You're not missing all that much. It's a game that, at first glance, appears to be an open-world adventure game with really horrible graphics and no plot whatsoever. Then when you get deeper into it, you find out it's actually a virtual LEGO set, which makes you wonder why all the fighting with monsters and zombies is even in there in the first place.
Taking it away from those currently in authority (those you refer to as "the psychopaths we have running our institutions") does not make all that power suddenly disappear into a magical rainbow of happy sparkles and more freedom for everyone; it creates a power vacuum, and that creates even worse conditions for people living through one than even the worst of tyranny. (If you don't believe me, go live in Somalia or Libya for a while.)
So if you're going to call my proposed solution problematic, the burden is on you to propose a better one.
At the very least, this is yet another example of how the public is not willing to just roll over when politicians attack the internet.
On one hand, awesome! Good for the Hungarians!
On the other... and yet the politicians keep trying. It's a big game of whack-a-mole, until the people change the rules by not just drawing lines in the sand and saying "no, you can't do that," but actually pushing back and getting positive laws passed instead.
You're advocating legalizing intoxicating drugs, with the line of reasoning that the only people who will end up dead are people who kill themselves by taking drugs. I am showing you the hole in your argument by giving an example (one of many!) of innocent people who end up dead due to widespread availability of currently legal intoxicating drugs.
No man is an island. Illegal drugs aren't illegal because people might hurt themselves; they're illegal because they might (and almost invariably do) cause widespread harm beyond themselves. Even if someone "safely" ODs all alone in the privacy of their own home, what if they had a family who now has nobody to provide for them?
Your argument is based on only thinking in one degree of cause and effect. The problem is, effects are causes too!
To keep it from being killed off, FBI Director Robert Mueller cited terrorism and investigations being placed in "serious jeopardy," but in reality, it's still all about drugs, drugs and more drugs.
Considering how many US citizens have been killed by terrorism over the last decade (very few) and how many have been killed by drugs and drug-related violence in the same time period (a heck of a lot more), why are you talking about this as if it's a bad thing?
Drugs are a very serious problem in the US, much more so than terrorism. Why not treat it as a more serious problem?
The "flu kills thousands every year" is questionable. I've heard (can't find the source at the moment) that the figure of "30,000 flu deaths per year" comes from counting anyone who exhibited flu symptoms up to a few months before death and then subsequently died of anything in any way resembling flu symptoms. The people counted in this way are disproportionately elderly, and this methodology ends up catching a lot of people who simply did what used to be referred to as "dying of old age."
Does anyone know anything more solid on this topic? I've heard the claim and it sounds like it makes sense, but that doesn't necessarily means it's correct.
A couple months ago, someone sent over an interesting Virginia Law Review article from Alli Orr Larsen about how the Supreme Court is increasingly listening to amicus curiae briefs (friend of the court briefs) from parties not actually engaged in lawsuits -- and at times that's problematic because the briefs are not always, you know, factual.
Am I missing something here? I thought that "from parties not actually engaged in [the lawsuit in question]" was the defining characteristic of an amicus brief.
That's simple. What the DEA did was identity theft, in actual fact if not necessarily in the legal sense (because there's probably some law somewhere protecting them from it.)
What the FBI did does not involve taking over or compromising any resources owned by any third party. The Seattle Times was not harmed in any way. It was a straight-up, plain-vanilla phishing attempt like the ones you probably get a dozen of every day in your spam folder, and the kid fell for it.
The FTC further points out that the throttling wasn't because of any network concerns, pointing out that it went into effect even when the network had "ample capacity" and its network was not congested. All in all, AT&T throttled 3.5 million different customers more than 25 million times.
So in other words, they defrauded their customers, not out of any urgency or exigent circumstances, not because it was interfering wit the network, degrading other users' bandwidth, or cutting into their profit margins in any way, but simply because they could.
Is anyone else picturing AT&T execs twirling black mustaches right about now?
