Ok - I'm going to start from the top on the "logical fallacy" issue, because I think one of us has misunderstood the other.
The discussion to date (pun intended;)):
1. jcr claimed that there was no need for regulation, because there was already legislation to cover these cases, hence implying that legislation precludes regulation. [ Claim: A implies not B, therefore B should not be considered (no evidence or further reasoning provided) ]
2. I made the point that having existing legistlation should not preclude regulation, and that regulation is often a good way of enforcing existing legislation. I used the example of some banking regulation being used to detect tax evasion to illustrate my point. [ Claims: A AND B can be better than just A (by example), therefore B should be considered ]
3. You accused me of a logical fallacy. You still have not explained what part of my logic is flawed, except to point out that there are other financial crimes apart from tax evasion, but I fail to see how that is relevant to my point.
4. To quote you: "So let me understand. You put forth a thesis, attempt to prove it and I call you out on your proof." I did not put forward a thesis. I am claiming that someone elses thesis is wrong. You could require me to prove that regulation of financial institutions helps prevent/catch tax cheats, but I assumed we could take that as a given (Note: I'm not claiming that all tax cheats are caught that way, or that it allows all tax cheats to be caught).
If someone claims that all birds can fly, I merely need to find a flightless bird to disprove their claim. The burden of proof is in their court, not mine. If I want to claim that *all* birds are flightless on the other hand, then that's another story entirely.
Anyway, on with other points:
But personally, if I used a dating service and wasn't getting actual dates out of it in a reasonable amount of time, I'd cancel it.
One of the problems here is that in one of the cases going through court at the moment, someone is claiming that one of the sites was hiring people not only to send flirty emails, but also to go on one-off dates. The claim is that the "bait" admitted to being paid to go on breakfast, lunch, dinner, and coffee dates day in, day out.
I personally think the claim is thin, as I am unconvinced about the profitability of such a scheme, but if the dating site had a model that could reasonably accurately predict when someone was likely to quit (or just use a flirty email to get them back in for a month once they quit), and target people they thought were likely to stick with the site for several more months if they had a single date, then it *could* be profitable.
The dating services do know who their paying customers are.
Agreed. But under what circumstances are they required to hand that information, and to which authorities? (I really don't know the answer to that question - I'm *really* not a lawyer).
At any rate, would anyone sue my ISP because I'm trying to send scams out over the email?
I'd hope such legislation would never be introduced (I assume you mean "should the ISP be held accountable for the emails you send"). It *should* be possible, given sufficient evidence that a customer is acting fraudulently, to force the ISP to reveal details of the customer. I understand this is already possible for very serious crimes, but how serious do the crimes need to be to get this information under existing legislation?
I doubt people sign up because there is just one and only one profile they like. I don't think I entirely agree with you there. People are going to be attracted to the site because there are a lot of profiles they like. Most of those profiles are going to be legitimate; some may not be. People are not going to pay for the service until they want to contact someone. I'd expect they will initially pay to contact a singe person, rather than sign up an
So if the larger storm is twice as wide[...] Your doing well...
[...] and twice as high Oh. I think I see the problem...
Who said it was twice as high? To quote me, "being only about half as high as it is wide". Hmm... Let's try wikipedia: "The Great Red Spot's dimensions are ~24-40,000 km × 12-14,000 km.", and "At the start of 2004, the Great Red Spot was approximately half as large as it was 100 years ago.".
Now, given that it has shrunk by 50% over the past 100 years, it is reasonable to assump it is currently at the lower end of the wikipedia range.
So, let's use your formula: A(j) = 3.14 * 12000/2 * 24000/2. That's about 2.26e8km^2. We're good so far? (Just to explain, the "/2"s are because the formula is talking about radius, not diameter.)
Now, we know that the Earth is nearly circular, and that it's radius is about 6375km (Amazingly, this makes the Great Red Ring about twice as wide as Earch). I'm sure you'll agree that the area of a circle is pi * r^2?
Ok - so A(e) = 3.14 * 6375^2, which is about 1.27e08 km^2. Suprisingly, that is much closer to twice the area of Earth's cross section than it is four.
