The story of my life back in the 80s and 90s. And to add insult to injury, I refused to pay a lot of those citations to my own peril. When everything in the DMVs went online, you couldn't get a license in any state if you had outstanding citations in any other state -- and it doesn't matter how old those citations are.
It took me 3 years and $10,000 to clear up citations going back 20 years. The irony is most of those citations wern't all that much money -- maybe a total of $500-1000 or so. Most of the money was spent in travel, hotel stays, and lawyers. Real fun, let me tell ya.
The height of this "fun" was New Jersey, which still refused to relinquish my DL even after the courts decided to dismiss the citations. It took personal phone calls from the DMV of my current home state to New Jersey -- and 3 days -- to FINALLY clear up the matter.
New Jersey was definitely the worse of the lot -- their state troopers are downright dangerous and rude, unlike most state troopers of other states I've run into.
Thank you, kind sir or madam, for being a force of reason in sea of chaos. I'm reading these posts palming my face, going, "Damn! These people never RTFA, and they don't even bother doing a little research."
*sigh*
Look, people. Laws are worded specific ways for a reason. Usually they are written so that they can be used to prosecute people who break the law. Obviously, no one is going to start prosecuting MySpace or Slashdot or Facebook members who post using an alias.
Don't be so sure. Or have we forgotten our recent history so quickly? Recall "Operation Sundevil", where many people had their computers conscicated and in some cases were convicted of being in possession of a 911 operational manual that could be purchased by *anyone* for just $5 or $10?
Or for that matter, Steve Jackson Games, whose business was nearly shut down over a silly RPG handbook?
Do the people that make laws have absolutely ANY idea how the internet works and is used?
Yes, they do. They're not interested in enforcing this in general, but if you pull a stupid, nasty stunt that turns out worse than you'd imagined and they're under public pressure to do something to you (as is the case here), they have something in their pockets with which to charge you.
This is what I call a "whack-you-over-the-head" (WYOTH) law, a law only used against people the powers that be don't like.
While one may feel justified to use a WYOTH law against someone doing harm in the "grey" areas of the legal system, keep in mind that the use of WYOTH won't stop there.
"Unnatural carnal knowledge" is a term of law that goes back decades, and maybe centuries, and is basically a euphemism for oral and anal sex. However, most jurisdictions (the military included) will not find a defendant guilty for oral sex, at least in a heterosexual encounter, unless it's forced.
Well, these days I would think it would be unnatural to find someone who have not engaged in oral sex at lest once!
Well, with the number of times I've been falsely accused of just about everything imaginable, include kidnapping and murder, I was inclined to seriously consider he'd been falsely fingered as well.
This sets a bad, bad, BAD precedent for criminal law in the US, because now it'll be seen as OK to convict someone without sufficient evidence.
I mean I don't agree with or believe in sodomy or gayness (thats a whole 'nuther debate, lets leave that out of this) but even I think thats harsh.
You don't have to agree with it or believe in it. So what's your point? Would you stand in the way of someone who does? Would you forbid them from doing with other consenting adults what you yourself disagree with?
I've had to deal with some vicious racist 10 years ago of accusing me of doing something hideous and unmentionable to my handicapped son when I took him to the washroom of a public restaurant.
This person -- Allison Beal of Stoneham Mass -- turned the entire restaurant against me with her antics, and the cops who came and responded were no better, and played right into the racism. It totally devastated my life, made me miss out on $2 million in missed stock options, and put into place a domino effect which recently ended my marriage.
With all that has been said, a bigger issue is being missed here -- that of suicide and the real causative factors behind it.
I find it hard to believe that the only thing going on in that person's life was MySpace. There had to be some other issues going in in that girl's life a-priori, and the MySpace thing simply have the effect of the straw breaking the camel's back.
Suicides are tragic, and 100% preventable. It just takes someone that's willing to notice someone that's in distress, as all.
"Tax evasion" is seen as fine to go after in our country, but it's perfectly OK for our bureaucrats and policy makers to waste and abuse the tax dollars they extract from us at gunpoint. There's a 2000 issue of Time that explains how *most* government agencies couldn't possibly pass an audit, and write off the imbalance in their books to the billions. Even the IRS is not above board here. And I doubt if the situation has changed today. Nobody cared then, nobody cares today. Oh, but if someone doesn't pay his taxes, off with his head!
If I didn't know any better, it would seem that many have the attitude of "Might makes Right" in the good ole' U.S. of A. Ok for the mighty powers to abuse, but not individuals to do the same.
And we see this abuse here by an egregious misapplication of the law. Just hope no one ever decides to use this precedent-setting misinterpretation against you in the future.
