In a nutshell, it places market freedom above human concerns.
No, that's Libertarianism you're talking about there. It's a policial party. Uncapitalized, libertarianism is the support of individual liberty. It has no more relationship to "Libertarianism" than Democrats do to democracy.
I.E. was not given away for free, any more than COMMAND.EXE was given away for free, or the control panel was given away for free. It's cost was rolled into the blanket cost of buying the OS,
No. When IE was released in 1997, people who had bought Windows95 earlier could download it. It was only later that it became one piece of an OS package, like those other things you mention.
There's a single point of origin on the Kazaa network -- the service itself.
I've never used Kazaa myself, but I don't think that's how it works. Unlike Napster, the people at Kazaa.com don't run any special servers. If everyone at the Kazaa company vanished tommorrow, the file sharing would continue to work as long as their users kept on running local copies of Kazaa.exe.
The network survives without any single point of origin. That's why Kazaa wasn't vulnerable to the same kind of lawsuit that destroyed Napster. (Note that Roxio's "Napster 2.0" has nothing to do with the original Napster that I just mentioned)
I use XFree86, and pass -nolistentcp on the commandline from/etc/Xservers. This is safer, because users cannot start using "xhost +" without understanding the implications. (A social engineer could easily telephone someone and convince them to try that, for example)
it's also not quite clear that making an exact duplicate copy, where it does not degrade the original, is "theft".
Many people use the word "thief" as a generic term for any criminal motivated by profit (especially nonviolent ones). For example, people will often discribe fictional character Tony Soprano as a thief, although theft rarely figures in his illegal activities.
It's clear that Bittorrent is being used to distribute both legal and illegal content.
BitTorrent is very different from Kazaa though.
BT provides P2P downloads only. Kazaa distributes not just downloading, but also searching. It's the searching part that makes it a threat.
If a person wants to use BT for copyright infringement, she'd still got to put up a webpage hosting the torrent file. She's just as legally vulnerable as if the entire file was on the webserver. There is a single point of blame, so traditional methods like C&D or DMCA enforcement can punish sharers. Legal and illegal users are completely separated from each other- if you only use BT to get RedHat ISOs, no data supporting copyright infringement will pass through your PC.
But Kazaa uses peers to support searching for files as well. If someone encodes a DVD and puts it on Kazaa, then search requests and responses for that file will go through ever system on the Kazaa network. Infringing and noninfringing users are all mixed together in one big mesh. This puts Kazaa at a greater risk of law enforcement action.
It is illegal according to the recent (3-4 years ago) mp3.com precedent.
That website offered a service they claimed allowed people to stream songs they already owned. Mp3.com quickly lost in court.
However, it's possible that although your use of Kazaa is illegal, you are not the guilty party. The blame might only apply to the one sending you the files. He's got no idea if you own the CD or not- and if he had to guess, he'd probably think "not". So he thinks he's doing something illegal, which is enough to be punished in typical jurisdictions. (Overall though, a determined lawyer could find a way to blame you)
Beware! Some of the most successful projects for pushing Linux to the desktop are already adopting some of Microsoft(tm)'s worst schemes!
Just look at the Lindows style of running everything as root!
(And, if Microsoft is wise, they could find ways to preserve application monoculture even if Linux displaces Windows on desktops. It's concievable that in a decade they might willingly retreat from the OS business and just write applications, which is where the big money is anyway)
I'm going to reproduce Speare's comment which was unfairly put at -1, because he's basically correct:
The router is the new favorite device for censorship. It's the last single-point-of-diversion before the network spreads out again, into the home or office department.
How long before libraries are forced to use scary, sealed products with cuddly names like RouterNanny or RightRoute or PopCop? Where librarians can't adjust or override those kill lists?
Speare's right because the only way "virus scanning in the router" can work is if the routers have the ability to read the contents of all packets. That means that encrypted connections will be forbidden: the router can't check if there's a virus inside, so to play things safe it must assume the worst and drop the packet.
Thus, government wiretappers, criminal eavesdroppers, and other nasty-types will have their livelihoods secured. Citizens won't be able to avoid surveillance by encrypting their own data, and Big Brother will watch over us all.
Its seems to me -- honestly -- that there is a prevasive thought in the Slashdot community that it's the product's fault, not the exploiter's. Could any clearify this for me?
