1. Simple solution: Don't do illegal activities on their network. If you are doing illegal activities, you're probably not terribly concerned with ethics, anyway.
Flip the scenario around. Would you want to take responsibility for things that complete strangers do on your wifi without your knowledge? If the answer is no, then you should apply the same ethical standards when you're considering other people than when you're considering yourself.
This is just more hair-shirt ethics. There's that phrase again. How do you define "hair-shirt ethics"? I googled "define hair-shirt ethics" and nothing came up.
To the moderators -- the fact that you disagree with something does NOT make it a troll (which is what I see my post was modded). Slashdot's definition of "troll" is "a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses."
Okay, I'll bite. The point is the risk itself. One of the reasons "borrowing" someone else's car without them knowing is wrong is because you're putting their car at risk. This is a problem even if (lucky for them) you do no damage.
Again, freeloading creates the issue of forcing everyone else on the system to subsidize you. Whether the ISP has anything in the contract about it is irrelevant.
To your #1 -- if I'm using my neighbor's wi-fi and NOT doing anything illegal, there's no issue.
To your #2 -- Believe it or not, it is not per se unethical to obtain a benefit without incurring a direct cost. That hair-shirt version of ethics is ridiculous. #1 -- the point is putting someone else at *risk*. Even if you drive someone's car 120 mph and don't do any damage, it's still wrong to put their car at risk like that.
#2 -- I guess tapping into the electrical grid is fine in your world then. I simply disagree with your ethics, and we'll have to agree to disagree and leave it at that.
If you're stealing wifi right now, do the right thing and pay for it. SOMEONE has to pay for it, and it's not right to have someone else pay for you.
I bet drinking fountains ruin your day.
The owner of the drinking fountain knows people are drinking from it and has budgeted for that. A better analogy would be stealing water from someone else's garden hose.
it's like finding money in a parking lot.
sure, you could track down the owner, but it's in your best interest to just keep it. That's a poor analogy because taking the money doesn't put the previous owner at risk, nor does it cost them (or anyone else) anything. Try again.
I just want to point out that whether it's a crime or not to tap into your neighbor's wi-fi misses the point. Whether it's illegal or not, it is unethical. Here's why:
1. It puts your neighbor at risk for any illegal activities done by you that get traced to their IP address.
2. It boosts their bandwidth use higher than it otherwise would have been. Even if this doesn't directly harm them, it causes indirect harm to all the ISP's paying users because they have to subsidize your freeloading.
If you're stealing wifi right now, do the right thing and pay for it. SOMEONE has to pay for it, and it's not right to have someone else pay for you.
I jumped out of the car and proceeded to ask him what the hell was going on and we started arguing when I told him how to drive Did you really think this was going to be effective? Seriously.
The best thing in life is to walk away from conflict when you're able to. If you get into conflicts you have problems with things like getting into trouble with cops.
You need some anger management training, seriously. Someday you're going to get yourself into real trouble. I'm saying all of this to try to help you.
You have a 4-digit UID, which automatically means you belong to an older generation of music than me. Sorry gramps.
*ducks and runs* It's nice to see ageism is alive and well.
If you put helpful things for people who come after you, then your company no longer needs you. If you write unclear code, then not only do people think you're smart, but you're also irreplaceable at your job.
Come on, don't let facts get in the way of all the pro-gun slashdot rants. Let's take the average vocally pro-gun slashdot poster. They're geeks, so probably not especially physically imposing. Grew up into math and computers and science, and probably got picked on for it. When they grew up they picked a safe, sedentary job. The only way they can assert their masculinity is by boasting about gun ownership online, and denigrate people who treat guns with caution. Eazy E expressed it more succinctly: "with a gat it don't matter if you're smaller or bigger."
If these people were scared by the mere presence of a few guns, this seriously worries me about the future of the 2nd amendment. I guess there is solace to be taken in knowing that the people who would read that comic and go to that place aren't a very good representative set of the people though.
Still it worries me. I hope that liberals pay close attention to Alan Dershowitz, who said: "Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like."
their casualties and length of time have no bearing when comparing the two? The point I'm making, and it's limited to this point, is that causing the deaths of 15,000 people and internal displacement of 850,000 in an attack launched well before diplomatic options were exhausted is immoral no matter what standard you use.
To use the argument of saying Iraq was worse than Kosovo is no defense. It would be like a schoolyard bully saying that all he did was break his victim's nose, even though that other meaner bully broke a guy's leg. It's still not a valid defense.
My experience has been if you talk negatively or positivly about your candidate, or your candidates opponent you will be marked troll. If you voice an opinion on politics (or global warming) you will be marked troll or flamebait This is true, not a troll. Anyone who wants to test this assertion can do a simple experiment: post something moderately positive about McCain, making sure to back it up by evidence so it is an informative post. Then watch as your post's rating rises and then falls, simply because of the partisan disagreement the moderators have.