"ou don't throw someone to the wolves for just using a pseudonym."
They do not throw people to wolves for just using a pseudonym.
"If MySpace even thinks of dragging my kids into criminal (or even civil) court just because they used a pseudonym? I will make it my business to do everything in my power to bring MySpace down."
They won't. Let's take a step back, look at the facts of the case, and avoid slippery-sloping this.
MySpace isn't going after Lori Drew just because she used a pseudonym. They are going after her because she used said pseudonymous account to harass a young girl to the point that she killed herself. The pseudonym aspect is the best legal angle they can come up with.
I dunno. Seems to me that harassment is a good thing to go for, as well as "wrongful death".
The problem with going after inane things like using a pseudonym is that it sets a precedent, rife for abuse by our so-called "justice system".
Oh, but I forgot -- our country cares nothing about the innocent who's done no wrong, unless that innocent happens to be a "victim". But if it's false accusations or wrongful justice, that's OK in the Great ole' U.S. of A.
The charge should be appropriate -- charge her with the crime of enticing another person to commit suicide, not the "crime" of using a pseudonym on the Internet.
I know enough about the law to know that it does not conform to any type of logic any sensible person (read: us slash-dotters) have come to know and understand.
Basically, the law exists in its own universe, and you would do well to be aware of it.
Do the people that make laws have absolutely ANY idea how the internet works and is used? Are they even living on the same planet as the rest of us?
I realize that this was likely a rhetorical question, but IMO, the rulemakers do not live in the same world as us slashdotters. I would bet that many of the lawmakers still have VCRs hooked up, and the clock has been blinking 12:00 for 10 years. The lawmakers are just like every other "old" person. They call thier son/nephew/grandson for technical support when thier computer isn't working. They do not have a myspace profile, instant messanger account, or any account for that matter beyond email.
While they may be "old people", there is still the issue of commonsense. You don't throw someone to the wolves for just using a pseudonym. I encourage my kids to use pseudonyms on the Internet to protect their privacy, as do I, as do almost everyone with a clue.
Now, I have to consider if I am endangering my kids' liberty -- and they use MySpace, among many other sites popular with the under-21 crowd.
If MySpace even thinks of dragging my kids into criminal (or even civil) court just because they used a pseudonym? I will make it my business to do everything in my power to bring MySpace down.
There may be some decent hand-held scanner "wands" that may allow you to scan without destruction. I've seen some of these, but couldn't say if they would do the trick. Worth a look, anyway.
Just because it's infrared doesn't mean it can't be foiled.
And aside from that, there is still the grave danger that the government may try to use this technology to finger people it doesn't like.
Currently developed technology requires the target to be within a few meters of the iris reader, and also to be "cooperative", but technologies always improve.
The algorithms being used to classify the iris has an impressively low false positive rate. I'll give it that.
Security considerations
Like with most other biometric identification technology, a still not satisfactorily solved problem with iris recognition is the problem of "live tissue verification". The reliability of any biometric identification depends on ensuring that the signal acquired and compared has actually been recorded from a live body part of the person to be identified, and is not a manufactured template. Many commercially available iris recognition systems are easily fooled by presenting a high-quality photograph of a face instead of a real face, which makes such devices unsuitable for unsupervised applications, such as door access-control systems. The problem of live tissue verification is less of a concern in supervised applications (e.g., immigration control), where a human operator supervises the process of taking the picture.
Methods that have been suggested to provide some defence against the use of fake eyes and irises include:
* Changing ambient lighting during the identification (switching on a bright lamp), such that the pupillary reflex can be verified and the iris image be recorded at several different pupil diameters
* Analysing the 2D spatial frequency spectrum of the iris image for the peaks caused by the printer dither patterns found on commercially available fake-iris contact lenses
* Analysing the temporal frequency spectrum of the image for the peaks caused by computer displays
* Using spectral analysis instead of merely monochromatic cameras to distinguish iris tissue from other material
* Observing the characteristic natural movement of an eyeball (measuring nystagmus, tracking eye while text is read, etc.)
* Testing for retinal retroreflection (red-eye effect)
* Testing for reflections from the eye's four optical surfaces (front and back of both cornea and lens) to verify their presence, position and shape
* Using 3D imaging (e.g., stereo cameras) to verify the position and shape of the iris relative to other eye features
A 2004 report by the German Federal Office for Information Security noted that none of the iris-recognition systems commercially available at the time implemented any live-tissue verification technology. Like any pattern-recognition technology, live-tissue verifiers will have their own false-reject probability and will therefore further reduce the overall probability that a legitimate user is accepted by the sensor.
