4 ms·

███ ██ █ ████ everything ███ █████ is █████ ████ ████ fine ████.

39 points by blago 15y ago

███ ██ █ ████ love. █████ ███████ ███ your █████ ████ government.

whichdan 15y ago
█████ ██ ████ ███████?
- danudey 15y ago
  Probably Thursday.
  - aymeric 15y ago
    No I think it █████ ██████████, don't you think?.
tgrass 15y ago
For no good reason, a rant: As far as I know, companies are not held legally accountable when their database is illegally accessed and consumer data (passwords and emails) are released to the public. In civil engineering, if a dam fails, the man who signed his name to the design is held responsible. Legally. And he likely loses his license. The same is true of doctors and lawyers. It will not surprise me if the government steps in to create standards for online security; programmers have not taken steps to self-police. The same seems true with SOPA. The theft of intellectual property is clearly a problem. A robots.txt file does not stop someone from scraping your content. There's been no effective self-policing and in its absence the result is a Congressional act. Does the act go too far (by denying due process)? Sure. Might that get scaled back in the courts? Likely. Has Google, Wikipedia, or any of the countless sites protesting SOPA offered up an alternative that actually resolves the problem. No. I don't support SOPA, but I have a hard time opposing it when this is the state of affairs it was born from.
- chc 15y ago
  Although I guess it's technically true that "the theft of intellectual property is clearly a problem", it's unenlightening. Shoplifting and texting in theaters are also clear problems, but I hope you'd oppose insane laws where people caught doing those things are publicly hanged alongside their immediate family. Is the theft of intellectual property such an urgent problem that it merits an extreme response? That I doubt. We seem to be doing mostly fine with the status quo. It might be a bit frustrating when your content is pirated, but it does not call for drastic measures on the scale of SOPA. (And of course, this is all ignoring the fact that SOPA would actually be quite ineffective at stopping piracy, and would mainly just act as ammunition for trolls and anticompetitive corporations. I'd guess that true pirate sites would generally be less affected by SOPA than the average non-pirate site that just accepts user-generated content.)
  - tgrass 15y ago
    The evidence speaks: it was clearly an extreme and urgent problem to some parties, hence the act is under serious consideration. Shoplifting is not only illegal, but much is dedicated to minimizing it. To claim that SOPA is similar to a death sentence for shoplifting is excessive hyperbole. We have drivers licenses and stop signs for our once 'open roads'. Clearly as a civilization we are capable of allowing oversight. Should it be as severe as removing due process? Absolutely not. Should the world of the web gotten out in front of this with an elegant solution? Yes. It didn't and hasn't. The reality is similar bills will be pushed until the problem is resolved.
    - chc 15y ago
      > The evidence speaks: it was clearly an extreme and urgent problem to some parties, hence the act is under serious consideration. This is a non sequitur. The fact that something is under consideration does not mean it addresses an "extreme and urgent problem". For example, the Gravina Island Highway (the "road to nowhere") was not only under serious consideration, but was actually built despite the fact that it did nobody any good. And we've all heard about silly laws, like how it's illegal to tease skunks in Minnesota. Do you think skunk-teasing is an extreme and urgent problem? The fact that an industry group is pushing a bill that would give it massive power does not indicate that there is actually an urgent problem that needs solving, much less that the bill is what's necessary to solve their problem. I mean, if somebody offered me a million dollars, I'd absolutely take it, but you would be wrong to infer that I'm a million dollars in debt. In this particular case, many of the numbers the industry associations have thrown out to show a need have been proven to be outright fabrications, and most of the others have been shown to be heavily skewed. So not only have they not shown a legitimate need, but they've demonstrated that their motive has nothing to do with need. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that piracy isn't a problem — just that I don't see a need for drastic measures. > Shoplifting is not only illegal, but much is dedicated to minimizing it. The maximum sentence for shoplifting in most places is one year in jail. We're hardly taking SOPA-level countermeasures against it. > To claim that SOPA is similar to a death sentence for shoplifting is excessive hyperbole. I don't think so. Jailing people for song covers on YouTube is about as disproportionate, and SOPA essentially implements the death penalty for websites that don't have the resources to police user-generated content with 100% efficacy. But at any rate, the point of the comparison is that it is a drastic solution to a vexing but not-so-drastic problem.
- dangrossman 15y ago
  Civil engineering as a practice is at least 4000 years old; as a professional degree, about 200 years. Lots of dams failed before we became good enough at building them to license people and place liability on them for failing. The first software engineering BS degree in the US was offered 16 years ago (at RIT, if you're curious). The most senior web developers in the world are within 20 years of the most junior. I won't argue for a lawless internet, but I also don't think locking things down to the same level as other professions is a good idea. It will stifle the growth and change the field must go through. If you want a model for what regulation of online security does to a nation, look no further than South Korea. 10 years after the government required using a certain encryption mechanism for banking and commerce, 99.9% of users are still forced to use Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer -- because the only way to meet the regulatory requirement is an ActiveX control. http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/02/27/the-cost-of-monoculture/ http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/02/27/the-cost-of-monocultu...
brudgers 15y ago
For no good reason - This post reminds me of John Carpenter's They Live, and that maybe what we really need to take care of SOPA is Rowdy Roddy Piper - whose website is, fortuitously, not blacked out today. http://www.rowdyroddypiper.com/ http://www.rowdyroddypiper.com/

