I know you just meant that as a joke, but there's actually a verse about that in Romans. "What then? Shall we go on sinning that grace might increase? By no means! If we have died to sin, how can we continue in it?"
I can't even parse that. I even looked up an explanation of it, and it still made no sense.
All the expertise cited in the article IS here. It is just relegated to small specialty shops that cater to small runs.
So the question becomes, "Can those industries be scaled up to the necessary size to handle large-scale production, and can it be done at a competitive price?" Seems to me that without some other variable changing, it won't happen. Something will have to either make it cost more to do overseas, or make it cheaper here, or both.
Depends on your definition of broken. The last couple of elections voter turnout has averaged in the low 60s. If such a system could boost voter participation by 10+% then I'd say it is definitely worth investigating. Part of the analysis should be which groups in society are underrepresented at the polls (who turns out the least) and ensure that it is these groups who are more likely to make use of online voting.
Wait, do we really want people who can't be bothered to take the time to vote being able to do so while they wait for some YouTube video to load? If people are so lazy they can't go out and vote, they're likely also too lazy to inform themselves in even the most basic ways about the issues. Seems like it's probably good that they don't vote.
The point is to denature the name from the voter. Go to the post office or local shopping center, and have your name crossed off the list. You get your voting token randomly chosen by yourself via a lucky dip. Then at vote time, use the hash number to cast your vote. If you trust your gubbermint enough, have them posted in the mail with the same level of denaturing.
If there's a way for you to verify your vote from a computer, there's a way for your boss, spouse, etc, to verify your vote simply by demanding that you do so in their presence. That's bad.
Yes, I read TFA. It wasn't very illuminating; the author essentially says that since the client side can alter the transactions, HTML5 has security problems. That's kind of stupid; whose security are we talking about here, anyway? Clearly not the end user - and I'll feel free to use various add-ons to alter the web pages I visit to improve my security and privacy
Apparently you didn't get past number one in the article's list. I thought the article was pretty clear about who's security it was talking about. Namely the security of the app, and by extension, the security of the person or organization that writes their app using HTML5. I have no idea why you would think otherwise based on the topic of the article.
Then you're hopelessly dense, or you need to take the green lenses off your glasses. The fact that they wanted, at least to some degree, to crash the company's servers was self-evident when they continued the barrage after they were explicitly made aware of its effects.
Now who's being hopelessly dense? You just take whatever a company says as fact? They're supposed to cease their compaints because the company says a few of their executives' inboxes are full? Really? It's ridiculous to think that a company of that size couldn't handle that volume of email. Any free email server out there could do so easily. Let them bring the evidence to court then. If I were in the union's place, I would continue to fight there because the company seems utterly incompetent.
It goes to intent. Jamming their phones may not be illegal, but jamming their computers is.
I think I've already said that their intent was expressed pretty clearly, and that was to convey the outrage of their members. That this may clog their phone line is a side-effect as far as I can tell, but they were operating within the law. They had every reason to believe they were doing so with email as well. If anything, email is usually MUCH easier to handle in volume than phone calls.
I haven't seen anything otherwise. People are thinking only a couple thousand, but I showed the pool available. And union members are usually pretty good at doing what they're told.
So no evidence at all really, and we don't know where the articles got the estimate of "thousands" from, but that's all there is.
So you think your free speech includes causing physical damage? That's going too far. Even noise abatement ordinances are constitutionall acceptable.
Noise abatement is fine within reason. No loud music or equipment after 9pm and such. That's not really relevant here. They didn't cause physical damage. They apparently caused their email inboxes to fill up. That's the extent of the "damage". This is also apparently only based on the say-so of the company, as I've seen no actual evidence presented by them. If they had ridiculously small quotas set, and completely incompetent administration of their server, then I suppose it's possible. Of course it was the company's email server that was accepting all that email too. They could have quite easily told it not to. This doesn't seem to be any different than sending them so much snail mail that they have trouble receiving and finding the mail they actually want to read.
I agree there. And unions are still quite necessary. My main problem with unions these days is the extortion campaign many use in organizing. This incident has the classic look of the beginning of such a campaign. That is why I clearly believe the claim of intent to adversely affect their systems, which is a crime and a tort.
Versus the extortion campaign that companies use to prevent organization? We see that all the time too.
Even accepting that the union had an "established business relationship" (which is very debatable), they're still allowed to specify how the union may contact them. "No phone calls" means no phone calls. They're within their rights to demand that any communications be made in writing.
Didn't see anything of the sort in the law. Got a citation for that? If that was true, I could tell any bill collector, political campaign, etc to never call me again and they'd have to respect it. I don't believe that's remotely true.
Intent matters: they weren't exercising free speech; they were retaliating against the company. This was explicitly stated by the union, and is part of the basis on which the CoA reinstated the claim against the union:
Seems like they were retaliating by exercising free speech. I've seen no evidence that they explicitly stated that they wanted to crash the company's servers. I've seen that they said they wanted to fight back, which is certainly a function of free speech. Their members sent many emails expressing their outrage and grievances with the company. The company claims that this harmed them. I didn't see any actual evidence of that either, but that's what they said. I'm still less likely to believe that from a company of that size than to believe that those few execs just didn't like getting a bunch of emails attacking their decision to fire the employee.
The robocalls are part of a clear pattern of bahavior designed to DOS the company's ability to communicate.
The robocalls were part of a pattern of legal behavior you mean? I don't see how they can support the idea that they were doing something illegal if they were complying with the robocall laws.
There's an old saying, the right to swing your fist ends at my nose. Your right to speak your mind ends when it materially interferes with my business. In this case they weren't even speaking their mind, since a 600,000-strong membership was just clicking a "send" button over and over and over in order to flood emails. Automated by a programming loop, or by having over half a million clickers at your disposal. Same concept.
