'll make the determination of what 'appreciable deterioration' *is* on *my* PCs.
One thing that Intuit is learning the hard way is not to listen to so-called 'experts' like Allanson's think tank. It is what your customers think and believe that is important. I used to use Quicken (for the last 6 years) and TurboTax (for the last three tax seasons). After several recent annoyances with Quicken and TurboTax's covert use of the Macrovision C-Dilla (Safecast) license manager was more than enough to push me toward using Microsoft's Money software and to use Klipenger's TaxCut software.
Piss your customers off and you'll be looking for new markets no matter *how* incorrect the consumers perceptions of the product's deficiencies are.
Say you deface walmart.com or amazon.com. They track how much sales are done per hour, how many visits the site gets per actual perchase. If during the time that the website is defaced they can show a drop in those stats then were they not robbed of income? Do they not deserve to recoup said loss?
If you spray painted the outside of walmart with the words "CLOSED - BUILDING UNSAFE" and they lost a days sales because of it would they not be deserve to recoup said loss?
Obsolutely, they have the right to claim the lost finances due to a hack.
Honestly I have no sympathy for hackers or any other type of white collar crime. Most all of them get far too light a sentence IMHO. So do many violent criminals as well. We spend so much of our time locking up drug users and dealers, while drunk drivers get off that we can't properly deal with REAL crimes.
What troubles me about your post is that you have an idea of what un*REAL* crimes are. Crimes are crimes, there is no dispute about that. The topic is to determine whether the *sentences* fit the crime.
Don't have sympathy for a murderer? Either do I. Hang 'em high, I say.
Crackers generally only cause a little bit of mayham or 'borrow' some information to support a 'rightous hack' and they get 20 years of prison time unless some kind of deal is reached?
If a cracker *or* hacker causes actual physical damages that lead to the harm of people or property then they should, along side with lost incomes or revenue, be subject to those laws that would bind them if they had actually perpetrated the crime in person.
Slashdot Mirror
I recently purchased a set of quality headphones to shield my music from my neighbors - who live a thin wall of drywall away. Whenever anyone watches a movie at night or listens to their favorite songs I can hear it very well - the bass especially so.
I've complained a number of times and now the level has been brought in to check but every now and then I hear them.
I want to listen to my music, too. Sometimes loudly. But how do I listen to my music my way without being hypocritical and by being respectful to my neighbor?
My Solution: Headphones. It was an apiphany to me. While I was in the US Navy onboard a submarine, whether at sea or in the barracks, we all had headphones and peaceful bliss listening to our music without someone threatening to float test your stereo equipment or CD player.
For those of you who live in a condo, like I do, for the sake of your neighbors and yourself, buy a set of headphones. It's a whole lot easier than explaining to the Condo Association why noise complaints are being issues against you - and in my association, the bylaws are written such that noise complaints can get your sorry butt tossed out into the street. Permenently!
{teen1 dons new Microsoft Personal Datalogger}
Teen1: W00T! Check my l33t PDL. It'll record all the uder stuff we do tonight.
Teen2 and 3: Whoa! Awesome, dude!
Teen1: Alright, everyone got their paint-ball guns?
Teen2: Hell, Yeah!
Teen3: Locked and loaded!
Teen1: Sweet! I'll drive.
Clippy PDL: It looks like you're about to raise hell in your neighborhood! Would you like me to:
-Phone Angry Man Smith and have him step outside so as you can get a better shot at him?
-Automatically search for unsecured wireless networks and e-mail them home for you?
-Record all your nights activities to be used against you in a court of law?
I've got a friend over from New Zealand. I'm American. We're both blond and blue eyed of average build. I thought it would be funny one day to introduce him to some people but instead of telling them he's from New Zealand I said he was from Australia.
The introduction went like this:
Carl(me): "Everyone, this is Jansen. He's from Australia."
Jansen: "Everyone, this is Carl. He's from Mexico."
(I still get a kick out of that story.)
MOD PARENT DOWN!! IMPERSONATION!
Look closely at his name! RAY_R_NOND? looks like raymond but spelled rayrnond. See it?
See the FAQ
You know, you're a real asshat. I wonder what the real ESR thinks of you masquerading as him. Hrm?
