If we're going to get into that topic it's worth noting that Microsoft only exists in its current form through governmental regulation.
It's actually pretty sad to note how many people believe that we do indeed operate in a free market and don't recognize that many of the large corporations only exist because government regulation helped funnel money into their market dominance.
But so much for longing for an ideal world. I guess that's how we know we're not in heaven.
No, it's not. To be pedantic we have entire libraries full of books which contain rules which regulate our supposedly "free market". Let us, however, zoom in on the point of Microsoft's monopoly.
This is not a world in which the consumer influence carries any real weight. The majority influence is the corporate influence. Corporations, by and large, do not switch to Linux for several reasons:
1) Top level execs favor MS because MS is a huge player in the stock market. 2) Security firms cannot use open source products because the guidelines and standards for a certified secure desktop system are written almost entirely with Windows as the template. 3) The Microsoft monopoly extends beyond its software. Training institutes are cranking out MS monkeys by the thousands while there are very few programs which focus on administration in a *NIX environment. In terms of a corporate viewpoint it's easier for HR to staff and support a Windows workplace than a Linux workplace.
I'm not saying that certifications actually mean knowledge or ability. However, reality is 99% perception and the HR goons are impressed by certifications and letters after a name.
Microsoft holds a monopoly in many ways far beyond the simple installation of the software. Until the world divests itself of this delusion in appearances and faces reality it will always be an uphill battle against the entrenched giant. To be perfectly honest, Microsoft and its empire generate PROFIT for people who don't need to know anything about the actual products. FSF, GNU, and F/OSS philosophies would actually make people like Alan Greenspan get a real job.
"Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"
Which they've failed horribly at in both "limited times" and "authors and inventors".
If corporate America wants to hamstring citizens such that they have a legal workaround (here's a dollar, we own it... or... here's your signing contract, take it and eat or leave it and go back to living under the bridge) for our exclusive rights to our creations then I have no guilt about sharing everything they sell.
If enough people bug their senators and representatives they'll be forced to take some kind of action lest they be concerned with losing a re-election bid
How does the opinion of a few thousand computer enthusiasts affect a re-election bid when the voting demographic is overwhelmingly influenced by what they see and hear on television? Let's have a look at our democracy. According to here and here voter turnout for Presidential elections can be as high as 70% but, in the midterm elections, can be as low as 35%. Of those polled who didn't cast a ballot, one in five said they were too busy. In a midterm election that's 12% of the theoretical votes--clearly enough to sway the decision. In our last presidential election, one in five of thirty percent is still 6%--an enormous number compared to the margin that Bush used to assume victory. It doesn't take a conspiracy theory to note that when the yearly tax burden is heavier the advantage will clearly be given to candidates who support platforms which will further benefit already wealthy voters. The wealthy classes win on both sides: first, they're closer to the government trough from which those tax dollars get disbursed and second, the elected candidates are going to hold their interests as more important than the interests of working class America.
This is part of why they can't bust someone for drug paraphernelia unless they have actual drugs on them,
I know several people who've been taken into custody. To be honest they were only given a ticket--$180 for a pack of papers, in one case, because he didn't have any tobacco to prove they weren't for marijuana. Does that count as "busted"? The public defender recommended a plea of "no contest" and the individual couldn't afford private legal counsel.
They didn't set up the scam, they didn't make the rules, they just made the plays, and made money on the spread
OMG! You don't say? You mean to tell me that everyone on Wall Street knows exactly how these ripoffs are played on the investing public (401k funding?) and they're ALL IN ON IT? You mean the execs (like Martha Stewart) really are nothing more than sacrificial lambs to hide the FACT that the.com boom-bust was just a money making scheme that all the traders knew about and just "made the plays"?
Okay, according to here the count is at least 282 executives who were involved in siphoning money off of Enron. According to here there were a total of three Enron execs who had given in to the guilty plea as of 24-Aug-04
And it's 292. So the FBI's batting 1% on the big players who've cost American investors multi-millions in fraud. Go get 'em boys! Score 1 for the People!
I'm most intrigued by this snippet: "RackSpace fought back". Just how prevalent are DDoS wars on the network both on offense and defense? If it happens all the time why is the FBI so proud about trumping up catching this one guy? Isn't that like patting yourself on the back for killing one of the three million cockroaches swarming through your kitchen? It's something I'd expect from Chief Wiggum.
