merlyn writes "The Oregon Supreme Court declines to hear my case. See my fors-announce message for details."
After I became familiar with the case, I made it a point to only purchase boxes equiped with Athlons or non-Intel CPUs. Curiously, I am now a convert. The chips are cheaper and faster and I would purchase AMD whether or not Intel was trying to bully such an outstanding member of the community.
My best wishes go out to Meryln. And a suggestion: Consider Europe. At least you'll be able to jaywalk without having to worry about doing jail time.
Re:A Lamentable Outcome
pudge on 2001-12-25T12:44:51
I suggest he stay away from Europe. At least he'll be able to choose his own religion without getting shot at.Re:A Lamentable Outcome
malte on 2001-12-25T15:19:10
...unless you are attending columbine high school.
Come on, this is not the place to talk about this kinda stuff. Perl is a tollerant language (there is more than one way to do it (which includes the American way)). As a Perl programmer you should at least hold yourself up to the same standards as your favorite programming language.
merry christmas
malteRe:A Lamentable Outcome
pudge on 2001-12-25T17:40:02
Don't tell me, I agree. That was my point. Someone took the opportunity of merlyn's misfortune to bash America in favor of Europe, and I'd rather not see that kind of thing here. Especially on Christmas.
Merry Christmas!Re:A Lamentable Outcome
Buggs on 2001-12-27T18:08:56
So you choose to bash Europe...
Guess you will be treated unfair all over the world, so you can choose to fight for your rights all over the world. And not giving up just because the opponent seems to be stronger than you, might be the lesson we can learn from Merlyn.Re:A Lamentable Outcome
pudge on 2001-12-29T03:37:45
So you choose to bash Europe... False. I was pointing out the absurd by being absurd. I just explained this.
Re:A Lamentable Outcome
dwayne on 2001-12-25T16:46:14
funny, that's one of the reasons i switched to AMD as well. (love the
.sig, btw). randal, i'm sorry it turned out this way, but i am grateful you had the guts to fight it. if the world had more people like you, it would be less like this.
Re:Too bad but ...
dha on 2001-12-25T23:13:18
Yes, a lot of other people have had it worse.
However, my immediate reaction to that is "so what?"
You can always compare injustices, it doesn't make any of them more just.
More to the point, my real concern here (beyond my concern for merlyn personally) is that A MAJOR CORPORATION JUST USED THE LEGAL SYSTEM TO ITS OWN ENDS AND WE HAVE NO OBVIOUS RECOURSE. Yes, I felt like shouting.
The idea is that that sort of thing is not supposed to happen. I'm quite aware that the legal system is really, really, really far from perfect, but when it's so obviously influenced by outside forces, it saddens me. Moreso.
Furthermore, I find it mind-boggling that the punishment meted out here for a "crime" where no demostrable damage seems to have been done can be left standing.
But that's just me. What the hell do I know?Re:Too bad but ...
pudge on 2001-12-26T02:04:25
Not that I agree with the law, the actions of Intel, the outcome, etc., but "demonstrable damage" is not necessarily relevant in crimes. For example, there is no demonstrable damage in the crime of "assault," which consists of the threat of violence (the actual damage is usually involved in what comes after the assault, e.g., "battery"). Yet assault is a crime, and most people would agree it should be.
However, what makes this case odd is that there was not even an intent -- and not even an allegation of intent -- to cause criminal injury of any kind.
Of course, that in itself is not necessarily evidence that it shouldn't be labelled a criminal act, but it does, perhaps, put things in perspective, especially consdering the manner in which the trial was prosecuted. Instead of the prosecution looking at Randal as a contract worker who got into some systems he shouldn't have with the -- at worst -- intent of making a few people look bad inside the company, he was treated as someone who was trying to steal from and harm the company, despite no evidence supporting the notion (outside of the actions themselves).
Is the language in the law vague? I'd say so. Is the law bad? Yeah, I'll go with that. But did he gain unauthorized access to a computer system, and did he steal passwords? Yes, he did. The problem is that his intent was not considered. And that is why he is going around telling everyone about what happened: so you'll think twice before thinking, "oh, I am not hurting anything, I'll just take a look."Re:Too bad but ...
merlyn on 2001-12-26T03:50:34
This is one of the best summaries I've seen in a long time, although I'd hasten to say that I can't agree with "gained unauthorized access" and "steal passwords", because I wouldn't have done that knowingly, and the actions weren't self-labelled as being wrong.Thanks, though, for the rest of the note.
Re:Too bad but ...
pudge on 2001-12-26T13:42:35
Well, in my lay opinion, you technically did gain unauthorized access. The system belonged to someone else, and you accessed it without permission. And you did take something -- passwords -- that didn't belong to you, again without permission.
The funny thing about the theft is that the prosecution contended that you took away the passwords' value from Intel by knowing the passwords; but in fact, you increased the value of the passwords and the security of the systems by finding and pointing out obvious flaws. Presumably you were under some sort of NDA, so any information you had could not be given to anyone else, and as already noted, there was no intent, alleged or actual, to use that information for anything even remotely criminal or unethical. Even if you weren't under NDA, there was no allegation that you would give that information away.
