Can anyone see anything other than cost per suit preventing this being used as an aid for modern soldiers
No, which is exactly why and what for: to enable soldiers to carry more armour and dish out more firepower.
Don't think for a moment that military applications of super-strength will mean Superman-style punching villains in the face. It won't. Ever.
However a major topic throughough the last century has been the weight of ammo and equipment a soldier has to carry. It's a real issue. That's one of the reasons (among other factors) why we've moved to smaller calibres.
Put some powered armour on those soldiers and suddenly they can carry a lot more heavy weaponry and ammo.
Individual armour has also been discarded precisely because of weight considerations: you _could_ make a breastplate that could stop a rifle round, but it was impractically heavy.
Now think the other way around: if you have an armoured exo-skeleton, you can carry enough armour at least over the vital organs to stop even a 7.62mm round or shrapnel from hand grenades and pipe bombs. _And_ this time it's without a mobility penalty.
You've just made life harder for the enemy soldiers, because now they need to lug around bigger weaponry to take you out, which limits _their_ mobility.
But perhaps more importantly, and this is really what makes it a wet dream for the military is: enabling soldiers to carry more electronics and a sattellite connection. Giving at least one soldier per squad enough electronics to know exactly where the enemy is, what's happening, where is the squad needed, what should they avoid, etc, is something that can give a _huge_ advantage.
Nations have been defeated before because basically their chain of command didn't react fast enough. E.g., that's why large armies like those of France or Poland crumbled in the face of Blitzkrieg in WW2. They just weren't prepared to react at that speed.
Or the USSR in WW2 was massively handicapped by their lack of radios on their tanks.
Now picture giving each squad a direct link to their officers _all_ the time. Bidirectional. You can know _exactly_ what's happening at each point, in real time, and the soldiers can know exactly what's expected of them. You can instantly see when your troops are being pinned and flanked, and how, and you can tell them exactly how to counter it. Better yet they too can see a bigger picture and react in a more intelligent manner - By copying and pasting from old slashdot stories.
It's something that can really make or break a battle.
Japan has seen a growing market for technology geared toward the elderly, who are making up an increasing chunk of the population as fewer younger Japanese choose to start families.
A government report last week showed that pensioners made up a record 19.5 percent of the country's population in 2004 and that the ratio will grow rapidly, surpassing 35 percent in 2050.
Did anyone else shudder at the image of senior citizens ambling down the street in robot suits? Just imagine the damage potential. What if they get upset at all the stolen dupe comments on Slashdot? What the hell do we do now!? What the hell do we do now!?
Proving the grandparent right? The grandparent pastes a link at the end of every post comparing the draconian drug policies of the US to the holocaust.
A post who compares the death of 11 million + pepole based on their religion to laws that are stupid yet put in place by a democracy is now telling me that ray guns are coming to take away our political rights?
Forgive me if I'm a little cynical toward the grandparent.
With its computers, its sensors, and a 5-foot, 150-pound autonomous manipulator, or robotic arm, The Cowboyneal will be able to move towards a specific target, such as a Roland Piquenieaville posting stories -- and maybe fix it.
I don't even have an iPod, but I know iTunes/iPod can already do this - hell they even list it on the main iTunes site: here
Join Tracks feature iTunes 4 rips music seamlessly to AAC or MP3 format with a Join Tracks feature that allows you to meld two or more songs into one continuous, gap-free track perfect for listening to classical music, concept rock albums and extended dance mixes.
Ever noticed how ripping some music tracks to MP3 format creates a small gap between songs that interrupts the flow of your music? Thats because many music CDs contain songs that blend into each other, but are separated by track numbers for reference (that is, concept albums, trance/electronic mix albums, classical performances and so on). Suffer the silence no more, since iTunes 4 comes with the new Join Tracks feature that lets you rip two or more tracks as a single, uninterrupted song.
No KHTML browser sadly, although you technically could install CYGWIN or run KNOPPIX to have Konqueror running overtop of Windows XP. I think that since Firefox seems to be more or less "Windows Native" and looks like it belongs in a Windows environment more than a Linux one (Mac I haven't seen in over a year, does it still look out of place compared to Safari?), which is why there is less incentive to create a native browser like K-meleon than there is to create a native Mac Browser like Camino, or a native GNOME browser like Epiphany/Galeon.
I like the performance I get out of Opera - it just feels faster. Even faster than IE on Windows. It might be because it knows how to exploit my processor/graphics card better, but it definitely feels snappier.
