How exactly does this apples to oranges comparison work? It's been a while since I did the calculation, but basically you take the average life expectancy of a person in hours (male life expectancy * percentage male + female life expectancy * percentage female), divide by two (I would imagine that the average age of a person who died in the 9/11 attack to be lower than the average, but I don't have any statistics to that effect), and multiply by the number of people who died in the attacks.
This is the amount of life lost on 9/11.
Next, you take the average wait time of airport security (I believe my original source was a DHS report), and multiply it by the number of travelers in a year. This leaves you with the amount of life lost in Airport Security lines.
Time dead = time dead I'll concede this one.
Waiting in security line = time alive Not exactly. Personally, I'm about as productive waiting in an airport security line as I would be while dead, and being dead has the advantage of being far less unpleasant.
Would this make you feel better? Being Alive > Being in Airport Security > Dead
Perhaps you would feel more comfortable with the statement "we lose more _productivity_ each year to airport security than to 9/11". Personally, I think it's demeaning to reduce people to little more than a measure of productivity; perhaps you feel differently.
You also forgot to mention this. Number of terrorist incidents involving planes in the USA since 9/11 = 0
No, I didn't "forget" to mention that - there's little mention to bring up a logical fallacy such as that. Remember, correlation does not imply causality.
Several things changed on 9/11, and not all of them were bad, or resulted in the loss of freedoms and our nation heading towards a police state. On that day, passengers changed - no longer would they sit there like sheep while a terrorist controlled the plane. On that day, people realized that there are those out there who want to kill us, people who you cannot negotiate with. When someone takes over a plane, you do not sit idly by - you act. You StopthepersonThreatening you.
So, there have been terrorist incidents since 9/11, including our own shoe bomber. The aim of 9/11 obviously was more than a simple hijacking, the planes were used to make a statement (and do the whole "death and destruction" thing. Between the reinforced cockpit door (useful, practical, good security) and the passengers (better security still), an attack of that scale cannot happen again. Furthermore, the pilot isn't going to allow the attacker into the cockpit. Ultimately, it wouldn't matter if the attacker had a gun and threatened to shoot passengers and crew - the pilot wouldn't allow the terrorist in, nor would the passengers just sit there.
As for the "wait in line to have your ID checked" part - we have a finite amount of security resources. Not everyone can get high security. so let's call the percentage that can P. So, we have to make 2 assumptions: 1) There is someone out there low security won't catch. If low security is good enough, there is no need for "high security". 2) The person who low security won't catch will be caught by high security. If high security isn't good enough, there is no point in high security either.
If both 1 and 2 aren't true, then there is no point to our current system at all. So, assume we have a terrorist who fits both 1 and 2.
Given that, how do you determine _who_ gets high security. Suppose we do it randomly - what's our chances of catching the terrorist? P. Ok, now examine our current system - checks b
It's not nearly as "simple" as you might think. It's fairly trivial to start sending business to a foreign subsidiary. So, we ban that. What's to stop the company from then having an "affiliate" company that gets 95% royalties on whatever they sell. Ok, ban that too. Companies can then "license" their technology to a foreign company cheaply, and operate the other company instead. Or, they can enter into business deals with the foreign company that cost a great deal of money, allowing them to funnel the money in the company to the foreign one. Finally, they have the option of just closing up shop, and when approached about business, say "we're not in business; however, we recommend the services of [foreign company] instead".
Legislating away all the ways one can move overseas would require such stringent legislation that nobody would want to do business here at all. It would take laws regulating (among other things) who you could do business with, require certain profit margins on all deals, impose requirements regarding ownership of multiple companies (remember that stocks convey ownership), regulate who you could recommend for services, and a number of other things which would greatly increase the size of government, decrease freedom for individuals and companies, cost a lot of money, and make the US a (even more) difficult place to do business.
I run a business in the United States, and I would like to continue to do so. We have a Hungarian engineer, not because he's cheap (he's not - he makes more than me), but because there isn't anyone better at what he does that we know of. We outsource to India on occasion because of the simple fact that for some jobs, we cannot compete at American wages. Which is better for America - an American company, paying American taxes, and hiring a few Indians as needed, or an Indian Company, paying Indian taxes, hiring only Indians?
If America started to take the steps to make it impossible to (effectively) move business overseas, regardless of the collateral damage, I would move. America is no longer the "shining beacon of liberty" it once was - we willingly, gladly trade real liberty for imagined security. Don't believe me? How is a Metal Detector going to stop a suicide bomber with some dynamite, a fuse, and a book of matches? George Bush has done more harm to this country's freedoms than any other person in history, congress and the police ignore the constitution at every occasion, we're turning into a police state, and we lose more life waiting in the airport security line every year than was lost on 9/11.
We squander money like it's going out of style, and our economy is doomed. Housing prices are way overinflated, we have no savings, and the FDIC doesn't have enough cash to make more than a token gesture at fixing things when the inevitable crash happens.
