But the sensitivity of new monitoring equipment is only going to increase. That's the entire reason we can afford to use such a weak signal to begin with. I don't know if there is a finite end to what will be observable but I won't hazard a guess as we've seen such proclamations proven false in the past.
Why cap the time that they will monitor it? Aside from military and industrial application most of the advancements in technology on this little blue marble over the last couple of thousand years have been for the purposes of observing and recording the data. History, in its many forms, has been the motivation of a lot of technology. We write down pretty much everything we see.
Take that into account with the increase of our ability to monitor more and more without actual human intervention and we can see where this is going. In another 100 years the entire efforts of SETI will be probably available to every child much like a cheap telescope or a chemistry set. Can you imagine where SETI will be at that point if it still exists? We will have machines that will monitor and dissect every single bit of data it can in the electromagnetic spectrum with no or next to no human interaction and all for less of the costs than what a single dish in the VLA costs per year in maintenance. We will be awash in all this data and without proper scientific reasoning we will never stop processing this information.
So by your standards Beatles fans should be eyed up as potential murderers because of what Chuck Manson and his little "family" did?
Regardless if it's a religion or a video game or a novel there is always going to be some people who are going to latch onto something and turn it into an excuse for being a rotten little asshole to the rest of us.
Your stats are waaaay off base. And don't get me wrong, but I think the truth is a bit muddled here. A more accurate representation of what is really being said is probably "99.8% of all EA customers never complain to the powers that be about DRM issues) and he's probably correct.
In any case, I doubt that Slashdot has 305,418 active users. I doubt that 50% of all people in the US buy video games. I highly doubt that 610,836 people have ever contacted EA let alone about DRM.
Just like this article probably will never get more than 600-700 posters. Maybe 400 of them will be unique posters. A handful of those will be trolls telling you to "just buy the damn game". Half of the rest probably have no interest in any particular EA title. Just with a rough eyeing up it appears that the average article gets about 300 posts. That would mean that only 1% of the entire Slashdot community is active on a weekly basis. There are a lot of people (including myself) who post multiple times a day. You would think if this place is getting 305K unique hits in a week and the majority of people here are against DRM we'd be seeing articles about it getting a few thousand rants. You rarely see an article go above 1500 responses. The highest ever is only ~5700. Not to say that it doesn't happen but those are some pretty shitty numbers for a site that would get 305K unique hits a week with a large core of users who post 10+ times a week. (sorry to get off topic a bit there)
The bigger problem here is the "My name is Steve Sixpack and I refuse to ever by a DRM anything" posts here on Slashdot simply don't count! These guys don't see this and even if they do they probably don't care about the handful of posts that these articles generate.
If you really are boycotting or otherwise bitching about these products you need to contact *the manufacturer*. Otherwise it's wasted time. For every person on here who ever has said "I'm not buying X altho I'd really like to own it but the DRM is an issue for me" and hasn't told that to the producer of the product you've done absolutely nothing to rectify the situation.
If that doesn't bother you, it doesn't bother me. I'm just saying that you've got to bend the right ear. You're simply not doing that here.
I like the athletes of my sports teams to be elite, I want my military to be elite, why don't we want our president to be elite?
Did you even see the original context of this? You've missed the point by a broad mile.
On is dealing with people educate in this country, the other is dealing with anyone who gets hired by some foriegn contract company.
No, they both deal with hiring people. The education part of it is secondary. If we send people back after they get their degree I'm sure we could hire them as H-1Bs.
The market only persues things in the immediate. RnD looks at the future.
I'm sorry but are you claiming that H-1Bs don't do any research in this country? To be frank, your post is a little hard to follow as the rest of it appears to be scattered thoughts and I can't tell where one ends and another begins. None of them have a reference point to the original conversation and I'd rather not make a bunch of assumptions.
they chant is Drill, Drill, Drill. Substitute heroin for oil and it makes a pretty picture.
Maybe if so many SUVs (many with Obama stickers on their fat ass bumper, may I add) weren't on the streets maybe the chant of "drill drill drill" wouldn't be so effective. The last I heard the government is there to serve the people and the people who spoken out on this matter pretty clearly.
In other words: The Republicans, in this case, are just feeding off the people's needs. Maybe if Joe Sixpack (who is going to vote for Obama) would wise up we wouldn't need to drill, drill, drill.
And I proclaim this as a proud non-Republican conservative who drives a car that typically gets 32 miles to the gallon. Thankyouverymuch.
