Oh, I didn't say, "embrace it and let the world know". What I said, exactly, was:
I would have to learn to embrace that it was part of who I was sufficiently that, if for some reason I had to explain it to my mother, I could handle it.
So I'm really just suggesting (in your example) that you consider, hypothetically: if you were *forced* to tell the people you love and care about, the people you respect and want them to respect you, that you're into BDSM, would you be unbearably ashamed of yourself?
I'm not saying you should tell them, but just that you consider that in your mind. It's an exercise in decision-making process to make you think about consequences. If you can't handle likely consequences of your actions, then your actions might not be wise.
Of course, like I said, it's not that simple. Some people are just prejudiced, and you might be afraid of people learning as a practical matter, and not as an issue of shame. But it can be pretty hard to tell the difference sometimes between such practical fears and the shame of knowing you're doing the wrong thing.
But again, I'm just talking about hypotheticals. You're into BDSM and aren't ashamed, so these considerations might simply not apply to you. But still, it's worth considering consequences. For example, if you were married and interested in BDSM, then you might still not want to look for sex with strangers on the Internet. That wouldn't necessarily mean that you would have to give up on BSDM stuff, but only that maybe you should try to involve your wife. Maybe.
But second, I'm not trying to hold myself up as being too smart to be hurt. Hell, I could do something stupid, get caught with my pants down (metaphorically or literally), and get myself into a bad situation. I believe strongly that people deserve mercy and pity when they've made mistakes.
My overriding sentiment throughout my discussions in here have been that this should serve as a warning: actions have consequences. You may not want your pursuit of sex to have consequences. You might think there shouldn't be consequences, or even convince yourself that there won't be consequences, but somewhere along the line there probably will be. If not from this guy, then from something else.
Because actions generally have some kinds of consequences. And if you're not prepared to deal with the possible (and even likely) consequences that stem from people knowing your actions, then it's best not to participate in those actions.
However, where I really came in on this discussion was somewhat on the defense of these people, the "victims". Not because what they did was necessarily right or good or even acceptable, but to have your secrets aired on the Internet is quite a punishment, due to the scope of the Internet. When something is posted on the Internet, for all you know, that information may be accessed by the entire world for as long as people continue to exist.
So, on the one hand, I think that there may be times when doing the wrong thing should result in some level of public humiliation, as a punishment and as a deterrent. Maybe there are times when having your loved ones know you did something bad is appropriate. But unfortunately, the Internet age raises this all to a new level. Doing something bad could mean that all potential loved ones and employers will always know that you did this bad thing, and get to experience it freshly with a simple Google search, even decades later. That really stinks.
But then, that too should serve as a warning to people posting things online, and also serve as a warning sign to society that the Internet's total recall can be a double-edged sword.
Count one: Violation of copyright act
Count two: Public disclosure of private facts
Count three: Intrusion upon seclusion
Count four: Injunctive relief
So I don't know if that list is supposed to be exhaustive, but it doesn't seem to include fraud (but is injunctive relief a charge? The list might be wrong anyway. Don't know. IANAL.) But what I was asking was whether what he did technically met the qualifications to be considered "fraud".
My point is that I can fully understand people being upset at Fortuny's actions, but I'm curious as to whether there's any actual merit to it. Copyright violation seems a bit silly, not in keeping with the intent of "copyright", but I don't know whether it can technically be considered that. It doesn't seem like he intruded into anything, but reported what others had volunteered to a stranger.
Instead they were the victims of fraud. "Fraud" may be grounds to sue.
Really? Is there a lawyer in the house that can comment on this?
It's only "dirty laundry" because of prudish American culture. The only reason people are so dismissive of the victims is because the circumstances involved kinky sex. These guys probably aren't ashamed of their sexual tastes, they just don't feel the need to announce them to the world.
Well, then, it seems as though there isn't much damage done. There are lots of things that I'm not ashamed of but don't feel the need to announce them to the world. However, if someone were to announce those things to the world, it probably wouldn't cause me much distress.
Reposting a creative work verbatim is illegal. It's copyright infringement. Reposting the picture is copyright infringement too. If Fortuny didn't have permission to repost, he's in violation of the law. It's open and shut.
There has to be such a thing as fair use, or else there really isn't any first amendment. Let's say I sent a letter (confessing to a crime, perhaps) to a reporter, who then printed it in a newspaper. Can I then sue him for copyright infringement for quoting me?
At least stupid: sending an e-mail with their name and picture, detailing things that they feel are deeply private, to an anonymous email address. They don't know whose e-mail address it is, or who has access to it. Hell, it could have even been a distribution list going to thousands of people-- they had no idea. Even if you don't think there's anything wrong with trolling for anonymous sex on the internet, that's at least not-so-smart.
How about this instead. What if you were looking on, say, eHarmony, for a nice, attractive, educated young lady to chastely court and eventually marry, so you responded to an ad from someone claiming to be a nice, attractive, educated young lady, with your picture and a description of yourself. But it turns out she's actually some sociopath like Jason here, and instead creates a website in which she posts your picture and your real name and the text of your email, and mocks you for being such a loser and thinking you had a chance with this fake girl, who's way out of your league (loser). Oh, and then republishes your picture with lolcats-esque text over it, like "I'M A DOUCHEBAG!"
I'd be a bit annoyed and think they guy was an asshole, but what grounds would I have to sue? And it wouldn't really be anything to be ashamed of on my part. Still, I'm generally smart enough to attempt some level of anonymity on the Internet. It might not be highly effective anonymity, but I'm not airing any dirty laundry to people I don't know.
Yes, and purposefully so. Just because we have 2 separate words doesn't necessarily mean that they're so distinct. You often feel "guilty" about the things that society instructs you are bad. Your feelings of shame are usually directed towards things you don't want people to know about because you feel guilty.
