If he was willingly and knowingly providing resources (in this case, carrying communiques between LulzSec members, which is what running an IRC server would count as) that enabled people to commit various criminal acts then that's pretty blatant conspiracy - and the fact the server is called irc.lulzsec.org kinda strongly suggests that he knew what he was doing. If he ever popped into the channel himself and didn't run to the police, or encrypted his logs, then that's perverting the course of justice. And attacking government infrastructure electronic systems is terrorism by the 2000 Terrorism Act. And this is all even if he didn't do any of the hacking himself.
The question for LulzSec is how long irc.lulzsec.org has been compromised. It's quite possible that GCHQ has been monitoring the site for some time, and they are only announcing the arrest now because they think they've gotten enough info out of him....
Personally, I'm enjoying the schadenfreude of seeing the shoe on the other foot. Wonder how good LulzSec's own internal security is.
Lawyers can't stop charges being pressed. It seems like a number of reasonable charges can be brought: Perverting the course of justice, conspiracy to commit offences contrary to Section 2/3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, etc etc. If they want to go all out on him, they can charge him on conspiracy to commit terrorism, as a broad reading of the UK Terrorism Act encompasses LulzSec.
Not really. Doing attacks for the lulz (i.e. for personal enjoyment) marks you out as a criminal psychopath, substantially diminishing your opportunity for parole.
China essentially buddies up with everyone, as long as there's a reasonable rate of return involved. Their basic foreign policy is to not pick and choose. From a pragmatic viewpoint, even though these countries might be hellholes now, they might not be in the future, and China wants to be in there at day 0. In places where the reputation of the US is dirt, China's gaining a reputation as being a reliable and non-discriminatory ally. It's about building a new status quo.
It's not dishonest if you *say that you are excluding them*, and explain why you are doing so. It's not like the whole field of robust statistics doesn't exist. Real statisticians filter data for stuff like people misplacing decimal points, and so on, all the time.
Yeah, exactly. There's strong game theoretic arguments to actually support such behaviour. Things like taxation would be completely illogical as an individual voluntary act (because who wants to be the idiot who's the only one to voluntarily pay tax), but make perfect sense as things advocated as a group. (I can pay only a modest amount of tax, and the knowledge that this would be reflected by everyone else would make this have a big impact.)
"However if you are just looking for a "I'm slightly better than you so HA!" pissing match, well you may want to reconsider. I actually live quite a frugal lifestyle in terms of many things. For example I bike to work, walk to most stores, and as such drive less than 500 miles a year."
Drive less than 500 miles a year? Ha! I don't even have a car!
No, see, it seems a lot like you are trying to make this into an 'I'm slightly better than you pissing match', when I am saying you should judge people's arguments on their individual merits. And besides, the main weight of his argument would fall not on people who live relatively frugal existences, but on the people who live more extravagant lifestyles - yes, including him.
Glenn's an idiot. Those people do that because they think the value of their discussions at these conferences outweigh the cost of that individual action. A forest ranger might burn some dried waste to prevent a larger forest fire.
So, like, if I was to copy and paste the entire contents of Friedman's article, and pretend I said it, you'll suddenly change your mind? Your argument sounds a lot like an excuse.
1. Looking at the vegan site, the land required to grow food for vegans would be ~650 m^2, not 300m^2. This means that actually all the farmland in the US would not be able to feed everyone in the world, even if everyone went vegan. If there's some meat consumption, to UK levels, then you need over three times the farmland in the US, at maximum efficiency, to feed everyone. Is it plausible that everyone becomes vegans? I'd say not.
Then if you look at the breakdown of 'US farmland', then you see that it contains 'woodland' and 'pastureland', neither of which can be directly converted into cropland, which is what the site refers to. You are enormously underestimating the amount of land required to feed them here.
What's more, you need maintenance infrastructure to continue production at that, maximum rate. You need tractors, combine harvesters, transport infrastructure... You need education to keep all of the above working. Entertainment to stop people going crazy. And when a blight hits that single piece of farmland? You're going to need redundancy. All of that puts a strain on other resources, especially...
2. Water. The water of the Columbia River is not gonna be enough, because the majority of the water required to keep people alive isn't going to be what they directly use in drinking and sanitation. You need that water to water your crops and keep livestock alive. You need it for industry, to keep those tractors going and fueled up. And so on. Just counting food alone, your water requirements need to be multiplied by 4-24.
3. Medicine. That sort of population density will be a nightmare of plague and worse.
Food costs have not actually doubled in terms of comparable dollars. However, the composition and quantity of "food" purchases is much different, and much of it is wasteful. And, government debt and overall money mismanagement have eroded the purchasing power of our money.
You're looking at food costs in the US, which are cushioned by the fact that distribution and packaging occupy the majority of costs. But go out of the first world?
This is what the raw wheat prices are doing:
http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/wheat.html
The short version is that large proportions of the world are already being fed by grain grown through overpumping finite aquifers. When those run out, that section of food production will disappear. Add to that additional environmental factors putting pressure on the food supply, and it seems plausible that food production is going to fall, just as consumption increases. You can ask people to save power and turn off the lights. But you can't ask people to stop eating and drinking.
Their population growth reduces, but their consumption level explodes. You need to create negative population growth if you want to do the development route.
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Thank god someone's sane around here. Holy shit, is stormfront invading or something?
Stealing customer personal details is still theft, because personal details have value.
Though possibly it should be accessory, instead of conspiracy. Or maybe both.
