LOL: It sure made me laugh last time I was over in the US... State bird, state pie (quiz: Which state is Chicken and Mushroom?), state room, state of mind (Manic!)... kinda funny really?
Anyone know why? Are the different names for the states not a sufficient differentiator that other items are required? Do US Sat Navs perhaps use them to help find their position? - Was that an Albatross? OK, left at the lights?
I lose nothing when someone copies something I have made, whether it is a chair, a text or a piece of music.
There ya have, in a nutshell, the problem the "creators" have in the internet age. This chair (or text or piece of music) you have made, may I ask why you made it? Is it a hobby or is it how you earn a crust to feed yourself and your family? If you sell these chairs for a living and someone copies them and gives them away in the market downtown you are going to be less well off. No one stole any of your chairs, but they did steal your business!
I know many people who write (and perform) music as a hobby and they are (mostly) pretty happy if people copy it because it widens their audience and part of why anyone creates things is to share them with the world at large.
If, on the other hand, you have been successful in your hobby and it has become your work, ie remuneration from your creative talents is how you put bread on the table, then while you are still happy for people to enjoy your work you are also hoping people will be willing to pay a fair price to do so. If they don't, if nobody does then you have to give up the creative work and go back to whatever it was you did before.
It become the death of a thousand cuts. Oh it doesn't matter if I make a copy... but if no one pays (a fair price) for creative works, be they films, music, chairs, whatever, then people will stop making them, or at least stop making the good ones. So, do you want a world without chairs? Once they're all gone it will too late to stand up and be counted, 'cos everyone will already be standing and no one will notice you!
It's perfectly predictable that they will eventually, politely, do something within their power to stop the kid's antics.
So it's within their power to make up or miss-use laws is it?
I disagree. The Police should be bound by the same laws as the rest of us because they are "the rest of us"! The kid wasn't rude he was just knowledgeable and insistent and I can understand how that might attract the ire of the Plod, but it is no excuse.
Erm, yer, about that. I sure hope The Big O's kill switch will just turn off the US-of-A's tinternet (which, as we all know, is a series of tubes) as I'm quite happy to just use the remainder of it during the US's outage.
Also, does it makes sense to run some cables around/avoiding the US so the rest of us can continue more easily during those dark times?
In this case, though, you had a photographer that sounded like a total prat, ranting on about his rights and refusing to answer reasonable questions by a police officer (listen to the audio).
Isn't it odd how different people can hear different things. For example, I heard the kid asking why he was being detained (consistently throughout the audio) and the Police trying to find some valid reason... and failing!
The problem here was the intervention from the first police person (a cadet IIRC). Had the next (real!) copper who rocked up listened to the cadet's reason for intervention and then put him/her? straight and apologised to the kid photographer all would have been well, but he decided to back up the cadet instead! And why? Because Police always (ALWAYS ALWAYS!) stick together!
If we had suitable tech to move the power sufficient distances (wasn't there some Japanese scientist talking about a superconductor world power grid ten years ago or more?) then power storage becomes less important because the Sun does shine on somewhere on the Earth 24/7 (OK... sometimes the moon gets in the way!).
Also, if we ever get our act together sufficiently to build solar arrays in space (Lagrange) and beam it back to Earth it'd be useful to be able to move it around as losslessly as possible.
Where mighty Throxeus once rolled, now there is only the ochre moss of the dead sea bottom. Oh bugger my flyer's crashing AGAIN, I really am going to speak to the maintenance guys when I eventually fight my way back to Helium
Is it only me that read that in an oddly high pitched voice?
Others have pretty much covered the points I might make except to answer this particular one.
Once it becomes a problem is it too late, at least that is what a number of quite bright people suspect. The problem is that when it costs everything we have to feed everybody (or even everybody that counts!) there is no money left to run the space program unless you choose to let people starve to death to do it!
The one analogy no one has mentioned is the Titanic:
We have a few lifeboats, but nowhere near enough for everybody, indeed not even enough for everyone who counts.
