In that case, then, would it be legal to simply hurl a few thousand unsolicited messages at every unmoderated USENET group every hour for a week, on the basis that nobody is *forced* to read them?
There's more ways to harrass than one. Casting aspersions on a fellow in USENET, for instance, can lead to those messages being not only visible to one's coworkers, but also archived through Deja and such.
And to drive somebody away who *was* a frequent patron of a group is also not exactly kosher. That's still denial of service.
It's not so much targetted at USENET as at a single person, in much the same way that somebody making harrassing calls overseas could likely be targetted by his home jurisdiction depending on local legality.
If the defendant moves to a different jurisdiction, the order might not be valid anymore.
Yes, particularly where threats of violence have been involved...
It would seem to be basically the same thing as any other order forbidding contact for some duration, regardless of reason.
Would the prevailing attitude be different if, say, the online vendettas were carried out through the mail? Or in Letters to the Editor for some major newspaper? If memory serves, making threats in either case is frowned upon, legally... and the solution that the courts turn to is not to tell the victims to move or cancel their subscription.
* thrust/turn L/turn R/reverse-thrust for steering, plus hyperspace * torps/phasers for firepower, ea. costing energy * separate, transferrable weapon/energy power?
and a star w/ a planet orbitting it, perhaps w/ gravity?
Mmmmmmm. That was GOOD stuff.
Hmmm. Wonder if the source for that version is available... the AI opponents were both a little silly to the point that you could beat them firing just once in the game, or sometimes exactly zero times (with the sun/planet on)...
Fine. If you need primary sources, there's the decent collection "Essential Works of Socialism", edited by Irving Howe, which should enlighten you as to the intent of Marx and friends.
In a capitalist system, ability tends to be spotted. Those who take risks may quite often fail (as do most new businesses), but usually not catastrophically; some find that they can provide new services (such as Federal Express, an idea mocked by the professor who graded the paper...), goods, and so forth, and thrive. Others take relatively few risks, and their station in life may remain fairly stable -- but that's their choice. For instance, if I wanted to, there's nothing in any governmental system here that prevents me from leaving grad school and trying to found a startup. It might fail, leaving me worse of fiscally but possibly wiser; or it might leave me significantly wealthier, and with more resources to continue in that direction. That's my choice.
In a Communist system as per the original works of Marx and Engels, there is no such incentive because *equality* is woven so massively into its canvas. The collective is intended to provide for all equally, meaning that those who might nominally try harder get absolutely nothing extra in exchange; those who shirk, get nothing less. Particularly on a national scale, there's thus less reason to achieve unless sufficient others do as well. How, then, do you propose to find those of better ability?
That's correct even if you accept Marx's premises, which I do not. He assumes that capitalism leads to concentration of wealth combined with a lack of mobility; but do we not see economic mobility today, even in the US (one of the nations closest to the capitalism of Smith)? We see individuals becoming wealthy... or poor, depending on their actions, and it's not even tied to their politics.
Instead of a dichotomy between a proletariat and a bourgeousie, we have had and still have a genuine middle-class that has every reason *not* to revolt, thanks to this mobility. Examine, if you will, a Forbes list of the richest folks in the nation. There aren't that many scions of the wealthy who maintain their fortunes despite incompetence or laziness, versus having actually made or expanded their holdings.
We also have the *creation* of wealth, instead of plain circulation; this reduces the effects of concentration. We see this in that inflation appears to be minimal at the same time that the national economy is booming enough that having a little more unemployment would actually cheer the stock market... much to the detriment of those who felt the two were irrevocably, inversely bound.
Carbon dating, AFAIK, is remotely accurate only when you're talking at least on the order of thousands of years ago.
DNA, on the other hand, is not necessarily intact for that period of time, unless it's protected from exposure... at least that's the impression I've got.
I'm not advocating simply buying based on a review; but what I am saying is that there's little reason to be flying blind here. Between demos, multiple reviews, and USENET, there's usually a pretty decent amount of information there.
If the publisher *isn't* willing to provide a functional demo and otherwise show off their product, then perhaps it's simply not worth it; if they won't even go that far, they're probably not going to support the product. There's a lot of games out there and not that much time.
