Why, because you say so? In both cases, A) it's someone else's property, and; B) others have absolutely no right whatsoever to enter it in that fashion. I don't care how much good one thinks will come of it, or how little harm one thinks will come of it - that server was not theirs, and they had no right whatsoever to behave as though it was theirs to do with as they pleased. Morally and ethically, it's exactly the same as "learning" about home security by breaking into strangers' houses.
Nobody gets to decide for themselves which rules, regulations, or laws apply to them based on whatever "higher" end they happen to have in mind, not even witless academics.
But if you did go out and rob banks and kite checks, would you not learn something from what worked and what did not?
Maybe. But the problem is that in so doing, the "good guys" become morally, ethically, and legally indistinguishable from the bad guys - you've erased the difference between you and them, your altruistic motives notwithstanding. The ends do not justify the means.
But hacking a chess site is probably not so bad, since potential harm is low.
The rightness or wrongness does not depend on the level of risk to the perpetrators. Investigating the efficacy of home security systems is a worthy goal. Breaking into strangers' houses is not an appropriate method of pursuing that goal, even if you minimize the risk by making sure that nobody's home at the time. And, I suppose I should add, even if you don't plan to take anything.
As I said, though, there are plenty of ways to gain that kind of knowledge without actually breaking the law. Forensic accountants learn how to spot money-laundering schemes without having to get out there and launder money. Serial-murder specialists don't have to kill scores of people to learn how serial killers operate. Viral pathologists don't infect people with HIV so they can learn how to prevent AIDS.
In all those cases, they study past cases, study current events, and don't generally have to become like the things they're acting against in order to defeat them, and I have no idea why computer security should be different - as someone who used to work in banking, allow me to testify that we didn't go out and rob banks or kite checks in order to learn how to prevent others from doing the same. And in those few cases where hands-on experience is absolutely necessary, you don't need to go out into the world and involve innocent third-parties - you set up a controlled environment where they can play on the playground without actually attacking real people. The ethics of this sort of "white-hat" hacking are non-existent - this is absolutely unethical behavior on the part of these clowns, and in no way do the ends justify the means.
...and the claim probably came from his parents or some shit anyway.
From his crazy lawyer. Jack Thompson, A/K/A "BatJack", apparently because he used to make public appearances in a Batman costume. Some of BatJack's prior hits here...
Treaties supersede state constitutions. Leave out the "or laws..." bit to parse it - "and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution....of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding".
The clearest discussion of this was in Reid v. Covert, 354 US 1 (1957). To quote Justice Black, writing for the Court:
Article VI, the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, declares:
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; . . .."
There is nothing in this language which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution. Nor is there anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification of the Constitution which even suggests such a result. These debates as well as the history that surrounds the adoption of the treaty provision in Article VI make it clear that the reason treaties were not limited to those made in "pursuance" of the Constitution was so that agreements made by the United States under the Articles of Confederation, including the important peace treaties which concluded the Revolutionary War, would remain in effect. It would be manifestly contrary to the objectives of those who created the Constitution, as well as those who were responsible for the Bill of Rights - let alone alien to our entire constitutional history and tradition - to construe Article VI as permitting the United States to exercise power under an international agreement without observing constitutional prohibitions. In effect, such construction would permit amendment of that document in a manner not sanctioned by Article V. The prohibitions of the Constitution were designed to apply to all branches of the National Government and they cannot be nullified by the Executive or by the Executive and the Senate combined.
There is nothing new or unique about what we say here. This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty. For example, in Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U.S. 258, 267, it declared:
"The treaty power, as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms unlimited except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government or of its departments, and those arising from the nature of the government itself and of that of the States. It would not be contended that it extends so far as to authorize what the Constitution forbids, or a change in the character of the government or in that of one of the States, or a cession of any portion of the territory of the latter, without its consent."
This Court has also repeatedly taken the position that an Act of Congress, which must comply with the Constitution, is on a full parity with a treaty, and that when a statute which is subsequent in time is inconsistent with a treaty, the statute to the extent of conflict renders the treaty null. It would be completely anomalous to say that a treaty need not comply with the Constitution when such an agreement can be overridden by a statute that must conform to that instrument.