Like let's say you're gay and you're still in the closet because you think it'll be easier, but you don't feel at all guilty about it. I wouldn't say, then, that you feel ashamed of yourself. I would say that you're just keeping things private because it's expedient. If, however, you feel immense shame about it and just don't want others to know, then in some way you must also feel "guilty", i.e. you think it's "wrong".
Again, I'm not saying you have to be proud of everything and want to talk about it with everyone. I'm not saying that I want to world to know about my sex life. But honestly-- it's true. If the entire world knew everything about my sex life, I would be embarrassed. But I wouldn't be extremely ashamed and it probably wouldn't ruin my life, because I don't believe I've done anything much worse than anyone else.
I'm just saying, it's not a bad policy to live by. Yeah, it sucks when you make a mistake, and in this new world of ubiquitous/permanent/searchable information, it can be much harder to escape your mistakes. Probably too hard. But that doesn't mean that trying to live a good life is an unreasonable approach.
All you have to do for me to sue you and collect is cause damage to me or my property, on purpose or by accident.
It takes more than that (assuming the judge/jury isn't on crack). You'd need to demonstrate that I damaged you or your property in a way that I am somehow legally at fault, having done something that I didn't have a right to do.
If the people of the US had known that George Bush and Dick Cheney had been convicted of drunk driving before ELECTION NIGHT the nightmare that has been the Bush legacy might never have happened.
First, that was known, and people didn't really care. But ok, let's instead assume that the candidate you would most like to be president (Obama? Clinton? Paul?) was going to win the election, and then it came out that, when he/she was a teenager, he/she had written a post online which seemed to advocate the holocaust (but perhaps was taken out of context). And that suddenly caused them to lose the election to someone like Bush. Would you feel so happy about that?
Or might you feel that, even had they actually had written something stupid or done something stupid, there was some point at which that act should fade from public memory?
Yeah, I suppose you're right-- maybe he just pulled a picture from MySpace where the guy had innocently posted a picture of his genitalia.
Of course, you'd think that the victims would then be claiming libel, which AFAIK isn't the case. They're just claiming that he had no right to post private communications publicly, and not denying the validity of the emails. But making private conversations public isn't illegal. If you tell me you cheated on your wife, and then I tell your wife, I'm not breaking a law, even if I lied to you to get that information.
Who are you (or the sociopath at the heart of this) to judge the actions of others, the actions of total strangers
If I make someone else's actions public, that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm judging them. Or at least, my judgments don't necessarily need to be very relevant. In fact, let's assume that what the person is doing is perfectly fine-- well then, what are they so upset about? If you're in an open marriage, then why are you so concerned about your wife finding out that you're trolling for sex on Craigslist?
The problem isn't that I'm judging them. The problem these men are faced with is that the people around them who know them, who are not total strangers, are judging them. That's what they're upset about. And that they've judged themselves to have done something "wrong", or else it wouldn't be such a horrifying revelation to have it made public.
And whether or not it's wrong, obviously it's stupid. Not just the trolling for sex on Craigslist thing, but the fact that they've given their real names and pictures along with embarrassing statements to a total stranger on the Internet. I think we can all agree that it's not smart.
Of course, someone will read my post here and have the knee-jerk reaction about privacy being important, and the dangerous sentiment of "if you have nothing to hide, then you won't mind the government searching your house. But this guy isn't "the government" and we're not talking about "a search of your house". We're talking about people who've made essentially public statements (when you send to an unknown email address, I'd consider that equivalent to a "public statement") who are then upset when their statements were made public. If those e-mails were going to be so radioactive to their own lives, they should have considered not sending them.
Of course, if those e-mails were perfectly fine and acceptable for thier own lives, then it seems like there's no problem.
insulting pictures of mohammed, for example. yes, a sound understanding of free speech means that insulting pictures of mohammed should be tolerated. however, a legal, societal understanding of tolerance on this issue does not protect you from the anger of religious fundamentalists who could care less about tolerance
I would hope the government would still protect someone from violence if they drew an insulting picture of mohammed. It shouldn't try to stop people from being angry, but it should still offer him some level of protection. But more to the point, it should protect someone from *legal* consequences of speaking (assuming the speech is legal).
remember that about free speech: it has consequences. if you get upset about that idea, or expect government to somehow protect you from the consequences of what you say, you really don't understand the whole notion that with freedom comes responsibility, which is the only notion that will keep speech truly free
Funny, because the same lesson could be directed at Fortuny's "victims". They exercised their freedom of speech via e-mail, and that speech has had consequences. Should they expect the government to somehow protect them?
If I were that guy's kid, I'd ask Fortuny if he'd like to tell me anything about the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus. I'd then thank him for shattering all my childhood illusions and ensuring my exposure to a long drawn out custody battle that will leave me an emo kid who feels rejected and unloved by my parents.
And he'd be right if he pointed you back to your father and said, "Nope. Thank that guy over there for shattering your childhood."
I'm not vouching for infidelity and don't tell me this prankster was out to do any good. He was doing it to humiliate these people.
Can't we do both at the same time?
Honestly, I don't buy that his actions were guided merely by a desire to "do good". On the other hand, it doesn't seem impossible that he imagined this project might have some beneficial effects. It's informative about the lack of privacy/anonymity of online communications. It's discouraging people from engaging in this sort of behavior. It's exposing some creepy individuals for what they are. It's showing some interesting facets of human behavior.
Yes, it's also humiliating some people. I'm not sure that this in and of itself is an awful thing. Sometimes people should be humiliated when they do something bad or stupid. It sets an example of why you don't do bad and stupid things. The main problem that I see is that it has the potential to be such a far-reaching and long-term humiliation. When something is put on the internet, anyone in the world can see it, and it can stick around forever. Essentially, these guys can never walk into a room for the rest of their lives and be able to trust that the people in that room haven't seen these emails and pictures. That's pretty rough.
