but I read your posts on music sharing, voting machines, and unauthorized wireless access
Hold on a second while I process the fact that someone actually reads that. *processing*
it seems you just want the world to be run the way you know is right without any regard to the law
Well, not so much "to be run" or anything like that - but more like I want to be a counterweight to the people, here, who spout some pretty silly stuff about the underlying right/wrong about a LOT of things. What I see, too often, is that people who don't like a particular law (or lack of one) will twist themselves into some really spectacularly disengenuous postures, and talk themselves into backing some really crazy people without realizing the absurd heights (or depths) to which they're traveling.
it frightens me that you think people should just be punished when the legal precedent for doing so is dubious at best
It's possible that I'm too quickly blowing past the "news" of a particular case (and, say, what Singapore's laws happen to be) and focusing instead on exposing the hypocrisies that people tend to trot out when they talk about such stuff. Some of those stories strike a little close to home for some people (especially, since you brought it up, when it comes to issues like freeloading on other people's creative work, bandwidth, etc), and they tend to swing the intellectual pendulum a little too far over the cliff in doing a little CYA lest they admit, to themselves, that they're looking in a mirror. We all do it sometimes... but on some topics here, the scope of the mixed premises and thus the tortured logic that is used to cover for them is particularly amazing.
Saying "We're right and to hell with the law. String 'em up!" is fine when things go your way, but leaves you no recourse when things don't. It is an outlook begging to be abused, and I would never want you, or anyone else on/. to fall victim to such a system.
I think you may be inferring some things from my comments that aren't there, or not to the degree that my rhetorical tone might have you think. I appreciate your point, though, and will try to be clearer on my real purpose here, which I think I can usually sum up as the asking of a clarifying question when some loons here post particularly ridiculous (if very popular) comments. To wit, I'm usually just saying, "Do you really mean that? And, how about if we apply what you just said to some slightly different circumstances?"
That usually pisses people off, but it wouldn't if it didn't get the ol' neurons firing. Thanks for your thoughts.
Here's what they really said: It's the actions of the person in the uniform that need respect, or sometimes, a lack thereof.
Ah. So, how does that work in an emergency, when the responding people in uniform are folks you've never seen in action (and thus, using that formula, are people you don't yet know if you can trust), and who are telling you what to do because they, for example, know something you don't about the situation you're in? If you don't operate with a presumption of trust, you're screwed. You can elect, later, to write off a particular cop's respect-earning skills if that turns out to be appropriate, but you can't wait until you've weighed an emergency responder's actions, or a state guard's actions, or a detective's actions to decide how you're going to interact with them when something unexpected or dangerous is happening. That's not out of context, that's the only context.
He never claimed that people in uniform did not deserve respect, or jack shit, or whatever the hell you want to try and make him say.
Yes: he says there are good cops and bad. We all know that's true. But you have to operate on a presumption of decency on the part of the police (at least, here in the US) unless you know, solidly and specifically, to the contrary - because otherwise their ability to function in ugly, and rapidly evolving situations is pretty well hosed up. The OP's exact phrase ("But that doesn't mean anyone in a uniform deserves jack shit from you.") speaks of a pre-emptive position of distrust, and that doesn't serve him or anyone else that they are trying to serve. The point is that people wearing those uniforms do deserve the presumption of decency and respect. I've dealt with police under all sorts of different circumstances, and operating from an immediate posture of respect for what they're doing for living has never failed to keep things in fine tune. I've met one clueless sheriff's deputy, and one burned-out county detective - but never the mythological demons that would have to exist in enough quantity to make someone presume that cops don't "deserve jack shit" (not my words, but those to which I responded).
And last but not least, you're doing the novice users a great disservice: Instead of advocating proper network configuration including encryption, you tell them that it's normal to run open WLANs
It's not that I'm not encouraging them to secure their networks, it's just that we're not talking about 'best practices,' here - we're talking about the moral frameworks underlying the two basic positions that are being presented:
1) It is OK to use someone's private network without asking
2) It isn't.
I'm not talking about the law. I'm talking the classic someone who brings home the new laptop, does not have broadband of their own, and: presto! Look, it's the internet! It's not the 5% of people who are too dumb to think that it's magic, it's the vast majority of the rest of them that do know it's their neighbor's signal they're jumping on, and can't, with a straight face, imply that they didn't. Whether or not their neighbor tells his neighborhood that they're all welcome to use his pipe, is another matter. He's certainly welcome to hit the few doors within WiFi range around him and make the offer clear and unambiguous. Which is also a great time to mention that he'd appreciate it if people didn't conduct phishing campaigns, kiddie pr0n operations, and spouse murdering research over his pipe, and to please not mention his blatant violation of his ISP's AUP to his ISP, since he'll lose his service.
Your post sounds depressingly like the 'hang them high for stealing a loaf of bread' rhetoric common of the 19th Century, Mr. Kettle
You're confusing my role as a counterbalance to the "if you can get-it/use-it/steal-it/copy-it, then it's right that you should have-it/use-it" crowd. The odd thing about much of the conversation, here, is that in their urgency to point out that they think the country in question is being too harsh in having jail time as an option when they convict someone for using someone else's network, they're arguing against the wrong thing: I keep seeing arguments that there's nothing ethically wrong with using someone else's stuff as the basis for not locking the kid up. Why aren't we hearing, instead, arguments about the nature of the offense as it matches up to the penalty, or to the recompense that might be offered to the person whose services he was heisting?