Surely you didn't need me to work that out for you? Sorry if I sound a bit short - I'm just sick of seeing the same bad maths so many times in the wrong thread.
However, the fact remains that it should be the -perpetrators- punished for the crime, not the sites on which they commit them. I absolutely agree with you, however the sites should not be allowed to turn a blind eye to an illegal practice they are profiting from.
But a site should not be liable if a con artist uses its services, whether that site be this one or a dating service. Again, couldn't agree more. I'm suggesting that regulation be used to help catch these people, not that the ISP be responsible for the actions of their users. I'm only suggesting that the ISP's not be able to shrug it off as "not their problem".
Generally, I'm not too hot on anything that requires a website or ISP to "police" content put up by users. Agree again!:) In the end, it is up to the users to obey the law.
What I'm not fond of, is a company profiting from a kind of fraud that they know goes on, when there are ways of detecting/reporting it. IMHO, dating sites should be required to have some form of complaints department, where these kinds of fraud are detected, and reported to authorities.
And to a certain extent, people do need to be aware of the old truism--if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Yes, but that's no reason to let people take advantage of gullibility. To a certain extent, victims of 419 scams are really victims of their own crimes. That doesn't lesson the evilness of what the 419 scammers are doing. It's in our nature to be greedy and gullible. The ISP's shouldn't be responsible for the 419 scammers, but they should be required to do anything reasonable to help track the perpetrators down.
Would you hold the ISPs that route scams (SPAM) through their routers? No, but I'd expect them to know who their customers were. At the very least, they're going to need to have a credit card number in the ISP example. For online dating, anybody can just come along, say they're an 18yo virgin, then get some idiot to pay the dating site to contact the fraudster. Ironically, that's in the dating site's advantage - some bozo has just paid for their service, and the dating site has made profit from the fraudster being there.
Furthermore, the case in the courts at the moment is claiming that a dating site paid for people to contact people. They are in a prime position to take advantage of people, and they shouldn't be able to do that.
Wow, nice logical fallacy.
Really? I could have sworn you were guilty of that rather than me. I explicitly said that there are other reasons (and agendas) for introducing any kind of regulation, but that something being illegal is not a good reason to not regulate against it. I provided a single example of this. You claim that since my example does not cover the case of some other example, my entire reason is fallacious.
Wow, nice logical fallacy. Come back when you have some kind of valid point, and can properly back it up.
What's being described here is already illegal, but the laws are difficult to enforce online. They are not proposing making these kinds of fraud illegal, but putting regulations on the "middle-men" (the dating sites) to make it harder for criminals to get away with it.
To say that the regulations are not needed because the crimes are already illegal is a lot like saying that regulation of financial systems and institutions is irrelevant because tax evasion is already illegal. The point of regulating should be to help enforce what is already law (although I realise there are often other reasons for putting in regulations).
* Assumes objects are of the same shape and the shape is uniform in one dimension. Which should be pretty good assumptions in this case.
No, sorry. The cross section of Earth is very nearly circular. The Great Red Spot is very eliptical, being only about half as high as it is wide. In this case, something that is approximately twice as wide as Earth, also has approximately twice the area.
If the great red spot is twice as wide as earth is, then its radius is 12,756.3 km and the earth's is 6378.15. That means that the great red spot is an area of approximately 510950815.6266 square kilometers and the earth's cross section has an area of approximately 127737703.90665 square kilometers.
But now you can throw your maths right out the window, because you're using the wrong formula. From Wikipedia, "The Great Red Spot's dimensions are ~24-40,000 km × 12-14,000 km". It's not circular, sorry.
At it's smallest size (which I understand it is close to at the moment - It has halved in size over the past 100 years), it is almost exactly 2 Earths wide, and is also 2 times the Earth's cross-section in area.
For anyone who didn't cringe at that post (and I'm talking about the wording of the post, not what MS did or didn't do), please read COPYRIGHT vs. TRADEMARK vs. PATENT before taking part in this discussion.
How do we stop them from just mutating into non-viable types of their former selves and corrupting the colony?
