Yeah, but the problem here is that 'true' is exactly what people are debating about. You can't use whats 'true' to defend FUD - the whole purpose behind corperate driven FUD (and the EFFs FUD, likely, too) is that its alarmist and doesn't incite someone to verrify or cooberate the claim.
Your comment and my comment still stand - in the absense of an absolute truth, and a poorly-behaved party, even the good guys have to behave poorly sometimes. I give credit to those who understand that he without power and economic interest in the outcome of a debate should be more tolerated and generally more trusted when shouting matches break out. Anybody that says you should listen to the richer of the two is more interested in wealth than the truth, although people dont seem subject themselves to social disapproval when they come right out and admit it these days, which is what bothers me the most.
> As a donor-supported, nonprofit membership organization
FUD is bad to begin with, but I'd certainly give the benifit of the doubt to the organization that isn't seeking to make a few billion off of FUD.
FUD to support what a substantial group of people believes is a good cause that benifits society is a fuckload more forgivable than FUD-for-profit. Ya gotta fight FUD with FUD (otherwise FUD wouldn't exist, see?), but I'll champion those who are fighting because they believe its the right thing to do, not because it increases the chances of getting a bigger paycheque, thanks.
I have just one question. A mark is the victom of a con - exactly what does the EFF have to gain from conning the easily scared? And what do companies have to gain from the chilling effect, whether or not it is actually occurring?
I'll never understand why people dont consider whats at stake when people deceive others; quite often you'll find the most sincere and real message comes from the dude who has little to gain from yelling 'Fire!' You can find more insidious fear mongering than EFF's call-to-arms in any ad in Business 2.0 or Wired article.. the fact that somebody seeks to profit from it, as opposed to furthur a belief or ideology they hold makes the behaviour N times less acceptable to me.
Honestly, when did people start becoming more tolerant of deception and FUD, so long as it was for the Good Nature of profiteering? Doesn't that seem a little backwards, or am I just confusing this issue with the time honoured tradition of masses stroking the egos of the already powerful?
Re:Heh I wonder if it compiles the Linux kernel
on
GCC 3.2 Released
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· Score: 2
Let me go back to off-topic land. Do you sequence and produce under *nix? Or do you use *nix to make the sounds and go to Windows-land to produce it all?
Being a electro-music head myself, I've never seen much stuff in *nix that I could use in my music production..
I'm not a child of God, unless you can pull some birth records or DNA tests that proove otherwise.
BTW, how on earth can you deride identity politics and then participate in them in the very next sentance? I hope you can spot the irony.
I also hope you can spot that its "HipTop" and not "HipHop".
Re:Great, there goes more of our freedom
on
Shrinkwrapped Books
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· Score: 2
Ah, thankee. So the question I get from that is, what constitutes a threat? Is that stupulated? Where is the line drawn between using the worlds "behaviour X is prohibited" and "behaviour X will result in us suing you"?
Re:"Phenomena" is plural; singular is "phenomenon"
on
Shrinkwrapped Books
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· Score: 1
The only thing bigger than an idiot is somebody who acts like nobody else is capable of identifying them.
Re:Great, there goes more of our freedom
on
Shrinkwrapped Books
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I'd make sure #1 was:
Thou shalt not threaten litigation prior to having evidence of illegal activity by the defendant.
The way I see it, ignorance of the law is exactly how these folks get away with it. Most people dont know theres no law that says these things are legally binding, so the threats themselves become the law. Making threats that are not backed up by law should be illegal, as one is simply plying on the fact that customers have 24 hours in their days, and we cannot all hire personal lawyers to vet the threats we are presented with every single day.
You're not allowed to threaten somebody with their life; whats the difference if you threaten to make somebody so poor through litigation that their life would never be the same? I really dont see a functional difference unless you claim that having your wealth erased through litigation is infintesimally smaller a threat than ones life.
If anything, that would seem to encourage even more rigorous defence of the trademark; if they interpret Dave as infringing, and he got it off Mozilla, that would seem to give them more ammunition in court that infringements are 'viral' and must be stopped at all costs.
