Eventually "you can't use the internet" will be like "You can't use electricity."
Perhaps so. But if sufficient harm has been done and it can be demonstrated that the offender is likely to repeat it, isn't the sentence appropriate?
Consider the analogy of a recidivist drunk driver. Some will argue that banning him from ever again driving a car after being convicted a third time for DWI is harsh and cruel, because it condemns him to using only his feet or a bicycle for transport in a town without public transportation. But if he drives again and kills someone, or even just does significant property damage, there is significant societal harm that is done. The penalty exacted against him may cost him a lot, but it protects society from him.
The various jerks who write these viruses that fill my inbox with crap, or who intentionally muck up the Internet in other ways, are causing expensive and troublesome problems. If they're banned from the Internet a while and it causes them some hardship, well, too bad.
As for the argument that criminals won't respect court orders, I might remind everyone that this is why they invented jails.
Where did they get the Windows source code to examine? If they didn't get the code, then how do they know they found all the bugs in Windows?
There's also the question of defining a bug. Sometimes, one person's feature is another person's bug. Take allowing scripts in email, like Outlook Express used to do. (May still do, for all I know.)
Those who have infant children can fight back -- with a screaming baby and a poopy diaper. Those of us whose children have outgrown that will just let them play their headphones at the usual volume. The rest of you can suffer.
30-40 years ago, people were fussing about spending all those billions of dollars to put men in space when there were people starving on earth. Now we face the possibility (hopefully remote) of men starving in space.
To the best of my recollection, some of them used genuine Virginia driver's licenses, which were obtained fraudulently. The database didn't have a field for boxcutter knives, or for a note warning airlines to keep the cockpit door locked.
All this hullaballoo (sp?) about encoding information in driver's licenses, etc., misses the point. The purpose of an identification card is to give the person/machine examining it assurance (to the required level of certainty) that the person presenting it is who he says he is. However far you want to go in determining that, it doesn't do a thing to enhance national or provincial security, nor does it do anything to tell the state trooper who just pulled you over that you have a sawed-off shotgun under your seat or a USB disk drive in your pocket.
Holography and RFID make the document harder to counterfeit. Some biometric information, like the color of the person's eyes, height, weight, etc., is useful in establishing that the bearer is the person belonging to the ID.
Nonetheless, none of this is worth a whit if the ID is issued fraudulently. Here in Virginia, we had a problem with DMV clerks issuing driver's licenses to anyone for the price of a bribe, as well as notaries public who would vouch for anyone for a fee. The licenses themselves were machine-readable, with some kind of special seal on them that would be difficult to counterfeit, and included the information I mentioned above. A policeman could be reasonably sure the driver is the person in the photo. But, at bottom, because the controls on the license issuing process were bad, and the identification accepted by DMV was so weak, it was possible for anyone to get a real Virginia license or ID card that would be acceptable as genuine anywhere.
Actually, it doesn't look ungrammatical to me (minor in English), but it doesn't say what I believe the writer meant to say.
BTW (to get back on topic), I hope the malicious hackers will be better coders. MSIE reported an unterminated string, and I didn't get it to work on Netscape 7.2 with the popup blocker on. (Or maybe it worked, and I'm being monitored right now.)
I cannot imagine an artist saying I cannot wait to quit painting or drawing...
Plenty of writers (a type of artist) say that writing is hard work, and plenty of artists have quit when it wasn't fulfilling anymore. Tom Lehrer, for example, had lots of fun writing and performing some really great songs, and then went back to being a college professor.
But it's not just a question of losing one's muse or experiencing burnout. Too much of anything is too much. For example, by the time I get home from work, I don't want coffee anymore, I want beer.
Finally, I have other stuff to do than mess with a computer. When I want to balance my checkbook, so I can pay my bills, I don't want to debug the accounting program.
I have been laid off twice from "secure" full-time employment, and I'm convinced there is no job security except the security you make for yourself. Treat each contract or job as an opportunity to make money, in which you will invest your time, forgoing other opportunities, in the same way as investing in a stock or other asset. Evaluate it fully before you decide to plunk your assets down.
Beyond that, keep your debt low, and save as much money as you can put away. If you and your spouse both work, that is even more security. If you have or plan to have kids, try to arrange for one of you to work part-time. In my case, because we had the cars paid-for and a mortgage that could be paid by one of our full-time incomes, we weathered a year-long layoff with only minor lifestyle adjustments.