Unlike the Titanic, however, we are now aware that we we are going to hit the iceberg and we are also aware that we don't have enough lifeboats... and you are suggesting we set sail and worry about it when we hit the iceberg!
FWIW, I regularly check my tires and when they are no longer serviceable I change 'em. This rock is no longer serviceable (if not now, then sufficiently soon that "now" is a reasonable estimate given the time required to resolve the situation) and we should seriously be thinking about setting up a permanent presence elsewhere.
My point is the rather severe problems we have should be attended to before we shoot the Moon.
The problem with that otherwise insightful meme is that there is a finite sum of money available for all projects and it is suggested that at some point in our future the Earth will be so densely populated that it will take ALL the money just to keep people alive and there will be no spare cash for space exploration. It will also be political suicide to pull the plug on "worthwhile" Earth-bound projects to fund space programs because people will die. At that point we are doomed as a species because we have to get off this rock.
That point may not have arrived yet, but at this point in time we DO have sufficient spare cash to decide to build a base on the moon, and from that experience perhaps Mars next, and we can do that without robbing the money from projects that keep people alive.
I agree with you 100%. It doesn't matter what medical conditions he has...
Hmmm. Well, if the medical condition has some bearing on the criminal activity then, by definition, it does matter. Aspergers, assuming he has it, does pre-dispose those affected/afflicted with certain traits that would include a blinkered aproach to any problem to the exclusion of all else - ie he (allegedly) believes in UFOs and the advanced tech they have provided and which he believes the US are withholding (eg free energy) and thinks that wonder-tech should be in the public domain, so he goes looking for it!
That's not hard for me to believe. The fact that he was then able to basically walk into the US Secure Networks unhindered by any apparent security just fed his belief. Hell, if you had (free and unfettered) access to systems like that there were would be a very great desire to have a look around (and if you wouldn't want to sneak a peak then what're you doing on/.!).
If the US can show evidence of sufficient wrongdoings to warrant extradition then perhaps we'll look again, but there can be no extradition without evidence. Simples!
If he was brave enough to even try to hack in to a Us government server,he should be brave enough to suffer to consequences too.
I kinda take your point, but I think that maybe where the (alleged?) Aspergers starts to become interesting and relevant.
As many of you/.ers out there can probably testify, having autism can make a person fixate on things, issues, subjects to the exclusion of everything else. If he really does have aspergers it could be the reason he fixated on UFOs, and the (conspiracy theory) idea that the US gov had been covering up the evidence, to make him step over the line (that he will simply not perceive at all!) and go hunting for evidence.
Now I'm not excusing his actions, and indeed he fully admits, in hindsight, that what he did was wrong, but if he has aspergers it would indeed have fuelled his search.
I would also like to point out that while "breaking and entering" is a crime, just "entering" is considerably less so! The fact that he was simply able to connect to unsecured hosts is quite simply laughable, and I suspect the root of the severity with which the US Gov have been chasing him - no one likes to be made a laughing stock and that is indeed what happened to the US Security Services in charge of ALL the hosts he managed to connect to.
I have some experience of secure systems and the first splash screen you should be presented with should tell you, in no uncertain terms, that proceeding further is verboten. If he just connected to some unsecured PCs I very much doubt he would have been presented with anything like that, further likening the experience to walking into a shop to have a look around.
He should be tried in the UK (although having admitted guilt I guess it's just the sentencing we're looking for) and banged up in the UK for as long as is deemed reasonable given the circumstances of his merry jaunt into the depths of the US's secured systems and whatever medical evidence can be provided to show his medical pre-disposition for such activities.
He is NOT a terrorist threat (indeed it could be argued that the US were lucky it was him and not someone else! - at the alleged $800000 it should be seen as a cheap lesson!) and the US's use of the bullying tactics against a UK subject should be slapped down by the UK Gov because it is simply not acceptable, however much we may have colluded in Gitmo, rendition, torture, etc in the past!
