But the "average Joe" wouldn't walk in and steal your stuff.
Except that every teenager I know with broadband and a PC spends hours every week doing everything they can to not pay for the entertainment they want from artists they say they respect. That's every single one of them. All of them. Somewhere in that group is the "average joe," and they are, in effect, walking in and stealing every day. Because it's technically easy for them to do, just like it's technically easy for you to walk through an unlocked door. The problem is the culture, which has begun to normalize the notion that famous musicians and actors should be the pet entertainment slaves of all people under the age of 25.
This isn't about frontiers, innovation, or flawed existing "systems." This is about mostly young people feeling entitled to the professional work of other people, and simply taking it because they know they probably won't be caught. They do this enough, and then any step taken by anyone to protect the interests they have in their own work is suddenly seen as some sort of insult. Why people don't recognize the hypocrisy in saying they like an artist even as they rip them off is always beyond me. I'd like to have the same teenager sit down right next to the guys from Cold Play or on the couch with Nelly while explaining just how much they love their work as they go about digging out an unpaid-for copy of it.
but when you're talking about something that impacts the entire world what better and more universally recognized body do we currently have
This would be the same body that puts places like Lybia and Iran in charge of human rights committees? The point is that the larger majority of the voters that assemble at the UN represent completely corrupt interests that absolutely want things that they can't, yet, as a society, build for themselves. The original post's mentioning of even the notion of a tax (by the UN?!?) to support "univerisal access" should make everyone run screaming from this whole concept. What does "universal access" mean, anyway? Subsidized cyber cafes along rivers in Papua New Guinea? They may not have phones, but they've got a vote at the UN!
If the residents in the non- or less-wired places really are in a position where having net access would immediately boost their socio-economic horsepower, then that implies a stable, non-corrupt government, rule of law, and a culture ready for action. In otherwords, exactly the things that normally attract vastly more efficient private investment, with no compulsary UN taxes or bureacracy involved. And nobody from China getting to vote on how the internet should work (or, be broken, in their case).
2009 isn't that far away, and plenty of people have portable TVs or good old fashioned rabbit ears. A lot of that will just be junk without an aftermarket tuner. Radio Shack will probably do a bang-up business in cheesy HD-to-NTSC widgets. Hell, an entire province in China could live for a decade off of this decision.
I think we're on the same page, then. I would only ask that those of us who do understand the need for a strong deterrent/defense still make a regular point of reminding ourselves (and everyone we meet) that there are actual, genuine Bad Guys out there. That seems to fade into the background sometimes as we pick on which OS has the most bugs or which users are the least prepared for trouble.
Critical Thinking Classes - year in, year out
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Improving Education?
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I can tell you that those students I've encountered that have been through even a couple of such courses (even those laden with idealogical bias in the teacher) benefit immensely. Specifically, they start to see the value (and nuances) in rhetoric, advertising, and other forms of communication. They also start to realize that clarity in symbolic thinking and in the communication that expresses it (even when they're IM-ing) makes them much more powerfully self-possesed. Alas, it also makes them realize what twits so many other people are, but that's better than being one of them.
Good critical thinking skills also develop better skills in reason-related areas like software engineering (really, any complex pursuit involving large systematic things that can overwhelm the more muddle-headed), finance, every scientific discipline, even languages. More importantly, though, it helps make kids into wiser participants in the economy. That raises the bar for sophisitcation in commercial communication, creative works (like movies), reduces the odds of making poor choices while under the influence of scary messages (about not owning a hybrid car, or about going to hell because Jesus says so, or about the inability to truly appreciate turn of the century French poetry).
Mostly, though, it's about realizing that most information reaches you in some context, and teaches you to ask, "why is this person saying this to me?" or "why is this person saying what they're saying about that other person/thing?"
Now the actual question is: so what? If the ultimate responsibility is on the bad guy, does that mean I don't lock my door anymore? How does placing the responsibility correctly actually influence my actions? How is it useful information? Answer: it's not.
Answer: it is.
By cultivating a culture where we don't hold bad guys responsible (or even call them responsible, whether we catch them or not), we're just adding to the moral relativism that makes 13-year-old script kiddies think they're some sort of underground heros rather than, basically, vandals. These people are going to grow up, vote, attempt to get jobs, and so on. The one thing they like (and imagine themselves to be good at - hacking) and they're going to find that the real world isn't nearly as ambivalent about identity theft, system abuse, DoS attacks, and so on.
Except, if we don't use media attention and discussion areas like this to maintain the notion that bad guys are bad guys, and that worms and keystroke loggers aren't like the weather blowing in, then we'll get what we deserve - a huge internet user base that's even more clueless than they already are. Treating system break-ins as, essentially, bad weather blowing in, completely masks the ethical culpability of the people who do the breaking. Pretending that stuff like this "just happens," minus human motivation and involvement, is a component of much larger cultural trouble.
