Put this way, I agree with you.

My comment was posted before I'd thought things through. The Slashdot virus must have infected me.

First we pass a law that is an open invitation to unintended use (like this seizure law) because it conveniently neglects to mention where it is to be applied and where it isn't.

Then we come over all indignant when that law (which is "on the books") is used outside its originally intended area of application.

Am I the only one who thinks that Congress is to blame here (for passing sloppy legislation), not the IRS or The Government?

Might it not be a good idea to work harder to phrase legislation in such a way that it's difficult to abuse? Or would that cramp the style of "tough-on-crime" politicians?

@Globaljustin

IMHO your "opinion" is very very humble indeed and belongs in the category of "uneducated careless speculation with a sensationalist bent".

It may have escaped your notice, but doctors who help out in West-African hospitals come into close contact with a constant stream of very ill people who are in the stadium where they really are contagious, every day for months at a stretch.

Their protective clothing prevents transmission in the vast majority (say 99,9%) of cases (something you can tell by the fact that we still have doctors left treating Ebola patients). The real danger comes when you take off your protective suit. That has to be done carefully so as not to touch the splatters of blood, muckus, tears, sweat etcetera that very ill patients secrete and if possible it has to be decontaminated first.

Now I'm sure your "humble" and uneducated opinion never has been schooled in elementary probability so you wouldn't understand things like P(contagion_after_100_days) = 1 - [P(no_contagion_after_1_day)]^100, but try it this way.

Playing the lottery every day makes it unlikely that you won't win a single prize.

And so it is with medical personnel who treat Ebola patient for months. They run a risk.

So it's no conspiracy (I can feel your incredulity and disappointment) and no case of "fsking idiots" (a term which I'd like to reserve for you personally).

It's easy to shout your (thoroughly humble) head off about stuff you don't understand, but it's not helping anybody and it stands in the way of a rational attitude towards Ebola.

P.S. there is absolutely nothing "insightful" about your post. On the other hand it's revealing. Revealing of a mindset that couples a penchant for conspiracy theories with a complete lack of understanding of risk and a disdain for plain ordinary everyday scientific commonsense that seems to have whizzed over your (so very humble) head.

is that the Government is actually doing something sensible.

Like airing the vulnerability, launching an investigation, and giving off a signal that the *manufacturers* should pay attention to security and at least make a reasonable effort to make their kit tamper-resistant

It would be in total accordance with a certain political outlook to suppress the news, pose as being "tough on crime" by imposing ridiculous penalties on offences that could be construed as breaking into medical equipment, and criminalising research into and publications of weaknesses.

Perhaps I'm being optimistic ... perhaps this will still happen. That "certain political outlook" I mentioned could be a bit behind the tech news on this issue. We can still hope though.

You argue that "capital" and "labor" are essentially equal to the identity of an enterprise.

I really didn't: when I said "bundle" I left the relative proportions unspecified. But I agree with you in that the relative importance of people's identity varies sharply with the scarcity of people's skills and that depends on the setting.

We agree that in a environment where people do routine work, so many people share the required skill that identity of who provides this skill no longer matters. And that's where vast majority of the working population is employed.

Of course there are settings where individual skills matter to a greater degree. One can think of e.g. professional sportspeople, scientists, lawyers, entrepreneurs, politicians, artists, inventors.

But their numbers are small compared to "ordinary" workers, so that by and large I think the proposition holds. Yes, there are exceptions, but 99% of the working population is rather un-exceptional.

I fear that the negative reactions here indicate (once again) that Slashdot readership consists mainly of techies. And such people often have difficulties understanding understanding how society works (even if they tend to have vocal opinions on any subject that comes along). Let me try to bring some perspective into the discussion.

Lest somebody misunderstand, the very essence of an enterprise (any enterprise) is that it is a bundle of labour and capital whose essential structure and identity is independent of and more persistent than the labour it employs. The identity behind its labour component is no more important than the identity of its capital component.

It is for this reason that any contemporary HR policy is aimed at (and this is important) divorcing the work from specific individuals.

What this means is that all and any employees must (and this is essential) be plug-replaceable as a matter of policy. Those that aren't should either be unique individuals like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, the actual owners of the company, or leaving.

That is one of the drivers (not the only one of course) behind the desire for standardisation of work procedures and documentation of ideas and knowledge.

The result of careful execution of such policy is a situation in which personnel really is replaceable. Even when it concerns 10%-30% of the employees. Which is what we are now seeing illustrated at Cisco.

So there's no need to be surprised. And no need to be disgruntled. It's simply the consequence of a certain feature of our society we collectively decided we want and actively maintain. And it has truly served us well for the past century and a half and its end-result is the envy of our neigbours.