To the extent that attitude exists (and it's not really as universal as you seem to think), it's because that's the only viewpoint that is productive. In the real world, who is "wrong" is less important than "who could have prevented it".
Blaming virus-authors won't help prevent viruses. Blaming someone for exploiting a vulnerability won't prevent exploits. But blaming the authors of vulnerable software will help.
Maybe it's not obvious why this is. There are many factors that work together, and I don't have time to go through them all. Most importantly is that we live on a planet full of separate nations sharing high-speed data links. A virus-creator can be hidden anyplace on the planet. With a single copy of the vulnerable software, he can release a worm that'll flash around the world in seconds.
Even if the US institutes a death-penalty for virus writers, it still just takes one guy facing that risk to create a disaster. The guy might be employed by an enemy government, and have zero risk of US arrest. (In fact, imagine what'd happen if the US managed to really crackdown on virus-authors. Over a few decades software would become more and more vulnerable, until a foreign-sponsored virus strikes and shuts down the entire country)
But if selling a vulnerable application was punishable, then Microsoft would try much much harder to prevent their code from shipping with exploits. If the penalty was severe enough, they'd even cut back on features to ensure that they don't skip a hole.
Am I saying the government should punish programmers who accidently leave a buffer overflow in software? No, I wouldn't advocate that (at least not yet).
What I'd like is for the free market to have a chance to dish out this punishment. Let's see if customers will shun dangerous products. But... the free market can't take action if there's government interference- and the government interferes in software security!
By arresting and punishing hackers and other exploiters of software holes, the government actually protects the authors of vulnerable programs from having to fix their own software. Imagine if writing a virus or hacking a computer only had a $50 fine the first time you were caught: then there'd be no way people would buy Microsoft's apps in their current vulnerable states.
The reason is NOT because Windows is more insecure, or easier to write viruses for, even if that is the case.
No, Windows(r) truely is less secure. Not for the reason many people think, though.
Windows is insecure because the OS developer is also the #1 applications developer. Most Windows exploits are from apps like IIS, Word, IE, and especially Outlook. But since Microsoft(tm) blends the applications into the OS, application exploits become equivalent to OS exploits.
First of all, businesses would NEVER impliment a system charging potential customers to send them mail.
"NEVER"? Sorry, it's already happened. More than 300 years ago. Have you sent "mail" to a business lately? It won't arrive without a "stamp", which costs money. Telephoning a business also costs money.
Of course, a company can decide to take care of these charges for their customers- by providing 800 numbers, postage-paid mailers, or other ways to cover the cost. Many do that today. If sender-pays email takes off in the future, companies could whitelist all their customers so they don't have to pay. And first-time customers could have the mail fee deducted from the first order (how validated parking works in US metropoli).
Or, the company could even decide to do a accept absolutely all emails for no charge, like a 1-800 phone number works today. Spammers have little incentive to send to a corporation anyhow; after all, we rarely hear of telemarkers preying on toll-free support line operators.
If we're going to do that, why not put some other means of verifying senders in place?
What's that supposed to mean? If money is being exchanged with email, it implies that a very strong way of identifying the sender has been implemented- strong enough to reach her bank account!
Maybe you're suggesting that strong sender-ID would enable whitelist/blacklist systems to work more reliably. But in reality, the "sender pays" concept has white/blacklisting at its core. It's expected that the majority of emails sent would be accepted via whitelist. The option for the sender to pay is a fallback for the occasional time a non-whitelisted person needs to send a you a message (such as when your grandma has just changed to a new ISP)
That's often mentioned as an argument against a competitor's legacy systems, it's more complex than that. Linux and OS/2 are substantially different.
Back when IBM attempted to push OS/2 to the buying public, it was a $100+ product, while DOS/Windows was "free" (it seemed free from the end-user perspective, in that it came with every computer and customers couldn't reduce PC cost by declining DOS)
Today, however, Linux is a $0 product, and some buyers now have the option of bare-bones systems where Windows(r) would look like a $299 add-on.
So OS/2 was more expensive than Windows. Using it to run Windows apps was wasteful. But Linux is less expensive than Windows, so if it turns out it can run Windows stuff adequately, people will turn to Linux as the cheaper choice.
(And then, when/if Linux gets major marketshare, more new commercial programs will tend to be aimed at Linux first)
That's the same argument that comes up around Wine, or other projects that allow non-native applications to run on a platform- backward compatibility might discourage creation of true native apps.