And, of course, keeping everyone freshly reminded that it takes bad people to deliberately attack you with malware, social hacks, doorknob-rattling, and so on, is the only way that we can expect legislative attention on providing consequences for doing those things. And the only way we can hope, as generations change over, to keep people in office who will not let their Russian, Chinese, Korean, and other counterparts tolerate huge, organized cyber crime syndicates in their countries. Throwing up your hands and saying "oh well" may feel easier, but it's just one less person willing to back laws, and law enforcement that puts away people who think nothing of ruining businesses and private lives.
I think this is perfectly acceptable since no one would know you don't need a key to get into Microsoft houses if the robot hadn't started his rampage
OK, so you're being funny. I do get that. But even this joke depends on that old saw: "I was just breaking into the school's computers and taking SSNs and faculty records as a service to the school to show them how vulnerable... blah blah." Even you could twist that into some vaguely useful thing (even though everyone knows it's the ritual BS that's used by only the ones who are caught), that doesn't allow for writing a worm or virus and actually deploying it. There's such clear intent to harm, there, that the lame excuse just doesn't cut it.
If you don't put on a seatbelt and get into a crash and are injured, don't you take some responsibility by not wearing your seatbelt?
Sorry, not a good analogy to a locked/unlocked door. Does wearing (or not) the seatbelt have any bearing on whether the accident would happen or not? If you run your car into a tree, you're responsible for running your car into a tree - simple. If you're not wearing a seatbelt, your injuries may be worse (or fatal), but that doesn't typically have anything to do with causing the accident in the first place. Likewise, if someone were to hit your car with their car, your seatbelt status didn't really have anything to do with that person's causing the accident. It may have something to do with how liable that person is for your now more serious head injuries (depending on how the local laws work... in states where wearing a seatbelt is manditory, the person causing the accident may be held less liable on the injuries if the other person wasn't wearing one - but that doesn't get them off the hook for causing the accident in the first place).
More to the point of our original analogy, though: if you're just driving along, and someone hits you with their car, the resulting injuries are something that would NOT have happened but for the actions of the other party. That doesn't make it smart to ride around without a seatbelt (since you might blow out a tire, swerve to avoid an animal, etc), but in the case of someone else causing an accident: those injuries wouldn't have happened without someone else causing them. Degree of financial liability would depend on laws and insurance policies.
Because there is a legal concept of basic, minimal responsibility. If you don't want people walking in your house, you leave the door closed
I didn't say "open," I said "unlocked."
An open door is an invitation for people to just walk right in...either to rob you, or to check and see if everyone is ok
It's never an invitation to rob anyone. That's illegal, and everyone knows that. On clearly private property, even an open door is not a literal invitation for a stranger to walk in. Hence the need for signs that say things like "open house." Just to be sure, of course, people do put up neighborhood "no soliciting" and "no trespassing" signs. Commercial properties are certainly a different beast entirely. But your private residence, with a door closed, is every bit of signal necessary to indicate a desire for privacy. And the GP who said that the owner who doesn't have that door actually locked has to bear some resposibility for getting robbed was completely wrong.
But if you leave your front door open you are partially to blame
Why? In what way does leaving your front door unlocked cause someone to walk off the street and attempt to enter your home without an invitation?
The person who breaks in is still ultimately responsible, but you have to take some basic responsibility.
Well, which is it? The person who is "ultimately" responsible, as you put it, is THE person who is responsible. Ultimate, as in finally and completely. So, if you lock your door, but do it with an inexpensive lock, and the typical burgler just pushes through it... is that any different? The point is, the bad guy has to decide to take an action. If he doesn't decide to, then he doesn't wind up in your house. Period. And it's exactly the same with crackers and other malware.
However it is still within my rights to point out my opinion on the state of MS's software. The fact there are other offerings in no way changes the fact that MS's offering has taken a disconcerting turn, especially for those who did use it and may be unaware of the change.
Well, of course. We're not talking about your rights to free speech. You can say whatever you want, or write whatever software you want, and even distribute it for free (like MS's anti-spyware package is free). My comment was in response to your suggestion that somehow someone's actual rights were being violated by MS, and that's just factually incorrect. It's FUD like that that makes people draw the wrong conclusions about all sorts of stuff, and I think it's important to not toss around the word "rights" when we're talking about much less important things (like your choice of free stuff).
Just like 1334-speak is the tongue-stud and baggy pants of the English language, management buzz-words are the after-market spinner hubs on the engine of productivity. They convey movement and complexity where there is little or none, and distract the intellectually modest from having to think about what an organization actually does. Because, in a large organization, what it does is pretty complicated, and takes some actual depth of thought and a multi-minute attention span to comprehend and discuss.
Give it a decade. We'll see PowerPoint presentation with charts showing, in detail, how "OMG, we totally h@xx0r3d the competition last quarter. Kewl! But this quarter is teh sucks. WTF???" Next slide, please, dude.
And, how is your right to privacy infringed or threatened when you simply choose not to use this free product? As the GP said, there are plenty of others to pick from. Who cares if MS is less stringent on some ad companies? There's nothing stopping AdAware, or SpyBot or any of the others from doing exactly the same. Nothing, that is, except people just walking away from them and using something else. "Rights" are not involved when you're simply picking among a range of free tools and deciding which one you want to use.