I'm not really commenting, one way or the other, about Singapore's sensibilities about a $50 fine vs. 3 years in jail or anything in between - I'm addressing the odd notion here that calling someone else's network your own is just fine, thank you very much, because that other person didn't do a good enough job keeping you out. It doesn't matter what the specific law is, or how well it holds up to comparisons (like to making use of someone else's phone line, or other household utilities). None of that matters, because jumping on someone's pipe without their permission is just wrong, and everyone here knows it, and any hairsplitting over the details of that country's laws on the subject are a moral smoke screen designed to make people feel more comfortable when they jack someone's pipe themselves. It really is the same as loudly talking about preserving your first amendment rights as you busy yourself getting around having to subscribe to HBO's services in order to watch "Deadwood" or "Rome."
They think about whose rights needs to be protected and whose rights need to be curtailed.
There is no "right" to use someone else's network. That network doesn't exist unless someone acts to put it in place. You're not passively, in some way, using the stray radiation from it... you're talking to it, tying up its very finite bandwidth, and potentially (depending on what you're doing) exposing the network owner to substantial risk by not making it clear whether it's you or the actual network owner conducting a giving activity over the pipe. Even if the faucet on the front of my house isn't padlocked somehow, I'm not curtailing someone's rights by suggesting that it's not right for them to run a hose over to it and wash their car out in the street. We don't even have to talk about laws to clearly understand that the "open water network" that has an interface on the front of my house is not reasonably up for your use just because you feel entitled to it.
Someone owns an acre of grassland adjacent to a park. There are no signs marking the border, and you walk through it on a regular basis. One day, the owner gets pissed and you are charged with tresspassing.
Not such a bad analogy, actually. Because sometimes you don't much care until something happens, or the risks change. For example, suddently there's a spate of local crimes in the neighborhood that seem to be happening on the edges of the parkland, and you don't want to be liable. Or (a much better analogy, really), people start leaving a bunch of trash on your property, and you run the risk of being fined because the rest of the world can't tell whether it's you making an eyesore, or the people who have started abusing their presumptive (but never actually granted) "rights" to cut across the propery. A history of people trespassing without much consequence doesn't vacate the trespass laws or your property rights - though it's the sort of thing that you need to deal with periodically lest you appear to have waved those rights (though that takes years... and that's where this analogy breaks down: someone else making use of the internet pipe you're paying for, without their asking, is a pretty specific thing).
GP didn't say that people in uniforms deserved no respect
Right. He said "they don't deserve jack shit."
So, how does this work? You only show a particular officer respect after you've known him for a while? But they guy who's "just wearing the uniform," and "doesn't deserve jack shit" but has just showed up to bail you out of trouble... no respect for him on the spot, right there when he shows up? How do people think they're going to get treated when their default position in dealing with an officer they may very well never see again anyway is "you don't deserve jack shit" huh? How does that work? For anyone?
His approach is the presumption of corruption, which is BS unless you live in Russia or Mexico, etc.
Oh, and the kid was in the wrong only if he was somehow on notice that the network wasn't intended to be public. Otherwise my right to run an open network would be compromised.
Which is a nice, righteous-sounding defense of the circumstances that provide cover for people who want to be able to use other people's personal networks without asking.
It's much like the pure-as-the-driven-snow carping we hear from people that, mostly interested in being too cheap to pay for their entertainment, insist that all they want to make sure their rights aren't being compromised while they're busy compromising someone elses (the artist they're ripping off). There's a little more to it than just assuming that every network you can, technically use is appropriately yours to use.
But if it was unsecured, it wasn't possible to break in.
OK, how about instead of using the "breaking in" analogy, we just use the good old "trespassing" analogy? If you don't lock your doors, it's still reasonable to expect people not to go into your house and make phone calls that might make you look like a criminal.
If you look at the population over the entire globe (SHOCK: OMG! there are people OUTSIDE the USA???? OMG! OMG!) police are in fact universally feared and hated
Huh. So, here we are at a web site hosted in the US, run by a business inside the US, primarily used by visitors in the US, talking about a news event that occurred inside the US.
For someone that so despises the US, you sure are spending a lot of time here using a US resource and talking to and about US citizens and events. But that doesn't really matter. What matters is that you're still using the word "universal," while at the same time not including the United States in your universe. Police are not, as a group or as individuals, "universally" hated in this country. And I imagine that if you took an honest poll (could you be that honest?), you'd find that people in, say, Switzerland, or Denmark, or Australia, or Japan, or Scotland, or Canada, or countless other spots will also tell you that they do not "universally" hate their own citizens who choose to work as police officers.
If you wonder why so many Americans don't seem to care that a small, but very loud, cross section of people aroud the world "despise" us, it's because much of that loathing (as you've so perfectly just demonstrated) is driven by utter BS. Either out of total ignorance (I doubt you're actually that stupid), or out of a condescending hope that the people listening to you are so uninformed that they'll actually by your line of crap (much more likely, and more embarassing for you, actually).
your IQ is about 85
Yes, now I see the worldly, mature, adult perspective that shows your superior intellect. It's really impressive, I must say. A monument to reason and polished debating skills.
go back to kissing your buddies asses so you can get that next promotion based on your ass-kissing and not your abilities
Such breathtaking insight! Obviously a well informed, unique perspective on my career and what I do for a living. Other than the fact that you don't know what the hell you're talking about, it sure does make your point, doesn't it? You want people to think your perspective on things is... well, what do you want? Near as I can tell, based on what you're saying, you want people to think that:
1) You are about 12 years old.
