The next time the United States government brutally executes six million people based on their heritage and religious beliefs alone, you may make comparisons with Nazi Germany.
This is of course a fallacy, assuming that the only valid way to compare anything is at the point of your choosing in the history timeline, the point selected carefully as to make such comparisons as least valid as possible. Because you say so. However, if you had paid attention, most of the comparisons are to the Germany of the early 1930s, well before such wide-scale attrocities occured. And those comparisons appear to be quite valid and frighteningly accurate.
Do not fall into that trap. No matter how bad you think things are in the United States government, they will never approach the level of the Third Reich. Period.
Is that your lucky psychic 8-ball telling you this? Or have you got a time machine in your garage? Because failing these, you have absolutely no way to justify such a statement, other then by sheer power of jingoistic naivette. May I remind you that the US history is replete with activities which are on par with that of Nazi Germany already, like for example the Genocide of the American Indians or the Genocide of the black slaves being transported there to. Also, history teaches us that "never" is a word most fondly cherished by shortsighted fools, whom history apparently enjoys proving wrong.
Its not a matter of what's "right", its a matter of what "is".
Absolutely. What "is" is a bunch of murderous idiots in an AC-130 blowing farmers away becasue... they can.
What is "right"... well, "right" is so far away from this position that the AC-130 would be out of fuel 1000000 times before it got there.
Don't pedal that crap with me. I don't support the Iraq invasion, and I support a quick withdrawal. But I don't think soldiers have a moral obligation to be target practice. Unlike you.
Let me get this straight, a crew of an AC-130, with computer controlled guns, anti-missile defenses and what not, were "sitting ducks" at 2 miles away and 4000 feet up, when faced with a bunch of farmers, in the middle of an empty field, armed with a truck and a tractor. Not even an AK-47 in sight. Could you run this by me again? Something is terribly amiss here.
Yes, the civilians know the score. Yes, the US occupation merely generates more enemies of the US. Doesn't change the fact that soldiers will shoot people on suspicious activity.
No, soldiers do not do such things. Soldiers are guided by at least some resemblance of a moral code and honour, even if the price of it is sometimes high to them. Imperial centurions, Nazi sturmtruppen, militant religious wackos or just plain old mercenaries on the other hand, do indeed do whatever it takes, regardless of how repugnant and inhumane. Soldiers and these other maggots are wholly distinct and separate classes of entities and you have just spat in the face of every honour-bound warrior who ever existed by such a moronic insinuation. The fact that you do not comprehend this, nor do apparently your so-called "soldiers" has quite likely something to do with the "generating more enemies" and a "complete loss of moral authority" you enjoy.
You can call whomever you want, including your mother, for all the good that it will do. Godwin's make-believe "law" applies, if anywhere, to discussions not involving demonsrtably totalitarian activities in the news. It is a relic of kinder, gentler, optimistic times, when people really did believe that "it cannot happen here". If you go to USENET, where Godwin's so-called "law" originated, you will find that it is no longer held in high regard, as the real-world events became far too uncomfortably close to those of the early 20th century ones and so if the "law" were to be used, it would lead to an ominous silence everywhere, as virtually every poster on every thread is forced to exmine such historical parallels.
Perheaps the world will set itself right again, and I for one hope that a day will come when Godwin's disarmingly naive approach will be viable again. But not today.
Their estate is still responsible for their debt, just like everyone else. Believe me, I doubt their next of kin will get protection under bankruptcy after a terror attack.
Yea, they are going to confiscate all his sheep in Tora Bora.
Absolutely, I have been telling this to my Comrades for ages!
Vhat you hav to realise is none of tis means anything. So KGB be notified. So they have a look at your bumagi. So they notice nothing be wrong, they go away.
Vhat the problem? It be age old statement that defeats conspiracy theorists, they who convinced the government is going to imprison all good Soviets vhile the real reactionaries run free.
"If you not doing anything vrong, you hav nothing to vorry about."
Tink about it. If someone vere involved in the shifting of huge amount of funds around and planning the next Trotskyte terror campaign, subversive sabotage or bombing, you mean all would not want to know about it? Phew! You be joker.
============
Absolutely, I haf been telling zis to my Komraden for all zis time!
What you haf to realize is none of zis means anyzing. So ze Gestapo is notified. So zey haf a look at your recorden. So zey eventually notice nozing is vrong, and zey go away.