I would like to advise Gary not to be contemplating any holidays in the US though, or indeed any through flights that land there to refuel!
Oh yes, the "FORS" is something about having relatives (the "R" as I recall) also in the industry, actually it's an abbreviation of the original FORS Kin from the early 80's.
The fact is he hacked into government servers he had no business accessing. We can argue motives and harm done all we want but it doesn't change the fact a crime was committed.
... and as I understand it, he's admitted to it. What he doesn't deserve is some show trial and 70+ years in a US jail for it because he's apparently a threat to the US's security. Did I read somewhere that one of the passwords he managed to crack was... "password"? There ya go... now I've told the world what one of the US Security Services favourite passwords is so I guess I can look forward to an extraordinary rendition trip somewhere scenic for a water-boarding holiday!
You could ask the owner of the local gas station to switch to a new franchise.... Not pretty, but convincing enough of them to switch would be the real way to harm BP. Just boycotting BP stations is pretty much useless.
Not forgetting that oftentimes a filling station will get new supplies from whichever oil producer has oil closest - it's not unusual, for example, to see a BP tanker refilling a Texaco gas/petrol station (and vica versa), esp. if yer in the middle of nowhere.
I heard on NPR that some people looking to investigate beaches were turned away by policeman and when they asked the policemen who was paying them to do that the policeman said they were off duty police officers employed by BP. I don't know if that's true...
... but I'm going to spread the rumour anyway because it shows BP in a bad light and BP are the current people we love to hate.
A friend of mine said BP wanted to use mashed up baby dolphins to try and plug the leak, but I don't know if it's true...
Oddly, the situations is somewhat more complex than the army of armchair deep sea drilling experts suspect. LMAO @ "... lower a large cork..."! You'll be suggesting they just put a tray under the sump plug and drain it from there next!
Anyone who honestly thinks BP isn't doing E V E R Y T H I N G in its power to stem the flow is a fool. Apart from the pollution considerations, the bad PR, and of course not forgetting the clamour from the large cork manufactures now wanting a slice of the action, if they're now pulling 10000 barrels a day from that well and a barrel runs at around 70 bucks... well, I'd say you do the math(s) but someone might suggest I lower a cork on it so I'll do it for ya - $700000!
That they are also trying to stem the flow of bad publicity is totally understandable too, because people keep posting asshat ideas like "lower a large cork" and all the numbnuts dolts read that and nod saying, "yer... why dontcha just lower a large cork BP? Eh? Why dontcha?". And people cheering when buffoons suggest that the whole company should concentrate their efforts a mile down instead - does he expect every PA, secretary, programmer, lorry driver, pump attendant, etc, to all be controlling their own ROV at the site?
Now I'm not saying BP are squeaky clean in this - my guess is that BP suspect that capping the well is nigh on impossible without the relief wells easing the pressure though obviously they'll keep trying - but to think they don't want to stop the oil flow is frankly as ludicrous a concept as having every BP employee lowering their very own large cork!
As Fnkmaster (89084) wrote: (on Tuesday June 08, @01:49PM (#32499016))... the "punish BP" bloodlust... is crazy when so many Americans work in the industry as all you're doing is shooting yourselves in the foot! If BP doesn't do the deep drilling someone else will and maybe the next company to do it won't be hiring so many Americans and pumping so much money into the US economy?
...However look at it from a potential terrorists PoV: There's a 95% chance you'll fail, spend several decades in a maximum security hellhole, and be someone else's virgin, at least at the start.
If they act randomly, then there isn't actually a violation of civil liberties, as we already randomly select people for extra attention. But the presumption is that they won't act completely randomly, and therein lies the problem.
... and of course therein also is the dichotomy facing the security (theatre) services because they can be more effective if they step away from the random checks. If you are looking for muslim terrorists it makes no sense to stop the little old white lady. It is actually counter-productive to stop people who are obviously not fitting the description!
