Well, that's one mystery of my life solved. I spotted them in Underworld, and they drove me frigging nuts. Granted, I can't say they "ruined" the movie since it was so bad to start with, but I was most definately very distracted trying to figure out A)whether I was actually seeing them, and B)then what they were. And I griped about them later with friends, and speculated on what would drive the director to put subliminal spots all over his film.
If it had been a movie I actually *liked* I would be doubly irritated. I'll have to tell my friends who've spotted them, and griped about them as well.
I also wonder, why can't they do something with the cigarette burn? It's up on the corner, it's not remotely as distracting, and most people don't pay attention to it.
All I can say, though, is that this goes beyond sad. I find it simply stunning that they actually believe that this is a good idea. I mean, what next, the RIAA embedding random chunks of static on CDs? At the rate they're going, they're gonna cripple their products to the point that no one wants to buy them anyway... (Which would then also be blamed on piracy... (Sigh))
Ok, does some mod out there have a hardon for me or something? If I post something you disagree with, post a reply! And how can something possibly be "Flamebait" when it's buried 6 levels down in a discussion where it'll probably only be seen by those already participating?
After years of using computers almost exclusively for written communication, my manual writing skills have atrophied to the point of near uselessness. My handwriting - never my strong point - now makes a doctor's look like calligraphy, and my hand starts cramping up almost instantly.
Yes, and the mental techniques to which you refer are called "critical thinking skills". There are actually courses taught in this at most major educational institutions,
And that's the problem. By the time people hit college, they're already developed. If they went to a typical American school, 12 years of being encouraged to simply parrot whatever they're told and not think for themselves (except in specific well-defined areas of doubt and uncertainty;-> ) aren't going to change their behavior upon reaching University.
This would require a change in teaching techniques from the bottom up.
And yes, some days, I agree with your conspiracy theory. From the point of view of the entrenched powers, an unthinking citizenry is FAR better than a thinking one, whether you're running for reelection or trying to sell the latest New And Improved Super-Widget.
It's not moral feebility, it's a lack of education. People have been trained that "morals" come from the outside, that what is Right is whatever message is most barraging their mind. Look at the people who have actually managed to buy the RIAA's propaganda that Fair Use rights are a myth - it does completely contrary to all theories of property rights, economics, consumer power, and just plain common sense. But people have gotten programmed to believe it.
What we need is a way of training people to THINK. To make decisions for themselves on occasion rather than just accepting whatever message is most prevalant. That's the real root for our moral instability, and it starts at *birth*. "Moral Laws" have nothing to do with it whatsoever.
Teach children in such a way that they rely on their own judgement, and are encouraged to draw conclusions on their own, even if they're contrary to what's being taught, and you'll fundamentally have a more stable, morally-centered populace.
Attempt to treat the children like robots, don't let them think for themselves, don't even TEACH them except so they can bubble in the right answers on standardized tests, and you have a whole new generation of people with no sense of self, who'll just drift on the waves of public opinion for the rest of their lives.
There's a very simple solution. Route *all* money coming in through ASCAP rather than the RIAA. ASCAP divvies the money up among the artists (probably based on a statistical model of file distribution), and sends a chunk to the RIAA so they'll sit down and shut up.
Gotta disagree. We live in a world where Capitalism is burned into people's brains. Someone produces something of value, you *should* pay for it. If a band produces good music, traditional social programming tells us, they should be rewarded for it.
There is also a measure of self-interest in that. If I enjoy Band X's music, I am going to naturally want MORE of their music. If no money is reaching them, they won't be able to continue making music, and *I* lose out. One need only watch 'Amadeus' to understand that principle. (how much richer would our musical history be if the Emperor hadn't stiffed Mozart?)
The rampant piracy isn't caused by people being evil, immoral cheapskates - it's caused by consumer perceptions of value being greatly reduced. Most people know - on some level or another - that CD prices are wildly inflated. That the record labels use radio and advertising to trick people into buying CDs that aren't very good. That the RIAA does everything they can to NOT pass money onto the artists. Outside of those who've been completely deluded by RIAA propaganda into believing Fair Use rights don't exist, most people are at least vaguely aware of this.
People know music should be FAR cheaper. Most people (not your hardened l33t d00d w4r3zRz) feel at least a vauge twinge of conscience when they download music they really like without paying for it. (as opposed to 'trying out' bands in search of good stuff) And most would be willing to pay if A)the price was more in line with their current perception of its value, and B)they knew the money was going to support artists and not bloated mega-corps.