What iz ze problem? Again it comez down to ze age old statement zat defeats ze conspiracy zeorists who are convinced ze government is going to imprizon all good Germans while ze real Communisten und Juden run free.
"Iv you are not doing anyzing vrong, you haf nozing to worry about."
Zink about it. If someone vere involved in ze shifting of huge amounts of funds around und planning ze next Burning of the Reichstag or bombing of ze train tracks carrying our heroic troops in Polen, you mean you all vouldn't vant to know about it? Jaaa. Right.
You are confused. Once police has a solid record of evidence indicating past patterns of behaviour and they simply act as one of many customers of these spammers in order to physically apprehend them, there is no entrapment involved. If this were the only case of these spammers ever doing anything like that, and if the police action were to be their main motivation, it would be entrapment. Otherwise it is just normal police work. The difference is the in the circumstances leading to the final "transaction". Otherwise there would be next to no way for the police to conduct a bust for an on-going operation.
They aren't addicted, they've just been forced to use it for so long that they no longer remember how much better a touchpad is.
Right. That is why when offered, by all the combo pointer system ThinkPads in the last 3 years, the "thrilling", "exciting", "superior" joy of having one's palms move the mouse all over the screen while typing and rendering the "palm-rest" area... well "unrestable", not to mention all the fun of having to move your hands back and forth between the pad and the keyboard all the time, the "orgasmic" experience of having to lift one's finger repeatedly as the accuracy of the touchpad runs counter to its sensitivity, they all promptly disabled the flipping things. So much for being forced.
I fail to see how it isn't entrapment for the Secret Service to do what they did.
That depends on what they did exactly. The article is, as usual, pretty much useless for determining that. It could be that they simply posed as one of the spammers' customers on some IRC channel, in which case there would be no entrapment, as that would satisfy the "predisposition" clause, providing that the police can show the prior pattern of behaviour in court.
In the "thug for hire" example I was discussing, the cop could have used the trick, providing that he already has done the police footwork on the thug and has a way of showing his prior record in court. In which case he can satisfy the "predisposition" clause.
"In the United States, entrapment exists if the accused's main motivation was the offer made by the police. If the accused was more motivated by other concerns, such as financial gain, then it is not entrapment despite police actions."
That means financial gain other than that which the "offer" made by the police consists of. Otherwise the police "offer" could only be of booze, cigarettes, carrots, chewing gum and the like.
when a person is predisposed to commit a crime, offering opportunities to commit the crime is not entrapment
Right. So in the example I was replying to, the supposed "thug for hire" had no predisposition whatsoever to whack random bystanders for free. Only the financial gain offer made by the cop incited him to do so. On the other hand, were he an "enforcer" of some gang, and the cop who posed as a member of that gang pointed out an "enemy" to be whacked, this would perhaps fit the "predisposition" condition as that is the "enforcers's" "job" in the gang.
So as a cop I walk up to you and say "here's 100$ hit this guy for me" and you do it. Who actually created the crime?
The cop, clearly. If I were a thug for hire (which you again seem to imply) I would not have "hit that guy" without pay. Chances are, "that guy" has no enemies who would pay me to do it. Ergo, no crime until the cop showed up.
You *DID NOT* have to do the action. The crime was you hit the person. Who hit the person? You did. Who created the crime of hitting the person? You did. I just don't buy it. "creating a crime" is just a defense strategy and not a realistic argument.
And again, you are conveniently avoiding the issue of motivation. See above.
Might as well say Twinkies enticed you to commit the crime. I mean obviously you're only responsible for your positive actions. All negative actions have an excuse that puts you out of the hot spot.
What is it with your obsession in projecting your own insecurities onto me? I have never proposed commiting any crime here, nor any avoidance of responsibility for it. It is you who seem fixated on it. As I repeatedly explained, the problem is not with individual crooks caught by entrapment, the problem is with the larger societal effect of such activity.
Now, I can see talking to mentally retarded people who may confuse right and wrong (or plain not know the difference at all). That should be a crime because they're likely to go with whatever someone else says specially if they gain their trust.
But a rational well mentally equipped person wouldn't succomb to such peer pressure at all. And if they do then they're just immoral and shouldn't be in society.
None of which has any relevance to the issue at hand.
I mean at $OFFICE here where I work I could probably ask 10 people to break some law (say theft) with the promise of $100 reward. I bet you all 10 will refuse to commit the action.