MOD PARENT DOWN!! Just based on impersonation - take a close look at this clowns name.
Oh yeah. I decided not to post anonymously.
Burn, karma, burn.
FYI, found this at the bottom of a 'Post Comment' page: "Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal."
Not true. I just tried this in Outlook 2003.
0 \O utlook\Options\Mail
Only difference is a slight change in the reg key.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.
Add ReadAsPlain as a DWORD. Set to 1.
Viola! No more html in Outlook 2003.
The change is the 11. For 2000 it is 10.
Anyone know what version # previous versions use?
Hrm, I didn't quite know how to react to the glowing spine thing. I figured it was just a visual clue to the audience that the woman was "not quite human."
;o)
If the cylon spine does indeed glow then yeah, he should have noticed. However, the master mechanic will learn, too, that his woman is a cylon. Now, either everyone in BG thinks missionary style is the only style or anything else is illegal. Either way, they're missing out on *a lot!*
Now the question we're all asking though, is, "Is the 'Spine-Glow' thing a bug or a feature?"
Oh, the proverbial status quo.
If you say that there are 5 presented so far then I say that there are 6. Why? No one has yet to mention it but if you look at the cylon space-fighters, IIRC, they had that 'eye' thing going on. That leads me to believe that the cylon star-fighters themselves are an individual robot.
:o)
Remember in the original series that they showed the cylons paired up piloting a cylon star-fighter. In the new version, I remember no such scene where two cylons piloted the craft from the inside. They did, however, pair two star-*fighters* whenever they were shown.
The underlying logic? Why waste three pieces of equipment (the ship, the left cylon and the right cylon) when the ship is itself capable of cylon technology and theory - which is a, well, another form of cylon.
See?
I don't care how low the price of an individual DVD (media) is. My time invested is worth 25 times that value. (My DVDs were $3/DVD.)
I don't care how inexpensive the drives becomes. I just spent all day *burning* a DVD using Sony's "Click to DVD." When the first DVD was burned, I popped it into my DVD player and the DVD worked flawlessly. I didn't like the way the layout was created so I redesigned it and created another DVD with 12 different 'chapters.'
This DVD didn't work one bit (no pun intended) in either the burning DVD writer or the standalone DVD player. Nadda. I opened the DVD up in Hex Editor and looked at the various sectors - 99% of them were NULLs. WTGDF!?
I basically spent the whole day creating these two DVDs to have the final product, which looked fantastic in layout, turn to complete *shit* after the burn.
Time line?:
1 hour designing(importing, etc.) - DVD #1
2 hours burning first DVD - DVD #1
1.5 hours redesigning DVD layout - DVD #2
3.5 hour burning period - DVD #2
All for naught.
Moral of the story?
Who gives a rats ass what the cost of the blank DVDs are when the software burning the DVDs doesn't work properly.
I never said that they have a worse POTS service that the US. I said it wasn't as well established (thus, lessor-established).
Congratulations on your county's adoption of GSM network support. The US doesn't see the need to buy into it, just yet. Does that make them, or us, I should say, archaic? Maybe to your eyes. But "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Adopting GSM technology still has a cost to incur and companies aren't ready or willing to swallow that cost.
The US has a large area to cover and it is already covered with millions on miles of conduit that work with an existing network system. Replacing that system, even over time, is a costly venture that will have an economic impact on a country that is already experiencing an economic recession.
In the future, should the US head toward the use of GSM or the next latest-and-greatest communications system, the older equipment, lines and all, will have to be removed. These companies will have to foot the bill to pay for that removal.
Perhaps the whole story is not fully understood by those in Norway.
The United States (via a Scottish immigrant) invented the telephone and quickly built upon that technology within the country to enhance it's infrastructure. "By 1878, Alexander Graham Bell had set up the first telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut. By 1884, long distance connections were made between Boston, Massachusetts and New York City." Source
{{Fast forward 130 odd years}}
It may seem feasible, for someone living in a country with a lessor-established technological-infrastructure that never had a system in place such as the existing telephone system in the US, that the US is behind but the US already had a *huge* system established for over 130 years. An entire industry was created because of it and when you have a beast (or a burden) of such a large scale as the US does one does not just throw it out in favor of some other kind of system - such as the cell phone.