I suspect there's more to the story than you're letting on, but on the assumption that you've accurately portrayed the situation over there, all I can say is...
...SUCKERS!!!!
Seriously, I rather doubt it's as one-sided as all that. Although you could always vote Tory, I guess;)
I'm wondering whether it would obligate nations to assist in cases where based on their own laws, the suspected crime wouldn't have been a crime at all.
As a general rule, the US does not recognize offenses abroad that don't have what would be considered parallel offenses here. That is, if you visit Upper Freedonistan, and fail to tip your hat to one of the local women - punishable by six months in jail and a fine of 10,000 klopkas - the US will not usually extradite you to face punishment, because no parallel offense exists here. The French can harass Yahoo France all they like, but there is no way they'll get an American judge to operate that way here - treaties cannot and do not supersede the Constitution. That is, you cannot perform an end-run around the First Amendment merely by signing some treaty with another nation, in the end. Whether other nations behave similarly, I can't say, but I presume that for the most part, they do.
In the Palestine/Israeli issue, you'd normally expect to get commentary from a spokesperson from the Israeli embassy, possibly a spokesperson for the Palestinian authority, and possibly comment from an aid agency working in the area (if applicable). I would argue that makes it distinctly less "biased" than CNN, and certainly less than Fox.
We're getting beyond the point where we can argue in generalities, and to where we need specific examples to continue, but generally speaking, merely presenting opposing views is not, in and of itself, sufficient to warrant a badge of objectivity. The Beeb records the Israeli ambassador saying "The Palestinians claim that we intend to crush them like bugs, but of course that's ridiculous", and then al-Jazeera broadcasts the ambassador saying "We intend to crush them like bugs". And then al-Jazeera is "objective" because it presents "both sides", sort of;)
Obviously, that's a made-up example, but the point behind it is indisputable, I think - the editorial process is itself inherently biased. No newsroom in the world can possibly cover everything that's of interest to someone, so the bias begins right off the bat, with the choosing of which stories are "important" enough to warrant coverage, and which aren't - and I would argue that those choices are, far more often than not, driven by the views of those in charge of that editorial process.
They choose stories that are important to them, and that they believe should be important to you and me, whether or not they, in fact, are. And then they follow it up by reinforcing one viewpoint or another, in order to "persuade" us all that this story is as important as they claim. Journalism is advocacy, in almost all cases. To give a concrete example, there didn't appear to me to be any shortage of people out there who questioned CBS's conclusions on those "memos" that they found, but CBS sure had a hell of a time finding any opposing points of view for their initial report, didn't they? (If you're in the UK and didn't follow the story and its aftermath, let me fill in the answer for you: yes, they apparently couldn't find anyone to dispute their "findings", despite the fact that hundreds of folks popped up to challenge them within hours of the broadcast, to the point where they've basically been discredited by now.)
They choose the issues that they find to be "important", and then selectively present the viewpoints in such a way as to reinforce one or the other. It used to be - and not so much any more now that they've been called on it - that CNN would invariably identify their conservative commentators or contributors as such, but skip the label for those who leaned more left in their proclivities. It's hard for me to see them as fair and objective when you used to get things akin to "Coming up next: raving right-wing looney Newt Gingrich discusses money in politics with the eminent, well-respected scholar, Noam Chomsky!" I exaggerate, of course, but not so much as to be totally off the wall.
So does Fox represent me? Sometimes. More than some, less than others, and I like Fox. I think "fair and balanced" is silly, but it's the game all news agencies try to play, whether it's the BBC or AFP or whatever - we choose to believe some of them, and disbelieve others, and that choice is largely based on how closely their presentations match up with our own views of the world. They tell you otherwise, but they're lying to you. Trust me;)
...whereas the BBC headline made them sound more like an invading army.
And that's "unbiased", in your opinion? CNN casts them as cartoon heroes, the Beeb makes them cartoon villains, and you choose one or the other to represent fair and accurate?