Giving up a mega-million dollar high profile job is pretty bad punishment
<wry smile> I'm sure his amassed wealth will help to assuage the pain while he's on the golf course.
ALL the Sr. Enron execs who came up the the scams are convicted and doing time except Lay (so far). You really should check your facts.
Okay, according to here the count is at least 282 executives who were involved in siphoning money off of Enron. According to here there were a total of three Enron execs who had given in to the guilty plea as of 24-Aug-04.
Those rich people are really taking a pummelling. Whew. I bet it's getting hot out there on the golf course.
I assumed that the whistleblower protection would fall under wrongfull termination
Typically it does. It's not your bad. I was referring to wrongful termination in general.
Consider the following situation:
Your goals are A, B, C, and D. Throughout the course of the year your manager directs you to devote your attention to E, F, G, and H. At the end of the year you're held responsible for A, B, C, and D and not given any credit for E, F, G or H.
Refusing to pursue E, F, G and H is insubordination which leads to termination. Not meeting goals two years in a row is subject for corrective action and often leads to termination. It's obviously a regimen of harassment but, unless you fit into a legally protected group, there's no legal argument because there's no legal reason why you were singled out and discriminated against.
I was also raised with a good work ethic, a respect for self-sufficiency and self-responsibility
I was also raised with a good work ethic which is why I would never participate in unethical activity, even if I were destitute. I never said that the employees had a good work ethic. I sympathize with the employees because I am familiar with betrayal, not because I condone their actions.
there *is no excuse* for 'owning' several thousand zombies from which to direct DDoS attacks for any reason
There's no excuse for lots of things in this world. That's how we know we're not in heaven. There's the old saying,"If life gives you lemons, make lemonade." These employees were trying to make lemonade. Whether or not they could have made better decisions growing up is irrelevent. They were making the best use of the lemons which life had given them at the time.
you *did* read the fine article
There you go being insulting again. I read the article and it only referenced one of the packeters as receiving $1k and a shell account for his services. I imagine the others were formally employer.
I also feel qualified to reject your idea of an unofficial caste system
Yet you recognize the existence of people who are at a disadvantage and you agree that they cannot afford the same calibre of legal counsel afforded by the wealthier classes. Isn't the meaning of a caste system the separation of priveleges based upon an arbitrary value like monetary wealth?
caste: 2 a : a division of society based on differences of wealth, inherited rank or privilege, profession, or occupation b : the position conferred by caste standing. 3 : a system of rigid social stratification characterized by hereditary status, endogamy, and social barriers sanctioned by custom, law, or religion.
A person with sufficient wealth to afford legal counsel could avoid the conviction. A felony conviction is a particularly large social barrier. Many employers will ask if you've even been charged with a crime regardless of the outcome.
As per the legal system, how do you propose that poor defendants be better represented?
I pay 60% of my yearly income to various taxes and fees imposed by the various levels of government to solve this problem. I'm only pointing out that it is a problem. I'd also like to point out that, for all the money which the upper castes of American society receive, their not doing much about it. Rather it plays in their favor to allow it to propagate.
And your apparently uninformed and emotionally based opinions were more professional?
I was referring to the language and attitude that you were using.
The thing to do is find any old job, flipping burgers if necessary, that will pay the rent and discuss the situation with the landlord
You're contradicting yourself. Flipping burgers most definitely will not pay the rent, the lights, the water, and the fuel/bus money to get to work. There's also the consideration of the job market. When unemployment is up, as it has been since '99, minimum wage jobs are less likely to take employees with any marketable skill because those are the first people to leave. When unemployment is up minimum wage businesses have a large selection of people who will feel lucky to have any job and will not be likely to leave.
Besides, I still see not one speck of evidence from the article that these guys were in any way disadvantaged
True. The article made no reference at all about the financial situation of the employees.
Seemed like a legitimate question to me. Perhaps I missed something in the article
You didn't miss anything in the article. Rather you chose to assume that the employees weren't on a financial shoestring. I forwarded the possibility that they might have been and you made use of a derogatory remark to imply that it was impossible.
I don't know you and I don't need your love
Everyone could use a little more love, especially when their crotchety butt is aging in a nursing home.
you are up for a rather large settlement in a whistle-blower
Yes.
wrongfull termination lawsuit
Probably not. Successful prosecution of wrongful termination requires a motive. Most commonly the motive is discrimination based upon gender, race, disability, or sexual orientation. Unless you fit into a legally protected group your chances of winning a wrongful termination are proportional to the amount of money that you have on-hand for legal counsel starting with $10k giving you roughly a 50/50 chance.