So to a layman like me, you did gain unauthorized access and steal passwords. Perhaps the legal definitions are such that you feel you didn't, which is fine with me. But the point is that even assuming you did technically do those things, it's still unreasonable that you were treated as you were under the law, and it's a warning to the rest of the white hat hackers out there. Most or many of us have done or would do similar things, and imagining that such consequences could result would be unfathiomable were it not for what happened to you.
Hm, it's snowing outside. Merry Christmas!Re:Too bad but ...
dha on 2001-12-27T22:39:24
q("demonstrable damage" is not necessarily relevant in crimes. )
I suppose I agree that it's not *necessarily* relevant.
Still, were life imprisonment the punishment for jaywalking, I'd definitely have a problem with that.
Maybe I'm just too much of a G&S fan, but there is *something* to having the punishment fit the crime.:-)
Also, I'm probably less incensed that the conviction occured than that it's been let stand.
It's one thing to say "the law is the law, even if it's wrong", and another to realize that we have no recourse about it's wrongness.
Don't mind me. I have a philosophy degree.:-) Re:Too bad but ...
autarch on 2001-12-26T03:20:12
> Yes, a lot of other people have had it worse.
> However, my immediate reaction to that is "so what?"
I should probably have gone into more detail. Randall's case is a good example of how the law can be used and manipulated by money and corporate power.
And if this pisses you off, which it should, because it is unjust, that's good, cause you should be pissed.
But you should also go on from there to look at cases that are far, far worse. These are cases where instead of losing just money, people lost years of their lives in brutal prison conditions.
So if you're motivated enough by Intel's actions to stop buying there chips then it would be a good thing to educate yourself (you in the general sense) about other serious injustices and find out what you can do about those.
Randall's situation is but the tip of a very big and dirty iceberg.
-daveRe:Too bad but ...
babbage on 2001-12-26T16:46:55
...I 90% agree, but actually, in a shining ray of hope, Mumia abu-Jamal just had his death sentence thrown out.'course, that doesn't help all the thousands of others who are getting screwed over by the justice system, but it's a nice symbolic step in the right direction.
Getting a pardon for Randal would be another step in the right direction, but somehow I think it's a long shot as long as people are afraid of all this "cyber terrorism" silliness...
Re:Too bad but ...
babbage on 2001-12-26T17:08:08
That was a troll? You're right, I apologize, "everything is for the best in this best of all possible nations." We're America, we're infallible, the problems aren't with the justice system, they're with the dissidents. *sigh*...I was trying to be constructive...
:( Re:Too bad but ...
autarch on 2001-12-26T17:20:04
Was who a troll? Me, no. I was dead serious. Was there a message in there that got deleted or something. I'm confused.
-daveRe:Too bad but ...
babbage on 2001-12-26T17:28:25
No, my original reply to your comment was marked as a troll, but I was trying to be serious too. Maybe it was more political than is appropriate, but I wasn't trying to troll...Re:Too bad but ...
autarch on 2001-12-26T23:03:50
Dissent is bad. Dissenters shall be marginalized as crazies. Crazies don't have any points worth listening too. We shall not listen to the crazies.
Discussion of systemic injustice is largely seen as "irrational" in American society. Though my favorite code word for this is "unrealistic" and things along those lines. Its always great when some kisser-of-powerful-ass neoliberal columnist dismisses things like concern for human rights as being "unrealistic".
What's quite strange is that _my_ original message (which was a lot more political and provoking) wasn't marked as a troll. Weird, weird.
-daveRe:Too bad but ...
pudge on 2001-12-29T03:26:10
I marked your post as a troll because you mentioned Mumia Abu-Jamal. It already attracted one unwanted reply, which only proves that the moderation was warranted in the first place. This is not the forum for such discussions.Re:Too bad but ...
pdcawley on 2001-12-29T15:19:30
I thought participating in threads which you moderated was considered bad form? Then again, you own the software, the database and the machine it runs on, so it's your rules.
However, I'm not entirely sure that the mere mention of a particular person should automatically mean that said post was trolling.Re:Too bad but ...
pudge on 2001-12-29T15:51:07
"Trolling" isn't always intentional. I take it to mean a post that inflames and attracts generally undesirable and usually off-topic responses, as that one did.
FWIW, use Perl; is set so that administrators may moderate any post at any time, including their own, without limitation. It is assumed that this power won't be abused, and I don't think it ever has been.
If the post had *only* mentioned the person in question, I would have moderated it down all the way to -1, as was done by another site administrator to the reply. I thought the moderation would have been understood, but it clearly was not; in retrospect, I should have just replied with a request to not discuss Mumia further, as he has nothing to do with Perl or Randal and is sufficiently controversial that discussion of him will only cause problems and flames; and then moderated down any further discussion about him.
I don't want to squelch conversations, but encourage conversations that are relevant to the topics at hand. I offer my apology for taking action which instead only served to confuse and frustrate. We live and learn.Re:Too bad but ...
dmitri on 2001-12-28T18:10:18
Fuck Mumia. Let him get a chair ASAP. If he wasn't black, he would have been executed long time ago.