Ok, so our wounded/killed numbers, their casualties and length of time have no bearing when comparing the two? That whole focus on "our" is the problem I have with US politics. And this isn't a Republican-Democrat issue, it's an issue with both sides. If an atrocity is done by your side, it should not be fine nor dismissed as no big deal. According to Human Rights Watch 850,000 people were internally displaced and up to 15,000 killed after the Kosovo bombing started, and as a result of the bombing. You can read the report here: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/kosovo/undword-03.htm
The fact that these were not "our" people who died or became homeless refugees should be irrelevant from a moral standpoint.
You're forgetting that Kosovo was a "military action" started by a Democrat president, and so totally okay by them. This is the moral problem I have with the American political system. Atrocities, as long as they're done by your side, are okay. Take the Kosovo attack, which according to Human Rights Watch led to the internal displacement of 850,000 people and up to 15,000 deaths after the bombing started. Anyone can read their report here: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/kosovo/undword-03.htm
Well, according to this post, this is no big deal because it "lasted a few months, provided some embarrassing issues." Again, as long as your side is the one doing the atrocity, it's fine. This point of view is ethically repugnant.
Since both Bush and Clinton are pretty much at zero when it comes to principles, it's not really accurate to say "least principled man to run for president from either major party since Nixon."
Actually it is. That you equate Kosovo with Iraq is irrational. Not irrational at all. Kosovo and Iraq both involved a rejection of diplomatic options that were far from exhausted, in order to launch a military attack that had gruesome consequences for civilian populations.
Yet, he wouldnt sign on to legislation limiting interrogation techniques to those found in the Army field manual. Limiting the interrogation techniques was McCain's own amendment to the 2006 Defense Authorization Act. It was amendment #1557. It's in the Congressional Record, a transcript of which you can read here: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2005_cr/s072505.html What you're not understanding is that you're agreeing with the original anti-McCain statement. The post said that McCain used to have values and now he doesn't. You're saying that in 2006 (and also 2007) he fought against torture, but ignoring the factual statements of other posters showing that by late 2007/early 2008, McCain voted against the same thing he had previously championed. McCain now supports torture, but that's a very new position he took up during the primary, because he doesn't care at all about human rights when they might stand in the way of his nomination. McCain is the least principled man to run for president from either major party since Nixon. I agree about that when it comes to, for example, McCain voting to allow the CIA to use waterboarding last February. That was inexcusable on any moral level.
What I was doing in the post you quoted was rebutting the guy who said McCain voted against the Army being limited to its field manual interrogation techniques. In fact that was McCain's own amendment to the legislation!
About the unprincipled thing, that describes most recent presidents. Bush II for example invaded Iraq for what can best be summed up (according to McClellan's recent book) as leaving a "legacy." In ancient Rome they called this "glory," which is a more accurate word.
Or take Clinton and his 78 days of bombing Kosovo despite a lack of evidence of Serb genocide. (It's since come out in the public record that there were no mass graves, no genocide, etc.) That was definitely unprincipled too.
Since both Bush and Clinton are pretty much at zero when it comes to principles, it's not really accurate to say "least principled man to run for president from either major party since Nixon."
Yet, he wouldnt sign on to legislation limiting interrogation techniques to those found in the Army field manual. Limiting the interrogation techniques was McCain's own amendment to the 2006 Defense Authorization Act. It was amendment #1557. It's in the Congressional Record, a transcript of which you can read here: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2005_cr/s072505.html
But above all else, I NEVER NEVER NEVER thought I would see a man who was a torture victim and POW stand up and support that very torture by HIS OWN COUNTRY. I'm not a McCain supporter, but this assertion is simply incorrect. McCain (along with Ron Paul of course) was the only candidate in the GOP debates to take a stand against torture, arguing pragmatically that torture has the unintended consequence of putting US troops in danger of being tortured themselves. While that's a far cry from the elevated moral argument that torture is simply wrong prima facie, it is still an opposition to the practice.
The specific quotation from him is: "I would create an Army advisory committee with 20,000 soldiers to partner with militaries abroad and launch a crash program in civilian and military schools to prepare more experienced languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, and others and create a new specialty in strategic interrogation -- a new group of strategic interrogators so that we never have to or feel motivated to torture anyone ever again."
They were all reactionary, not forecasting, much like the regular stock market. This is simply incorrect. Do even a cursory study of the financial literature and you'll see that the equities markets are forward-looking, which is why market declines tend to precede economic declines, and market gains tend to precede economic increases.
McCain 70-80% likely to pick up Florida? Obama 70-80% likely to grab Pennsylvania? Everyone is expecting those two to be big battleground states. Those probabilities seem pretty lofty to me. The great thing about prediction markets is that if you think the collected wisdom of the other bettors is wrong, you can bet against them and make some money.
I wonder why people don't look at veterinary medicine compared with human medicine in the US. Veterinary medicine is the perfect example of health care free from government interference. If there were a canine equivalent of the plastic tube, you'd be able to get it for the $20 and be done with it.