Without wanting to seem elitist about all of this, McCain and Palin probably aren't smarter than 5th graders when it comes to science. McCain graduated 894th out of 899 in his class at the Naval Academy and Palin's undergraduate degree in journalism was earned at 5 different universities.
Sorry, did I miss something in Obama/Biden's education to show that they're any better off? It comes off elitist because it's a focused attack with no real backing of anything substantial from the opposition.
Personally, I think that we should also reverse the policy that now forces top foreign science and engineering students who come to the US for their Ph.D. and M.D. studies to return to their home countries. Making that change is at odds with the Republican platform stance of tightening the borders.
Hold on now, I thought it was the groupthink around here that it was the Republicans who were destroying the domestic science/tech job market by letting H-1Bs flood the market. So which is it?
Based on the record, it's pretty clear that Obama and the Democrats are bigger supporters of government funding of scientific research than are the Republicans, who believe in leaving it to the "market". That market-oriented view, of course, has a negative impact on such things as funding the development of drugs for rare diseases where it would be impossible for a private company to make a profit on their investment in the needed R&D and clinical trials.
This is true and there does need to be a balance here but I also must ask if you don't feel that government dickering in these areas is part of the big costs that make some pursuits unprofitable? It's a real rocky situation and I'm really not sure any one solution is going to make things better overall. My guess is that as this shifts back and forth that different areas will benefit while others will suffer. That's the ultimate nature of things.
While I commend Vint Cerf for his public endorsement of Obama (and strongly share his preference), the US is faced with a slew of critical geopolitical and economic issues. Whoever wins, scientific research isn't likely to be a top priority in the new Administration. All we can do is hope that it has strong supporters in the White House.
Again, while I agree that science isn't likely to be high on the to-do list but I can't help but think that more government intervention in research is also going to burn the private sector. This will ultimately hamper innovation and the swing in power is also going to involve a shift of people to new companies/roles in government agencies. That alone is a killer of forward momentum. But again, I don't think one answer will fit all needs either.
If pushing to reform the DMCA is all it will take to put a real dent in his current voter deficit than God help us all.
Seriously, in light of all the other issues we currently have going on it's not that big of a deal. Even if the problems we face today (the economy, energy crisis, so on and so forth) are really just a problem of perception it's still causing a real rift in society.
And given the high pro-DMCA vote, I doubt even if McCain or Obama ripped into the law with a zealot-like fury that it would get anywhere beyond a revision that would make political material exempt.
In some ways it's good to see a bit of backlash only because it will keep the legislatures eyes open to the potential for future technology to be marginalized by wide sweeping laws such as the DMCA but I don't know how much this single incident will have a long term effect on the minds of those on The Hill.
It's pretty simple, they can boycott the university if they don't like it.
Given the fact that this is part of some experiment that they're doing I'd like to think that they have a full plan laid down on what goals are to be reached to determine if this is useful or not.
I know that on the surface it looks like kids being given toys in an attempt to rope them in to attending the university but if they really are putting stuff out their on their intranet to make life more tolerable maybe it has a serious educational value after all.
Without having full access to their over all plan and some research into the ROI of this project it's hard to say if this is a good or bad thing. I do feel it's a bit knee-jerk to reject the program without understanding all of what's going on.
I'm sure many others felt exactly the same that you do when they first started to introduce PCs to the classrooms on a large scale. Give this program a chance before you condemn it wholesale.
Thanks for the story, that's the first I had ever heard it. It gave me a chuckle.
But I agree with Barret in this case. The police are strictly a peace keeping force. Why should they have more/better firepower than I do as a civilian who also has the right to self-preservation?
And the term "sniper rifle" is such a hard one to get people to get their heads around in the proper context of the art of a legitimate sniper. Any sniper who's worth the title is going to be effect with just about any functional rifle once they get to know the ins and outs of it. It's not the tool, it's the body behind it.
Maybe that would be a good idea for the banners to do sometime (taped, of course, for public consumption): Give them these evil weapons and see how well they can do with them and then give commonplace or third rate weapons to trained individuals and see how much more effective they are. It's always nice to have the best tools but it's nothing compared to having the best training.
But the 160 cost as much as my 80 did just a year before. That's a real downer to know that they did stop the 160. We'll see what's around the next time I go to buy one. Capacity is going to be key.
Actually, I think the gun issue is unimportant simply because neither side is going to have much room to work with it. Between the Heller Decision and the beating that the Democratic legislators took after the assault weapons ban there isn't going to be much traction for wide regulation.
Obama is likely to win at this point, he's going to have his hands full of other crap and if he plans on having a hope as a second term president he's going to keep his head low on the issue of 2nd Amendment rights until he gets re-elected. And even in that case he has to hope for a serious Democratic majority in the legislature or it's going to be a moot point. I don't really know if that will happen as it seems that neither party seems to be able to keep a solid hand on both the presidency and the legislature at the same time.
And even as pro-gun as McCain is I don't see him pushing any agenda he may have either. At this point gun control is fairly moderate compared to the days of Clinton (and even Bush Sr if you want to get into the technical elements of it all). Even if he does push in some direction it's likely to be considered too technical for the mainstream to ever get a hold of. It would make for good campaigning banter but the people on the street would likely never see the difference and it will be hard for the anti-gun culture to embrace as an issue between rampant misinformation and lack of knowledge.
I often vote based on the candidates outlook on the 2nd Amendment as a major point of interest and, while I'll be voting 3rd party this election, I don't really see a threat from the Obama camp unless he's looking to have an ineffective administration. McCain simply will not have the power needed to open up regulations further without being seen as an extremist.
Twinkling has been technologically defeated in serious astronomy. Parallax measurements would benefit but not on the levels that it's currently done on. Your accuracy of a parallax measurement when the observation points are only a quarter of a million miles apart is going to suffer compared to when they're 186 million miles apart.
If you have a cell phone that offers good quality audio, why bother with an extra gadget?
Battery life, capacity, video and podcasts. That's a few reasons I can think of. Granted, most podcasts can be put on a phone but Apple makes it easy if you're subscribed to their podcasts.
This is another example, certainly one of the iPod skus will be removed (probably those large HD based ones.) but small music players will always be a hot item. The iPhone & Touch are designed to cannibalize the high end iPod sales, and it has done so effectively.
"those large HD based ones" is the only reason I ever bought an iPod. I wanted a player with a large capacity so I bought a 80gig G5 unit. I will probably buy the 160 (or whatever is out there) in the next year or so. If Apple drops their large capacity iPods I will have no interest in their product.
Granted, I'm a single user but as more and more people build a serious music collection (and with piracy being what it is, who can't anymore?) are going to want their entire collection on a device. Hell, I still only have about 1/4 - 1/3 of my collection ripped at this point and between that and a couple of podcasts I'm already at the limits of what my iPod can do.
Also, I need physical buttons on my unit. I use mine for when I ride bike. I can't be taking the time to fuss with my unit when I want to change songs and volume, having that little disc interface that I can feel with my finger tips means that I don't have to take my eyes of the trail that I ride. That alone makes it worth my time to look elsewhere if Apple goes with only the touch units in higher capacities. I'm sure someone will make a third party gizmo for people like me but it still might be a deal breaker.
Will sarah palin get a similar fine for using Yahoo mail to conduct official business?
This is against the law? Can you cite me the law that makes this illegal?
Secondly, would the fine and prison term be that large if it was any old persons e-mail he hacked* into.
I don't think this law was written with Palin in mind. Seriously, step back a second and see what you're really asking here. You're acting like the maximum sentence was just dreamed up on the spot. The maximum penalty for a crime is determined before anyone is ever charged with the crime. Let's wait and see how he fairs in court before we go ranting on about how abusive of a sentence it is. The boy hasn't even had his day in court yet.
My guess is that the charges will be lessened or dropped because of how high profile the case is. She doesn't want this kind of publicity. This is the same reasoning that politician use not to charge each other with slander during election season.
*If you consider asking Yahoo for the password to be hacking
The mere fact that he attempted to access an account that wasn't his and he wasn't authorized to access is probably good enough to find him guilty. Let's not get on our high horses about what is and is not a crime by 31337 terms. If we really wanted to downgrade society to that level we could let all kinds of things slide that are normally kept in check by the law. It's the proverbial slippery slope that we hear so much around here when it suits the posters needs.
I don't know for sure but I'd like to think that it creates some kind of gray market that is only profitable for the manufacturers. Just one thought off the top of my head.
Slashdot Mirror
But the sensitivity of new monitoring equipment is only going to increase. That's the entire reason we can afford to use such a weak signal to begin with. I don't know if there is a finite end to what will be observable but I won't hazard a guess as we've seen such proclamations proven false in the past.
Why cap the time that they will monitor it? Aside from military and industrial application most of the advancements in technology on this little blue marble over the last couple of thousand years have been for the purposes of observing and recording the data. History, in its many forms, has been the motivation of a lot of technology. We write down pretty much everything we see.