My theory is that most people tend to think of opinions as "unbiased" or "objective" based on how closely those opinions match up to their own. There are no newsreading robots on the air, and even if there were, someone would have to write their copy, and hence there are no unbiased news outlets, not even the BBC. Better, IMO, to have them be up front about their worldviews than to have them wrap themselves in a cloak of faux-objectivism. Is Fox "fair and balanced"? No, of course they're not, but neither is CNN, ABC, BBC, the New York Times, the Telegraph, or Pravda - the only difference is that we all choose to believe some of them when they claim they are, and disbelieve others, depending on how "objectively" their worldviews match our own....
I dunno. I never seem to have much trouble finding something interesting to watch when I want to sit down and watch something interesting. Not to be rude or anything, but if 150 channels covering the range from Sesame Street to porn aren't enough, perhaps you're watching too much TV to begin with. I mean, if you're that bored with it all, perhaps you should find something else to do. Take up fishing, start a stamp collection, write a book, learn to play flamenco guitar, et cetera. It's a big world and life is short - why waste time with things you don't enjoy?;)
Of course there is, although I suspect you and I would disagree on what constitutes "liberal" - your description of CNN as center-right is positively bizarre. In any case, if that's not flamingly left enough for you, there's always WorldLink TV - all the Chomsky and Zinn you could possibly want, and then some. Both major satellite providers carry it, and you can always call your cable company if they're not.
It's filled wall to wall with American sitcoms, reality TV, and endless repeats.
That's a shame. If I were to head into the living room and flip on the TV right now, I'd have my choice of the following intelligent, informative, and entertaining channels:
9 channels devoted exclusively to news;
11 channels devoted to science, nature, or history;
5 channels devoted to education or public affairs;
6 channels devoted to children's programming;
6 channels devoted to religion and religious affairs;
3 channels devoted exclusively to providing "family friendly" entertainment;
2 channels that show nothing but classic old movies;
7 channels devoted to various genres of music;
9 sports channels;
a host of specialty channels, including one with nothing but cooking and food-related shows, one channel about home maintenance and improvement, one for fitness and exercise, one for computers and technology, and one entire channel devoted to nothing but golf.
It's similar to the old-style wire gauge conventions - 1 gauge wire is.300 inches in diameter, 0 gauge is.324 inches, 00 is.348, 000 is.372, etc., etc., all the way up to 0000000, which is.500 inches. It's basically a throwback to the nomenclature in use when shot towers were invented in the late 18'th century or so - I suppose there's just not much incentive to replace the traditional numbering scheme...
The next size up from 00 (double-aught) is, naturally, 000 - triple-aught. 00 buckshot has a pellet diameter of.33 inches, 000 is.36, and that's just about as big as you'll normally find. Depending on how far away your target is, 12 gauge 000 buckshot is quite capable of putting a hole the size of a basketball in it, which is quite enough for most people;)
Dull pulp to boot. Really, for a "positive" review, it makes the book sound awful. I presume that's because it is awful, awful beyond the powers of mere mortal reviewers to rescue...
Anyway, what you're saying isn't generally false for the country-at-large (though your choice of dates and locality is far more favorable to your point than the average US numbers)...
I'm sorry, no. In fact, car ownership in the Bay area (as a whole) is slightly lower than in the rest of the country - in San Francisco itself, it's much lower than in the country as a whole, no doubt due to urban congestion as well as a well-developed mass-transit system. I would have been better off looking at national data to make my case rather than looking at your back yard - it so happened that data to support me came from your neck of the woods as well.
...even the trend in cars has followed this same trajectory generally speaking...that is, unless you consider the bottom 15% of the socioeconomic scale with respect to cars since about 1990, where the motion is decidedly retrograde.
I notice you can't seem to cite anything to support that - feel free to try, though.
Now, if we get back into the conversation we were actually having, which is limited to a particular item (automobiles) over a particular limited time range (from about 1990 on, when airbags and alarms and computer chipped engines and all sorts of other stuff started getting built into every single car), you'll see what I'm saying is true.