Yeah, personally, I've tried to live my life by a basic rule: If I would be too ashamed to handle everyone in the world knowing what I'm doing, then don't do it. It kinda mostly works most of the time, and has kept me out of a lot of possible trouble. The main problem is that people sometimes don't think I'm too much fun.
Now, that's not to say that I don't do anything that would shame myself. It's just that it's a level of shame that I can handle. Like let's say I were interested in BDSM, I would look at it as having two choices on what to do about that. Either I don't engage in it because I wouldn't want to carry around that level of shame, -or- I would have to learn to embrace that it was part of who I was sufficiently that, if for some reason I had to explain it to my mother, I could handle it. That's not to say I would try to get so comfortable about it that I would seek out a conversation with my mother, but I would try to figure out what those impulses were in me, and exercise them in ways that I wouldn't have to feel overly ashamed of.
The basic way that I see it is that shame is instructive. Shame is your psyche's way of telling you that you think there's something wrong with your behavior. So if you're ashamed, you should engage your psyche in a sort of discussion, and try to discover whether there really is something wrong with your behavior. If there is something wrong, then strongly consider *not doing it*. If there isn't something wrong, then try not to be so ashamed. It's not really quite that simple, but it's a lot simpler than most people seem to think.
So yeah, overall, I agree with you (I think). If your life will be ruined by trolling for BDSM sex with strangers on Craigslist, then maybe you should consider not doing that.
From where I sit, the USA claims to be the "free-est" nation, yet has the largest prison population. People haven't stopped taking drugs, committing petty crimes, assaulting each other, falling asleep at the wheel, felonies haven't gone away, white collar crime is a game of 'catch me if you can', etc etc etc.
In fairness, he didn't say that "If you punish enough criminals, it discourages crime", but only that "you DO change and impact the culture".
Seems like, if you through enough people into prison, the culture is likely to get more degraded and thuggish. That's certainly an impact.
He routinely engages in low-level criminal actions, knowing that he is unlikely to get caught and arrested for doing things that are the equivelent of spray painting a car.
Can you elaborate? I've heard the story vaguely before, but I'm not aware of him damaging other people's property. As far as I've ever heard, all he does is post the responses he receives to his Craigslist ads. What else is he doing?
I don't feel too bad for Fortuny for getting sued, because he doesn't seem like that nice a guy, but I also don't really see where what he's doing is a crime. IANAL, but how is this different from all the other situations? If I had a website documenting letters I had received from my grandfather, without my grandfather's permission, would that be illegal? Seriously, I'm interested in these sorts of legal things.
Mostly, I don't even think this guy is doing anything all that immoral. I don't particularly recommend e-mailing pictures of your penis to anyone if you're going to be ashamed if friends/family find out. E-mail isn't all that private/secure to begin with. But I especially wouldn't send it to random people you don't know.
Seems like people were trolling for sex on Craigslist and they got caught. Later, they wish they hadn't gotten caught. When people get caught doing something they don't think they're supposed to be doing, they generally wish that they hadn't gotten caught. There's even a part of me that's glad that this guy is out there. The Internet is this place where people think they can do whatever they want and never get caught because it's so big and anonymous. They do some awful things sometimes and they're even careless about it. I think the whole system could use a little accountability.
Admittedly, on the other hand, I wouldn't particularly want my entire online history sent to my parents or my boss. And this is one place where I think this little experiment highlights another problem with the internet: it might never forget. I mean, send one embarrassing e-mail when you're a teenager, and it might get posted somewhere, cached, stored in archived, etc. 50 years later you're running for president, and it could pop up in the news. That's the reality we might be faced with in the future. Our whole lives documented, stored, indexed, searchable, and public. It's probably better that we realize this early on.
I'm sure there will be several jokes and some Apple bashing, but putting all that aside, I think this could be a pretty good idea, but wonder which direction this would go.
I would bet that somehow, somewhere, some functionality will be sacrificed. For example, they could combine an iPod Nano with a phone, give you no games or apps, and even sacrifice contacts/calendars. Or, the less expected route (but I think better) would be to give a phone that sacrifices the iPod functionality (no music/video), but still give you email, web, and PIM functionality.
The facts that aren't subjective are objective. Saying something "sucks by comparison" isn't objective, it's subjective.
Not sure where I said something "sucks in comparison". Skimming my post, I can't find it. I said Palm's browser "stinks", not in comparison, but just that it stinks. At least the last time I used the browser that comes with Palm devices, it couldn't render normal HTML the same as a desktop browser. You had to write a mobile version of your page, which almost no one does.
Without a doubt, every phone out there is locked down in some way or another. The iPhone is locked down in every single way imaginable, including where battery replacement is concerned. That's a huge deal.
Not if the things you want to do in the phone are still possible when it's "locked down in every single way imaginable". I mostly want to use the phone, browse the web, check my e-mail, and listen to music. A device which does those things painlessly is, IMO, better than a device which does more thing (most of which I don't really want to do) in a way that's painfully frustrating.
For god's sake there's nothing as simple (or as Apple-famous) as copy/cut and paste. Why did they leave it out? People want it. It's not there
I'm sure they'll put it in when they develop a method of executing it in the UI that's systematic and fits with the rest of the UI. That's just an issue of design philosophy-- Apple isn't denying you copy/paste because they're trying to cheat you. They just don't put in poorly-executed features that they'll have to re-implement later because it was rushed in the first place. They'd rather leave it out until it's ready. Anyway, I've been using the iPhone for over a year now, and though copy/paste would have been useful at times, it's never been a huge deal.
Everything is very controlled. The root story here is that someone screwed up and let something USEFUL out and they pulled it.
No, the root story here is that Apple has released, withdrawn, and re-released a piece of software which violates the AT&T contract. There's nothing really surprising there, let alone covert or nefarious. When they released the SDK, they said they would control distribution and not distribute programs which violate AT&T's rules.
