...Yahoo! has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service (or any portion thereof).[Emphasis mine]
Notice, "right". Not "obligation". The agreement language you quote permits Yahoo! to act at its own discretion, but doesn't set up a contractual requirement to do so at anyone elses's.
IANAL, but this bit of the TOS isn't helpful in the victim's case. I actually believe that Yahoo! is clearly in the wrong, but I'm kinda at a loss to figure out which legal principle would apply in support of common sense here. I guess that's why I'm not plaintiff's counsel (in addition to the fact that IANAL).
"Well, first of all become a doctor and discover a marvellous cure for something, and then, when the medical profession really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right so there'll never be any diseases ever again."
Oops, sorry, sorry, wrong episode. That's the preview of "How to play the flute, how to split an atom, how to construct a box girder bridge, how to irrigate the Sahara Desert and make vast new areas of land cultivatable, and how to rid the world of all known diseases."
Which, I guess, is in fact the specific current episode, not the next one. So it's not a preview. It's just a view. Or, in/. Python tradition, a dupe.
If you go on these experitmental drugs, they have horrible side effects that require more treatment to recover from which in-effect increases or impacts your insurance, as a group, does that not affect me?
Oh, I don't know, but I suspect your (hypothetical) mutual health insurance provider would find a way to disclaim the costs incidental to GP's decision to accept experimental treatment. Their reasoning would be much along the lines of yours: "You, Mr. Guinea Pig, accepted that risk. We, your insurer, did not. Have a lovely time paying for your own side-effect recovery." And you, policyholder in the same company, would probably agree, because you don't want GP's costs raising your premiums.
So it works out!
As to "greater social costs", the leading cause of death is life. I suspect I could credibly calculate the cumulative damage your existence has caused my finances, but that's just damned silly. If provable direct damage occurs, fine, prove it in court. But the "drain on society" is the whole reason society exists: we, its members, agreed (implicitly or explicitly) to support the "weak and infirm" in our population. Otherwise we would abandon our elderly, shoot the wounded, banish the sick, and make yummy mystery food out of our terminall ill and political dissidents.
Replace "Klingon" with "man", and "human-betazoid hybrid" with "woman" in the above statement, and you've got a stereotypical heterosexual relationship.
If, by "stereotypical", you mean "dead-on 100% absolutely accurate".
Re:Yep. Strictly typed languages help
on
Perl Medic
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· Score: 1
True. In practice, if I'm using strict, I use it without qualifiers. In this specific case, however, I was just pointing out the particular Perl answer to gp's "strong typing" issue.
"strict refs" sometimes bites me in old code that I've inherited and don't have time or permission to rewrite, though.
Re:Yep. Strictly typed languages help
on
Perl Medic
·
· Score: 1
Ask any VB developer about the 'Option explicit declaration' (I think thats the name? Its been years since I touched it)?
It forces the compiler to treat code without explicit declarations of types to be treated as errors. It also prevents undeclared variables from being used due to spelling errors.
How did I possibly manage to spell "accelerator" three different ways in the same post?
Talent?
On a slightly more serious note, not just any particle accelerator. A neutron accelerator. With a very simple input (heat), if this kicks out a high enough neutron flux density you could have a cheap-n-compact high-yield neutron source for all kinds of kind and nefarious purposes.
Damn. That explains why that last rasher I bought did such a craptacular job soldering up the power supply connections. They reversed signal ground and earth ground, for $diety's sake!
Hmmp. I guess that means you've gotta be cautious which smoked pork products you entrust with your electronics fabrication jobs.
I wonder if bacon will work out better for plumbing....
You probably wrote an angry e-mail to the IETF RFC-Editors about RFC 1149, didn't you?
Now I like a good laugh as much as the next person
In gaming, this is a "tell". Whenever someone uses this phrase, it actually indicates a near-total lack of enjoyment of a good laugh as much as any number of randomly-selected "next persons".
Just lettin' you know. Humor has its place, and that place is any damn place you can find it in this sad scary crazy world.
Short answer? Windows boxes seem to miss deleted files during runtime somewhat less than you might expect. So technical feasibility is not a show-stopper in this story.
Geez, Dude (or Dudette)... it didn't get modded a 2, it started out a 2 because GP poster has excellent karma...unlike you...
GP admitted to n00bness WRT DNS. No point taking a 'tude about it, 'cos that's just n00bsniping.
Putting IPs into a hosts file isn't always a bad idea. If your DNS server is unreliable, and you MUST MUST MUST get through, this would work. (So would adding more reliable DNS servers to your search order, of course.) The downside is that it will work poorly in the case of multi-home (DNS round-robin) sites, or dynamically-IP'd ones.
Besides, the actual article is about how DNS is often no better than putting static IP addresses into your static hosts file. You did RTFA, didn't you?