Sure....as long as you cherry-pick the contemporary market by excluding those low-end cars. I see my local Kia dealer has a brand-new Kia Rio sedan listed for $10,070, which is just about exactly what the list price ($6595) on that Omni was after you adjust it for inflation. It also has 104 HP versus the Omni's lawnmower-like 93, and gets nearly identical gas mileage. And it even has airbags and power mirrors.
Sorry, you're wrong, and no amount of assertion-without-support can cover that.
It's always fun when someone tells you you can't do what you went and did. I bought my $800 car to get myself back and forth to my $6.50 an hour job, my $250 a month apartment, my college classes for which I borrowed $30,000 to go to a state university, and to the grocery store where I fed myself, my wife, and my son on less than $50 a week. Don't tell me about how the "working poor" live - I was the working poor, almost certainly unlike you.
I'm not necessarily complaining here, though I do think that when you require all cars be made with airbags, that's not very compassionate to the lowest-earning 15% or so of society that now finds even the cheapest car to be way beyond their means.
The major problem with your theory is that it's empirically false* - cars may indeed be getting slightly more expensive in real terms, but more people have them than before, which puts to the lie the idea that cars are being priced out of reach for more and more people. And you're cherry-picking the data by excluding the lowest end of the current new car market. Other than that, it's a wonderful idea;)
Aside from the Hyundais and Kias that you ignored, don't forget that there's a vibrant secondary market for used cars. The first car I bought, a few years after your dad's purchase, cost me a whopping $800, or about 10% of what he spent. Was it as nice as his? Probably not. Did it last as long as his? Probably not, but it got me back and forth to my job and enabled me to earn the money to buy something better. Which is just the sort of thing the working poor can do also.
* You can get the big picture from the entire paper here.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody gets to decide for themselves which rules, regulations, or laws apply to them based on whatever "higher" end they happen to have in mind, not even witless academics.
Maybe. But the problem is that in so doing, the "good guys" become morally, ethically, and legally indistinguishable from the bad guys - you've erased the difference between you and them, your altruistic motives notwithstanding. The ends do not justify the means.
But hacking a chess site is probably not so bad, since potential harm is low.
The rightness or wrongness does not depend on the level of risk to the perpetrators. Investigating the efficacy of home security systems is a worthy goal. Breaking into strangers' houses is not an appropriate method of pursuing that goal, even if you minimize the risk by making sure that nobody's home at the time. And, I suppose I should add, even if you don't plan to take anything.
In all those cases, they study past cases, study current events, and don't generally have to become like the things they're acting against in order to defeat them, and I have no idea why computer security should be different - as someone who used to work in banking, allow me to testify that we didn't go out and rob banks or kite checks in order to learn how to prevent others from doing the same. And in those few cases where hands-on experience is absolutely necessary, you don't need to go out into the world and involve innocent third-parties - you set up a controlled environment where they can play on the playground without actually attacking real people. The ethics of this sort of "white-hat" hacking are non-existent - this is absolutely unethical behavior on the part of these clowns, and in no way do the ends justify the means.
Exactly why killing a man is part and parcel of becoming a homicide detective. Errr, wait, it's not.
Yes, you have to know how crimes are committed to solve/prevent them, but committing those crimes is not the only way to gain that knowledge.
From his crazy lawyer. Jack Thompson, A/K/A "BatJack", apparently because he used to make public appearances in a Batman costume. Some of BatJack's prior hits here...
The clearest discussion of this was in Reid v. Covert, 354 US 1 (1957). To quote Justice Black, writing for the Court:
Seriously, I rather doubt it's as one-sided as all that. Although you could always vote Tory, I guess ;)
As a general rule, the US does not recognize offenses abroad that don't have what would be considered parallel offenses here. That is, if you visit Upper Freedonistan, and fail to tip your hat to one of the local women - punishable by six months in jail and a fine of 10,000 klopkas - the US will not usually extradite you to face punishment, because no parallel offense exists here. The French can harass Yahoo France all they like, but there is no way they'll get an American judge to operate that way here - treaties cannot and do not supersede the Constitution. That is, you cannot perform an end-run around the First Amendment merely by signing some treaty with another nation, in the end. Whether other nations behave similarly, I can't say, but I presume that for the most part, they do.