So what makes Apple better or different? It's how people FEEL about Apple. If you disagree, instead of modding me flaimbait, how about citing some *objective* examples of where I am mistaken?
You're wrong. I don't know what you expect in terms of "objective" examples, but you're missing the point entirely. People don't like Apple products because of how the fell about Apple, they like Apple because of how they feel about Apple's products. And it's not really the "Oooooo shiney!" factor either.
I've always been a gadget freak. I've bought an inordinate number of computers in my life, some of which I didn't need at all (most of which I've built from parts). I've owned a number of Palms, and have been assigned Windows-based phones and Blackberries for work, and have serviced all of those devices as a helpdesk tech. With each of those devices, I was really excited to get them, and then over time I found myself leaving them at the office because, once the novelty wore off, they weren't really worth the trouble.
Lets start with Palm. I stopped bothering to keep up with their development a few years back when it became clear that there was no development going on. The OS is outdated, flakey, and slow. The web browser stinks, and is the definition of why people don't want to use a "mobile browser". Their e-mail client isn't much worth talking about, and instead of syncing with the email/calendar/contacts of the programs you use, they try to get you to use their crappy Palm Desktop.
Blackberry was a big step forward. It synced with Exchange, but needed some kind of specialty software to accomplish that (desktop redirector or Blackberry server). That was ok, though, because nothing else really provided that functionality at the time. The email client was plain text, but honestly I didn't mind much. Web browser wasn't anything much to speak of. So to sum up, it was the best PIM of the time when it first came out, but don't expect anything other than the PIM functions to be worth anything. Also, your Blackberry could be working and your Exchange server could be working, but there was always some kind of service in between coordinating between the two. If anything in there lost its connection (which it frequently did) then you stopped getting updates.
So when Windows-based phones started syncing directly with Exchange, I was eager to try those out. Sure enough the syncing was much more reliable, but the devices were slow and unreliable. They would crash frequently. I only used those on Verizon, so the upshot there was they were always loaded up with Verizon crap, and their tech support was always pushing us to use their syncing service instead of Exchange's native sync-- which caused us loads of problems. They also had a tendency to just stop working, the solution to which was to reset the device and set it up all over again.
The iPhone came out and I got one. I used to carry around a Windows mobile device, another cell phone (because I hated with Windows mobile device), and an iPod, and the iPhone replaced all 3. It was definitely less feature-rich than Windows (which has been fixed by the new firmware for everything I care about), but everything it did, it did without problems. I set up IMAP e-mail, and it worked without crashing and without fiddling with it. When e-mail came to my account, it came to my phone. There were no intermediate servers to worry about. The web browser was actually useable for normal websites. The PIM stuff synced through the cable to Outlook, and now it syncs over the air. AIM works fine.
The only problem I've had with the iPhone is that occasionally the battery runs out really quickly, but I've had that problem with every cell phone and laptop I've ever owned. Oh, and on the day the 2.0 firmware was launched, I was one of those unfortunate enough to upgrade right away, only to find that I had to reactivate my phone and the activation servers had crashed.
Oh, I'm not knocking the idea. I'm just trying to say that even if it's a miracle pill and very safe, it might still be that it could be abused.
I mean, I don't know how this thing works, but lets say I could take 1 pill a day and it would help me keep my body healthy. Would I get to be in better shape by taking 2 pills? Is it a more-is-better kind of thing, a more-is-worse kind of thing, or a more-will-just-get-excreted-by-your-body sort of thing?
Because a certain level of androgen also keeps you healthy, but too much will both enhance athletic performance and have undesirable side-effects. Might we find that this drug also can be a performance-enhancer when used at dangerous dosages? Or is that somehow impossible?
If this drug works as advertised & has no dangerous side effects, why wouldn't *everyone* including athletes take it? I realize that this would be an unfair advantage in the present, but I'm talking about after 20+ years of testing.
Well even if it turns out to be relatively free of dangerous side-effects, there will still be the issue of dosage. Anything will kill you if you take too much of it, and however well this stuff works, there will still be the possibility of abuse.
I think most answers here (at least the reasonable ones) are going to have more questions than answers. Questions like:
Secure against what?
How secure do you need it to be?
How thorough do your tests need to be?
Part of the problem is that there isn't any such thing as completely thorough testing that makes sure everything is completely secure from any kind of attack whatsoever. It doesn't exist. So when you're talking about testing security, you have to know what you're trying to achieve.
Are you just trying to meet some kind of regulation placed on your company from an outside body? Because that outside body should be providing you with information, then, that will tell you how to meet their standards. Are you just trying to satisfy someone's paranoia? Then you just need to come up with a bullshit standard that satisfies that person's paranoia.
For most situations, it's enough to protect against generic hacking over the network, worms, etc. In those cases, as far as the software installed, it's probably enough to buy from major vendors or use respectable FOSS distributors, and keep things patched. If you're using Debian/Redhat/SuSE, then you're probably good. Even Microsoft's stuff (despite its bad reputation on Slashdot), if kept up-to-date with patches, is fine. A decent firewall goes a long way, and you can look into IDS stuff.
Another valid concern is employees, so make sure they're locked down as much as possible, not given access to resources they don't need. Ideally you'll audit what you can, keep backups going back so if some data goes missing (or is mysteriously changed), you can recover it.
Or you might just be asking about making sure a given piece of software isn't malware? So you do some research online and find if anyone is complaining about it. Maybe you install it, scan for opened ports, look at the network traffic coming off for anything anomalous.
But if you're talking about auditing the security of Firefox or MS Office for bugs that allow for privilege escalation or something, and you're unwilling to rely on the analysis of other experts.... well, good luck with that.
Seems to me like the people running Slashdot missed a golden opportunity. They could have altered the moderation in this story so that modding something as "Troll" gave you +1.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I didn't say, "embrace it and let the world know". What I said, exactly, was:
I would have to learn to embrace that it was part of who I was sufficiently that, if for some reason I had to explain it to my mother, I could handle it.