That's nothing! What happens when they mutate enough that they work out how to use us to generate electricity for them! It'll be like watching another sequel to The Matrix!
In Soviet Russia, bacteria generates electricity from YOU!
Virtually no security exploits take advantage of timing like that. In any case, the same applies on fixed binaries, since the relative execution times of any 2 parts of the system depend so heavily on the hardware timings such as RAM, and external bits like the network and the remote users.
Many security exploits take advantage of the layout of the stack - they rarely need to know about anything outside the stack, or even the value of the stack pointer until a certain point in the exploit where they can just read it anyway. The layout of the stack is almost never influenced by the kernel. Even major upgrades of the compiler are unlikely to change that layout.
Most other vulnerabilities (such as the one in the article, most XSS issues, etc) allow documents to make requests on the user's behalf that otherwise shouldn't be allowed. In these kind of exploits, the attacker doesn't even need to know the layout of the stack. The just tell the app "modify this file", "create this file".
I doubt FedEx is going to let them open some little envelope from you to your grand-mother. I doubt MPAA is going to effort or cost of training dogs to catch you sending a pirated movie to her, either.
FTFA: "These DVDs are often smuggled by criminal networks involved in large scale piracy operations from around the world."
If there's some big shipment labelled as "computer monitors", and the dogs pick up a scent, they're probably going to want to know if it really is monitors, or thousands of pirated DVDs.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok - I'm going to start from the top on the "logical fallacy" issue, because I think one of us has misunderstood the other.
;)):
The discussion to date (pun intended
1. jcr claimed that there was no need for regulation, because there was already legislation to cover these cases, hence implying that legislation precludes regulation. [ Claim: A implies not B, therefore B should not be considered (no evidence or further reasoning provided) ]
2. I made the point that having existing legistlation should not preclude regulation, and that regulation is often a good way of enforcing existing legislation. I used the example of some banking regulation being used to detect tax evasion to illustrate my point. [ Claims: A AND B can be better than just A (by example), therefore B should be considered ]
3. You accused me of a logical fallacy. You still have not explained what part of my logic is flawed, except to point out that there are other financial crimes apart from tax evasion, but I fail to see how that is relevant to my point.
4. To quote you: "So let me understand. You put forth a thesis, attempt to prove it and I call you out on your proof." I did not put forward a thesis. I am claiming that someone elses thesis is wrong. You could require me to prove that regulation of financial institutions helps prevent/catch tax cheats, but I assumed we could take that as a given (Note: I'm not claiming that all tax cheats are caught that way, or that it allows all tax cheats to be caught).
If someone claims that all birds can fly, I merely need to find a flightless bird to disprove their claim. The burden of proof is in their court, not mine. If I want to claim that *all* birds are flightless on the other hand, then that's another story entirely.
Anyway, on with other points:
But personally, if I used a dating service and wasn't getting actual dates out of it in a reasonable amount of time, I'd cancel it.
One of the problems here is that in one of the cases going through court at the moment, someone is claiming that one of the sites was hiring people not only to send flirty emails, but also to go on one-off dates. The claim is that the "bait" admitted to being paid to go on breakfast, lunch, dinner, and coffee dates day in, day out.
I personally think the claim is thin, as I am unconvinced about the profitability of such a scheme, but if the dating site had a model that could reasonably accurately predict when someone was likely to quit (or just use a flirty email to get them back in for a month once they quit), and target people they thought were likely to stick with the site for several more months if they had a single date, then it *could* be profitable.
The dating services do know who their paying customers are.
Agreed. But under what circumstances are they required to hand that information, and to which authorities? (I really don't know the answer to that question - I'm *really* not a lawyer).
At any rate, would anyone sue my ISP because I'm trying to send scams out over the email?
I'd hope such legislation would never be introduced (I assume you mean "should the ISP be held accountable for the emails you send"). It *should* be possible, given sufficient evidence that a customer is acting fraudulently, to force the ISP to reveal details of the customer. I understand this is already possible for very serious crimes, but how serious do the crimes need to be to get this information under existing legislation?