Good luck!
but here's a tip: TAX THE FLAMIN PETROL PER LITRE!
That'll never work here. We don't burn petrol, we burn gasoline and a little diesel. And we don't measure it in litres or even liters, but in gallons. Never mind the fact that Congress committed us to convert to S.I. almost 30 years ago. It's just part of our mentality. We believe because we are Americans, we are not bound by common sense, economics, or even by the rules of physics, and that for any new, expensive technology, there is a problem to be solved with it.
Actually, in some places, it would be very easy to implement without GPS. In many areas of the U.S. -- including the congested areas where people are wont to drive fuel-efficient cars like the Prius, there is a mandatory exhaust emissions test, usually every two years. In Virginia, where I live, the results of the emissions test are sent electronically to the state DMV. I have to take that test, or I cannot register my car. It would be a simple matter for the mechanic performing the test to read the odometer and to verify that it had not been tampered with, inspecting some hypothetical seal. For all I know, he may already collect the mileage information -- I don't have the inspection certificate in front of me. Voila! The information needed for collecting the tax is available, without GPS, and my tinfoil hat cannot protect me.
Mind you, I'm not arguing for distance-based taxation -- just pointing out that it can be done cheaply, without satellites.
E.g., traffic congestions. If you can see those from the sattellite, you have a head start in telling people to take other routes.
But around here (D.C.), traffic usually goes to hell when it rains or snows. When the skies are clear, it's much less bad. As for other routes, when one of the major ones is blocked, we're screwed anyway.
Even if it is China and the mandatory knee jerk reaction is "chinese govt==evil"...
With regard to the various folks who point out that we have surveillance in the U.S., please don't forget that many of us aren't too keen on it here, either. In any place and under any governmental system, surveillance technology can be used for good or ill.
Something else for my kid to lose. And, at $10-15 a card (figuring administrative costs, etc.), more money that parents have to pay for crap that has NOTHING to do with the kid's education.
The logical solution, of course, is to chip 'em when they're born. It's funny. Twenty-five years ago, an acquaintance of mine at the university had gone off the deep end -- I thought -- into Christian fundamentalism. He was going on about tattoos and the number of the beast. I thought he was nuts -- that would never happen here in the U.S. Now I'm not so sure.
Here's another idea. Texas was for a short time an independent nation, before joining the Union. They then seceded during the War between the States, and were corralled in again. The folks down there clearly have an independent streak and, um, "creative" thinking. (pun intended) I say we should give them their freedom. All for Texas independence raise your hand!
I submit that it doesn't matter. The same logic that says Google has a right to index my website because it's not password-protected would seem to indicate that I have a right to index Google's website.
... The article talks about salespeople talking to customers. I have never had that happen, even when my wife and I were closely inspecting refrigerators, clearly with the intention of buying one. Maybe the author was writing about a different chain.
The Bush administration pretty much spit on Kyoto in its first term. I would expect no less from the Texas oil crowd, and I only expect more of everything in the coming four years.
Excuse me while I start packing to move to Lincoln, Montana.
Of course, not the kind of hard cheeses like cheddar that we find in U.S. supermarkets, but some of that gooey fromage/formatge that can be found in France and Catalonia. (Maybe other places, too.)
Wife bought a new car (Toyota Corolla). Dealer only gave her one key and promised her another one. She dropped the car for service (minor, non-key things) and picked it up. The labor charges on the bill (for internal billing purposes) were something like a hundred bucks for programming the key and remote. It seems this car has keys with RFID chips in them, to cut down on the chances of the car being stolen.
We are in the practice of socking away one of the original keys and making a duplicate for daily use, but that's from the days when one could stroll into any hardware store and get a key cut for a couple of dollars.
Does anyone have any recommendation on a way to replicate "smart" keys that costs less than the exorbitant cost of getting one made and "programmed" by the dealer? (All of a sudden, my 15-year-old VW is looking a lot better.)
I submit my old 80386 that's been sitting around in the basement for the last six years, combined with the various boards, disks, and keyboards/mice lying around.
Who said I'm cheating? If we can assume a mouse, keyboard, and monitor, why can't we assume the rest of the hardware? If the objective is to produce a $100 PC, the cost should encompass the entire kit. After all, we're trying to make it so people won't steal expensive software, right?