Unfortunately the current economic tide makes the downsides (for such they are) of this state of affairs more visible: i.e. employees are just another commodity and any successful enterprise will treat them as such. . As a result, employees can get a rough deal (if they get any deal at all, i.e. if they are employed). Let's be clear about this: I don't know how to make those downsides go away without wrecking the competitiveness of enterprises. But I suspect it will involve a realignment in the balance of power between labour and capital.

One way of achieving this is through the use of force. Also known as "legislation". Fortunately we have a mechanism in place for effecting change. It's called Politics. But what actual policy should be enacted through Politics? If knew (and could prove it) I'd tell you, but I don't.

One of the problems is the constraints imposed on all of us through competition. I.e. if the policy we adopt is too disadvantagous for enterprises, they will simply take their capital, set up shop elsewhere, and drive the disadvantaged enterprises off the market.

So it's up for debate really, and this isn't a new debate. It's a debate about a basic balance in our society that needs to be realigned from time to time.

There are a number of relevant things to know about Florian Mueller before you start asking him questions.

Things that people with short memories will have forgotten by now since they happened all of three years ago. Detailed summaries of his doing can still be found on Groklaw though.

You see, mr. Mueller is not just *any* publicist. He's a publicist who is, basically, for hire by large companies to provide a congenial account of their doings and their position. In short: he is a lobbyist. His (former) clients seem to include SCO (the company who tried to claim crippling copyrights on Linux and engaged in an intense campaign of legal blackmail aimed at companies using Linux) and one of his current clients seems to be Oracle (the company that reied to shut down Android by claiming copyright on Java library API's).

As summarised by the following posts:

http://www.groklaw.net/article...

http://www.dailytech.com/Top+A...

http://techrights.org/2010/08/...

My only question to him would be: who is on your current client list?

That's the only suggestion I can give really.

Based on the paper, I'd say this thing is genuine, even if we don't understand how it works yet.

Err, sorry, but how would *you* know anything about that?

Did you do any kind of analysis tracing existing malware to point-sources? Or did you see any data on that and did you identify and count those point-sources?

No? Then what is your opinion worth?

You seem to be confusing *operators* (i.e. the ones that actually push the button and run botnets, burglarise computers, and/or spread malware) with *researchers*, *designers* and *programmers* who never hack, but who write (and sell) the tools the operators use.

If you had actually read the article, you would have noticed that it's talking about those tool-makers, not operators. I could very well believe that those toolmakers number only about 100 world-wide.

What you mean is this: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/a... Good informal advice too. A look at the mechanism at work is provided here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

You're probably speaking in jest, but unfortunately it's true.

If Google focuses on filtering content rather than providing it then it can certainly comply quicker and more completely with all such take-down orders.

The question of whether Google can " control and censor every last thing" is totally irrelevant, as the suit is addressed to Google on basis of what you can find using Google ... as opposed to what you can find "on the Internet".

It's simply a matter of where you put your priorities. Which in term depends on how reasonable you think the demands to censor search results are.

As noted in earlier posts, techies don't appreciate the extent to which society can suppress behaviour it doesn't want.

Lawsuits like this may well lead to a shift in Google's priorities and a substantial increase in the extent to which it filters search results.

It's quite OK to mass-produce cellphones that can be tapped and controlled in this way.

But apparently it's not OK to sell software to allow people to use their perfectly ordinary cellphone to pick up other conversations from its vicinity.

How about securing the transmissions of cellphones instead of prosecuting someone for doing the obvious?

Nah, no worries: the idea wasn't going to make money anyway so there's no harm in publishing it.

Oh ... sorry. It's in Japan, so we probably don't have the legal facilities we need for remunerative legal action.

Ah well, we'll just have to work it into the next free-trade treaty then.

Or simply an overreaction? I really wonder.

Allowing the security services to *monitor* the whole country looks like a panicky move and leaves the door wide open to abuse.

Curtailing the freedom of speech of journalists and bloggers, as in :

The legislation makes it an offence if a person "discloses information ... [that] relates to a special intelligence operation" and does not state any public interest exemptions, meaning it could apply to anyone including journalists. Those who disclosed such information would face up to 10 years' jail.

veers into police-state territory, given the vague way in which it's phrased. I think that the balance between on the one hand safeguarding the effectiveness of anti-terrorism measures and on preventing miscreants from benefiting from bloggers and journalists and a general gag-order on the other has been upset.

For example reporting on the crackdown of the past few days would probably fall under it. Reporting like the articles that exposed the TSA's practices of make-work and unprofessional conduct could fall under it, if the prosecutors happened to feel like it.

I'm not given to quoting historical figures as a rule, but I'll make an exception now:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. [Franklin, B. ((11 Nov. 1755) Reply to the Governor] .

Have they really considered the costs and benefits of this little gag-law? Are their "Special Intelligence Operations" that fragile that they come apart when people report about them? I can't imagine it.