They do things which they believe are in the best interests of humanity in general. They do some diligence (some argue not enough) to sanitize it so people don't get further endangered as a result. They feel that Not Acting harms more than acting, so they act and release information in the interests of disclosing corruption, false propaganda, or things which are Unknown to the public at large. They do this despite knowing that it will get them on the shit-lists of influential governments. They seem to try to stay legal, but it appears that they are willing to publish things which you or I would be unable to get away with publishing.
This anthropomorphizes Wikileaks a bit more than I probably should. It seems like their modus operandi is "Expose corruption and lies, even if it's against the law someplace", but that may just be my perception. They're like Robin Hoods of the information age.
To elaborate: in the short term, if implants get hackable wirelessly, I imagine that professional security goons will need to be implant-free in terms of nerves that affect anything motion, pain, or perception-related (and probably more). We don't want the Secret Service to suddenly keel over when their movement transmitters get jumbled (seizure?) or when their reflex augmentations get shut off (or hacked to do Other Crap).
If 4chan were to hack things up, I'd imagine they'd just put Guy Fawkes masks on footage of themselves, or overlay naughty pictures on the faces of Famous People.
It was ok when we imagined the blinkenlights and the dissolving artificial flesh. It only scary once we imagined the low-cut dress the Borg Queen liked to wear.
True, but presumably their current jobs give them less access to a constant stream of victims to molest.
Re:Israeli Airport Security folks are professional
on
Bruce Schneier vs. the TSA
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Bullshit.
Train people to conduct good security, and have them stationed at the airports. Make it a well-paying career and people might actually consider it as a career who might otherwise have avoided it. We may have more airports, but we also have more people who can be trained for the job, or are already trained.
We can't force the cell phone company to give us good service indoors at our work, but you're always free to threaten to go to their competitor. Would they rather lose a $150/month customer on a multi-year contract, or send you a repeater which likely costs not a lot more than that but keeps you as a satisfied customer?
The sad part is, the spoofee would be pretty likely (given what most students do;)) to have been sharing music or movies as well. The tricky part of all of our (well, my) righteous indignation is that it only applies to people who are only sharing non-infringing copies (e.g., Creative Commons music/movies/books, Linux ISOs, game patches). If some kid was foolish enough to be sharing the latest album or blockbuster hit, I'll feel somewhat sad that he got caught, but won't have the same degree of sympathy.
Now, the real fun would be if a MAC spoofer were to implicate the administrative staff.
It'd never work -- a sneakernet would require some critical mass of users who are somewhat rebellious, are tech-savvy, and interested in uncommon interests like sharing music or videos. Not to mention having computers. Colleges wouldn't be a good breeding ground for a sneakernet, as the students are too poor to own their own computers, and too busy to listen music. What's next, telling me that they're going to have kids playing games, too, instead of studying??
Surely it's not wise to be paranoid, but at the same time, it's prudent to be cautious. The schools WILL report things to the local police, the police will likely respond to some of them, and will likely trust the school IT "experts" that these kids were infringing copyrighted bits, even though some will be downloading/seeding Cataclysm updates. Moreover, when police are willing to harass and arrest people for taking their photograph in an entirely legal manner, or pretty much for anything the policeman thinks is illegal (but isn't), and that the job of the police is to make arrests so that the DA gets cases they can win, some students will get arrested -- whether by malice or incompentence.
I would be very surprised if at least one student at this school will be inconveniencd by the police (and probably arrested) while having done nothing illegal.
Students might consider writing to the police ahead of time, informing them of their intention to use P2P to share Linus ISOs and other things whose copyright licenses explicitly allow it, and to ONLY use it for that. They also can tell them that the school is not differentiating between infringing and non-infringing traffic.
When I bought my phone, I wanted to get a GSM one so that I could unlock it if/when my wife and I went on vacation in Europe. When we went to Ireland, it was pretty convenient. However, it would have been roughly as convenient to buy a cheap, low-frills "travel" phone from the Irish phone carrier. Futzing with the SIMs (and phone books between them, etc etc) was a pain in the neck.
Next time I travel, I'll buy a $10 used phone on Ebay, or something (perhaps one if those e-ink ones with long battery life and no features;)). I think it is silly to continue to base my US phone provider choice based on the ability to swap SIMs or unlock the phone, since only T-Mobile and AT&T use the GSM phones here anyways. (Unless I'm mistaken?) I'm much more interested in which Andriod phones are supported by whom.