We're getting beyond the point where we can argue in generalities, and to where we need specific examples to continue, but generally speaking, merely presenting opposing views is not, in and of itself, sufficient to warrant a badge of objectivity. The Beeb records the Israeli ambassador saying "The Palestinians claim that we intend to crush them like bugs, but of course that's ridiculous", and then al-Jazeera broadcasts the ambassador saying "We intend to crush them like bugs". And then al-Jazeera is "objective" because it presents "both sides", sort of ;)
Obviously, that's a made-up example, but the point behind it is indisputable, I think - the editorial process is itself inherently biased. No newsroom in the world can possibly cover everything that's of interest to someone, so the bias begins right off the bat, with the choosing of which stories are "important" enough to warrant coverage, and which aren't - and I would argue that those choices are, far more often than not, driven by the views of those in charge of that editorial process.
They choose stories that are important to them, and that they believe should be important to you and me, whether or not they, in fact, are. And then they follow it up by reinforcing one viewpoint or another, in order to "persuade" us all that this story is as important as they claim. Journalism is advocacy, in almost all cases. To give a concrete example, there didn't appear to me to be any shortage of people out there who questioned CBS's conclusions on those "memos" that they found, but CBS sure had a hell of a time finding any opposing points of view for their initial report, didn't they? (If you're in the UK and didn't follow the story and its aftermath, let me fill in the answer for you: yes, they apparently couldn't find anyone to dispute their "findings", despite the fact that hundreds of folks popped up to challenge them within hours of the broadcast, to the point where they've basically been discredited by now.)
They choose the issues that they find to be "important", and then selectively present the viewpoints in such a way as to reinforce one or the other. It used to be - and not so much any more now that they've been called on it - that CNN would invariably identify their conservative commentators or contributors as such, but skip the label for those who leaned more left in their proclivities. It's hard for me to see them as fair and objective when you used to get things akin to "Coming up next: raving right-wing looney Newt Gingrich discusses money in politics with the eminent, well-respected scholar, Noam Chomsky!" I exaggerate, of course, but not so much as to be totally off the wall.
So does Fox represent me? Sometimes. More than some, less than others, and I like Fox. I think "fair and balanced" is silly, but it's the game all news agencies try to play, whether it's the BBC or AFP or whatever - we choose to believe some of them, and disbelieve others, and that choice is largely based on how closely their presentations match up with our own views of the world. They tell you otherwise, but they're lying to you. Trust me ;)
Good. My advice to you is the same, then - find another hobby.
And that's "unbiased", in your opinion? CNN casts them as cartoon heroes, the Beeb makes them cartoon villains, and you choose one or the other to represent fair and accurate?
My theory is that most people tend to think of opinions as "unbiased" or "objective" based on how closely those opinions match up to their own. There are no newsreading robots on the air, and even if there were, someone would have to write their copy, and hence there are no unbiased news outlets, not even the BBC. Better, IMO, to have them be up front about their worldviews than to have them wrap themselves in a cloak of faux-objectivism. Is Fox "fair and balanced"? No, of course they're not, but neither is CNN, ABC, BBC, the New York Times, the Telegraph, or Pravda - the only difference is that we all choose to believe some of them when they claim they are, and disbelieve others, depending on how "objectively" their worldviews match our own....
I dunno. I never seem to have much trouble finding something interesting to watch when I want to sit down and watch something interesting. Not to be rude or anything, but if 150 channels covering the range from Sesame Street to porn aren't enough, perhaps you're watching too much TV to begin with. I mean, if you're that bored with it all, perhaps you should find something else to do. Take up fishing, start a stamp collection, write a book, learn to play flamenco guitar, et cetera. It's a big world and life is short - why waste time with things you don't enjoy? ;)
Of course there is, although I suspect you and I would disagree on what constitutes "liberal" - your description of CNN as center-right is positively bizarre. In any case, if that's not flamingly left enough for you, there's always WorldLink TV - all the Chomsky and Zinn you could possibly want, and then some. Both major satellite providers carry it, and you can always call your cable company if they're not.