Yeah, but we all know that most of the leveraging, actions, and reactions happening in the world today is in no way connected to reality and legality - the world is run on threats now.
You know what that is? Stupid. It means its become more efficient and cheap to succumb to threats than to see issues through to their proper and (I can't stress this enough) correct conclusion. I have no feelings either which way in this case; what frusterates the FUCK out of me is that we'll likely never get to see who's right, in court.
Personally, I'm waiting for the laywer industry to reform its traditional garb and start dressing more like jocks and repo men.
Oh, there's always perfection to strive for - its simply a matter of weighing the cost of making some foolproof vs. placing some amount of onus on the user to understand the scope and mechanics of the tool they are using.
Personally, I think the smarter and more transparent you make tools, the dumber people are allowed to be. In that respect, I'm very wary of fully transparent solutions for the simple reason that once you become sufficiently detached from the mechanics of a tool, you become *much* more susceptable and vulnerable to social engineering (cause your brain isn't used to the mental safety checklist of your actions), and more vulnerable to being a victim of an attack and not knowing it. I think you should only the take "The Technology Should Be Fully Transparent" route if you are 100% sure you will never introduce a bug into that technology and expose unprepared people to social/tech engineering exploits.
I guess that makes me an elitist, although the argument has held up pretty darn well in the physical technology world... I prefer the term realist. People are never going to be perfect, but the more foolproof you make the technology, the more people are free from any responsibility or accountability from accidents stemming from the use of the tool, even if that accident ends up having been easily avoided with a little common sense.
This also brings up a more interesting point; should this kind of technology be accessible to somebody with no investment in education of encryption tools and concepts? I believe that anybody who requires truely secure communication, from your CEO to your Anthromorphic Fetisher who's terrified those jocks in dorm room 4B are going to sniff his porn emails might consider that some investment in learning the tools that will offer them protection are simply a fair cost of requiring a truely secure communication pipe. Thats also the conclusion that the physical technology world made - generally, technologies with smaller user bases require more training to use those technologies, simply because the cost to foolproof-ize that technology isn't worth it given the low amount of users.
All that said, to be honest, I don't use PGP, so I'm really not aware of the installed user base, nor the various pros and cons of trying to entrench PGP to Every User and Every Desk. Is that truely the intended goal? Secure communications for every email flying about? Sure seems like alotta wasted cycles... =)
Yeah, this exploit falls under the 'social engineering' side more than anything. Who on earth would use PGP for their communications, but have no hesitations replying to suspicious email from unknown people. Even if one were to reply, one shouldn't include the body of the mail in question out of sheer para^H^H^H^Hcommon sense!
I think what you'll find is that its the US mentality that is perceived as the threat online. The US as a government cant control the internet, but the large corperations who own 95% of the internet traffic's eyeballs can certainly push a, for example, free-market WTO-approved political mindset and sell it to people inside the borders of another country via their slant on world issues and news.
I'm not saying thats inherently good, or inherently bad. Simply that if US culture and values are not Good, in the absolute sense (ie, they arn't The Only Way), then I think you have a position from which to contend that American values and policies could (and probably are) owning the airwaves of the Internet and potentially affecting the views and decisions of people in geographics and political situations where they dont or shouldnt apply. (That is to say what is good for Americans is not always, maybe even usually, good for people elsewhere.)
An employee should know what s/he can say in an interview. That decision making should be left up to the employee. If s/he says something inappropriate, fire them. I cannot believe how employees are treated these days - like retarded wrenches, capable of only turning clockwise or counterclockwise, incapable of being trusted with execising proper judgement.
Yes, because I know the only people who can provide me with accurate insightful and potentially critical information on a public organization is the person who's job it is to do damage control.
Are you people serious? Have we come this far only to create employment in the form of deflecting or managing scrutiny? Doesn't that somewhat defeat the purpose of scrutiny if its your job to be graceful under it?
I remember people saying how the Internet would bring us all together. You know, no borders, that silly stuff.