So, if this country is so bad, why don't I leave? Well, it's (at the moment) a favorable environment for business, and I have family here. I also think that it may be possible to save our freedoms, and that an economic crash may help wake people up, and will be good in the long run (affordable housing, smaller government from lack of funding, etc.). So I stay, run my business, and work to make the country a better place. Take away my business, or threaten it, and I will lose much of my reason for staying. Companies aren't the only ones who can move.
If they aren't going to use it anyway, why not just skip the whole botnet thing in the first place? Tell people you will DOS them, then don't do it regardless of if they pay.
You can't lose what you don't have, and the victim has little way of knowing if you are serious anyway.
Driving around the country, in a vehicle with Arizona plates, and 100% tinting in the back (AZ legal).
In some states (Montana, Wyoming, etc.) they pull me over to issue me speeding tickets (whether or not I'm actually speeding doesn't really matter). Fortunately, I've got a GPS tracking system in my car - it's really easy to prove I wasn't.
In other states (CA, UT, etc.) - it seems that they are looking for drug runners (AZ plates, after all). I'm a 22 year old hispanic male, with a large truck, tinted windows, and AZ plates - pulling me over (even for a made up excuse) gives them a chance to look at me and inside the truck.
I _never_ consent to a search (not that I ever have anything illegal - it's the principle of the thing). I do tend to have weapons in the car (or on my person), but I declare them to the officer beforehand, and have never had that used as a justification for a search.
I have had two illegal searches of my car - the first time, the officer said he saw me hide something and was very nervous. I ended up handcuffed in the back of the squad car while he searched my car. Nothing was found.
I had a drug dog "alert" once, and had that used as grounds for a search. Nothing was found (it was a bogus reason).
The most "fun" one was when I got pulled over late at night in Arizona (around 2AM). I turned on the dome light, hands on the steering wheel. When the officer came over, I cracked the window, and handed him my license and registration when asked. I was asked to step out, and to take a "field sobriety test", which I declined (these can't do anything but hurt you in court). I was detained (not free to go) until they got the drug dog, and went around the car several times. When the drug dog didn't alert, I was brought down to the station and given the choice of blowing into the breath analyzer (Intoxilyzer? infrared spectroscopy, IIRC), or having a search warrant drawn up for my blood. Given Arizona's "Implied Consent" law, I would have lost my license for refusing anyway.
I blow straight 0s, and they let me go about 4AM. I get back, and my car's stereo was stolen.
Uhhh, not to be inflammatory and all, but who the fuck are you to take it upon yourself to install your own trojan?
Well, that certainly sounds like you're trying to be inflammatory, but I'll bite.
A trojan is a specific type of program that masquerades as one thing, but is in fact another. The original attack was most definately a trojan. As such, I can only assume that either a) the owner of the machine didn't know about it, and has no desire for it to continue, or b) it's a botnet owner - I don't care about them anyway.
The program that was sent to the client was very, very simple, and very limited. It looked for a running hidden mIRC.exe copy in a very specific hidden directory inside the windows directory. If found, it would terminate only that mIRC.exe, delete that specific hard-coded trojan-specific directory (no other legitimate program would be there), and remove the registry entry used to load it at startup.
As for "how do you know"? Well, it was a simple small app, and a decompile would show what it did. Or, the source code could be taken and recompiled, and compared. The app had my name and email in it, for heaven's sake.
As for the "YOU COMMITTED A CRIME" part - it would be interesting to see that argument in court. I connected to a publically accessable chat server, with the consent (implied and explicit) of the owner of that server. I placed a program to connect to a chat room, and simply pasted a command containing a URL. Arguably, the trespass was already done, and there was plenty of evidence to indicate that it was done without the consent of the owner of the computer. If anything, my script would "un-do" the harm originally done - it would be difficult to convince a judge that the Mens Rea was present for Computer Tresspass; given the rather limited scope and simplicity of the program, recklessness or negligence would be rather difficult to prove. Also, there was most certainly no intent to commit an act of Computer Trespass, further complicating a case against me.
Besides, good luck getting that one past a jury of my peers. "Their computers were infected, and attacking other computers online. I cleaned them up, at no charge, and restored them to how they were before they were attacked." - you really think you could convince a jury of 12 to convict for that?
I certainly wouldn't complain if someone started actively dismantling these networks.
Some of us try.
A while ago, I got a spam message, trying to infect me and connect me to a botnet - the software was a hacked up mIRC client with some DLL plugins. The client would automatically open a second connection, connect to a random network and channel, and proceed to spam people with virus messages on join. ("Type//some evil command to get op!, etc.")
After talking to the admins, we banned the owners (only certain nicknames were allowed to control the bots), and replaced them with an eggdrop that had the infected people download and install an automatic cleaner. Thousands of infected computers were cleaned overnight, and hundreds more over the next few weeks. Is it possible that the cleaner broke a machine or two in the process? Possible, but unlikely (would be most likely due to a variant of the bot). Oh well - it made the IRC servers I used a lot more useful.
Even better - get a pair of Shure E2cs (or higher). They have plugs that are basically the foam earplugs used by airline ramp agents, with a tube in them for sound. Don't "cancel" the noise - absorb it. As a nice bonus, because of the absorbtion, you can listen at a much lower volume, if you are into that thing.