Of course, negative feedback from the mods because you spoke ill of FIREFOX even though it was a valid point. Same happens with Linux and Google. Oh well.
This person posts at -1 because their karma is bad due to the fact that they've been modded down many times, and when someone modded them insightful it went to (0, Insightful).
YHBT, HAND. With a nice advertisement in the post as well. Nice turning it into an antislashdot attack that got modded up as well. Mods, are you encouraging people to respond to trolls, and the act of trolling itself?
This is better than the Ask Slashdot I submitted, where I wanted to find out a way for thunderbird to play a random sound every time my RSS feed picks up a new Slashdot story.
I settled for comic book guy saying "Worst. Slashdot. Story. EVER."
I would still recommend using a shell other than Firefox around a Gecko- or KHTML- based browser. I use Camino (Gecko) and Safari (KHTML) on Mac OS X, but I'm sure there are equivalents to these for Windows. But regardless, the exposure from using Firefox is so far less than using IE that if Firefox and IE are your only choices... use Firefox.
A ha, a browser like this DOES exist on Windows, and it is much like Camino on the Mac. A native ported version Gecko browser called K-meleon is available for Windows. The problem being that the browser is still quite immature - changing tabs for example causes the Windows taskbar entry for the browser to dissapear and then reappear with the name of the new tab. When it matures it will be a great browser, but I fear Firefox's popularity will kill interest in this obscure browser.
Personally, I'm using Opera 8.0x on Windows, but I do understand that most people aren't going to live with the ad / pay for the browser like I am.
The Smashing Pumpkins DID do this in 2000. Their label wasn't happy. (On a side note, the album wasn't as polished as Siamese Dream / Mellon Collie, but the free availablility of it actually got me into music a couple years ago, and now I'm actually learning the guitar. Kudos, Mr Corgan)
From Wikipedia: In May 2000, Billy Corgan announced the band's decision to break up at the end of that year following additional touring and recording. In a first for an established band, the group's final album, MACHINA II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music, was released in September 2000 in a limited pressing on vinyl with permission and instructions for free redistribution on the Internet by fans. The Smashing Pumpkins' final commercial recording was a single, "Untitled".
I worked (till they outsourced last year) at a call center for Symantec's Norton line of products, and I can tell you from my experience, most ISP technicians are bumblefucks
Agreed, most of my coworkers freak out if they get a Mac call. They're fine if you keep them within certain things they've been trained in, but once you get outside that you see that they're not quite knowledgeable.
Personally, I've never had any problems with blocking things with my firewall (the NAT connections on this "free" wireless router with port forwarding being an exception, but thats an issue with shitty settings in the firmware of this iNexQ device).
The way that Windows Firewall is at least better for computer illiterate people is that it blocks most ports that would cause problems like the sasser worm in the future, while not asking them if they want to block iexplore.exe. I mean, you and I might know what that is, but I can see why someone would block a program out of fear with so many spyware programs out there.
Never had an issue here...maybe you should check to see if you have a gazillion programs trying to startup when you boot. It's probably a program conflict.
I was more speaking about ZoneAlarm, especially the new versions. ZoneAlarm + a fresh install of slipstream SP2 on my laptop = hang on boot waiting for the Windows logon box ("Windows is starting up...", the message it shows before it lets you type in your username/password). I haven't bothered with Kerio or any other third party solution, just because the XP Firewall has been working perfectly for me, and I don't even bother with antivirus... since I don't run strange exes, and I run in user mode. I'm definitely the exception in this case though.
Also, to the person in the thread who said that he has Kerio on 200+ boxen... is this in a corporate environment? If so, why would you be deploying a workstation solution? Wouldn't it be better to have something like an OpenBSD based firewall as the entrance to the internet from your network?
I've had too many problems with firewalls from ZoneAlarm, Kerio, etc, especially with them causing XP to hang on boot, skyrocketing memory use, etc, especially compared to the extremely basic windows firewall (I'm behind a router, I don't need much out of a firewall.)
I work in a call center for a major US ISP. Do you know how often we get people calling in because Norton Internet Security is screwing up? I talked to at least two people personally just yesterday, one couldn't get his email because Norton would cause the connection to the server to close, another lady could open up PORT 80 TO BROWSE THE INTERNET. These people didn't change any settings on NIS, it just caused this on its own. I know that IE isn't secure, but that's a little extreme.