Ironically, its proving that due to its non-geographical nature, you dont actually have to _have_ a border to fight over - you can just invent one at your own whim! Think about it.. subnets - the world's new holy lands, only this time you can add as many as you like if things get too homogonized for your liking.;)
And please take this with a grain of salt, I'm only half-kidding.
Yeah, cause we know news only happens when its released in the form of a 'press release' after having been through the squeaky-clean rollers of 3 proof readers, 2 spokespeople, a lawyer and a manager that makes sure the contents dont illustrate why the brochure is 40% BS.
Yeah, but your entire argument rests on the concept that people 'earn' their wealth. If you truely believe that, then we're at odds from the start. The extremes of the wealth chasm one can have *requires* a bias from the beginning of one's 'earning' cycle. George Bush wouldn't have 'earned' his wealth had he not been socially connected to people who could front him capital. Similarly, a homeless guy earning his homeless is not often because 'he threw it all away' but more often connected to the kind of people and life lessons he was subject to since birth.
(Nevermind that the legality of inherited wealth completely breaks your argument - certainly you cant say I earned that 10 grand my grandmother left me that catapults me above the wealth of my peers?)
No, obviously Robin Hood didn't do the 'right' thing. But I'd certainly be much more tolerant (as would any society with many poor, I would think) of his behaviour than that of the King (who already has the advantages of being able to set the rules.) I really dont believe people 'earn' their status in life - I think you have a top and a bottom you can reach, givin your situation from birth. But think about it - Bush (or Clinton, or Martha Stewart) couldn't 'earn' homeless even if they tried (unless maybe they started killing little babies or something.)
Thats my problem. Everyone gets a bias from birth as to their 'earning' potential, and I am a firm believer that as a social body, our job is to provide the checks and balances in order to try to equalize that bias on a case or group by group situation.
Laws which allow one to become 'poor' do help those that truely need it. Sure, people scam the system, but I'm willing to take that loss in order to help those who genuinely deserve it. I'm of the impression that you dont mind throwing out the babes with the bathwaters. Especially if capitalism is designed to bring everybody up in wealth - well, thats going to include people who dont deserve it, so being procapitalist under the guise of wanting to increase the quality of life of the world is really no more 'costly' than supporting some lazy scammers to ensure that those who truely need help get help.
I really wish psychology was taught more often in schools. There are many factors wrt the human condition and wrt to the whole disposition/attribution blame game that would likely change many people's worldview.
This one is easy: People have a tendancy to believe the world is 'fair'. (I think phsycology textbooks call it the 'just world' phenomenom.) So, the rich folks who commit crimes cant be all that bad - after all, they're rich, so they must do something right. The bike theif obviously has nothing more than bikes as his revenue stream, so he's obviously worthless to society and doesn't deserve any benifit of doubt or sympathy.
Thats why people will forever feel less upset about White Collar crime (other than the obvious optics issues).. this is why I want to punch people who immediately place faith in those in power without doing their homework. Just because you're a leader doesn't neccessarily mean that you have constributed to society in a more positive way than some homeless dude. Sometimes, yes, sometimes no, but for those who don't spend any brain cycles on determining who deserves your angst, considering both the attribtion (personality) *and* disposition (environment in which behaviour in question was undertaken), their opinions are simply the stuffed ballots and "me too" posts of public opinion. And, as noted above, usually people will side (understantably, but not unforgivably) on the dude with more wealth.
Unfortunately, I really think this is a case of the American people stuck with an ugly reality: there will be no litigating or lawmaking or innovating out of this problem.
The answer is to raise your kids ethically - even if other people lie and cheat, if you give up and join the party, you only contribute to this problem. Personally, there seems to have been a large increase in the glorification in popular culture of cheating and scamming and basically 'getting a leg up' on people in less fortunate positions than themselves. The popularization of the phrase "Bling-Bling" or "Show Me the Money" says it all.
America has become a hotbed of wealthy-ego-stroking minions. People seem to only believe those in positions of wealth, as if they deserved to get there and as if the world is truely a fair and just place.
If we could try and raise our populous slightly more Robin-Hoodish (distrust those in positions of wealth - if they deserve or have the capability to be there, they will remain despite you not giving them benifits of doubts), and generally make the social heros those who are honest, ethical, and only 'scam' (exploit rule loopholes in order to gain) people who can afford to be scammed, we'd be in a much better position.