Oddly, I think we agree, except to the significance of what we're agreeing to. You cite training as if it were sufficient per se to prevent bad firearms handling. I believe that in many cases (probably not the majority, but a significant minority), safe hunter training fails to prevent stupid aiming choices.
My point is that there are both enough both people with guns and enough people with the capacity to strike back on the network for whom no amount of training or good intentions can prevent from doing the wrong thing.
My belief is essentially that any capability will be used by N members of a community (for values of N > 0) for stupid, careless, or simply mistaken reasons and innocents will get hurt. I'm not saying necessarily that that's a reason to take away all firearms or declaim blanket condemnation against aggressive network self-defense; I'm simply pointing out that we need to be ready for the costs.
I think, ultimately, that your point is the optimistic theoretical part of this argument, while mine is the pessimistic realistic part of it.
Oh, I don't know. Mere possession of a firearm doesn't give you IFF, x-ray low-light vision, or even basic good sight picture. If you want, you can blast away in the general direction of a perceived threat. In fact, aimed fire is pretty rare, even among law-enforcement professionals. And how many innocent cattle die each deer hunting season because "trained" hunters risk shots through cover at a barely-glimpsed "deer"? Hell, how many hunters are fired on under the same circumstances, in spite of mandatory high-visibility clothing?
No, guns and "active network defense" are very similar, for very much the same reasons: everyone downrange is in the threat space, innocents get hit as easily as the "intended target", it's easy to reaction-fire on an innocent (non-actual) "threat", and the bad guys already know to duck or hide behind innocent "shields". And it doesn't take too much imagination of two different parties of armed personnel attacking the same "bad guy" and inadvertently engaging each other. The military has a few names for it: "fratricide", "friendly fire", "Blue-on-blue".
No, the weapons analogy stretches pretty well in this case. "Active network defense" may be a wonderful idea or a terrible one, but it certainly has consequences comparable in kind (if not scope) to gunfights in the streets.
I don't know about you, but considering my typical negative productivity, playing $latest_game (or, for that matter, any member of %latest_games) is the most productive thing I can do for society.
Firefighting isn't a profit center. Neither is law enforcement, military defense, and a whole laundry list of socially beneficial services.
So, if all else fails, there's your alternate economic model. If it has to be about money. And no, I'm not particularly advocating socializing software production. I'm just saying that if getting paid is critical, there's your worst-case answer.
But even less cynically, the Red Hat "Use it free, but pay me for support" angle can work. You'll not get filthy rich, but who wants to be filty? If you have to have money, hook yourself up with the *AA and bully license money out of media consumers.
Slashdot Mirror
Notice, "right". Not "obligation". The agreement language you quote permits Yahoo! to act at its own discretion, but doesn't set up a contractual requirement to do so at anyone elses's.
IANAL, but this bit of the TOS isn't helpful in the victim's case. I actually believe that Yahoo! is clearly in the wrong, but I'm kinda at a loss to figure out which legal principle would apply in support of common sense here. I guess that's why I'm not plaintiff's counsel (in addition to the fact that IANAL).
"Well, first of all become a doctor and discover a marvellous cure for something, and then, when the medical profession really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right so there'll never be any diseases ever again."
Oops, sorry, sorry, wrong episode. That's the preview of "How to play the flute, how to split an atom, how to construct a box girder bridge, how to irrigate the Sahara Desert and make vast new areas of land cultivatable, and how to rid the world of all known diseases."
Which, I guess, is in fact the specific current episode, not the next one. So it's not a preview. It's just a view. Or, in /. Python tradition, a dupe.
Hell, I'm just falling about LMAO picturing what the miner's canaries must sound like...
In my case, it's in front of all four digits. I guess I should ask for a raise.
Oh, I don't know, but I suspect your (hypothetical) mutual health insurance provider would find a way to disclaim the costs incidental to GP's decision to accept experimental treatment. Their reasoning would be much along the lines of yours: "You, Mr. Guinea Pig, accepted that risk. We, your insurer, did not. Have a lovely time paying for your own side-effect recovery." And you, policyholder in the same company, would probably agree, because you don't want GP's costs raising your premiums.
So it works out!
As to "greater social costs", the leading cause of death is life. I suspect I could credibly calculate the cumulative damage your existence has caused my finances, but that's just damned silly. If provable direct damage occurs, fine, prove it in court. But the "drain on society" is the whole reason society exists: we, its members, agreed (implicitly or explicitly) to support the "weak and infirm" in our population. Otherwise we would abandon our elderly, shoot the wounded, banish the sick, and make yummy mystery food out of our terminall ill and political dissidents.
If, by "stereotypical", you mean "dead-on 100% absolutely accurate".
"strict refs" sometimes bites me in old code that I've inherited and don't have time or permission to rewrite, though.