2) You think that even though you hate the US, we should still provide you with free entertainment.
3) You cannot seem to get a job you actually like, and assume that people who say things you don't like (about completely unrelated things!) must also be the people who you imagine get better jobs than you because they are actually able to communicate in a lucid way with people who do things like decide who to hire.
Your small whiney source is pitiful.
Well, it's a little hard to say what you really mean with that sentence, but let's assume that you mean my comment was pitiful in some way. Let's call that my fault - I wasn't clear enough on what I was trying to say. It's the brain of the person I was responding to that was the small, whiny source of the noise to which I responded. You seem to think I was referring to the country in which that small, whiny brain was sitting while typing away at a computer connected over the internet (an American invention - how you must despise us for that, too!) to a web server here in the US. I don't care what country that person's sitting in - but I do feel some obligation to point out that the word "universal" actually means something. Perhaps your 140 IQ is the kind that doesn't make you feel any obligation to actually pick up a dictionary, so I'll save you some trouble. Here. Careful, though, it's an evil American web site! Surely not to be trusted with the dissemination of things like word definitions... but then, you don't actually care what words mean anyway, do you? Because y
You're confusing analysis of the recently videotaped event with the notion that "arresting people in a professional manner" doesn't have to sometimes involve the heavy application of force. Sometimes in a way that would, out of context or missing the big picture, seem brutal. It's a very, very tough job (dealing with just plain mean, frequently boorishly drunk or drug addled, sometimes large, powerful people who may decide to try to hurt you). I'm talking about the prevailing presumptions, here, that a) all cops are evil, b) they all delight in beating people, c) all people that they physically deal with are saints who can be asked to put down their [weapon/stolen vehicle/hostage/tin-foil hat/killer attitude] with a reasonable expectation that they'll smile and do the right thing since the nice officer asked them to.
I'd dare the average Cops-Are-Evil poster here to spend a week on a ride-along in a typical urban area, dealing with domestic violence calls, obnoxious drunks smashing things because it's fun, really broken minds that see passers-by as deadly threats to which they react, well, crazily... cops see, disporportionately, the worst and most dangerous people and circumstances. And when they're pursuing a known criminal, say, in a stolen car, who resists arrest and - as a 6-plus-foot, 280-pounder - starts throwing punches and kicking and appears completely immune to a stun gun... you have nothing for it but to use force. Cops have to be prepared for that, every day. Some of them bring that readiness to bear on situations that don't quite rise to that level, and they means they need to do something else for a living. But that doesn't make all of them nazi sadists, and it doesn't change the fact that there will still always be people that do need (literally) a thump in the head so that two much smaller officers can get them under control and in restraints before someone (or more people) get hurt by said crazy (or just assholish) guy.
if he deserved it he should have been arrested in a professional manner
Just out of curiosity, have you ever personally tried to subdue a large angry person who doesn't want you to subdue him? Have you ever held someone down while trying to put handcuffs on them as they put up a fight and grab at your leg, right next to where you keep your metal baton and your sidearm?
Which professional manner where you thinking about, exactly? A comic-book style magic net-thrower with immobilizing sneeze powder? Or perhaps you were thinking of just politely asking the career criminal to step into your police cruiser, all professional-like? Or perhaps you were thinking that after you've put your hands on the bad guy who is refusing arrest, that he'd say... "Ah! You got me. My career in repeat crimes is at an end, and I'll just come along with you polite, professional men, now."
And officials wonder why police universally are looked upon as evil and not to be trusted.
"Universal" is a pretty big word, coming from such a small, whiny source. Big, in the sense that it means "everything," "everyone." Which is, as you probably already know, utter horseshit, in the context in which you used it. The "universe" consists of a lot more than just your own personal tinfoil-lined paranoic fantasies. I know lots of people, and I know cops. I don't know anyone, including people who've had to pay speeding tickets or who have been arrested for one thing or another, that would ever make a statement like that. There's really no point using the word "evil" if you're just going to use it to describe imaginary police departments full of characters that no mayor or governor or their voters would tolerate, and which don't actually exist.
But that doesn't mean anyone in a uniform deserves jack shit from you.
The only way that sentiment makes any sense is if most police officers and soldiers were crazy, sadistic, power-abusing jerks. That isn't the case, and it's really quite the opposite. The uniform can be abused by the rare few, just like the liberties and responsibilities of being a citizen are abused by, well, rather a lot of people.
But these people don't get to wear a law enforcement or military uniform just by asking, and they operate under a lot more scrutiny than most of would tolerate at our own jobs. You do owe people in uniform respect, as a default position. You owe people who abuse that respect nothing - but unless you start out with the premise that all who serve are like that, which is crap, your position is just plain insulting. To a lot of people. If you assume you owe all of those people nothing, then do you also expect nothing from them? You can't have it both ways, even if it is easy to sit at your keyboard spewing nonsense. When your car is in a ditch and it's a state trooper that finds your ass in the middle of the night, be sure to start out by saying you don't respect him, OK? And if it's your ass that's being helicoptered off a rooftop in New Orleans by Coast Guard personnel that risk their lifes to save idiots every day, make sure the first thing you tell them as they pull you aboard is that you don't owe them any respect.