It's a valid concern. But for the position Linux is in today, it looks like a degree of Windows compatibility will help more than it hurts.
If two systems can share binary applications and drivers, then a barrier for users to switch between those systems has been reduced. Compatibility might encourage switching in either direction- but the rule of thumb is that lowered switching costs helps minority solutions increase their popularity.
Virtually everyone uses Windows(r)... if switching to other things were easier, then more people will switch, and the number of Linux installs will increase.
If you are in the market for one of these cards, buy from a company that supports your OS of choice...
One way a company might "support" linux is by including this wrapper module with the hardware, and pointing Linux customers to instructions on how to use it. This way, hardware vendors can take a gentle slope towards native Linux support: their initial investment in software programming is minimized, but they can get accustomed to the idea that some of their customers are buying for Linux, and that the platform deserves support in the future.
It's clear that if the sender of an email suffered a cost above just paying for the computer and bandwidth, the problem of spam would be mostly eliminated. A fee of even just $0.00005 would cancel out the profits from the typical spam business plan.
But, also clear is that a government mandated tax would be absolutely the wrong way to impose this cost.
If a citizen wants to setup his email client so that all messages from strangers are deleted unless accompanied by a $5.00 paypal donation, that's his business! "Pay for email" can be implemented without government help. If we ever get a functioning micropayment system so that transactions of less than $0.05 can be cheaply exchanged, then it's quite probable that big ISPs (starting with AOL) will let their users elect to block all non-whitelisted emails unless the sender paid a minor fee to compensate for time wasted reading.
If the question is: "Should email require a stamp-like payment?", the answer is maybe. But "Should the government tax email?", no.
If consumers decide that per-email fees are a fair price for eliminating spam, then private enterprise can provide it without state meddling. Pay-email poses technical and administrative challenges, so it might not ever really work- but sticking the IRS in there would just strengthen the obstacles.
That's 100% backwards. Japan doesn't try to reduce childbirth, and has no worries about overpopulation. It's got a birthrate of much less than 2 kids per family, and the government is terrified. (They're fearful that the future won't have enough citizens to tax- a problem the US might face in the 2ks as well).
That low rate is apparently the natural consequence of wealthy people in constricted space; nobody wants their kids to live on smaller lots than they do, so situations where children would outnumber parents are avoided. They'd hate to divide an inheritance 3+ ways. (And even if most families desire 2 kids, miscellaneous factors lead to them failing to achieve that goal, giving an overall rate of 1.85 kids or so)
The government has been working on many projects to encourage families to reproduce more. Some of these have approached the form of negative-taxes, where the taxes on "parasite singles" go to childcare for breeders.
If you are talking about GPS, that was from the space program, not geologists. The techniques used before were millenia old.
Incorrect. Mapping accuracy made several huge leaps in the 1400-1700 timeframe. It was only 2 centuries ago that precision mechanical clocks allowed decent calcuation of longitude.
I define basic research (as opposed to "basic research") as something that contributes both to the immediate applied research problems and accumulates fundamental knowledge of the nature in general.
So to summarize, you just made a dozen contrarian posts because you wish "basic research" meant something different than what it means.
Much of the knowledge we've gleaned from the fight against HIV is not related to eliminating retroviruses.
The medical struggle against HIV is still a very bad analogy. Doctors are learning permanent information that'll still be useful even after HIV is eradicated. Even though HIV research gives some insight into other fields, the medical profession has no incentive to preserve HIV.
The information the RIAA collects is of an ephemeral nature: once P2P goes away, they'll lose a daily measurement of which songs are hottest. The historical record is leftover, but it does them no good. The RIAA has a small incentive to allow P2P to continue.
most importantly, had you or the person you responded to been living in nazi germany, you would've probably done the same. Just see the Milgram experiments...
I knew a guy who was harassed in boot camp, where he was, and I was not.
That's actually a more ambiguous sentence than your original one. "where he was, and I was not" could be referring either to "being harassed" or "being in boot camp".
Slashdot Mirror
Before you could say "tatarigama,"
s/gama/gami
Tatarigama would be a "cursed toad".
In a nutshell, it places market freedom above human concerns.
No, that's Libertarianism you're talking about there. It's a policial party. Uncapitalized, libertarianism is the support of individual liberty. It has no more relationship to "Libertarianism" than Democrats do to democracy.