Remember, some civilian collectors have 50 cal machine guns, which are devestating weapons, but they are rarely or never used in crime.
And, those collectors are subject to surprise Federal inspections, and have to regularly show where and how they're storing that item to prove that they're keeping it out of easy reach of bad guys. Certainly there's always the risk that the owner of the 50-cal will flip out, but his right to own it is something that's regularly reviewed by police and BATF people, and his mental health status and other legal postures have to be regularly reviewed. Plenty of people who show no obvious (to us) problems are turned down for Class 3 licenses, or lose ones they already have.
The issue here is that the feds have a sense of how likely they think it is for that guy's collection to be looted by bad guys. The risks go up tremendously when we're talking about The Perfect Backpack Nuke(tm), and so the standards would have to be commensurately higher. To wit, the collector would have to have military-grade protection. So much so, that only the military could provide it. That's a standard that would prevent anyone from legally keeping on the shelf, and passes even my generally libertarian view of such things. Sort of like someone who wants to keep a 50,000 gallon tank of propane out back, next to his charcoal grill, and next to an adjoining row of townhouses. There's an innate risk in the existance of something like that which is not present in any flavor of firearm. Let alone kitchen knives, no matter how long or pointy.
No, you insensitive clod. I was born without one, and I can't believe you'd bring that up in a public forum like this. I'm going to write you a long, long comment when I recover from this moral anguish.
But, what's wrong with parents just turning off the TV? And, if you make the government decide which show is "crap" and which show isn't, then you're eventually going to have some bureaucrat deciding that science shows about evolution are two racy, or some similar nonsense. Adults can decide what to watch, and children have their own adults to do it for them. More government isn't the answer (let alone the more taxes and ceded power that it represents).
That's actually very funny. Um, from this side of the Atlantic. And, with all due respect to the recent unpleasantness in London. You know, speaking of that famous British Stiff Upper Lip in the face of trouble... I wonder if that's just because of painful gums? I jest! Nothing but respect for the Brits. Er, when thet're not trying to ban kitchen knives, anyway.
I thought the UK law was more about where the knives are.
It's really more of a call from certain public and legislative circles, so far, not an actual law (thank goodness). None the less, here's a BBC bit about it. You'll notice that the entire focus is on actually banning them from sale.
Just physically having one without the resources of the military's nuke-weapons support, monitoring, handling, storage, and safety operations and trained personnel represents such an inherent bit of unstable risk that your question is meaningless. In other words, seeking to have one, personally, is by itself such a reckless act that it deserves the immediate ramifications that we'd reasonably apply to the situation.
He did so through an agent that he created, most likely unaware of the impact it will have.
Just like "dumb kids" that throw hunks of cement off of bridges onto highways at night. They have no way of know exactly what's going to happen... so they really shouldn't be scolded too harshly, right?
At any point during the storefront vandalizing spree you have a chance to stop and go home. You cannot stop a worn once it's released. That's what places him in the "dumb kid" rather than the malicious criminal category
Sort of like if you were to set fire to the first store in a row of stores, or to the first tree in a forest. I mean, after a little while, it's completely beyond your control what happens, so, no malice, right?
Come on. The only reason that teenage punks fiddle with malware like worms is because they know exactly what worms are and that they are self propogating. The dangerous, "cool" and reputation-making allure is exactly what these idiots find so compelling. The only "dumb" involved here was the dumbness of not expecting to get caught, and the dumbness of not connecting the damage done to large networks and businesses with the impact it has on individual people that depend on them, invest in them, are paid by them, and expect to be able to communicate with them. The thing that's being punished here is the lack of a decent, accountability-minded world view inside this kid's head. If he can't, after 17 years, understand that damage to networks and hugely inconveniencing milions of people is bad, then he's exactly the sort of person that should be intercepted by law enforcement (since he doesn't have the willingness to restrain his own destructive urges). The only real problem here was that they considered him a minor. If that's true, then his parents should also have been arrested for not keeping his destructive hobby in check. There's plenty of malice and criminality in his actions, and he knows it. That's why he's being so contrite, and that's why spending less than a week doing community service is like hitting the freakin' lottery. He should be ashamed, but the court and his parents should be more so.
Honestly, even though this kid is a jerk and what he did was wrong
That would be "wrong" as in, "lost lots of people millions of dollars in revenue and productivity." If he decided to physically vandalize several storefronts to the tune of maybe only $10,000 he'd be a lot more locked up than he is for adding several more zeros to the amount. Just because he did it from a keyboard instead of with a brick.
Yeah, cause look at all the hand gun crimes in England...