For instance, with wargames, one can consult various grognard sites about the level of detail. For instance, I used to play quite a bit of "Close Combat 2"; one site included detailed discussions about tips, bugs (a variety, some quite irritating...), gameplay details, accuracy (down to whether the amounts of ammunition carried by each soldier seemed a bit low, or about the availability of fragmentation grenades...) and so forth. Someone who didn't have that game might be able to at least get a good impression of what it's like.
Kids without spendable cash? Better tell all the advertisers, then, that they tend to focus on the wrong people...
At least, there are reviews. Plenty of 'em, in fact, some of whom will at least occasionally mention things like how a game might lack an in-level save feature, or whether any crashes occured or whatever, or whether they feel that you should wait until a patch is released. I've read some pretty harsh reviews at times; combine that with personal tastes -- such as a preference for turn-based strategy -- and the field might be narrowed significantly.
One can also monitor USENET. For instance, on one SMAC group, you could find out that an expansion pack apparently disables the ability to start the game w/o the CD in the drive, and that the balance may have been upset...
Most respected? {shrug} Depends on your audience. Talonsoft (turn-based wargames), SSI (ditto, and the "Gold Box" series...), Jane's (military simulators), Blizzard (RTSgs)...
Well, almost everything has been pirated on this campus, but they're not all equally popular (at least judging from what I recall seeing when in the dorms.)
"Doom" found itself in the PC clusters before its official release; heck, there were even USENET bug reports/support pleas for the registered version ('tho not from CMU, IIRC) -- not smart when the developers read the NGs...
"Doom II", then, had a fairly receptive audience who already knew what id was capable of beyond "Commander Keen"-type games; and, for whatever reason, FPS games are were, are, and probably will remain popular -- witness "Half-Life", the "Quake" series, and so forth. Some of them are likely still popular; OTOH, I'm not sure I ever saw a "Duke Nukem" game in the PC clusters, suggesting that it just didn't appeal to the local FPS fans as much.
Same thing for the RTS market -- I've seen far more *craft here than, say, C&C. Why? Presumably taste. Piracy probably didn't boost C&C's much here, and may have hurt 'em (if people decided that they *wouldn't* buy the game... heh.)
*shrug*
It all suggests that it's not completely one-way; that if it's not that popular, it might not be pirated as much. And if you're cynical, you may consider that piracy can also depress sales by letting people know early when your product bites...
Do you pay for movie and concert tickets, or always sneak in?
Do you break into museums, just to see the exhibits for free?
Do you believe everybody deserves everything they want, for free?
There's no fundamental right to owning software -- in fact, there are laws against theft going the opposite direction. If you choose to spend your money in other ways, fine -- you can. There's still no right to claim that you wouldn't *buy* the software, and therefore aren't hurting anybody by *stealing* a license to it.
Money? The members of the BSA aren't in the business out of the kindness of their hearts, and it's arguably not in their interests to be ripped off.
They can likely pursue the big distributors -- such as folks who spam with ads for illegitimate CD's, or those who distribute "w4r3z" on their own sites, through FTP, HTTP or SMB -- through other means, since they're more obvious. A relatively stable, high profile increases the chances of detection.
OTOH, IRC person-to-person transactions are less likely to be logged and harder to note unless you've actually got either help from the admins, or somebody else watching at the time.
I'd frankly be surprised if industry folks weren't watching IRC and USENET for years, or at least occasionally checking the Moron Muster (when that was still being maintained). This helps one nail the clueless folks on the cheap...
I believe it's pretty well documented that the KS incident involved panicking (poorly-trained, perhaps?) Nat'l Guardsmen under continual harrassment by the students -- that they were NOT earlier ordered to butcher anybody who stood in their way.
The PRC can hardly claim that it's armored columns were panicking, or that they were moving on the Square at nighttime on a simple mission of containment.
I think you mean 'oligarchy'; it's hard for a 'plutocracy' to exist on barely-existent wealth.
Because in a pseudo-Communist state that never had a well-developed economy, there's not that much to steal unless, say, you loot the wealth for formerly succesful countries.
Anything can happen if you anger the Nine! They've got heavy armor, graviton guns, hordes of Disciples with plasma lances, and nasty spider bots, so the carnage could be terrible... and when was the last time you saw a lawyer with a nuclear grenade?
Eh?
Not those Nine?
Ooooops.
