I was there to talk with the head of Mobility IT- it's not at all a difficult or convoluted mess. Purchasing buys say 5,000 Dells, (which come with XP Home), for 799 each or whatever. Purchasing calls up Microsoft and buys 5,000 XP Pro licenses. Provisioning provisions those 5,000 Dells with a remote install of XP Pro with a hashed computer ID in Active Directory, and then just applies all 5,000 XP licenses to those newly activated 5,000 machines. (or it may be done by hardware ID- I forget.)
The fact is, you licence the machines as soon as they come in the door. There's no mess, no fuss, and since they need to be network provisioned anyway, (as would any other type of system), linking the provisioning to the licensing is just common sense.
On the server side I imagine it's more complicated- but not by much.
The reason, of course, they use XP Pro is for Active Directory; can you imagine any system more critical for a real Windows-based network?
...as I pointed out in a seperate comment, the reason I practice my law the way I do is this...
Absolute and total lack of empathy?
Seriously, I don't care. I call the law as I see it, and yeah, sometimes I'm wrong. Being wrong, however, doesn't bother me overmuch- it means my arguments weren't sound enough or my reasoning was flawed.
I've never had to defend a hate speech case (and it's doubtful I ever would... too much trouble to get involved in that kind of slippery issue) but it's nowhere near as black and white as you make it sound.
For example, an Anton Piller order is not just a random search warrant- it requires an extremely strong case to already have been assembled and presented to a judge before being executed.
"We are prepared, therefore, to sanction... but only in an extreme case where there is grave danger...of vital evidence being destroyed.
The proposed order is at the extremity of this court's powers. Such orders therefore will rarely be made and only when there is no alternative way to ensuring that justice is done to the applicant."
Further, the difference between an anton piller order and a regular search warrant (in execution) is simply that the searching comes before the legal argument. If the legal argument strikes down the order, the evidence is null and void.
No it doesn't. Freedom of speech means freedom to say what you like, regardless of content; it does not mean freedom to say what you like, regardless of intent, or freedom to say what you like, regardless of consequence.
An example for each of the above three: You are equally free to espouse your love for coca-cola or pepsi; You are equally unable to say anything that could be construed as insightment to a breach of the public peace in a public place, even if that incitement is as simple as yelling fire in a public theatre or as complicated as advocating racial genocide on national TV; You are, to some degree, sheltered from the consequences of your actions if the words are true and spoken in good faith.
After all, libel is free speech too, isn't it? And yet that's totally illegal! Why, that's a violation of our right to freedom of speech!
No. It is not your speech being punished; it is the reprecussions of your speech that is being punished. There is a difference substantial.
When I was at Bell Canada's offices, I saw exactly the same thing- mass-bought Dells with XP-Home stickers on the side. Guess what? They were all running network-imaged copies of XP Professional. They didn't even bother to remove the XP Home stickers.
Why bother? An XP Home licence is not worth the paper it's printed on for enterprise consumers.
Seriously, I don't care. I call the law as I see it, and yeah, sometimes I'm wrong. Being wrong, however, doesn't bother me overmuch- it means my arguments weren't sound enough or my reasoning was flawed.
By the way, however, you forgot the most important part of 319- 319(3).
(3) No person shall be convicted of an offence under subsection (2)
(a) if he establishes that the statements communicated were true;
(b) if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text;
(c) if the statements were relevant to any subject of public interest, the discussion of which was for the public benefit, and if on reasonable grounds he believed them to be true; or
(d) if, in good faith, he intended to point out, for the purpose of removal, matters producing or tending to produce feelings of hatred toward an identifiable group in Canada.
Given what I know about viable interpretations of 'religious text', that right there is a loophole wide enough to fly an airbus through.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Read Zundel's trial, for example. You are not allowed to incite violence. Period. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
Moreover, the section you are referencing is a rehash of a law that was struck down (In Zundel's trial, ironically enough), by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. It won't stand up to a constitutional challenge the next time, either.
Do so. Ernest Zundel, as I pointed out above, was acquitted on the grounds of freedom of speech, and he did quite a bit more than 'his mere opinion of other racial and ethnic groups'.