I.E. was not given away for free, any more than COMMAND.EXE was given away for free, or the control panel was given away for free. It's cost was rolled into the blanket cost of buying the OS,
No. When IE was released in 1997, people who had bought Windows95 earlier could download it. It was only later that it became one piece of an OS package, like those other things you mention.
(It still doesn't even approach "altruism")
There's a single point of origin on the Kazaa network -- the service itself.
I've never used Kazaa myself, but I don't think that's how it works. Unlike Napster, the people at Kazaa.com don't run any special servers. If everyone at the Kazaa company vanished tommorrow, the file sharing would continue to work as long as their users kept on running local copies of Kazaa.exe.
The network survives without any single point of origin. That's why Kazaa wasn't vulnerable to the same kind of lawsuit that destroyed Napster. (Note that Roxio's "Napster 2.0" has nothing to do with the original Napster that I just mentioned)
I use XFree86, and pass -nolistentcp on the commandline from /etc/Xservers. This is safer, because users cannot start using "xhost +" without understanding the implications. (A social engineer could easily telephone someone and convince them to try that, for example)
it's also not quite clear that making an exact duplicate copy, where it does not degrade the original, is "theft".
Many people use the word "thief" as a generic term for any criminal motivated by profit (especially nonviolent ones). For example, people will often discribe fictional character Tony Soprano as a thief, although theft rarely figures in his illegal activities.
It's clear that Bittorrent is being used to distribute both legal and illegal content.
BitTorrent is very different from Kazaa though.
BT provides P2P downloads only. Kazaa distributes not just downloading, but also searching. It's the searching part that makes it a threat.
If a person wants to use BT for copyright infringement, she'd still got to put up a webpage hosting the torrent file. She's just as legally vulnerable as if the entire file was on the webserver. There is a single point of blame, so traditional methods like C&D or DMCA enforcement can punish sharers. Legal and illegal users are completely separated from each other- if you only use BT to get RedHat ISOs, no data supporting copyright infringement will pass through your PC.
But Kazaa uses peers to support searching for files as well. If someone encodes a DVD and puts it on Kazaa, then search requests and responses for that file will go through ever system on the Kazaa network. Infringing and noninfringing users are all mixed together in one big mesh. This puts Kazaa at a greater risk of law enforcement action.
It is illegal according to the recent (3-4 years ago) mp3.com precedent.
That website offered a service they claimed allowed people to stream songs they already owned. Mp3.com quickly lost in court.
However, it's possible that although your use of Kazaa is illegal, you are not the guilty party. The blame might only apply to the one sending you the files. He's got no idea if you own the CD or not- and if he had to guess, he'd probably think "not". So he thinks he's doing something illegal, which is enough to be punished in typical jurisdictions. (Overall though, a determined lawyer could find a way to blame you)
Beware! Some of the most successful projects for pushing Linux to the desktop are already adopting some of Microsoft(tm)'s worst schemes!
Just look at the Lindows style of running everything as root!
(And, if Microsoft is wise, they could find ways to preserve application monoculture even if Linux displaces Windows on desktops. It's concievable that in a decade they might willingly retreat from the OS business and just write applications, which is where the big money is anyway)
How long before libraries are forced to use scary, sealed products with cuddly names like RouterNanny or RightRoute or PopCop? Where librarians can't adjust or override those kill lists?
Speare's right because the only way "virus scanning in the router" can work is if the routers have the ability to read the contents of all packets. That means that encrypted connections will be forbidden: the router can't check if there's a virus inside, so to play things safe it must assume the worst and drop the packet.
Thus, government wiretappers, criminal eavesdroppers, and other nasty-types will have their livelihoods secured. Citizens won't be able to avoid surveillance by encrypting their own data, and Big Brother will watch over us all.
Its seems to me -- honestly -- that there is a prevasive thought in the Slashdot community that it's the product's fault, not the exploiter's. Could any clearify this for me?
To the extent that attitude exists (and it's not really as universal as you seem to think), it's because that's the only viewpoint that is productive. In the real world, who is "wrong" is less important than "who could have prevented it".
Blaming virus-authors won't help prevent viruses. Blaming someone for exploiting a vulnerability won't prevent exploits. But blaming the authors of vulnerable software will help.