But more seriously:
* Perhaps tossing out whatever verdict that hasn't yet been delivered. * Perhaps letting the verdict stand, w/o comment. * Perhaps letting it stand, and explaining why.
It's all going to depend on what's hashed out in Jackson's courtroom; if it goes to the Supreme Court, that'll be for appeals only, if I read it correctly.
You're not telling the whole story. Recall that the password "guessing" was very limited -- "mp3", "password" were tried... as were any passwords explicitly listed in shared, public README files.
If a password's listed in a file, or it's the folder name, or is another giveaway, it's clearly intended to be publicly shared. Remember that the default directory permission is: NOT shared, and that there are far more private ways to transfer files.
The issue is not really whether other companies get to evade the APIs, but whether MS's current products do.
If, say, MS Office somehow benefits through Windows functionality that _isn't_ disclosed to non-MS developers, then that's arguably a tad unfair. Any breakup into multiple divisions would just about have to come along with a consent decree prohibiting such behavior.
An individual helping to lead a massacre of a village wasn't looked upon too kindly by authorities who'd be under pressure if they didn't prosecute and convict. Not that this seems to happen with heads of state...
True, 'tho, it's pretty rare for anybody from a superpower or former superpower to get nailed thusly.
The communications infrastructure might be a reasonable target. There's the one-way methods (typically state-controlled broadcast media, used for spreading propaganda and mobilizing people), and the two-way methods (phones, radio, computers...).
If you can disable the first -- which might very well require a physical attack -- then you might increase uncertainty among the civillians.
If you can disable the second, you may be able to hamper such things as civillians reporting information to their government (civillian spotters warning about inbound aircraft, say, in the event that radar's being jammed/bombed; or reporting troop movements in the event of an actual invasion); orders from the government outside (such as summoning staff who aren't on-base for whatever reason, and any logistics that aren't completely w/n military lines), and so forth.
I'm figuring that radio communications can be triangulated, and the phone grid either hit physically (exchanges generally don't run away), or flooded. Network communications tend to go on leased phone lines, as well, so that may be a 2-for-1: voice/data.
In theory, one could nail enough communications infrastructure to make confusing and isolating an opposing force much easier...
Was it actually a declared war? I honestly don't remember any such vote by Congress...
In any event, I'd think the (im)practicality would be more of a consideration than ethics. There's little reason that their defense infrastructure would allow, say, Telnet access from the rest of the world even if it were based on TCP/IP; hence, (physically) attacking would be the main way to DoS...
...concerning ethics, by the time you're committed to airstrikes and launching cruise missiles, it's a little late to be worrying about the whether you're being "nice" to their computers.
It's *theoretically* possible that they honestly believe that they haven't violated the law, but that may not be the most expedient way to go compared to a Clintonesque response -- "We did wrong, we're sorry, and let's move on."
If they stonewall, and this drags on and depresses the stock price, I wonder if any lawyers would pounce.
I'm frankly bothered by the fact that the Government seemingly chose to focus on the inclusion of IE with Windows.
Why? Because that's implicitly opening the door to regulation of software engineering; and that's a very dangerous Pandora's box, indeed. Is it legitimate to ever integrate software, or to give away your software for free? If your product subsequently takes off, will you have to undo the integration to avoid illegally mis-using your new-found power? If a product shipped with a shared library that other applications find useful, is that integration or no?
I'd have absolutely no problem with the Government coming down hard on Microsoft if they find violations of a consent decree that don't lead to the above, or if they investigated and found that Windows did indeed have code that deliberately broke on competitor's products to prevent interoperability, or if they established pricing schemes that punished OEMs that refused to buy into their whole product line. Those are all clearly anti-competitive business practices that would probably be barred by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. I'm just leery of the Government deciding what software can have what features...
Slashdot Mirror
*shrug*
In that case, then, would it be legal to simply hurl a few thousand unsolicited messages at every unmoderated USENET group every hour for a week, on the basis that nobody is *forced* to read them?
There's more ways to harrass than one. Casting aspersions on a fellow in USENET, for instance, can lead to those messages being not only visible to one's coworkers, but also archived through Deja and such.
And to drive somebody away who *was* a frequent patron of a group is also not exactly kosher. That's still denial of service.