The UK is chasing its tail on that one. No easily owned guns, so of course there's an epidemic of stabbings, instead. And of course now there are calls there to ban long kitchen knives because those are too dangerous for the public to own, too. All of this is politcally correct claptrap, designed to keep everyone looking busy doing something about problems while ignoring the real problem: poorly raised, intellectually stunted people with no sense of accountability. As long as people don't give a damn about the consequences of their actions, and as long as societies feel bad about holding the accountable, the only option is to pursue pointless little media-friendly exercises like taking tools away from people.
And, of course, people who don't care about the law anyway are going to ignore those laws, too, leaving only the criminals with guns, knives, and eventually anything heavy, pointy, or flammable. Australia took away everyone's guns, too, and have seen violent crime of all sorts skyrocket as a result.
There have been several proposals in the UK to require registration of all knives, including kitchen knives
Actually, the UK proposals include the banning of "long" kitchen knives from ownership by "the public." Presumably chefs and household gourmands are not "the public." Of course, this is completely ridiculous. People should be locked up when they do bad things, not when they own equipment (like cars, or gasoline, or kitchen knives, or computers) with which they can do bad things.
Democracy is not the end all be all of human civilization
It is if you don't want to live as a slave.
Time and again democracy has failed because the majority of people are incapable of deciding what path produces a lasting civilization.
Time and time again? Representative democracy in the form that is currently working so well is a compartively new invention. Fuedal (and similar) societies have been around for thousands of years, and countless regimes/civilizations have risen and fallen into total oblivion without any sign of democracy. Over those thousands of years, it's the monarchies that have had to adapt to democracy or fail. The tyrannical, totalitarian states are the same. Most have fallen, or will. But the last two centuries are when democracy's really been given a chance to work. No surprise that the most prosperous countries in the world work well with that system, and that countries, such as in Eastern Europe that have just thrown off non-democractic regimes, are embracing elected representatives as ideal form of government.
There are those who believe that the future should not be decided by a popularity contest
Right. Royal families and fuedal contests are definately on the way out.
that certain ideals, virtues, and standards remain constant throughout the ages.
Yup: like democracy. Specifically, self determination as expressed thereby.
History is on the side of those who believe democracy is a failure. Your cavalier disregard of this fact exemplifies how you are the one subject to dominant propaganda of our modern age.
No, history if filled with failed monarchies, fuedal societies, and most recently with failed oppressive communinist tyrannies. It's actually your cavalier disregard for the failure of every other form of government for the last several thousand years that is so striking. Read some history! Look around you!
I must have missed that meeting then. They did denounce the elections in Iraq...
Sure, they denounced that election. But only as a sub-set of democracy in general. Here is the quote from the man himself, Bin Laden's head head-remover in Iraq:
"We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology," said the speaker, who identified himself as Zarqawi. "Anyone who tries
to help set up this system is part of it."
Righto, there you have it. You might also read this Washington Post piece by Fawaz A. Gerges, wherein he discusses the Al Queda position that "democracy is heresy itself." And quote's Bin Laden's take on the new Iraqi provisional constitution, which he says is by its nature, heretical. It's nature, by the way, calls for equality, representative government, freedom of speech... you know, all of those heresies that we (and the newly bloodied UK) also stand for.
All of the head people so far have been former oil industry workers.
Really? Let's see. How about their new Foreign Affairs Minister? Just picked one at random. Point is, even though he hasn't had anything to do with the oil industry, that other than being part of Saddam's military thugocracy, there wasn't much industry in Iraq, so most people with any social clout amount the local establishment/society there are going to have at least some connection to what amounts to the national industry. Pretty hard to avoid. And, since oil revenue is about the only thing (other than the charity of other nations) that will bring Iraq up out the crumbling infrastructure they inherited from Saddam (not counting the palaces he built with skimmed-off "food" money), it's not like it's a bad thing for people who know that business to be involved in the running of a country that depends upon that business.
Perhaps you are confusing Al Qaida with the fundamentalists who run Saudi and Iran?
Um, most of the Al Queda hierarchy is Saudi, or has received a lot of their cash from them. Bin Laden, of course - the founder of the group - is Saudi.
Contrast the likes of Jerry Fallwell with any sane Christian out there. Is it fair to tar all Christians with the same gay-hating "AIDS is a blessing from God" brush? I think not!
Hmmm. Probably not. But it's also reasonable for those very same Christians to be the most vocal people in showing how Falwell is wrong. Likewise, for all the talk of how peaceful most Muslims are, it's Muslims that should be completely non-stop shouting down the extremist members of their culture or explaining over and over how they are not good Muslims. Instead, you get Al Jazeera treating these jerks like heros, and much of the Muslim world tuning in there for their news. You don't see the major western news outlets talking about how wise and brave Falwell is - he's mostly the subject of jokes. But Bin Laden, or his buddies like Zarqawi, are help up as examples of righteousness in the popular Islamic media. To the extent that decent Muslims don't shun and boycott that sort of nonsense, it's pretty hard indeed to separate what you'd hope were just some violent extremists in the minority from the larger majority. But they don't even separate themselves, let alone demonstrate why the rest of the world should think of them that way.
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But the "average Joe" wouldn't walk in and steal your stuff.