Should you have done so, and be successful with someone, you would be creating crime, very much so as a policeman trying to entrap someone would.
I bet you I can find 10 people in under an hour in Toronto willing to steal for $100. Where would I find them?
These guys where not just potential spammers, their active spamming is what got the secret service involved in the first place.
My point was not in the reference to the actual incident in this Slashdot article but in response to the poster who was downplaying the very idea of entrapment. In the case of the spammers at hand, it is quite likely that no entrapment took place, if the police merely posed as one of the many customers of the crooks in question.
Nobody could pressure me into doing something like mass piracy (...err.. copyright violations) or spamming or theft without threat of harm or violence.
Heck, I have a chance to not file some money I made as a "sole prop." in Canada last year. I could save $4,000 if I did that. My friends even suggest it wouldn't be noticed. I'm just not stupid enough to do that. I pay the 4K I should pay anyways and I don't run the risk of being caught, convicted and then seriously hampered (e.g. international travel). I guess I'm that sort of rare "honest" breed.
Absolutely irrelevant. You seem to be fixated on morality of the individuals caught by entrapment, instead of looking at the macroscopic societal effects of the actions of law enforcement.
So if you're likely to comit a crime for personal gain at the suggestion of someone else you're probably not a moral person and likely to do it anyways.
Again, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue. The issue is police creating crime for their own convenience.
But the point really is you're responsible for your own actions. Unless the person threatens you (or others) with violence you have no reason to follow through other than you're corrupt.
I, personally, have nothing whatsoever to do with any of this. The discussion was about the societal effects of allowing police to perform entrapment. I find your presumption of my predisposition to crime, and your defensiveness about "being a moral person" (complete with chest-beating examples) to be rather curious. You doth protest too much, methinks.
Reasons entrapment should be illegal
The main reason it is illegal is because it allows police to manufacture their own criminals just so that they can "catch" them for a spiffy press release. It impairs the main function of the police, that is to bring justice to citizens being victims of real crooks.
I never believed in Entrapment. It's one thing to say "steal this money or I'll kill you" but "come on, no one is looking!" is not significant pressure.
You got the wrong idea. The point is not if the person entrapped is a crook who only needs a big enough lure or not, the point is that the law enforcement is not supposed to be actively promoting and encouraging crime. It also is an easy cop-out for them as instead of catching crooks which commited crimes against citizens, now they create their own, thus increasing the overall pool of active criminals (by converting potential ones into active ones).
Consumers basically are saying that they don't want them. What hapened?
Nothing of the sort. Everybody I have ever seen using ThinkPads for a long time is pretty much addicted to the thing. All of the new combo trackpoint/touchpad units at my clients' have the touchpad permanently disabled. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the wants of consumers but with IBM licensing policies to other makers and later, their eventual efforts to adopt the "don't stick out of the crowd" mentality of marketing drones. "Sameness is good. Conformity makes money. Choices confuse customers." etc.
You are talking off topic, again... This is about how a high level developer should code...
No, this is about a supremacy of one paradigm over another. High level? There were complex computer systems around which were not only programmed exclusively in assembly, but the very user interaction with all of their programming consisted of numeric entry, separated with 4 keys: 'program', 'verb', 'noun' and 'enter'. As in Program 27 Enter, Verb 2 Enter, Noun 3 Enter, +00231 Enter, etc. One such computer was called the AGC and was responsible for a trifle thing like landing the man on the Moon. High level? A priest of fuctional programming will be making exactly the same arguments as you are making, something about "high level of functional abstraction". A FORTH coder will be right there with you arguing about how his word dictionary is indeed "high level" in all respects. And so on. This has nothing whatsoever to do with how things are implemented (except to demonstrate the equivalence of all paradigms to each other on a fundamental level). The supremacy of your favourite paradigm is all in your head and it is not a universal nor an objective assesment. Some things are merely easier for some people in one paradigm at the expense of other things.
and the central server running the "hub" doesn't host any files or even index.
Oops right there. Didn't they just take down a bunch of DC hubs last year for "facilitating piracy". Raids, seisures, big announcements and all that jazz...
For certain use cases different paradigms are definitely superior to one another. To imply that large libraries could be implemented without procedural code and just with GOTOs is plain silly.