Personally, I have the E4c - better sound and more comfortable than the (arguably very comfortable) Bose headphones. Not that the Bose are the pinnacle of sound quality - you can get a good pair of Sony headphones that sound better, for cheaper. It's kind of like owning an iPod - it's not as good as the competition (Zune excluded), nor as cheap, nor as reliable, but some people value form over function.
As for being a "violent society" - there is truth to that statement; however, it's more complicated than just access to guns. There are a number of socioeconomic factors that affect violence and crime.
Taking guns away from people doesn't make them less violent, but it does make it harder for them to defend themselves. An elderly woman is not likely to be able to defend herself against a younger male attacker with brute strength. Give her a gun, and she has a fairly decent chance.
As for "expecting" people to defend themselves - who else is going to? The government cannot be always present; police show up after the crime is reported. At that point, it's already happened. If you defend yourself, you avoid being a victim in the first place.
Also, the Second Amendment to the US Constitution is intended to provide the people the ability to resist their government, with force if necessary. Disarming the populace allows for much greater levels of tyranny, as the people have no way to fight back.
In England (where they reported robberies with knives had risen by 72% last year), they have strict gun control laws, and have increased the penalty for "carrying a knife in public without good reason" to a maximum of 4 years.
You say you don't want to live in a society where people have to enforce their rights. Would you rather be in a society where the criminals are free to prey on whomever they want, knowing that their victim will be unable to fight back? I wouldn't want to live in a society where the government is free to do whatever they want without consequence, and it's not safe to roam the streets at night, lest someone decide to mug/rape you. Besides, most of the uses of guns in the US don't actually result in firing - most of the time, when the attacker finds out the victim has a gun, he runs.
As for the "as often as I seem to imply" part - my comments should not be taken to mean that the whole United States is full of thugs, waiting to pounce at every opportunity (Congress Excepted). Rather, there are certain areas around certain towns where one does so at your own peril. In both cases, I was in a place, at a time I should not have been. A little more caution on my part would have avoided the incident. Nonetheless, I had the ethical (and legal) right to defend myself against an agressor, and do not feel sorry for having done so.
With the second attack, I called the police. It took them 2 hours to show up, and all they did was file a report. Someone else finally reported the guy stumbling around town bleeding, and only then did they actually do anything. If nobody dies, and they would have to do any actual police work, they aren't going to bother. This isn't unusual for major cities - my Aunt called the police once in Chicago, and informed them someone was being raped out on her street. Dispatch said "yeah, and what do you expect us to do about it?". So I ask - what is a person in that circumstance to do?
I live in the USA, and here in Wyoming, anyone can buy a gun at a gun show, with no waiting period, no ID, no police requirements, and pay in cash.
There are a number of vehicles with guns in them in the parking lot, and a number of guns in lockers here at the dormotories. It's an open carry state (only need a permit to conceal), and I regularly see people walking around with guns, including into stores.
You know what? Those people might be able to shoot me, but on the other hand, they might knife me, hit me with a club, or any of a number of other things. I'm not going to live in fear. If anything, it's comforting to know that if someone is attacking me, there's a better chance of someone coming to my aid. I also know that criminals will think twice - the person they are thinking of mugging may very well kill them.
I have been mugged twice (both times in California, where the laws are very much anti-gun). The first guy had a knife. I had a bigger one, and he ran.
The second mugger had no weapon, and when I didn't have enough money for him, decided to attack me. I put him in the hospital.
While it's true that neither of the attackers had a gun, a knife can kill you just as dead (with a lot more pain involved). The Police (which have no obligation to the individual) show up afterwards to take reports, and clean up the mess. If I cannot protect myself, others cannot protect me, and the police won't - what's to stop those who do me harm. If I (or those around me) are armed, violent crime can be deterred, or at the very least the offenders can be removed from the gene pool.
As a final example, my sister was violently raped, and still bears emotional scars from it. She was not able to physically resist his assault. The rapist was never caught, and may very well have been a serial rapist from the area.
Had she had a gun, she would most likely have emotional scars of an entirely different nature, and the later victims would have not happened. Given the crimes this man did, I wouldn't be particularly sorry for him.
Heck, these guys have a search engine that automatically unrars files, and lets you download almost any file over straight HTTP. I typically pull 1MByte/sec or higher.
Well, with ACH access, you can withdraw (or deposit) any arbitrary amount (with sufficient funds) from (or to) almost any account in the United States.
Well, "global brands" aside, how about the obvious? Canadian companies might just be willing to buy ads which are shown to canadians. Despite the fact that my sites tend to be American in focus and demographic, I've still sold ads to companies wanting to reach a specific demographic outside the US.
Other than rights sold off to Canadian affiliates, what is to stop Fox US from showing 24 on their web site, and doing targeting based off IP address? Viewers in Canada get ads for Canadian companies, sold by Fox US to those companies. Visitors in the US get ads sold to US companies. Costs a couple hundred dollars to license a geolocation database, and a few hours development work to add support to ad serving software. It's not rocket science.