Lovely. I'm reminded of a story I heard in DC about a DC associate to a council person get heat because he used the word niggardly. Nothing was meant, in context or intent, to be a slur. Yet the members, instead of asking for an explanation, showed their ignorance, stupidity, and intolerance by getting up and walking out, leading to the perpetrator being asked to resign. Even when they realized their mistake, they still believed 2 wrongs made a right.
I can corroborate the story. It was actually an aide to the mayor of D.C., Anthony Williams, who is a very smart, educated guy. The sad thing was that Williams didn't have the intestinal fortitude to stand up for his appointee, and he accepted the aide's resignation.
Someone remarked that you have to be very close to a reader for the chip to be read. Out of curiosity, I checked and found out that the range varies from
about 30 cm to 10 metres, depending on the band the chip operates in.
I don't mind a customs official reading my passport, but I most certainly don't want anyone else reading it. I guess I'll be packing aluminum foil in a few years.
So the way I read it, they're going to try to selectively ADD banding to the printed output, undoing the progress that engineers have worked so hard to achieve?
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps so. But if sufficient harm has been done and it can be demonstrated that the offender is likely to repeat it, isn't the sentence appropriate?
Consider the analogy of a recidivist drunk driver. Some will argue that banning him from ever again driving a car after being convicted a third time for DWI is harsh and cruel, because it condemns him to using only his feet or a bicycle for transport in a town without public transportation. But if he drives again and kills someone, or even just does significant property damage, there is significant societal harm that is done. The penalty exacted against him may cost him a lot, but it protects society from him.
The various jerks who write these viruses that fill my inbox with crap, or who intentionally muck up the Internet in other ways, are causing expensive and troublesome problems. If they're banned from the Internet a while and it causes them some hardship, well, too bad.
As for the argument that criminals won't respect court orders, I might remind everyone that this is why they invented jails.
There's also the question of defining a bug. Sometimes, one person's feature is another person's bug. Take allowing scripts in email, like Outlook Express used to do. (May still do, for all I know.)
Those who have infant children can fight back -- with a screaming baby and a poopy diaper. Those of us whose children have outgrown that will just let them play their headphones at the usual volume. The rest of you can suffer.
30-40 years ago, people were fussing about spending all those billions of dollars to put men in space when there were people starving on earth. Now we face the possibility (hopefully remote) of men starving in space.
To the best of my recollection, some of them used genuine Virginia driver's licenses, which were obtained fraudulently. The database didn't have a field for boxcutter knives, or for a note warning airlines to keep the cockpit door locked.
Holography and RFID make the document harder to counterfeit. Some biometric information, like the color of the person's eyes, height, weight, etc., is useful in establishing that the bearer is the person belonging to the ID.
Nonetheless, none of this is worth a whit if the ID is issued fraudulently. Here in Virginia, we had a problem with DMV clerks issuing driver's licenses to anyone for the price of a bribe, as well as notaries public who would vouch for anyone for a fee. The licenses themselves were machine-readable, with some kind of special seal on them that would be difficult to counterfeit, and included the information I mentioned above. A policeman could be reasonably sure the driver is the person in the photo. But, at bottom, because the controls on the license issuing process were bad, and the identification accepted by DMV was so weak, it was possible for anyone to get a real Virginia license or ID card that would be acceptable as genuine anywhere.
BTW (to get back on topic), I hope the malicious hackers will be better coders. MSIE reported an unterminated string, and I didn't get it to work on Netscape 7.2 with the popup blocker on. (Or maybe it worked, and I'm being monitored right now.)
Politicians would lie. Journalists would use phrases like "an unconfirmed source".
Plenty of writers (a type of artist) say that writing is hard work, and plenty of artists have quit when it wasn't fulfilling anymore. Tom Lehrer, for example, had lots of fun writing and performing some really great songs, and then went back to being a college professor.
But it's not just a question of losing one's muse or experiencing burnout. Too much of anything is too much. For example, by the time I get home from work, I don't want coffee anymore, I want beer.
Finally, I have other stuff to do than mess with a computer. When I want to balance my checkbook, so I can pay my bills, I don't want to debug the accounting program.
Beyond that, keep your debt low, and save as much money as you can put away. If you and your spouse both work, that is even more security. If you have or plan to have kids, try to arrange for one of you to work part-time. In my case, because we had the cars paid-for and a mortgage that could be paid by one of our full-time incomes, we weathered a year-long layoff with only minor lifestyle adjustments. Good luck!