That's a shame. If I were to head into the living room and flip on the TV right now, I'd have my choice of the following intelligent, informative, and entertaining channels:
9 channels devoted exclusively to news; ;
11 channels devoted to science, nature, or history;
5 channels devoted to education or public affairs;
6 channels devoted to children's programming;
6 channels devoted to religion and religious affairs
3 channels devoted exclusively to providing "family friendly" entertainment;
2 channels that show nothing but classic old movies;
7 channels devoted to various genres of music;
9 sports channels;
a host of specialty channels, including one with nothing but cooking and food-related shows, one channel about home maintenance and improvement, one for fitness and exercise, one for computers and technology, and one entire channel devoted to nothing but golf.
But hey, quantity isn't everything, I'm told ;)
At that size, that's awfully close to being an artillery piece loaded with grapeshot ;)
It's similar to the old-style wire gauge conventions - 1 gauge wire is .300 inches in diameter, 0 gauge is .324 inches, 00 is .348, 000 is .372, etc., etc., all the way up to 0000000, which is .500 inches. It's basically a throwback to the nomenclature in use when shot towers were invented in the late 18'th century or so - I suppose there's just not much incentive to replace the traditional numbering scheme...
The next size up from 00 (double-aught) is, naturally, 000 - triple-aught. 00 buckshot has a pellet diameter of .33 inches, 000 is .36, and that's just about as big as you'll normally find. Depending on how far away your target is, 12 gauge 000 buckshot is quite capable of putting a hole the size of a basketball in it, which is quite enough for most people ;)
Dull pulp to boot. Really, for a "positive" review, it makes the book sound awful. I presume that's because it is awful, awful beyond the powers of mere mortal reviewers to rescue...
Bite me, shitbag.
Almost ;)
I like how you say I "don't know much about Kodak", and then continue on to basically confirm what I posted. Very slick ;)
I'm sorry, no. In fact, car ownership in the Bay area (as a whole) is slightly lower than in the rest of the country - in San Francisco itself, it's much lower than in the country as a whole, no doubt due to urban congestion as well as a well-developed mass-transit system. I would have been better off looking at national data to make my case rather than looking at your back yard - it so happened that data to support me came from your neck of the woods as well.
I notice you can't seem to cite anything to support that - feel free to try, though.
Now, if we get back into the conversation we were actually having, which is limited to a particular item (automobiles) over a particular limited time range (from about 1990 on, when airbags and alarms and computer chipped engines and all sorts of other stuff started getting built into every single car), you'll see what I'm saying is true.
Sure....as long as you cherry-pick the contemporary market by excluding those low-end cars. I see my local Kia dealer has a brand-new Kia Rio sedan listed for $10,070, which is just about exactly what the list price ($6595) on that Omni was after you adjust it for inflation. It also has 104 HP versus the Omni's lawnmower-like 93, and gets nearly identical gas mileage. And it even has airbags and power mirrors.
Sorry, you're wrong, and no amount of assertion-without-support can cover that.
It's always fun when someone tells you you can't do what you went and did. I bought my $800 car to get myself back and forth to my $6.50 an hour job, my $250 a month apartment, my college classes for which I borrowed $30,000 to go to a state university, and to the grocery store where I fed myself, my wife, and my son on less than $50 a week. Don't tell me about how the "working poor" live - I was the working poor, almost certainly unlike you.
The major problem with your theory is that it's empirically false* - cars may indeed be getting slightly more expensive in real terms, but more people have them than before, which puts to the lie the idea that cars are being priced out of reach for more and more people. And you're cherry-picking the data by excluding the lowest end of the current new car market. Other than that, it's a wonderful idea ;)
Aside from the Hyundais and Kias that you ignored, don't forget that there's a vibrant secondary market for used cars. The first car I bought, a few years after your dad's purchase, cost me a whopping $800, or about 10% of what he spent. Was it as nice as his? Probably not. Did it last as long as his? Probably not, but it got me back and forth to my job and enabled me to earn the money to buy something better. Which is just the sort of thing the working poor can do also.
* You can get the big picture from the entire paper here.
Right you are. Nevertheless, I think it's fair to say that the imaging market has not been kind to Kodak over the last decade or so ;)