Ever spend a winter in Wyoming, the Dakotas, or Montana? Farther south, you get a bigger window of decent weather to work with. You also have a better shot at attracting more people to work for you.
Look at what M$ is pulling with Novel and Linux. This is typical M$ arrogance and disdain for the law.
Yeah, Novell was just dragged, kicking and screaming, into a dark alley and forced to sign that one, weren't they! Not.
This is about Novell making more money by having broader services and options to offer their customers, and about Microsoft doing the same.
Arrogance? Would you rather that every company that's striving to keep its millions of investors and thousands of employees happy, and not just die on the vine, just act with total "humility" in a rapidly changing tech marketplace, and not swing new deals, introduce new tools, etc? Or should they, but you get to tell them what the price should be and which other businesses they should be allowed to talk to? I'm guessing you like it when, say, IBM and Red Hat do things together? Or is that something that shouldn't be "allowed in a modern society?"
Well... it's possible you're not aware you're using Slashdot, I suppose. The AUP here includes making sure that every post includes a raving, drooling insistance that your rights have just been violated, have always been violated, and always will, no matter what, at all times, with regard to every conceivable topic, in every way (unless you work for Microsoft, in which case you have no rights). Speaking of which: um... (I'm having to reach, here...) saying you're not offended is a way of offending those of us that are! Um... ok, so that's not a rights issue, but that AUP is pretty strict, so I have to be indignant. It's the spirit of the thing.
Apparently parody is not protected under Japanese law.
An old geezer on harmonica and a underage Japanese school girl on piano?;)
I don't know... Japanese entertainment culture and the related sensibilities seems like a parody of itself. But they take it so seriously that it can't be a joke - it's just plain freakin' inscrutible most of the time. Now let me get back to my cup of Wonderment Green Unlimited Magnificence Jasmin Most Happiness Tea. I know it's good for me, because the googly-eyed character on the box seems Excellent Robustness.
But the arrest wasn't for not paying. It was violating a court injunction after he previously refused to obtain permission to use the copyrighted stuff in his business. Indirectly, yes, for not paying... but he was totally aware of what he was doing.
going after bars and nightclubs who didn't pay them money, but never performers
RTFA. He is the bar - it's his operation.
And it's not like someone was walking by his business, heard Beatles tunes, and called in an air strike. Just like everyone here says, it's up to the copyright holders and their representatives actually police this stuff, right? So, they did - they asked him to stop. He didn't. They got an injunction against him using this material in his business without permission, and he refused. The arrest is for violating the court's injunction, not for playing "Yesterday" (though, that should be an arrestable offense, if it's only on a harmonica).
I do understand the difference (hey, I toured a tidal generating facility in Nova Scotia, which was quite cool, I must say). But the notion that tides are not part of wave action is a little simplistic. All that sloshing around generates a lot of "impulse" type energy that results in part of how waves behave and where they appear, and in what form, and how regularly, etc.
if you want to get really serious about your lighting you'd be MUCH better off picking up some inexpensive monoblock strobes
Sometimes, yep. But I'm weird: I do a lot of this stuff in places where AC isn't handy, and lugging around the big 12V batteries is a PITA. Simple physics do apply, of course... the speedlights just don't have the horsepower of the monolights, but (for me) they make up for it in quick deployment and portability. I carry an SB800 and an SB600 in my go-bag, and can do some pretty great stuff with them and some rechargeable AAs, especially with as well as my D200 deals with moderate lighting.
Now: am I still planning on buying a pile of AB gear when I see more studio-ish coming my way, or have to light some big rooms? Yes, no question. But for the roving stuff I'm doing now, I just can't get enough of the i-TTL wizardry. It's fantastic, and those tiny little strobes still go a long way (in one shoulder bag). I do, though, sound suspiciously like I'm trying to talk myself out of more gear... which is nonsense. Never. Enough. Gear.
What do waves have to do with the movement of the moon?
The tidal movement of the oceans (the thing that allows wave-based energy stuff to work) is largely driven by the movement of the moon in its orbit around the earth. The moon tugs at the ocean, which sloshes around, rising and falling. This does not need to be "renewed" in order to continue to work.
I'd bet dollars to donuts that the slightly older, credit card-holding demographic of online shoppers gladly tolerate more than 4 seconds on we sites, and do so without much prejudice
I think it all comes down to what the site is doing, and how readily available another, virtually identical site (or range of merchandise, at similar prices, etc) actually is. The more sites there are that present and transact the same things in essentially the same way, the more that things like raw speed differentiate one from another. The more unique something is (niche merchandise, a blog with a particular perspective), the more patience people will have. Those things are nearly impossible to quantify, and thus you get largely BS, context-less reports like the one being discussed. I think that the larger conclusion ("people are less patient than they used to be") is valid - but pretty hard to nail down, in terms of specific seconds, for specific demographics, on particular platforms, across particular pipes, under certain seasonal circumstances, blah blah blah.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, ScentCone, you're a smart guy
/. to fall victim to such a system.