If he was willingly and knowingly providing resources (in this case, carrying communiques between LulzSec members, which is what running an IRC server would count as) that enabled people to commit various criminal acts then that's pretty blatant conspiracy - and the fact the server is called irc.lulzsec.org kinda strongly suggests that he knew what he was doing. If he ever popped into the channel himself and didn't run to the police, or encrypted his logs, then that's perverting the course of justice. And attacking government infrastructure electronic systems is terrorism by the 2000 Terrorism Act. And this is all even if he didn't do any of the hacking himself.
Well, okay, we agree completely, and the anonymous coward GP is an idiot.
Personally, I'm enjoying the schadenfreude of seeing the shoe on the other foot. Wonder how good LulzSec's own internal security is.
Lawyers can't stop charges being pressed. It seems like a number of reasonable charges can be brought: Perverting the course of justice, conspiracy to commit offences contrary to Section 2/3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, etc etc. If they want to go all out on him, they can charge him on conspiracy to commit terrorism, as a broad reading of the UK Terrorism Act encompasses LulzSec.
Not really. Doing attacks for the lulz (i.e. for personal enjoyment) marks you out as a criminal psychopath, substantially diminishing your opportunity for parole.
So, you'd favour not going after bank robbers? Come on, it's not like opprobrium is a scarce resource.
China essentially buddies up with everyone, as long as there's a reasonable rate of return involved. Their basic foreign policy is to not pick and choose. From a pragmatic viewpoint, even though these countries might be hellholes now, they might not be in the future, and China wants to be in there at day 0. In places where the reputation of the US is dirt, China's gaining a reputation as being a reliable and non-discriminatory ally. It's about building a new status quo.
By 'think', you mean 'leap immediately to a prejudice driven stance', right?
Well, when your intrusion fingerprint is so small, who can tell if you've even done it at all?
Turn to page 4 of the associated pdf, and look at the figure. 'Chart title'? 'Axis title'? Yeah, this is real professional looking.
It's not dishonest if you *say that you are excluding them*, and explain why you are doing so. It's not like the whole field of robust statistics doesn't exist. Real statisticians filter data for stuff like people misplacing decimal points, and so on, all the time.
Yeah, exactly. There's strong game theoretic arguments to actually support such behaviour. Things like taxation would be completely illogical as an individual voluntary act (because who wants to be the idiot who's the only one to voluntarily pay tax), but make perfect sense as things advocated as a group. (I can pay only a modest amount of tax, and the knowledge that this would be reflected by everyone else would make this have a big impact.)
Drive less than 500 miles a year? Ha! I don't even have a car!
No, see, it seems a lot like you are trying to make this into an 'I'm slightly better than you pissing match', when I am saying you should judge people's arguments on their individual merits. And besides, the main weight of his argument would fall not on people who live relatively frugal existences, but on the people who live more extravagant lifestyles - yes, including him.
Glenn's an idiot. Those people do that because they think the value of their discussions at these conferences outweigh the cost of that individual action. A forest ranger might burn some dried waste to prevent a larger forest fire.
Because their point is that you can actually live your life to be a net positive to the environment around you?
So, like, if I was to copy and paste the entire contents of Friedman's article, and pretend I said it, you'll suddenly change your mind? Your argument sounds a lot like an excuse.
1. Looking at the vegan site, the land required to grow food for vegans would be ~650 m^2, not 300m^2. This means that actually all the farmland in the US would not be able to feed everyone in the world, even if everyone went vegan. If there's some meat consumption, to UK levels, then you need over three times the farmland in the US, at maximum efficiency, to feed everyone. Is it plausible that everyone becomes vegans? I'd say not.
Then if you look at the breakdown of 'US farmland', then you see that it contains 'woodland' and 'pastureland', neither of which can be directly converted into cropland, which is what the site refers to. You are enormously underestimating the amount of land required to feed them here.
What's more, you need maintenance infrastructure to continue production at that, maximum rate. You need tractors, combine harvesters, transport infrastructure... You need education to keep all of the above working. Entertainment to stop people going crazy. And when a blight hits that single piece of farmland? You're going to need redundancy. All of that puts a strain on other resources, especially...
2. Water. The water of the Columbia River is not gonna be enough, because the majority of the water required to keep people alive isn't going to be what they directly use in drinking and sanitation. You need that water to water your crops and keep livestock alive. You need it for industry, to keep those tractors going and fueled up. And so on. Just counting food alone, your water requirements need to be multiplied by 4-24.
3. Medicine. That sort of population density will be a nightmare of plague and worse.
Your claim is basically wrong.
What's a little education and birth control compared to a supposedly little bit of risk?
Food and drinking water isn't a fundamental scarcity? Did we invent star trek replicators some time I wasn't looking?
You're looking at food costs in the US, which are cushioned by the fact that distribution and packaging occupy the majority of costs. But go out of the first world? This is what the raw wheat prices are doing: http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/wheat.html
Okay, on some things like energy, you can argue that the problem is US overconsumption and ill distribution. But on things like food?
Here's an analysis of the global grain market:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/mar/10/world-food-prices-climbing?INTCMP=SRCH
The short version is that large proportions of the world are already being fed by grain grown through overpumping finite aquifers. When those run out, that section of food production will disappear. Add to that additional environmental factors putting pressure on the food supply, and it seems plausible that food production is going to fall, just as consumption increases. You can ask people to save power and turn off the lights. But you can't ask people to stop eating and drinking.
Their population growth reduces, but their consumption level explodes. You need to create negative population growth if you want to do the development route.