Except that every teenager I know with broadband and a PC spends hours every week doing everything they can to not pay for the entertainment they want from artists they say they respect. That's every single one of them. All of them. Somewhere in that group is the "average joe," and they are, in effect, walking in and stealing every day. Because it's technically easy for them to do, just like it's technically easy for you to walk through an unlocked door. The problem is the culture, which has begun to normalize the notion that famous musicians and actors should be the pet entertainment slaves of all people under the age of 25.
This isn't about frontiers, innovation, or flawed existing "systems." This is about mostly young people feeling entitled to the professional work of other people, and simply taking it because they know they probably won't be caught. They do this enough, and then any step taken by anyone to protect the interests they have in their own work is suddenly seen as some sort of insult. Why people don't recognize the hypocrisy in saying they like an artist even as they rip them off is always beyond me. I'd like to have the same teenager sit down right next to the guys from Cold Play or on the couch with Nelly while explaining just how much they love their work as they go about digging out an unpaid-for copy of it.
but when you're talking about something that impacts the entire world what better and more universally recognized body do we currently have
This would be the same body that puts places like Lybia and Iran in charge of human rights committees? The point is that the larger majority of the voters that assemble at the UN represent completely corrupt interests that absolutely want things that they can't, yet, as a society, build for themselves. The original post's mentioning of even the notion of a tax (by the UN?!?) to support "univerisal access" should make everyone run screaming from this whole concept. What does "universal access" mean, anyway? Subsidized cyber cafes along rivers in Papua New Guinea? They may not have phones, but they've got a vote at the UN!
If the residents in the non- or less-wired places really are in a position where having net access would immediately boost their socio-economic horsepower, then that implies a stable, non-corrupt government, rule of law, and a culture ready for action. In otherwords, exactly the things that normally attract vastly more efficient private investment, with no compulsary UN taxes or bureacracy involved. And nobody from China getting to vote on how the internet should work (or, be broken, in their case).
2009 isn't that far away, and plenty of people have portable TVs or good old fashioned rabbit ears. A lot of that will just be junk without an aftermarket tuner. Radio Shack will probably do a bang-up business in cheesy HD-to-NTSC widgets. Hell, an entire province in China could live for a decade off of this decision.
I think we're on the same page, then. I would only ask that those of us who do understand the need for a strong deterrent/defense still make a regular point of reminding ourselves (and everyone we meet) that there are actual, genuine Bad Guys out there. That seems to fade into the background sometimes as we pick on which OS has the most bugs or which users are the least prepared for trouble.
I can tell you that those students I've encountered that have been through even a couple of such courses (even those laden with idealogical bias in the teacher) benefit immensely. Specifically, they start to see the value (and nuances) in rhetoric, advertising, and other forms of communication. They also start to realize that clarity in symbolic thinking and in the communication that expresses it (even when they're IM-ing) makes them much more powerfully self-possesed. Alas, it also makes them realize what twits so many other people are, but that's better than being one of them.
Good critical thinking skills also develop better skills in reason-related areas like software engineering (really, any complex pursuit involving large systematic things that can overwhelm the more muddle-headed), finance, every scientific discipline, even languages. More importantly, though, it helps make kids into wiser participants in the economy. That raises the bar for sophisitcation in commercial communication, creative works (like movies), reduces the odds of making poor choices while under the influence of scary messages (about not owning a hybrid car, or about going to hell because Jesus says so, or about the inability to truly appreciate turn of the century French poetry).
Mostly, though, it's about realizing that most information reaches you in some context, and teaches you to ask, "why is this person saying this to me?" or "why is this person saying what they're saying about that other person/thing?"
Now the actual question is: so what? If the ultimate responsibility is on the bad guy, does that mean I don't lock my door anymore? How does placing the responsibility correctly actually influence my actions? How is it useful information? Answer: it's not.
Answer: it is.
By cultivating a culture where we don't hold bad guys responsible (or even call them responsible, whether we catch them or not), we're just adding to the moral relativism that makes 13-year-old script kiddies think they're some sort of underground heros rather than, basically, vandals. These people are going to grow up, vote, attempt to get jobs, and so on. The one thing they like (and imagine themselves to be good at - hacking) and they're going to find that the real world isn't nearly as ambivalent about identity theft, system abuse, DoS attacks, and so on.
Except, if we don't use media attention and discussion areas like this to maintain the notion that bad guys are bad guys, and that worms and keystroke loggers aren't like the weather blowing in, then we'll get what we deserve - a huge internet user base that's even more clueless than they already are. Treating system break-ins as, essentially, bad weather blowing in, completely masks the ethical culpability of the people who do the breaking. Pretending that stuff like this "just happens," minus human motivation and involvement, is a component of much larger cultural trouble.