I am not sure what sort of computer you would be referring to, for as far as I know, every Turing-style machine since sometime around ENIAC had also an equivalemnt of BASIC's GOSUBs. All assembly languages I have ever seen for these Turing-tape-style machines, which we use nearly exclusively, have CALLs in addition to JMPs (or BRANCHs etc). And that was loooong before the term "procedural programming" entered the scene. But even if they don't, the action can be simulated by placing an address in an area indexed by a memory or register stored pointer (label it the "call address") and then jumping to a routine labelled "call" which will place the instruction pointer in another area, indexed by another register (call it the "return stack pointer") increment it and JMP to the specified address, another piece of code labeled "return" will do the reverse if JMPed to. You are wrong, again.
Yeah, I tried that. I have a solar charger that works for that and also AA batteries. I just got to the point where I was hauling my ebook, a GPS (4AA's), a digital camera (4AA's), MP3 player (2AA's), and flashlight (2AA's), and a sack of spares. Got to be I was juggling electronics the whole time. I pared it down to an old paperback, 2 lithium AA's in a cheaper, lower power GPS (with 4 spares), a disposable film camera, and an LED hand-crank flashlight. Much less worry about breaking stuff, much lighter weight-- much happier
Good grief! I was trying to help out someone with a small ebook by the campfire issue, but I see that you were a whole mobile electronics gizmotron central! You didn't need a solar cell, you were in need of one of these!
The point being made is that OOP principles were being used in procedural programming long before OOP principles were formalized. OOP is a formalization and extension of certain long standing techniques that proved to be productive, many of which you almost certainly use even in languages that do not specifically define the
Oh and one more thing, this same reasoning can be applied to any of the other paradigms. Some LISP hack will swear up and down that the OOP folks are merely revisiting functional techniques which were already used by the assembly language programmers in 1961 and that you have simply renamed his beloved lambdas into "methods" and his dynamic function dictionaries into "classes". He will even prove it to you by putting it all in LISP lingo in two million different ways, an example of which is the CLOS system. And so on and so forth. A never ending game of "my paradigm is bigger then your paradigm!". Thanks for playing, but there are no winners possible in this retarded game.
It is a fad to the extent of its ludicrous over-emphasis and present hype. The same thing has happened with procedural programming before, and functional one at one time too. All were, just like OOP in your view, providing "just too many dramatic efficiency gains" to consider anything "older and yucky" for their respective adherents. It was to be recursive functions operating on hardware-assisted CONSes all the way to the glorious future. So OOP will "go away" in the sense of becoming just another tired old paradigm, on par with all the previous ones and all the sheep will move onto some new sparkly, shiny thing of the future. And the cycle will repeat itself. There of course will be devoted adherents of it, swearing up and down by their Javas and what not, right next to the LISP, Pascal and Transputer (remember that revolution which was to change everything?) folks, while the masses will be busy screwing around with their "Quantum Spin Computing Exrtapolation" paradigm, or whatever will that new thing be.
Awesome! I remember exactly the same detailed and well-argued articles being posted against the use of procedural code in the 70s. Procedural code was 'just a paradigm', and pointless as it could always be implemented with the right combination of 'GOTO's
The joke is of course on you. Because it can be indeed so implemented. The assembly language perspective of a program has of course many dis-advantages but it also has great advantages, if deployed in its optimal application. All of these paradigms are equivalent, on the fundamental level, mathematically. As someone has posted on this very thread, the utility of a different paradigm depends on the domain of its application and also on the mode of thinking of the programmer. That is why some can crank out superb applications in C, some others swear by LISP, while at the same time some others need Java to be able to function. Paradigms and languages are tools. Nothing more. They are not omni-potent, nor universally superior to one another.
I'd agree with that, my only issue with your previous comment was that you seemed to be saying that there were very few good applications for OOP which I disagree with, at least with respect to my own admittedly limited experience.
Your impression comes from this misunderstanding: what I said in effect is that there are indeed very few good uses for OOP when compared to the promises made by its proponents. So, yes I said something of the sort, but it was not an absolute statement by any means. OOP is not qualitatively different from all the other paradigms past. Just different. That means that while it is not universally inferior, it is also not universally superior to all the others. But that is not how it was sold to us mere mortals, never you mind pointy-haired bosses. The hype, although still very strong now, would, back then, have you believe that a state of Nirvana was upon us and that every hamster will be able to produce self-maintaining Fortune 500 CRM application by judicious and sporadic farting thanks to the miracles of OOP.
