Give the right person physical access, and all bets are off. In fact, I'm surprised none of the defence lawyers have used this to their advantage. Set up a demonstration in the courtroom of exactly how "hard" it is to get into the average computer if you have physical access.
You don't even need to touch their HD or break their passwords (barring a bios password). Bootable flash drive? Portable apps anyone?
Okay, well I do wish you luck if you try to argue that someone snuck into your dorm room (and no one else's!) without your knowledge, carrying bootable equipment, opened the P2P programs on your OS, downloaded copyrighted files, and then vanished with no clear benefit to himself, without creating any witnesses or appearing on any video cameras.
Seriously -- your defense would work just the same as a defense in prosecutions of laws you do support (child porn, ID theft), so it sounds to me like you're just rationalizing: "no one can ever be proven, to my standards, to have committed a computer crime, but only for those crimes I don't think should be crimes."
Well, that, plus it's the same as prosecuting party 'a' because party 'b' stole their firearm and used it in a crime, which would never stand up in court (unless party 'a' were somehow proven to be implicated or was somehow negligent).
Um, not reporting the theft of your firearm until someone commits a crime with it (assuming there's a long enough gap) will certainly get you into a lot of trouble, even if you're not charged with the crime that that person committed.
This in no-way limits the pool of potential "defendants" to two, (which was also stated in the summary), it simply says that it could have been on-or-the-other of the two room-mates, or any guest they may have ever had, or anyone else who may have had access to the room (i.e. janitorial staff, friends, friends' friends, party guests, etc.).
I got in trouble with my university for trolling an IRC chat room. (Chat roomed admin called my ISP.) They traced it to my internet connection.
TRUST ME, the "roommate, janitorial staff, friends, friends' friends, party guests, etc." defense DOESN'T WORK. They know you can secure access to your own computer and will attribute responsibility for it. And remember, this was for a reprimand offense. Imagine how much more scruity such a b/s defense is going to get when you try it on a copyright infringement case in an actual court.
Yeah, but I think this is the *best* summary so far:
-We're still going to make grub HIGHLY RECOMMENDED in the install process. I mean, obviously, it's stupid to install such a flaky bootloader that can't handle large hard drives when you don't need to, but why bother newcomers with a warning about the nasty nasty risk of locking users out of their computer? Changing this would be tantamout to admitting UbuntuDupe was right, and we can't have that. Too painful to admit error.
-Ditto for advising the user to have a reliable boot disk, like a Windows release, when they install grub. Obviously, the Ubuntu install CD is insufficient as a "reliable boot disk", but saying otherwise would -- you guessed it -- hurt our feelings.
-Continue to promote as "open access, usable by all". By "all", of course, we mean nerds who have installed Linux on six different people's PCs. Remember -- it's just a slogan, not something we actually believe in.
-Not budget any money for mass market advertising or in-store promotions. After all, only evil people affiliate with big box retailers. And do you really want our user base to include people who SHOP there? Yuck.
-Add a bunch of little widgets that only nerds who brag about their configuration will like.
-Have more names like "Hairy Hardon". See, too many corporate users are taking Ubuntu seriously. We need to remind people of our "fun" side. We definitely don't want to see the day when someone starts making those "get a mac" ads about Ubuntu!
Wrong. I'm not complaining that I had "a problem" installing Ubuntu. I'm complaining that the install failure locked me out of my computer entirely, and that the reason the failure so cascaded was that I followed a HIGHLY RECOMMENDED instruction, and that the forums could not help me unless I had taken precautions that are mentioned nowhere in the install instructions. In other words, pretty pitiful design errors got through.
Furthermore, the reason I continue to talk about this *today* is that each and every day on/., I see people making the very same design criticisms I did, but in different contexts, and then getting modded to 5, as if people are incapable of seeing errors in their sacred cows.
Nope. Many people here claimed that by having an install CD, I necessarily must have the Live CD.
Btw, I think the concept of "advanced options for advanced users" is ill-defined for Ubuntu. In the past, people have told me that on a dual boot:
-Pressing F8 and selected a secondary hard drive is "too complicated for most people" while -Installing a flaky bootloader that you need a second computer and CD burner, plus command-line familiarity, to diagnose on failure, but allows you one less keystroke on bootup, is appropriate for beginners. (Remember, grub is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. If they have removed that statement from later versions, I want a gold-plated apology.)