Unfortunately what the US has is a mixture of socialized and market medicine. The result is so many things are over-priced. Clearly the best thing is to either choose one or the other, not be a mixture.
I have yet to see any proof of falsified voting results. Yes, I read the news a lot. Probably more than is healthy. What specifically are you referring to? Well, you could take the Ohio Presidential election from 2004. This paper, "The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy" from the University of Pennsylvania, explains: http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/Documents/ExitPoll.pdf
In a nutshell, exit polls are astoundingly accurate, just as prediction markets are. Over the past 3 decades, on average in elections that are completely uncontested as to accuracy, exit polls have a differential from tallied results of just 0.44%. In Ohio the differential was 6.7%.
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1. Simple solution: Don't do illegal activities on their network. If you are doing illegal activities, you're probably not terribly concerned with ethics, anyway.
Flip the scenario around. Would you want to take responsibility for things that complete strangers do on your wifi without your knowledge? If the answer is no, then you should apply the same ethical standards when you're considering other people than when you're considering yourself.To the moderators -- the fact that you disagree with something does NOT make it a troll (which is what I see my post was modded). Slashdot's definition of "troll" is "a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses."
Okay, I'll bite. The point is the risk itself. One of the reasons "borrowing" someone else's car without them knowing is wrong is because you're putting their car at risk. This is a problem even if (lucky for them) you do no damage.
Again, freeloading creates the issue of forcing everyone else on the system to subsidize you. Whether the ISP has anything in the contract about it is irrelevant.
#2 -- I guess tapping into the electrical grid is fine in your world then. I simply disagree with your ethics, and we'll have to agree to disagree and leave it at that.
I bet drinking fountains ruin your day.
The owner of the drinking fountain knows people are drinking from it and has budgeted for that. A better analogy would be stealing water from someone else's garden hose.I just want to point out that whether it's a crime or not to tap into your neighbor's wi-fi misses the point. Whether it's illegal or not, it is unethical. Here's why:
1. It puts your neighbor at risk for any illegal activities done by you that get traced to their IP address.
2. It boosts their bandwidth use higher than it otherwise would have been. Even if this doesn't directly harm them, it causes indirect harm to all the ISP's paying users because they have to subsidize your freeloading.
If you're stealing wifi right now, do the right thing and pay for it. SOMEONE has to pay for it, and it's not right to have someone else pay for you.
The best thing in life is to walk away from conflict when you're able to. If you get into conflicts you have problems with things like getting into trouble with cops.
You need some anger management training, seriously. Someday you're going to get yourself into real trouble. I'm saying all of this to try to help you.
If you put helpful things for people who come after you, then your company no longer needs you. If you write unclear code, then not only do people think you're smart, but you're also irreplaceable at your job.
To use the argument of saying Iraq was worse than Kosovo is no defense. It would be like a schoolyard bully saying that all he did was break his victim's nose, even though that other meaner bully broke a guy's leg. It's still not a valid defense.
The fact that these were not "our" people who died or became homeless refugees should be irrelevant from a moral standpoint.
Well, according to this post, this is no big deal because it "lasted a few months, provided some embarrassing issues." Again, as long as your side is the one doing the atrocity, it's fine. This point of view is ethically repugnant.
What I was doing in the post you quoted was rebutting the guy who said McCain voted against the Army being limited to its field manual interrogation techniques. In fact that was McCain's own amendment to the legislation!
About the unprincipled thing, that describes most recent presidents. Bush II for example invaded Iraq for what can best be summed up (according to McClellan's recent book) as leaving a "legacy." In ancient Rome they called this "glory," which is a more accurate word.
Or take Clinton and his 78 days of bombing Kosovo despite a lack of evidence of Serb genocide. (It's since come out in the public record that there were no mass graves, no genocide, etc.) That was definitely unprincipled too.
Since both Bush and Clinton are pretty much at zero when it comes to principles, it's not really accurate to say "least principled man to run for president from either major party since Nixon."
McCain has also called for the US Army to specifically train its interrogators to not torture. See for example this news report: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/12/15/519269.aspx
The specific quotation from him is: "I would create an Army advisory committee with 20,000 soldiers to partner with militaries abroad and launch a crash program in civilian and military schools to prepare more experienced languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, and others and create a new specialty in strategic interrogation -- a new group of strategic interrogators so that we never have to or feel motivated to torture anyone ever again."
I wonder why people don't look at veterinary medicine compared with human medicine in the US. Veterinary medicine is the perfect example of health care free from government interference. If there were a canine equivalent of the plastic tube, you'd be able to get it for the $20 and be done with it.
Unfortunately what the US has is a mixture of socialized and market medicine. The result is so many things are over-priced. Clearly the best thing is to either choose one or the other, not be a mixture.
In a nutshell, exit polls are astoundingly accurate, just as prediction markets are. Over the past 3 decades, on average in elections that are completely uncontested as to accuracy, exit polls have a differential from tallied results of just 0.44%. In Ohio the differential was 6.7%.