As it is, it seems that the lower and middle class really seems to have an addiction to playing the lap dog to corperations exploiting that dumb loyalty. Wake up folks and try and raise your kids a little more well versed in the knowledge that the world is not a fair place and that those in positions of extreme wealth dont need any cheerleaders. How willingly they purchase services and products at brand-name inflated margins, and then allay blame to economic problems to the government, with a little gentle proding from the private sector. (Most notably, the libertarians seem to have a hard time blaming the puppeteers, the private sector bohemoths, instead often wrongfully accusing the puppet, the government.)
And how does this help the investors? The investors are us! Lets help each other instead of trying to screw each other, and the corperate culture will fall in relative (as in, better than now) lock step at some point down the road.
Oh puhlease. Anybody watching sitcoms or movies over the last 10 years can see how being manipulative and bordering on cheating is *A-OK* so long as you dont get caught.
All this is a fallout of a huge social mindset where your gain at somebody else's pain is the whole freakin point of life! (Right? Thats business! Competition! It's good for the world!)
Seriously, this is a social problem. It pains me to admit that people will denounce these CEOs and then laugh about having tricked or fooled their way into some advantage in the same breath.
The answer to all of this applies to everybody equal: ETHICS, YOU MORONS. If we just started taking a harder line against fudging rules just because you *can*, we likely wouldn't raise the type of leaders that do this. But its gotta start at the bottom. Laws have to reflect the bahviour of society - they do not change that behaviour in a conditioned social body.
To that end, dont put up with people cackling mealevolantly about how they scammed the cable company or their neighbour into some gain. Nobody is above the *intent* of ethics and laws.. just because the law says this or that doesn't mean, as people, we should put up with shit.
I say, bring the public stocks back. I think its high time to make public humiliation an effective deterrant of unethical behaviour.
Slashdot Mirror
>In the EFF's case, the FUD is true
Yeah, but the problem here is that 'true' is exactly what people are debating about. You can't use whats 'true' to defend FUD - the whole purpose behind corperate driven FUD (and the EFFs FUD, likely, too) is that its alarmist and doesn't incite someone to verrify or cooberate the claim.
Your comment and my comment still stand - in the absense of an absolute truth, and a poorly-behaved party, even the good guys have to behave poorly sometimes. I give credit to those who understand that he without power and economic interest in the outcome of a debate should be more tolerated and generally more trusted when shouting matches break out. Anybody that says you should listen to the richer of the two is more interested in wealth than the truth, although people dont seem subject themselves to social disapproval when they come right out and admit it these days, which is what bothers me the most.
From the EFF homepage:
> As a donor-supported, nonprofit membership organization
FUD is bad to begin with, but I'd certainly give the benifit of the doubt to the organization that isn't seeking to make a few billion off of FUD.
FUD to support what a substantial group of people believes is a good cause that benifits society is a fuckload more forgivable than FUD-for-profit. Ya gotta fight FUD with FUD (otherwise FUD wouldn't exist, see?), but I'll champion those who are fighting because they believe its the right thing to do, not because it increases the chances of getting a bigger paycheque, thanks.
I have just one question. A mark is the victom of a con - exactly what does the EFF have to gain from conning the easily scared? And what do companies have to gain from the chilling effect, whether or not it is actually occurring?
.. the fact that somebody seeks to profit from it, as opposed to furthur a belief or ideology they hold makes the behaviour N times less acceptable to me.
I'll never understand why people dont consider whats at stake when people deceive others; quite often you'll find the most sincere and real message comes from the dude who has little to gain from yelling 'Fire!' You can find more insidious fear mongering than EFF's call-to-arms in any ad in Business 2.0 or Wired article
Honestly, when did people start becoming more tolerant of deception and FUD, so long as it was for the Good Nature of profiteering? Doesn't that seem a little backwards, or am I just confusing this issue with the time honoured tradition of masses stroking the egos of the already powerful?