You keep throwing that 600K number out, but I've heard no evidence of how many members were actually involved, and no numbers for how many emails were sent, beyond the vague "thousands". So while you keep trying to imply that all 600K members were just clicking away as fast as possible, I haven't seen anything to support that.
Because of an old injury, loud noises cause me serious pain with the likelihood of further injury. You start yelling. It would not hurt most people, no damage done. I tell you it is causing me pain and injury. You refuse to stop. You are now purposely injuring me. But it's okay because it wouldn't hurt others? Am I obliged to put in ear plugs, or should I just call the police?
Actually, yes. You should be responsible for dealing with your issue in that case. It's not reasonable to limit everyone else's rights because of some issue specific to you. I hate to think what the world would be like if we all had to cater to every idiosyncratic issue that someone has. Now, would I stop yelling just to be polite? Sure. But I'd be a whole lot less inclined to comply with your wishes if you had just done something to insult or injure me, which is more the case in this situation.
I can't think of a case in law where the victim's inability to absorb an attack without injury absolved the attacker of responsibility for the injury.
Using the language of physical assault is really not relevant here. There are many cases where people's constitutional rights trump the inconveniences or harm to others. Some of these are codified in law, and others are simply precedent set by the courts.
This is a corporate case. One multi-million dollar corporation with fat cat executives against another multi-million dollar corporation with fat cat executives. One is in the business of building homes for profit, the other is in the business of unionizing workers for profit.
I wasn't the one that started drawing lines between the union and the company at issue. Drawing those lines seems to be a Republican thing. I have plenty of issues with the behavior of unions, but I also recognize that their very existence is due to the abuses of corporations. It's very much a balancing act. Unfortunately one that often results in the very same kinds of brinksmanship we see in the federal government now.
The court cited it and found so. In addition, they persisted once notified of the effects of their campaign.
Where did they state their intent to crash the servers? The court cited something that could be interpreted in a number of ways. That, combined with other bizarre interpretations is why I think this is a bad ruling. The robocalls are a separate issue covered under a separate law, and therefore shouldn't be used as evidence of intent either. Then there's the notion that the simple, unsubstantiated notification that something is inconveniencing them is enough to override free speech rights. I really hope that's not the case. I would like to see what kind of horribly misconfigured mail server they were using that could be overloaded by such a paltry number of emails.
I have no double standard. Show me a corporate executive doing RICO stuff and I'll support him going to jail.
Yeah, that's the thing. They make it damn near impossible to prove most of the time. In this case, even though no intent to crash servers was apparently stated, the CoA chose to interpret some language to mean that, and to interpret the use of robocalling as further evidence of intent, even though that makes no sense. If they were guilty of violating the robocalling law, why aren't they being charged with that? If they aren't guilty of violating the robocalling law, then how does it show intent? The court seems to have manufactured the intent in this case, which is usually the one thing missing in most corporate cases. This ruling is just all-around bad.
All attacks are relative. If you, by any means, flood a system with the knowledge that the flood is of sufficient strength to affect the availability of that system, and with the intent of hindering the availability of that system, then you are purposely performing a DOS. That is illegal.
Again, this goes to proving intent. I still don't see that being done. They were obviously trying to convey the outrage of their members at the company. The company may not have liked it, and it may have been some sort of burden for them to receive so many complaints, but the volume of mail we're talking about here isn't remotely close to being able to take down an email system unless it was set up horribly wrong. That's on the company. Just because they say it's overloading their system, doesn't mean that it actually is. If it actually was overloading the system, it's due to negligence on the company's part in not setting up their email server properly. This isn't some mom and pop operation we're talking about. Free speech should win out over inconvenience and negligence.
That it was coordinated among thousands should bring in RICO charges too. For once I'd like to see some modern union bosses go to jail for their tactics.
The intent was to convey the outrage of the union members and have their voices be heard by the management. Business-related emails sent to business email addresses. I've seen no real evidence of any other intent than that. Their free speech should trump the inconvenience to the company, especially for something as trivial to prevent as this. RICO charges for this would be complete bullshit. Hell, CEOs have to practically be caught red-handed eating live babies before they go to jail. Why should we have a double-standard here?
An "established business relationship" is a voluntary two-way communication which has not been previously terminated. If you tell them not to call you any more, they must stop.
Voluntary in the sense that they still have business dealings with the union? Sounds voluntary to me.
But use of the phone system is unauthorized EXPLICITLY once you've explicitly told them to stop calling you.
Only if you aren't covered by one of the exceptions.
I'm authorized implicitly to cut across your yard if you don't have a "no trespassing" sign, but I'm trespassing the instant you tell me to leave and I don't. The same principle applies here.
Not sure where you live, but that's not true in Texas.
A phone call is information. Inside the telephone system, it's just binary information. But I was referring more to the mass email campaign anyway, not the phone calls.
Like I said, pretty much anything can be described as information. It's not what this law was intended for. We already have laws that specifically cover what you can and can't do with robocalls, so trying to apply this one is just wrong. And if you don't describe the phone calls as information, then they aren't covered under this law.
As far as the email is concerned, I think that the free speech of individuals outweighs the inconvenience to the company. Especially since they could easily address it themselves if they had even a halfway competent admin. Judging by the quick overload of their system, under a rather paltry load by most standards, they don't currently have one. The servers at my office have to fend off millions of spam emails per day. The thousands that were being sent by the union would probably barely get noticed by the server, and would be quickly cut off from the mail recipients once the admins were alerted.
"What man has done, man can aspire to do." -- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight
