He responded to the sting, and no reason exists to mourn his choice to "self-rehabilitate." His family won't see it that way,but consider that a result of family bonding. It's common enough in criminal cases for the family to spew excuses for the perp.
Both the original post and the linked article make it clear that he did NOT go to the sting.
I've watched the show before; they made a point of telling the culprits that they passed the line the moment they walked in the door, that they could have turned around, etc.
I'm not pissed with the police for going to arrest him, and presumably they can't tell Dateline to sod off because of Press rights, but Dateline broke their own rules here. They should have reported him to the police for the lesser crime that he presumably DID commit, and left it alone.
Do you seriously think handing power to someone who holds insane views is a way to fix corruption? I know he comes across as a genial, harmless old duffer, but he displays all the usual crank libertarian beliefs in hokey alternative medicine and the evils of government (yet wants to run for it). He's overdue for a zimmer frame, an aspirin and a nice lie down.
Even assuming that you're right about him being insane, I'd prefer an eccentric person who isn't planning to screw me over to a sane one that is. And I don't see why I should care about his views on medicine, unless he wants to ban the practice of it.
Ron Paul? And hand power to the conspiracy nuts? That sounds like a great idea.
Actually, yes, it does.
We've got Congressmen, as well as many lesser bureaucrats, dropping left and right from scandals. Corporations are buying laws. We keep getting involved in Middle East conflicts for stupid reasons.
Do you seriously think no one's trying to screw the country over when dozens of people have been exposed trying to do just that?
I don't know his reason for doing this or how valid it was, but it looks like he made two mistakes.
1. He didn't arrange for others to do it alongside him. Every community has a few people who are pissed off at the IRS and would be willing to do something like this. You might have had a harder time dealing with it if ten people had showed up to pay in pennies.
2. He brought his wife. Bringing your woman along for a protest without being 100% certain she's on your side is a bad idea; nine times out of ten she'll stab you in the back once things get rough. I would count letting her take the car keys and letting her hit him as mistakes as well, but they could have easily been avoided by not taking her along, or not marrying her in the first place.
I'd like to see something like this play out with a bigger crowd.
"Their country, their choice" doesn't work when, for many of them, it's neither.
Who are we to say that our way of life is better? Don't we have rising illiteracy, crime-ridden cities, corrupt politicians, rapacious corporations and wars we don't believe in killing bucketloads of civilians?
They have rampant illiteracy, crime-ridden cities, corrupt politicians, (the same) rapacious corporations, tens of millions of intentionally murdered civilians shoved under the rug, and censorship that dwarfs the crap the FCC tries to pull.
Being a superpower with a great economy and being evil aren't even close to mutually exclusive.
At any rate, if you're judging countries by the same standards as you judge people, all or nearly all of them lean towards evil. The few that are very strong tend to oppress the rest, and those aren't really "good". They just don't have claws.
Welcome to/. This is where a story about someone sitting in a car outside an internet cafe and stealing the wireless connection gets the headline "Poor innocent Linux user arrested for browsing the web." Or a story about a student posting Nazi slogans from a college computer gets the headline "Student suspended for blogging."
In the first case, the place had a sign up that said "free wireless" and a network that was broadcasting its SSID. The store owner didn't even think it was illegal; a nosy cop decided to hassle the guy. So yeah, an innocent man was arrested for using the web. The headline was "Michigan Man Charged for Using Free WiFi", and was quite accurate.
If you're talking about this one (a very different case), "Man Arrested for Wireless Piggybacking" hardly seems like an example of a slanted headline.
Are smaller system builders considered "manufacturers"? That would explain why the bill got so much support from HP and Dell; it raises the cost of doing business.
What if I want to set up a network of personnel across the country who live-blog every NCAA sporting event, and broadcast it on a web site. Maybe one with ads. And then I pay people to live blog for me. At every event. And maybe all of those people can have computers with cameras, and stream video as well. Well, why not? I should be able to do that, right? No?
Yes.
If I understand correctly, your main issue is with people who are confusing this with government-sponsored censorship, and I agree with you on that point.
However, I _do_ think that I should be able to do those things at a college basketball game, if I cared to. By the NCAA's rules, the players can't even accept money for playing unless it's part of a scholarship, but they sure don't mind raking in nice piles of tax-exempt dough from the broadcasts. I find that combination a bit dishonest.
Once we get rid of this completely wrong-headed "one-person-one-vote" nonsense and also start allowing a wider range of options (two parties are a horrible oversimplification of the range of political agendas at work in a nation of our size), maybe then I will see some value in voting. Until then, nothing good can come of it, so I won't participate.
The only way to change the system into what you describe would be for enough candidates who support the change to get elected. Of course, no major party candidate (or very, very few) is going to push for that. It's a self-perpetuating system, and it won't stop until people start refusing to play by its rules in large numbers.
Simply not voting is still playing by its rules, of course, since it doesn't interfere.
Jesus Christ, how old are you people? As if spelling Microsoft as "M$" somehow makes you more leet or insightful.
Here's a hint. It makes you look retarded. It's like a 5 year old calling somebody poopyhead or something.