39 points by blago 15y ago

███ ██ █ ████ love. █████ ███████ ███ your █████ ████ government.

whichdan 15y ago

█████ ██ ████ ███████?

danudey 15y ago
Probably Thursday.
- aymeric 15y ago
  No I think it █████ ██████████, don't you think?.

tgrass 15y ago

For no good reason, a rant: As far as I know, companies are not held legally accountable when their database is illegally accessed and consumer data (passwords and emails) are released to the public. In civil engineering, if a dam fails, the man who signed his name to the design is held responsible. Legally. And he likely loses his license. The same is true of doctors and lawyers. It will not surprise me if the government steps in to create standards for online security; programmers have not taken steps to self-police. The same seems true with SOPA. The theft of intellectual property is clearly a problem. A robots.txt file does not stop someone from scraping your content. There's been no effective self-policing and in its absence the result is a Congressional act. Does the act go too far (by denying due process)? Sure. Might that get scaled back in the courts? Likely. Has Google, Wikipedia, or any of the countless sites protesting SOPA offered up an alternative that actually resolves the problem. No. I don't support SOPA, but I have a hard time opposing it when this is the state of affairs it was born from.

chc 15y ago
Although I guess it's technically true that "the theft of intellectual property is clearly a problem", it's unenlightening. Shoplifting and texting in theaters are also clear problems, but I hope you'd oppose insane laws where people caught doing those things are publicly hanged alongside their immediate family. Is the theft of intellectual property such an urgent problem that it merits an extreme response? That I doubt. We seem to be doing mostly fine with the status quo. It might be a bit frustrating when your content is pirated, but it does not call for drastic measures on the scale of SOPA. (And of course, this is all ignoring the fact that SOPA would actually be quite ineffective at stopping piracy, and would mainly just act as ammunition for trolls and anticompetitive corporations. I'd guess that true pirate sites would generally be less affected by SOPA than the average non-pirate site that just accepts user-generated content.)
- tgrass 15y ago
  The evidence speaks: it was clearly an extreme and urgent problem to some parties, hence the act is under serious consideration. Shoplifting is not only illegal, but much is dedicated to minimizing it. To claim that SOPA is similar to a death sentence for shoplifting is excessive hyperbole. We have drivers licenses and stop signs for our once 'open roads'. Clearly as a civilization we are capable of allowing oversight. Should it be as severe as removing due process? Absolutely not. Should the world of the web gotten out in front of this with an elegant solution? Yes. It didn't and hasn't. The reality is similar bills will be pushed until the problem is resolved.
  - chc 15y ago
    > The evidence speaks: it was clearly an extreme and urgent problem to some parties, hence the act is under serious consideration. This is a non sequitur. The fact that something is under consideration does not mean it addresses an "extreme and urgent problem". For example, the Gravina Island Highway (the "road to nowhere") was not only under serious consideration, but was actually built despite the fact that it did nobody any good. And we've all heard about silly laws, like how it's illegal to tease skunks in Minnesota. Do you think skunk-teasing is an extreme and urgent problem? The fact that an industry group is pushing a bill that would give it massive power does not indicate that there is actually an urgent problem that needs solving, much less that the bill is what's necessary to solve their problem. I mean, if somebody offered me a million dollars, I'd absolutely take it, but you would be wrong to infer that I'm a million dollars in debt. In this particular case, many of the numbers the industry associations have thrown out to show a need have been proven to be outright fabrications, and most of the others have been shown to be heavily skewed. So not only have they not shown a legitimate need, but they've demonstrated that their motive has nothing to do with need. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that piracy isn't a problem — just that I don't see a need for drastic measures. > Shoplifting is not only illegal, but much is dedicated to minimizing it. The maximum sentence for shoplifting in most places is one year in jail. We're hardly taking SOPA-level countermeasures against it. > To claim that SOPA is similar to a death sentence for shoplifting is excessive hyperbole. I don't think so. Jailing people for song covers on YouTube is about as disproportionate, and SOPA essentially implements the death penalty for websites that don't have the resources to police user-generated content with 100% efficacy. But at any rate, the point of the comparison is that it is a drastic solution to a vexing but not-so-drastic problem.
dangrossman 15y ago
Civil engineering as a practice is at least 4000 years old; as a professional degree, about 200 years. Lots of dams failed before we became good enough at building them to license people and place liability on them for failing. The first software engineering BS degree in the US was offered 16 years ago (at RIT, if you're curious). The most senior web developers in the world are within 20 years of the most junior. I won't argue for a lawless internet, but I also don't think locking things down to the same level as other professions is a good idea. It will stifle the growth and change the field must go through. If you want a model for what regulation of online security does to a nation, look no further than South Korea. 10 years after the government required using a certain encryption mechanism for banking and commerce, 99.9% of users are still forced to use Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer -- because the only way to meet the regulatory requirement is an ActiveX control. http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/02/27/the-cost-of-monoculture/ http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/02/27/the-cost-of-monocultu...

brudgers 15y ago

For no good reason - This post reminds me of John Carpenter's They Live, and that maybe what we really need to take care of SOPA is Rowdy Roddy Piper - whose website is, fortuitously, not blacked out today. http://www.rowdyroddypiper.com/ http://www.rowdyroddypiper.com/