"Well... Yeah that is how the law works with intrusions, but port scanning is not breaking in (intrusion). It is like you walked up to someone's house and checked to see if the door was locked without actually even opening the door."
Where I live, that is quite clearly aggravated trespassing and actually justifies the use of lethal force.
Going up to the porch is acceptable. Trying the door is attempted burglary. Jumping the back fence is criminal trespass, and trying the backdoor is burglary.
No matter how badly you wish they were, network ports are not cars in a parking lot. I know you'd desperately like your car-door-idiom to apply as a true analogy, but it simply does not. And no matter how much you want it to, it will not.
Yeah, all it would really take is a letter to the Dean with a sworn deposition that a professor has asked a student to commit a specified federal crime. If corrective action isn't taken immediately, RICO statutes come into play, and the Dean is named as a co-conspirator.
How is this different from a chemistry professor assigning a term project that involves synthesizing and distributing Ecstacy? (That happened, more or less, and the professor went to prison! -- it wasn't exactly 'an assignment' in that case, but what's the difference really?)
"The reason any of it is put forward as fact, though, is because Holy Blood, Holy Grail was put forward as fact. If you want to go after someone, go after the writers of that."
Tolkein puts forth Middle Earth as fact. By your logic, it should be acceptable to copy Lord of the Rings. Many, if not most, fiction writers, write as though they are reporting facts. How boring would a novel be if every narrative were accompanied by a disclaimer?
What's more dangerous? A disease that kills half the people it infects, that infects a hundred people a year, or a disease that kills one in 10,000, that infects half a million people a year?
"Yeah throw the low-down perp in jail for his criminal malfeasance in defence of America's democratic institutions! That'll make it easier to honor the sacrifice he's made in such a noble cause!"
It is a necessary component of civil disobedience that one is prepared to accept the consequences of his actions.
If he did not want to go to prison or be killed for his noble actions, he could have done it anonymously. You may not volunteer to be a martyr for a cause of justice, and then chicken out when you realize the consequences are real.
"The Da Vinci Code was a disgrace, every factual analysis done on the theories presented showed NO FACTUAL BASIS!!!"
You do realize the book is a work of fiction, correct? Yes, the author writes his prose with assertions that his story is based on fact, and that's nothing new in works of fiction. Anybody who goes to any effort to try to "verify" something that is clearly intended to be an entertainment vehicle, should not be surprised when they come up empty!
People have done the same thing with Robert Anton Wilson, to "discredit" the Illuminatus, which is not only a work of fiction but a work of *humor* at that!
I think it's hilarious that people have published books discrediting the Da Vinci Code.
"The majority seems to be of the opinion that the document leaker has performed a public service. That is as far from the truth as it could possibly be."
There are millions of people who honestly believe recent elections of federal officers have been rigged, in what amounts to a coup d'etat, in part facilitated by the Diebold corporation.
In this light, it should be more surprising that we have not seen violent acts of rebellion, and certainly that there have not been more incidents where people have sought to expose Diebold.
This was a peaceful act of civil disobedience (for which Heller should face the consequences!) with a much larger goal than merely exposing an attorney's briefs. There may be a case to be made that the ruling party governs without legitimacy, and if that's true, there is no legal framework under which the matter can be considered fairly, since it questions the very authority of the government under which any question of law can be judged.
Now, I personally do not believe Diebold is effective enough to accomplish a coup, and I consider the current government to be an expression of the apathy of voters. I also don't believe that *even if* these documents show what they are purported to show, they amount to a defense for Heller.
However, in a question as serious as this, it was irresponsible of counsel to allow this information to escape.
Prove to the satisfaction of skeptics that there was vote-rigging, and you may be able to justify this level of civil disobedience. Even so, it is still likely that someone like Heller will have to face the consequences for civil disobedience -- even if Diebold literally rigged an election, it still isn't a defense for Heller's crime. Two wrongs don't make a right, even in clear cases of civil disobedience which are meant to seek justice or correct great injustices.
