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Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

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Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#441

Post by Kerb_ »

wl wrote: post #334
kmeisthax wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that the US is very proud of their trigger and muzzle discipline. Or at least half of it. The other half points loaded guns with the safeties off directly at their own crotches to own the libs[0]. Going a layer deeper, Americans really, really love to abuse the shit out of customer service workers. To put it extremely charitably, we're used to being fucked by corpos so we pre-emptively fuck them back in…

That Vice article and the pluralistic blog spam post don't understand what a Fudd is. A Fudd is a curmudgeonly, old fashioned gun owner who is judgmental about people owning modern firearms. They favor hunting and shotgun games over handguns and semiautomatic rifles. If they own handguns at all, think revolvers and 1911s instead of Glocks. Generally, Fudds tend to be very adamant about safe gun handling, often advoca…

I agree with almost all of this, but a lot of the people who point loaded guns at their crotches act like normal people at the range or shoot at unsupervised DNR land

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#442

Post by rsynnott »

CalRobert wrote: post #436
rsynnott wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the theory is that they'll roll it out to 569,000 premises which are considered unlikely to be connected to fibre via the commercial providers; it's fairly extensive. In principle, it should go virtually everywhere that the commercial providers don't. We'll see how it works out in practice, of course. They're at about 150k premises 'passed' (ie they can be connected on demand); of these 45k are actually connected.…

Rob!!! It's been a while. Hope you're doing well. I was referring to this (from 2018) for the 300k number - https://www.openeir.ie/open-eir-passes-170k-rural-homes-busi...

Oh, small world!

Yeah, this was OpenEir (which is now just Eir’s standard commercial offering, though I think the rural buildout was subsidised). I was thinking of NBI, a separate network which is supposed to fill in what OpenEir didn’t.

Meanwhile I’m on coax; that’s the price you pay to live in the city center. (For whatever reason, Dublin city center tends to be behind on this stuff; my old apartment, beside Trinity, didn’t even get _VDSL_ until 2016 or so).

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#443

Post by tzs »

kmeisthax wrote: post #104
wkat4242 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of incidents involving firearms is astonishing. I'm glad I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals that only really use them to shoot their rivals. I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people. I'm really a bit surprised to hear this. I did a similar job…

You're right that the US is very proud of their trigger and muzzle discipline. Or at least half of it. The other half points loaded guns with the safeties off directly at their own crotches to own the libs[0]. Going a layer deeper, Americans really, really love to abuse the shit out of customer service workers. To put it extremely charitably, we're used to being fucked by corpos so we pre-emptively fuck them back in…

> Or at least half of it. The other half points loaded guns with the safeties off directly at their own crotches to own the libs[0]

The source you cited specifically says it is not to own the libs.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#444

Post by peyton »

jltsiren wrote: post #275
noduerme wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. Policing in any country is always a mix of public service and protection racket. A police monopoly on protecting people from other people, or society from itself, leaves no safety for anyone. It's ironic that some of the most vociferously anti-gun people in the US are also the ones with the clearest view of the police as an armed gang. But absent armed police and without the right to protect themselves, wh…

People don't agree on whether there is a positive or negative correlation between security and safety; whether increased security makes the society more or less safe. Some people also think that everyone interested in security (including the police, the military, and people buying guns for self defense) is inherently suspicious. Trust makes the society safe. When there is a lack of trust, careful security measures ca…

> But security can also lead to an arms race that makes everyone less safe, as measures that improve someone's safety may have a negative effect on others.

The stoic natural rights theory on which the US is founded definitely tips the balance towards self-defense over the collective. It’s the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#445

Post by jltsiren »

peyton wrote: post #444
jltsiren wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't agree on whether there is a positive or negative correlation between security and safety; whether increased security makes the society more or less safe. Some people also think that everyone interested in security (including the police, the military, and people buying guns for self defense) is inherently suspicious. Trust makes the society safe. When there is a lack of trust, careful security measures ca…

> But security can also lead to an arms race that makes everyone less safe, as measures that improve someone's safety may have a negative effect on others. The stoic natural rights theory on which the US is founded definitely tips the balance towards self-defense over the collective. It’s the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.

The hard part is stopping the self-defense at armed individuals. And not escalating from armed individuals to armed gangs. From armed gangs to criminal organizations capable of challenging the state. From criminal organizations to regional warlords replacing the state. And from regional warlords to conquerors establishing a new state.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#446

Post by incompatible »

vore wrote: post #256
incompatible wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose I'm just old, and people doing stupid things isn't going to make my blood boil any more. I've accepted it by now as human nature. If you want to actually annoy me, you need to do something purely evil, like harming innocent people just to advance some stupid agenda of your own. Russians firing missiles at apartment buildings in Ukraine is a current example.

Or, like, someone having their life destroyed by being sent to jail for having cable internet as set up by the provider? The author clearly had the means to sort her own case out, but you can certainly imagine someone who didn't and would be in jail for it. Sure, on the scale of evil it's nowhere near the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but I don't think this is shrug your shoulder and say "tough titty" territory either…

Certainly, there was somebody who was actually sent to jail, even after patiently explaining their case in court, and if the management of the cable provider knew exactly what was happening, and continued their persecution because of some stupid business reason, it would be more concerning.

However, that's not how the story was told.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#447

Post by incompatible »

devnullbrain wrote: post #391
incompatible wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose I'm just old, and people doing stupid things isn't going to make my blood boil any more. I've accepted it by now as human nature. If you want to actually annoy me, you need to do something purely evil, like harming innocent people just to advance some stupid agenda of your own. Russians firing missiles at apartment buildings in Ukraine is a current example.

You wouldn't be annoyed by spending 6 months in jail? You must be old!

It would perhaps be an interesting new experience, when interesting new experiences are hard to find. But it's probably one of those things that seems more interesting in theory than it turns out to be in practice, and I'd get tired of it after a few days.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#448

Post by tzs »

notpushkin wrote: post #181
b112 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of that, it takes equipment, hardware, personnel, infrastructure, power to deliver cable. The OP literally has no idea what they are talking about, and could use the same logic for electricity theft.

There's a subtle but very important difference. Electricity theft does extract a resource from the grid (electricity provider needs to supply the energy you're using on the other end). Similarly, phreaking uses phone lines which is a finite resource too (and phone company would rather keep those available for paying customers). Cable on the other hand runs all channels to your household in the first place. By removin…

Just because the harm caused by an individual action is tiny doesn't necessarily mean that thing should be legal.

For example I have a small amount of engine oil that needs disposal. I could dump it in the drainage ditch in front of my house and probably the only measurable harm it might cause would be to weeds that are growing in the ditch. By time it got to where oil could harm anything valuable it would be so diluted that it would not cause any detectable harm.

Yet doing so is illegal. It needs to be illegal because if a large number of people did it there would be measurable harm even though the harm from any one of the individuals would not be measurable.

With any kind of theft of services you need to look at not just the direct harm an individual might cause to the service provider (which may be immeasurably small) but also the harm to the service provider and to the people who are paying for the service if theft of services were widespread.

To give an extreme example if I am the only customer in my town who is actually paying for service with everyone else committing theft of services to get that service the service provider is likely to either withdraw from the market or raise rates significantly, either of which harms me.

Of course it would never actually get that extreme, but if even a few percent of people are doing it the service provider will probably start spending money on technological solutions to stop that. And the costs of those technological solutions will likely be pushed onto subscribers. Those solutions may also require installing more equipment at the user end to use the service (e.g., set top boxes) that can reduce the user's privacy.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#449

Post by cogman10 »

tzs wrote: post #448
notpushkin wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a subtle but very important difference. Electricity theft does extract a resource from the grid (electricity provider needs to supply the energy you're using on the other end). Similarly, phreaking uses phone lines which is a finite resource too (and phone company would rather keep those available for paying customers). Cable on the other hand runs all channels to your household in the first place. By removin…

Just because the harm caused by an individual action is tiny doesn't necessarily mean that thing should be legal. For example I have a small amount of engine oil that needs disposal. I could dump it in the drainage ditch in front of my house and probably the only measurable harm it might cause would be to weeds that are growing in the ditch. By time it got to where oil could harm anything valuable it would be so dilu…

And I don't think anyone is arguing that there shouldn't be some sort of legal action against cable stealing. My initial comment is really focused on the fact that it involves jail time.

To the oil ditch example, I certainly could see something like "it's $1000 and cleanup costs". The only way I could see jail time being justified is if you routinely decided to go around spraying the neighborhood with motor oil.

But for cable, there doesn't seem like there's ever a case where an individual could warrant jail time. Fine + cable bill for the free months of cable seems like more than enough for most people and for the "serial offender" it seems like lifetime subscription would be more than enough to avoid future problems (court mandated cable would be an interesting punishment :D)

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#450

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

talldatethrow wrote: post #382
brenns10 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, that statistic (roughly one per person) doesn't inspire confidence. The correct takeaway isn't "wow, so few of the guns in America are used to kill people." It's "wow, there are so many guns that anybody can have one, regardless of whether they are fit to."

We don't tell people if they have the right to reproduce, and we shouldn't tell people if they have the right to protect themselves.

Your insistence on a right to a gun for self-protection comes at the cost of others using their right to a gun for crime.

If nobody had guns, you wouldn't need to a gun to protect yourself from someone else with a gun.

The problem of course is that the genie is already out of the bottle. We can't take the guns away, they're all over the place in the USA already. Even if the Second Amendment was repealed, all that would happen is that only criminals would have guns.

We're fucked and there's no solution.

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