Maybe it's not obvious why this is. There are many factors that work together, and I don't have time to go through them all. Most importantly is that we live on a planet full of separate nations sharing high-speed data links. A virus-creator can be hidden anyplace on the planet. With a single copy of the vulnerable software, he can release a worm that'll flash around the world in seconds.
Even if the US institutes a death-penalty for virus writers, it still just takes one guy facing that risk to create a disaster. The guy might be employed by an enemy government, and have zero risk of US arrest. (In fact, imagine what'd happen if the US managed to really crackdown on virus-authors. Over a few decades software would become more and more vulnerable, until a foreign-sponsored virus strikes and shuts down the entire country)
But if selling a vulnerable application was punishable, then Microsoft would try much much harder to prevent their code from shipping with exploits. If the penalty was severe enough, they'd even cut back on features to ensure that they don't skip a hole.
Am I saying the government should punish programmers who accidently leave a buffer overflow in software? No, I wouldn't advocate that (at least not yet).
What I'd like is for the free market to have a chance to dish out this punishment. Let's see if customers will shun dangerous products. But... the free market can't take action if there's government interference- and the government interferes in software security!
By arresting and punishing hackers and other exploiters of software holes, the government actually protects the authors of vulnerable programs from having to fix their own software. Imagine if writing a virus or hacking a computer only had a $50 fine the first time you were caught: then there'd be no way people would buy Microsoft's apps in their current vulnerable states.
The reason is NOT because Windows is more insecure, or easier to write viruses for, even if that is the case.
No, Windows(r) truely is less secure. Not for the reason many people think, though.
Windows is insecure because the OS developer is also the #1 applications developer. Most Windows exploits are from apps like IIS, Word, IE, and especially Outlook. But since Microsoft(tm) blends the applications into the OS, application exploits become equivalent to OS exploits.
If Linux got even 30% marketshare on the desktop, Microsoft(tm) would release Outlook(r) for Linux, bringing along all the same vulnerabilities.
First of all, businesses would NEVER impliment a system charging potential customers to send them mail.
"NEVER"? Sorry, it's already happened. More than 300 years ago. Have you sent "mail" to a business lately? It won't arrive without a "stamp", which costs money. Telephoning a business also costs money.
Of course, a company can decide to take care of these charges for their customers- by providing 800 numbers, postage-paid mailers, or other ways to cover the cost. Many do that today. If sender-pays email takes off in the future, companies could whitelist all their customers so they don't have to pay. And first-time customers could have the mail fee deducted from the first order (how validated parking works in US metropoli).
Or, the company could even decide to do a accept absolutely all emails for no charge, like a 1-800 phone number works today. Spammers have little incentive to send to a corporation anyhow; after all, we rarely hear of telemarkers preying on toll-free support line operators.
If we're going to do that, why not put some other means of verifying senders in place?
What's that supposed to mean? If money is being exchanged with email, it implies that a very strong way of identifying the sender has been implemented- strong enough to reach her bank account!
Maybe you're suggesting that strong sender-ID would enable whitelist/blacklist systems to work more reliably. But in reality, the "sender pays" concept has white/blacklisting at its core. It's expected that the majority of emails sent would be accepted via whitelist. The option for the sender to pay is a fallback for the occasional time a non-whitelisted person needs to send a you a message (such as when your grandma has just changed to a new ISP)
That's often mentioned as an argument against a competitor's legacy systems, it's more complex than that. Linux and OS/2 are substantially different.
Back when IBM attempted to push OS/2 to the buying public, it was a $100+ product, while DOS/Windows was "free" (it seemed free from the end-user perspective, in that it came with every computer and customers couldn't reduce PC cost by declining DOS)
Today, however, Linux is a $0 product, and some buyers now have the option of bare-bones systems where Windows(r) would look like a $299 add-on.
So OS/2 was more expensive than Windows. Using it to run Windows apps was wasteful. But Linux is less expensive than Windows, so if it turns out it can run Windows stuff adequately, people will turn to Linux as the cheaper choice.
(And then, when/if Linux gets major marketshare, more new commercial programs will tend to be aimed at Linux first)
This is kind of a double edged sword.
That's the same argument that comes up around Wine, or other projects that allow non-native applications to run on a platform- backward compatibility might discourage creation of true native apps.
It's a valid concern. But for the position Linux is in today, it looks like a degree of Windows compatibility will help more than it hurts.