So I'm really just suggesting (in your example) that you consider, hypothetically: if you were *forced* to tell the people you love and care about, the people you respect and want them to respect you, that you're into BDSM, would you be unbearably ashamed of yourself?
I'm not saying you should tell them, but just that you consider that in your mind. It's an exercise in decision-making process to make you think about consequences. If you can't handle likely consequences of your actions, then your actions might not be wise.
Of course, like I said, it's not that simple. Some people are just prejudiced, and you might be afraid of people learning as a practical matter, and not as an issue of shame. But it can be pretty hard to tell the difference sometimes between such practical fears and the shame of knowing you're doing the wrong thing.
But again, I'm just talking about hypotheticals. You're into BDSM and aren't ashamed, so these considerations might simply not apply to you. But still, it's worth considering consequences. For example, if you were married and interested in BDSM, then you might still not want to look for sex with strangers on the Internet. That wouldn't necessarily mean that you would have to give up on BSDM stuff, but only that maybe you should try to involve your wife. Maybe.
First, nice trolling.
But second, I'm not trying to hold myself up as being too smart to be hurt. Hell, I could do something stupid, get caught with my pants down (metaphorically or literally), and get myself into a bad situation. I believe strongly that people deserve mercy and pity when they've made mistakes.
My overriding sentiment throughout my discussions in here have been that this should serve as a warning: actions have consequences. You may not want your pursuit of sex to have consequences. You might think there shouldn't be consequences, or even convince yourself that there won't be consequences, but somewhere along the line there probably will be. If not from this guy, then from something else.
Because actions generally have some kinds of consequences. And if you're not prepared to deal with the possible (and even likely) consequences that stem from people knowing your actions, then it's best not to participate in those actions.
However, where I really came in on this discussion was somewhat on the defense of these people, the "victims". Not because what they did was necessarily right or good or even acceptable, but to have your secrets aired on the Internet is quite a punishment, due to the scope of the Internet. When something is posted on the Internet, for all you know, that information may be accessed by the entire world for as long as people continue to exist.
So, on the one hand, I think that there may be times when doing the wrong thing should result in some level of public humiliation, as a punishment and as a deterrent. Maybe there are times when having your loved ones know you did something bad is appropriate. But unfortunately, the Internet age raises this all to a new level. Doing something bad could mean that all potential loved ones and employers will always know that you did this bad thing, and get to experience it freshly with a simple Google search, even decades later. That really stinks.
But then, that too should serve as a warning to people posting things online, and also serve as a warning sign to society that the Internet's total recall can be a double-edged sword.
Or enough people will get burned that we, as a society, grow the fuck up and realize that it really doesn't matter most of the time.
Yeah, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for people to "grow up".
Count one: Violation of copyright act
Count two: Public disclosure of private facts
Count three: Intrusion upon seclusion
Count four: Injunctive relief
So I don't know if that list is supposed to be exhaustive, but it doesn't seem to include fraud (but is injunctive relief a charge? The list might be wrong anyway. Don't know. IANAL.) But what I was asking was whether what he did technically met the qualifications to be considered "fraud".
My point is that I can fully understand people being upset at Fortuny's actions, but I'm curious as to whether there's any actual merit to it. Copyright violation seems a bit silly, not in keeping with the intent of "copyright", but I don't know whether it can technically be considered that. It doesn't seem like he intruded into anything, but reported what others had volunteered to a stranger.
Instead they were the victims of fraud. "Fraud" may be grounds to sue.
Really? Is there a lawyer in the house that can comment on this?
It's only "dirty laundry" because of prudish American culture. The only reason people are so dismissive of the victims is because the circumstances involved kinky sex. These guys probably aren't ashamed of their sexual tastes, they just don't feel the need to announce them to the world.
Well, then, it seems as though there isn't much damage done. There are lots of things that I'm not ashamed of but don't feel the need to announce them to the world. However, if someone were to announce those things to the world, it probably wouldn't cause me much distress.
Reposting a creative work verbatim is illegal. It's copyright infringement. Reposting the picture is copyright infringement too. If Fortuny didn't have permission to repost, he's in violation of the law. It's open and shut.
There has to be such a thing as fair use, or else there really isn't any first amendment. Let's say I sent a letter (confessing to a crime, perhaps) to a reporter, who then printed it in a newspaper. Can I then sue him for copyright infringement for quoting me?
What did these guys do that was bad or stupid?
At least stupid: sending an e-mail with their name and picture, detailing things that they feel are deeply private, to an anonymous email address. They don't know whose e-mail address it is, or who has access to it. Hell, it could have even been a distribution list going to thousands of people-- they had no idea. Even if you don't think there's anything wrong with trolling for anonymous sex on the internet, that's at least not-so-smart.
How about this instead. What if you were looking on, say, eHarmony, for a nice, attractive, educated young lady to chastely court and eventually marry, so you responded to an ad from someone claiming to be a nice, attractive, educated young lady, with your picture and a description of yourself. But it turns out she's actually some sociopath like Jason here, and instead creates a website in which she posts your picture and your real name and the text of your email, and mocks you for being such a loser and thinking you had a chance with this fake girl, who's way out of your league (loser). Oh, and then republishes your picture with lolcats-esque text over it, like "I'M A DOUCHEBAG!"
I'd be a bit annoyed and think they guy was an asshole, but what grounds would I have to sue? And it wouldn't really be anything to be ashamed of on my part. Still, I'm generally smart enough to attempt some level of anonymity on the Internet. It might not be highly effective anonymity, but I'm not airing any dirty laundry to people I don't know.
I think you're conflating shame and guilt.
Yes, and purposefully so. Just because we have 2 separate words doesn't necessarily mean that they're so distinct. You often feel "guilty" about the things that society instructs you are bad. Your feelings of shame are usually directed towards things you don't want people to know about because you feel guilty.
Like let's say you're gay and you're still in the closet because you think it'll be easier, but you don't feel at all guilty about it. I wouldn't say, then, that you feel ashamed of yourself. I would say that you're just keeping things private because it's expedient. If, however, you feel immense shame about it and just don't want others to know, then in some way you must also feel "guilty", i.e. you think it's "wrong".
Again, I'm not saying you have to be proud of everything and want to talk about it with everyone. I'm not saying that I want to world to know about my sex life. But honestly-- it's true. If the entire world knew everything about my sex life, I would be embarrassed. But I wouldn't be extremely ashamed and it probably wouldn't ruin my life, because I don't believe I've done anything much worse than anyone else.
I'm just saying, it's not a bad policy to live by. Yeah, it sucks when you make a mistake, and in this new world of ubiquitous/permanent/searchable information, it can be much harder to escape your mistakes. Probably too hard. But that doesn't mean that trying to live a good life is an unreasonable approach.
All you have to do for me to sue you and collect is cause damage to me or my property, on purpose or by accident.
It takes more than that (assuming the judge/jury isn't on crack). You'd need to demonstrate that I damaged you or your property in a way that I am somehow legally at fault, having done something that I didn't have a right to do.
If the people of the US had known that George Bush and Dick Cheney had been convicted of drunk driving before ELECTION NIGHT the nightmare that has been the Bush legacy might never have happened.
First, that was known, and people didn't really care. But ok, let's instead assume that the candidate you would most like to be president (Obama? Clinton? Paul?) was going to win the election, and then it came out that, when he/she was a teenager, he/she had written a post online which seemed to advocate the holocaust (but perhaps was taken out of context). And that suddenly caused them to lose the election to someone like Bush. Would you feel so happy about that?
Or might you feel that, even had they actually had written something stupid or done something stupid, there was some point at which that act should fade from public memory?
Yeah, I suppose you're right-- maybe he just pulled a picture from MySpace where the guy had innocently posted a picture of his genitalia.
Of course, you'd think that the victims would then be claiming libel, which AFAIK isn't the case. They're just claiming that he had no right to post private communications publicly, and not denying the validity of the emails. But making private conversations public isn't illegal. If you tell me you cheated on your wife, and then I tell your wife, I'm not breaking a law, even if I lied to you to get that information.
Who are you (or the sociopath at the heart of this) to judge the actions of others, the actions of total strangers
If I make someone else's actions public, that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm judging them. Or at least, my judgments don't necessarily need to be very relevant. In fact, let's assume that what the person is doing is perfectly fine-- well then, what are they so upset about? If you're in an open marriage, then why are you so concerned about your wife finding out that you're trolling for sex on Craigslist?
The problem isn't that I'm judging them. The problem these men are faced with is that the people around them who know them, who are not total strangers, are judging them. That's what they're upset about. And that they've judged themselves to have done something "wrong", or else it wouldn't be such a horrifying revelation to have it made public.
And whether or not it's wrong, obviously it's stupid. Not just the trolling for sex on Craigslist thing, but the fact that they've given their real names and pictures along with embarrassing statements to a total stranger on the Internet. I think we can all agree that it's not smart.
Of course, someone will read my post here and have the knee-jerk reaction about privacy being important, and the dangerous sentiment of "if you have nothing to hide, then you won't mind the government searching your house. But this guy isn't "the government" and we're not talking about "a search of your house". We're talking about people who've made essentially public statements (when you send to an unknown email address, I'd consider that equivalent to a "public statement") who are then upset when their statements were made public. If those e-mails were going to be so radioactive to their own lives, they should have considered not sending them.
Of course, if those e-mails were perfectly fine and acceptable for thier own lives, then it seems like there's no problem.
insulting pictures of mohammed, for example. yes, a sound understanding of free speech means that insulting pictures of mohammed should be tolerated. however, a legal, societal understanding of tolerance on this issue does not protect you from the anger of religious fundamentalists who could care less about tolerance
I would hope the government would still protect someone from violence if they drew an insulting picture of mohammed. It shouldn't try to stop people from being angry, but it should still offer him some level of protection. But more to the point, it should protect someone from *legal* consequences of speaking (assuming the speech is legal).
remember that about free speech: it has consequences. if you get upset about that idea, or expect government to somehow protect you from the consequences of what you say, you really don't understand the whole notion that with freedom comes responsibility, which is the only notion that will keep speech truly free
Funny, because the same lesson could be directed at Fortuny's "victims". They exercised their freedom of speech via e-mail, and that speech has had consequences. Should they expect the government to somehow protect them?
If I were that guy's kid, I'd ask Fortuny if he'd like to tell me anything about the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus. I'd then thank him for shattering all my childhood illusions and ensuring my exposure to a long drawn out custody battle that will leave me an emo kid who feels rejected and unloved by my parents.
And he'd be right if he pointed you back to your father and said, "Nope. Thank that guy over there for shattering your childhood."
I'm not vouching for infidelity and don't tell me this prankster was out to do any good. He was doing it to humiliate these people.
Can't we do both at the same time?
Honestly, I don't buy that his actions were guided merely by a desire to "do good". On the other hand, it doesn't seem impossible that he imagined this project might have some beneficial effects. It's informative about the lack of privacy/anonymity of online communications. It's discouraging people from engaging in this sort of behavior. It's exposing some creepy individuals for what they are. It's showing some interesting facets of human behavior.
Yes, it's also humiliating some people. I'm not sure that this in and of itself is an awful thing. Sometimes people should be humiliated when they do something bad or stupid. It sets an example of why you don't do bad and stupid things. The main problem that I see is that it has the potential to be such a far-reaching and long-term humiliation. When something is put on the internet, anyone in the world can see it, and it can stick around forever. Essentially, these guys can never walk into a room for the rest of their lives and be able to trust that the people in that room haven't seen these emails and pictures. That's pretty rough.