It's not so much targetted at USENET as at a single person, in much the same way that somebody making harrassing calls overseas could likely be targetted by his home jurisdiction depending on local legality.
If the defendant moves to a different jurisdiction, the order might not be valid anymore.
Yes, particularly where threats of violence have been involved...
It would seem to be basically the same thing as any other order forbidding contact for some duration, regardless of reason.
Would the prevailing attitude be different if, say, the online vendettas were carried out through the mail? Or in Letters to the Editor for some major newspaper? If memory serves, making threats in either case is frowned upon, legally... and the solution that the courts turn to is not to tell the victims to move or cancel their subscription.
Oh yes. ;-)
The version with:
* thrust/turn L/turn R/reverse-thrust
for steering, plus hyperspace
* torps/phasers for firepower, ea. costing
energy
* separate, transferrable weapon/energy power?
and a star w/ a planet orbitting it, perhaps w/
gravity?
Mmmmmmm. That was GOOD stuff.
Hmmm. Wonder if the source for that version is available... the AI opponents were both a little silly to the point that you could beat them firing just once in the game, or sometimes exactly zero times (with the sun/planet on)...
Fine. If you need primary sources, there's the decent collection "Essential Works of Socialism", edited by Irving Howe, which should enlighten you as to the intent of Marx and friends.
In a capitalist system, ability tends to be spotted. Those who take risks may quite often fail (as do most new businesses), but usually not catastrophically; some find that they can provide new services (such as Federal Express, an idea mocked by the professor who graded the paper...), goods, and so forth, and thrive. Others take relatively few risks, and their station in life may remain fairly stable -- but that's their choice. For instance, if I wanted to, there's nothing in any governmental system here that prevents me from leaving grad school and trying to found a startup. It might fail, leaving me worse of fiscally but possibly wiser; or it might leave me significantly wealthier, and with more resources to continue in that direction. That's my choice.
In a Communist system as per the original works of Marx and Engels, there is no such incentive because *equality* is woven so massively into its canvas. The collective is intended to provide for all equally, meaning that those who might nominally try harder get absolutely nothing extra in exchange; those who shirk, get nothing less. Particularly on a national scale, there's thus less reason to achieve unless sufficient others do as well. How, then, do you propose to find those of better ability?
That's correct even if you accept Marx's premises, which I do not. He assumes that capitalism leads to concentration of wealth combined with a lack of mobility; but do we not see economic mobility today, even in the US (one of the nations closest to the capitalism of Smith)? We see individuals becoming wealthy... or poor, depending on their actions, and it's not even tied to their politics.
Instead of a dichotomy between a proletariat and a bourgeousie, we have had and still have a genuine middle-class that has every reason *not* to revolt, thanks to this mobility. Examine, if you will, a Forbes list of the richest folks in the nation. There aren't that many scions of the wealthy who maintain their fortunes despite incompetence or laziness, versus having actually made or expanded their holdings.
We also have the *creation* of wealth, instead of plain circulation; this reduces the effects of concentration. We see this in that inflation appears to be minimal at the same time that the national economy is booming enough that having a little more unemployment would actually cheer the stock market... much to the detriment of those who felt the two were irrevocably, inversely bound.
That's why.
They mention both DNA tests and carbon dating.
Carbon dating, AFAIK, is remotely accurate only when you're talking at least on the order of thousands of years ago.
DNA, on the other hand, is not necessarily intact for that period of time, unless it's protected from exposure... at least that's the impression I've got.
So how old do they think it is?
I'm not advocating simply buying based on a review; but what I am saying is that there's little reason to be flying blind here. Between demos, multiple reviews, and USENET, there's usually a pretty decent amount of information there.
If the publisher *isn't* willing to provide a functional demo and otherwise show off their product, then perhaps it's simply not worth it; if they won't even go that far, they're probably not going to support the product. There's a lot of games out there and not that much time.
For instance, with wargames, one can consult various grognard sites about the level of detail. For instance, I used to play quite a bit of "Close Combat 2"; one site included detailed discussions about tips, bugs (a variety, some quite irritating...), gameplay details, accuracy (down to whether the amounts of ammunition carried by each soldier seemed a bit low, or about the availability of fragmentation grenades...) and so forth. Someone who didn't have that game might be able to at least get a good impression of what it's like.