That'll never work here. We don't burn petrol, we burn gasoline and a little diesel. And we don't measure it in litres or even liters, but in gallons. Never mind the fact that Congress committed us to convert to S.I. almost 30 years ago. It's just part of our mentality. We believe because we are Americans, we are not bound by common sense, economics, or even by the rules of physics, and that for any new, expensive technology, there is a problem to be solved with it.
Actually, in some places, it would be very easy to implement without GPS. In many areas of the U.S. -- including the congested areas where people are wont to drive fuel-efficient cars like the Prius, there is a mandatory exhaust emissions test, usually every two years. In Virginia, where I live, the results of the emissions test are sent electronically to the state DMV. I have to take that test, or I cannot register my car. It would be a simple matter for the mechanic performing the test to read the odometer and to verify that it had not been tampered with, inspecting some hypothetical seal. For all I know, he may already collect the mileage information -- I don't have the inspection certificate in front of me. Voila! The information needed for collecting the tax is available, without GPS, and my tinfoil hat cannot protect me.
Mind you, I'm not arguing for distance-based taxation -- just pointing out that it can be done cheaply, without satellites.
But around here (D.C.), traffic usually goes to hell when it rains or snows. When the skies are clear, it's much less bad. As for other routes, when one of the major ones is blocked, we're screwed anyway.
Even if it is China and the mandatory knee jerk reaction is "chinese govt==evil"...
With regard to the various folks who point out that we have surveillance in the U.S., please don't forget that many of us aren't too keen on it here, either. In any place and under any governmental system, surveillance technology can be used for good or ill.
The logical solution, of course, is to chip 'em when they're born. It's funny. Twenty-five years ago, an acquaintance of mine at the university had gone off the deep end -- I thought -- into Christian fundamentalism. He was going on about tattoos and the number of the beast. I thought he was nuts -- that would never happen here in the U.S. Now I'm not so sure.
Here's another idea. Texas was for a short time an independent nation, before joining the Union. They then seceded during the War between the States, and were corralled in again. The folks down there clearly have an independent streak and, um, "creative" thinking. (pun intended) I say we should give them their freedom. All for Texas independence raise your hand!
I found it here, in the lint in my left front pocket!
Intellectual property issues sure are peculiar!
... The article talks about salespeople talking to customers. I have never had that happen, even when my wife and I were closely inspecting refrigerators, clearly with the intention of buying one. Maybe the author was writing about a different chain.
The Bush administration pretty much spit on Kyoto in its first term. I would expect no less from the Texas oil crowd, and I only expect more of everything in the coming four years.
Excuse me while I start packing to move to Lincoln, Montana.
Of course, not the kind of hard cheeses like cheddar that we find in U.S. supermarkets, but some of that gooey fromage/formatge that can be found in France and Catalonia. (Maybe other places, too.)
Wife bought a new car (Toyota Corolla). Dealer only gave her one key and promised her another one. She dropped the car for service (minor, non-key things) and picked it up. The labor charges on the bill (for internal billing purposes) were something like a hundred bucks for programming the key and remote. It seems this car has keys with RFID chips in them, to cut down on the chances of the car being stolen.
We are in the practice of socking away one of the original keys and making a duplicate for daily use, but that's from the days when one could stroll into any hardware store and get a key cut for a couple of dollars.
Does anyone have any recommendation on a way to replicate "smart" keys that costs less than the exorbitant cost of getting one made and "programmed" by the dealer? (All of a sudden, my 15-year-old VW is looking a lot better.)
Who said I'm cheating? If we can assume a mouse, keyboard, and monitor, why can't we assume the rest of the hardware? If the objective is to produce a $100 PC, the cost should encompass the entire kit. After all, we're trying to make it so people won't steal expensive software, right?
I can corroborate the story. It was actually an aide to the mayor of D.C., Anthony Williams, who is a very smart, educated guy. The sad thing was that Williams didn't have the intestinal fortitude to stand up for his appointee, and he accepted the aide's resignation.
I don't mind a customs official reading my passport, but I most certainly don't want anyone else reading it. I guess I'll be packing aluminum foil in a few years.
I feel safer knowing you're outside the country, too. (Well, give me a line like that, how can I pass it up?)
My guess is that had the Chinese government been in charge of Skylab, it would have been considered a "retrievable space station".
So the way I read it, they're going to try to selectively ADD banding to the printed output, undoing the progress that engineers have worked so hard to achieve?