OOP isn't a magic bullet, it won't make any code magically better somehow. If you're a bad programmer who writes crap, then all OOP allows you to do is write more complicated crap. However, OOP can be a fantastic tool when used properly.
Unfortunately, this applies to just about any other paradigm. A good assembly coder will write a massive business application in it (it has been done more then once) and he will be able to maintain it quite well too. This does not however mean that assembly lanugage coding is therefore somehow superior to all other paradigms out there. OOP is merely a view, a perspective on things. Just like a doctor would examine a patient's leg with his eyeballs, feel it with his hands, use plain X-Ray machine, CT scanner, MRI or maybe take a biopsy sample: all being different perspectives of the same object, each suited better to a different task at hand. So is OOP, which fits best particular kinds of use, that of simulating real-life objects or objects closely corresponding to them (certain UI elements etc). But it has little to no advantage over other approaches elsewhere. It is merely practically equivalent to them. Note that all programming paradigms are all equivalent to each other, mathematically. Everything that can be expressed in OOP can be expressed in functional programming or even logical predicates (ala Prolog). All of these end up translated into machine code anyway or else the CPU would be helpless in executing them.
Much like XML for example, many people get caught up in the hype and only learn how to use it, not when to use it, leading to many people trying to squeeze it into places where it just doesn't fit.
Which is my whole point. XML is also merely a perspective on data. And like OOP it has its uses and their anathemas as well. And like OOP it is being overused severely because the marketing hype seems to have defated reason, and abysmal inexperience of some young programmers leads to fashion and "cool" trends ruling supreme where one would think detached, objective analysis should have.
Slashdot Mirror
This is of course a fallacy, assuming that the only valid way to compare anything is at the point of your choosing in the history timeline, the point selected carefully as to make such comparisons as least valid as possible. Because you say so. However, if you had paid attention, most of the comparisons are to the Germany of the early 1930s, well before such wide-scale attrocities occured. And those comparisons appear to be quite valid and frighteningly accurate.
Do not fall into that trap. No matter how bad you think things are in the United States government, they will never approach the level of the Third Reich. Period.
Is that your lucky psychic 8-ball telling you this? Or have you got a time machine in your garage? Because failing these, you have absolutely no way to justify such a statement, other then by sheer power of jingoistic naivette. May I remind you that the US history is replete with activities which are on par with that of Nazi Germany already, like for example the Genocide of the American Indians or the Genocide of the black slaves being transported there to. Also, history teaches us that "never" is a word most fondly cherished by shortsighted fools, whom history apparently enjoys proving wrong.
Absolutely. What "is" is a bunch of murderous idiots in an AC-130 blowing farmers away becasue ... they can.
What is "right"... well, "right" is so far away from this position that the AC-130 would be out of fuel 1000000 times before it got there.
Don't pedal that crap with me. I don't support the Iraq invasion, and I support a quick withdrawal. But I don't think soldiers have a moral obligation to be target practice. Unlike you.
Let me get this straight, a crew of an AC-130, with computer controlled guns, anti-missile defenses and what not, were "sitting ducks" at 2 miles away and 4000 feet up, when faced with a bunch of farmers, in the middle of an empty field, armed with a truck and a tractor. Not even an AK-47 in sight. Could you run this by me again? Something is terribly amiss here.
Yes, the civilians know the score. Yes, the US occupation merely generates more enemies of the US. Doesn't change the fact that soldiers will shoot people on suspicious activity.
No, soldiers do not do such things. Soldiers are guided by at least some resemblance of a moral code and honour, even if the price of it is sometimes high to them. Imperial centurions, Nazi sturmtruppen, militant religious wackos or just plain old mercenaries on the other hand, do indeed do whatever it takes, regardless of how repugnant and inhumane. Soldiers and these other maggots are wholly distinct and separate classes of entities and you have just spat in the face of every honour-bound warrior who ever existed by such a moronic insinuation. The fact that you do not comprehend this, nor do apparently your so-called "soldiers" has quite likely something to do with the "generating more enemies" and a "complete loss of moral authority" you enjoy.
You can call whomever you want, including your mother, for all the good that it will do. Godwin's make-believe "law" applies, if anywhere, to discussions not involving demonsrtably totalitarian activities in the news. It is a relic of kinder, gentler, optimistic times, when people really did believe that "it cannot happen here". If you go to USENET, where Godwin's so-called "law" originated, you will find that it is no longer held in high regard, as the real-world events became far too uncomfortably close to those of the early 20th century ones and so if the "law" were to be used, it would lead to an ominous silence everywhere, as virtually every poster on every thread is forced to exmine such historical parallels.