Let me go back to off-topic land. Do you sequence and produce under *nix? Or do you use *nix to make the sounds and go to Windows-land to produce it all?
..
Being a electro-music head myself, I've never seen much stuff in *nix that I could use in my music production
> our common heritage as children of God
I'm not a child of God, unless you can pull some birth records or DNA tests that proove otherwise.
BTW, how on earth can you deride identity politics and then participate in them in the very next sentance? I hope you can spot the irony.
I also hope you can spot that its "HipTop" and not "HipHop".
Ah, thankee. So the question I get from that is, what constitutes a threat? Is that stupulated? Where is the line drawn between using the worlds "behaviour X is prohibited" and "behaviour X will result in us suing you"?
The only thing bigger than an idiot is somebody who acts like nobody else is capable of identifying them.
I'd make sure #1 was:
Thou shalt not threaten litigation prior to having evidence of illegal activity by the defendant.
The way I see it, ignorance of the law is exactly how these folks get away with it. Most people dont know theres no law that says these things are legally binding, so the threats themselves become the law. Making threats that are not backed up by law should be illegal, as one is simply plying on the fact that customers have 24 hours in their days, and we cannot all hire personal lawyers to vet the threats we are presented with every single day.
You're not allowed to threaten somebody with their life; whats the difference if you threaten to make somebody so poor through litigation that their life would never be the same? I really dont see a functional difference unless you claim that having your wealth erased through litigation is infintesimally smaller a threat than ones life.
If anything, that would seem to encourage even more rigorous defence of the trademark; if they interpret Dave as infringing, and he got it off Mozilla, that would seem to give them more ammunition in court that infringements are 'viral' and must be stopped at all costs.
Yeah, but we all know that most of the leveraging, actions, and reactions happening in the world today is in no way connected to reality and legality - the world is run on threats now.
You know what that is? Stupid. It means its become more efficient and cheap to succumb to threats than to see issues through to their proper and (I can't stress this enough) correct conclusion. I have no feelings either which way in this case; what frusterates the FUCK out of me is that we'll likely never get to see who's right, in court.
Personally, I'm waiting for the laywer industry to reform its traditional garb and start dressing more like jocks and repo men.
Yes. So long as you dont turn around and sell it for a profit, yes.
Oh, there's always perfection to strive for - its simply a matter of weighing the cost of making some foolproof vs. placing some amount of onus on the user to understand the scope and mechanics of the tool they are using.
... I prefer the term realist. People are never going to be perfect, but the more foolproof you make the technology, the more people are free from any responsibility or accountability from accidents stemming from the use of the tool, even if that accident ends up having been easily avoided with a little common sense.
... =)
Personally, I think the smarter and more transparent you make tools, the dumber people are allowed to be. In that respect, I'm very wary of fully transparent solutions for the simple reason that once you become sufficiently detached from the mechanics of a tool, you become *much* more susceptable and vulnerable to social engineering (cause your brain isn't used to the mental safety checklist of your actions), and more vulnerable to being a victim of an attack and not knowing it. I think you should only the take "The Technology Should Be Fully Transparent" route if you are 100% sure you will never introduce a bug into that technology and expose unprepared people to social/tech engineering exploits.
I guess that makes me an elitist, although the argument has held up pretty darn well in the physical technology world
This also brings up a more interesting point; should this kind of technology be accessible to somebody with no investment in education of encryption tools and concepts? I believe that anybody who requires truely secure communication, from your CEO to your Anthromorphic Fetisher who's terrified those jocks in dorm room 4B are going to sniff his porn emails might consider that some investment in learning the tools that will offer them protection are simply a fair cost of requiring a truely secure communication pipe. Thats also the conclusion that the physical technology world made - generally, technologies with smaller user bases require more training to use those technologies, simply because the cost to foolproof-ize that technology isn't worth it given the low amount of users.
All that said, to be honest, I don't use PGP, so I'm really not aware of the installed user base, nor the various pros and cons of trying to entrench PGP to Every User and Every Desk. Is that truely the intended goal? Secure communications for every email flying about? Sure seems like alotta wasted cycles
Yeah, this exploit falls under the 'social engineering' side more than anything. Who on earth would use PGP for their communications, but have no hesitations replying to suspicious email from unknown people. Even if one were to reply, one shouldn't include the body of the mail in question out of sheer para^H^H^H^Hcommon sense!