That's unfortunate, but if civil disobedience were painless and easy, there would be no reason to honor people who have made sacrifices in pursuit of justice.
The angle to approach this from, is the infringement of your own copyrights when you use this media to produce, copy, and distribute your own creative works where you reserve all rights under copyright. This would be the position from which to have the tax law struck down, on the argument that it abridges your rights.
>While it's a good and just thing that we now know Diebold was doing what they did
The problem is, we do NOT know that. We only know that two lawyers were talking about them doing what they did. That's not the same thing, compelling as it may be.
If the public opinion against the validity of Bush administration is as widespread as we are led to believe, there should be no jury pool that can possibly produce a jury that would find in favor of Diebold.
On the other hand, I think the defendant is going to discover that the belief in the rogue regime is not nearly as common as the opposition wants to believe. The USA is not on the brink of civil war or revolution, the people do not generally believe Bush was elected by fraud, and no member of Congress has his aides typing up articles of impeachment.
>I'll never have to serve on a jury as I find it my civic duty to ask a question relevant to the > case that forces the judge to explain that concept to those jurors who _are_ allowed to stay.
What do you mean, exactly? What precise words do you say, and do you say it during voir dire? How do you know you'll get the chance to say it?
I've been excluded from a jury once because I refused to answer a question regarding my religious beliefs. Apparently I was the first person to ever do this. I explained that my understanding of the First Amendment was that no court or any other government agent could justify any concern of my religious beliefs whatsoever.
When I was younger and much crazier, I was excluded from a jury because I wore my Karl Marx T-Shirt.
Once when I was on a jury, the judge explained about nullification, and made it clear that while jury nullification may end the trial, there are still significant appeals and review processes.
>Would his failure to act on his knowledge of alleged lawbreaking make him an accessory?
Reporting it to the press instead of to someone with legal authority wouldn't save him anyway.
It appears that he was interested in more than merely justice. Notice that he didn't make this tip *anonymously*. He wanted credit. He apparently believed he had the scoop that would bring down the Bush Administration, once he proved that "the election" was stolen by Diebold...
>Software licences are a complete maze and open source ones are a maze inside a maze.
Open source licences are a pleasant, straight walk. Interpreting copyright laws may be difficult in the UK, but reading and understanding a license such as the GPL or the MPL. The idea that this kind of language is inaccessible to ordinary people and can only be understood by lawyers is actually abnegation of the idea that individuals can and should take personal responsibility for their rights.
Forbidding transfer of copyrighted works where licence is granted, is no less a copyright infringement than is distributing copyrighted works to which all rights are reserved.
Because I personally know survivors of it, I don't consider it distant history at all. Likewise, I consider the Hungarian Revolution to be a contemporary event, because I personally know many people who were involved in it.
"I think the sad irony in that is that under the current regime, they would be called terrorists."
Of course they would. But if they were truly marching with the feet of the overwhelming majority that certain pundits would like us to believe they are, it would not matter.
There is no issue which is so divisive, for example, that it would engender rebellious divisions within the military, entire chains of command, complete with support of wide swaths the civilian industrial infrastructure, to turn against the regime to which they had been loyal. Just an example to dispel any images of a modern military force being called onto the battlefield by a handful of septuagenarian tax protestors from Montana. And my point is, we're not there yet, and nobody is anywhere near that upset about the status quo.
Further, for all the rhetoric aimed at the US, I see no coalition of military powers developing to, say, liberate Iraq from the US occupation by force, or even, to blockade the US Navy from accessing Cuba. The stated level of outrage is this high, but the actions do not support the diatribes.
Same phenomenon applies to China. If the world was really upset with China, they'd be under so much pressure that they would implode, what with no country allowing their citizens entry visas, and with no port giving harbor to their ships (enforced by gunships). But you don't do diplomacy that way.
I realize I'm out of step with the prevailing viewpoints, since I'm already thinking at the level of war and revolution. I'm not advocating violence; I'm just wondering when the inevitable repetitions of history will beging to unfold, and whether the issues of current events are sufficient to bring such extraordinary results to bear.