Remember that Mac that was released that didn't even have a manual? That's what the goal should be.
Btw, if I were immature, I would say something like this:
-Craig seems to be planning to take a *wide stance* on Hairy Hardon. Narf!
-Hey, this is Ubuntu, so if you buy the book online, does that mean the book will have instructions inside on how to open the package, which people will refer to when you ask for help on how to get it open?
-"Chapter 2 dives into installing Ubuntu from either the Live CD or the Alternative installation CD" Wait, I thought the Live CD *was* the install CD. At least that's one of the two inconsistent explanations they give to newbies.
-Doesn't selling copyrighted works go against the Free as in Freedom philosophy? But luckily I'm not immature enough to do that.
it's just flailing like in Twilight Princess... not "murder simulating" like they tried to insinuate (note: not a quote).
Well, if you'll recall, USA Today said that Manhunt 2 "literally gives you the hands of a killer", which if they understood how to use "literally" would be a serious accusation.
(Hey, I'm all for colorful use of terms. But what am I supposed to say when I literally mean literally?)
The solution would be to have a "Consumer Reports" of gaming where people unaffiliated with the publishers, buy the game at a retail outlet like anyone else at launch, play it, write the review, and then do this consistently for all games that are released.
The disadvantages:
-You wouldn't see the review until after launch. (Probably a week for some games.) -It doesn't seem to have a viable revenue model, unless someone knows a counterexample?
In fairness, Katrina and the IOE were largely because of CO2 emissions in the First World (due to e.g. jerks who still use incandescents) that caused global climate change. *please mod flamebait, please mod flamebait*
Why not just have a large cube farm of women sitting there reading search engine requests, doing a look up of the information and then directing customer to information?
They do: that's ChaCha.
They could wear glasses and have their hair in a bun, that only comes down when they're overwhelmed by desire for a games play, Star Trek watching geek?
I don't think he was being anti-semantic, he was just saying that newish tag systems should be segregated off into their own neighborhoods, separate from the rest of the internet, and possibly flagged with a special star.
My complaint was this: state/local/federal governments promise benefits in the form of pensions, which pay out later.
That obligation has a present (discounted) value today. For example, $3000/month till death, for a then-70-year old, starting twenty years from now, would cost some amount to fully fund today. As a rough estimate, let's say that's $60,000 (the present actuarial value). If the government has the obligation *now* to pay that benefit *later*, it should count that liability on its balance sheet today, and should set aside money today (in an investment portfolio) to even out that obligation -- the $60,000 so the money is there when the pensioner needs to draw on it.
They don't do this. Instead, they take current tax revenues and use it, basically to buy votes and re-election (i.e. the present "fads" that win votes). If anything, they only cover a small portion of the actuarially-accurate value, risking that future taxpayers won't be able to pay for it.
In the case of the SSA, the government takes the surplus and "loans it to itself", an accounting fiction rivaling what Enron did. I can't fund my retirement by writing an IOU to myself, sticking it in my mattress, and "withdrawing" it later, yet that's exactly what government pension funds do.
Okay, that is *not* fair. The Semantic Web would have untold benefits for humanity. For example: if you wanted to find out which Major League batter had the most RBIs in 1997, you would have to spend three -- perhaps four -- minutes learning how to use an internet search engine.
With the Berners-Lee Semantic Web(tm), however, you would just type in "which Major League batter had the most RBIs in 1997?"
(Of course, most search engines will already pick out the relevant terms even if you typed that question in, but that doens't count because they don't do it *intelligently*.)
I think you may be interested in Robin Hanson's futarchy idea. It incorporates that "random person's judgment" you refer to, but tempers it by requiring them to only make judgments for which they'll lose money if they're wrong. That is, it would set up prediction markets for bets on the merit of various policies, where "merit" is defined by a legislature's setting of some utility function. (e.g. k1*economic growth rate - k2*unemployment rate - k3* inflation rate - k4*pollutant emissions) The legislature would then implement policies that *bettors*, in the aggregate, believe will work.
Hanson summarizes it as "vote on values (the utility function), bet on beliefs (what you believe will optimize that)".