Take that into account with the increase of our ability to monitor more and more without actual human intervention and we can see where this is going. In another 100 years the entire efforts of SETI will be probably available to every child much like a cheap telescope or a chemistry set. Can you imagine where SETI will be at that point if it still exists? We will have machines that will monitor and dissect every single bit of data it can in the electromagnetic spectrum with no or next to no human interaction and all for less of the costs than what a single dish in the VLA costs per year in maintenance. We will be awash in all this data and without proper scientific reasoning we will never stop processing this information.
Compared to a night elf? Please.
FTW, just call me Inkie.
Panzerfaust
53rd lvl Dark Elf Necromancer
Veeshan server
Errr... Sorry.
So by your standards Beatles fans should be eyed up as potential murderers because of what Chuck Manson and his little "family" did?
Regardless if it's a religion or a video game or a novel there is always going to be some people who are going to latch onto something and turn it into an excuse for being a rotten little asshole to the rest of us.
I think just about every major religion (and common sense) embraces these same ideals.
I first read this as "Cisco Demos Public Restrooms For Telepresence"
Not really very constructive.
Neither is bitching about it here.
Your stats are waaaay off base. And don't get me wrong, but I think the truth is a bit muddled here. A more accurate representation of what is really being said is probably "99.8% of all EA customers never complain to the powers that be about DRM issues) and he's probably correct.
In any case, I doubt that Slashdot has 305,418 active users. I doubt that 50% of all people in the US buy video games. I highly doubt that 610,836 people have ever contacted EA let alone about DRM.
Just like this article probably will never get more than 600-700 posters. Maybe 400 of them will be unique posters. A handful of those will be trolls telling you to "just buy the damn game". Half of the rest probably have no interest in any particular EA title. Just with a rough eyeing up it appears that the average article gets about 300 posts. That would mean that only 1% of the entire Slashdot community is active on a weekly basis. There are a lot of people (including myself) who post multiple times a day. You would think if this place is getting 305K unique hits in a week and the majority of people here are against DRM we'd be seeing articles about it getting a few thousand rants. You rarely see an article go above 1500 responses. The highest ever is only ~5700. Not to say that it doesn't happen but those are some pretty shitty numbers for a site that would get 305K unique hits a week with a large core of users who post 10+ times a week. (sorry to get off topic a bit there)
The bigger problem here is the "My name is Steve Sixpack and I refuse to ever by a DRM anything" posts here on Slashdot simply don't count! These guys don't see this and even if they do they probably don't care about the handful of posts that these articles generate.
If you really are boycotting or otherwise bitching about these products you need to contact *the manufacturer*. Otherwise it's wasted time. For every person on here who ever has said "I'm not buying X altho I'd really like to own it but the DRM is an issue for me" and hasn't told that to the producer of the product you've done absolutely nothing to rectify the situation.
If that doesn't bother you, it doesn't bother me. I'm just saying that you've got to bend the right ear. You're simply not doing that here.
I like the athletes of my sports teams to be elite, I want my military to be elite, why don't we want our president to be elite?
Did you even see the original context of this? You've missed the point by a broad mile.
On is dealing with people educate in this country, the other is dealing with anyone who gets hired by some foriegn contract company.
No, they both deal with hiring people. The education part of it is secondary. If we send people back after they get their degree I'm sure we could hire them as H-1Bs.
The market only persues things in the immediate. RnD looks at the future.
I'm sorry but are you claiming that H-1Bs don't do any research in this country? To be frank, your post is a little hard to follow as the rest of it appears to be scattered thoughts and I can't tell where one ends and another begins. None of them have a reference point to the original conversation and I'd rather not make a bunch of assumptions.
they chant is Drill, Drill, Drill. Substitute heroin for oil and it makes a pretty picture.
Maybe if so many SUVs (many with Obama stickers on their fat ass bumper, may I add) weren't on the streets maybe the chant of "drill drill drill" wouldn't be so effective. The last I heard the government is there to serve the people and the people who spoken out on this matter pretty clearly.
In other words: The Republicans, in this case, are just feeding off the people's needs. Maybe if Joe Sixpack (who is going to vote for Obama) would wise up we wouldn't need to drill, drill, drill.
And I proclaim this as a proud non-Republican conservative who drives a car that typically gets 32 miles to the gallon. Thankyouverymuch.