> "no rules" just means Bill Gates makes the rules
Yummy, can I steal as a sig? Or maybe:
To live in a society with no rules, you'd better pray you're a born opportunist.
Thats really the thesis I'm starting to form.
I think what you'll find is that its the US mentality that is perceived as the threat online. The US as a government cant control the internet, but the large corperations who own 95% of the internet traffic's eyeballs can certainly push a, for example, free-market WTO-approved political mindset and sell it to people inside the borders of another country via their slant on world issues and news.
I'm not saying thats inherently good, or inherently bad. Simply that if US culture and values are not Good, in the absolute sense (ie, they arn't The Only Way), then I think you have a position from which to contend that American values and policies could (and probably are) owning the airwaves of the Internet and potentially affecting the views and decisions of people in geographics and political situations where they dont or shouldnt apply. (That is to say what is good for Americans is not always, maybe even usually, good for people elsewhere.)
I'll probably get beat down for this one.
An employee should know what s/he can say in an interview. That decision making should be left up to the employee. If s/he says something inappropriate, fire them. I cannot believe how employees are treated these days - like retarded wrenches, capable of only turning clockwise or counterclockwise, incapable of being trusted with execising proper judgement.
>simply because it is not my job!
Yes, because I know the only people who can provide me with accurate insightful and potentially critical information on a public organization is the person who's job it is to do damage control.
Are you people serious? Have we come this far only to create employment in the form of deflecting or managing scrutiny? Doesn't that somewhat defeat the purpose of scrutiny if its your job to be graceful under it?
I remember people saying how the Internet would bring us all together. You know, no borders, that silly stuff.
.. subnets - the world's new holy lands, only this time you can add as many as you like if things get too homogonized for your liking. ;)
Ironically, its proving that due to its non-geographical nature, you dont actually have to _have_ a border to fight over - you can just invent one at your own whim! Think about it
And please take this with a grain of salt, I'm only half-kidding.
Yeah, cause we know news only happens when its released in the form of a 'press release' after having been through the squeaky-clean rollers of 3 proof readers, 2 spokespeople, a lawyer and a manager that makes sure the contents dont illustrate why the brochure is 40% BS.
D'oh, right, got it the wrong way around. Thanks for the correction.
Yeah, but your entire argument rests on the concept that people 'earn' their wealth. If you truely believe that, then we're at odds from the start. The extremes of the wealth chasm one can have *requires* a bias from the beginning of one's 'earning' cycle. George Bush wouldn't have 'earned' his wealth had he not been socially connected to people who could front him capital. Similarly, a homeless guy earning his homeless is not often because 'he threw it all away' but more often connected to the kind of people and life lessons he was subject to since birth.
(Nevermind that the legality of inherited wealth completely breaks your argument - certainly you cant say I earned that 10 grand my grandmother left me that catapults me above the wealth of my peers?)
No, obviously Robin Hood didn't do the 'right' thing. But I'd certainly be much more tolerant (as would any society with many poor, I would think) of his behaviour than that of the King (who already has the advantages of being able to set the rules.) I really dont believe people 'earn' their status in life - I think you have a top and a bottom you can reach, givin your situation from birth. But think about it - Bush (or Clinton, or Martha Stewart) couldn't 'earn' homeless even if they tried (unless maybe they started killing little babies or something.)
Thats my problem. Everyone gets a bias from birth as to their 'earning' potential, and I am a firm believer that as a social body, our job is to provide the checks and balances in order to try to equalize that bias on a case or group by group situation.
Laws which allow one to become 'poor' do help those that truely need it. Sure, people scam the system, but I'm willing to take that loss in order to help those who genuinely deserve it. I'm of the impression that you dont mind throwing out the babes with the bathwaters. Especially if capitalism is designed to bring everybody up in wealth - well, thats going to include people who dont deserve it, so being procapitalist under the guise of wanting to increase the quality of life of the world is really no more 'costly' than supporting some lazy scammers to ensure that those who truely need help get help.