I doubt people sign up because there is just one and only one profile they like.
I don't think I entirely agree with you there. People are going to be attracted to the site because there are a lot of profiles they like. Most of those profiles are going to be legitimate; some may not be. People are not going to pay for the service until they want to contact someone. I'd expect they will initially pay to contact a singe person, rather than sign up an
Evil be you.
:))
Okay - I admit that wasn't very funny. (But feel free to mod me insightful!
I suppose you could try ignoring them as a third option, but it would have ended up like B.
:(.
It would be kind of like B, but with a bunch of people you hired in China being locked up
Gah - I can do basic maths, but I can't spell at this time of night. You'll work it out ;).
Oh dear. Let me start again.
The area of an elipse is A=pi*a*b
Yep.
So if the larger storm is twice as wide[...]
Your doing well...
[...] and twice as high
Oh. I think I see the problem...
Who said it was twice as high? To quote me, "being only about half as high as it is wide". Hmm... Let's try wikipedia: "The Great Red Spot's dimensions are ~24-40,000 km × 12-14,000 km.", and "At the start of 2004, the Great Red Spot was approximately half as large as it was 100 years ago.".
Now, given that it has shrunk by 50% over the past 100 years, it is reasonable to assump it is currently at the lower end of the wikipedia range.
So, let's use your formula: A(j) = 3.14 * 12000/2 * 24000/2. That's about 2.26e8km^2. We're good so far? (Just to explain, the "/2"s are because the formula is talking about radius, not diameter.)
Now, we know that the Earth is nearly circular, and that it's radius is about 6375km (Amazingly, this makes the Great Red Ring about twice as wide as Earch). I'm sure you'll agree that the area of a circle is pi * r^2?
Ok - so A(e) = 3.14 * 6375^2, which is about 1.27e08 km^2. Suprisingly, that is much closer to twice the area of Earth's cross section than it is four.
Surely you didn't need me to work that out for you? Sorry if I sound a bit short - I'm just sick of seeing the same bad maths so many times in the wrong thread.
However, the fact remains that it should be the -perpetrators- punished for the crime, not the sites on which they commit them.
:) In the end, it is up to the users to obey the law.
I absolutely agree with you, however the sites should not be allowed to turn a blind eye to an illegal practice they are profiting from.
But a site should not be liable if a con artist uses its services, whether that site be this one or a dating service.
Again, couldn't agree more. I'm suggesting that regulation be used to help catch these people, not that the ISP be responsible for the actions of their users. I'm only suggesting that the ISP's not be able to shrug it off as "not their problem".
Generally, I'm not too hot on anything that requires a website or ISP to "police" content put up by users.
Agree again!
What I'm not fond of, is a company profiting from a kind of fraud that they know goes on, when there are ways of detecting/reporting it. IMHO, dating sites should be required to have some form of complaints department, where these kinds of fraud are detected, and reported to authorities.
And to a certain extent, people do need to be aware of the old truism--if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
Yes, but that's no reason to let people take advantage of gullibility. To a certain extent, victims of 419 scams are really victims of their own crimes. That doesn't lesson the evilness of what the 419 scammers are doing. It's in our nature to be greedy and gullible. The ISP's shouldn't be responsible for the 419 scammers, but they should be required to do anything reasonable to help track the perpetrators down.
Would you hold the ISPs that route scams (SPAM) through their routers?
No, but I'd expect them to know who their customers were. At the very least, they're going to need to have a credit card number in the ISP example. For online dating, anybody can just come along, say they're an 18yo virgin, then get some idiot to pay the dating site to contact the fraudster. Ironically, that's in the dating site's advantage - some bozo has just paid for their service, and the dating site has made profit from the fraudster being there.
Furthermore, the case in the courts at the moment is claiming that a dating site paid for people to contact people. They are in a prime position to take advantage of people, and they shouldn't be able to do that.
Wow, nice logical fallacy.
Really? I could have sworn you were guilty of that rather than me. I explicitly said that there are other reasons (and agendas) for introducing any kind of regulation, but that something being illegal is not a good reason to not regulate against it. I provided a single example of this. You claim that since my example does not cover the case of some other example, my entire reason is fallacious.