Seeing this map is wonderful, and marks a milestone in neuroscience. Now, the burning question is how this neural map differs from person to person, between the sexes, and across cultures. Would the neural map of someone in Japan be different from someone in the US? Would the neural map of a geek like those of us who slash-dot everyday differ from, say, a lawyer, a brick-layer, or a street-sweeper, or more importantly, the managers we work for?
:-)
I say that VERY tongue-in-cheek, being a high-tech manager myself.
Wonder Woman! Yep, I too was doing a bit of drooling! Remember "Star Lost"?
In the 80's I was drooling over Lala Ward as "Romana 2" -- every geek's dream girl. Richard Dawkins, that lucky dog. Tom Baker is an idiot for not being able to keep her...
There was one story that came out about this family traveling in space (no, not "Lost in Space") that fell down a black hole. Can't recall the name of it to save my life, but it aired on PBS.
Yes, I too kept my nose buried in SF novels -- many. Was always annoyed why my English teachers never considered SF literature. They always gave us boorish stuff to read like "The Good Earth" and "Red Badge of Courage". Though, I did pull one on them once. One English teacher asked us to do a term paper on an English writer, and I chose -- of course -- Authur C Clarke and his story "2001". That was lots of fun.
Today, no one in our family watches TV *at all* -- we don't even have TV service. We just grab what we want to see via BitTorrent, Google Video, or YouTube (though I prefer Google for the better quality and that it's longer than 5 minutes).
Occasionally I'll be stuck in, say, a hotel room or a friend's house, and I'll turn on the boob tube to see if I'm missing anything. Every time I do this I am always astonished at *how much worse* it's become since we defenestrated the TV set years ago. Just firm confirmation that we did the right thing.
And with the strong push to go HDTV, I really don't see the point in that either. Now you'll be able to watch the finest crap in a higher resolution, wide screen format. Of course, there's the few good things coming out on Blue Ray that may make it worth my while to go HDTV, as well as all the cool video games that can take advantage of that format!
Three things have killed TV....
2. TV companies decided to have hundreds of channels of crap, rather than a few good ones.
A few good ones? Back when there were only a few channels, the only good channel was PBS. The rest sucked, but we were too young to realize it. You try to watch some of that awful stuff now and you'll cringe. How did we ever make it out of the 70's?
Slashdot Mirror
I wish it were that simple...
The story of my life back in the 80s and 90s. And to add insult to injury, I refused to pay a lot of those citations to my own peril. When everything in the DMVs went online, you couldn't get a license in any state if you had outstanding citations in any other state -- and it doesn't matter how old those citations are.
It took me 3 years and $10,000 to clear up citations going back 20 years. The irony is most of those citations wern't all that much money -- maybe a total of $500-1000 or so. Most of the money was spent in travel, hotel stays, and lawyers. Real fun, let me tell ya.
The height of this "fun" was New Jersey, which still refused to relinquish my DL even after the courts decided to dismiss the citations. It took personal phone calls from the DMV of my current home state to New Jersey -- and 3 days -- to FINALLY clear up the matter.
New Jersey was definitely the worse of the lot -- their state troopers are downright dangerous and rude, unlike most state troopers of other states I've run into.
Thank you, kind sir or madam, for being a force of reason in sea of chaos. I'm reading these posts palming my face, going, "Damn! These people never RTFA, and they don't even bother doing a little research."
*sigh*
Look, people. Laws are worded specific ways for a reason. Usually they are written so that they can be used to prosecute people who break the law. Obviously, no one is going to start prosecuting MySpace or Slashdot or Facebook members who post using an alias.
Don't be so sure. Or have we forgotten our recent history so quickly? Recall "Operation Sundevil", where many people had their computers conscicated and in some cases were convicted of being in possession of a 911 operational manual that could be purchased by *anyone* for just $5 or $10?
Or for that matter, Steve Jackson Games, whose business was nearly shut down over a silly RPG handbook?
How quickly do they forget...
Yes, they do. They're not interested in enforcing this in general, but if you pull a stupid, nasty stunt that turns out worse than you'd imagined and they're under public pressure to do something to you (as is the case here), they have something in their pockets with which to charge you.
This is what I call a "whack-you-over-the-head" (WYOTH) law, a law only used against people the powers that be don't like.
While one may feel justified to use a WYOTH law against someone doing harm in the "grey" areas of the legal system, keep in mind that the use of WYOTH won't stop there.
Ok.
"Unnatural carnal knowledge" is a term of law that goes back decades, and maybe centuries, and is basically a euphemism for oral and anal sex. However, most jurisdictions (the military included) will not find a defendant guilty for oral sex, at least in a heterosexual encounter, unless it's forced.