Perheaps the world will set itself right again, and I for one hope that a day will come when Godwin's disarmingly naive approach will be viable again. But not today.
Yea, they are going to confiscate all his sheep in Tora Bora.
Vhat you hav to realise is none of tis means anything. So KGB be notified. So they have a look at your bumagi. So they notice nothing be wrong, they go away.
Vhat the problem? It be age old statement that defeats conspiracy theorists, they who convinced the government is going to imprison all good Soviets vhile the real reactionaries run free.
"If you not doing anything vrong, you hav nothing to vorry about."
Tink about it. If someone vere involved in the shifting of huge amount of funds around and planning the next Trotskyte terror campaign, subversive sabotage or bombing, you mean all would not want to know about it? Phew! You be joker.
============
Absolutely, I haf been telling zis to my Komraden for all zis time!
What you haf to realize is none of zis means anyzing. So ze Gestapo is notified. So zey haf a look at your recorden. So zey eventually notice nozing is vrong, and zey go away.
What iz ze problem? Again it comez down to ze age old statement zat defeats ze conspiracy zeorists who are convinced ze government is going to imprizon all good Germans while ze real Communisten und Juden run free.
"Iv you are not doing anyzing vrong, you haf nozing to worry about."
Zink about it. If someone vere involved in ze shifting of huge amounts of funds around und planning ze next Burning of the Reichstag or bombing of ze train tracks carrying our heroic troops in Polen, you mean you all vouldn't vant to know about it? Jaaa. Right.
You are confused. Once police has a solid record of evidence indicating past patterns of behaviour and they simply act as one of many customers of these spammers in order to physically apprehend them, there is no entrapment involved. If this were the only case of these spammers ever doing anything like that, and if the police action were to be their main motivation, it would be entrapment. Otherwise it is just normal police work. The difference is the in the circumstances leading to the final "transaction". Otherwise there would be next to no way for the police to conduct a bust for an on-going operation.
Right. That is why when offered, by all the combo pointer system ThinkPads in the last 3 years, the "thrilling", "exciting", "superior" joy of having one's palms move the mouse all over the screen while typing and rendering the "palm-rest" area ... well "unrestable", not to mention all the fun of having to move your hands back and forth between the pad and the keyboard all the time, the "orgasmic" experience of having to lift one's finger repeatedly as the accuracy of the touchpad runs counter to its sensitivity, they all promptly disabled the flipping things. So much for being forced.
That depends on what they did exactly. The article is, as usual, pretty much useless for determining that. It could be that they simply posed as one of the spammers' customers on some IRC channel, in which case there would be no entrapment, as that would satisfy the "predisposition" clause, providing that the police can show the prior pattern of behaviour in court.
In the "thug for hire" example I was discussing, the cop could have used the trick, providing that he already has done the police footwork on the thug and has a way of showing his prior record in court. In which case he can satisfy the "predisposition" clause.
That means financial gain other than that which the "offer" made by the police consists of. Otherwise the police "offer" could only be of booze, cigarettes, carrots, chewing gum and the like.
Right. So in the example I was replying to, the supposed "thug for hire" had no predisposition whatsoever to whack random bystanders for free. Only the financial gain offer made by the cop incited him to do so. On the other hand, were he an "enforcer" of some gang, and the cop who posed as a member of that gang pointed out an "enemy" to be whacked, this would perhaps fit the "predisposition" condition as that is the "enforcers's" "job" in the gang.
The cop, clearly. If I were a thug for hire (which you again seem to imply) I would not have "hit that guy" without pay. Chances are, "that guy" has no enemies who would pay me to do it. Ergo, no crime until the cop showed up.
You *DID NOT* have to do the action. The crime was you hit the person. Who hit the person? You did. Who created the crime of hitting the person? You did. I just don't buy it. "creating a crime" is just a defense strategy and not a realistic argument.
And again, you are conveniently avoiding the issue of motivation. See above.
Might as well say Twinkies enticed you to commit the crime. I mean obviously you're only responsible for your positive actions. All negative actions have an excuse that puts you out of the hot spot.
What is it with your obsession in projecting your own insecurities onto me? I have never proposed commiting any crime here, nor any avoidance of responsibility for it. It is you who seem fixated on it. As I repeatedly explained, the problem is not with individual crooks caught by entrapment, the problem is with the larger societal effect of such activity.