(I've been chatting with the guy who runs Magnatunes, he says the purchasing response to his site has been great.)
I got bored one day and worked out a model of how the RIAA could offer unlimited-download licenses for $20 per month (using the existing P2P services as the point of purchase), and still increase their profits greatly. It sounds completely counter-intuitive, that they could profit by allowing people unlimited downloads for the price of one CD, but it all worked out. I was estimating billions more in profits in the US alone. (and secondary benefits spread all around that benefitted *every*) And contrary to your overly slanted take on the situation, I firmly believe that if you told someone "For $20 a month, you can legally download all the music you want, paying the labels and artists," most people of sufficient means WOULD take up that offer.
Music doesn't want to be FREE. It just wants to be a lot CHEAPER.
Well, it goes deeper than that. Some days I seriously play around with (in my head, of course) the idea of making stockholders directly responsible for the actions of them company they invest in. No, I'm not kidding. Think about it.
If I were to give you $500 and say, "Go rob that house. I don't care what you do, just get me their goodies," and you turned around and killed the homeowners, I'd be an accessory to murder at least, if not up on First Degree charges myself. Whenever a stock investor buys stock in a company with a known track record for abusing the customers, the environment, third world labor, etc, that's EXACTLY what they're doing. "I'm going to give you money (my investment) and in return, you are to make me MORE money. I don't care how you do it."
Furthermore, due to the general inability of the court system to properly fine corporations, there is at present NO incentive whatsoever for a shareholder to NOT do this. For example:
Electric Company A is a good, responsible Corporation. They go above and beyond EPA requirements, only use clean-burning sources, and have a steadily-growing customer base among those who care about such things. They aren't making bushels of money, but their profits are steady and rising.
Electric Company B is Evil. They ignore EPA regulations whenever they can, pollute the water sources of small towns, and screw the customers on the prices. However, by not putting any environmental controls in place, they can take a tiny fraction of the money saved and funnel it into a massive ad campaign guaranteed to trick customers into believing they are a good company. Most people fall for it, their profits skyrocket.
To an investor, unless he is possessed of incredible conscience, there's no pressure at all to select A. Company B virtually guarantees him a higher return on his investiment, and anyway, will likely buy out Company A the moment they become a threat. Given he has nothing to lose BUT the initial investiment, there's no reason not to invest in B over A.
It's become a cyclical problem. Those companies which are the most abusive are often the ones with the best stock prices. Companies which attempt to play fair get buried. (look at Ben & Jerry Ice Cream - for years they were the definition of a Good Corporation. Then one day they got bought out thanks to a loophole in "shareholder protection laws" which says if a buyout offer is made which is significantly high enough, you CANNOT refuse. Now they're a corporate subsidiary and just like everyone else)
Somewhere the system has to be changed. It's getting increasingly unstable, as the Stock Market continues to further divorce itself from any sort of economic reality. I'm not making doomsday predictions that there'll be a huge crash next month or something, just the simple statistical fact that no system in this sort of shape can continue indefiniately. If things don't change, it WILL crash one day, and far more disasterously than in the 30s thanks to us being the economic Rome of the modern age.
No, you are pretty much on target. I'd mod you up if I had points.
The only problem with your argument is that most people DON'T realize they can just chuck the printer. Your average user just isn't that comfortable with hardware or messing with their system. They dutifully go out and buy the official cartridges, as directed in the manual, because they are afraid to do anything else.
It's just like all those people who insist on buying actual Aleve? Brand Pain Reliever instead of the generic Naproxen Sodium. You can sit there and explain to them for hours, it's the exact same thing, the FDA verifies it's an identical formula, there is no difference whatsoever besides the lack of sugar coating, and they'll STILL buy the brand stuff because the idea has been set up in their mind that something must have a Name Brand attached to it to be good. (I had this argument once. Some woman saw me loading up my basket with generic meds, thought she'd 'warn' me they weren't safe. Nothing I said managed to puncture the shell that the Brands had erected around her.) Exact same goes on with most computer parts - for every enlightened geek who knows they're identical, there are 5 lusers who have been convinced their computer will burst into flames if they don't use the EXACT RIGHT brand of ink.
When a vendor tries to force its customers to use products in a certain way (either directly, or indirectly by attacking a third party) then, in effect, that vendor is trying to maintain some level of ownership of that product.
Exactly. I can *only* imagine what Adam Smith would say if he found out about the legalistic games that manufacturers use today to screw over their customers. Of course, people like to hail him as the Objectivist Patron Saint - folks tend to forget that even he conceeded that government intervention is sometimes necessary to prevent monopolies from taking root.