Well, these days I would think it would be unnatural to find someone who have not engaged in oral sex at lest once!
Don't be so hard on the man, until you yourself go through a bitter divorce! Believe me, he already got his...which is why he probably did it.
he was definitely methodical about his FS!!!!!
This sets a bad, bad, BAD precedent for criminal law in the US, because now it'll be seen as OK to convict someone without sufficient evidence.
I mean I don't agree with or believe in sodomy or gayness (thats a whole 'nuther debate, lets leave that out of this) but even I think thats harsh.
You don't have to agree with it or believe in it. So what's your point? Would you stand in the way of someone who does? Would you forbid them from doing with other consenting adults what you yourself disagree with?
Rape is defined as "an act of sexual intercourse with a female not his wife, by force and without consent" (Article 120).
So, according to that definition, it would be perfectly OK for a woman to rape a man, because a man is not a female.
Not to mention what the hell is meant by "unnatural".
Military law may be "to the point", but it's also way off-base.
This person -- Allison Beal of Stoneham Mass -- turned the entire restaurant against me with her antics, and the cops who came and responded were no better, and played right into the racism. It totally devastated my life, made me miss out on $2 million in missed stock options, and put into place a domino effect which recently ended my marriage.
Commonsense. If commonsense were applied in my case, everyone would've seen it as ridiculous that I would be doing anything wrong to my handicapped son in a public, crowded place. But commonsense is a rare commodity in this country, as is evidenced by the recent case of the MIT girl being held up at gunpoint by the TSA idiots because they thought her circuit breadboard was a "bomb"
Commonsense. Something most people in the Good Ole' U.S. of A. lacks.
I find it hard to believe that the only thing going on in that person's life was MySpace. There had to be some other issues going in in that girl's life a-priori, and the MySpace thing simply have the effect of the straw breaking the camel's back.
Suicides are tragic, and 100% preventable. It just takes someone that's willing to notice someone that's in distress, as all.
"Tax evasion" is seen as fine to go after in our country, but it's perfectly OK for our bureaucrats and policy makers to waste and abuse the tax dollars they extract from us at gunpoint. There's a 2000 issue of Time that explains how *most* government agencies couldn't possibly pass an audit, and write off the imbalance in their books to the billions. Even the IRS is not above board here. And I doubt if the situation has changed today. Nobody cared then, nobody cares today. Oh, but if someone doesn't pay his taxes, off with his head!
If I didn't know any better, it would seem that many have the attitude of "Might makes Right" in the good ole' U.S. of A. Ok for the mighty powers to abuse, but not individuals to do the same.
And we see this abuse here by an egregious misapplication of the law. Just hope no one ever decides to use this precedent-setting misinterpretation against you in the future.
"ou don't throw someone to the wolves for just using a pseudonym."
They do not throw people to wolves for just using a pseudonym.
"If MySpace even thinks of dragging my kids into criminal (or even civil) court just because they used a pseudonym? I will make it my business to do everything in my power to bring MySpace down."
They won't. Let's take a step back, look at the facts of the case, and avoid slippery-sloping this.
MySpace isn't going after Lori Drew just because she used a pseudonym. They are going after her because she used said pseudonymous account to harass a young girl to the point that she killed herself. The pseudonym aspect is the best legal angle they can come up with.
I dunno. Seems to me that harassment is a good thing to go for, as well as "wrongful death".
The problem with going after inane things like using a pseudonym is that it sets a precedent, rife for abuse by our so-called "justice system".
Oh, but I forgot -- our country cares nothing about the innocent who's done no wrong, unless that innocent happens to be a "victim". But if it's false accusations or wrongful justice, that's OK in the Great ole' U.S. of A.
I have frolicked with many languages since then, but Forth will always occupy fond memories in my head.
The charge should be appropriate -- charge her with the crime of enticing another person to commit suicide, not the "crime" of using a pseudonym on the Internet.
Basically, the law exists in its own universe, and you would do well to be aware of it.
I realize that this was likely a rhetorical question, but IMO, the rulemakers do not live in the same world as us slashdotters. I would bet that many of the lawmakers still have VCRs hooked up, and the clock has been blinking 12:00 for 10 years. The lawmakers are just like every other "old" person. They call thier son/nephew/grandson for technical support when thier computer isn't working. They do not have a myspace profile, instant messanger account, or any account for that matter beyond email.
While they may be "old people", there is still the issue of commonsense. You don't throw someone to the wolves for just using a pseudonym. I encourage my kids to use pseudonyms on the Internet to protect their privacy, as do I, as do almost everyone with a clue.