In the US, and correct me if I'm wrong, only something like 20-30% of household use cellphones in their daily lives. Look at Indonesia; 95-98% of their populace uses cellphone technology. Does that make them a world leader? In cell phone usage yes. Why? Cell towers. No one needs to spend billions (if not trillions!) of dollars (or dinars, or Euroes) and lay millions of miles of cable to communicate. Erect a few cell phone towers and you've connected thousands of people. Erect a few more and you've connected an entire nation in a mere fraction of the time as it took for technology to advance enough for it to become feasible for these coutries. Even in Norway.
I'm a US citizen and I cut the cord 3 years ago. Cell phone and e-mail only for me.
You want to harp on the US. Go ahead. But while you're harping, look down your nose and see that you're standing on the shoulders of giants.
Don't forget to type in the confirmation code after voting or your vote wont be counted.
Regardless of what you, or the IRA, believes, bombs do not solve the world's problems.
However, an uprising saying, "We the governed have had enough!", may be inevitiable in order to win our country back. Call me overly dramatic; but, I fear for that day.
I used creatine for about six months with the recommended 'break' periods in between doses.
One side effect that I remember was increased agitation. Of course, the inferior boobs surrounding me at work could have caused that.
I do the same thing if I don't use my crosscut shredder. Now I'm thinking of running out and buying another crosscut shredder.
I think a good way to make this effective is to tear the documents along its length then shred each 1/2 of the document into different shredders.
Of course, as a previous poster already said, "Throw out sensitive shredded documents with kitty-litter."
I think that is Microsoft's point - to make it as painful as possible to switch.
Since, just about, every PC or laptop comes with the "Microsoft Tax" preinstalled they already know that the purchaser has to remove (or dual-boot) the system in order to get linux installed. Businesses make their decisions on how much money they will save when purchasing equipment. If dual-booting is appealing to them and they know it's going to take great effort to switch/setup the company may think twice about switching to linux and dual booting their shiney new laptops/PCs.
For the home user, say some kid gets a new laptop/pc and begins to experiment. If he's not of the Type-'A' personality, he might just give up on switching or be told by his unknowledgable parents that linux is evil (or just plain 'No' to installing Linux on the pc - thereby creating another MS-Droid(tm).
Make something painful to do and people will stop doing it. Granted, there are those of us who, if we want to do something with our computers we are going to do it, software/hardware protection or not.
End result, more people use Microsoft products and the few that switch are incredible people indeed.
Well, Fine! I'll go build my own simulator.
With Black-jack...and hookers.
In fact, forget the Black-jack!
Awe, screw the whole thing.
Dammit! ;) I almost said yellow feet, too! Of course, I had to think of Emperor Penguins, which have black feet.
Oh, well. Thanks for pointing it out.
OK, after reading all the comments and seeing the case for myself I've got to say that the commercials on TV about kids not getting enough art are true.
/. crowd just didn't get this one. On one hand we have very creative & clever IT people. On the other, they can't see the beauty in something that doesn't have two black webbed feet dressed in a tuxedo that doesn't compile the lastest kernel.
You know, the one where the little girl wants her father to read to her a history lesson, one where a girl reads CS books to relax and the one where the boy tells the acordian player to 'get a job.'
So this guys case mod can't be made by most of the slashdot crowd even if they did have the knowledge of how use the tools to create it. It's the creative ability of the artist that makes a medium art.
I'm not surprised, though, that the
Shesh! To quote 'The Matrix': "Free your mind."
mod away!
Actually, it was four.
But, I won't tell anyone else.
This same thing happened to me when I bought my mother a desktop and myself a laptop April 2002. They charged a penny to my best buy bill, too, for a 6-month trial experience - which as far as I remember, I did not give/sign for anything saying I'll pay for MSN after the time (6 months is over). When I asked why they said, "Inventory Tracking purposes." Just like the plantiff in the original story.
I, absentmindedly, said, "Oh. OK." and shrug it off. A month later, I say, "Hey what's this MSN experience like and throw in the disk." Know that I already had cable interent via COX.