And, of course, keeping everyone freshly reminded that it takes bad people to deliberately attack you with malware, social hacks, doorknob-rattling, and so on, is the only way that we can expect legislative attention on providing consequences for doing those things. And the only way we can hope, as generations change over, to keep people in office who will not let their Russian, Chinese, Korean, and other counterparts tolerate huge, organized cyber crime syndicates in their countries. Throwing up your hands and saying "oh well" may feel easier, but it's just one less person willing to back laws, and law enforcement that puts away people who think nothing of ruining businesses and private lives.
I think this is perfectly acceptable since no one would know you don't need a key to get into Microsoft houses if the robot hadn't started his rampage
OK, so you're being funny. I do get that. But even this joke depends on that old saw: "I was just breaking into the school's computers and taking SSNs and faculty records as a service to the school to show them how vulnerable... blah blah." Even you could twist that into some vaguely useful thing (even though everyone knows it's the ritual BS that's used by only the ones who are caught), that doesn't allow for writing a worm or virus and actually deploying it. There's such clear intent to harm, there, that the lame excuse just doesn't cut it.
If you don't put on a seatbelt and get into a crash and are injured, don't you take some responsibility by not wearing your seatbelt?
Sorry, not a good analogy to a locked/unlocked door. Does wearing (or not) the seatbelt have any bearing on whether the accident would happen or not? If you run your car into a tree, you're responsible for running your car into a tree - simple. If you're not wearing a seatbelt, your injuries may be worse (or fatal), but that doesn't typically have anything to do with causing the accident in the first place. Likewise, if someone were to hit your car with their car, your seatbelt status didn't really have anything to do with that person's causing the accident. It may have something to do with how liable that person is for your now more serious head injuries (depending on how the local laws work... in states where wearing a seatbelt is manditory, the person causing the accident may be held less liable on the injuries if the other person wasn't wearing one - but that doesn't get them off the hook for causing the accident in the first place).
More to the point of our original analogy, though: if you're just driving along, and someone hits you with their car, the resulting injuries are something that would NOT have happened but for the actions of the other party. That doesn't make it smart to ride around without a seatbelt (since you might blow out a tire, swerve to avoid an animal, etc), but in the case of someone else causing an accident: those injuries wouldn't have happened without someone else causing them. Degree of financial liability would depend on laws and insurance policies.
Because there is a legal concept of basic, minimal responsibility. If you don't want people walking in your house, you leave the door closed
I didn't say "open," I said "unlocked."
An open door is an invitation for people to just walk right in...either to rob you, or to check and see if everyone is ok
It's never an invitation to rob anyone. That's illegal, and everyone knows that. On clearly private property, even an open door is not a literal invitation for a stranger to walk in. Hence the need for signs that say things like "open house." Just to be sure, of course, people do put up neighborhood "no soliciting" and "no trespassing" signs. Commercial properties are certainly a different beast entirely. But your private residence, with a door closed, is every bit of signal necessary to indicate a desire for privacy. And the GP who said that the owner who doesn't have that door actually locked has to bear some resposibility for getting robbed was completely wrong.
But if you leave your front door open you are partially to blame
Why? In what way does leaving your front door unlocked cause someone to walk off the street and attempt to enter your home without an invitation?
The person who breaks in is still ultimately responsible, but you have to take some basic responsibility.
Well, which is it? The person who is "ultimately" responsible, as you put it, is THE person who is responsible. Ultimate, as in finally and completely. So, if you lock your door, but do it with an inexpensive lock, and the typical burgler just pushes through it... is that any different? The point is, the bad guy has to decide to take an action. If he doesn't decide to, then he doesn't wind up in your house. Period. And it's exactly the same with crackers and other malware.
However it is still within my rights to point out my opinion on the state of MS's software. The fact there are other offerings in no way changes the fact that MS's offering has taken a disconcerting turn, especially for those who did use it and may be unaware of the change.
Well, of course. We're not talking about your rights to free speech. You can say whatever you want, or write whatever software you want, and even distribute it for free (like MS's anti-spyware package is free). My comment was in response to your suggestion that somehow someone's actual rights were being violated by MS, and that's just factually incorrect. It's FUD like that that makes people draw the wrong conclusions about all sorts of stuff, and I think it's important to not toss around the word "rights" when we're talking about much less important things (like your choice of free stuff).
Just like 1334-speak is the tongue-stud and baggy pants of the English language, management buzz-words are the after-market spinner hubs on the engine of productivity. They convey movement and complexity where there is little or none, and distract the intellectually modest from having to think about what an organization actually does. Because, in a large organization, what it does is pretty complicated, and takes some actual depth of thought and a multi-minute attention span to comprehend and discuss.
Give it a decade. We'll see PowerPoint presentation with charts showing, in detail, how "OMG, we totally h@xx0r3d the competition last quarter. Kewl! But this quarter is teh sucks. WTF???" Next slide, please, dude.
The right to privacy
And, how is your right to privacy infringed or threatened when you simply choose not to use this free product? As the GP said, there are plenty of others to pick from. Who cares if MS is less stringent on some ad companies? There's nothing stopping AdAware, or SpyBot or any of the others from doing exactly the same. Nothing, that is, except people just walking away from them and using something else. "Rights" are not involved when you're simply picking among a range of free tools and deciding which one you want to use.