"Barring a few stupid corporations (*cough* Diebold *cough*), most ATMs accept extremely limited input, and have a very narrow range of possible actions they can take with that input, so there really isn't much to gain by hacking an ATM, and no real way to do it, because it's not really set up for that, and isn't running other, exploitable, services."
Are you only considering the keypad and the card reader? What about physical access to the phone line? (Lots of ATM's use a POTS line, and a previous workplace had an ATM with an exposed, dangling RJ-11 wire in plain view...)
>1) The implicit comparison of Chinese law to Nazi Germany's is pretty offensive.
Offensive to whom? Only to Nazis, or offensive to genocidal regimes in general? Ask any Mongol survivor, or a refugee from the Dreprung Loseling monastery, if the comparison is unreasonable.
>2) He also seems to imply that violation of other countries laws just because the > US goverment doesn't agree with them is morally correct. That's a morally >questionable point in itself.
I don't have any resources to quote chapter and verse, but I am certain that it's a matter of doctrine that we obey the laws of any country we visit or do business in. The dividing line is past the point where we have embargos. We obey Saudi laws and Malaysian laws, but we don't obey Cuban laws or North Korean laws.
>3) This 'Congressman' also part of a system which has incarcerated a number of >people indefinately without due process of law (Guantanamo Bay of course) because > they say they're guilty. Somewhat hypocritical...
Yes, the current government is completely broken according to its opposition. Nevertheless, people have not yet become upset enough to take real action (coup, rebellion, allies becoming enemies and taking military action, that sort of thing), preferring instead to wait out the term peacably.
Of course, you are aware that a good postdoc academic job is one that pays a stipend worth a 1-bedroom apartment and doesn't require you to lecture, right? Category #1 jobs don't always pay a living wage, but at least some of them do. Category #2 jobs are good for people who saved enough money from a Category #1 job and want to spend their retirement living in a laid-back college town.
>It's a software "solution", it only checks if the processor is Intel's. Can't that >be patched?
Of course. Whatever key it uses, is available to anyone with an intel chip. No matter how hard the crypto behind it may be, the key has to be in the wild.
"I think the above is AGS, aging geek syndrome - where you look critically at 'upgrades' and see only the work involved in implementing them."
I call it something else: The Plateau of Human Proportions.
I'm doing things with computers now, that I wanted to do in the 70s. Namely, realtime music synthesis, with digital recording as a bonus. It's finally practical, and upgrades are incrementally beneficial -- the quantum leap was when we got audio systems capable of producing sounds beyond the limits of human perception, even perhaps beyond the limits of *bat* perception.
Perhaps there is another such quantum jump for video production as well, where amateur video reaches the level of quality required to compete with professional gear, but I'm not so sure. At any rate, I agree with you -- my systems that I use for music production are quite thoroughly tweaked and the hardware was selected through a very expensive trial-and-error process. I would hate to replace it, and I won't, until I *must*. Doubly so, that the equipment is finally sufficient for the task. And it's not that I've moved the target over the years -- I've ALWAYS wished for digital synthesis in software, and I've always been frustrated that we hadn't reached the point where it was possible... Then we did...
I'm sure there are countless "Human Proportions" limits, where increases in the capability of tools don't matter.
Slashdot Mirror
"Well... Yeah that is how the law works with intrusions, but port scanning is not breaking in (intrusion). It is like you walked up to someone's house and checked to see if the door was locked without actually even opening the door."
Where I live, that is quite clearly aggravated trespassing and actually justifies the use of lethal force.
Going up to the porch is acceptable. Trying the door is attempted burglary. Jumping the back fence is criminal trespass, and trying the backdoor is burglary.
No matter how badly you wish they were, network ports are not cars in a parking lot. I know you'd desperately like your car-door-idiom to apply as a true analogy, but it simply does not.
And no matter how much you want it to, it will not.