That's definitely a tricky moral issue. For my part I'd expect the non-violent majority to abhor the violence perpetrated in their name so much that they would be handing over the nut-jobs as soon as they raised their heads, but the silence is deafening!
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone know why? Are the different names for the states not a sufficient differentiator that other items are required? Do US Sat Navs perhaps use them to help find their position? - Was that an Albatross? OK, left at the lights?
I lose nothing when someone copies something I have made, whether it is a chair, a text or a piece of music.
There ya have, in a nutshell, the problem the "creators" have in the internet age. This chair (or text or piece of music) you have made, may I ask why you made it? Is it a hobby or is it how you earn a crust to feed yourself and your family? If you sell these chairs for a living and someone copies them and gives them away in the market downtown you are going to be less well off. No one stole any of your chairs, but they did steal your business!
I know many people who write (and perform) music as a hobby and they are (mostly) pretty happy if people copy it because it widens their audience and part of why anyone creates things is to share them with the world at large. ... but if no one pays (a fair price) for creative works, be they films, music, chairs, whatever, then people will stop making them, or at least stop making the good ones. So, do you want a world without chairs? Once they're all gone it will too late to stand up and be counted, 'cos everyone will already be standing and no one will notice you!
If, on the other hand, you have been successful in your hobby and it has become your work, ie remuneration from your creative talents is how you put bread on the table, then while you are still happy for people to enjoy your work you are also hoping people will be willing to pay a fair price to do so. If they don't, if nobody does then you have to give up the creative work and go back to whatever it was you did before.
It become the death of a thousand cuts. Oh it doesn't matter if I make a copy
So it's within their power to make up or miss-use laws is it?
I disagree. The Police should be bound by the same laws as the rest of us because they are "the rest of us"! The kid wasn't rude he was just knowledgeable and insistent and I can understand how that might attract the ire of the Plod, but it is no excuse.
Until Obama installs his kill switch.
Erm, yer, about that. I sure hope The Big O's kill switch will just turn off the US-of-A's tinternet (which, as we all know, is a series of tubes) as I'm quite happy to just use the remainder of it during the US's outage.
Also, does it makes sense to run some cables around/avoiding the US so the rest of us can continue more easily during those dark times?
Thanks.
In this case, though, you had a photographer that sounded like a total prat, ranting on about his rights and refusing to answer reasonable questions by a police officer (listen to the audio).
Isn't it odd how different people can hear different things. For example, I heard the kid asking why he was being detained (consistently throughout the audio) and the Police trying to find some valid reason ... and failing!
The problem here was the intervention from the first police person (a cadet IIRC). Had the next (real!) copper who rocked up listened to the cadet's reason for intervention and then put him/her? straight and apologised to the kid photographer all would have been well, but he decided to back up the cadet instead! And why? Because Police always (ALWAYS ALWAYS!) stick together!
Unfortunately the people who decide we need to go to war are seldom the ones who actually go!
Also, if we ever get our act together sufficiently to build solar arrays in space (Lagrange) and beam it back to Earth it'd be useful to be able to move it around as losslessly as possible.
Where mighty Throxeus once rolled, now there is only the ochre moss of the dead sea bottom. Oh bugger my flyer's crashing AGAIN, I really am going to speak to the maintenance guys when I eventually fight my way back to Helium
Is it only me that read that in an oddly high pitched voice?
When it becomes a real problem, we deal with it.
Others have pretty much covered the points I might make except to answer this particular one.
Once it becomes a problem is it too late, at least that is what a number of quite bright people suspect. The problem is that when it costs everything we have to feed everybody (or even everybody that counts!) there is no money left to run the space program unless you choose to let people starve to death to do it!
The one analogy no one has mentioned is the Titanic: ... and you are suggesting we set sail and worry about it when we hit the iceberg!
We have a few lifeboats, but nowhere near enough for everybody, indeed not even enough for everyone who counts.
