I am treating him, his site, and this story the same as I would any other.
So, you automatically jump to the defense of large corporations, by pulling out obscure arguments that you have no evidence of? You could have simply said you were skeptical of the claims, but instead you made the argument that this was definitely about "compliance checks" even though you had no evidence of that whatsoever.
So, why are you skeptical about the website owner, but not equally skeptical of the bank? In fact, you were not just un-skeptical about the bank, you went out of your way to make positive arguments for them, that even the bank never made. It's really weird.
Call me cynical, but anytime I see some website whining about some supposed injustice done to them, I think 'shameless self promotion.'
I wouldn't say you're cynical - I'd say you have extreme problems assessing reality, and automatically jump to bizarre conclusions. You seriously have a problem if you habitually respond to things in such a way, rather than using your brain.
Not saying this was the case, or the bank was right even if it was the case, I'm just saying, this may just be an amateurish attempt to turn a personal fuck-up into some site promotion.
And I'm not saying that spun regularly has sex with goats and has contracted goat AIDS. I'm just sayin'.
But stop and consider: would this be any kind of a story unless there were the hint of homophobia around it? No.
Hell yes.
If it were a straight porn site that had their bank account canceled, or maybe a hacker's site or a technology news site that had their account canceled, it would get just as much media attention. Because it's completely bizarre that a bank would take this action over the content of a website.
I don't think this is true at all. Movies like Wargames manage to be decently realistic
Yes, a kid having conversations with an intelligent computer, who then evades authorities and escapes from the Cheyenne Mountain NORAD facility, and nuclear war is averted which the computer is convinced of the futility of war... is decently realistic. For unusual values of "realistic."
In fact Sneakers is probably the best hacker movie to date. Wargames is certainly in the top five, too.
Heretic.
Wargames in the top five hacker movies? Nonsense. Wargames is the greatest film ever made. No need to restrict the statement to "hacker movies." Get out of here with your foolish Sneakers superiority complex.
If I was starting a company tomorrow, I'd incorporate offshore, hire offshore and only make my software available via download or as a web app.
You are going to incur a lot of extra overheads running your business from a ship, and it won't be a very pleasant work environment. Also, how many decent programmers are you going to find on the high seas? I think most of them will be living on land.
OK. If a country who decided, stupidly and unconventionally, to have Windows (any version) installed anywhere within the chain of firecontrol for nuclear weapons, or massive bio/chem weapons, and one accidentally launched or worse, didn't launch when needed. Microsoft needs to be held liable.
Don't they specifically disclaim liability for such usage scenarios, saying that the software is not to be used in nuclear facilities, weapons control systems, etc? It's pretty standard to see that disclaimer in software licenses.
Why is it IT people in general feel that they are somehow different than everyone else in the world?
Because they are precious snowflakes who melt easily. Of course, they are also Howard Roark style rugged individualists who oppose conformity and government intervention, unless that government intervention helps them - then they are back to being precious snowflakes again.
An engineer can be independent designer, and yet still find work with someone like Lockheed.
A programmer who is an independent will not be hired, due to Lockheed being afraid of the IRS punishment.
That doesn't make a lot of sense. If you're working for Lockheed, you're hardly an "independent programmer," are you? The term usually refers to people who are creating their own products and running their own business - not just to somebody working on a contract as opposed to regular employment.
Well, I'm pretty sure the US government isn't selling THAT particular paper, nor the dyes or security strips.
Irrelevant. Plenty of forgeries are made on normal paper.
Not only did Sony push for the general acceptance of the format, but then they went on and became the world's top seller of portable cassette tape RECORDERS.
Right. So how does that mean they support the copying of copyrighted content? There are many other uses of tape recorders.
Once again, a poor argument. Knives can be used for murder. This doesn't mean knife manufacturers advocate murder.
I'm not sure why you ascribe insanity to them. They are doing what is logical in a desperate attempt to protect their relevance. Why would an organization that is all about "copyright protection" argue against their own existence? If you can convince a court to protect your organization, why wouldn't you?
Anyone besides me ever wonder why Sony sells blank CDs and DVDs, then complains about infringement?
I'm guessing that the blank DVDs are intended to be used to burn your home videos shot with Sony video cameras to disc, not to copy commercial and CSS-protected content.
I'm not a fan of stupid copyright arguments or Sony, but this argument is disingenuous. You may as well wonder "why do they sell blank paper, yet complain about the counterfeiting of currency?"
Which is why religion and all other straight-faced magical thinking should be abolished.