Now, I can see talking to mentally retarded people who may confuse right and wrong (or plain not know the difference at all). That should be a crime because they're likely to go with whatever someone else says specially if they gain their trust. But a rational well mentally equipped person wouldn't succomb to such peer pressure at all. And if they do then they're just immoral and shouldn't be in society.
None of which has any relevance to the issue at hand.
I mean at $OFFICE here where I work I could probably ask 10 people to break some law (say theft) with the promise of $100 reward. I bet you all 10 will refuse to commit the action.
Should you have done so, and be successful with someone, you would be creating crime, very much so as a policeman trying to entrap someone would.
I bet you I can find 10 people in under an hour in Toronto willing to steal for $100. Where would I find them?
Huh?
My point was not in the reference to the actual incident in this Slashdot article but in response to the poster who was downplaying the very idea of entrapment. In the case of the spammers at hand, it is quite likely that no entrapment took place, if the police merely posed as one of the many customers of the crooks in question.
Absolutely irrelevant. You seem to be fixated on morality of the individuals caught by entrapment, instead of looking at the macroscopic societal effects of the actions of law enforcement.
So if you're likely to comit a crime for personal gain at the suggestion of someone else you're probably not a moral person and likely to do it anyways.
Again, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue. The issue is police creating crime for their own convenience.
But the point really is you're responsible for your own actions. Unless the person threatens you (or others) with violence you have no reason to follow through other than you're corrupt.
I, personally, have nothing whatsoever to do with any of this. The discussion was about the societal effects of allowing police to perform entrapment. I find your presumption of my predisposition to crime, and your defensiveness about "being a moral person" (complete with chest-beating examples) to be rather curious. You doth protest too much, methinks.
Reasons entrapment should be illegal
The main reason it is illegal is because it allows police to manufacture their own criminals just so that they can "catch" them for a spiffy press release. It impairs the main function of the police, that is to bring justice to citizens being victims of real crooks.
You got the wrong idea. The point is not if the person entrapped is a crook who only needs a big enough lure or not, the point is that the law enforcement is not supposed to be actively promoting and encouraging crime. It also is an easy cop-out for them as instead of catching crooks which commited crimes against citizens, now they create their own, thus increasing the overall pool of active criminals (by converting potential ones into active ones).
Nothing of the sort. Everybody I have ever seen using ThinkPads for a long time is pretty much addicted to the thing. All of the new combo trackpoint/touchpad units at my clients' have the touchpad permanently disabled. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the wants of consumers but with IBM licensing policies to other makers and later, their eventual efforts to adopt the "don't stick out of the crowd" mentality of marketing drones. "Sameness is good. Conformity makes money. Choices confuse customers." etc.
No, this is about a supremacy of one paradigm over another. High level? There were complex computer systems around which were not only programmed exclusively in assembly, but the very user interaction with all of their programming consisted of numeric entry, separated with 4 keys: 'program', 'verb', 'noun' and 'enter'. As in Program 27 Enter, Verb 2 Enter, Noun 3 Enter, +00231 Enter, etc. One such computer was called the AGC and was responsible for a trifle thing like landing the man on the Moon. High level? A priest of fuctional programming will be making exactly the same arguments as you are making, something about "high level of functional abstraction". A FORTH coder will be right there with you arguing about how his word dictionary is indeed "high level" in all respects. And so on. This has nothing whatsoever to do with how things are implemented (except to demonstrate the equivalence of all paradigms to each other on a fundamental level). The supremacy of your favourite paradigm is all in your head and it is not a universal nor an objective assesment. Some things are merely easier for some people in one paradigm at the expense of other things.
Oops right there. Didn't they just take down a bunch of DC hubs last year for "facilitating piracy". Raids, seisures, big announcements and all that jazz...
I am not sure what sort of computer you would be referring to, for as far as I know, every Turing-style machine since sometime around ENIAC had also an equivalemnt of BASIC's GOSUBs. All assembly languages I have ever seen for these Turing-tape-style machines, which we use nearly exclusively, have CALLs in addition to JMPs (or BRANCHs etc). And that was loooong before the term "procedural programming" entered the scene. But even if they don't, the action can be simulated by placing an address in an area indexed by a memory or register stored pointer (label it the "call address") and then jumping to a routine labelled "call" which will place the instruction pointer in another area, indexed by another register (call it the "return stack pointer") increment it and JMP to the specified address, another piece of code labeled "return" will do the reverse if JMPed to. You are wrong, again.