Unlike the Titanic, however, we are now aware that we we are going to hit the iceberg and we are also aware that we don't have enough lifeboats
FWIW, I regularly check my tires and when they are no longer serviceable I change 'em. This rock is no longer serviceable (if not now, then sufficiently soon that "now" is a reasonable estimate given the time required to resolve the situation) and we should seriously be thinking about setting up a permanent presence elsewhere.
3. You are mistaken... wrong headed here... it's humanity that is doomed sooner or later, not Earth. Earth is a rock.
Er, yes. I guess that's true, though trying to build anything on 'Earth' once it is subsumed by the expanding Sun will also be an expensive project.
My point is the rather severe problems we have should be attended to before we shoot the Moon.
The problem with that otherwise insightful meme is that there is a finite sum of money available for all projects and it is suggested that at some point in our future the Earth will be so densely populated that it will take ALL the money just to keep people alive and there will be no spare cash for space exploration. It will also be political suicide to pull the plug on "worthwhile" Earth-bound projects to fund space programs because people will die. At that point we are doomed as a species because we have to get off this rock.
That point may not have arrived yet, but at this point in time we DO have sufficient spare cash to decide to build a base on the moon, and from that experience perhaps Mars next, and we can do that without robbing the money from projects that keep people alive.
It's now or never (for some values of "now").
It doesn't matter whether he was guessing passwords or ran a brute force attack or what not.
If it doesn't matter then I'd say you need to get some better security staff!
I agree with you 100%. It doesn't matter what medical conditions he has ...
Hmmm. Well, if the medical condition has some bearing on the criminal activity then, by definition, it does matter. Aspergers, assuming he has it, does pre-dispose those affected/afflicted with certain traits that would include a blinkered aproach to any problem to the exclusion of all else - ie he (allegedly) believes in UFOs and the advanced tech they have provided and which he believes the US are withholding (eg free energy) and thinks that wonder-tech should be in the public domain, so he goes looking for it!
That's not hard for me to believe. The fact that he was then able to basically walk into the US Secure Networks unhindered by any apparent security just fed his belief. Hell, if you had (free and unfettered) access to systems like that there were would be a very great desire to have a look around (and if you wouldn't want to sneak a peak then what're you doing on /.!).
If the US can show evidence of sufficient wrongdoings to warrant extradition then perhaps we'll look again, but there can be no extradition without evidence. Simples!
Like the US would have control over any aliens that stop by.
What's funny is that the US probably thinks it would - well how could they not with God on their side!
If he was brave enough to even try to hack in to a Us government server,he should be brave enough to suffer to consequences too.
I kinda take your point, but I think that maybe where the (alleged?) Aspergers starts to become interesting and relevant.
As many of you /.ers out there can probably testify, having autism can make a person fixate on things, issues, subjects to the exclusion of everything else. If he really does have aspergers it could be the reason he fixated on UFOs, and the (conspiracy theory) idea that the US gov had been covering up the evidence, to make him step over the line (that he will simply not perceive at all!) and go hunting for evidence.
Now I'm not excusing his actions, and indeed he fully admits, in hindsight, that what he did was wrong, but if he has aspergers it would indeed have fuelled his search.
I would also like to point out that while "breaking and entering" is a crime, just "entering" is considerably less so! The fact that he was simply able to connect to unsecured hosts is quite simply laughable, and I suspect the root of the severity with which the US Gov have been chasing him - no one likes to be made a laughing stock and that is indeed what happened to the US Security Services in charge of ALL the hosts he managed to connect to.
I have some experience of secure systems and the first splash screen you should be presented with should tell you, in no uncertain terms, that proceeding further is verboten. If he just connected to some unsecured PCs I very much doubt he would have been presented with anything like that, further likening the experience to walking into a shop to have a look around.
He should be tried in the UK (although having admitted guilt I guess it's just the sentencing we're looking for) and banged up in the UK for as long as is deemed reasonable given the circumstances of his merry jaunt into the depths of the US's secured systems and whatever medical evidence can be provided to show his medical pre-disposition for such activities.