The criminal code says that inciting violence is illegal, as it is anywhere else.
...did publish a statement or tale, namely, "Did Six Million Really Die?" that he knows is false and that is likely to cause mischief to the public interest...
...and he was acquitted on those grounds because the Supreme Court ruled that was a violation of his right to free speech. He was only held in prison, to my knowledge, during the time between when a lower court ruled him guilty and the supreme court ruled the law unconstitutional.
Arguably because it does not fit the legal definition of 'breaking the peace.' The point of the Canadian codes against hate speech are not so much to prevent speech as they are to prevent violence.
What many people (usually americans, I find, although that in no way implies you are one) mistake about Canada is that hate speech is illegal. It is not. Hate speech inciting violence or hate speech advocating genocide is illegal. There is a substantial difference. You are perfectly free to walk around street-corners yelling about how much you hate the jews; but when you start yelling "SOMEONE SHOULD KILL THE JEWS" and their speech...
...incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace...
That's when they can be punished. Even when Canada did not have a written constitution or bill of rights, this speech was still protected extensively.
Hate speech is in fact legal. it is inciting violence which is not legal, and, to my knowledge, is not legal in the US either.
However, that reminds me of Marain, from the Culture- if language affects culture, what happens when you engineer the perfect language?(Or vice versa, I suppose.)
Question: I am not a rocket scientist.... but wouldn't it be easier to just shoot a missile at whatever you don't like, rather than using space-fighter planes?
The whole space-fighter/missile scenario would seem to apply here- a missile requires a quarter the fuel and no real capacity for reuse while being able to carry more boom per rocket.
Correct from my reading - his problem stems from his making a date for sex after finding out the bait's "age". If he dropped it after finding out she was supposed to be 13, this never would have been prosecuted. Until he was advised of the "age" there was the statutory defense of he "believed her to be of the age of consent." Per the wording of the law, it's the belief that the contact is with a minor that's the trigger. Once he was told of the "age", he lost that defense, and by proceeding with the "seduction" invoked this law.
In my mind, that is entrapment. Perhaps not per the wording of the law, but in my mind, this is what happened- Officers trolled a discussion about "I like older men". This gent was one that responded, and after seeing that he was on the hook, they let out the bait of how old the 'character' was. They then arrested him for soliciting sex for a minor.
As I said, I think he's an asshole. But I think it's the police officer's fault, and I seriously don't think he should be convicted for that. Especially important is the exact wording used, (which obviously we don't know.)
Legally, however, I realize that he's probably up a creek without a paddle.
There is a fine line here that cops & DA's do understand. It's the difference between a sting and entrapment. Sometimes the difference is only 1 word in a question, but it's a difference. Generally the difference in a sting is that the cop is passive, only responding to the questions & actions of the target. This allows the target to lead the conversation where they want to go, and protects the operation against allegations of entrapment.
Yeah, I know. But sometimes I think even that is going too far.
From what I read, they hung out in a chatroom & waited to be contacted - they didn't contact this guy, he contacted them. They passed him information regarding a faux-persona which was clearly identified as underage. He made a date - for sex - with a person he believed to be 13. It's no more entrapment than putting a cop out on the streetcorner dressed like a hooker. What you see, isn't what you get - but the solicitation charge is based on what you tried to get.
I'll freely admit I didn't read the article that closely, I was more interested in the legal judgement, so you may be right (and even the legal judgement basically glosses over that bit because it's pretty irrelevant.)
However, from what I read in the judgement, it was not at all clear that the man contacted her after she broadcast her age. My interpretation was that he spoke to her before (they had met in a chatroom called "I like older men" apparently) and then she told him her proported age after some discussion.
Ah, aside from the fact that they'd be utterly clobbered. It's very much a nuclear option. Once you strip out the immense amount of total bullshit in the article describing what Microsoft was doing, you will see (on this page, that he recieved a vague call from someone in Microsoft, apparently working on their programming team, (not, note, their legal team) and decided to alter his software based upon the percieved threat of threat of legal action.