Ideally bail is to give the accused time to prepare their defense. It's hard to talk with your alibi witnesses if they don't know you're in jail.
In reality bail is another method of enforcing an unofficial social caste system. Poor people can't get out to find decent legal counsel. They're stuck with the run-of-the-mill public defender who always advocates a "guilty" or "no contest" plea. The cycle repeats itself indefinitely.
In science it's called chromatography. If you have a jar of mixed large and small pellets you can separate the pellets simply by vibrating the jar for a long enough period of time. In society every accusation leveled against you is the equivalent of one vibration. If you're priveleged or wealthy you shake up. If you're poor or well-framed you shake down.
So if I only steal one car as opposed to stealing ten cars I don't deserve to be locked up?
I don't like this metaphor but let's run with it. People are stealing cars all the time and, for the greatest part, the wealthier people are stealing more cars. This metaphor exposes the selective enforcement and abuse that's already occurring.
I shouldn't be "rounded up"?
If we round up one person then we should round them all up. If we can't round them all up but instead get those who we can then it's very easy to see that the chances of conviction will be directly related to the social order of the person who's rounded up.
I think your sympathy is misdirected here
If the five packet monkeys were sons of senators who were doing this from their posh apartments then my sympathy would be misdirected. However, if the five packet monkeys were from the upper echelons of society then they too would have fled to Morocco--or the media would have been strictly instructed to keep a lid on things or face an FCC audit.
Legalized indentured servitude. There's nothing ethical about supporting a system of what is, for all practical purposes, opportunistic slavery. They take 30% and treat you in a fashion that my parents would have beaten me half to death for. The only reason why it's not technically "slavery" is because they pay with legalized bank notes.
Go to a fast food place. Go to a 24 hour gas station.
Nobody with a technical skill set gets hired at these places unless you have a connection or you're lucky to interview when the hiring manager is having a bad day. Gas stations and fast food do not want to hire employees who could very well leave in a week for a better job. Additionally, from 1999-present, unemployment is so high that minimum wage jobs have their pick of employees who are dying just to have any income. There's no business sense in hiring people with skills that are marketable outside the realm of minimum wage.
But let's be real. These guys didn't want to work hard for money. They wanted it easy
Who doesn't? Politicians, CEOs, VPs, and executives don't make big bucks with posh benefits and retirement packages because they wanted to work hard.
and didn't think they should be subjected to minimum wage jobs
Most minimum wage jobs probably wouldn't have hired them. It's business. Why hire a guy who could leave next week when there are a dozen single mothers who will stay for a year or more?
I'm not defending their lack of ethics. But, again, let's be real: the upper echelon of our society is rank with a lack of ethics. I'm simply saying that I have sympathy for people who were following the example set by "successful" people and ended up taking the shaft.
after a lengthy appeals process that ends in a three-way phone call with an administrative law judge
That sounds like a system similar to mail-in rebates: the system only functions by (rightly) assuming that a significant percentage of the people won't bother with the hassle.
With the way the unemployment office loses records, has a horrendous automated telephone maze, and the amount of hassle that it takes to get to the three-way phone call I'm not surprised that, for all practical purposes, a company can deny unemployment for arbitrary reasons.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say if you have a botnet of 10,000 compromised machines then you are already doing something illegal and deserve what you get
I agree. I'm simply keeping in mind that this is _NOT_ an isolated situation. This is going to come up over and over again as the years go on and, if we don't pay attention now, it's going to progress into abuse of greyer and greyer areas.
do something illegal
That's where the situation will get greyer and greyer. That's where selective/arbitrary enforcement and abuse will come into play. As the years wind on the bosses will figure out how to ask employees to do this without actually asking them to do something illegal. There will always be people who were dealt a bum hand by life who will be susceptible to these shady offers to move ahead.
Use some common sense
First off, you don't need to be so offensive.
They aren't going to arrest the messenger over minor stuff that practically everybody does
That's precisely what authorities love to do especially if performance review time is coming up. They know that the only reason why the informer came to them is because the informer has few other options. They hold all the cards and will have no qualms about playing their hands to their best advantage. If the authority can get a pay raise out of the media spin from sticking a few script kiddies behind bars, do you think he'll pass it up?
This time it was guys with botnets of 10000. Next time it'll be guys with botnets of 100. The time after, it'll be the arbitrary roundup of some poor college kid who was playing a prank on his wealthy dorm buddy.
The burden of proof in most states is on the employer to prove that you aren't eligible
You've never been denied unemployment, have you?
"Unemployment: DENIED Reason: OTHER."
"We're sorry, sir. The only thing you can do is resubmit your request."
I don't disagree
Neither do I, really. I was simply pointing out that, if your employer really does want to screw you, there's really nothing you can do to stop them unless you're in a legally protected group: woman, minority, veteran, homosexual, legally disabled.
Want to explain that to Martha Stewart, Ken Lay and the gang from Enron, Ivan Boesky, Micheal Milliken, and others.
It's always to point out the sacrificial lambs when their former media cohorts paraded them through the streets. They represent about 1 in ten thousand, maybe?
And the majority of the Enron people managed to weasel out. Charges were brought, then dismissed.
Look at the head of Strong Funds. He agreed not to work in the brokerage industry and in exchange they dropped the investigation. w00t for the investors who got screwed.
"Look, we like you, but you're screwed and you're going to die someday. M'kay?"
Hahaha! EXACTLY.
but essentially the American dream is a carrot on a stick
Thank you for ruining my Friday with the truth. Friday's still get a +5 on the happy scale.
the American political model is the best one I've seen
In its original unmodified form, before Congress sold us into slavery to the Federal Reserve, yes.:)
it's just suffering from the effect of large corporations having the rights of individuals
That's a disease that will never go away. I gave up the fight against it about a month ago. Now I just work to maintain my level of existence without getting all worked up about the inequities.
And just how does one go about doing that? Have you seen the national debt? Who do you think is liable for that debt? The Federal Government collects money to pay that debt. If it can't get it through direct taxation it does what? It institutes even more schemes to siphon more money out in more ways.
Unless you're given a special opportunity or born into an independently wealthy class it's almost impossible to pay off your debt. You're in debt for life.
I spent the last 5 years paying off all my debt
You received that special opportunity. I spent the last 5 years paying the interest and then was laid off. Now, with the nonpayment, late payment, and overlimit (due to accrued interest, nonpayment, and late payment fees), I'm back at the same level I was at 5 years ago.
We're looking at this from two different angles. Most people on this thread are quite focused on the particular story at hand. In this particular story, yes, the packeteers probably could have enlisted legal assistance. Granted, the legal assistance most likely would have exposed their other questionable activities (and, if you're perfet, more power to you--most of us aren't)...
I'm looking at this from the viewpoint of similar cases, down the road. There is always a fringe. In this case the act of DDoS was obviously illegal. Down the road, however, we're going to see this surface in cases where the employee was asked to participate in actions which weren't obviously illegal but, at some point down the managerial line, were used in an illegal manner. It's not a secret that the rich and powerful recruit the poor and destitute to do their dirty work by keeping them in a haze of ignorance.
What we should do is simply imprison, by default, people who are in financial dependency hell. They're obviously going to be targeted to become parties to questionably legal activities. If we imprison them preemptively then our society will be perfect. Won't it? All the poor people will be in jail and only the rich and happy people will be in public.
We should work to mod this sort of behavior to oblivion or collectively, as a Slashdot public, avoid using it. It's not very professional and doesn't say much for your temper.
Your's is the same kind of uninformed blathering
I think "blathering" should be reserved for any time people talk about experiences that they've never had such as...
Doesn't sound like a lot of concern for their diet or housing was involved
On the contrary. When you're unemployed and facing eviction for not paying rent there's little else to do but sit on IRC networks to occupy your time before the inevitable.
Where in the world did you come up with that?
No need for insults. Try to keep it polite.
To me they sound not much more than your average mal-adjusted script kiddies
That is one possibility. Another possibility is that they were jobless and facing eviction in two weeks and so a few thousand dollars looked like a grand opportunity.
I don't.
When you get old we'll all come visit you in the nursing home to show you how much we love you.:)
Slashdot Mirror
If we're going to get into that topic it's worth noting that Microsoft only exists in its current form through governmental regulation.
It's actually pretty sad to note how many people believe that we do indeed operate in a free market and don't recognize that many of the large corporations only exist because government regulation helped funnel money into their market dominance.
But so much for longing for an ideal world. I guess that's how we know we're not in heaven.
It's a free market
No, it's not. To be pedantic we have entire libraries full of books which contain rules which regulate our supposedly "free market". Let us, however, zoom in on the point of Microsoft's monopoly.
This is not a world in which the consumer influence carries any real weight. The majority influence is the corporate influence. Corporations, by and large, do not switch to Linux for several reasons:
1) Top level execs favor MS because MS is a huge player in the stock market.
2) Security firms cannot use open source products because the guidelines and standards for a certified secure desktop system are written almost entirely with Windows as the template.
3) The Microsoft monopoly extends beyond its software. Training institutes are cranking out MS monkeys by the thousands while there are very few programs which focus on administration in a *NIX environment. In terms of a corporate viewpoint it's easier for HR to staff and support a Windows workplace than a Linux workplace.
I'm not saying that certifications actually mean knowledge or ability. However, reality is 99% perception and the HR goons are impressed by certifications and letters after a name.
Microsoft holds a monopoly in many ways far beyond the simple installation of the software. Until the world divests itself of this delusion in appearances and faces reality it will always be an uphill battle against the entrenched giant. To be perfectly honest, Microsoft and its empire generate PROFIT for people who don't need to know anything about the actual products. FSF, GNU, and F/OSS philosophies would actually make people like Alan Greenspan get a real job.
That's really what we're fighting against.
Would this be the "right to free warez and MP3s" amendment?
I think it's in article I, section 8, clause 8...
"Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"
Which they've failed horribly at in both "limited times" and "authors and inventors".
If corporate America wants to hamstring citizens such that they have a legal workaround (here's a dollar, we own it... or... here's your signing contract, take it and eat or leave it and go back to living under the bridge) for our exclusive rights to our creations then I have no guilt about sharing everything they sell.
Most of them will probably yawn
It'll be good practice for the boredom of a prison cell, or the third job to pay off the settlement with the *AA.
If enough people bug their senators and representatives they'll be forced to take some kind of action lest they be concerned with losing a re-election bid
How does the opinion of a few thousand computer enthusiasts affect a re-election bid when the voting demographic is overwhelmingly influenced by what they see and hear on television? Let's have a look at our democracy. According to here and here voter turnout for Presidential elections can be as high as 70% but, in the midterm elections, can be as low as 35%. Of those polled who didn't cast a ballot, one in five said they were too busy. In a midterm election that's 12% of the theoretical votes--clearly enough to sway the decision. In our last presidential election, one in five of thirty percent is still 6%--an enormous number compared to the margin that Bush used to assume victory. It doesn't take a conspiracy theory to note that when the yearly tax burden is heavier the advantage will clearly be given to candidates who support platforms which will further benefit already wealthy voters. The wealthy classes win on both sides: first, they're closer to the government trough from which those tax dollars get disbursed and second, the elected candidates are going to hold their interests as more important than the interests of working class America.
This is part of why they can't bust someone for drug paraphernelia unless they have actual drugs on them,
I know several people who've been taken into custody. To be honest they were only given a ticket--$180 for a pack of papers, in one case, because he didn't have any tobacco to prove they weren't for marijuana. Does that count as "busted"? The public defender recommended a plea of "no contest" and the individual couldn't afford private legal counsel.
They didn't set up the scam, they didn't make the rules, they just made the plays, and made money on the spread
.com boom-bust was just a money making scheme that all the traders knew about and just "made the plays"?
OMG! You don't say? You mean to tell me that everyone on Wall Street knows exactly how these ripoffs are played on the investing public (401k funding?) and they're ALL IN ON IT? You mean the execs (like Martha Stewart) really are nothing more than sacrificial lambs to hide the FACT that the
You're a genius! I love you!
Okay, according to here the count is at least 282 executives who were involved in siphoning money off of Enron. According to here there were a total of three Enron execs who had given in to the guilty plea as of 24-Aug-04
That's here and here.
And it's 292. So the FBI's batting 1% on the big players who've cost American investors multi-millions in fraud. Go get 'em boys! Score 1 for the People!
This guy was paid to run a criminal enterprise
I'm most intrigued by this snippet: "RackSpace fought back". Just how prevalent are DDoS wars on the network both on offense and defense? If it happens all the time why is the FBI so proud about trumping up catching this one guy? Isn't that like patting yourself on the back for killing one of the three million cockroaches swarming through your kitchen? It's something I'd expect from Chief Wiggum.
Giving up a mega-million dollar high profile job is pretty bad punishment
<wry smile> I'm sure his amassed wealth will help to assuage the pain while he's on the golf course.