Yeah, all it would really take is a letter to the Dean with a sworn deposition that a professor has asked a student to commit a specified federal crime. If corrective action isn't taken immediately, RICO statutes come into play, and the Dean is named as a co-conspirator.
How is this different from a chemistry professor assigning a term project that involves synthesizing and distributing Ecstacy? (That happened, more or less, and the professor went to prison! -- it wasn't exactly 'an assignment' in that case, but what's the difference really?)
"The reason any of it is put forward as fact, though, is because Holy Blood, Holy Grail was put forward as fact. If you want to go after someone, go after the writers of that."
Tolkein puts forth Middle Earth as fact. By your logic, it should be acceptable to copy Lord of the Rings. Many, if not most, fiction writers, write as though they are reporting facts. How boring would a novel be if every narrative were accompanied by a disclaimer?
What's more dangerous? A disease that kills half the people it infects, that infects a hundred people a year, or a disease that kills one in 10,000, that infects half a million people a year?
"Yeah throw the low-down perp in jail for his criminal malfeasance in defence of America's democratic institutions! That'll make it easier to honor the sacrifice he's made in such a noble cause!"
It is a necessary component of civil disobedience that one is prepared to accept the consequences of his actions.
If he did not want to go to prison or be killed for his noble actions, he could have done it anonymously. You may not volunteer to be a martyr for a cause of justice, and then chicken out when you realize the consequences are real.
"The problem is that Dan Brown states that the controversial parts of the plot (if you've read it you know what I'm talking about) are truth. "
Many works of fiction do the same!
I'd expect there to even be a disclaimer somewhere that explains this is a work of fiction, even though it's not necessary.
This isn't a sworn deposition, folks. It's a fictional novel.
"The Da Vinci Code was a disgrace, every factual analysis done on the theories presented showed NO FACTUAL BASIS!!!"
You do realize the book is a work of fiction, correct? Yes, the author writes his prose with assertions that his story is based on fact, and that's nothing new in works of fiction. Anybody who goes to any effort to try to "verify" something that is clearly intended to be an entertainment vehicle, should not be surprised when they come up empty!
People have done the same thing with Robert Anton Wilson, to "discredit" the Illuminatus, which is not only a work of fiction but a work of *humor* at that!
I think it's hilarious that people have published books discrediting the Da Vinci Code.
"The majority seems to be of the opinion that the document leaker has performed a public service. That is as far from the truth as it could possibly be."
There are millions of people who honestly believe recent elections of federal officers have been rigged, in what amounts to a coup d'etat, in part facilitated by the Diebold corporation.
In this light, it should be more surprising that we have not seen violent acts of rebellion, and certainly that there have not been more incidents where people have sought to expose Diebold.
This was a peaceful act of civil disobedience (for which Heller should face the consequences!) with a much larger goal than merely exposing an attorney's briefs. There may be a case to be made that the ruling party governs without legitimacy, and if that's true, there is no legal framework under which the matter can be considered fairly, since it questions the very authority of the government under which any question of law can be judged.
Now, I personally do not believe Diebold is effective enough to accomplish a coup, and I consider the current government to be an expression of the apathy of voters. I also don't believe that *even if* these documents show what they are purported to show, they amount to a defense for Heller.
However, in a question as serious as this, it was irresponsible of counsel to allow this information to escape.
Prove to the satisfaction of skeptics that there was vote-rigging, and you may be able to justify this level of civil disobedience. Even so, it is still likely that someone like Heller will have to face the consequences for civil disobedience -- even if Diebold literally rigged an election, it still isn't a defense for Heller's crime. Two wrongs don't make a right, even in clear cases of civil disobedience which are meant to seek justice or correct great injustices.
That's unfortunate, but if civil disobedience were painless and easy, there would be no reason to honor people who have made sacrifices in pursuit of justice.
> And that's why they should rightly be in trouble.
And they may very well *be* in trouble, but that won't help Mr. Heller, because it's not a defense for his crime.