As far as enlightened capitalists, there aren't any left in major US businesses. Why? Two words: Stock Prices. Companies today are concerned with nothing but keeping their stock prices high, and making their money off the stock market. As long as they can lie to investors and make their company appear stronger than it is, they can do whatever they want to the consumers and it doesn't really matter. It takes spectacular, over-the-top abuses to bring a company down. (ever stop to wonder what Enron could have done had they NOT gone down the path of full-blown evil, and had instead limited themselves to less obvious things?)
So I'm sure Lexmark will turn around and issue a bunch of glowing press releases and stock reports speaking of how they just won a major legal battle to protect their endangered intellectual property rights, and profits are expected to rise in Q1 (thanks to the further jacking up of cartridge prices), and people will flock to buy their stock.
Look at it from their point of view. (we'll assume for this post that it was not an intentional exploit, just a bug) If it WAS just a bug, and Garriok had just been spewing FUD to discredit them? I'd be more than a little pissed off. His little post led to, I'm sure, a lot of users deleting their software just on his say-so. (a lot of/.ers said as much) He didn't quietly alert them to the problem first, or issue a standard BugTraq style release - he lept straight from "hmm, here's an exploit that can delete local files." to "EVIL CONSPIRACY TO DESTROY YOUR COMPUTER!!!!"
If the ONLY negative response they made was diplomatically-phrased sarcasm, I'd say they held it together pretty well. I'd be fuming.
Not to mention, if you think that response was overly childish, you must never watch Congressional hearing coverage.
Even Microsoft doesn't have the resources to buy off entire world governments. (they spend too much keeping the US bought.) Why would presumably rational delegates and senators pay much heed to a single company advocating change in treaty\declaration language which obviously has no purpose EXCEPT to benefit that single company? Especially one whose lack of product security and general badness have become world reknown even in non-techie circles.
It sounds like this is just a rare case of a Senator these days recognizing that "let a corporation do whatever it wants" is NOT a good idea. The RIAA's campaign started off bad, and keeps getting worse. Anyone with a shred of sense can see that - piracy aside - their business model is quickly becoming unsustainable. Yet they don't seem to recognize this, at least not publically, and their insistance that it's 100% because of piracy suggests they are profoundly out of touch with the real world.
It also suggests that at this point, they've become so entrenched in this mindset that they probably WOULD happily start suing more and more people, the more their sales start to slide. Which, I personally think represents one of the most profound perversions of our economic principles imaginable. Did anyone else who bought something from Magnatunes in the last week stop to think, gee, I probably just sent another subpoena to some grandmother in NYC? That's virtually how bad the situation has gotten, and a logical conclusion that can be drawn from their quixotic belief that ALL their sales problems are from piracy. It boils down to, "Buy our stuff or we sue you."
Since the government can't act DIRECTLY to stop them (well, it could, but it won't) the best thing they could do is seek to limit the RIAA's power to weild lawsuits. If you eliminate the chance of them profitting from this (the fines would be less than the lawyers' fees), and make sure no one suddenly wakes up to discover a quarter-million lawsuit in their mailbox, then the RIAA might just be forced to face reality.
(WHY the RIAA is taking this stance is another issue altogether. I personally think it's a snowball, once they started trying to convince their shareholders that their problems were due to piracy, it took on a life of its own)
Exactly. My focus in history in this case are the steel and rail barons in the 1800s.:-)
Either they play nice, or their blatant power grabs cause them to fall.
I feel compelled to point out that there's nothing in the article SAYING the bios would prevent other OSes from being installed. Nor, from the description, there is no reason it would have to happen, unless it was deliberately implemented.
MicroSoft is undoubtedly up to no good with this, but we don't need to go Chicken Little without a little more evidence...
Which rather illustrates one of the big problems with our stock system at the moment. Most tech investors DON'T follow tech headlines, and some (I suspect) intentionally ignore them. So Company X (be it Verisign or Microsoft or SCO or whoever) does something massively illegal\immoral\just plain stupid, but issues some glowing release about how they've just implemented a move to double their revenue, or eliminate a threat to their company. The Investors buy it, and buy their stock, thus reinforcing their behavior. Thanks to the crawling state of our civil justice system, it's years before any actual reprocussions from the act come back, so in the meantime the investors (and the CEOs and other with loads of stock options) profit, and can get out of the game before the hammer falls.
No, I don't have a solution. Just pointing out that this is just a symptom of a larger problem.