ALL the Sr. Enron execs who came up the the scams are convicted and doing time except Lay (so far). You really should check your facts.
Okay, according to here the count is at least 282 executives who were involved in siphoning money off of Enron. According to here there were a total of three Enron execs who had given in to the guilty plea as of 24-Aug-04.
Those rich people are really taking a pummelling. Whew. I bet it's getting hot out there on the golf course.
I assumed that the whistleblower protection would fall under wrongfull termination
Typically it does. It's not your bad. I was referring to wrongful termination in general.
Consider the following situation:
Your goals are A, B, C, and D.
Throughout the course of the year your manager directs you to devote your attention to E, F, G, and H.
At the end of the year you're held responsible for A, B, C, and D and not given any credit for E, F, G or H.
Refusing to pursue E, F, G and H is insubordination which leads to termination. Not meeting goals two years in a row is subject for corrective action and often leads to termination. It's obviously a regimen of harassment but, unless you fit into a legally protected group, there's no legal argument because there's no legal reason why you were singled out and discriminated against.
I was also raised with a good work ethic, a respect for self-sufficiency and self-responsibility
I was also raised with a good work ethic which is why I would never participate in unethical activity, even if I were destitute. I never said that the employees had a good work ethic. I sympathize with the employees because I am familiar with betrayal, not because I condone their actions.
there *is no excuse* for 'owning' several thousand zombies from which to direct DDoS attacks for any reason
There's no excuse for lots of things in this world. That's how we know we're not in heaven. There's the old saying,"If life gives you lemons, make lemonade." These employees were trying to make lemonade. Whether or not they could have made better decisions growing up is irrelevent. They were making the best use of the lemons which life had given them at the time.
you *did* read the fine article
There you go being insulting again. I read the article and it only referenced one of the packeters as receiving $1k and a shell account for his services. I imagine the others were formally employer.
I also feel qualified to reject your idea of an unofficial caste system
Yet you recognize the existence of people who are at a disadvantage and you agree that they cannot afford the same calibre of legal counsel afforded by the wealthier classes. Isn't the meaning of a caste system the separation of priveleges based upon an arbitrary value like monetary wealth?
caste: 2 a : a division of society based on differences of wealth, inherited rank or privilege, profession, or occupation b : the position conferred by caste standing. 3 : a system of rigid social stratification characterized by hereditary status, endogamy, and social barriers sanctioned by custom, law, or religion.
A person with sufficient wealth to afford legal counsel could avoid the conviction. A felony conviction is a particularly large social barrier. Many employers will ask if you've even been charged with a crime regardless of the outcome.
As per the legal system, how do you propose that poor defendants be better represented?
I pay 60% of my yearly income to various taxes and fees imposed by the various levels of government to solve this problem. I'm only pointing out that it is a problem. I'd also like to point out that, for all the money which the upper castes of American society receive, their not doing much about it. Rather it plays in their favor to allow it to propagate.
And your apparently uninformed and emotionally based opinions were more professional?
I was referring to the language and attitude that you were using.
The thing to do is find any old job, flipping burgers if necessary, that will pay the rent and discuss the situation with the landlord
You're contradicting yourself. Flipping burgers most definitely will not pay the rent, the lights, the water, and the fuel/bus money to get to work. There's also the consideration of the job market. When unemployment is up, as it has been since '99, minimum wage jobs are less likely to take employees with any marketable skill because those are the first people to leave. When unemployment is up minimum wage businesses have a large selection of people who will feel lucky to have any job and will not be likely to leave.
Besides, I still see not one speck of evidence from the article that these guys were in any way disadvantaged
True. The article made no reference at all about the financial situation of the employees.
Seemed like a legitimate question to me. Perhaps I missed something in the article
You didn't miss anything in the article. Rather you chose to assume that the employees weren't on a financial shoestring. I forwarded the possibility that they might have been and you made use of a derogatory remark to imply that it was impossible.
I don't know you and I don't need your love
Everyone could use a little more love, especially when their crotchety butt is aging in a nursing home.
you are up for a rather large settlement in a whistle-blower
Yes.
wrongfull termination lawsuit
Probably not. Successful prosecution of wrongful termination requires a motive. Most commonly the motive is discrimination based upon gender, race, disability, or sexual orientation. Unless you fit into a legally protected group your chances of winning a wrongful termination are proportional to the amount of money that you have on-hand for legal counsel starting with $10k giving you roughly a 50/50 chance.