On the other hand, soldiers that decide they don't really enjoy killing other people don't normally have the option of choosing a different job. Joe Grunt doesn't get to say, "I want to transfer to an intelligence job" or "I quit" - he must follow orders. Many are the stories of the job changing after they sign up (e.g., people in reserves who ended up serving in Iraq/Afghanistan for more years than they expected). You or I have the luxury of finding another job, they don't.
And yet, they still do a (mostly) thankless job, at great personal risk, which you or I would be unwilling to do. Much of what they do is good, some of what they do are for reasons which we might disagree with... they're still courageous.
Yes, the world has gone mad. That's the simplest explanation. The long one is, sometimes people get caught up in enforcing the letter of the law, or disagree on whether something is sarcasm or funny or merely exasperated, rather than serious. In the terror-obsessed world we live in, it's generally safer for one's career to overreact to the false positives than to risk letting one through. (Yes, I'm likely as dismayed by this as you are.)
These may be true, but the convenience factor is tremendous. All things considered, I'd rather do something ethical and legal than not, and Steam has nearly all of the convenience of Torrents (aside from selection), and none of the ethical baggage. Its price on many games is Nearly Free, and on others is competitive with buying the game in a brick and mortar store.
I'd rather buy on Steam than in a store, because I can painlessly reinstall it all later (or play on multiple machines easily) at any time in the future. Should Steam go bankrupt and the DRM servers go dead, there will be cracks on the net within days, if not hours, so that worry is a moot point also.
I'd still chalk it up to Chuck Norris slashdotting his own website, by proxy. If he hadn't been so gracious, he'd have not posted that, and we'd not have had a link to follow.
Also, I didn't know he had novels written. That's kindof cool. I don't really follow the genre, but I could see reading those. Maybe. If I can find reviews.
Slashdot Mirror
You're marked funny, but I think that's spot-on.
They do things which they believe are in the best interests of humanity in general.
They do some diligence (some argue not enough) to sanitize it so people don't get further endangered as a result.
They feel that Not Acting harms more than acting, so they act and release information in the interests of disclosing corruption, false propaganda, or things which are Unknown to the public at large.
They do this despite knowing that it will get them on the shit-lists of influential governments. They seem to try to stay legal, but it appears that they are willing to publish things which you or I would be unable to get away with publishing.
This anthropomorphizes Wikileaks a bit more than I probably should. It seems like their modus operandi is "Expose corruption and lies, even if it's against the law someplace", but that may just be my perception. They're like Robin Hoods of the information age.
To elaborate: in the short term, if implants get hackable wirelessly, I imagine that professional security goons will need to be implant-free in terms of nerves that affect anything motion, pain, or perception-related (and probably more). We don't want the Secret Service to suddenly keel over when their movement transmitters get jumbled (seizure?) or when their reflex augmentations get shut off (or hacked to do Other Crap).
If 4chan were to hack things up, I'd imagine they'd just put Guy Fawkes masks on footage of themselves, or overlay naughty pictures on the faces of Famous People.
Oh, come on, it's not like we'd have to worry about people hacking our brains or altering everyone's perceptions in realtime. Nobody would try that, and by "nobody" I mean "4chan".
It was ok when we imagined the blinkenlights and the dissolving artificial flesh. It only scary once we imagined the low-cut dress the Borg Queen liked to wear.
Sorry.
True, but presumably their current jobs give them less access to a constant stream of victims to molest.
Bullshit.
Train people to conduct good security, and have them stationed at the airports. Make it a well-paying career and people might actually consider it as a career who might otherwise have avoided it. We may have more airports, but we also have more people who can be trained for the job, or are already trained.
To be fair, they're really concerned about quarantining insects and bacteria that might spread to (or from) the mainland.
Pretty much.
We can't force the cell phone company to give us good service indoors at our work, but you're always free to threaten to go to their competitor. Would they rather lose a $150/month customer on a multi-year contract, or send you a repeater which likely costs not a lot more than that but keeps you as a satisfied customer?
If the subject were copyright infringement of music, we'd all be in support (or at least sympathize with) the infringing party.
If the subject were infringement of music copyrights for commercial gains, I'd have zero sympathy.
Other people would make them up in their heads and foist their lunacy upon us anyway.
Or you're not installing Gentoo ...
The sad part is, the spoofee would be pretty likely (given what most students do ;)) to have been sharing music or movies as well. The tricky part of all of our (well, my) righteous indignation is that it only applies to people who are only sharing non-infringing copies (e.g., Creative Commons music/movies/books, Linux ISOs, game patches). If some kid was foolish enough to be sharing the latest album or blockbuster hit, I'll feel somewhat sad that he got caught, but won't have the same degree of sympathy.