Not to mention that if the person doesn't have a computer or have Internet access, unless they're Amish, there's a very high chance they don't have the time\money to fight it at all.
Is it possible the RIAA's rampage will become the incident that illustrates how broken some parts of our justice system have gotten?
(snicker) While I actually think a "Failsafe" option wouldn't be a bad idea at all, for some reason your post made me imagine Dr. Strangelove as interpreted by a group of l33t d00dz.
EXACTLY. Locking up non-violent offenders in federal prisons is NOT the answer. For every one who "reforms" (which usually means he was caught in a stupid stunt he wouldn't've repeated anyway), two more get turned into hardened criminals, or so hating of their government as to be certain to do something worse upon release.
The "Send a Message!" types never seem to think about the larger societal impact, only the idea of prison time equalling vengance.
"What do you get when you lock a whole bunch of criminals together? Concentrated criminality!"
I wonder if\when people will start pointing fingers at random innocent parties? I worked ISP tech support, every day I'd get at least one call from a luser who was CONVINCED they were being "hacked" just because their system was running low on v-mem or something. And half of them, no matter how strenuously I tried to explain the situation to them, would except no answer except "it's a hacker" as an explanation. (even my patented "you aren't being hacked because you aren't important enough" speech sometimes failed)
And I just wonder... what happens when one of those yahoos gets convinced they're hacked... and then looks out the window and sees a neighbor working on a laptop in his yard?
I'm not saying it WILL, but if the gubment keeps overreacting to computer crime as it is, just tacking on larger and larger penalties without addressing any of the OTHER contributory problems, it could easily turn into another witchhunt situation where the ignorant and unimformed are stringing up the few knowledgable out of fear...
And, of course, any of us who merely believe that locking people up in dark holes for longer periods of time is not the solution to crime, are merely hypocrits attempting to cover for our desire to live in a world without penalty?
Or that good computer help doesn't exist any more. Your 'witch' allusion isn't far off - hackers are quickly becoming the bogeymen of the new age. (I worked ISP tech support. Anything went wrong with a luser's computer, it was a "hacker". I don't know how many times I had to recite the "you're not being hacked because you aren't important enough" speech...)
How long, I wonder, before people start filing intentionally malicious hacking complaints because they get so hard to fight against.
Slashdot Mirror
If it had been a movie I actually *liked* I would be doubly irritated. I'll have to tell my friends who've spotted them, and griped about them as well.
I also wonder, why can't they do something with the cigarette burn? It's up on the corner, it's not remotely as distracting, and most people don't pay attention to it.
All I can say, though, is that this goes beyond sad. I find it simply stunning that they actually believe that this is a good idea. I mean, what next, the RIAA embedding random chunks of static on CDs? At the rate they're going, they're gonna cripple their products to the point that no one wants to buy them anyway... (Which would then also be blamed on piracy... (Sigh))
Jeez...
Sad, really.
And that's the problem. By the time people hit college, they're already developed. If they went to a typical American school, 12 years of being encouraged to simply parrot whatever they're told and not think for themselves (except in specific well-defined areas of doubt and uncertainty ;-> ) aren't going to change their behavior upon reaching University.
This would require a change in teaching techniques from the bottom up.
And yes, some days, I agree with your conspiracy theory. From the point of view of the entrenched powers, an unthinking citizenry is FAR better than a thinking one, whether you're running for reelection or trying to sell the latest New And Improved Super-Widget.
What we need is a way of training people to THINK. To make decisions for themselves on occasion rather than just accepting whatever message is most prevalant. That's the real root for our moral instability, and it starts at *birth*. "Moral Laws" have nothing to do with it whatsoever.
Teach children in such a way that they rely on their own judgement, and are encouraged to draw conclusions on their own, even if they're contrary to what's being taught, and you'll fundamentally have a more stable, morally-centered populace.
Attempt to treat the children like robots, don't let them think for themselves, don't even TEACH them except so they can bubble in the right answers on standardized tests, and you have a whole new generation of people with no sense of self, who'll just drift on the waves of public opinion for the rest of their lives.
Here's one that is: Magnatune.
There's a very simple solution. Route *all* money coming in through ASCAP rather than the RIAA. ASCAP divvies the money up among the artists (probably based on a statistical model of file distribution), and sends a chunk to the RIAA so they'll sit down and shut up.
There is also a measure of self-interest in that. If I enjoy Band X's music, I am going to naturally want MORE of their music. If no money is reaching them, they won't be able to continue making music, and *I* lose out. One need only watch 'Amadeus' to understand that principle. (how much richer would our musical history be if the Emperor hadn't stiffed Mozart?)