Enron had been cooking the books for some time before they collapsed. The powers in charge were concerned only about their own profits. If they'd have been forthcoming with their employees that the world was not all roses, they could have had a chance to get out without needing "illegal insider trading".
Trading based on information you have privileged access to, would violate insider trading laws. If OTOH you believe they should have just publicly said that the stock sucks and you should sell it, see below.
In any case, Enron unraveled because a few people actually dissected Enrons *public* filings and saw how shaky it was. What Enron did was more like disclosing "source code" which they jumbled up but which achieved the same thing while being harder to read.
They also followed the advice and hype that came from the Enron executives. They were told that their company was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Sure, they could have sought advice from outside, but why should they expect their employers to be giving them a load of BS?
In other words, why shouldn't they accept self-serving statements at face value, in contravention of universally-known advice to diversify one's investments?
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree then on whether or not executives are morally obligated to make decisions based on morals.
Morals? Okay.
Each and every person who commits any crime (for robustness, let's only take laws we believe are just) is morally obligated to confess and turn himself again.
Do you agree?
Okay, then let me see where you've spoken in favor of repealing the fifth amendment.
Asking that executives tell people not to buy their stock because it's overvalued is basically the same. How about instead, we just require executives to *reveal through their actions* whether they think the stock is overvalued by disclosing their purchases, sales, and options exercises? Oh wait, we already do.
I remember that one common criticism of McCain-Feingold was that it's like the "Mainstream Media empowerment act" in how it basically allows mainstream media outlets to freely make political speech, but keeps anyone from countering that message with ads near an election.
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Give the right person physical access, and all bets are off. In fact, I'm surprised none of the defence lawyers have used this to their advantage. Set up a demonstration in the courtroom of exactly how "hard" it is to get into the average computer if you have physical access.
You don't even need to touch their HD or break their passwords (barring a bios password). Bootable flash drive? Portable apps anyone?
Okay, well I do wish you luck if you try to argue that someone snuck into your dorm room (and no one else's!) without your knowledge, carrying bootable equipment, opened the P2P programs on your OS, downloaded copyrighted files, and then vanished with no clear benefit to himself, without creating any witnesses or appearing on any video cameras.
Seriously -- your defense would work just the same as a defense in prosecutions of laws you do support (child porn, ID theft), so it sounds to me like you're just rationalizing: "no one can ever be proven, to my standards, to have committed a computer crime, but only for those crimes I don't think should be crimes."
Well, that, plus it's the same as prosecuting party 'a' because party 'b' stole their firearm and used it in a crime, which would never stand up in court (unless party 'a' were somehow proven to be implicated or was somehow negligent).
Um, not reporting the theft of your firearm until someone commits a crime with it (assuming there's a long enough gap) will certainly get you into a lot of trouble, even if you're not charged with the crime that that person committed.
This in no-way limits the pool of potential "defendants" to two, (which was also stated in the summary), it simply says that it could have been on-or-the-other of the two room-mates, or any guest they may have ever had, or anyone else who may have had access to the room (i.e. janitorial staff, friends, friends' friends, party guests, etc.).
I got in trouble with my university for trolling an IRC chat room. (Chat roomed admin called my ISP.) They traced it to my internet connection.
TRUST ME, the "roommate, janitorial staff, friends, friends' friends, party guests, etc." defense DOESN'T WORK. They know you can secure access to your own computer and will attribute responsibility for it. And remember, this was for a reprimand offense. Imagine how much more scruity such a b/s defense is going to get when you try it on a copyright infringement case in an actual court.
Not AL, but aware of the patience of courts.
Yeah, but I think this is the *best* summary so far:
-We're still going to make grub HIGHLY RECOMMENDED in the install process. I mean, obviously, it's stupid to install such a flaky bootloader that can't handle large hard drives when you don't need to, but why bother newcomers with a warning about the nasty nasty risk of locking users out of their computer? Changing this would be tantamout to admitting UbuntuDupe was right, and we can't have that. Too painful to admit error.
-Ditto for advising the user to have a reliable boot disk, like a Windows release, when they install grub. Obviously, the Ubuntu install CD is insufficient as a "reliable boot disk", but saying otherwise would -- you guessed it -- hurt our feelings.