Remember, some civilian collectors have 50 cal machine guns, which are devestating weapons, but they are rarely or never used in crime.
And, those collectors are subject to surprise Federal inspections, and have to regularly show where and how they're storing that item to prove that they're keeping it out of easy reach of bad guys. Certainly there's always the risk that the owner of the 50-cal will flip out, but his right to own it is something that's regularly reviewed by police and BATF people, and his mental health status and other legal postures have to be regularly reviewed. Plenty of people who show no obvious (to us) problems are turned down for Class 3 licenses, or lose ones they already have.
The issue here is that the feds have a sense of how likely they think it is for that guy's collection to be looted by bad guys. The risks go up tremendously when we're talking about The Perfect Backpack Nuke(tm), and so the standards would have to be commensurately higher. To wit, the collector would have to have military-grade protection. So much so, that only the military could provide it. That's a standard that would prevent anyone from legally keeping on the shelf, and passes even my generally libertarian view of such things. Sort of like someone who wants to keep a 50,000 gallon tank of propane out back, next to his charcoal grill, and next to an adjoining row of townhouses. There's an innate risk in the existance of something like that which is not present in any flavor of firearm. Let alone kitchen knives, no matter how long or pointy.
Do you have a sense of humor?
No, you insensitive clod. I was born without one, and I can't believe you'd bring that up in a public forum like this. I'm going to write you a long, long comment when I recover from this moral anguish.
But, what's wrong with parents just turning off the TV? And, if you make the government decide which show is "crap" and which show isn't, then you're eventually going to have some bureaucrat deciding that science shows about evolution are two racy, or some similar nonsense. Adults can decide what to watch, and children have their own adults to do it for them. More government isn't the answer (let alone the more taxes and ceded power that it represents).
That's actually very funny. Um, from this side of the Atlantic. And, with all due respect to the recent unpleasantness in London. You know, speaking of that famous British Stiff Upper Lip in the face of trouble... I wonder if that's just because of painful gums? I jest! Nothing but respect for the Brits. Er, when thet're not trying to ban kitchen knives, anyway.
I thought the UK law was more about where the knives are.
It's really more of a call from certain public and legislative circles, so far, not an actual law (thank goodness). None the less, here's a BBC bit about it. You'll notice that the entire focus is on actually banning them from sale.
What about when they own nuclear missiles?
The classic bit of sophistry.
Just physically having one without the resources of the military's nuke-weapons support, monitoring, handling, storage, and safety operations and trained personnel represents such an inherent bit of unstable risk that your question is meaningless. In other words, seeking to have one, personally, is by itself such a reckless act that it deserves the immediate ramifications that we'd reasonably apply to the situation.
Next (non-trolling, rational) question?
He did so through an agent that he created, most likely unaware of the impact it will have.
Just like "dumb kids" that throw hunks of cement off of bridges onto highways at night. They have no way of know exactly what's going to happen... so they really shouldn't be scolded too harshly, right?
At any point during the storefront vandalizing spree you have a chance to stop and go home. You cannot stop a worn once it's released. That's what places him in the "dumb kid" rather than the malicious criminal category
Sort of like if you were to set fire to the first store in a row of stores, or to the first tree in a forest. I mean, after a little while, it's completely beyond your control what happens, so, no malice, right?
Come on. The only reason that teenage punks fiddle with malware like worms is because they know exactly what worms are and that they are self propogating. The dangerous, "cool" and reputation-making allure is exactly what these idiots find so compelling. The only "dumb" involved here was the dumbness of not expecting to get caught, and the dumbness of not connecting the damage done to large networks and businesses with the impact it has on individual people that depend on them, invest in them, are paid by them, and expect to be able to communicate with them. The thing that's being punished here is the lack of a decent, accountability-minded world view inside this kid's head. If he can't, after 17 years, understand that damage to networks and hugely inconveniencing milions of people is bad, then he's exactly the sort of person that should be intercepted by law enforcement (since he doesn't have the willingness to restrain his own destructive urges). The only real problem here was that they considered him a minor. If that's true, then his parents should also have been arrested for not keeping his destructive hobby in check. There's plenty of malice and criminality in his actions, and he knows it. That's why he's being so contrite, and that's why spending less than a week doing community service is like hitting the freakin' lottery. He should be ashamed, but the court and his parents should be more so.
Honestly, even though this kid is a jerk and what he did was wrong
That would be "wrong" as in, "lost lots of people millions of dollars in revenue and productivity." If he decided to physically vandalize several storefronts to the tune of maybe only $10,000 he'd be a lot more locked up than he is for adding several more zeros to the amount. Just because he did it from a keyboard instead of with a brick.
Yeah, cause look at all the hand gun crimes in England...