Yeah, personally, I've tried to live my life by a basic rule: If I would be too ashamed to handle everyone in the world knowing what I'm doing, then don't do it. It kinda mostly works most of the time, and has kept me out of a lot of possible trouble. The main problem is that people sometimes don't think I'm too much fun.
Now, that's not to say that I don't do anything that would shame myself. It's just that it's a level of shame that I can handle. Like let's say I were interested in BDSM, I would look at it as having two choices on what to do about that. Either I don't engage in it because I wouldn't want to carry around that level of shame, -or- I would have to learn to embrace that it was part of who I was sufficiently that, if for some reason I had to explain it to my mother, I could handle it. That's not to say I would try to get so comfortable about it that I would seek out a conversation with my mother, but I would try to figure out what those impulses were in me, and exercise them in ways that I wouldn't have to feel overly ashamed of.
The basic way that I see it is that shame is instructive. Shame is your psyche's way of telling you that you think there's something wrong with your behavior. So if you're ashamed, you should engage your psyche in a sort of discussion, and try to discover whether there really is something wrong with your behavior. If there is something wrong, then strongly consider *not doing it*. If there isn't something wrong, then try not to be so ashamed. It's not really quite that simple, but it's a lot simpler than most people seem to think.
So yeah, overall, I agree with you (I think). If your life will be ruined by trolling for BDSM sex with strangers on Craigslist, then maybe you should consider not doing that.
From where I sit, the USA claims to be the "free-est" nation, yet has the largest prison population. People haven't stopped taking drugs, committing petty crimes, assaulting each other, falling asleep at the wheel, felonies haven't gone away, white collar crime is a game of 'catch me if you can', etc etc etc.
In fairness, he didn't say that "If you punish enough criminals, it discourages crime", but only that "you DO change and impact the culture".
Seems like, if you through enough people into prison, the culture is likely to get more degraded and thuggish. That's certainly an impact.
He routinely engages in low-level criminal actions, knowing that he is unlikely to get caught and arrested for doing things that are the equivelent of spray painting a car.
Can you elaborate? I've heard the story vaguely before, but I'm not aware of him damaging other people's property. As far as I've ever heard, all he does is post the responses he receives to his Craigslist ads. What else is he doing?
I don't feel too bad for Fortuny for getting sued, because he doesn't seem like that nice a guy, but I also don't really see where what he's doing is a crime. IANAL, but how is this different from all the other situations? If I had a website documenting letters I had received from my grandfather, without my grandfather's permission, would that be illegal? Seriously, I'm interested in these sorts of legal things.
Mostly, I don't even think this guy is doing anything all that immoral. I don't particularly recommend e-mailing pictures of your penis to anyone if you're going to be ashamed if friends/family find out. E-mail isn't all that private/secure to begin with. But I especially wouldn't send it to random people you don't know.
Seems like people were trolling for sex on Craigslist and they got caught. Later, they wish they hadn't gotten caught. When people get caught doing something they don't think they're supposed to be doing, they generally wish that they hadn't gotten caught. There's even a part of me that's glad that this guy is out there. The Internet is this place where people think they can do whatever they want and never get caught because it's so big and anonymous. They do some awful things sometimes and they're even careless about it. I think the whole system could use a little accountability.
Admittedly, on the other hand, I wouldn't particularly want my entire online history sent to my parents or my boss. And this is one place where I think this little experiment highlights another problem with the internet: it might never forget. I mean, send one embarrassing e-mail when you're a teenager, and it might get posted somewhere, cached, stored in archived, etc. 50 years later you're running for president, and it could pop up in the news. That's the reality we might be faced with in the future. Our whole lives documented, stored, indexed, searchable, and public. It's probably better that we realize this early on.
I'm sure there will be several jokes and some Apple bashing, but putting all that aside, I think this could be a pretty good idea, but wonder which direction this would go.
I would bet that somehow, somewhere, some functionality will be sacrificed. For example, they could combine an iPod Nano with a phone, give you no games or apps, and even sacrifice contacts/calendars. Or, the less expected route (but I think better) would be to give a phone that sacrifices the iPod functionality (no music/video), but still give you email, web, and PIM functionality.
The facts that aren't subjective are objective. Saying something "sucks by comparison" isn't objective, it's subjective.
Not sure where I said something "sucks in comparison". Skimming my post, I can't find it. I said Palm's browser "stinks", not in comparison, but just that it stinks. At least the last time I used the browser that comes with Palm devices, it couldn't render normal HTML the same as a desktop browser. You had to write a mobile version of your page, which almost no one does.
Without a doubt, every phone out there is locked down in some way or another. The iPhone is locked down in every single way imaginable, including where battery replacement is concerned. That's a huge deal.
Not if the things you want to do in the phone are still possible when it's "locked down in every single way imaginable". I mostly want to use the phone, browse the web, check my e-mail, and listen to music. A device which does those things painlessly is, IMO, better than a device which does more thing (most of which I don't really want to do) in a way that's painfully frustrating.
For god's sake there's nothing as simple (or as Apple-famous) as copy/cut and paste. Why did they leave it out? People want it. It's not there
I'm sure they'll put it in when they develop a method of executing it in the UI that's systematic and fits with the rest of the UI. That's just an issue of design philosophy-- Apple isn't denying you copy/paste because they're trying to cheat you. They just don't put in poorly-executed features that they'll have to re-implement later because it was rushed in the first place. They'd rather leave it out until it's ready. Anyway, I've been using the iPhone for over a year now, and though copy/paste would have been useful at times, it's never been a huge deal.
Everything is very controlled. The root story here is that someone screwed up and let something USEFUL out and they pulled it.
No, the root story here is that Apple has released, withdrawn, and re-released a piece of software which violates the AT&T contract. There's nothing really surprising there, let alone covert or nefarious. When they released the SDK, they said they would control distribution and not distribute programs which violate AT&T's rules.