Without wanting to seem elitist about all of this, McCain and Palin probably aren't smarter than 5th graders when it comes to science. McCain graduated 894th out of 899 in his class at the Naval Academy and Palin's undergraduate degree in journalism was earned at 5 different universities.
Sorry, did I miss something in Obama/Biden's education to show that they're any better off? It comes off elitist because it's a focused attack with no real backing of anything substantial from the opposition.
Personally, I think that we should also reverse the policy that now forces top foreign science and engineering students who come to the US for their Ph.D. and M.D. studies to return to their home countries. Making that change is at odds with the Republican platform stance of tightening the borders.
Hold on now, I thought it was the groupthink around here that it was the Republicans who were destroying the domestic science/tech job market by letting H-1Bs flood the market. So which is it?
Based on the record, it's pretty clear that Obama and the Democrats are bigger supporters of government funding of scientific research than are the Republicans, who believe in leaving it to the "market". That market-oriented view, of course, has a negative impact on such things as funding the development of drugs for rare diseases where it would be impossible for a private company to make a profit on their investment in the needed R&D and clinical trials.
This is true and there does need to be a balance here but I also must ask if you don't feel that government dickering in these areas is part of the big costs that make some pursuits unprofitable? It's a real rocky situation and I'm really not sure any one solution is going to make things better overall. My guess is that as this shifts back and forth that different areas will benefit while others will suffer. That's the ultimate nature of things.
While I commend Vint Cerf for his public endorsement of Obama (and strongly share his preference), the US is faced with a slew of critical geopolitical and economic issues. Whoever wins, scientific research isn't likely to be a top priority in the new Administration. All we can do is hope that it has strong supporters in the White House.
Again, while I agree that science isn't likely to be high on the to-do list but I can't help but think that more government intervention in research is also going to burn the private sector. This will ultimately hamper innovation and the swing in power is also going to involve a shift of people to new companies/roles in government agencies. That alone is a killer of forward momentum. But again, I don't think one answer will fit all needs either.
If pushing to reform the DMCA is all it will take to put a real dent in his current voter deficit than God help us all.
Seriously, in light of all the other issues we currently have going on it's not that big of a deal. Even if the problems we face today (the economy, energy crisis, so on and so forth) are really just a problem of perception it's still causing a real rift in society.
And given the high pro-DMCA vote, I doubt even if McCain or Obama ripped into the law with a zealot-like fury that it would get anywhere beyond a revision that would make political material exempt.
In some ways it's good to see a bit of backlash only because it will keep the legislatures eyes open to the potential for future technology to be marginalized by wide sweeping laws such as the DMCA but I don't know how much this single incident will have a long term effect on the minds of those on The Hill.
If you take the time to do an "about" under WinXP you'll see it's version is "Microsoft Windows 5.1".
Win2K comes up as "5.0"
It's pretty simple, they can boycott the university if they don't like it.
Given the fact that this is part of some experiment that they're doing I'd like to think that they have a full plan laid down on what goals are to be reached to determine if this is useful or not.
I know that on the surface it looks like kids being given toys in an attempt to rope them in to attending the university but if they really are putting stuff out their on their intranet to make life more tolerable maybe it has a serious educational value after all.
Without having full access to their over all plan and some research into the ROI of this project it's hard to say if this is a good or bad thing. I do feel it's a bit knee-jerk to reject the program without understanding all of what's going on.
I'm sure many others felt exactly the same that you do when they first started to introduce PCs to the classrooms on a large scale. Give this program a chance before you condemn it wholesale.
So this is why I got an unstoppable urge to paint a Mr. Yuk on the hood of my car? Now the universe makes sense. Finally!
Thanks for the story, that's the first I had ever heard it. It gave me a chuckle.
But I agree with Barret in this case. The police are strictly a peace keeping force. Why should they have more/better firepower than I do as a civilian who also has the right to self-preservation?
And the term "sniper rifle" is such a hard one to get people to get their heads around in the proper context of the art of a legitimate sniper. Any sniper who's worth the title is going to be effect with just about any functional rifle once they get to know the ins and outs of it. It's not the tool, it's the body behind it.
Maybe that would be a good idea for the banners to do sometime (taped, of course, for public consumption): Give them these evil weapons and see how well they can do with them and then give commonplace or third rate weapons to trained individuals and see how much more effective they are. It's always nice to have the best tools but it's nothing compared to having the best training.
most people...aren't going to want your average citizen to be allowed a .50 cal
I don't know where you live but 50s are legal in the state of Pennsylvania.
But yeah, I feel that the gun control issue is going to be pretty calm for sometime to come.