There's no advantage for a U.S network to stream to Canada because the streamed ads are intended for a U.S. market. My guess is that the advertisers pay/view and they don't want to pay for Canadian eyes.
That argument holds water only until the US content providers find advertisers willing to pay for ad impressions to Canadians.
Turnitin is doing something these students feel is unethical. They feel that they should have more control over their work. The law that covers what control authors have over their work is copyright law, and the only way they can get a court to do anything about Turnitin is to sue.
So, given that:
a) without the law, they have no recourse against Turnitin b) the section of the law that deals with this sort of thing is copyright (i.e. the right to make copies) c) the only way to get the courts to rule on it is to sue d) their suit is potentially strengthened by registering the document with the copyright office
What other reasonable action can they take? It's not like they can boycott Turnitin and let the "free market" sort it out - they aren't Turnitin's customers. Why would they deliberately weaken their chances in a lawsuit, and what alternative to a lawsuit do they have?
In the example you cite, there would be degredation of the signal for those who did pay, so there is some harm involved there. On the other hand, what if you could make the splice without causing those problems?
Let's see - scenario one (you don't use cable at all) Your neighbor pays $X, and gets his service. The cable company gets $X, and uses a portion of that to pay for their services and infrastructure.
Scenario two (you splice into your neighbors cable) Your neighbor still pays $X. He still gets his service. The cable company still gets $X, and uses the same portion of that to provide the same services and infrastructure.
Now, if you were going to purchase cable, and now avoid it because you get it for free, the cable company is unquestionably out the revenue. On the other hand, if you were not going to buy service anyway, and now get it from your neighbor, the cable company (and television company) still make the same revenue, providing the same services. Logistically speaking, it's no different than going over to your neighbors house and watching it there.
I believe that people should be responsible for the harm they do others, and if what you do doesn't harm me (or place me at unreasonable risk of harm), I have no right to interfere in what you do. As such, I see using some illegal drugs in the privacy of your own home in much the same way I see copyright infringement when no sale would have taken place. So I ask you, who is harmed when you copy something you would not have bought anyway?
As a practical matter, not everyone who claims they would never buy it tells the truth, and it's necessary to be able to enforce business models dependant on honest participation on both parties; fraud and deceit interfere with a free and open market. For those reasons, copyright infringement and "theft of services" must be illegal; without it, the services and goods couldn't be provided in the first place, without some radical restructuring to the way society works (patronage, etc.). My point is more of an ethical one - if one could truly demonstrate that someone would never buy a product, what harm is them in copying it? The closest answer I can come up with is not that the copied party was wronged, but rather their competition - the potential marketplace has shrunk.
Your recourse at that point is the same as mine was in High School.
I wrote a paper for Junior english, and was accused of complete plagerism. This was a shock to me, as I wrote it. When the teacher brought in the printout for "proof", it was a forum post I had made, in which I had asked for other's comments on it. I had posted this after turning it on to the teacher. Give my use of semicolons, and rather unique writing style, it should have been readily apparent that it was my writing; the "I wrote this for an english paper, what do you think" preface should have further driven that message home.
I got credit for the paper, but got an admonition to not do it again.
While it could be about the money, it's also quite possible that this is, in fact, a negotiation technique similar to those used by the RIAA.
Statutory damages are a pain (up to $150,000 per offense), and Turnitin isn't going to want to pay them, and especially isn't going to want to have precedent like that with their huge database.
The people brining the lawsuit can use the potential (though unlikely to be applied in full) damages as a bargaining chip - forcing Turnitin to either settle, or risk $900,000 worth of damages for these 6 papers, and a whole lot more for the database itself.
My comment was more a reference to the rather literal "militia" definition used by the GP. My point was, that even if taken literally, without interpretation, that right was still present.
Do you think that all those drunks that file out of the bar at 2AM night after night take a cab home? No, and that's why I drive a large (relatively safe) vehicle, and avoid other traffic as much as possible those times of nights.
You'll just have to trust people not to abuse it. If they do, they'll eventually run out of luck and their life ends. Their life ending isn't why drunk driving bothers me. That's simply a natural consequence of driving something large and heavy, when you are not in a position to be in control of the vehicle. When it gets to be my problem is when they place my well-being, as well as that of my family, and my property at risk.
The law that is enforced and the law written into the books ought not to be different, right? Laws should be absolutely enforced. If the law shouldn't be absolutely enforced, it shouldn't be a law.
If drunk driving carried an automatic penalty of a year in jail for the first offense, the drunks wouldn't be driving home. In the US, the penalties are not suffient to provide adequate deterrance. This can be seen in a number of european countries, which have stricter laws regarding drunk driving than the US.
Unfortunately, as alcohol impairs your judgement, it also impares your ability to reasonably decide if you are too impaired. This is why society steps in, and designates at which level it's unacceptable.
Slashdot Mirror
For those who don't have something that can read qtl files, here are some direct links:
"Exclusive Trailer".
Theatrical Trailer.
Teaser Trailer.
How exactly does this apples to oranges comparison work?