Please grow up and call them by their correct names, unless you want to look like an idiot, which you did.
No, it has nothing to do with wanting to sound "leet" or insightful. It's a slightly amusing way to express hatred for a company. It does not make the user look retarded, unless they use it in a formal setting, which this isn't. Getting your panties in a wad when someone makes fun of a corporation on a "News for Nerds" website by altering its name makes YOU look like an idiot.
And if you're waiting for it to go away, give up. "Radio$hack" hasn't, and it's been around longer.
If the "brand" had been trademarked, the fact that everyone is using it generically would invalidate it, as would the fact that it has never been defended. And considering how available the technology is, that Russian patent probably isn't worth its weight in toilet paper.
But seriously. I'm not sure if this kind of research is ethically sound. Considering people could exploit this as a basic form of eugenics... how much more research like this should we be willing to tolerate? And what exactly was the goal of this study?
Stopping research because people could conceivably use it for unethical purposes is a terrible idea. I'm no geneticist, but couldn't correlations we find like this help when we get deeper into genetic engineering by helping us isolate genes that produce a particular result?
Lesson: sputtering halfwitted rage is for idiot fanboys. The people who actually make things base their self-esteem on what they accomplish, not on how insanely they hate someone else.
The lesson is not to let someone know you're angry unless/until you can actually strike at them.
2. Many people I've known who were creative and innovative had short fuses and vendettas a-plenty. Others were peaceful.
3. These two aren't the "people who actually make things"; these are business leaders.
...but the author of the article seems to be writing for an unrelated reason, and pulling some of her info out of thin air.
Fanfiction dates back to Star Trek: The Original Series (ST-TOS) when fans published their own "fanzines" - anthologies of stories, complete with artwork.Written almost exclusively by women, fanfic is the fore-mother of user-generated content.
They distributed ads with adolescent boy appeal that the women hated.
The second quote links to someone's LiveJournal, and it's not the only one. This seems like a Cyber Sister storm to me.
That was what I was implying. Linux (and other Unixes like *BSD, Solaris, etc) aren't invincible, but as far as I know they're better than the current alternatives. The fact that enough dedicated attackers could break them seems like a moot point to me.
Hmmmm - if any other country invests in its military capability, it's equivalent to an attack on the US?
Have you been offline for the past decade? Chinese attacks on US networks aren't some nebulous possibility; they've been going on for years. Quite a few articles about it have shown up right here on Slashdot.
As for the US's military spending, that annoys me because it gets blown kicking over some dictator in the Middle East or chasing "terrorists" who kill less people than cars, instead of preparing for and dealing with real threats.
Do you not think it better to trade with countries and develop strong relations with them?
I like Linux as much as every other guy here but, if you actually believe that Linux is flawless enough to endure a military funded search for flaws and vulnerabilities and come out immaculate, you must be out of touch with reality.
Care to tell us what is? Because Solaris and Windows sure aren't. OpenVMS has a good record, but I doubt it's completely bugless.
Actual attacks on US military and government computers from China have been happening for years. There was especially a lot of crap flying during the "spy plane" incident a few years back.
The US will ignore this for the most part, keep trading with them, and allow corporations to send its citizens jobs to the nation that is attacking it. It makes me sick.
"as well as any property used to commit the crimes"
They could use this to take control of internet backbones?:P
They can, they will, and they probably already have. Remember that they've decided that ISPs have a "responsibility" to help them track down offenders? It's only a matter of time before they decide that a reluctant ISP is an "accomplice".
Like they've been doing for the past twenty-something years? Of course. They can even auction it off at a nice price. All they have to do is find some way, even a very flimsy one, of linking it to a crime.
This has ruined the livelihoods of innocent people on multiple occasions. The burden of proof is considered to be on the property owner. If the property taken is critical to the owner's work, they often can't afford the court fees.
Slashdot Mirror
Both the original post and the linked article make it clear that he did NOT go to the sting.
I've watched the show before; they made a point of telling the culprits that they passed the line the moment they walked in the door, that they could have turned around, etc.
I'm not pissed with the police for going to arrest him, and presumably they can't tell Dateline to sod off because of Press rights, but Dateline broke their own rules here. They should have reported him to the police for the lesser crime that he presumably DID commit, and left it alone.
Even assuming that you're right about him being insane, I'd prefer an eccentric person who isn't planning to screw me over to a sane one that is. And I don't see why I should care about his views on medicine, unless he wants to ban the practice of it.
If you're going to sentence someone to sodomy and near-starvation, you'd better go ahead and kill them.
Actually, yes, it does.
We've got Congressmen, as well as many lesser bureaucrats, dropping left and right from scandals. Corporations are buying laws. We keep getting involved in Middle East conflicts for stupid reasons.
Do you seriously think no one's trying to screw the country over when dozens of people have been exposed trying to do just that?
I don't know his reason for doing this or how valid it was, but it looks like he made two mistakes.
1. He didn't arrange for others to do it alongside him. Every community has a few people who are pissed off at the IRS and would be willing to do something like this. You might have had a harder time dealing with it if ten people had showed up to pay in pennies.