Yes, except that this was obviously not from the Seattle Times. Look at the URL. Anyone who knows anything about how the Web works can recognize that instantly as a phishing attempt. (And anyone who doesn't, in this day and age, is too dumb to be using the Web... just like this kid, who walked straight into a transparent phishing attempt and got busted by the FBI. QED.)
If anything, the Seattle Times should seize on this and turn it into an opportunity to teach people how to recognize and avoid phishing attempts.
From the point of view of the Seattle Times, they are probably thinking that links to ST stories will now be viewed with suspicion by default and are therefore less likely to be followed.
And anyone who thinks that is an idiot. Do they really believe that the FBI would try the exact same thing again, now that everyone's watching for it? The Seattle Times is probably one of the safest sits to visit right now, because that same trick can't be used again.
Besides, have a close look at the document. The kid fell for one of the oldest phishing tricks in the book: he didn't check the URL carefully. The site he got pointed to was not seattletimes.com, but nwsource.com, essentially a smaller, more local version of Craigslist. Someone at the FBI set up a page on there that would look like a newspaper site, but this does (or should do) nothing to make anyone leery of going to the Seattle Times site. From all appearances, at no time was seattletimes.com or the organization The Seattle Times hacked or compromised in any way.
From my security point of view, this isn't a bad thing because people should be cautious about it in general (mainstream websites are occasionally a source of malware too, after all).
Exactly. I first saw this about 10 years ago (don't remember if it was 2003 or 2004) when my virus scanner's web security started alerting me to malware on a fairly large, very legitimate site. A bit of research on my part showed it was coming in through banner ads. I alerted them to the problem, and at first they angrily denied serving malware. I responded, reiterating that this didn't appear to be their fault at all, but the fault of their banner ad provider, and they actually looked into it and switched ad networks very quickly.
But I understand why people running those websites would prefer their readers to not feel nervous about going to their site.
Again, no one has any reason to feel nervous going to their site. The whole point her is that this guy didn't go to the Seattle Times site; he got phished into going to a site that was set up to look like it, but was hosted on a different server and under the control of the FBI.
This hits close to home for me. I used to live in Marysville. I didn't go to the high school that got shot up last week, but I've got more than one sibling who did. And if the FBI managed to stop that from happening at another high school, yes we should be counting our blessings! That's exactly what they're supposed to be doing.
I really don't see what Kathy Best is complaining about, to be honest.
The FBI’s actions, taken without our knowledge, traded on our reputation and put it at peril.
How so? If someone did something bad while impersonating me, and no one knew about it, it has not harmed my reputation in any way.
If someone did something bad while impersonating me, and no one knew about it, and the first that anyone found out about it (including me!) was when it came out that I had been impersonated... this still has not harmed my reputation in any way, because everyone knows that it wasn't really me who did it.
Seems to me the only possible way that such a scenario could harm my reputation is if it came out that I wasn't being impersonated afterall, but that I had been complicit in doing the bad thing in question. But no one is even suggesting that that is the case, so I really don't see Ms. Best's point.
Congratulations and bravo to the FBI. Finally a bit of good news, after all the stupid crap they've been caught at lately!
If your IP rights are being infringed, the proper course of action is to go to court, not take the law into your own hands.
Well, it was before the DMCA came around. Now, though, between the DMCA Takedown system and the protection of DRM, IP vigiliantism on digital devices is firmly enshrined in law.
This is what I've been saying for years: unless the DMCA is repealed and replaced by something that affirmatively protects the rights of computer owners as the first priority, acts like this will inevitably continue. This isn't the first time it's happened (multiple gaming DRM systems have broken CD/DVD burners in the past) and it won't be the last, unless we get rid of the DMCA.
This update bricked one specific chip. But a lot of computers these days are being sold with a TPM, an incredibly sinister chip that integrates DRM into the entire system. Just imagine the ramifications! Some people worry about the government of Iran getting nuclear weapons. I worry about them infiltrating a single engineer into the right division at Microsoft.
The Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator project had better be careful; with a name like that they're liable to end up getting sued by a certain celebrity...
On the post: Awesome Stuff: All Play And No Work
Re: Solace in company
On the post: FBI's Use Of 'Sneak And Peek' Warrants Still Steadily Increasing, Still Has Nearly Nothing To Do With Fighting Terrorism
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Taking it away from those currently in authority (those you refer to as "the psychopaths we have running our institutions") does not make all that power suddenly disappear into a magical rainbow of happy sparkles and more freedom for everyone; it creates a power vacuum, and that creates even worse conditions for people living through one than even the worst of tyranny. (If you don't believe me, go live in Somalia or Libya for a while.)
So if you're going to call my proposed solution problematic, the burden is on you to propose a better one.
On the post: After Protests Continue, Hungary Dumps Stupid Internet Tax Idea
On one hand, awesome! Good for the Hungarians!
On the other... and yet the politicians keep trying. It's a big game of whack-a-mole, until the people change the rules by not just drawing lines in the sand and saying "no, you can't do that," but actually pushing back and getting positive laws passed instead.
On the post: FBI's Use Of 'Sneak And Peek' Warrants Still Steadily Increasing, Still Has Nearly Nothing To Do With Fighting Terrorism
Re: Re: Re: Re:
No man is an island. Illegal drugs aren't illegal because people might hurt themselves; they're illegal because they might (and almost invariably do) cause widespread harm beyond themselves. Even if someone "safely" ODs all alone in the privacy of their own home, what if they had a family who now has nobody to provide for them?
Your argument is based on only thinking in one degree of cause and effect. The problem is, effects are causes too!
On the post: FBI's Use Of 'Sneak And Peek' Warrants Still Steadily Increasing, Still Has Nearly Nothing To Do With Fighting Terrorism
Re: Re:
Yeah, try telling that to someone who just lost a family member to a drunk driver and see how seriously they take your line of reasoning.
On the post: FBI's Use Of 'Sneak And Peek' Warrants Still Steadily Increasing, Still Has Nearly Nothing To Do With Fighting Terrorism
Considering how many US citizens have been killed by terrorism over the last decade (very few) and how many have been killed by drugs and drug-related violence in the same time period (a heck of a lot more), why are you talking about this as if it's a bad thing?
Drugs are a very serious problem in the US, much more so than terrorism. Why not treat it as a more serious problem?
On the post: DailyDirt: Deadly Diseases Besides Ebola
Does anyone know anything more solid on this topic? I've heard the claim and it sounds like it makes sense, but that doesn't necessarily means it's correct.
On the post: The Supreme Court Succumbs To Truthiness, Leading Librarians And Stephen Colbert To Bicker
Am I missing something here? I thought that "from parties not actually engaged in [the lawsuit in question]" was the defining characteristic of an amicus brief.
On the post: Documents Show FBI Impersonated Newspaper's Website To Deliver Spyware To Suspect's Computer
Re: Re:
What the FBI did does not involve taking over or compromising any resources owned by any third party. The Seattle Times was not harmed in any way. It was a straight-up, plain-vanilla phishing attempt like the ones you probably get a dozen of every day in your spam folder, and the kid fell for it.
On the post: FTC Sues AT&T For Selling 'Unlimited' Data Plans That Were Actually Throttled
So in other words, they defrauded their customers, not out of any urgency or exigent circumstances, not because it was interfering wit the network, degrading other users' bandwidth, or cutting into their profit margins in any way, but simply because they could.
Is anyone else picturing AT&T execs twirling black mustaches right about now?
On the post: Documents Show FBI Impersonated Newspaper's Website To Deliver Spyware To Suspect's Computer
Re: Re:
If anything, the Seattle Times should seize on this and turn it into an opportunity to teach people how to recognize and avoid phishing attempts.