No, no, no. It's:
!!!!! W4r3Z d00000dz !!!!!
3l33t FtP w4r3z 51t3! 5 GB 0f W4R3z 0nl1n3 @ 127.0.0.1! C0nn3cT3d bY 4 T3 f0r ph45t d0wnl04d5!
W4nT 1n? R3plY t0 tH15 M3554g3 w1tH y0uR 3-m41l 4dDr355 f0r 4 l0g1n/p455w0rD.
;-)
Kids without spendable cash? Better tell all the advertisers, then, that they tend to focus on the wrong people...
At least, there are reviews. Plenty of 'em, in fact, some of whom will at least occasionally mention things like how a game might lack an in-level save feature, or whether any crashes occured or whatever, or whether they feel that you should wait until a patch is released. I've read some pretty harsh reviews at times; combine that with personal tastes -- such as a preference for turn-based strategy -- and the field might be narrowed significantly.
One can also monitor USENET. For instance, on one SMAC group, you could find out that an expansion pack apparently disables the ability to start the game w/o the CD in the drive, and that the balance may have been upset...
Most respected? {shrug} Depends on your audience. Talonsoft (turn-based wargames), SSI (ditto, and the "Gold Box" series...), Jane's (military simulators), Blizzard (RTSgs)...
Well, almost everything has been pirated on this campus, but they're not all equally popular (at least judging from what I recall seeing when in the dorms.)
"Doom" found itself in the PC clusters before its official release; heck, there were even USENET bug reports/support pleas for the registered version ('tho not from CMU, IIRC) -- not smart when the developers read the NGs...
"Doom II", then, had a fairly receptive audience who already knew what id was capable of beyond "Commander Keen"-type games; and, for whatever reason, FPS games are were, are, and probably will remain popular -- witness "Half-Life", the "Quake" series, and so forth. Some of them are likely still popular; OTOH, I'm not sure I ever saw a "Duke Nukem" game in the PC clusters, suggesting that it just didn't appeal to the local FPS fans as much.
Same thing for the RTS market -- I've seen far more *craft here than, say, C&C. Why? Presumably taste. Piracy probably didn't boost C&C's much here, and may have hurt 'em (if people decided that they *wouldn't* buy the game... heh.)
*shrug*
It all suggests that it's not completely one-way; that if it's not that popular, it might not be pirated as much. And if you're cynical, you may consider that piracy can also depress sales by letting people know early when your product bites...
Do you pay for movie and concert tickets, or always sneak in?
Do you break into museums, just to see the exhibits for free?
Do you believe everybody deserves everything they want, for free?
There's no fundamental right to owning software -- in fact, there are laws against theft going the opposite direction. If you choose to spend your money in other ways, fine -- you can. There's still no right to claim that you wouldn't *buy* the software, and therefore aren't hurting anybody by *stealing* a license to it.
Which right were you talking 'bout here?
Money? The members of the BSA aren't in the business out of the kindness of their hearts, and it's arguably not in their interests to be ripped off.
They can likely pursue the big distributors -- such as folks who spam with ads for illegitimate CD's, or those who distribute "w4r3z" on their own sites, through FTP, HTTP or SMB -- through other means, since they're more obvious. A relatively stable, high profile increases the chances of detection.
OTOH, IRC person-to-person transactions are less likely to be logged and harder to note unless you've actually got either help from the admins, or somebody else watching at the time.
I'd frankly be surprised if industry folks weren't watching IRC and USENET for years, or at least occasionally checking the Moron Muster (when that was still being maintained). This helps one nail the clueless folks on the cheap...
Here's a Q for you:
Who gave the orders?
I believe it's pretty well documented that the KS incident involved panicking (poorly-trained, perhaps?) Nat'l Guardsmen under continual harrassment by the students -- that they were NOT earlier ordered to butcher anybody who stood in their way.
The PRC can hardly claim that it's armored columns were panicking, or that they were moving on the Square at nighttime on a simple mission of containment.
I think you mean 'oligarchy'; it's hard for a 'plutocracy' to exist on barely-existent wealth.
Because in a pseudo-Communist state that never had a well-developed economy, there's not that much to steal unless, say, you loot the wealth for formerly succesful countries.