It's been a while since I did the calculation, but basically you take the average life expectancy of a person in hours (male life expectancy * percentage male + female life expectancy * percentage female), divide by two (I would imagine that the average age of a person who died in the 9/11 attack to be lower than the average, but I don't have any statistics to that effect), and multiply by the number of people who died in the attacks.
This is the amount of life lost on 9/11.
Next, you take the average wait time of airport security (I believe my original source was a DHS report), and multiply it by the number of travelers in a year. This leaves you with the amount of life lost in Airport Security lines.
Time dead = time dead
I'll concede this one.
Waiting in security line = time alive
Not exactly. Personally, I'm about as productive waiting in an airport security line as I would be while dead, and being dead has the advantage of being far less unpleasant.
Would this make you feel better?
Being Alive > Being in Airport Security > Dead
Perhaps you would feel more comfortable with the statement "we lose more _productivity_ each year to airport security than to 9/11". Personally, I think it's demeaning to reduce people to little more than a measure of productivity; perhaps you feel differently.
You also forgot to mention this.
Number of terrorist incidents involving planes in the USA since 9/11 = 0
No, I didn't "forget" to mention that - there's little mention to bring up a logical fallacy such as that. Remember, correlation does not imply causality.
Several things changed on 9/11, and not all of them were bad, or resulted in the loss of freedoms and our nation heading towards a police state. On that day, passengers changed - no longer would they sit there like sheep while a terrorist controlled the plane. On that day, people realized that there are those out there who want to kill us, people who you cannot negotiate with. When someone takes over a plane, you do not sit idly by - you act. You Stop the person Threatening you.
So, there have been terrorist incidents since 9/11, including our own shoe bomber. The aim of 9/11 obviously was more than a simple hijacking, the planes were used to make a statement (and do the whole "death and destruction" thing. Between the reinforced cockpit door (useful, practical, good security) and the passengers (better security still), an attack of that scale cannot happen again. Furthermore, the pilot isn't going to allow the attacker into the cockpit. Ultimately, it wouldn't matter if the attacker had a gun and threatened to shoot passengers and crew - the pilot wouldn't allow the terrorist in, nor would the passengers just sit there.
As for the "wait in line to have your ID checked" part - we have a finite amount of security resources. Not everyone can get high security. so let's call the percentage that can P. So, we have to make 2 assumptions:
1) There is someone out there low security won't catch. If low security is good enough, there is no need for "high security".
2) The person who low security won't catch will be caught by high security. If high security isn't good enough, there is no point in high security either.
If both 1 and 2 aren't true, then there is no point to our current system at all. So, assume we have a terrorist who fits both 1 and 2.
Given that, how do you determine _who_ gets high security. Suppose we do it randomly - what's our chances of catching the terrorist? P.
Ok, now examine our current system - checks b
Simple- don't allow companies to move.
It's not nearly as "simple" as you might think. It's fairly trivial to start sending business to a foreign subsidiary. So, we ban that. What's to stop the company from then having an "affiliate" company that gets 95% royalties on whatever they sell. Ok, ban that too. Companies can then "license" their technology to a foreign company cheaply, and operate the other company instead. Or, they can enter into business deals with the foreign company that cost a great deal of money, allowing them to funnel the money in the company to the foreign one. Finally, they have the option of just closing up shop, and when approached about business, say "we're not in business; however, we recommend the services of [foreign company] instead".
Legislating away all the ways one can move overseas would require such stringent legislation that nobody would want to do business here at all. It would take laws regulating (among other things) who you could do business with, require certain profit margins on all deals, impose requirements regarding ownership of multiple companies (remember that stocks convey ownership), regulate who you could recommend for services, and a number of other things which would greatly increase the size of government, decrease freedom for individuals and companies, cost a lot of money, and make the US a (even more) difficult place to do business.
I run a business in the United States, and I would like to continue to do so. We have a Hungarian engineer, not because he's cheap (he's not - he makes more than me), but because there isn't anyone better at what he does that we know of. We outsource to India on occasion because of the simple fact that for some jobs, we cannot compete at American wages. Which is better for America - an American company, paying American taxes, and hiring a few Indians as needed, or an Indian Company, paying Indian taxes, hiring only Indians?
If America started to take the steps to make it impossible to (effectively) move business overseas, regardless of the collateral damage, I would move. America is no longer the "shining beacon of liberty" it once was - we willingly, gladly trade real liberty for imagined security. Don't believe me? How is a Metal Detector going to stop a suicide bomber with some dynamite, a fuse, and a book of matches? George Bush has done more harm to this country's freedoms than any other person in history, congress and the police ignore the constitution at every occasion, we're turning into a police state, and we lose more life waiting in the airport security line every year than was lost on 9/11.
We squander money like it's going out of style, and our economy is doomed. Housing prices are way overinflated, we have no savings, and the FDIC doesn't have enough cash to make more than a token gesture at fixing things when the inevitable crash happens.