You can hardly argue that's Microsoft flexing their legal muscles. That would be about as threatening as the guy who cleans the floors at Harvard telling a student that if he cheats on his paper, Academic Affairs is going to expel him.
Now, there may be OTHER times when they have done so, but that's not one of them.
It's still an asset, in exactly the same sense that the USA & USSR nuclear arsenals were assets. You have to have them, but you don't want to have to use them.
I would change that to 'You have to have them, but you can't ever use them.', but essentially, yes. Microsoft will keep accumulating patents and keep threatening people with them. The only time Microsoft will ever be in a position to press the trigger is when they either control or are allied with pretty much every big giant- Sony, IBM, HP, Sun, Novell, everybody. And at that point, you have a lot more to worry about than them just playing nasty with their patents.
Without taking into account any sort of pragmatism, ideally we would have clear, effective laws and if someone commits an offensive/harmful act that is not covered by these fine laws we would let the offender off and say "gee we'd better make a law for that" and then we would. In practise things don't and shouldn't work that way. There are very many terribly written laws out there, which intertwine with each other and are not clearly interpreted, so we end up getting mired in definitions and semantics and technicalities in the absence of common sense.
And here is where you go terribly, horribly wrong. Your first situation is fine... your second is not. Two wrongs do not make a right- the fact that we have crappy laws does not mean they must be interpreted badly. It means they must be struck down and replaced with better ones.
To me, the judge made a CORRECT decision. It is very clear to all but slimy lawyers (there ARE good ones, but all too many are slimy) that the law was intended to address the problem of paedophiles soliciting minors for sex over the internet. When the law was written, IM was likely not forefront in the framers' minds because it was either uncommon or nonexistent. Furthermore there already existed in Florida law a LEGAL (not technical) definition of email that encompassed any person-to-person electronic distribution of content. Why this is a controversial ruling here I don't know.
No, it's clear to the slimy lawyers what the law was intended to address. But the law did not address it, and therefore, punishing someone for it is both morally and legally unacceptable. You cannot punish someone for the judge's interpretation framer's intent as expressed in a legal document. Full, complete and total stop. This would be akin to ignoring contractual provisions because you thought they 'weren't what were intended'.
Is this a good law? NO...it is one of those terrible laws. It is because lawyers are attracted to politics and become legislators--unfortunately the slimier the lawyer the more likely this happens (it is rare indeed when a truly altruistic, ethical and highly skilled lawyer enters politics). This law should've never been made--existing laws protecting minors from sexual predators should've been amended to make penaltes tougher and broaden the definition of sexual solicitation to include means that do not involve physical proximity in general.
True, it should never have been made. But that has nothing to do with this specific case.
I'm not saying that you are wrong in your contention that we can't just fudge with the law to put some slimeball in prison, and that the legislature is the proper place to correct the problem. I'm simply saying that the legal system and the government are so riddled with self-serving slimy-lawyer-politicians that processes put in place to protect our civil liberties are completely abused for personal gain and political manoevring. The fix is to renew public civic-mindedness and political involvement and boot out the slimy politicians, not to throw up our hands and let judges become more "activist" so they can play fast and loose with interpretation of laws. Tough thing to do, but they only proper way to go.
Exactly. So why is it that your very-well thought out position is in total contradiction to your knee-jerk reaction of 'this is a good ruling'?
Almost my own words from the UCLA student tazing threads, thrown back at me:) I am still on the fence regarding these "try to catch the predator" stings, but regardless I do believe that they need to be strongly monitored and controlled. Especially in cases where the evidence is a text file on a computer that anyone could have typed up after the fact.
Hell, I didn't even think of that.
I mean, come on. the guy is guilty of being a stupid asshole. But he's not a rapist. He's just an asshole, and the police baited him into acting on that assholeness.
My opinion in this area is a little fuzzy, for many of the reasons you listed (and having step children, it is probably influenced by my desire to see anyone to tries to hurt a kid killed).