I really wish psychology was taught more often in schools. There are many factors wrt the human condition and wrt to the whole disposition/attribution blame game that would likely change many people's worldview.
This one is easy: People have a tendancy to believe the world is 'fair'. (I think phsycology textbooks call it the 'just world' phenomenom.) So, the rich folks who commit crimes cant be all that bad - after all, they're rich, so they must do something right. The bike theif obviously has nothing more than bikes as his revenue stream, so he's obviously worthless to society and doesn't deserve any benifit of doubt or sympathy.
.. this is why I want to punch people who immediately place faith in those in power without doing their homework. Just because you're a leader doesn't neccessarily mean that you have constributed to society in a more positive way than some homeless dude. Sometimes, yes, sometimes no, but for those who don't spend any brain cycles on determining who deserves your angst, considering both the attribtion (personality) *and* disposition (environment in which behaviour in question was undertaken), their opinions are simply the stuffed ballots and "me too" posts of public opinion. And, as noted above, usually people will side (understantably, but not unforgivably) on the dude with more wealth.
Thats why people will forever feel less upset about White Collar crime (other than the obvious optics issues)
Unfortunately, I really think this is a case of the American people stuck with an ugly reality: there will be no litigating or lawmaking or innovating out of this problem.
The answer is to raise your kids ethically - even if other people lie and cheat, if you give up and join the party, you only contribute to this problem. Personally, there seems to have been a large increase in the glorification in popular culture of cheating and scamming and basically 'getting a leg up' on people in less fortunate positions than themselves. The popularization of the phrase "Bling-Bling" or "Show Me the Money" says it all.
America has become a hotbed of wealthy-ego-stroking minions. People seem to only believe those in positions of wealth, as if they deserved to get there and as if the world is truely a fair and just place.
If we could try and raise our populous slightly more Robin-Hoodish (distrust those in positions of wealth - if they deserve or have the capability to be there, they will remain despite you not giving them benifits of doubts), and generally make the social heros those who are honest, ethical, and only 'scam' (exploit rule loopholes in order to gain) people who can afford to be scammed, we'd be in a much better position.
As it is, it seems that the lower and middle class really seems to have an addiction to playing the lap dog to corperations exploiting that dumb loyalty. Wake up folks and try and raise your kids a little more well versed in the knowledge that the world is not a fair place and that those in positions of extreme wealth dont need any cheerleaders. How willingly they purchase services and products at brand-name inflated margins, and then allay blame to economic problems to the government, with a little gentle proding from the private sector. (Most notably, the libertarians seem to have a hard time blaming the puppeteers, the private sector bohemoths, instead often wrongfully accusing the puppet, the government.)
And how does this help the investors? The investors are us! Lets help each other instead of trying to screw each other, and the corperate culture will fall in relative (as in, better than now) lock step at some point down the road.
Oh puhlease. Anybody watching sitcoms or movies over the last 10 years can see how being manipulative and bordering on cheating is *A-OK* so long as you dont get caught.
.. just because the law says this or that doesn't mean, as people, we should put up with shit.
All this is a fallout of a huge social mindset where your gain at somebody else's pain is the whole freakin point of life! (Right? Thats business! Competition! It's good for the world!)
Seriously, this is a social problem. It pains me to admit that people will denounce these CEOs and then laugh about having tricked or fooled their way into some advantage in the same breath.
The answer to all of this applies to everybody equal: ETHICS, YOU MORONS. If we just started taking a harder line against fudging rules just because you *can*, we likely wouldn't raise the type of leaders that do this. But its gotta start at the bottom. Laws have to reflect the bahviour of society - they do not change that behaviour in a conditioned social body.
To that end, dont put up with people cackling mealevolantly about how they scammed the cable company or their neighbour into some gain. Nobody is above the *intent* of ethics and laws
I say, bring the public stocks back. I think its high time to make public humiliation an effective deterrant of unethical behaviour.
somebody in the internet advertising business like me? or are you a publisher?