The XP Firewall hasn't bothered me at all, not a memory hog for something as simple as a firewall, and hasn't caused me any problems, which is more than I can say about ZoneAlarm/Kerio.
Tell me, what makes it not a real firewall? It blocks ports.
MSNger Plus! is a great program, but it asks you to install an adware IE toolbar when you install it. The last time I ran MS Antispyware it recommended that you keep it.
At least MSNger Plus! doesn't automatically check the "Yes, install this" box for the adware, you'd have to ignore the warnings, then click "YES, INSTALL THIS" to get it. I use MSNger Plus! and don't have any spyware at all.
Absolutely insightful, I've had my parents computer set up with a limited user setup for over a year without problems*. Case in point: "Ryan, your sister is complaining that she can't install this program for free smilies".
When they DO need to install a program, for example the software that came with their digital camera, they can log out and log in as the administrator account. Sure, its a hassle, but much less of a hassle than using popups and things like that.
Whenever I come home I do Windows Update and usually a Firefox update, then I check up on Adware and things like that (nothing found at all for over a year!).
This setup has worked on my laptop as well, limited user accounts + no IE + no installing risky programs (ex: downloaded from bittorrent, closed source "Freeware" programs without researching), and you won't be getting any malware.
I don't even consider myself to be that knowledgeable, and I can't understand why people are still getting infected with this besides poor habits.
* the only problem with their computer is that they allowed my sister to install LimeWire, and while that isn't a spyware program, is still a risk (I don't trust P2P beyond Bittorrent, thankfully they chose an Open Source / Malware Free program) through installing programs. Sadly, the only problem with this is that my sister has downloaded enough music to get within 250MB of the harddrive limit, and they don't really want to buy a second harddrive.
Look at his post, and see the plug at the end for the grandparent's website.
Nothing but a stupid ad, probably has been posted many times before (the story doesn't even make sense, as you said) something that is happening more and more often with Slashdot (Turn off sigs and see how many fake ones are out there, its disgusting.)
Don't worry about being a jerk with people like this, they deserve it.
hint: If you have a link to your website, put it in your sig or profile,/. allows for it. DO NOT PASTE IT TO THE END OF EVERY POST.
If the company was an abortion clinic and the opinion expressed by the employee was anti-abortion, then there would be no uproar if they were fired.
He expressed anti copyright and IP views, while working for a firm that relies on copyright and IP. In addition he was only working there for a week, all companies insist on a probabtion period of at least a month to see if your face fits, with instant dismissal if you don't. So he is going to have trouble winning his case.
Yes it isn't nice that your freedom of speech is curtailed by your employer, but there are plenty of precedents for it - from the aforementioned abortion example, through to the Police in the UK at least not being allowed to express racist views even when not on duty, or the Slashdot editors not being able to remove dupes in their spare time.
To what extent can an opinion about intellectual property (or any other law) form grounds for dismissal? IMHO it is the right, indeed the obligation of anyone living in a democracy to question the laws that govern them. Intellectual property laws are increasingly valid targets for such scepticism.
There would be an uproar in most countries if someone was fired for expressing their opinion on abortion, or religion, why should someone's opinion on dupe law be any different?
He didn't get fired for sharing anything. He got fired because he earlier run what seems to have been a BitTorrent tracker in his spare time, was sued over it (in a civil case, not a criminal case), and didn't tell his employer when they interviewed him, so they only found out when he talked about it on a TV show.
He argues that he didn't have to mention it since it doesn't have anything to do with his employer, and I think depending on how the interview went exactly, he's probably right. If they actually asked him about whether there were any civil cases pending against him and he lied and said no, then it's understandable that he got fired (it's not like it's a personal question, after all); but if they didn't, then I really think it's their own fault, and he's right in any case when he says that the whole thing simply doesn't affect his employer in any way.
In any case, it's important to note that he did not himself share any files. He got fired for going into dupe slashdot comments and stealing the +5 moderations.
Slashdot Mirror
Can anyone see anything other than cost per suit preventing this being used as an aid for modern soldiers
No, which is exactly why and what for: to enable soldiers to carry more armour and dish out more firepower.
Don't think for a moment that military applications of super-strength will mean Superman-style punching villains in the face. It won't. Ever.
However a major topic throughough the last century has been the weight of ammo and equipment a soldier has to carry. It's a real issue. That's one of the reasons (among other factors) why we've moved to smaller calibres.
Put some powered armour on those soldiers and suddenly they can carry a lot more heavy weaponry and ammo.