It forces the compiler to treat code without explicit declarations of types to be treated as errors. It also prevents undeclared variables from being used due to spelling errors.
2. Patent it.
5. Profit!
Err... "3. Profit!", Sire.
Right, "3".
<angelic choir>ooooo ooooo</angelic choir>
BOOM!
Talent?
On a slightly more serious note, not just any particle accelerator. A neutron accelerator. With a very simple input (heat), if this kicks out a high enough neutron flux density you could have a cheap-n-compact high-yield neutron source for all kinds of kind and nefarious purposes.
True dat. The experiment uses a heat-activated crystal rather than a mechanically (pressure) activated one. Hence, pyro versus piezo.
So if anything, the submitter isn't wrong.
Well, maybe not completely correct either: "...a type of crystal used in cell phones to filter signals...."
I thought that signal filtering was a piezo crystal application. But IANAEE, so YMMV.
Ham?
Not bacon?
Damn. That explains why that last rasher I bought did such a craptacular job soldering up the power supply connections. They reversed signal ground and earth ground, for $diety's sake!
Hmmp. I guess that means you've gotta be cautious which smoked pork products you entrust with your electronics fabrication jobs.
I wonder if bacon will work out better for plumbing....
"Where's the Kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom!"
Now I like a good laugh as much as the next person
In gaming, this is a "tell". Whenever someone uses this phrase, it actually indicates a near-total lack of enjoyment of a good laugh as much as any number of randomly-selected "next persons".
Just lettin' you know. Humor has its place, and that place is any damn place you can find it in this sad scary crazy world.
If you prefer, check the original linked article.
Short answer? Windows boxes seem to miss deleted files during runtime somewhat less than you might expect. So technical feasibility is not a show-stopper in this story.
GP admitted to n00bness WRT DNS. No point taking a 'tude about it, 'cos that's just n00bsniping.
Putting IPs into a hosts file isn't always a bad idea. If your DNS server is unreliable, and you MUST MUST MUST get through, this would work. (So would adding more reliable DNS servers to your search order, of course.) The downside is that it will work poorly in the case of multi-home (DNS round-robin) sites, or dynamically-IP'd ones.
Besides, the actual article is about how DNS is often no better than putting static IP addresses into your static hosts file. You did RTFA, didn't you?
My point is that there are both enough both people with guns and enough people with the capacity to strike back on the network for whom no amount of training or good intentions can prevent from doing the wrong thing.
My belief is essentially that any capability will be used by N members of a community (for values of N > 0) for stupid, careless, or simply mistaken reasons and innocents will get hurt. I'm not saying necessarily that that's a reason to take away all firearms or declaim blanket condemnation against aggressive network self-defense; I'm simply pointing out that we need to be ready for the costs.
I think, ultimately, that your point is the optimistic theoretical part of this argument, while mine is the pessimistic realistic part of it.Oh, I don't know. Mere possession of a firearm doesn't give you IFF, x-ray low-light vision, or even basic good sight picture. If you want, you can blast away in the general direction of a perceived threat. In fact, aimed fire is pretty rare, even among law-enforcement professionals. And how many innocent cattle die each deer hunting season because "trained" hunters risk shots through cover at a barely-glimpsed "deer"? Hell, how many hunters are fired on under the same circumstances, in spite of mandatory high-visibility clothing?
No, guns and "active network defense" are very similar, for very much the same reasons: everyone downrange is in the threat space, innocents get hit as easily as the "intended target", it's easy to reaction-fire on an innocent (non-actual) "threat", and the bad guys already know to duck or hide behind innocent "shields". And it doesn't take too much imagination of two different parties of armed personnel attacking the same "bad guy" and inadvertently engaging each other. The military has a few names for it: "fratricide", "friendly fire", "Blue-on-blue".
No, the weapons analogy stretches pretty well in this case. "Active network defense" may be a wonderful idea or a terrible one, but it certainly has consequences comparable in kind (if not scope) to gunfights in the streets.
Silly premise if you ask me. Maybe for a good cause, maybe for cheap publicity, maybe for ego gratification, maybe all and more.
I'll remember that for future Slashdot Polls.
Ermmm.. how do you think reverse engineering works? There's buttloads of trial and metric shedloads of error.
Unless you're talking some bizarre "infinite number of monkeys" trial methodology.
Trust me on this.
Ah, Mandriva, the even more impoverished and backward neighbor of Molvania.
So, if all else fails, there's your alternate economic model. If it has to be about money. And no, I'm not particularly advocating socializing software production. I'm just saying that if getting paid is critical, there's your worst-case answer.
But even less cynically, the Red Hat "Use it free, but pay me for support" angle can work. You'll not get filthy rich, but who wants to be filty? If you have to have money, hook yourself up with the *AA and bully license money out of media consumers.