Now, the real fun would be if a MAC spoofer were to implicate the administrative staff.
It'd never work -- a sneakernet would require some critical mass of users who are somewhat rebellious, are tech-savvy, and interested in uncommon interests like sharing music or videos. Not to mention having computers. Colleges wouldn't be a good breeding ground for a sneakernet, as the students are too poor to own their own computers, and too busy to listen music. What's next, telling me that they're going to have kids playing games, too, instead of studying??
Surely it's not wise to be paranoid, but at the same time, it's prudent to be cautious. The schools WILL report things to the local police, the police will likely respond to some of them, and will likely trust the school IT "experts" that these kids were infringing copyrighted bits, even though some will be downloading/seeding Cataclysm updates. Moreover, when police are willing to harass and arrest people for taking their photograph in an entirely legal manner, or pretty much for anything the policeman thinks is illegal (but isn't), and that the job of the police is to make arrests so that the DA gets cases they can win, some students will get arrested -- whether by malice or incompentence.
I would be very surprised if at least one student at this school will be inconveniencd by the police (and probably arrested) while having done nothing illegal.
Students might consider writing to the police ahead of time, informing them of their intention to use P2P to share Linus ISOs and other things whose copyright licenses explicitly allow it, and to ONLY use it for that. They also can tell them that the school is not differentiating between infringing and non-infringing traffic.
No, but a skilled bard could find a way to phrase it well. :D
He'd likely still be prosecuted (if he read your or my mail), as he'd be acting as a vigilante.
When I bought my phone, I wanted to get a GSM one so that I could unlock it if/when my wife and I went on vacation in Europe. When we went to Ireland, it was pretty convenient. However, it would have been roughly as convenient to buy a cheap, low-frills "travel" phone from the Irish phone carrier. Futzing with the SIMs (and phone books between them, etc etc) was a pain in the neck.
Next time I travel, I'll buy a $10 used phone on Ebay, or something (perhaps one if those e-ink ones with long battery life and no features ;)). I think it is silly to continue to base my US phone provider choice based on the ability to swap SIMs or unlock the phone, since only T-Mobile and AT&T use the GSM phones here anyways. (Unless I'm mistaken?) I'm much more interested in which Andriod phones are supported by whom.
On the other hand, soldiers that decide they don't really enjoy killing other people don't normally have the option of choosing a different job. Joe Grunt doesn't get to say, "I want to transfer to an intelligence job" or "I quit" - he must follow orders. Many are the stories of the job changing after they sign up (e.g., people in reserves who ended up serving in Iraq/Afghanistan for more years than they expected). You or I have the luxury of finding another job, they don't.
And yet, they still do a (mostly) thankless job, at great personal risk, which you or I would be unwilling to do. Much of what they do is good, some of what they do are for reasons which we might disagree with... they're still courageous.
Yes, the world has gone mad.
That's the simplest explanation. The long one is, sometimes people get caught up in enforcing the letter of the law, or disagree on whether something is sarcasm or funny or merely exasperated, rather than serious. In the terror-obsessed world we live in, it's generally safer for one's career to overreact to the false positives than to risk letting one through. (Yes, I'm likely as dismayed by this as you are.)
These may be true, but the convenience factor is tremendous. All things considered, I'd rather do something ethical and legal than not, and Steam has nearly all of the convenience of Torrents (aside from selection), and none of the ethical baggage. Its price on many games is Nearly Free, and on others is competitive with buying the game in a brick and mortar store.
I'd rather buy on Steam than in a store, because I can painlessly reinstall it all later (or play on multiple machines easily) at any time in the future. Should Steam go bankrupt and the DRM servers go dead, there will be cracks on the net within days, if not hours, so that worry is a moot point also.
Yeah, but then you need to get the full time monitoring lackeys, and install the shark pools. It's just too much hassle.
I should have waited to post until I found more about the books. Here's an amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Justice-Riders-Chuck-Norris/dp/0805440321
Sounds like enjoyable stuff.
I'd still chalk it up to Chuck Norris slashdotting his own website, by proxy. If he hadn't been so gracious, he'd have not posted that, and we'd not have had a link to follow.
Also, I didn't know he had novels written. That's kindof cool. I don't really follow the genre, but I could see reading those. Maybe. If I can find reviews.