Look, trying to soften me up isn't going to help.
but I read your posts on music sharing, voting machines, and unauthorized wireless access
Hold on a second while I process the fact that someone actually reads that. *processing*
it seems you just want the world to be run the way you know is right without any regard to the law
Well, not so much "to be run" or anything like that - but more like I want to be a counterweight to the people, here, who spout some pretty silly stuff about the underlying right/wrong about a LOT of things. What I see, too often, is that people who don't like a particular law (or lack of one) will twist themselves into some really spectacularly disengenuous postures, and talk themselves into backing some really crazy people without realizing the absurd heights (or depths) to which they're traveling.
it frightens me that you think people should just be punished when the legal precedent for doing so is dubious at best
It's possible that I'm too quickly blowing past the "news" of a particular case (and, say, what Singapore's laws happen to be) and focusing instead on exposing the hypocrisies that people tend to trot out when they talk about such stuff. Some of those stories strike a little close to home for some people (especially, since you brought it up, when it comes to issues like freeloading on other people's creative work, bandwidth, etc), and they tend to swing the intellectual pendulum a little too far over the cliff in doing a little CYA lest they admit, to themselves, that they're looking in a mirror. We all do it sometimes... but on some topics here, the scope of the mixed premises and thus the tortured logic that is used to cover for them is particularly amazing.
Saying "We're right and to hell with the law. String 'em up!" is fine when things go your way, but leaves you no recourse when things don't. It is an outlook begging to be abused, and I would never want you, or anyone else on
I think you may be inferring some things from my comments that aren't there, or not to the degree that my rhetorical tone might have you think. I appreciate your point, though, and will try to be clearer on my real purpose here, which I think I can usually sum up as the asking of a clarifying question when some loons here post particularly ridiculous (if very popular) comments. To wit, I'm usually just saying, "Do you really mean that? And, how about if we apply what you just said to some slightly different circumstances?"
That usually pisses people off, but it wouldn't if it didn't get the ol' neurons firing. Thanks for your thoughts.
Here's what they really said: It's the actions of the person in the uniform that need respect, or sometimes, a lack thereof.
Ah. So, how does that work in an emergency, when the responding people in uniform are folks you've never seen in action (and thus, using that formula, are people you don't yet know if you can trust), and who are telling you what to do because they, for example, know something you don't about the situation you're in? If you don't operate with a presumption of trust, you're screwed. You can elect, later, to write off a particular cop's respect-earning skills if that turns out to be appropriate, but you can't wait until you've weighed an emergency responder's actions, or a state guard's actions, or a detective's actions to decide how you're going to interact with them when something unexpected or dangerous is happening. That's not out of context, that's the only context.
He never claimed that people in uniform did not deserve respect, or jack shit, or whatever the hell you want to try and make him say.
Yes: he says there are good cops and bad. We all know that's true. But you have to operate on a presumption of decency on the part of the police (at least, here in the US) unless you know, solidly and specifically, to the contrary - because otherwise their ability to function in ugly, and rapidly evolving situations is pretty well hosed up. The OP's exact phrase ("But that doesn't mean anyone in a uniform deserves jack shit from you.") speaks of a pre-emptive position of distrust, and that doesn't serve him or anyone else that they are trying to serve. The point is that people wearing those uniforms do deserve the presumption of decency and respect. I've dealt with police under all sorts of different circumstances, and operating from an immediate posture of respect for what they're doing for living has never failed to keep things in fine tune. I've met one clueless sheriff's deputy, and one burned-out county detective - but never the mythological demons that would have to exist in enough quantity to make someone presume that cops don't "deserve jack shit" (not my words, but those to which I responded).
And last but not least, you're doing the novice users a great disservice: Instead of advocating proper network configuration including encryption, you tell them that it's normal to run open WLANs
It's not that I'm not encouraging them to secure their networks, it's just that we're not talking about 'best practices,' here - we're talking about the moral frameworks underlying the two basic positions that are being presented:
1) It is OK to use someone's private network without asking
2) It isn't.
I'm not talking about the law. I'm talking the classic someone who brings home the new laptop, does not have broadband of their own, and: presto! Look, it's the internet! It's not the 5% of people who are too dumb to think that it's magic, it's the vast majority of the rest of them that do know it's their neighbor's signal they're jumping on, and can't, with a straight face, imply that they didn't. Whether or not their neighbor tells his neighborhood that they're all welcome to use his pipe, is another matter. He's certainly welcome to hit the few doors within WiFi range around him and make the offer clear and unambiguous. Which is also a great time to mention that he'd appreciate it if people didn't conduct phishing campaigns, kiddie pr0n operations, and spouse murdering research over his pipe, and to please not mention his blatant violation of his ISP's AUP to his ISP, since he'll lose his service.
Your post sounds depressingly like the 'hang them high for stealing a loaf of bread' rhetoric common of the 19th Century, Mr. Kettle
You're confusing my role as a counterbalance to the "if you can get-it/use-it/steal-it/copy-it, then it's right that you should have-it/use-it" crowd. The odd thing about much of the conversation, here, is that in their urgency to point out that they think the country in question is being too harsh in having jail time as an option when they convict someone for using someone else's network, they're arguing against the wrong thing: I keep seeing arguments that there's nothing ethically wrong with using someone else's stuff as the basis for not locking the kid up. Why aren't we hearing, instead, arguments about the nature of the offense as it matches up to the penalty, or to the recompense that might be offered to the person whose services he was heisting?