Anything can happen if you anger the Nine! They've got heavy armor, graviton guns, hordes of Disciples with plasma lances, and nasty spider bots, so the carnage could be terrible... and when was the last time you saw a lawyer with a nuclear grenade?
Eh?
Not those Nine?
Ooooops.
But more seriously:
* Perhaps tossing out whatever verdict that hasn't yet been delivered.
* Perhaps letting the verdict stand, w/o comment.
* Perhaps letting it stand, and explaining why.
It's all going to depend on what's hashed out in Jackson's courtroom; if it goes to the Supreme Court, that'll be for appeals only, if I read it correctly.
As if your own post isn't biased?
You're not telling the whole story. Recall that the password "guessing" was very limited -- "mp3", "password" were tried... as were any passwords explicitly listed in shared, public README files.
If a password's listed in a file, or it's the folder name, or is another giveaway, it's clearly intended to be publicly shared. Remember that the default directory permission is: NOT shared, and that there are far more private ways to transfer files.
The issue is not really whether other companies get to evade the APIs, but whether MS's current products do.
If, say, MS Office somehow benefits through Windows functionality that _isn't_ disclosed to non-MS developers, then that's arguably a tad unfair. Any breakup into multiple divisions would just about have to come along with a consent decree prohibiting such behavior.
...but the purpose was nominally the same, no?
An individual helping to lead a massacre of a village wasn't looked upon too kindly by authorities who'd be under pressure if they didn't prosecute and convict. Not that this seems to happen with heads of state...
True, 'tho, it's pretty rare for anybody from a superpower or former superpower to get nailed thusly.
Hrmmmm.
The communications infrastructure might be a reasonable target. There's the one-way methods (typically state-controlled broadcast media, used for spreading propaganda and mobilizing people), and the two-way methods (phones, radio, computers...).
If you can disable the first -- which might very well require a physical attack -- then you might increase uncertainty among the civillians.
If you can disable the second, you may be able to hamper such things as civillians reporting information to their government (civillian spotters warning about inbound aircraft, say, in the event that radar's being jammed/bombed; or reporting troop movements in the event of an actual invasion); orders from the government outside (such as summoning staff who aren't on-base for whatever reason, and any logistics that aren't completely w/n military lines), and so forth.
I'm figuring that radio communications can be triangulated, and the phone grid either hit physically (exchanges generally don't run away), or flooded. Network communications tend to go on leased phone lines, as well, so that may be a 2-for-1: voice/data.
In theory, one could nail enough communications infrastructure to make confusing and isolating an opposing force much easier...
Here's a site that includes the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civillian Persons in Time of War, in addition to other interesting documents.
Lt. William Calley.
'nuff said.
Was it actually a declared war? I honestly don't remember any such vote by Congress...
In any event, I'd think the (im)practicality would be more of a consideration than ethics. There's little reason that their defense infrastructure would allow, say, Telnet access from the rest of the world even if it were based on TCP/IP; hence, (physically) attacking would be the main way to DoS...
...concerning ethics, by the time you're committed to airstrikes and launching cruise missiles, it's a little late to be worrying about the whether you're being "nice" to their computers.
{shrug} Their loss.
It's *theoretically* possible that they honestly believe that they haven't violated the law, but that may not be the most expedient way to go compared to a Clintonesque response -- "We did wrong, we're sorry, and let's move on."
If they stonewall, and this drags on and depresses the stock price, I wonder if any lawyers would pounce.
Yes.
I'm frankly bothered by the fact that the Government seemingly chose to focus on the inclusion of IE with Windows.
Why? Because that's implicitly opening the door to regulation of software engineering; and that's a very dangerous Pandora's box, indeed. Is it legitimate to ever integrate software, or to give away your software for free? If your product subsequently takes off, will you have to undo the integration to avoid illegally mis-using your new-found power? If a product shipped with a shared library that other applications find useful, is that integration or no?
I'd have absolutely no problem with the Government coming down hard on Microsoft if they find violations of a consent decree that don't lead to the above, or if they investigated and found that Windows did indeed have code that deliberately broke on competitor's products to prevent interoperability, or if they established pricing schemes that punished OEMs that refused to buy into their whole product line. Those are all clearly anti-competitive business practices that would probably be barred by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. I'm just leery of the Government deciding what software can have what features...