So, if this country is so bad, why don't I leave? Well, it's (at the moment) a favorable environment for business, and I have family here. I also think that it may be possible to save our freedoms, and that an economic crash may help wake people up, and will be good in the long run (affordable housing, smaller government from lack of funding, etc.). So I stay, run my business, and work to make the country a better place. Take away my business, or threaten it, and I will lose much of my reason for staying. Companies aren't the only ones who can move.
So mount SVN over webdav, and turn on auto-versioning. Whenever you make a change, it gets committed as a new revision.
If they aren't going to use it anyway, why not just skip the whole botnet thing in the first place? Tell people you will DOS them, then don't do it regardless of if they pay.
You can't lose what you don't have, and the victim has little way of knowing if you are serious anyway.
Driving around the country, in a vehicle with Arizona plates, and 100% tinting in the back (AZ legal).
In some states (Montana, Wyoming, etc.) they pull me over to issue me speeding tickets (whether or not I'm actually speeding doesn't really matter). Fortunately, I've got a GPS tracking system in my car - it's really easy to prove I wasn't.
In other states (CA, UT, etc.) - it seems that they are looking for drug runners (AZ plates, after all). I'm a 22 year old hispanic male, with a large truck, tinted windows, and AZ plates - pulling me over (even for a made up excuse) gives them a chance to look at me and inside the truck.
I _never_ consent to a search (not that I ever have anything illegal - it's the principle of the thing). I do tend to have weapons in the car (or on my person), but I declare them to the officer beforehand, and have never had that used as a justification for a search.
I have had two illegal searches of my car - the first time, the officer said he saw me hide something and was very nervous. I ended up handcuffed in the back of the squad car while he searched my car. Nothing was found.
I had a drug dog "alert" once, and had that used as grounds for a search. Nothing was found (it was a bogus reason).
The most "fun" one was when I got pulled over late at night in Arizona (around 2AM). I turned on the dome light, hands on the steering wheel. When the officer came over, I cracked the window, and handed him my license and registration when asked. I was asked to step out, and to take a "field sobriety test", which I declined (these can't do anything but hurt you in court). I was detained (not free to go) until they got the drug dog, and went around the car several times. When the drug dog didn't alert, I was brought down to the station and given the choice of blowing into the breath analyzer (Intoxilyzer? infrared spectroscopy, IIRC), or having a search warrant drawn up for my blood. Given Arizona's "Implied Consent" law, I would have lost my license for refusing anyway.
I blow straight 0s, and they let me go about 4AM. I get back, and my car's stereo was stolen.
Well, that certainly sounds like you're trying to be inflammatory, but I'll bite.
A trojan is a specific type of program that masquerades as one thing, but is in fact another. The original attack was most definately a trojan. As such, I can only assume that either a) the owner of the machine didn't know about it, and has no desire for it to continue, or b) it's a botnet owner - I don't care about them anyway.
The program that was sent to the client was very, very simple, and very limited. It looked for a running hidden mIRC.exe copy in a very specific hidden directory inside the windows directory. If found, it would terminate only that mIRC.exe, delete that specific hard-coded trojan-specific directory (no other legitimate program would be there), and remove the registry entry used to load it at startup.
As for "how do you know"? Well, it was a simple small app, and a decompile would show what it did. Or, the source code could be taken and recompiled, and compared. The app had my name and email in it, for heaven's sake.
As for the "YOU COMMITTED A CRIME" part - it would be interesting to see that argument in court. I connected to a publically accessable chat server, with the consent (implied and explicit) of the owner of that server. I placed a program to connect to a chat room, and simply pasted a command containing a URL. Arguably, the trespass was already done, and there was plenty of evidence to indicate that it was done without the consent of the owner of the computer. If anything, my script would "un-do" the harm originally done - it would be difficult to convince a judge that the Mens Rea was present for Computer Tresspass; given the rather limited scope and simplicity of the program, recklessness or negligence would be rather difficult to prove. Also, there was most certainly no intent to commit an act of Computer Trespass, further complicating a case against me.
Besides, good luck getting that one past a jury of my peers. "Their computers were infected, and attacking other computers online. I cleaned them up, at no charge, and restored them to how they were before they were attacked." - you really think you could convince a jury of 12 to convict for that?
Some of us try.
A while ago, I got a spam message, trying to infect me and connect me to a botnet - the software was a hacked up mIRC client with some DLL plugins. The client would automatically open a second connection, connect to a random network and channel, and proceed to spam people with virus messages on join. ("Type
After talking to the admins, we banned the owners (only certain nicknames were allowed to control the bots), and replaced them with an eggdrop that had the infected people download and install an automatic cleaner. Thousands of infected computers were cleaned overnight, and hundreds more over the next few weeks. Is it possible that the cleaner broke a machine or two in the process? Possible, but unlikely (would be most likely due to a variant of the bot). Oh well - it made the IRC servers I used a lot more useful.
Even better - get a pair of Shure E2cs (or higher). They have plugs that are basically the foam earplugs used by airline ramp agents, with a tube in them for sound. Don't "cancel" the noise - absorb it. As a nice bonus, because of the absorbtion, you can listen at a much lower volume, if you are into that thing.