The rampant piracy isn't caused by people being evil, immoral cheapskates - it's caused by consumer perceptions of value being greatly reduced. Most people know - on some level or another - that CD prices are wildly inflated. That the record labels use radio and advertising to trick people into buying CDs that aren't very good. That the RIAA does everything they can to NOT pass money onto the artists. Outside of those who've been completely deluded by RIAA propaganda into believing Fair Use rights don't exist, most people are at least vaguely aware of this.
People know music should be FAR cheaper. Most people (not your hardened l33t d00d w4r3zRz) feel at least a vauge twinge of conscience when they download music they really like without paying for it. (as opposed to 'trying out' bands in search of good stuff) And most would be willing to pay if A)the price was more in line with their current perception of its value, and B)they knew the money was going to support artists and not bloated mega-corps.
(I've been chatting with the guy who runs Magnatunes, he says the purchasing response to his site has been great.)
I got bored one day and worked out a model of how the RIAA could offer unlimited-download licenses for $20 per month (using the existing P2P services as the point of purchase), and still increase their profits greatly. It sounds completely counter-intuitive, that they could profit by allowing people unlimited downloads for the price of one CD, but it all worked out. I was estimating billions more in profits in the US alone. (and secondary benefits spread all around that benefitted *every*) And contrary to your overly slanted take on the situation, I firmly believe that if you told someone "For $20 a month, you can legally download all the music you want, paying the labels and artists," most people of sufficient means WOULD take up that offer.
Music doesn't want to be FREE. It just wants to be a lot CHEAPER.
If I were to give you $500 and say, "Go rob that house. I don't care what you do, just get me their goodies," and you turned around and killed the homeowners, I'd be an accessory to murder at least, if not up on First Degree charges myself. Whenever a stock investor buys stock in a company with a known track record for abusing the customers, the environment, third world labor, etc, that's EXACTLY what they're doing. "I'm going to give you money (my investment) and in return, you are to make me MORE money. I don't care how you do it."
Furthermore, due to the general inability of the court system to properly fine corporations, there is at present NO incentive whatsoever for a shareholder to NOT do this. For example:
Electric Company A is a good, responsible Corporation. They go above and beyond EPA requirements, only use clean-burning sources, and have a steadily-growing customer base among those who care about such things. They aren't making bushels of money, but their profits are steady and rising.
Electric Company B is Evil. They ignore EPA regulations whenever they can, pollute the water sources of small towns, and screw the customers on the prices. However, by not putting any environmental controls in place, they can take a tiny fraction of the money saved and funnel it into a massive ad campaign guaranteed to trick customers into believing they are a good company. Most people fall for it, their profits skyrocket.
To an investor, unless he is possessed of incredible conscience, there's no pressure at all to select A. Company B virtually guarantees him a higher return on his investiment, and anyway, will likely buy out Company A the moment they become a threat. Given he has nothing to lose BUT the initial investiment, there's no reason not to invest in B over A.
It's become a cyclical problem. Those companies which are the most abusive are often the ones with the best stock prices. Companies which attempt to play fair get buried. (look at Ben & Jerry Ice Cream - for years they were the definition of a Good Corporation. Then one day they got bought out thanks to a loophole in "shareholder protection laws" which says if a buyout offer is made which is significantly high enough, you CANNOT refuse. Now they're a corporate subsidiary and just like everyone else)
Somewhere the system has to be changed. It's getting increasingly unstable, as the Stock Market continues to further divorce itself from any sort of economic reality. I'm not making doomsday predictions that there'll be a huge crash next month or something, just the simple statistical fact that no system in this sort of shape can continue indefiniately. If things don't change, it WILL crash one day, and far more disasterously than in the 30s thanks to us being the economic Rome of the modern age.
The only problem with your argument is that most people DON'T realize they can just chuck the printer. Your average user just isn't that comfortable with hardware or messing with their system. They dutifully go out and buy the official cartridges, as directed in the manual, because they are afraid to do anything else.
It's just like all those people who insist on buying actual Aleve? Brand Pain Reliever instead of the generic Naproxen Sodium. You can sit there and explain to them for hours, it's the exact same thing, the FDA verifies it's an identical formula, there is no difference whatsoever besides the lack of sugar coating, and they'll STILL buy the brand stuff because the idea has been set up in their mind that something must have a Name Brand attached to it to be good. (I had this argument once. Some woman saw me loading up my basket with generic meds, thought she'd 'warn' me they weren't safe. Nothing I said managed to puncture the shell that the Brands had erected around her.) Exact same goes on with most computer parts - for every enlightened geek who knows they're identical, there are 5 lusers who have been convinced their computer will burst into flames if they don't use the EXACT RIGHT brand of ink.