I'm not really commenting, one way or the other, about Singapore's sensibilities about a $50 fine vs. 3 years in jail or anything in between - I'm addressing the odd notion here that calling someone else's network your own is just fine, thank you very much, because that other person didn't do a good enough job keeping you out. It doesn't matter what the specific law is, or how well it holds up to comparisons (like to making use of someone else's phone line, or other household utilities). None of that matters, because jumping on someone's pipe without their permission is just wrong, and everyone here knows it, and any hairsplitting over the details of that country's laws on the subject are a moral smoke screen designed to make people feel more comfortable when they jack someone's pipe themselves. It really is the same as loudly talking about preserving your first amendment rights as you busy yourself getting around having to subscribe to HBO's services in order to watch "Deadwood" or "Rome."
They think about whose rights needs to be protected and whose rights need to be curtailed.
There is no "right" to use someone else's network. That network doesn't exist unless someone acts to put it in place. You're not passively, in some way, using the stray radiation from it... you're talking to it, tying up its very finite bandwidth, and potentially (depending on what you're doing) exposing the network owner to substantial risk by not making it clear whether it's you or the actual network owner conducting a giving activity over the pipe. Even if the faucet on the front of my house isn't padlocked somehow, I'm not curtailing someone's rights by suggesting that it's not right for them to run a hose over to it and wash their car out in the street. We don't even have to talk about laws to clearly understand that the "open water network" that has an interface on the front of my house is not reasonably up for your use just because you feel entitled to it.
Someone owns an acre of grassland adjacent to a park. There are no signs marking the border, and you walk through it on a regular basis. One day, the owner gets pissed and you are charged with tresspassing.
Not such a bad analogy, actually. Because sometimes you don't much care until something happens, or the risks change. For example, suddently there's a spate of local crimes in the neighborhood that seem to be happening on the edges of the parkland, and you don't want to be liable. Or (a much better analogy, really), people start leaving a bunch of trash on your property, and you run the risk of being fined because the rest of the world can't tell whether it's you making an eyesore, or the people who have started abusing their presumptive (but never actually granted) "rights" to cut across the propery. A history of people trespassing without much consequence doesn't vacate the trespass laws or your property rights - though it's the sort of thing that you need to deal with periodically lest you appear to have waved those rights (though that takes years... and that's where this analogy breaks down: someone else making use of the internet pipe you're paying for, without their asking, is a pretty specific thing).
GP didn't say that people in uniforms deserved no respect
Right. He said "they don't deserve jack shit."
So, how does this work? You only show a particular officer respect after you've known him for a while? But they guy who's "just wearing the uniform," and "doesn't deserve jack shit" but has just showed up to bail you out of trouble... no respect for him on the spot, right there when he shows up? How do people think they're going to get treated when their default position in dealing with an officer they may very well never see again anyway is "you don't deserve jack shit" huh? How does that work? For anyone?
His approach is the presumption of corruption, which is BS unless you live in Russia or Mexico, etc.
Oh, and the kid was in the wrong only if he was somehow on notice that the network wasn't intended to be public. Otherwise my right to run an open network would be compromised.
Which is a nice, righteous-sounding defense of the circumstances that provide cover for people who want to be able to use other people's personal networks without asking.
It's much like the pure-as-the-driven-snow carping we hear from people that, mostly interested in being too cheap to pay for their entertainment, insist that all they want to make sure their rights aren't being compromised while they're busy compromising someone elses (the artist they're ripping off). There's a little more to it than just assuming that every network you can, technically use is appropriately yours to use.
But if it was unsecured, it wasn't possible to break in.
OK, how about instead of using the "breaking in" analogy, we just use the good old "trespassing" analogy? If you don't lock your doors, it's still reasonable to expect people not to go into your house and make phone calls that might make you look like a criminal.
If you look at the population over the entire globe (SHOCK: OMG! there are people OUTSIDE the USA???? OMG! OMG!) police are in fact universally feared and hated
Huh. So, here we are at a web site hosted in the US, run by a business inside the US, primarily used by visitors in the US, talking about a news event that occurred inside the US.
For someone that so despises the US, you sure are spending a lot of time here using a US resource and talking to and about US citizens and events. But that doesn't really matter. What matters is that you're still using the word "universal," while at the same time not including the United States in your universe. Police are not, as a group or as individuals, "universally" hated in this country. And I imagine that if you took an honest poll (could you be that honest?), you'd find that people in, say, Switzerland, or Denmark, or Australia, or Japan, or Scotland, or Canada, or countless other spots will also tell you that they do not "universally" hate their own citizens who choose to work as police officers.
If you wonder why so many Americans don't seem to care that a small, but very loud, cross section of people aroud the world "despise" us, it's because much of that loathing (as you've so perfectly just demonstrated) is driven by utter BS. Either out of total ignorance (I doubt you're actually that stupid), or out of a condescending hope that the people listening to you are so uninformed that they'll actually by your line of crap (much more likely, and more embarassing for you, actually).
your IQ is about 85
Yes, now I see the worldly, mature, adult perspective that shows your superior intellect. It's really impressive, I must say. A monument to reason and polished debating skills.
go back to kissing your buddies asses so you can get that next promotion based on your ass-kissing and not your abilities
Such breathtaking insight! Obviously a well informed, unique perspective on my career and what I do for a living. Other than the fact that you don't know what the hell you're talking about, it sure does make your point, doesn't it? You want people to think your perspective on things is... well, what do you want? Near as I can tell, based on what you're saying, you want people to think that:
1) You are about 12 years old.