Personally, I have the E4c - better sound and more comfortable than the (arguably very comfortable) Bose headphones. Not that the Bose are the pinnacle of sound quality - you can get a good pair of Sony headphones that sound better, for cheaper. It's kind of like owning an iPod - it's not as good as the competition (Zune excluded), nor as cheap, nor as reliable, but some people value form over function.
A more likely scenario would be the mid/upper level bureaucrat simply writing the specifications to the product in question.
"The office suite selected shall be 100% compatible with all documents produced with Microsoft Office 2007", etc.
Why? Because that's the way the ACH works.
As for it not being your problem, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that it was fraud. Good luck with that.
As for being a "violent society" - there is truth to that statement; however, it's more complicated than just access to guns. There are a number of socioeconomic factors that affect violence and crime.
Taking guns away from people doesn't make them less violent, but it does make it harder for them to defend themselves. An elderly woman is not likely to be able to defend herself against a younger male attacker with brute strength. Give her a gun, and she has a fairly decent chance.
As for "expecting" people to defend themselves - who else is going to? The government cannot be always present; police show up after the crime is reported. At that point, it's already happened. If you defend yourself, you avoid being a victim in the first place.
Also, the Second Amendment to the US Constitution is intended to provide the people the ability to resist their government, with force if necessary. Disarming the populace allows for much greater levels of tyranny, as the people have no way to fight back.
In England (where they reported robberies with knives had risen by 72% last year), they have strict gun control laws, and have increased the penalty for "carrying a knife in public without good reason" to a maximum of 4 years.
You say you don't want to live in a society where people have to enforce their rights. Would you rather be in a society where the criminals are free to prey on whomever they want, knowing that their victim will be unable to fight back? I wouldn't want to live in a society where the government is free to do whatever they want without consequence, and it's not safe to roam the streets at night, lest someone decide to mug/rape you. Besides, most of the uses of guns in the US don't actually result in firing - most of the time, when the attacker finds out the victim has a gun, he runs.
As for the "as often as I seem to imply" part - my comments should not be taken to mean that the whole United States is full of thugs, waiting to pounce at every opportunity (Congress Excepted). Rather, there are certain areas around certain towns where one does so at your own peril. In both cases, I was in a place, at a time I should not have been. A little more caution on my part would have avoided the incident. Nonetheless, I had the ethical (and legal) right to defend myself against an agressor, and do not feel sorry for having done so.
With the second attack, I called the police. It took them 2 hours to show up, and all they did was file a report. Someone else finally reported the guy stumbling around town bleeding, and only then did they actually do anything. If nobody dies, and they would have to do any actual police work, they aren't going to bother. This isn't unusual for major cities - my Aunt called the police once in Chicago, and informed them someone was being raped out on her street. Dispatch said "yeah, and what do you expect us to do about it?". So I ask - what is a person in that circumstance to do?
I live in the USA, and here in Wyoming, anyone can buy a gun at a gun show, with no waiting period, no ID, no police requirements, and pay in cash.
There are a number of vehicles with guns in them in the parking lot, and a number of guns in lockers here at the dormotories. It's an open carry state (only need a permit to conceal), and I regularly see people walking around with guns, including into stores.
You know what? Those people might be able to shoot me, but on the other hand, they might knife me, hit me with a club, or any of a number of other things. I'm not going to live in fear. If anything, it's comforting to know that if someone is attacking me, there's a better chance of someone coming to my aid. I also know that criminals will think twice - the person they are thinking of mugging may very well kill them.
I have been mugged twice (both times in California, where the laws are very much anti-gun). The first guy had a knife. I had a bigger one, and he ran.
The second mugger had no weapon, and when I didn't have enough money for him, decided to attack me. I put him in the hospital.
While it's true that neither of the attackers had a gun, a knife can kill you just as dead (with a lot more pain involved). The Police (which have no obligation to the individual) show up afterwards to take reports, and clean up the mess. If I cannot protect myself, others cannot protect me, and the police won't - what's to stop those who do me harm. If I (or those around me) are armed, violent crime can be deterred, or at the very least the offenders can be removed from the gene pool.
As a final example, my sister was violently raped, and still bears emotional scars from it. She was not able to physically resist his assault. The rapist was never caught, and may very well have been a serial rapist from the area.
Had she had a gun, she would most likely have emotional scars of an entirely different nature, and the later victims would have not happened. Given the crimes this man did, I wouldn't be particularly sorry for him.
Usenet?
Heck, these guys have a search engine that automatically unrars files, and lets you download almost any file over straight HTTP. I typically pull 1MByte/sec or higher.
Well, with ACH access, you can withdraw (or deposit) any arbitrary amount (with sufficient funds) from (or to) almost any account in the United States.
Does that count as evil?
Since a corporation is (in fact) merely a collection of people, with a little legal trimming.
Remove the trimming, and put the people in jail.
Well, "global brands" aside, how about the obvious? Canadian companies might just be willing to buy ads which are shown to canadians. Despite the fact that my sites tend to be American in focus and demographic, I've still sold ads to companies wanting to reach a specific demographic outside the US.