He is NOT a terrorist threat (indeed it could be argued that the US were lucky it was him and not someone else! - at the alleged $800000 it should be seen as a cheap lesson!) and the US's use of the bullying tactics against a UK subject should be slapped down by the UK Gov because it is simply not acceptable, however much we may have colluded in Gitmo, rendition, torture, etc in the past!
I would like to advise Gary not to be contemplating any holidays in the US though, or indeed any through flights that land there to refuel!
Oh yes, the "FORS" is something about having relatives (the "R" as I recall) also in the industry, actually it's an abbreviation of the original FORS Kin from the early 80's.
The "CITP" is another one you pick up for free with the BCS membership now.
The fact is he hacked into government servers he had no business accessing. We can argue motives and harm done all we want but it doesn't change the fact a crime was committed.
You could ask the owner of the local gas station to switch to a new franchise. ... Not pretty, but convincing enough of them to switch would be the real way to harm BP. Just boycotting BP stations is pretty much useless.
Not forgetting that oftentimes a filling station will get new supplies from whichever oil producer has oil closest - it's not unusual, for example, to see a BP tanker refilling a Texaco gas/petrol station (and vica versa), esp. if yer in the middle of nowhere.
We as a nation have a pretty short attention span.
Er ... about what dude?
I heard on NPR that some people looking to investigate beaches were turned away by policeman and when they asked the policemen who was paying them to do that the policeman said they were off duty police officers employed by BP. I don't know if that's true ...
A friend of mine said BP wanted to use mashed up baby dolphins to try and plug the leak, but I don't know if it's true ...
Oddly, the situations is somewhat more complex than the army of armchair deep sea drilling experts suspect. LMAO @ "... lower a large cork ..."! You'll be suggesting they just put a tray under the sump plug and drain it from there next!
Anyone who honestly thinks BP isn't doing E V E R Y T H I N G in its power to stem the flow is a fool. Apart from the pollution considerations, the bad PR, and of course not forgetting the clamour from the large cork manufactures now wanting a slice of the action, if they're now pulling 10000 barrels a day from that well and a barrel runs at around 70 bucks ... well, I'd say you do the math(s) but someone might suggest I lower a cork on it so I'll do it for ya - $700000! ... why dontcha just lower a large cork BP? Eh? Why dontcha?". And people cheering when buffoons suggest that the whole company should concentrate their efforts a mile down instead - does he expect every PA, secretary, programmer, lorry driver, pump attendant, etc, to all be controlling their own ROV at the site?
That they are also trying to stem the flow of bad publicity is totally understandable too, because people keep posting asshat ideas like "lower a large cork" and all the numbnuts dolts read that and nod saying, "yer
Now I'm not saying BP are squeaky clean in this - my guess is that BP suspect that capping the well is nigh on impossible without the relief wells easing the pressure though obviously they'll keep trying - but to think they don't want to stop the oil flow is frankly as ludicrous a concept as having every BP employee lowering their very own large cork!
As Fnkmaster (89084) wrote: (on Tuesday June 08, @01:49PM (#32499016)) ... the "punish BP" bloodlust ... is crazy when so many Americans work in the industry as all you're doing is shooting yourselves in the foot! If BP doesn't do the deep drilling someone else will and maybe the next company to do it won't be hiring so many Americans and pumping so much money into the US economy?
Now where are my mod points ...
...However look at it from a potential terrorists PoV: There's a 95% chance you'll fail, spend several decades in a maximum security hellhole, and be someone else's virgin, at least at the start.
Fixed that for ya ...
If they act randomly, then there isn't actually a violation of civil liberties, as we already randomly select people for extra attention. But the presumption is that they won't act completely randomly, and therein lies the problem.
That's definitely a tricky moral issue. For my part I'd expect the non-violent majority to abhor the violence perpetrated in their name so much that they would be handing over the nut-jobs as soon as they raised their heads, but the silence is deafening!