-Continue to promote as "open access, usable by all". By "all", of course, we mean nerds who have installed Linux on six different people's PCs. Remember -- it's just a slogan, not something we actually believe in.
-Not budget any money for mass market advertising or in-store promotions. After all, only evil people affiliate with big box retailers. And do you really want our user base to include people who SHOP there? Yuck.
-Add a bunch of little widgets that only nerds who brag about their configuration will like.
-Have more names like "Hairy Hardon". See, too many corporate users are taking Ubuntu seriously. We need to remind people of our "fun" side. We definitely don't want to see the day when someone starts making those "get a mac" ads about Ubuntu!
-Take over the desktop market in '08!!!!
Whats new?
Four simple words: "on the internet".
(I estimate 60% or responses will reference my counting ability.)
the stroke order they learned is different from the stroke order I learned, so anytime I watch them write, it looks a bit odd.
You mean, you look more elitist?
Wrong. I'm not complaining that I had "a problem" installing Ubuntu. I'm complaining that the install failure locked me out of my computer entirely, and that the reason the failure so cascaded was that I followed a HIGHLY RECOMMENDED instruction, and that the forums could not help me unless I had taken precautions that are mentioned nowhere in the install instructions. In other words, pretty pitiful design errors got through.
/., I see people making the very same design criticisms I did, but in different contexts, and then getting modded to 5, as if people are incapable of seeing errors in their sacred cows.
Furthermore, the reason I continue to talk about this *today* is that each and every day on
...and would also kindly send a picture of them holding a sign that says, "p wnd b/y sh iv er me timb3rs".
Nope. Many people here claimed that by having an install CD, I necessarily must have the Live CD.
Btw, I think the concept of "advanced options for advanced users" is ill-defined for Ubuntu. In the past, people have told me that on a dual boot:
-Pressing F8 and selected a secondary hard drive is "too complicated for most people" while
-Installing a flaky bootloader that you need a second computer and CD burner, plus command-line familiarity, to diagnose on failure, but allows you one less keystroke on bootup, is appropriate for beginners. (Remember, grub is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. If they have removed that statement from later versions, I want a gold-plated apology.)
Go fig.
While they will be able to track the cookie, if hundreds of thousands of people are using that same cookie, the data is not going to mean much.
;-)
On the contrary, it will give us aggregate web surfing statistics for paranoid privacy loons
Btw, if I were immature, I would say something like this: -Craig seems to be planning to take a *wide stance* on Hairy Hardon. Narf!
-Hey, this is Ubuntu, so if you buy the book online, does that mean the book will have instructions inside on how to open the package, which people will refer to when you ask for help on how to get it open?
-"Chapter 2 dives into installing Ubuntu from either the Live CD or the Alternative installation CD" Wait, I thought the Live CD *was* the install CD. At least that's one of the two inconsistent explanations they give to newbies.
-Doesn't selling copyrighted works go against the Free as in Freedom philosophy? But luckily I'm not immature enough to do that.
it's just flailing like in Twilight Princess... not "murder simulating" like they tried to insinuate (note: not a quote).
Well, if you'll recall, USA Today said that Manhunt 2 "literally gives you the hands of a killer", which if they understood how to use "literally" would be a serious accusation.
(Hey, I'm all for colorful use of terms. But what am I supposed to say when I literally mean literally?)
The solution would be to have a "Consumer Reports" of gaming where people unaffiliated with the publishers, buy the game at a retail outlet like anyone else at launch, play it, write the review, and then do this consistently for all games that are released.
The disadvantages:
-You wouldn't see the review until after launch. (Probably a week for some games.)
-It doesn't seem to have a viable revenue model, unless someone knows a counterexample?
In fairness, Katrina and the IOE were largely because of CO2 emissions in the First World (due to e.g. jerks who still use incandescents) that caused global climate change. *please mod flamebait, please mod flamebait*
You can just call me Smilindog2000 in public.
;-)
After all that, don't you think "Frownindog2000" would be more appropriate?
I think the technical explanation for the flawed Google-Comcast interface is that Google has frequentus visitus but lacks extortionus paymentus.
If you know what I mean.
Why not just have a large cube farm of women sitting there reading search engine requests, doing a look up of the information and then directing customer to information?