2) You think that even though you hate the US, we should still provide you with free entertainment.
3) You cannot seem to get a job you actually like, and assume that people who say things you don't like (about completely unrelated things!) must also be the people who you imagine get better jobs than you because they are actually able to communicate in a lucid way with people who do things like decide who to hire.
Your small whiney source is pitiful.
Well, it's a little hard to say what you really mean with that sentence, but let's assume that you mean my comment was pitiful in some way. Let's call that my fault - I wasn't clear enough on what I was trying to say. It's the brain of the person I was responding to that was the small, whiny source of the noise to which I responded. You seem to think I was referring to the country in which that small, whiny brain was sitting while typing away at a computer connected over the internet (an American invention - how you must despise us for that, too!) to a web server here in the US. I don't care what country that person's sitting in - but I do feel some obligation to point out that the word "universal" actually means something. Perhaps your 140 IQ is the kind that doesn't make you feel any obligation to actually pick up a dictionary, so I'll save you some trouble. Here . Careful, though, it's an evil American web site! Surely not to be trusted with the dissemination of things like word definitions... but then, you don't actually care what words mean anyway, do you? Because y
You're confusing analysis of the recently videotaped event with the notion that "arresting people in a professional manner" doesn't have to sometimes involve the heavy application of force. Sometimes in a way that would, out of context or missing the big picture, seem brutal. It's a very, very tough job (dealing with just plain mean, frequently boorishly drunk or drug addled, sometimes large, powerful people who may decide to try to hurt you). I'm talking about the prevailing presumptions, here, that a) all cops are evil, b) they all delight in beating people, c) all people that they physically deal with are saints who can be asked to put down their [weapon/stolen vehicle/hostage/tin-foil hat/killer attitude] with a reasonable expectation that they'll smile and do the right thing since the nice officer asked them to.
I'd dare the average Cops-Are-Evil poster here to spend a week on a ride-along in a typical urban area, dealing with domestic violence calls, obnoxious drunks smashing things because it's fun, really broken minds that see passers-by as deadly threats to which they react, well, crazily... cops see, disporportionately, the worst and most dangerous people and circumstances. And when they're pursuing a known criminal, say, in a stolen car, who resists arrest and - as a 6-plus-foot, 280-pounder - starts throwing punches and kicking and appears completely immune to a stun gun... you have nothing for it but to use force. Cops have to be prepared for that, every day. Some of them bring that readiness to bear on situations that don't quite rise to that level, and they means they need to do something else for a living. But that doesn't make all of them nazi sadists, and it doesn't change the fact that there will still always be people that do need (literally) a thump in the head so that two much smaller officers can get them under control and in restraints before someone (or more people) get hurt by said crazy (or just assholish) guy.
if he deserved it he should have been arrested in a professional manner
Just out of curiosity, have you ever personally tried to subdue a large angry person who doesn't want you to subdue him? Have you ever held someone down while trying to put handcuffs on them as they put up a fight and grab at your leg, right next to where you keep your metal baton and your sidearm?
Which professional manner where you thinking about, exactly? A comic-book style magic net-thrower with immobilizing sneeze powder? Or perhaps you were thinking of just politely asking the career criminal to step into your police cruiser, all professional-like? Or perhaps you were thinking that after you've put your hands on the bad guy who is refusing arrest, that he'd say... "Ah! You got me. My career in repeat crimes is at an end, and I'll just come along with you polite, professional men, now."
And officials wonder why police universally are looked upon as evil and not to be trusted.
"Universal" is a pretty big word, coming from such a small, whiny source. Big, in the sense that it means "everything," "everyone." Which is, as you probably already know, utter horseshit, in the context in which you used it. The "universe" consists of a lot more than just your own personal tinfoil-lined paranoic fantasies. I know lots of people, and I know cops. I don't know anyone, including people who've had to pay speeding tickets or who have been arrested for one thing or another, that would ever make a statement like that. There's really no point using the word "evil" if you're just going to use it to describe imaginary police departments full of characters that no mayor or governor or their voters would tolerate, and which don't actually exist.
But that doesn't mean anyone in a uniform deserves jack shit from you.
The only way that sentiment makes any sense is if most police officers and soldiers were crazy, sadistic, power-abusing jerks. That isn't the case, and it's really quite the opposite. The uniform can be abused by the rare few, just like the liberties and responsibilities of being a citizen are abused by, well, rather a lot of people.
But these people don't get to wear a law enforcement or military uniform just by asking, and they operate under a lot more scrutiny than most of would tolerate at our own jobs. You do owe people in uniform respect, as a default position. You owe people who abuse that respect nothing - but unless you start out with the premise that all who serve are like that, which is crap, your position is just plain insulting. To a lot of people. If you assume you owe all of those people nothing, then do you also expect nothing from them? You can't have it both ways, even if it is easy to sit at your keyboard spewing nonsense. When your car is in a ditch and it's a state trooper that finds your ass in the middle of the night, be sure to start out by saying you don't respect him, OK? And if it's your ass that's being helicoptered off a rooftop in New Orleans by Coast Guard personnel that risk their lifes to save idiots every day, make sure the first thing you tell them as they pull you aboard is that you don't owe them any respect.