The angle to approach this from, is the infringement of your own copyrights when you use this media to produce, copy, and distribute your own creative works where you reserve all rights under copyright. This would be the position from which to have the tax law struck down, on the argument that it abridges your rights.
>While it's a good and just thing that we now know Diebold was doing what they did
The problem is, we do NOT know that. We only know that two lawyers were talking about them doing what they did. That's not the same thing, compelling as it may be.
If the public opinion against the validity of Bush administration is as widespread as we are led to believe, there should be no jury pool that can possibly produce a jury that would find in favor of Diebold.
On the other hand, I think the defendant is going to discover that the belief in the rogue regime is not nearly as common as the opposition wants to believe. The USA is not on the brink of civil war or revolution, the people do not generally believe Bush was elected by fraud, and no member of Congress has his aides typing up articles of impeachment.
>I'll never have to serve on a jury as I find it my civic duty to ask a question relevant to the
> case that forces the judge to explain that concept to those jurors who _are_ allowed to stay.
What do you mean, exactly? What precise words do you say, and do you say it during voir dire? How do you know you'll get the chance to say it?
I've been excluded from a jury once because I refused to answer a question regarding my religious beliefs. Apparently I was the first person to ever do this. I explained that my understanding of the First Amendment was that no court or any other government agent could justify any concern of my religious beliefs whatsoever.
When I was younger and much crazier, I was excluded from a jury because I wore my Karl Marx T-Shirt.
Once when I was on a jury, the judge explained about nullification, and made it clear that while jury nullification may end the trial, there are still significant appeals and review processes.
>Would his failure to act on his knowledge of alleged lawbreaking make him an accessory?
Reporting it to the press instead of to someone with legal authority wouldn't save him anyway.
It appears that he was interested in more than merely justice. Notice that he didn't make this tip *anonymously*. He wanted credit. He apparently believed he had the scoop that would bring down the Bush Administration, once he proved that "the election" was stolen by Diebold...
>I mislike calling information "property" -- for the life of me I can't understand why this guy
>is being charged with theft
So you'd have no problem with, say, the plaintiff in a lawsuit where you are the defendent, gathering information from your attorney's files?
You'd have no objection to your spouse, for example, listening to recordings of you and your attorney discussing your divorce proceedings?
There are very good reasons for communication with attorneys to be kept confidential.
>Software licences are a complete maze and open source ones are a maze inside a maze.
Open source licences are a pleasant, straight walk. Interpreting copyright laws may be difficult in the UK, but reading and understanding a license such as the GPL or the MPL. The idea that this kind of language is inaccessible to ordinary people and can only be understood by lawyers is actually abnegation of the idea that individuals can and should take personal responsibility for their rights.
Forbidding transfer of copyrighted works where licence is granted, is no less a copyright infringement than is distributing copyrighted works to which all rights are reserved.
"The Drepung attrocity happened decades ago"
Because I personally know survivors of it, I don't consider it distant history at all. Likewise, I consider the Hungarian Revolution to be a contemporary event, because I personally know many people who were involved in it.
"I think the sad irony in that is that under the current regime, they would be called terrorists."
Of course they would. But if they were truly marching with the feet of the overwhelming majority that certain pundits would like us to believe they are, it would not matter.
There is no issue which is so divisive, for example, that it would engender rebellious divisions within the military, entire chains of command, complete with support of wide swaths the civilian industrial infrastructure, to turn against the regime to which they had been loyal. Just an example to dispel any images of a modern military force being called onto the battlefield by a handful of septuagenarian tax protestors from Montana. And my point is, we're not there yet, and nobody is anywhere near that upset about the status quo.
Further, for all the rhetoric aimed at the US, I see no coalition of military powers developing to, say, liberate Iraq from the US occupation by force, or even, to blockade the US Navy from accessing Cuba. The stated level of outrage is this high, but the actions do not support the diatribes.