Totemism, alive and well in the 21st century...
Exactly. I can *only* imagine what Adam Smith would say if he found out about the legalistic games that manufacturers use today to screw over their customers. Of course, people like to hail him as the Objectivist Patron Saint - folks tend to forget that even he conceeded that government intervention is sometimes necessary to prevent monopolies from taking root.
As far as enlightened capitalists, there aren't any left in major US businesses. Why? Two words: Stock Prices. Companies today are concerned with nothing but keeping their stock prices high, and making their money off the stock market. As long as they can lie to investors and make their company appear stronger than it is, they can do whatever they want to the consumers and it doesn't really matter. It takes spectacular, over-the-top abuses to bring a company down. (ever stop to wonder what Enron could have done had they NOT gone down the path of full-blown evil, and had instead limited themselves to less obvious things?)
So I'm sure Lexmark will turn around and issue a bunch of glowing press releases and stock reports speaking of how they just won a major legal battle to protect their endangered intellectual property rights, and profits are expected to rise in Q1 (thanks to the further jacking up of cartridge prices), and people will flock to buy their stock.
If the ONLY negative response they made was diplomatically-phrased sarcasm, I'd say they held it together pretty well. I'd be fuming.
Not to mention, if you think that response was overly childish, you must never watch Congressional hearing coverage.
Geez...
There's gotta be something else going on...
It also suggests that at this point, they've become so entrenched in this mindset that they probably WOULD happily start suing more and more people, the more their sales start to slide. Which, I personally think represents one of the most profound perversions of our economic principles imaginable. Did anyone else who bought something from Magnatunes in the last week stop to think, gee, I probably just sent another subpoena to some grandmother in NYC? That's virtually how bad the situation has gotten, and a logical conclusion that can be drawn from their quixotic belief that ALL their sales problems are from piracy. It boils down to, "Buy our stuff or we sue you."
Since the government can't act DIRECTLY to stop them (well, it could, but it won't) the best thing they could do is seek to limit the RIAA's power to weild lawsuits. If you eliminate the chance of them profitting from this (the fines would be less than the lawyers' fees), and make sure no one suddenly wakes up to discover a quarter-million lawsuit in their mailbox, then the RIAA might just be forced to face reality.
(WHY the RIAA is taking this stance is another issue altogether. I personally think it's a snowball, once they started trying to convince their shareholders that their problems were due to piracy, it took on a life of its own)
Exactly. My focus in history in this case are the steel and rail barons in the 1800s. :-)
Either they play nice, or their blatant power grabs cause them to fall.
MicroSoft is undoubtedly up to no good with this, but we don't need to go Chicken Little without a little more evidence...
No, I don't have a solution. Just pointing out that this is just a symptom of a larger problem.
Is it possible the RIAA's rampage will become the incident that illustrates how broken some parts of our justice system have gotten?
Not questioning you, but do you have a source for those numbers? I'd love to start quoting it.
(snicker) While I actually think a "Failsafe" option wouldn't be a bad idea at all, for some reason your post made me imagine Dr. Strangelove as interpreted by a group of l33t d00dz.
EXACTLY. Locking up non-violent offenders in federal prisons is NOT the answer. For every one who "reforms" (which usually means he was caught in a stupid stunt he wouldn't've repeated anyway), two more get turned into hardened criminals, or so hating of their government as to be certain to do something worse upon release. The "Send a Message!" types never seem to think about the larger societal impact, only the idea of prison time equalling vengance. "What do you get when you lock a whole bunch of criminals together? Concentrated criminality!"
And I just wonder... what happens when one of those yahoos gets convinced they're hacked... and then looks out the window and sees a neighbor working on a laptop in his yard?
I'm not saying it WILL, but if the gubment keeps overreacting to computer crime as it is, just tacking on larger and larger penalties without addressing any of the OTHER contributory problems, it could easily turn into another witchhunt situation where the ignorant and unimformed are stringing up the few knowledgable out of fear...
And, of course, any of us who merely believe that locking people up in dark holes for longer periods of time is not the solution to crime, are merely hypocrits attempting to cover for our desire to live in a world without penalty?
How long, I wonder, before people start filing intentionally malicious hacking complaints because they get so hard to fight against.