Grow up.
Ever spend a winter in Wyoming, the Dakotas, or Montana? Farther south, you get a bigger window of decent weather to work with. You also have a better shot at attracting more people to work for you.
Look at what M$ is pulling with Novel and Linux. This is typical M$ arrogance and disdain for the law.
Yeah, Novell was just dragged, kicking and screaming, into a dark alley and forced to sign that one, weren't they! Not.
This is about Novell making more money by having broader services and options to offer their customers, and about Microsoft doing the same.
Arrogance? Would you rather that every company that's striving to keep its millions of investors and thousands of employees happy, and not just die on the vine, just act with total "humility" in a rapidly changing tech marketplace, and not swing new deals, introduce new tools, etc? Or should they, but you get to tell them what the price should be and which other businesses they should be allowed to talk to? I'm guessing you like it when, say, IBM and Red Hat do things together? Or is that something that shouldn't be "allowed in a modern society?"
I'm not feeling any rights violations here
Well... it's possible you're not aware you're using Slashdot, I suppose. The AUP here includes making sure that every post includes a raving, drooling insistance that your rights have just been violated, have always been violated, and always will, no matter what, at all times, with regard to every conceivable topic, in every way (unless you work for Microsoft, in which case you have no rights). Speaking of which: um... (I'm having to reach, here...) saying you're not offended is a way of offending those of us that are! Um... ok, so that's not a rights issue, but that AUP is pretty strict, so I have to be indignant. It's the spirit of the thing.
BTW, I completely agree with you.
Apparently parody is not protected under Japanese law.
;)
An old geezer on harmonica and a underage Japanese school girl on piano?
I don't know... Japanese entertainment culture and the related sensibilities seems like a parody of itself. But they take it so seriously that it can't be a joke - it's just plain freakin' inscrutible most of the time. Now let me get back to my cup of Wonderment Green Unlimited Magnificence Jasmin Most Happiness Tea. I know it's good for me, because the googly-eyed character on the box seems Excellent Robustness.
but arrests seem to go overboard
But the arrest wasn't for not paying. It was violating a court injunction after he previously refused to obtain permission to use the copyrighted stuff in his business. Indirectly, yes, for not paying... but he was totally aware of what he was doing.
going after bars and nightclubs who didn't pay them money, but never performers
RTFA. He is the bar - it's his operation.
And it's not like someone was walking by his business, heard Beatles tunes, and called in an air strike. Just like everyone here says, it's up to the copyright holders and their representatives actually police this stuff, right? So, they did - they asked him to stop. He didn't. They got an injunction against him using this material in his business without permission, and he refused. The arrest is for violating the court's injunction, not for playing "Yesterday" (though, that should be an arrestable offense, if it's only on a harmonica).
I do understand the difference (hey, I toured a tidal generating facility in Nova Scotia, which was quite cool, I must say). But the notion that tides are not part of wave action is a little simplistic. All that sloshing around generates a lot of "impulse" type energy that results in part of how waves behave and where they appear, and in what form, and how regularly, etc.
if you want to get really serious about your lighting you'd be MUCH better off picking up some inexpensive monoblock strobes
Sometimes, yep. But I'm weird: I do a lot of this stuff in places where AC isn't handy, and lugging around the big 12V batteries is a PITA. Simple physics do apply, of course... the speedlights just don't have the horsepower of the monolights, but (for me) they make up for it in quick deployment and portability. I carry an SB800 and an SB600 in my go-bag, and can do some pretty great stuff with them and some rechargeable AAs, especially with as well as my D200 deals with moderate lighting.
Now: am I still planning on buying a pile of AB gear when I see more studio-ish coming my way, or have to light some big rooms? Yes, no question. But for the roving stuff I'm doing now, I just can't get enough of the i-TTL wizardry. It's fantastic, and those tiny little strobes still go a long way (in one shoulder bag). I do, though, sound suspiciously like I'm trying to talk myself out of more gear... which is nonsense. Never. Enough. Gear.
What do waves have to do with the movement of the moon?
The tidal movement of the oceans (the thing that allows wave-based energy stuff to work) is largely driven by the movement of the moon in its orbit around the earth. The moon tugs at the ocean, which sloshes around, rising and falling. This does not need to be "renewed" in order to continue to work.
I'd bet dollars to donuts that the slightly older, credit card-holding demographic of online shoppers gladly tolerate more than 4 seconds on we sites, and do so without much prejudice
I think it all comes down to what the site is doing, and how readily available another, virtually identical site (or range of merchandise, at similar prices, etc) actually is. The more sites there are that present and transact the same things in essentially the same way, the more that things like raw speed differentiate one from another. The more unique something is (niche merchandise, a blog with a particular perspective), the more patience people will have. Those things are nearly impossible to quantify, and thus you get largely BS, context-less reports like the one being discussed. I think that the larger conclusion ("people are less patient than they used to be") is valid - but pretty hard to nail down, in terms of specific seconds, for specific demographics, on particular platforms, across particular pipes, under certain seasonal circumstances, blah blah blah.