Good grief! I was trying to help out someone with a small ebook by the campfire issue, but I see that you were a whole mobile electronics gizmotron central! You didn't need a solar cell, you were in need of one of these!
Google for "solar phone charger" or similar and your problem is solved. The smaller models can be velcroed to the top of your backpack.
Oh and one more thing, this same reasoning can be applied to any of the other paradigms. Some LISP hack will swear up and down that the OOP folks are merely revisiting functional techniques which were already used by the assembly language programmers in 1961 and that you have simply renamed his beloved lambdas into "methods" and his dynamic function dictionaries into "classes". He will even prove it to you by putting it all in LISP lingo in two million different ways, an example of which is the CLOS system. And so on and so forth. A never ending game of "my paradigm is bigger then your paradigm!". Thanks for playing, but there are no winners possible in this retarded game.
It is a fad to the extent of its ludicrous over-emphasis and present hype. The same thing has happened with procedural programming before, and functional one at one time too. All were, just like OOP in your view, providing "just too many dramatic efficiency gains" to consider anything "older and yucky" for their respective adherents. It was to be recursive functions operating on hardware-assisted CONSes all the way to the glorious future. So OOP will "go away" in the sense of becoming just another tired old paradigm, on par with all the previous ones and all the sheep will move onto some new sparkly, shiny thing of the future. And the cycle will repeat itself. There of course will be devoted adherents of it, swearing up and down by their Javas and what not, right next to the LISP, Pascal and Transputer (remember that revolution which was to change everything?) folks, while the masses will be busy screwing around with their "Quantum Spin Computing Exrtapolation" paradigm, or whatever will that new thing be.
The joke is of course on you. Because it can be indeed so implemented. The assembly language perspective of a program has of course many dis-advantages but it also has great advantages, if deployed in its optimal application. All of these paradigms are equivalent, on the fundamental level, mathematically. As someone has posted on this very thread, the utility of a different paradigm depends on the domain of its application and also on the mode of thinking of the programmer. That is why some can crank out superb applications in C, some others swear by LISP, while at the same time some others need Java to be able to function. Paradigms and languages are tools. Nothing more. They are not omni-potent, nor universally superior to one another.
Your impression comes from this misunderstanding: what I said in effect is that there are indeed very few good uses for OOP when compared to the promises made by its proponents. So, yes I said something of the sort, but it was not an absolute statement by any means. OOP is not qualitatively different from all the other paradigms past. Just different. That means that while it is not universally inferior, it is also not universally superior to all the others. But that is not how it was sold to us mere mortals, never you mind pointy-haired bosses. The hype, although still very strong now, would, back then, have you believe that a state of Nirvana was upon us and that every hamster will be able to produce self-maintaining Fortune 500 CRM application by judicious and sporadic farting thanks to the miracles of OOP.
Unfortunately, this applies to just about any other paradigm. A good assembly coder will write a massive business application in it (it has been done more then once) and he will be able to maintain it quite well too. This does not however mean that assembly lanugage coding is therefore somehow superior to all other paradigms out there. OOP is merely a view, a perspective on things. Just like a doctor would examine a patient's leg with his eyeballs, feel it with his hands, use plain X-Ray machine, CT scanner, MRI or maybe take a biopsy sample: all being different perspectives of the same object, each suited better to a different task at hand. So is OOP, which fits best particular kinds of use, that of simulating real-life objects or objects closely corresponding to them (certain UI elements etc). But it has little to no advantage over other approaches elsewhere. It is merely practically equivalent to them. Note that all programming paradigms are all equivalent to each other, mathematically. Everything that can be expressed in OOP can be expressed in functional programming or even logical predicates (ala Prolog). All of these end up translated into machine code anyway or else the CPU would be helpless in executing them.
Much like XML for example, many people get caught up in the hype and only learn how to use it, not when to use it, leading to many people trying to squeeze it into places where it just doesn't fit.
Which is my whole point. XML is also merely a perspective on data. And like OOP it has its uses and their anathemas as well. And like OOP it is being overused severely because the marketing hype seems to have defated reason, and abysmal inexperience of some young programmers leads to fashion and "cool" trends ruling supreme where one would think detached, objective analysis should have.