Individual armour has also been discarded precisely because of weight considerations: you _could_ make a breastplate that could stop a rifle round, but it was impractically heavy.
Now think the other way around: if you have an armoured exo-skeleton, you can carry enough armour at least over the vital organs to stop even a 7.62mm round or shrapnel from hand grenades and pipe bombs. _And_ this time it's without a mobility penalty.
You've just made life harder for the enemy soldiers, because now they need to lug around bigger weaponry to take you out, which limits _their_ mobility.
But perhaps more importantly, and this is really what makes it a wet dream for the military is: enabling soldiers to carry more electronics and a sattellite connection. Giving at least one soldier per squad enough electronics to know exactly where the enemy is, what's happening, where is the squad needed, what should they avoid, etc, is something that can give a _huge_ advantage.
Nations have been defeated before because basically their chain of command didn't react fast enough. E.g., that's why large armies like those of France or Poland crumbled in the face of Blitzkrieg in WW2. They just weren't prepared to react at that speed.
Or the USSR in WW2 was massively handicapped by their lack of radios on their tanks.
Now picture giving each squad a direct link to their officers _all_ the time. Bidirectional. You can know _exactly_ what's happening at each point, in real time, and the soldiers can know exactly what's expected of them. You can instantly see when your troops are being pinned and flanked, and how, and you can tell them exactly how to counter it. Better yet they too can see a bigger picture and react in a more intelligent manner - By copying and pasting from old slashdot stories.
It's something that can really make or break a battle.
Japan has seen a growing market for technology geared toward the elderly, who are making up an increasing chunk of the population as fewer younger Japanese choose to start families.
A government report last week showed that pensioners made up a record 19.5 percent of the country's population in 2004 and that the ratio will grow rapidly, surpassing 35 percent in 2050.
Did anyone else shudder at the image of senior citizens ambling down the street in robot suits? Just imagine the damage potential. What if they get upset at all the stolen dupe comments on Slashdot? What the hell do we do now!? What the hell do we do now!?
I Wonder whether its usage can contribute to cancer down the track
... only if you use it to light your cigarette. =)
Proving the grandparent right? The grandparent pastes a link at the end of every post comparing the draconian drug policies of the US to the holocaust.
A post who compares the death of 11 million + pepole based on their religion to laws that are stupid yet put in place by a democracy is now telling me that ray guns are coming to take away our political rights?
Forgive me if I'm a little cynical toward the grandparent.
With its computers, its sensors, and a 5-foot, 150-pound autonomous manipulator, or robotic arm, The Cowboyneal will be able to move towards a specific target, such as a Roland Piquenieaville posting stories -- and maybe fix it.
The article claims that while the price for a desktop license now matches what Microsoft charge, the new deal ...
Og teach english slashdot editors in new zealand school!?
I don't even have an iPod, but I know iTunes/iPod can already do this - hell they even list it on the main iTunes site: here
Join Tracks feature
iTunes 4 rips music seamlessly to AAC or MP3 format with a Join Tracks feature that allows you to meld two or more songs into one continuous, gap-free track perfect for listening to classical music, concept rock albums and extended dance mixes.
Ever noticed how ripping some music tracks to MP3 format creates a small gap between songs that interrupts the flow of your music? Thats because many music CDs contain songs that blend into each other, but are separated by track numbers for reference (that is, concept albums, trance/electronic mix albums, classical performances and so on). Suffer the silence no more, since iTunes 4 comes with the new Join Tracks feature that lets you rip two or more tracks as a single, uninterrupted song.
No KHTML browser sadly, although you technically could install CYGWIN or run KNOPPIX to have Konqueror running overtop of Windows XP. I think that since Firefox seems to be more or less "Windows Native" and looks like it belongs in a Windows environment more than a Linux one (Mac I haven't seen in over a year, does it still look out of place compared to Safari?), which is why there is less incentive to create a native browser like K-meleon than there is to create a native Mac Browser like Camino, or a native GNOME browser like Epiphany/Galeon.
I like the performance I get out of Opera - it just feels faster. Even faster than IE on Windows. It might be because it knows how to exploit my processor/graphics card better, but it definitely feels snappier.
Of course, negative feedback from the mods because you spoke ill of FIREFOX even though it was a valid point. Same happens with Linux and Google. Oh well.
This person posts at -1 because their karma is bad due to the fact that they've been modded down many times, and when someone modded them insightful it went to (0, Insightful).