So what makes Apple better or different? It's how people FEEL about Apple. If you disagree, instead of modding me flaimbait, how about citing some *objective* examples of where I am mistaken?
You're wrong. I don't know what you expect in terms of "objective" examples, but you're missing the point entirely. People don't like Apple products because of how the fell about Apple, they like Apple because of how they feel about Apple's products. And it's not really the "Oooooo shiney!" factor either.
I've always been a gadget freak. I've bought an inordinate number of computers in my life, some of which I didn't need at all (most of which I've built from parts). I've owned a number of Palms, and have been assigned Windows-based phones and Blackberries for work, and have serviced all of those devices as a helpdesk tech. With each of those devices, I was really excited to get them, and then over time I found myself leaving them at the office because, once the novelty wore off, they weren't really worth the trouble.
Lets start with Palm. I stopped bothering to keep up with their development a few years back when it became clear that there was no development going on. The OS is outdated, flakey, and slow. The web browser stinks, and is the definition of why people don't want to use a "mobile browser". Their e-mail client isn't much worth talking about, and instead of syncing with the email/calendar/contacts of the programs you use, they try to get you to use their crappy Palm Desktop.
Blackberry was a big step forward. It synced with Exchange, but needed some kind of specialty software to accomplish that (desktop redirector or Blackberry server). That was ok, though, because nothing else really provided that functionality at the time. The email client was plain text, but honestly I didn't mind much. Web browser wasn't anything much to speak of. So to sum up, it was the best PIM of the time when it first came out, but don't expect anything other than the PIM functions to be worth anything. Also, your Blackberry could be working and your Exchange server could be working, but there was always some kind of service in between coordinating between the two. If anything in there lost its connection (which it frequently did) then you stopped getting updates.
So when Windows-based phones started syncing directly with Exchange, I was eager to try those out. Sure enough the syncing was much more reliable, but the devices were slow and unreliable. They would crash frequently. I only used those on Verizon, so the upshot there was they were always loaded up with Verizon crap, and their tech support was always pushing us to use their syncing service instead of Exchange's native sync-- which caused us loads of problems. They also had a tendency to just stop working, the solution to which was to reset the device and set it up all over again.
The iPhone came out and I got one. I used to carry around a Windows mobile device, another cell phone (because I hated with Windows mobile device), and an iPod, and the iPhone replaced all 3. It was definitely less feature-rich than Windows (which has been fixed by the new firmware for everything I care about), but everything it did, it did without problems. I set up IMAP e-mail, and it worked without crashing and without fiddling with it. When e-mail came to my account, it came to my phone. There were no intermediate servers to worry about. The web browser was actually useable for normal websites. The PIM stuff synced through the cable to Outlook, and now it syncs over the air. AIM works fine.
The only problem I've had with the iPhone is that occasionally the battery runs out really quickly, but I've had that problem with every cell phone and laptop I've ever owned. Oh, and on the day the 2.0 firmware was launched, I was one of those unfortunate enough to upgrade right away, only to find that I had to reactivate my phone and the activation servers had crashed.
But other than that, it's been really
Oh, I'm not knocking the idea. I'm just trying to say that even if it's a miracle pill and very safe, it might still be that it could be abused.
I mean, I don't know how this thing works, but lets say I could take 1 pill a day and it would help me keep my body healthy. Would I get to be in better shape by taking 2 pills? Is it a more-is-better kind of thing, a more-is-worse kind of thing, or a more-will-just-get-excreted-by-your-body sort of thing?
Because a certain level of androgen also keeps you healthy, but too much will both enhance athletic performance and have undesirable side-effects. Might we find that this drug also can be a performance-enhancer when used at dangerous dosages? Or is that somehow impossible?
You might still need a teleporter capable of transporting things out of parents' basements, and a pill for women to unsharpen their knees.
If this drug works as advertised & has no dangerous side effects, why wouldn't *everyone* including athletes take it? I realize that this would be an unfair advantage in the present, but I'm talking about after 20+ years of testing.
Well even if it turns out to be relatively free of dangerous side-effects, there will still be the issue of dosage. Anything will kill you if you take too much of it, and however well this stuff works, there will still be the possibility of abuse.
I think most answers here (at least the reasonable ones) are going to have more questions than answers. Questions like:
Part of the problem is that there isn't any such thing as completely thorough testing that makes sure everything is completely secure from any kind of attack whatsoever. It doesn't exist. So when you're talking about testing security, you have to know what you're trying to achieve.
Are you just trying to meet some kind of regulation placed on your company from an outside body? Because that outside body should be providing you with information, then, that will tell you how to meet their standards. Are you just trying to satisfy someone's paranoia? Then you just need to come up with a bullshit standard that satisfies that person's paranoia.
For most situations, it's enough to protect against generic hacking over the network, worms, etc. In those cases, as far as the software installed, it's probably enough to buy from major vendors or use respectable FOSS distributors, and keep things patched. If you're using Debian/Redhat/SuSE, then you're probably good. Even Microsoft's stuff (despite its bad reputation on Slashdot), if kept up-to-date with patches, is fine. A decent firewall goes a long way, and you can look into IDS stuff.
Another valid concern is employees, so make sure they're locked down as much as possible, not given access to resources they don't need. Ideally you'll audit what you can, keep backups going back so if some data goes missing (or is mysteriously changed), you can recover it.
Or you might just be asking about making sure a given piece of software isn't malware? So you do some research online and find if anyone is complaining about it. Maybe you install it, scan for opened ports, look at the network traffic coming off for anything anomalous.
But if you're talking about auditing the security of Firefox or MS Office for bugs that allow for privilege escalation or something, and you're unwilling to rely on the analysis of other experts.... well, good luck with that.
Seems to me like the people running Slashdot missed a golden opportunity. They could have altered the moderation in this story so that modding something as "Troll" gave you +1.