They do: that's ChaCha.
They could wear glasses and have their hair in a bun, that only comes down when they're overwhelmed by desire for a games play, Star Trek watching geek?
Okay, maybe not that part.
I don't think he was being anti-semantic, he was just saying that newish tag systems should be segregated off into their own neighborhoods, separate from the rest of the internet, and possibly flagged with a special star.
(Hey, it works for me quite a bit!)
Why don't they just give their own content the metatag "non-hype"? ;-)
No to all.
My complaint was this: state/local/federal governments promise benefits in the form of pensions, which pay out later.
That obligation has a present (discounted) value today. For example, $3000/month till death, for a then-70-year old, starting twenty years from now, would cost some amount to fully fund today. As a rough estimate, let's say that's $60,000 (the present actuarial value). If the government has the obligation *now* to pay that benefit *later*, it should count that liability on its balance sheet today, and should set aside money today (in an investment portfolio) to even out that obligation -- the $60,000 so the money is there when the pensioner needs to draw on it.
They don't do this. Instead, they take current tax revenues and use it, basically to buy votes and re-election (i.e. the present "fads" that win votes). If anything, they only cover a small portion of the actuarially-accurate value, risking that future taxpayers won't be able to pay for it.
In the case of the SSA, the government takes the surplus and "loans it to itself", an accounting fiction rivaling what Enron did. I can't fund my retirement by writing an IOU to myself, sticking it in my mattress, and "withdrawing" it later, yet that's exactly what government pension funds do.
Okay, that is *not* fair. The Semantic Web would have untold benefits for humanity. For example: if you wanted to find out which Major League batter had the most RBIs in 1997, you would have to spend three -- perhaps four -- minutes learning how to use an internet search engine.
With the Berners-Lee Semantic Web(tm), however, you would just type in "which Major League batter had the most RBIs in 1997?"
(Of course, most search engines will already pick out the relevant terms even if you typed that question in, but that doens't count because they don't do it *intelligently*.)
I think you may be interested in Robin Hanson's futarchy idea. It incorporates that "random person's judgment" you refer to, but tempers it by requiring them to only make judgments for which they'll lose money if they're wrong. That is, it would set up prediction markets for bets on the merit of various policies, where "merit" is defined by a legislature's setting of some utility function. (e.g. k1*economic growth rate - k2*unemployment rate - k3* inflation rate - k4*pollutant emissions) The legislature would then implement policies that *bettors*, in the aggregate, believe will work.
Hanson summarizes it as "vote on values (the utility function), bet on beliefs (what you believe will optimize that)".
I stopped relying on my sense of justice when "handicapped" drivers started driving Mitsubishi eclipses.
Enron had been cooking the books for some time before they collapsed. The powers in charge were concerned only about their own profits. If they'd have been forthcoming with their employees that the world was not all roses, they could have had a chance to get out without needing "illegal insider trading".
Trading based on information you have privileged access to, would violate insider trading laws. If OTOH you believe they should have just publicly said that the stock sucks and you should sell it, see below.
In any case, Enron unraveled because a few people actually dissected Enrons *public* filings and saw how shaky it was. What Enron did was more like disclosing "source code" which they jumbled up but which achieved the same thing while being harder to read.
They also followed the advice and hype that came from the Enron executives. They were told that their company was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Sure, they could have sought advice from outside, but why should they expect their employers to be giving them a load of BS?
In other words, why shouldn't they accept self-serving statements at face value, in contravention of universally-known advice to diversify one's investments?
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree then on whether or not executives are morally obligated to make decisions based on morals.
Morals? Okay.
Each and every person who commits any crime (for robustness, let's only take laws we believe are just) is morally obligated to confess and turn himself again.
Do you agree?
Okay, then let me see where you've spoken in favor of repealing the fifth amendment.
Asking that executives tell people not to buy their stock because it's overvalued is basically the same. How about instead, we just require executives to *reveal through their actions* whether they think the stock is overvalued by disclosing their purchases, sales, and options exercises? Oh wait, we already do.
I remember that one common criticism of McCain-Feingold was that it's like the "Mainstream Media empowerment act" in how it basically allows mainstream media outlets to freely make political speech, but keeps anyone from countering that message with ads near an election.