I'm as big an atheist as anyone, but the way you phrased this sent shivers down my spine. I'd love it if religion and magical thinking went by the wayside because people decided of their own free will that it was bunk, but saying it "should be abolished" implies an active destruction that doesn't bode so well if you think about history.
It's also scary because so many religious fundamentalists (who outnumber the atheists) believe in abolishing the atheists. And they don't intend to do it peacefully.
OK, sorry. I've just run into too many people with serious thoughts about the "magical" nature of computers, and even concerns about "machine rights" and so forth. Well spoofed!
The funny part about it is - sorry to have to explain it, is not that machines are sentient, its that even if they were, we may not know, hence you can imply what you like within this unknowable realm and its still a joke, since it cannot be proven either way.
I'm not so sure about that. I would think it would have to be measurable in some way - i.e; that there are electrons flowing, even though they shouldn't be according to the programming/instructions.
Just about all the music we hear today is run through something called "Auto-Tune [time.com]", a piece of software which corrects any wrong notes sung by the performer, matching them automatically to the song's score.
Got a source for that claim? It may be true with pop music, but I doubt it's true for the majority of music. Hell, there's even a ton of instrumental music being released, which it wouldn't make sense to use Auto-Tune on.
Who is the "we" you are talking about, anyway? I almost never listen to pop music, so how can you generalize about the music "we" listen to?
Machines making music? they probably do that already, they may even have forums for which tunes they hate/like and why is that humans cannot understand it at all.
Yeah, right. You're basing that notion on what? If you can go ahead and prove machine sentience, you'd probably win a Nobel Prize. There's a reason why we tend to hear this kind of speculation from people with sanity issues, and not computer scientists.
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I am treating him, his site, and this story the same as I would any other.
So, you automatically jump to the defense of large corporations, by pulling out obscure arguments that you have no evidence of? You could have simply said you were skeptical of the claims, but instead you made the argument that this was definitely about "compliance checks" even though you had no evidence of that whatsoever.
So, why are you skeptical about the website owner, but not equally skeptical of the bank? In fact, you were not just un-skeptical about the bank, you went out of your way to make positive arguments for them, that even the bank never made. It's really weird.
Call me cynical, but anytime I see some website whining about some supposed injustice done to them, I think 'shameless self promotion.'
I wouldn't say you're cynical - I'd say you have extreme problems assessing reality, and automatically jump to bizarre conclusions. You seriously have a problem if you habitually respond to things in such a way, rather than using your brain.
Not saying this was the case, or the bank was right even if it was the case, I'm just saying, this may just be an amateurish attempt to turn a personal fuck-up into some site promotion.
And I'm not saying that spun regularly has sex with goats and has contracted goat AIDS. I'm just sayin'.
But stop and consider: would this be any kind of a story unless there were the hint of homophobia around it? No.
Hell yes.
If it were a straight porn site that had their bank account canceled, or maybe a hacker's site or a technology news site that had their account canceled, it would get just as much media attention. Because it's completely bizarre that a bank would take this action over the content of a website.
Maturity in IT really means that you're at the point where you finally realize, 'there really is no magic'.
Huh? Why would you think there was magic in the first place? Does anybody start a career in IT believing it is run on magic?
He had plenty of time! Maybe he did it when he was drunk.
Sounds plausible.
I don't think this is true at all. Movies like Wargames manage to be decently realistic
Yes, a kid having conversations with an intelligent computer, who then evades authorities and escapes from the Cheyenne Mountain NORAD facility, and nuclear war is averted which the computer is convinced of the futility of war... is decently realistic. For unusual values of "realistic."
In fact Sneakers is probably the best hacker movie to date. Wargames is certainly in the top five, too.
Heretic.
Wargames in the top five hacker movies? Nonsense. Wargames is the greatest film ever made. No need to restrict the statement to "hacker movies." Get out of here with your foolish Sneakers superiority complex.
Dear Die Hard,
You rock. Especially the part where that dude is on the rooftop, and you use Emacs to reconfigure his system files to cause a buffer overflow.
P.S. Do you know Mad Max?
Homer J. Simpson
my Wii stolen (I had no xbox at the time)
So... you eventually got a sex change and replaced your wii with a box?
If you're medical marijuana user, isn't it perfectly legal then? Why would they be after you in that case, exactly?
You haven't been paying attention, have you? The Feds did chase after medical marijuana users in California, considering the state's law invalid.
If I was starting a company tomorrow, I'd incorporate offshore, hire offshore and only make my software available via download or as a web app.
You are going to incur a lot of extra overheads running your business from a ship, and it won't be a very pleasant work environment. Also, how many decent programmers are you going to find on the high seas? I think most of them will be living on land.