Now, I have to consider if I am endangering my kids' liberty -- and they use MySpace, among many other sites popular with the under-21 crowd.
If MySpace even thinks of dragging my kids into criminal (or even civil) court just because they used a pseudonym? I will make it my business to do everything in my power to bring MySpace down.
I did a lot of cool stuff on the 64 way, WAY back, using Forth (remember that language?).
Some computers will never die. No matter how old. LONG LIVE COMMODORE!!!!
There may be some decent hand-held scanner "wands" that may allow you to scan without destruction. I've seen some of these, but couldn't say if they would do the trick. Worth a look, anyway.
Just because it's infrared doesn't mean it can't be foiled.
And aside from that, there is still the grave danger that the government may try to use this technology to finger people it doesn't like.
Currently developed technology requires the target to be within a few meters of the iris reader, and also to be "cooperative", but technologies always improve.
The algorithms being used to classify the iris has an impressively low false positive rate. I'll give it that.
Security considerations Like with most other biometric identification technology, a still not satisfactorily solved problem with iris recognition is the problem of "live tissue verification". The reliability of any biometric identification depends on ensuring that the signal acquired and compared has actually been recorded from a live body part of the person to be identified, and is not a manufactured template. Many commercially available iris recognition systems are easily fooled by presenting a high-quality photograph of a face instead of a real face, which makes such devices unsuitable for unsupervised applications, such as door access-control systems. The problem of live tissue verification is less of a concern in supervised applications (e.g., immigration control), where a human operator supervises the process of taking the picture. Methods that have been suggested to provide some defence against the use of fake eyes and irises include: * Changing ambient lighting during the identification (switching on a bright lamp), such that the pupillary reflex can be verified and the iris image be recorded at several different pupil diameters * Analysing the 2D spatial frequency spectrum of the iris image for the peaks caused by the printer dither patterns found on commercially available fake-iris contact lenses * Analysing the temporal frequency spectrum of the image for the peaks caused by computer displays * Using spectral analysis instead of merely monochromatic cameras to distinguish iris tissue from other material * Observing the characteristic natural movement of an eyeball (measuring nystagmus, tracking eye while text is read, etc.) * Testing for retinal retroreflection (red-eye effect) * Testing for reflections from the eye's four optical surfaces (front and back of both cornea and lens) to verify their presence, position and shape * Using 3D imaging (e.g., stereo cameras) to verify the position and shape of the iris relative to other eye features A 2004 report by the German Federal Office for Information Security noted that none of the iris-recognition systems commercially available at the time implemented any live-tissue verification technology. Like any pattern-recognition technology, live-tissue verifiers will have their own false-reject probability and will therefore further reduce the overall probability that a legitimate user is accepted by the sensor.
I say that VERY tongue-in-cheek, being a high-tech manager myself.
In the 80's I was drooling over Lala Ward as "Romana 2" -- every geek's dream girl. Richard Dawkins, that lucky dog. Tom Baker is an idiot for not being able to keep her...
There was one story that came out about this family traveling in space (no, not "Lost in Space") that fell down a black hole. Can't recall the name of it to save my life, but it aired on PBS.
Yes, I too kept my nose buried in SF novels -- many. Was always annoyed why my English teachers never considered SF literature. They always gave us boorish stuff to read like "The Good Earth" and "Red Badge of Courage". Though, I did pull one on them once. One English teacher asked us to do a term paper on an English writer, and I chose -- of course -- Authur C Clarke and his story "2001". That was lots of fun.
Today, no one in our family watches TV *at all* -- we don't even have TV service. We just grab what we want to see via BitTorrent, Google Video, or YouTube (though I prefer Google for the better quality and that it's longer than 5 minutes).
Occasionally I'll be stuck in, say, a hotel room or a friend's house, and I'll turn on the boob tube to see if I'm missing anything. Every time I do this I am always astonished at *how much worse* it's become since we defenestrated the TV set years ago. Just firm confirmation that we did the right thing.
And with the strong push to go HDTV, I really don't see the point in that either. Now you'll be able to watch the finest crap in a higher resolution, wide screen format. Of course, there's the few good things coming out on Blue Ray that may make it worth my while to go HDTV, as well as all the cool video games that can take advantage of that format!
Good bye TV!
Three things have killed TV. ...
2. TV companies decided to have hundreds of channels of crap, rather than a few good ones.
A few good ones? Back when there were only a few channels, the only good channel was PBS. The rest sucked, but we were too young to realize it. You try to watch some of that awful stuff now and you'll cringe. How did we ever make it out of the 70's?