Mostly I think the problem I have is that sex is very different from most other issues- it's far more grey. Just as the definition of 'rape' is grey, so is the definition of 'child molestation', at least ethically.
As I pointed out, back when I was... oh, thirteen or so... (and what a long time ago that was!) one of the better thought-out positions regarding sex was that it would be advantageous to have an older (although not old enough to be ugly, of course) person, say 25 or so, 'start you out'. They'd have a place to stay, so you wouldn't be stuck in back alleys or anything; they could go buy all the necessary stuff without problems, they'd probably have more experience and so know what to do better and how to make it a more pleasing time...
You get the idea. It's not really relevant, but thinking back to those discussions make me really very orny of dealing with 'predators'. The whole 'sting' idea for sexual predators especially makes me annoyed because it's not at all black and white... and it shouldn't be. It should be grey. The problem is, I suppose, I want it to be MY shade of grey, and it's not. Hence, rulings like this.
By the way, I read your comments on the UCLA tazing threads, and they very much mirror my own concerns, so good on you.
That one is badly written, and I am glad I don't live in that country. My own country has a much more sanely-written freedom of speech protection- it limits it specifically against certain circumstances like that.
With regard to the 'murder' issue, that's irrelevant and pedantic. The law is clear, and these are not loopholes, they're bizzare attempts to 'take the law out of context', so to speak.
On the other hand, interpreting the 'spirit' of the law is something very very different.
No, I see what you mean, and I'm sorry, I overreacted. I have just had enough (especially today) of people being snarky about how lawyers are all bad people and everyone hates them because they're scum.
It really pisses me off; mostly because people don't understand the law, don't see how important lawyers are for actually getting their rights codified and made precident, and how important lawyers are for restricting the awesome power of the state.
What I post on slashdot, AC, has absolutely nothing to do with how I behave in my professional life. Slashdot is where I can let off some steam with nerds, not have to spend an hour and a half drafting a letter to make sure that every comma is in the correct place.
The fact is, if people had wanted something to be wrong, they should have written that into the LETTER of the law. It is absolutely morally and legally reprehensible to retroactively change the rules and then punish people based on that- and that is almost exactly what happens when people start using the 'spirit' of the law. The spirit of the law is irrelevant. What is relevant is the letter of the law, because that is what people can read, that is what is written down, that is what is static. Spirit changes depending on who's spirit we're talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
I was there to talk with the head of Mobility IT- it's not at all a difficult or convoluted mess. Purchasing buys say 5,000 Dells, (which come with XP Home), for 799 each or whatever. Purchasing calls up Microsoft and buys 5,000 XP Pro licenses. Provisioning provisions those 5,000 Dells with a remote install of XP Pro with a hashed computer ID in Active Directory, and then just applies all 5,000 XP licenses to those newly activated 5,000 machines. (or it may be done by hardware ID- I forget.)
The fact is, you licence the machines as soon as they come in the door. There's no mess, no fuss, and since they need to be network provisioned anyway, (as would any other type of system), linking the provisioning to the licensing is just common sense.
On the server side I imagine it's more complicated- but not by much.
The reason, of course, they use XP Pro is for Active Directory; can you imagine any system more critical for a real Windows-based network?
I've never had to defend a hate speech case (and it's doubtful I ever would... too much trouble to get involved in that kind of slippery issue) but it's nowhere near as black and white as you make it sound.
For example, an Anton Piller order is not just a random search warrant- it requires an extremely strong case to already have been assembled and presented to a judge before being executed.
Further, the difference between an anton piller order and a regular search warrant (in execution) is simply that the searching comes before the legal argument. If the legal argument strikes down the order, the evidence is null and void.
It's not that simple. Read the rest of that section, 319(3); basically, it has to be malicious and known to be untrue.
Essentially, its pretty much the same thing as 319.1.
No it doesn't. Freedom of speech means freedom to say what you like, regardless of content; it does not mean freedom to say what you like, regardless of intent, or freedom to say what you like, regardless of consequence.