Wow, nice logical fallacy. Come back when you have some kind of valid point, and can properly back it up.
What's being described here is already illegal, but the laws are difficult to enforce online. They are not proposing making these kinds of fraud illegal, but putting regulations on the "middle-men" (the dating sites) to make it harder for criminals to get away with it.
To say that the regulations are not needed because the crimes are already illegal is a lot like saying that regulation of financial systems and institutions is irrelevant because tax evasion is already illegal. The point of regulating should be to help enforce what is already law (although I realise there are often other reasons for putting in regulations).
* Assumes objects are of the same shape and the shape is uniform in one dimension. Which should be pretty good assumptions in this case.
No, sorry. The cross section of Earth is very nearly circular. The Great Red Spot is very eliptical, being only about half as high as it is wide. In this case, something that is approximately twice as wide as Earth, also has approximately twice the area.
If the great red spot is twice as wide as earth is, then its radius is 12,756.3 km and the earth's is 6378.15. That means that the great red spot is an area of approximately 510950815.6266 square kilometers and the earth's cross section has an area of approximately 127737703.90665 square kilometers.
But now you can throw your maths right out the window, because you're using the wrong formula. From Wikipedia, "The Great Red Spot's dimensions are ~24-40,000 km × 12-14,000 km". It's not circular, sorry.
At it's smallest size (which I understand it is close to at the moment - It has halved in size over the past 100 years), it is almost exactly 2 Earths wide, and is also 2 times the Earth's cross-section in area.
I know I'm knew
You must be knew here... Wait... That doesn't look right... Hey! You did that on purpose, didn't you?
Does everything become political?
You must be new here.
Shit I wish I had mod points today - but my workmates are looking at me strangely now.
It's a great puzzle game! It's the sequel to Pontifex. If you haven't tried it, you should.
For anyone who didn't cringe at that post (and I'm talking about the wording of the post, not what MS did or didn't do), please read COPYRIGHT vs. TRADEMARK vs. PATENT before taking part in this discussion.
How do we stop them from just mutating into
non-viable types of their former selves and corrupting the colony?
That's nothing! What happens when they mutate enough that they work out how to use us to generate electricity for them! It'll be like watching another sequel to The Matrix!
In Soviet Russia, bacteria generates electricity from YOU!
Virtually no security exploits take advantage of timing like that. In any case, the same applies on fixed binaries, since the relative execution times of any 2 parts of the system depend so heavily on the hardware timings such as RAM, and external bits like the network and the remote users.
Many security exploits take advantage of the layout of the stack - they rarely need to know about anything outside the stack, or even the value of the stack pointer until a certain point in the exploit where they can just read it anyway. The layout of the stack is almost never influenced by the kernel. Even major upgrades of the compiler are unlikely to change that layout.
Most other vulnerabilities (such as the one in the article, most XSS issues, etc) allow documents to make requests on the user's behalf that otherwise shouldn't be allowed. In these kind of exploits, the attacker doesn't even need to know the layout of the stack. The just tell the app "modify this file", "create this file".
Umm - What's the kernel got to do with how the source code gets compiled?
I doubt FedEx is going to let them open some little envelope from you to your grand-mother. I doubt MPAA is going to effort or cost of training dogs to catch you sending a pirated movie to her, either.
FTFA: "These DVDs are often smuggled by criminal networks involved in large scale piracy operations from around the world."
If there's some big shipment labelled as "computer monitors", and the dogs pick up a scent, they're probably going to want to know if it really is monitors, or thousands of pirated DVDs.
Wait a second. This is slashdot. Aren't I supposed to find some subtle reason why I'm technically right? Oh, wait - I must be new here ;)
I hereby stand corrected. <insert image of afaik_ianal(nor a historian) running away with tail firmly between legs>
Ahh - when was India ruled by Muslims? Are you sure you're not thinking Pakistan?
I know I've seen this already, pics and all.
No, not a dupe. You're thinking of Real Doll.
But it's only 1 letter away from the state in which I live :(