On the post: Documents Show FBI Impersonated Newspaper's Website To Deliver Spyware To Suspect's Computer
Re: Re:
And anyone who thinks that is an idiot. Do they really believe that the FBI would try the exact same thing again, now that everyone's watching for it? The Seattle Times is probably one of the safest sits to visit right now, because that same trick can't be used again.
Besides, have a close look at the document. The kid fell for one of the oldest phishing tricks in the book: he didn't check the URL carefully. The site he got pointed to was not seattletimes.com, but nwsource.com, essentially a smaller, more local version of Craigslist. Someone at the FBI set up a page on there that would look like a newspaper site, but this does (or should do) nothing to make anyone leery of going to the Seattle Times site. From all appearances, at no time was seattletimes.com or the organization The Seattle Times hacked or compromised in any way.
Exactly. I first saw this about 10 years ago (don't remember if it was 2003 or 2004) when my virus scanner's web security started alerting me to malware on a fairly large, very legitimate site. A bit of research on my part showed it was coming in through banner ads. I alerted them to the problem, and at first they angrily denied serving malware. I responded, reiterating that this didn't appear to be their fault at all, but the fault of their banner ad provider, and they actually looked into it and switched ad networks very quickly.
Again, no one has any reason to feel nervous going to their site. The whole point her is that this guy didn't go to the Seattle Times site; he got phished into going to a site that was set up to look like it, but was hosted on a different server and under the control of the FBI.
On the post: Documents Show FBI Impersonated Newspaper's Website To Deliver Spyware To Suspect's Computer
I really don't see what Kathy Best is complaining about, to be honest.
How so? If someone did something bad while impersonating me, and no one knew about it, it has not harmed my reputation in any way.
If someone did something bad while impersonating me, and no one knew about it, and the first that anyone found out about it (including me!) was when it came out that I had been impersonated... this still has not harmed my reputation in any way, because everyone knows that it wasn't really me who did it.
Seems to me the only possible way that such a scenario could harm my reputation is if it came out that I wasn't being impersonated afterall, but that I had been complicit in doing the bad thing in question. But no one is even suggesting that that is the case, so I really don't see Ms. Best's point.
Congratulations and bravo to the FBI. Finally a bit of good news, after all the stupid crap they've been caught at lately!
On the post: DailyDirt: Meals On Mars
On the post: Roca Labs Story Gets More Bizarre: Senator Threatens Bogus Defamation Lawsuit, While Nevada Quickly Rejects Bogus Bribery Charge
Re: Re: Bribery
On the post: IP Is No Excuse: Even If Someone Is Using Fake Chips, It's Not Okay To Kill Their Devices
Well, it was before the DMCA came around. Now, though, between the DMCA Takedown system and the protection of DRM, IP vigiliantism on digital devices is firmly enshrined in law.
This is what I've been saying for years: unless the DMCA is repealed and replaced by something that affirmatively protects the rights of computer owners as the first priority, acts like this will inevitably continue. This isn't the first time it's happened (multiple gaming DRM systems have broken CD/DVD burners in the past) and it won't be the last, unless we get rid of the DMCA.
This update bricked one specific chip. But a lot of computers these days are being sold with a TPM, an incredibly sinister chip that integrates DRM into the entire system. Just imagine the ramifications! Some people worry about the government of Iran getting nuclear weapons. I worry about them infiltrating a single engineer into the right division at Microsoft.
On the post: America, The Defensive: Wars, Terrorism And Thirty Years Of Perpetual 'States Of Emergencies'
What in the world is a secret patent? Isn't publication the sine qua non of a patent filing?
On the post: Roca Labs Story Gets More Bizarre: Senator Threatens Bogus Defamation Lawsuit, While Nevada Quickly Rejects Bogus Bribery Charge
Re:
On the post: DailyDirt: DIY Space Exploration
On the post: Judge: The Supreme Court Has Said Aereo Must Die, So Go Die
So much for "safe harbors..."
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