YHBT, HAND. With a nice advertisement in the post as well. Nice turning it into an antislashdot attack that got modded up as well. Mods, are you encouraging people to respond to trolls, and the act of trolling itself?
This is better than the Ask Slashdot I submitted, where I wanted to find out a way for thunderbird to play a random sound every time my RSS feed picks up a new Slashdot story.
I settled for comic book guy saying "Worst. Slashdot. Story. EVER."
Surprisingly its true every time!
I would still recommend using a shell other than Firefox around a Gecko- or KHTML- based browser. I use Camino (Gecko) and Safari (KHTML) on Mac OS X, but I'm sure there are equivalents to these for Windows. But regardless, the exposure from using Firefox is so far less than using IE that if Firefox and IE are your only choices... use Firefox.
A ha, a browser like this DOES exist on Windows, and it is much like Camino on the Mac. A native ported version Gecko browser called K-meleon is available for Windows. The problem being that the browser is still quite immature - changing tabs for example causes the Windows taskbar entry for the browser to dissapear and then reappear with the name of the new tab. When it matures it will be a great browser, but I fear Firefox's popularity will kill interest in this obscure browser.
Personally, I'm using Opera 8.0x on Windows, but I do understand that most people aren't going to live with the ad / pay for the browser like I am.
The Smashing Pumpkins DID do this in 2000. Their label wasn't happy. (On a side note, the album wasn't as polished as Siamese Dream / Mellon Collie, but the free availablility of it actually got me into music a couple years ago, and now I'm actually learning the guitar. Kudos, Mr Corgan)
From Wikipedia:
In May 2000, Billy Corgan announced the band's decision to break up at the end of that year following additional touring and recording. In a first for an established band, the group's final album, MACHINA II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music, was released in September 2000 in a limited pressing on vinyl with permission and instructions for free redistribution on the Internet by fans. The Smashing Pumpkins' final commercial recording was a single, "Untitled".
I worked (till they outsourced last year) at a call center for Symantec's Norton line of products, and I can tell you from my experience, most ISP technicians are bumblefucks
Agreed, most of my coworkers freak out if they get a Mac call. They're fine if you keep them within certain things they've been trained in, but once you get outside that you see that they're not quite knowledgeable.
Personally, I've never had any problems with blocking things with my firewall (the NAT connections on this "free" wireless router with port forwarding being an exception, but thats an issue with shitty settings in the firmware of this iNexQ device).
The way that Windows Firewall is at least better for computer illiterate people is that it blocks most ports that would cause problems like the sasser worm in the future, while not asking them if they want to block iexplore.exe. I mean, you and I might know what that is, but I can see why someone would block a program out of fear with so many spyware programs out there.
Never had an issue here...maybe you should check to see if you have a gazillion programs trying to startup when you boot. It's probably a program conflict.
I was more speaking about ZoneAlarm, especially the new versions. ZoneAlarm + a fresh install of slipstream SP2 on my laptop = hang on boot waiting for the Windows logon box ("Windows is starting up...", the message it shows before it lets you type in your username/password). I haven't bothered with Kerio or any other third party solution, just because the XP Firewall has been working perfectly for me, and I don't even bother with antivirus... since I don't run strange exes, and I run in user mode. I'm definitely the exception in this case though.
Also, to the person in the thread who said that he has Kerio on 200+ boxen... is this in a corporate environment? If so, why would you be deploying a workstation solution? Wouldn't it be better to have something like an OpenBSD based firewall as the entrance to the internet from your network?
I've had too many problems with firewalls from ZoneAlarm, Kerio, etc, especially with them causing XP to hang on boot, skyrocketing memory use, etc, especially compared to the extremely basic windows firewall (I'm behind a router, I don't need much out of a firewall.)
I work in a call center for a major US ISP. Do you know how often we get people calling in because Norton Internet Security is screwing up? I talked to at least two people personally just yesterday, one couldn't get his email because Norton would cause the connection to the server to close, another lady could open up PORT 80 TO BROWSE THE INTERNET. These people didn't change any settings on NIS, it just caused this on its own. I know that IE isn't secure, but that's a little extreme.
The XP Firewall hasn't bothered me at all, not a memory hog for something as simple as a firewall, and hasn't caused me any problems, which is more than I can say about ZoneAlarm/Kerio.
Tell me, what makes it not a real firewall? It blocks ports.
I tried reading your post, but all the ACRNYMS blew my mind.