If two systems can share binary applications and drivers, then a barrier for users to switch between those systems has been reduced. Compatibility might encourage switching in either direction- but the rule of thumb is that lowered switching costs helps minority solutions increase their popularity.
Virtually everyone uses Windows(r)... if switching to other things were easier, then more people will switch, and the number of Linux installs will increase.
If you are in the market for one of these cards, buy from a company that supports your OS of choice...
One way a company might "support" linux is by including this wrapper module with the hardware, and pointing Linux customers to instructions on how to use it. This way, hardware vendors can take a gentle slope towards native Linux support: their initial investment in software programming is minimized, but they can get accustomed to the idea that some of their customers are buying for Linux, and that the platform deserves support in the future.
It's clear that if the sender of an email suffered a cost above just paying for the computer and bandwidth, the problem of spam would be mostly eliminated. A fee of even just $0.00005 would cancel out the profits from the typical spam business plan.
But, also clear is that a government mandated tax would be absolutely the wrong way to impose this cost.
If a citizen wants to setup his email client so that all messages from strangers are deleted unless accompanied by a $5.00 paypal donation, that's his business! "Pay for email" can be implemented without government help. If we ever get a functioning micropayment system so that transactions of less than $0.05 can be cheaply exchanged, then it's quite probable that big ISPs (starting with AOL) will let their users elect to block all non-whitelisted emails unless the sender paid a minor fee to compensate for time wasted reading.
If the question is: "Should email require a stamp-like payment?", the answer is maybe.
But "Should the government tax email?", no.
If consumers decide that per-email fees are a fair price for eliminating spam, then private enterprise can provide it without state meddling. Pay-email poses technical and administrative challenges, so it might not ever really work- but sticking the IRS in there would just strengthen the obstacles.
Actually, it does. In China and Japan, at least.
That's 100% backwards. Japan doesn't try to reduce childbirth, and has no worries about overpopulation. It's got a birthrate of much less than 2 kids per family, and the government is terrified. (They're fearful that the future won't have enough citizens to tax- a problem the US might face in the 2ks as well).
That low rate is apparently the natural consequence of wealthy people in constricted space; nobody wants their kids to live on smaller lots than they do, so situations where children would outnumber parents are avoided. They'd hate to divide an inheritance 3+ ways. (And even if most families desire 2 kids, miscellaneous factors lead to them failing to achieve that goal, giving an overall rate of 1.85 kids or so)
The government has been working on many projects to encourage families to reproduce more. Some of these have approached the form of negative-taxes, where the taxes on "parasite singles" go to childcare for breeders.
What advances have we obtained from geology?
Judging from how many hundreds of billions of dollars the US spends maintaining a grip on the fruits of those advances, they are highly valued.
If you are talking about GPS, that was from the space program, not geologists. The techniques used before were millenia old.
Incorrect. Mapping accuracy made several huge leaps in the 1400-1700 timeframe. It was only 2 centuries ago that precision mechanical clocks allowed decent calcuation of longitude.
I define basic research (as opposed to "basic research") as something that contributes both to the immediate applied research problems and accumulates fundamental knowledge of the nature in general.
So to summarize, you just made a dozen contrarian posts because you wish "basic research" meant something different than what it means.
Much of the knowledge we've gleaned from the fight against HIV is not related to eliminating retroviruses.
The medical struggle against HIV is still a very bad analogy. Doctors are learning permanent information that'll still be useful even after HIV is eradicated. Even though HIV research gives some insight into other fields, the medical profession has no incentive to preserve HIV.
The information the RIAA collects is of an ephemeral nature: once P2P goes away, they'll lose a daily measurement of which songs are hottest. The historical record is leftover, but it does them no good. The RIAA has a small incentive to allow P2P to continue.
most importantly, had you or the person you responded to been living in nazi germany, you would've probably done the same. Just see the Milgram experiments ...
Phil Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment is more directly applicable.
RTA.
If his contract states that whatever he works on at work is the property of Apple, then he is fucked and tough shit to him.
And then the California District Attorney can post an arrest warrant for Steve Jobs...
California's labor-laws are notoriously pro-employee. Contracts like that are illegal there. Enforcing an illegal contract is a crime.
I knew a guy who was harassed in boot camp, where he was, and I was not.
That's actually a more ambiguous sentence than your original one. "where he was, and I was not" could be referring either to "being harassed" or "being in boot camp".