More likely he'll wake up to find that Twitter has given away his handle.

I'll change my mind if the plaintiffs and the plaintiffs' lawyers donate the proceeds to charity.

Presumably the press release was issued after the write was pointed out to them. They warned Treasury in advance about the downgrade.

My reading of the Treasury release is that this all has to do with"baselines". Compared to current spending the deal didn't make cuts at all--spending will continue to increase over the next 10 years. The "cuts" are compared to a projection of what would have been spent without the deal, called a baseline. There are various ways of calculating baseline, i.e. how you account for inflation.It seems that S&P's error was related to misunderstanding which baseline the 2.1T applied to.

I understand that it was relative to baseline. But the bottom line we cut 2.1T out of the budget and S&P had advised 4T. This does highlight the issue of how cutting is done, though. The budget had a trajectory of 10T in spending increases over the next decade and now it will be 2.1T less than that. So we will increase our spending by 7.9T and call it a "cut". :)

The US did not come within one day of defaulting. It came within a day of hitting the debt ceiling, which is a very different thing. Despite the way it was portrayed, the government could have limped along for days our weeks without defaulting.

(I'm not saying that would have been a good thing--just that the idea of August 2nd as the day default would have occurred is incorrect.)

We hit the debt ceiling back in May. We've managed to stay afloat due to some accounting tricks at the Treasury.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/16/federal-gove...

How is this not "unauthorized access" "in any meaningful sense"?

They blocked his IP, they blocked his MAC, and he hid a machine in a wiring closet to get on MIT's network. What would he have to do to make it "meaningful"?

Crack a password. Use SQL injections. Steal a credit card. Spoof someone else's MAC and IP. Steal a cookie. Something like that.

He was accused of using a guest network account on MIT, with a fake name, new MAC and IP, and throw-away email address. From there, he used a script to download lots of JSTOR documents.

This isn't the internet equivalent of "checking out too many library books". It's the internet equivalent of "checking out too many library books whilst wearing a false mustache".

So it should only be illegal if a hacker wouldn't think it's lame? Got it.

Nah. It should only be illegal if normal people can't do it. Most of what Aaron did is stuff lots of people do.

There's a difference between wearing a dummy badge that says "I am Gary Host", a badge that incorrectly says "I am Bill Gates" (as that would be some kind of identity theft) and forging a passport in "Gary Host"'s name. What aaronsw did was far closer to the first.

Now, you could argue that scripts are power tools, and using them requires a higher standard of behavior. If you are driving a plane, giving dummy credentials over the radio is a lot more serious than a kid with a toy CV radio.

Even then, the dummy credentials didn't really cause any damage. The damage was done by the script itself. Even if he used his real name, the damage would have been done.

As a hacker, I think this would solve a lot of problems in the world. ;p

I did not say that it was not unauthorized access, just that hacking (in the breaking into computer systems sense) involves actually breaking in.

Changing a MAC address (on a device that you own and control) does not constitute hacking. It is as simple as ifconfig(8) and if you have a consumer router it probably has an option in the web interface to do it.

Do you have any basis for claiming that "an open door could likely be construed as implied consent"?

I would not advise that you try that in many parts of the US. You'll be risking getting shot, and the homeowner would not have committed a crime.

Why do you think a "properly implemented" OpenID site should allow the user to use any authentication provider? The relying party site is trusting the OpenID provider to authenticate its users. Wouldn't sites with real security requirements want to vet providers before trusting them?

Exactly right.

And all OpenID providers have different attribute exchange protocol extensions. If you use them, you can effectively allow only those you have tested.

And you are failing to understand the legal questions at issue...

The Fifth Amendment, as currently interpreted, doesn't provide the protection you describe. It protects against giving self-incriminating testimony and essentially the question is whether the password is "testimony." Keep in mind that the government is not asking him to disclose it, just to type it into the computer. Here's a good discussion: http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1197670606.shtml (There seems to be a CSS problem with that page, but the text is fine.)

It's not true that "you may not own the copyright to changes you make ... because the court may rule it a derivative work." You may not be able to distribute those changes without violating someone else's copyright, but that doesn't affect the fact that you own the copyright to your own work.

Consider what would happen in your FanFic case if Sony tried to incorporate the kid's changes into EverQuest. The kid could sue them for infringement.