*blink*
MSNger Plus! is a great program, but it asks you to install an adware IE toolbar when you install it. The last time I ran MS Antispyware it recommended that you keep it.
At least MSNger Plus! doesn't automatically check the "Yes, install this" box for the adware, you'd have to ignore the warnings, then click "YES, INSTALL THIS" to get it. I use MSNger Plus! and don't have any spyware at all.
He's... buffering... smoking... buffering... a ne...buffering...w kind of...
CONNECTION LOST
Noooo! WELSHIEEEEE!
However the Windows Media Player stream works just fine, but crappy quality (thought maybe the "Real" one might be better.
You thought that the realplayer stream might be better quality?
Could I please have some of whatever you're smoking? It sounds like really good stuff.
So why is expecting people to upgrade?
Because the new IE included in Longhorn includes Clippy saying "Hey, something about your grammer isn't right!" when posting to slashdot!
Please upgrade, for the children...
Absolutely insightful, I've had my parents computer set up with a limited user setup for over a year without problems*. Case in point: "Ryan, your sister is complaining that she can't install this program for free smilies".
When they DO need to install a program, for example the software that came with their digital camera, they can log out and log in as the administrator account. Sure, its a hassle, but much less of a hassle than using popups and things like that.
Whenever I come home I do Windows Update and usually a Firefox update, then I check up on Adware and things like that (nothing found at all for over a year!).
This setup has worked on my laptop as well, limited user accounts + no IE + no installing risky programs (ex: downloaded from bittorrent, closed source "Freeware" programs without researching), and you won't be getting any malware.
I don't even consider myself to be that knowledgeable, and I can't understand why people are still getting infected with this besides poor habits.
* the only problem with their computer is that they allowed my sister to install LimeWire, and while that isn't a spyware program, is still a risk (I don't trust P2P beyond Bittorrent, thankfully they chose an Open Source / Malware Free program) through installing programs. Sadly, the only problem with this is that my sister has downloaded enough music to get within 250MB of the harddrive limit, and they don't really want to buy a second harddrive.
Look at his post, and see the plug at the end for the grandparent's website.
/. allows for it. DO NOT PASTE IT TO THE END OF EVERY POST.
Nothing but a stupid ad, probably has been posted many times before (the story doesn't even make sense, as you said) something that is happening more and more often with Slashdot (Turn off sigs and see how many fake ones are out there, its disgusting.)
Don't worry about being a jerk with people like this, they deserve it.
hint: If you have a link to your website, put it in your sig or profile,
$50 to beta test software that doesn't isn't working on my hardware is a barrier?
:)
WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?
It seems to work for Windows!
At least Windows supports my hardware when it doesn't work.
(Slashdot Moderator Filter: ITS A JOKE, LAUGH)
If the company was an abortion clinic and the opinion expressed by the employee was anti-abortion, then there would be no uproar if they were fired.
He expressed anti copyright and IP views, while working for a firm that relies on copyright and IP. In addition he was only working there for a week, all companies insist on a probabtion period of at least a month to see if your face fits, with instant dismissal if you don't. So he is going to have trouble winning his case.
Yes it isn't nice that your freedom of speech is curtailed by your employer, but there are plenty of precedents for it - from the aforementioned abortion example, through to the Police in the UK at least not being allowed to express racist views even when not on duty, or the Slashdot editors not being able to remove dupes in their spare time.
To what extent can an opinion about intellectual property (or any other law) form grounds for dismissal?
IMHO it is the right, indeed the obligation of anyone living in a democracy to question the laws that govern them. Intellectual property laws are increasingly valid targets for such scepticism.
There would be an uproar in most countries if someone was fired for expressing their opinion on abortion, or religion, why should someone's opinion on dupe law be any different?
He didn't get fired for sharing anything. He got fired because he earlier run what seems to have been a BitTorrent tracker in his spare time, was sued over it (in a civil case, not a criminal case), and didn't tell his employer when they interviewed him, so they only found out when he talked about it on a TV show.
He argues that he didn't have to mention it since it doesn't have anything to do with his employer, and I think depending on how the interview went exactly, he's probably right. If they actually asked him about whether there were any civil cases pending against him and he lied and said no, then it's understandable that he got fired (it's not like it's a personal question, after all); but if they didn't, then I really think it's their own fault, and he's right in any case when he says that the whole thing simply doesn't affect his employer in any way.
In any case, it's important to note that he did not himself share any files. He got fired for going into dupe slashdot comments and stealing the +5 moderations.