An example for each of the above three:
You are equally free to espouse your love for coca-cola or pepsi;
You are equally unable to say anything that could be construed as insightment to a breach of the public peace in a public place, even if that incitement is as simple as yelling fire in a public theatre or as complicated as advocating racial genocide on national TV;
You are, to some degree, sheltered from the consequences of your actions if the words are true and spoken in good faith.
After all, libel is free speech too, isn't it? And yet that's totally illegal! Why, that's a violation of our right to freedom of speech!
No. It is not your speech being punished; it is the reprecussions of your speech that is being punished. There is a difference substantial.
When I was at Bell Canada's offices, I saw exactly the same thing- mass-bought Dells with XP-Home stickers on the side. Guess what? They were all running network-imaged copies of XP Professional. They didn't even bother to remove the XP Home stickers.
Why bother? An XP Home licence is not worth the paper it's printed on for enterprise consumers.
Seriously, I don't care. I call the law as I see it, and yeah, sometimes I'm wrong. Being wrong, however, doesn't bother me overmuch- it means my arguments weren't sound enough or my reasoning was flawed.
By the way, however, you forgot the most important part of 319- 319(3).
Given what I know about viable interpretations of 'religious text', that right there is a loophole wide enough to fly an airbus through.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Read Zundel's trial, for example. You are not allowed to incite violence. Period. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
Moreover, the section you are referencing is a rehash of a law that was struck down (In Zundel's trial, ironically enough), by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. It won't stand up to a constitutional challenge the next time, either.
Do so. Ernest Zundel, as I pointed out above, was acquitted on the grounds of freedom of speech, and he did quite a bit more than 'his mere opinion of other racial and ethnic groups'.
The criminal code says that inciting violence is illegal, as it is anywhere else.
Arguably because it does not fit the legal definition of 'breaking the peace.' The point of the Canadian codes against hate speech are not so much to prevent speech as they are to prevent violence.
There is a substantial difference. You are perfectly free to walk around street-corners yelling about how much you hate the jews; but when you start yelling "SOMEONE SHOULD KILL THE JEWS" and their speech...
That's when they can be punished. Even when Canada did not have a written constitution or bill of rights, this speech was still protected extensively.
Hate speech is in fact legal. it is inciting violence which is not legal, and, to my knowledge, is not legal in the US either.
Well, yes, I never said he was the first to come up with the idea. Just that it was the first thing I thought of at the time.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, nominally.
However, that reminds me of Marain, from the Culture- if language affects culture, what happens when you engineer the perfect language?(Or vice versa, I suppose.)
Exactly. Any of the things that he is suggesting are possible (say interdiction) are better done by missiles anyway.
Question: I am not a rocket scientist....
but wouldn't it be easier to just shoot a missile at whatever you don't like, rather than using space-fighter planes?
The whole space-fighter/missile scenario would seem to apply here- a missile requires a quarter the fuel and no real capacity for reuse while being able to carry more boom per rocket.
Legally, I agree with you.
Morally, I think the state should have better things to do with it's time than pretend to be teenage sluts and hit men.
In my mind, that is entrapment. Perhaps not per the wording of the law, but in my mind, this is what happened-
Officers trolled a discussion about "I like older men".
This gent was one that responded, and after seeing that he was on the hook, they let out the bait of how old the 'character' was.
They then arrested him for soliciting sex for a minor.
As I said, I think he's an asshole. But I think it's the police officer's fault, and I seriously don't think he should be convicted for that. Especially important is the exact wording used, (which obviously we don't know.)
Legally, however, I realize that he's probably up a creek without a paddle.
I'll freely admit I didn't read the article that closely, I was more interested in the legal judgement, so you may be right (and even the legal judgement basically glosses over that bit because it's pretty irrelevant.)
However, from what I read in the judgement, it was not at all clear that the man contacted her after she broadcast her age. My interpretation was that he spoke to her before (they had met in a chatroom called "I like older men" apparently) and then she told him her proported age after some discussion.
Ah, aside from the fact that they'd be utterly clobbered. It's very much a nuclear option. Once you strip out the immense amount of total bullshit in the article describing what Microsoft was doing, you will see (on this page, that he recieved a vague call from someone in Microsoft, apparently working on their programming team, (not, note, their legal team) and decided to alter his software based upon the percieved threat of threat of legal action.