OK. If a country who decided, stupidly and unconventionally, to have Windows (any version) installed anywhere within the chain of firecontrol for nuclear weapons, or massive bio/chem weapons, and one accidentally launched or worse, didn't launch when needed. Microsoft needs to be held liable.
Don't they specifically disclaim liability for such usage scenarios, saying that the software is not to be used in nuclear facilities, weapons control systems, etc? It's pretty standard to see that disclaimer in software licenses.
Why is it IT people in general feel that they are somehow different than everyone else in the world?
Because they are precious snowflakes who melt easily. Of course, they are also Howard Roark style rugged individualists who oppose conformity and government intervention, unless that government intervention helps them - then they are back to being precious snowflakes again.
An engineer can be independent designer, and yet still find work with someone like Lockheed. A programmer who is an independent will not be hired, due to Lockheed being afraid of the IRS punishment.
That doesn't make a lot of sense. If you're working for Lockheed, you're hardly an "independent programmer," are you? The term usually refers to people who are creating their own products and running their own business - not just to somebody working on a contract as opposed to regular employment.
But counterfeiters don't need to use that paper.
Well, I'm pretty sure the US government isn't selling THAT particular paper, nor the dyes or security strips.
Irrelevant. Plenty of forgeries are made on normal paper.
Not only did Sony push for the general acceptance of the format, but then they went on and became the world's top seller of portable cassette tape RECORDERS.
Right. So how does that mean they support the copying of copyrighted content? There are many other uses of tape recorders.
Once again, a poor argument. Knives can be used for murder. This doesn't mean knife manufacturers advocate murder.
Because these are the only types of content available.
Uhhh, I don't recall saying anything like that.
God forbid other people make stuff and they love it when you burn it on a DVD to show it to your friends.
Indeed.
Your honor, the defence rests.
What exactly are you trying to argue? I didn't say Sony's intentions were just - I was just trying to explain what Sony's intentions probably are.
I'm not sure why you ascribe insanity to them. They are doing what is logical in a desperate attempt to protect their relevance. Why would an organization that is all about "copyright protection" argue against their own existence? If you can convince a court to protect your organization, why wouldn't you?
By the way, courts don't legislate.
Anyone besides me ever wonder why Sony sells blank CDs and DVDs, then complains about infringement?
I'm guessing that the blank DVDs are intended to be used to burn your home videos shot with Sony video cameras to disc, not to copy commercial and CSS-protected content.
I'm not a fan of stupid copyright arguments or Sony, but this argument is disingenuous. You may as well wonder "why do they sell blank paper, yet complain about the counterfeiting of currency?"
Which is why religion and all other straight-faced magical thinking should be abolished.
I'm as big an atheist as anyone, but the way you phrased this sent shivers down my spine. I'd love it if religion and magical thinking went by the wayside because people decided of their own free will that it was bunk, but saying it "should be abolished" implies an active destruction that doesn't bode so well if you think about history.
It's also scary because so many religious fundamentalists (who outnumber the atheists) believe in abolishing the atheists. And they don't intend to do it peacefully.
Firstly, its a joke.
OK, sorry. I've just run into too many people with serious thoughts about the "magical" nature of computers, and even concerns about "machine rights" and so forth. Well spoofed!
The funny part about it is - sorry to have to explain it, is not that machines are sentient, its that even if they were, we may not know, hence you can imply what you like within this unknowable realm and its still a joke, since it cannot be proven either way.
I'm not so sure about that. I would think it would have to be measurable in some way - i.e; that there are electrons flowing, even though they shouldn't be according to the programming/instructions.
Wouldn't it be prudent to explore this connection?
Well, yeah. It's been studied for decades - centuries, even. It's not exactly news.
Just about all the music we hear today is run through something called "Auto-Tune [time.com]", a piece of software which corrects any wrong notes sung by the performer, matching them automatically to the song's score.
Got a source for that claim? It may be true with pop music, but I doubt it's true for the majority of music. Hell, there's even a ton of instrumental music being released, which it wouldn't make sense to use Auto-Tune on.
Who is the "we" you are talking about, anyway? I almost never listen to pop music, so how can you generalize about the music "we" listen to?
Machines making music? they probably do that already, they may even have forums for which tunes they hate/like and why is that humans cannot understand it at all.
Yeah, right. You're basing that notion on what? If you can go ahead and prove machine sentience, you'd probably win a Nobel Prize. There's a reason why we tend to hear this kind of speculation from people with sanity issues, and not computer scientists.