Same phenomenon applies to China. If the world was really upset with China, they'd be under so much pressure that they would implode, what with no country allowing their citizens entry visas, and with no port giving harbor to their ships (enforced by gunships). But you don't do diplomacy that way.
I realize I'm out of step with the prevailing viewpoints, since I'm already thinking at the level of war and revolution. I'm not advocating violence; I'm just wondering when the inevitable repetitions of history will beging to unfold, and whether the issues of current events are sufficient to bring such extraordinary results to bear.
CVS integration works really well in Eclipse, SVN integration is promising, but can be unpleasant. This alone keeps me using CVS.
"Barring a few stupid corporations (*cough* Diebold *cough*), most ATMs accept extremely limited input, and have a very narrow range of possible actions they can take with that input, so there really isn't much to gain by hacking an ATM, and no real way to do it, because it's not really set up for that, and isn't running other, exploitable, services."
Are you only considering the keypad and the card reader?
What about physical access to the phone line? (Lots of ATM's use a POTS line, and a previous workplace had an ATM with an exposed, dangling RJ-11 wire in plain view...)
>You think the US federal government would agree to that?
Following a Constitutional Amendment ratified by the states, they would indeed.
Good luck with that.
>1) The implicit comparison of Chinese law to Nazi Germany's is pretty offensive.
Offensive to whom? Only to Nazis, or offensive to genocidal regimes in general?
Ask any Mongol survivor, or a refugee from the Dreprung Loseling monastery, if the comparison is unreasonable.
>2) He also seems to imply that violation of other countries laws just because the
> US goverment doesn't agree with them is morally correct. That's a morally
>questionable point in itself.
I don't have any resources to quote chapter and verse, but I am certain that it's a matter of doctrine that we obey the laws of any country we visit or do business in. The dividing line is past the point where we have embargos. We obey Saudi laws and Malaysian laws, but we don't obey Cuban laws or North Korean laws.
>3) This 'Congressman' also part of a system which has incarcerated a number of
>people indefinately without due process of law (Guantanamo Bay of course) because
> they say they're guilty. Somewhat hypocritical...
Yes, the current government is completely broken according to its opposition. Nevertheless, people have not yet become upset enough to take real action (coup, rebellion, allies becoming enemies and taking military action, that sort of thing), preferring instead to wait out the term peacably.
>Like an idiot, I'm in category #1. What a dope.
Of course, you are aware that a good postdoc academic job is one that pays a stipend worth a 1-bedroom apartment and doesn't require you to lecture, right? Category #1 jobs don't always pay a living wage, but at least some of them do. Category #2 jobs are good for people who saved enough money from a Category #1 job and want to spend their retirement living in a laid-back college town.
>It's a software "solution", it only checks if the processor is Intel's. Can't that
>be patched?
Of course. Whatever key it uses, is available to anyone with an intel chip. No matter how hard the crypto behind it may be, the key has to be in the wild.
"I think the above is AGS, aging geek syndrome - where you look critically at 'upgrades' and see only the work involved in implementing them."
I call it something else: The Plateau of Human Proportions.
I'm doing things with computers now, that I wanted to do in the 70s. Namely, realtime music synthesis, with digital recording as a bonus. It's finally practical, and upgrades are incrementally beneficial -- the quantum leap was when we got audio systems capable of producing sounds beyond the limits of human perception, even perhaps beyond the limits of *bat* perception.
Perhaps there is another such quantum jump for video production as well, where amateur video reaches the level of quality required to compete with professional gear, but I'm not so sure. At any rate, I agree with you -- my systems that I use for music production are quite thoroughly tweaked and the hardware was selected through a very expensive trial-and-error process. I would hate to replace it, and I won't, until I *must*. Doubly so, that the equipment is finally sufficient for the task. And it's not that I've moved the target over the years -- I've ALWAYS wished for digital synthesis in software, and I've always been frustrated that we hadn't reached the point where it was possible... Then we did...
I'm sure there are countless "Human Proportions" limits, where increases in the capability of tools don't matter.