You can hardly argue that's Microsoft flexing their legal muscles. That would be about as threatening as the guy who cleans the floors at Harvard telling a student that if he cheats on his paper, Academic Affairs is going to expel him.
Now, there may be OTHER times when they have done so, but that's not one of them.
I would change that to 'You have to have them, but you can't ever use them.', but essentially, yes. Microsoft will keep accumulating patents and keep threatening people with them. The only time Microsoft will ever be in a position to press the trigger is when they either control or are allied with pretty much every big giant- Sony, IBM, HP, Sun, Novell, everybody. And at that point, you have a lot more to worry about than them just playing nasty with their patents.
And here is where you go terribly, horribly wrong. Your first situation is fine... your second is not. Two wrongs do not make a right- the fact that we have crappy laws does not mean they must be interpreted badly. It means they must be struck down and replaced with better ones.
No, it's clear to the slimy lawyers what the law was intended to address. But the law did not address it, and therefore, punishing someone for it is both morally and legally unacceptable. You cannot punish someone for the judge's interpretation framer's intent as expressed in a legal document. Full, complete and total stop. This would be akin to ignoring contractual provisions because you thought they 'weren't what were intended'.
True, it should never have been made. But that has nothing to do with this specific case.
Exactly. So why is it that your very-well thought out position is in total contradiction to your knee-jerk reaction of 'this is a good ruling'?
Hell, I didn't even think of that.
I mean, come on. the guy is guilty of being a stupid asshole. But he's not a rapist. He's just an asshole, and the police baited him into acting on that assholeness.
Mostly I think the problem I have is that sex is very different from most other issues- it's far more grey. Just as the definition of 'rape' is grey, so is the definition of 'child molestation', at least ethically.
As I pointed out, back when I was... oh, thirteen or so... (and what a long time ago that was!) one of the better thought-out positions regarding sex was that it would be advantageous to have an older (although not old enough to be ugly, of course) person, say 25 or so, 'start you out'. They'd have a place to stay, so you wouldn't be stuck in back alleys or anything; they could go buy all the necessary stuff without problems, they'd probably have more experience and so know what to do better and how to make it a more pleasing time...
You get the idea. It's not really relevant, but thinking back to those discussions make me really very orny of dealing with 'predators'. The whole 'sting' idea for sexual predators especially makes me annoyed because it's not at all black and white... and it shouldn't be. It should be grey. The problem is, I suppose, I want it to be MY shade of grey, and it's not. Hence, rulings like this.
By the way, I read your comments on the UCLA tazing threads, and they very much mirror my own concerns, so good on you.
That one is badly written, and I am glad I don't live in that country. My own country has a much more sanely-written freedom of speech protection- it limits it specifically against certain circumstances like that.
With regard to the 'murder' issue, that's irrelevant and pedantic. The law is clear, and these are not loopholes, they're bizzare attempts to 'take the law out of context', so to speak.
On the other hand, interpreting the 'spirit' of the law is something very very different.
No, I see what you mean, and I'm sorry, I overreacted. I have just had enough (especially today) of people being snarky about how lawyers are all bad people and everyone hates them because they're scum.
It really pisses me off; mostly because people don't understand the law, don't see how important lawyers are for actually getting their rights codified and made precident, and how important lawyers are for restricting the awesome power of the state.
What I post on slashdot, AC, has absolutely nothing to do with how I behave in my professional life. Slashdot is where I can let off some steam with nerds, not have to spend an hour and a half drafting a letter to make sure that every comma is in the correct place.
The fact is, if people had wanted something to be wrong, they should have written that into the LETTER of the law. It is absolutely morally and legally reprehensible to retroactively change the rules and then punish people based on that- and that is almost exactly what happens when people start using the 'spirit' of the law. The spirit of the law is irrelevant. What is relevant is the letter of the law, because that is what people can read, that is what is written down, that is what is static. Spirit changes depending on who's spirit we're talking about.