Ideally bail is to give the accused time to prepare their defense. It's hard to talk with your alibi witnesses if they don't know you're in jail.
In reality bail is another method of enforcing an unofficial social caste system. Poor people can't get out to find decent legal counsel. They're stuck with the run-of-the-mill public defender who always advocates a "guilty" or "no contest" plea. The cycle repeats itself indefinitely.
In science it's called chromatography. If you have a jar of mixed large and small pellets you can separate the pellets simply by vibrating the jar for a long enough period of time. In society every accusation leveled against you is the equivalent of one vibration. If you're priveleged or wealthy you shake up. If you're poor or well-framed you shake down.
So if I only steal one car as opposed to stealing ten cars I don't deserve to be locked up?
I don't like this metaphor but let's run with it. People are stealing cars all the time and, for the greatest part, the wealthier people are stealing more cars. This metaphor exposes the selective enforcement and abuse that's already occurring.
I shouldn't be "rounded up"?
If we round up one person then we should round them all up. If we can't round them all up but instead get those who we can then it's very easy to see that the chances of conviction will be directly related to the social order of the person who's rounded up.
I think your sympathy is misdirected here
If the five packet monkeys were sons of senators who were doing this from their posh apartments then my sympathy would be misdirected. However, if the five packet monkeys were from the upper echelons of society then they too would have fled to Morocco--or the media would have been strictly instructed to keep a lid on things or face an FCC audit.
Jobless? Okay. Fix that. Go to a temp agency
Legalized indentured servitude. There's nothing ethical about supporting a system of what is, for all practical purposes, opportunistic slavery. They take 30% and treat you in a fashion that my parents would have beaten me half to death for. The only reason why it's not technically "slavery" is because they pay with legalized bank notes.
Go to a fast food place. Go to a 24 hour gas station.
Nobody with a technical skill set gets hired at these places unless you have a connection or you're lucky to interview when the hiring manager is having a bad day. Gas stations and fast food do not want to hire employees who could very well leave in a week for a better job. Additionally, from 1999-present, unemployment is so high that minimum wage jobs have their pick of employees who are dying just to have any income. There's no business sense in hiring people with skills that are marketable outside the realm of minimum wage.
But let's be real. These guys didn't want to work hard for money. They wanted it easy
Who doesn't? Politicians, CEOs, VPs, and executives don't make big bucks with posh benefits and retirement packages because they wanted to work hard.
and didn't think they should be subjected to minimum wage jobs
Most minimum wage jobs probably wouldn't have hired them. It's business. Why hire a guy who could leave next week when there are a dozen single mothers who will stay for a year or more?
I'm not defending their lack of ethics. But, again, let's be real: the upper echelon of our society is rank with a lack of ethics. I'm simply saying that I have sympathy for people who were following the example set by "successful" people and ended up taking the shaft.
after a lengthy appeals process that ends in a three-way phone call with an administrative law judge
That sounds like a system similar to mail-in rebates: the system only functions by (rightly) assuming that a significant percentage of the people won't bother with the hassle.
With the way the unemployment office loses records, has a horrendous automated telephone maze, and the amount of hassle that it takes to get to the three-way phone call I'm not surprised that, for all practical purposes, a company can deny unemployment for arbitrary reasons.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say if you have a botnet of 10,000 compromised machines then you are already doing something illegal and deserve what you get
I agree. I'm simply keeping in mind that this is _NOT_ an isolated situation. This is going to come up over and over again as the years go on and, if we don't pay attention now, it's going to progress into abuse of greyer and greyer areas.
do something illegal
That's where the situation will get greyer and greyer. That's where selective/arbitrary enforcement and abuse will come into play. As the years wind on the bosses will figure out how to ask employees to do this without actually asking them to do something illegal. There will always be people who were dealt a bum hand by life who will be susceptible to these shady offers to move ahead.
Use some common sense
First off, you don't need to be so offensive.
They aren't going to arrest the messenger over minor stuff that practically everybody does
That's precisely what authorities love to do especially if performance review time is coming up. They know that the only reason why the informer came to them is because the informer has few other options. They hold all the cards and will have no qualms about playing their hands to their best advantage. If the authority can get a pay raise out of the media spin from sticking a few script kiddies behind bars, do you think he'll pass it up?