Other than rights sold off to Canadian affiliates, what is to stop Fox US from showing 24 on their web site, and doing targeting based off IP address? Viewers in Canada get ads for Canadian companies, sold by Fox US to those companies. Visitors in the US get ads sold to US companies. Costs a couple hundred dollars to license a geolocation database, and a few hours development work to add support to ad serving software. It's not rocket science.
That argument holds water only until the US content providers find advertisers willing to pay for ad impressions to Canadians.
Turnitin is doing something these students feel is unethical. They feel that they should have more control over their work. The law that covers what control authors have over their work is copyright law, and the only way they can get a court to do anything about Turnitin is to sue.
So, given that:
a) without the law, they have no recourse against Turnitin
b) the section of the law that deals with this sort of thing is copyright (i.e. the right to make copies)
c) the only way to get the courts to rule on it is to sue
d) their suit is potentially strengthened by registering the document with the copyright office
What other reasonable action can they take? It's not like they can boycott Turnitin and let the "free market" sort it out - they aren't Turnitin's customers. Why would they deliberately weaken their chances in a lawsuit, and what alternative to a lawsuit do they have?
In the example you cite, there would be degredation of the signal for those who did pay, so there is some harm involved there. On the other hand, what if you could make the splice without causing those problems?
Let's see - scenario one (you don't use cable at all)
Your neighbor pays $X, and gets his service.
The cable company gets $X, and uses a portion of that to pay for their services and infrastructure.
Scenario two (you splice into your neighbors cable)
Your neighbor still pays $X. He still gets his service.
The cable company still gets $X, and uses the same portion of that to provide the same services and infrastructure.
Now, if you were going to purchase cable, and now avoid it because you get it for free, the cable company is unquestionably out the revenue. On the other hand, if you were not going to buy service anyway, and now get it from your neighbor, the cable company (and television company) still make the same revenue, providing the same services. Logistically speaking, it's no different than going over to your neighbors house and watching it there.
I believe that people should be responsible for the harm they do others, and if what you do doesn't harm me (or place me at unreasonable risk of harm), I have no right to interfere in what you do. As such, I see using some illegal drugs in the privacy of your own home in much the same way I see copyright infringement when no sale would have taken place. So I ask you, who is harmed when you copy something you would not have bought anyway?
As a practical matter, not everyone who claims they would never buy it tells the truth, and it's necessary to be able to enforce business models dependant on honest participation on both parties; fraud and deceit interfere with a free and open market. For those reasons, copyright infringement and "theft of services" must be illegal; without it, the services and goods couldn't be provided in the first place, without some radical restructuring to the way society works (patronage, etc.). My point is more of an ethical one - if one could truly demonstrate that someone would never buy a product, what harm is them in copying it? The closest answer I can come up with is not that the copied party was wronged, but rather their competition - the potential marketplace has shrunk.
Your recourse at that point is the same as mine was in High School.
I wrote a paper for Junior english, and was accused of complete plagerism. This was a shock to me, as I wrote it. When the teacher brought in the printout for "proof", it was a forum post I had made, in which I had asked for other's comments on it. I had posted this after turning it on to the teacher. Give my use of semicolons, and rather unique writing style, it should have been readily apparent that it was my writing; the "I wrote this for an english paper, what do you think" preface should have further driven that message home.
I got credit for the paper, but got an admonition to not do it again.
While it could be about the money, it's also quite possible that this is, in fact, a negotiation technique similar to those used by the RIAA.
Statutory damages are a pain (up to $150,000 per offense), and Turnitin isn't going to want to pay them, and especially isn't going to want to have precedent like that with their huge database.
The people brining the lawsuit can use the potential (though unlikely to be applied in full) damages as a bargaining chip - forcing Turnitin to either settle, or risk $900,000 worth of damages for these 6 papers, and a whole lot more for the database itself.
My comment was more a reference to the rather literal "militia" definition used by the GP. My point was, that even if taken literally, without interpretation, that right was still present.
Do you think that all those drunks that file out of the bar at 2AM night after night take a cab home?
No, and that's why I drive a large (relatively safe) vehicle, and avoid other traffic as much as possible those times of nights.
You'll just have to trust people not to abuse it. If they do, they'll eventually run out of luck and their life ends.
Their life ending isn't why drunk driving bothers me. That's simply a natural consequence of driving something large and heavy, when you are not in a position to be in control of the vehicle. When it gets to be my problem is when they place my well-being, as well as that of my family, and my property at risk.
The law that is enforced and the law written into the books ought not to be different, right?
Laws should be absolutely enforced. If the law shouldn't be absolutely enforced, it shouldn't be a law.
If drunk driving carried an automatic penalty of a year in jail for the first offense, the drunks wouldn't be driving home. In the US, the penalties are not suffient to provide adequate deterrance. This can be seen in a number of european countries, which have stricter laws regarding drunk driving than the US.
Unfortunately, as alcohol impairs your judgement, it also impares your ability to reasonably decide if you are too impaired. This is why society steps in, and designates at which level it's unacceptable.