The UK is chasing its tail on that one. No easily owned guns, so of course there's an epidemic of stabbings, instead. And of course now there are calls there to ban long kitchen knives because those are too dangerous for the public to own, too. All of this is politcally correct claptrap, designed to keep everyone looking busy doing something about problems while ignoring the real problem: poorly raised, intellectually stunted people with no sense of accountability. As long as people don't give a damn about the consequences of their actions, and as long as societies feel bad about holding the accountable, the only option is to pursue pointless little media-friendly exercises like taking tools away from people.
And, of course, people who don't care about the law anyway are going to ignore those laws, too, leaving only the criminals with guns, knives, and eventually anything heavy, pointy, or flammable. Australia took away everyone's guns, too, and have seen violent crime of all sorts skyrocket as a result.
There have been several proposals in the UK to require registration of all knives, including kitchen knives
Actually, the UK proposals include the banning of "long" kitchen knives from ownership by "the public." Presumably chefs and household gourmands are not "the public." Of course, this is completely ridiculous. People should be locked up when they do bad things, not when they own equipment (like cars, or gasoline, or kitchen knives, or computers) with which they can do bad things.
Democracy is not the end all be all of human civilization
It is if you don't want to live as a slave.
Time and again democracy has failed because the majority of people are incapable of deciding what path produces a lasting civilization.
Time and time again? Representative democracy in the form that is currently working so well is a compartively new invention. Fuedal (and similar) societies have been around for thousands of years, and countless regimes/civilizations have risen and fallen into total oblivion without any sign of democracy. Over those thousands of years, it's the monarchies that have had to adapt to democracy or fail. The tyrannical, totalitarian states are the same. Most have fallen, or will. But the last two centuries are when democracy's really been given a chance to work. No surprise that the most prosperous countries in the world work well with that system, and that countries, such as in Eastern Europe that have just thrown off non-democractic regimes, are embracing elected representatives as ideal form of government.
There are those who believe that the future should not be decided by a popularity contest
Right. Royal families and fuedal contests are definately on the way out.
that certain ideals, virtues, and standards remain constant throughout the ages.
Yup: like democracy. Specifically, self determination as expressed thereby.
History is on the side of those who believe democracy is a failure. Your cavalier disregard of this fact exemplifies how you are the one subject to dominant propaganda of our modern age.
No, history if filled with failed monarchies, fuedal societies, and most recently with failed oppressive communinist tyrannies. It's actually your cavalier disregard for the failure of every other form of government for the last several thousand years that is so striking. Read some history! Look around you!
I must have missed that meeting then. They did denounce the elections in Iraq...
Sure, they denounced that election. But only as a sub-set of democracy in general. Here is the quote from the man himself, Bin Laden's head head-remover in Iraq:
"We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology," said the speaker, who identified himself as Zarqawi. "Anyone who tries to help set up this system is part of it."
Righto, there you have it. You might also read this Washington Post piece by Fawaz A. Gerges, wherein he discusses the Al Queda position that "democracy is heresy itself." And quote's Bin Laden's take on the new Iraqi provisional constitution, which he says is by its nature, heretical. It's nature, by the way, calls for equality, representative government, freedom of speech... you know, all of those heresies that we (and the newly bloodied UK) also stand for.
All of the head people so far have been former oil industry workers.
Really? Let's see. How about their new Foreign Affairs Minister? Just picked one at random. Point is, even though he hasn't had anything to do with the oil industry, that other than being part of Saddam's military thugocracy, there wasn't much industry in Iraq, so most people with any social clout amount the local establishment/society there are going to have at least some connection to what amounts to the national industry. Pretty hard to avoid. And, since oil revenue is about the only thing (other than the charity of other nations) that will bring Iraq up out the crumbling infrastructure they inherited from Saddam (not counting the palaces he built with skimmed-off "food" money), it's not like it's a bad thing for people who know that business to be involved in the running of a country that depends upon that business.
Perhaps you are confusing Al Qaida with the fundamentalists who run Saudi and Iran?
Um, most of the Al Queda hierarchy is Saudi, or has received a lot of their cash from them. Bin Laden, of course - the founder of the group - is Saudi.
Contrast the likes of Jerry Fallwell with any sane Christian out there. Is it fair to tar all Christians with the same gay-hating "AIDS is a blessing from God" brush? I think not!
Hmmm. Probably not. But it's also reasonable for those very same Christians to be the most vocal people in showing how Falwell is wrong. Likewise, for all the talk of how peaceful most Muslims are, it's Muslims that should be completely non-stop shouting down the extremist members of their culture or explaining over and over how they are not good Muslims. Instead, you get Al Jazeera treating these jerks like heros, and much of the Muslim world tuning in there for their news. You don't see the major western news outlets talking about how wise and brave Falwell is - he's mostly the subject of jokes. But Bin Laden, or his buddies like Zarqawi, are help up as examples of righteousness in the popular Islamic media. To the extent that decent Muslims don't shun and boycott that sort of nonsense, it's pretty hard indeed to separate what you'd hope were just some violent extremists in the minority from the larger majority. But they don't even separate themselves, let alone demonstrate why the rest of the world should think of them that way.