This time it was guys with botnets of 10000. Next time it'll be guys with botnets of 100. The time after, it'll be the arbitrary roundup of some poor college kid who was playing a prank on his wealthy dorm buddy.
The burden of proof in most states is on the employer to prove that you aren't eligible
You've never been denied unemployment, have you?
"Unemployment: DENIED
Reason: OTHER."
"We're sorry, sir. The only thing you can do is resubmit your request."
I don't disagree
Neither do I, really. I was simply pointing out that, if your employer really does want to screw you, there's really nothing you can do to stop them unless you're in a legally protected group: woman, minority, veteran, homosexual, legally disabled.
Want to explain that to Martha Stewart, Ken Lay and the gang from Enron, Ivan Boesky, Micheal Milliken, and others.
It's always to point out the sacrificial lambs when their former media cohorts paraded them through the streets. They represent about 1 in ten thousand, maybe?
And the majority of the Enron people managed to weasel out. Charges were brought, then dismissed.
Look at the head of Strong Funds. He agreed not to work in the brokerage industry and in exchange they dropped the investigation. w00t for the investors who got screwed.
"Look, we like you, but you're screwed and you're going to die someday. M'kay?"
:)
Hahaha! EXACTLY.
but essentially the American dream is a carrot on a stick
Thank you for ruining my Friday with the truth. Friday's still get a +5 on the happy scale.
the American political model is the best one I've seen
In its original unmodified form, before Congress sold us into slavery to the Federal Reserve, yes.
it's just suffering from the effect of large corporations having the rights of individuals
That's a disease that will never go away. I gave up the fight against it about a month ago. Now I just work to maintain my level of existence without getting all worked up about the inequities.
Have a wonderful Friday!
pay off your debt
And just how does one go about doing that? Have you seen the national debt? Who do you think is liable for that debt? The Federal Government collects money to pay that debt. If it can't get it through direct taxation it does what? It institutes even more schemes to siphon more money out in more ways.
Unless you're given a special opportunity or born into an independently wealthy class it's almost impossible to pay off your debt. You're in debt for life.
I spent the last 5 years paying off all my debt
You received that special opportunity. I spent the last 5 years paying the interest and then was laid off. Now, with the nonpayment, late payment, and overlimit (due to accrued interest, nonpayment, and late payment fees), I'm back at the same level I was at 5 years ago.
I give up. Screw debt.
We're looking at this from two different angles. Most people on this thread are quite focused on the particular story at hand. In this particular story, yes, the packeteers probably could have enlisted legal assistance. Granted, the legal assistance most likely would have exposed their other questionable activities (and, if you're perfet, more power to you--most of us aren't)...
I'm looking at this from the viewpoint of similar cases, down the road. There is always a fringe. In this case the act of DDoS was obviously illegal. Down the road, however, we're going to see this surface in cases where the employee was asked to participate in actions which weren't obviously illegal but, at some point down the managerial line, were used in an illegal manner. It's not a secret that the rich and powerful recruit the poor and destitute to do their dirty work by keeping them in a haze of ignorance.
What we should do is simply imprison, by default, people who are in financial dependency hell. They're obviously going to be targeted to become parties to questionably legal activities. If we imprison them preemptively then our society will be perfect. Won't it? All the poor people will be in jail and only the rich and happy people will be in public.
RTFA
:)
We should work to mod this sort of behavior to oblivion or collectively, as a Slashdot public, avoid using it. It's not very professional and doesn't say much for your temper.
Your's is the same kind of uninformed blathering
I think "blathering" should be reserved for any time people talk about experiences that they've never had such as...
Doesn't sound like a lot of concern for their diet or housing was involved
On the contrary. When you're unemployed and facing eviction for not paying rent there's little else to do but sit on IRC networks to occupy your time before the inevitable.
Where in the world did you come up with that?
No need for insults. Try to keep it polite.
To me they sound not much more than your average mal-adjusted script kiddies
That is one possibility. Another possibility is that they were jobless and facing eviction in two weeks and so a few thousand dollars looked like a grand opportunity.
I don't.
When you get old we'll all come visit you in the nursing home to show you how much we love you.
Suspicion is generated by other's shady actions too
The disease is paranoia and there's no legitimate cause for suspicion.
Those parents are responding to a series of their children's actions
Many parents are paranoid. If your children is misbehaving then you're not paranoid.
I'll reiterate: A suspicious government will imprison its people in the same manner that suspcious parents ground their children.