Not being able to connect to MSN through cable, I called their customer support hot-line and spoke to a rep who informed me that MSN is not available through cable internet. Then, she suggests that I purchase a DSL line through MSN.
A) I haven't used a land line since Y2K.
B) Why would I want to have two sources of internet hooked up in my place? I wouldn't.
C) Too costly!
Land Line ($45/month)
Cable Internet ($39.99/month)
DSL Subsciber ($39.99/month)
MSN Account ($22.95/month)
OUCH!
So I tell her no thanks and hang up, feeling rather refreshed for having gotten off the phone with MSN - butterfly or no.
Well, five months later I get a charge on my charge card for MSN Service. WTF!?
I called and called and called. It took almost two weeks to get in contact with the correct person to remove the charges. When they did remove the charges, it took them two months to do so!
Math Class!
Let's see:
My bill
22.95 @ 12 %interest = x
Microsoft's bill (Hrm)
22.95 times (like) 8000 customers who don't know their being billed ($22.95) + the interest earned on those 8K peeps + MSNs delay time of two months = one helluva chunk of ka-ching via interest alone EVEN IF THOSE SAME PEEPS WERE SEEKING TO STOP MSNs "service."
To make matters worse, they did the same to my mother. If I hadn't mentioned it to her, she might still be paying that bill.
Curse Microsoft!
I've bought a number of items from Best Buy, not to push a store, and I've had very good results. Fantastic results even. Contrary to the topics thesis of everything being %100 correct or the company refuses to process the rebate, I've actually had Best Buy mail my rebate back to me denoting the error and pleasently, respectfully even, asking me to correct it in order to process the rebate.
It was a month after the rebate deadline for the second processing but they still honored my rebate and I received a $100 check in the mail 2-6 weeks later. I count myself lucky and I'll shop at Best Buy before going to others.
Of course, I also remember, when a child, that my mother sent out for an item on the back of a cerial box and it never arrived. Buyer beware, I guess.
It is not a question of *how* people use the software it is a question of how Intuit deceived their customers by covertly installing Macrovision C-Dilla.
"In all the test systems they set up, they didn't find any appreciable deterioration in performance for any of the computer systems they tested," Allanson said.
Excuse me? I'll make the determination of what 'appreciable deterioration' *is* on *my* PCs.
One thing that Intuit is learning the hard way is not to listen to so-called 'experts' like Allanson's think tank. It is what your customers think and believe that is important. I used to use Quicken (for the last 6 years) and TurboTax (for the last three tax seasons). After several recent annoyances with Quicken and TurboTax's covert use of the Macrovision C-Dilla (Safecast) license manager was more than enough to push me toward using Microsoft's Money software and to use Klipenger's TaxCut software.
Piss your customers off and you'll be looking for new markets no matter *how* incorrect the consumers perceptions of the product's deficiencies are.
Say you deface walmart.com or amazon.com. They track how much sales are done per hour, how many visits the site gets per actual perchase. If during the time that the website is defaced they can show a drop in those stats then were they not robbed of income? Do they not deserve to recoup said loss? If you spray painted the outside of walmart with the words "CLOSED - BUILDING UNSAFE" and they lost a days sales because of it would they not be deserve to recoup said loss?
Obsolutely, they have the right to claim the lost finances due to a hack.
Honestly I have no sympathy for hackers or any other type of white collar crime. Most all of them get far too light a sentence IMHO. So do many violent criminals as well. We spend so much of our time locking up drug users and dealers, while drunk drivers get off that we can't properly deal with REAL crimes.
What troubles me about your post is that you have an idea of what un*REAL* crimes are. Crimes are crimes, there is no dispute about that. The topic is to determine whether the *sentences* fit the crime.
Don't have sympathy for a murderer? Either do I. Hang 'em high, I say.
Crackers generally only cause a little bit of mayham or 'borrow' some information to support a 'rightous hack' and they get 20 years of prison time unless some kind of deal is reached?
If a cracker *or* hacker causes actual physical damages that lead to the harm of people or property then they should, along side with lost incomes or revenue, be subject to those laws that would bind them if they had actually perpetrated the crime in person.