2. He brought his wife. Bringing your woman along for a protest without being 100% certain she's on your side is a bad idea; nine times out of ten she'll stab you in the back once things get rough. I would count letting her take the car keys and letting her hit him as mistakes as well, but they could have easily been avoided by not taking her along, or not marrying her in the first place.
I'd like to see something like this play out with a bigger crowd.
Isn't it obvious that he was speaking of inherent human rights, not legal ones?
They have rampant illiteracy, crime-ridden cities, corrupt politicians, (the same) rapacious corporations, tens of millions of intentionally murdered civilians shoved under the rug, and censorship that dwarfs the crap the FCC tries to pull.
Being a superpower with a great economy and being evil aren't even close to mutually exclusive.
At any rate, if you're judging countries by the same standards as you judge people, all or nearly all of them lean towards evil. The few that are very strong tend to oppress the rest, and those aren't really "good". They just don't have claws.
In the first case, the place had a sign up that said "free wireless" and a network that was broadcasting its SSID. The store owner didn't even think it was illegal; a nosy cop decided to hassle the guy. So yeah, an innocent man was arrested for using the web. The headline was "Michigan Man Charged for Using Free WiFi", and was quite accurate.
If you're talking about this one (a very different case), "Man Arrested for Wireless Piggybacking" hardly seems like an example of a slanted headline.
Are smaller system builders considered "manufacturers"? That would explain why the bill got so much support from HP and Dell; it raises the cost of doing business.
Yes.
If I understand correctly, your main issue is with people who are confusing this with government-sponsored censorship, and I agree with you on that point.
However, I _do_ think that I should be able to do those things at a college basketball game, if I cared to. By the NCAA's rules, the players can't even accept money for playing unless it's part of a scholarship, but they sure don't mind raking in nice piles of tax-exempt dough from the broadcasts. I find that combination a bit dishonest.
The only way to change the system into what you describe would be for enough candidates who support the change to get elected. Of course, no major party candidate (or very, very few) is going to push for that. It's a self-perpetuating system, and it won't stop until people start refusing to play by its rules in large numbers.
Simply not voting is still playing by its rules, of course, since it doesn't interfere.
No, it has nothing to do with wanting to sound "leet" or insightful. It's a slightly amusing way to express hatred for a company. It does not make the user look retarded, unless they use it in a formal setting, which this isn't. Getting your panties in a wad when someone makes fun of a corporation on a "News for Nerds" website by altering its name makes YOU look like an idiot.
And if you're waiting for it to go away, give up. "Radio$hack" hasn't, and it's been around longer.
If the "brand" had been trademarked, the fact that everyone is using it generically would invalidate it, as would the fact that it has never been defended. And considering how available the technology is, that Russian patent probably isn't worth its weight in toilet paper.
Stopping research because people could conceivably use it for unethical purposes is a terrible idea. I'm no geneticist, but couldn't correlations we find like this help when we get deeper into genetic engineering by helping us isolate genes that produce a particular result?
The lesson is not to let someone know you're angry unless/until you can actually strike at them.
2. Many people I've known who were creative and innovative had short fuses and vendettas a-plenty. Others were peaceful.
3. These two aren't the "people who actually make things"; these are business leaders.
The second quote links to someone's LiveJournal, and it's not the only one. This seems like a Cyber Sister storm to me.
That was what I was implying. Linux (and other Unixes like *BSD, Solaris, etc) aren't invincible, but as far as I know they're better than the current alternatives. The fact that enough dedicated attackers could break them seems like a moot point to me.
Have you been offline for the past decade? Chinese attacks on US networks aren't some nebulous possibility; they've been going on for years. Quite a few articles about it have shown up right here on Slashdot.
As for the US's military spending, that annoys me because it gets blown kicking over some dictator in the Middle East or chasing "terrorists" who kill less people than cars, instead of preparing for and dealing with real threats.
No, not while they're attacking.
Care to tell us what is? Because Solaris and Windows sure aren't. OpenVMS has a good record, but I doubt it's completely bugless.
Actual attacks on US military and government computers from China have been happening for years. There was especially a lot of crap flying during the "spy plane" incident a few years back.
The US will ignore this for the most part, keep trading with them, and allow corporations to send its citizens jobs to the nation that is attacking it. It makes me sick.
"We have driven the infidels from the nation...There are no enemy troops within the city...Our troops have reclaimed the airport."
Seriously, this guy is *literally* trying to claim that F/OSS is dead because it's succeeding.
They can, they will, and they probably already have. Remember that they've decided that ISPs have a "responsibility" to help them track down offenders? It's only a matter of time before they decide that a reluctant ISP is an "accomplice".
Like they've been doing for the past twenty-something years? Of course. They can even auction it off at a nice price. All they have to do is find some way, even a very flimsy one, of linking it to a crime.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-179es.html
This has ruined the livelihoods of innocent people on multiple occasions. The burden of proof is considered to be on the property owner. If the property taken is critical to the owner's work, they often can't afford the court fees.