But the 160 cost as much as my 80 did just a year before. That's a real downer to know that they did stop the 160. We'll see what's around the next time I go to buy one. Capacity is going to be key.
Actually, I think the gun issue is unimportant simply because neither side is going to have much room to work with it. Between the Heller Decision and the beating that the Democratic legislators took after the assault weapons ban there isn't going to be much traction for wide regulation.
Obama is likely to win at this point, he's going to have his hands full of other crap and if he plans on having a hope as a second term president he's going to keep his head low on the issue of 2nd Amendment rights until he gets re-elected. And even in that case he has to hope for a serious Democratic majority in the legislature or it's going to be a moot point. I don't really know if that will happen as it seems that neither party seems to be able to keep a solid hand on both the presidency and the legislature at the same time.
And even as pro-gun as McCain is I don't see him pushing any agenda he may have either. At this point gun control is fairly moderate compared to the days of Clinton (and even Bush Sr if you want to get into the technical elements of it all). Even if he does push in some direction it's likely to be considered too technical for the mainstream to ever get a hold of. It would make for good campaigning banter but the people on the street would likely never see the difference and it will be hard for the anti-gun culture to embrace as an issue between rampant misinformation and lack of knowledge.
I often vote based on the candidates outlook on the 2nd Amendment as a major point of interest and, while I'll be voting 3rd party this election, I don't really see a threat from the Obama camp unless he's looking to have an ineffective administration. McCain simply will not have the power needed to open up regulations further without being seen as an extremist.
Twinkling has been technologically defeated in serious astronomy. Parallax measurements would benefit but not on the levels that it's currently done on. Your accuracy of a parallax measurement when the observation points are only a quarter of a million miles apart is going to suffer compared to when they're 186 million miles apart.
If you have a cell phone that offers good quality audio, why bother with an extra gadget?
Battery life, capacity, video and podcasts. That's a few reasons I can think of. Granted, most podcasts can be put on a phone but Apple makes it easy if you're subscribed to their podcasts.
This is another example, certainly one of the iPod skus will be removed (probably those large HD based ones.) but small music players will always be a hot item. The iPhone & Touch are designed to cannibalize the high end iPod sales, and it has done so effectively.
"those large HD based ones" is the only reason I ever bought an iPod. I wanted a player with a large capacity so I bought a 80gig G5 unit. I will probably buy the 160 (or whatever is out there) in the next year or so. If Apple drops their large capacity iPods I will have no interest in their product.
Granted, I'm a single user but as more and more people build a serious music collection (and with piracy being what it is, who can't anymore?) are going to want their entire collection on a device. Hell, I still only have about 1/4 - 1/3 of my collection ripped at this point and between that and a couple of podcasts I'm already at the limits of what my iPod can do.
Also, I need physical buttons on my unit. I use mine for when I ride bike. I can't be taking the time to fuss with my unit when I want to change songs and volume, having that little disc interface that I can feel with my finger tips means that I don't have to take my eyes of the trail that I ride. That alone makes it worth my time to look elsewhere if Apple goes with only the touch units in higher capacities. I'm sure someone will make a third party gizmo for people like me but it still might be a deal breaker.
I see absolutely zero reference to using a public mail provider for state business as being against this act.
Will sarah palin get a similar fine for using Yahoo mail to conduct official business?
This is against the law? Can you cite me the law that makes this illegal?
Secondly, would the fine and prison term be that large if it was any old persons e-mail he hacked* into.
I don't think this law was written with Palin in mind. Seriously, step back a second and see what you're really asking here. You're acting like the maximum sentence was just dreamed up on the spot. The maximum penalty for a crime is determined before anyone is ever charged with the crime. Let's wait and see how he fairs in court before we go ranting on about how abusive of a sentence it is. The boy hasn't even had his day in court yet.
My guess is that the charges will be lessened or dropped because of how high profile the case is. She doesn't want this kind of publicity. This is the same reasoning that politician use not to charge each other with slander during election season.
*If you consider asking Yahoo for the password to be hacking
The mere fact that he attempted to access an account that wasn't his and he wasn't authorized to access is probably good enough to find him guilty. Let's not get on our high horses about what is and is not a crime by 31337 terms. If we really wanted to downgrade society to that level we could let all kinds of things slide that are normally kept in check by the law. It's the proverbial slippery slope that we hear so much around here when it suits the posters needs.
I don't know for sure but I'd like to think that it creates some kind of gray market that is only profitable for the manufacturers. Just one thought off the top of my head.