walid

Why are you taking it as sarcasm? MIT didn't know it was him until they installed a camera and guest logins are the norm and apparently/reportedly have high privileges.

Did you see people throwing themselves out of the World Trade Center not wanting to be burnt alive? Was it their choice to kill themselves? Were they victims of their own minds? Think about your stupid comment for a while.

It is so frustrating that people don't try to look up what they should know before commenting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacks_at_the_Massachusetts_Inst...

I totally agree he killed himself just like every suicide victim. The question is why does a person commit suicide? Boredom? Adventure? To get laid?

Your comment is the stupidest I've read in a long long time.

Down voted.

> Many people, almost by definition, do not believe that their own criminal acts were actually a "crime". Rationalization is a well-known human psychological phenomenon.

It is problematic when you accept people's sworn testimony when it is against their true belief. Usually that is what is called a lie and sometimes a form of slavery. Disagreeing with clearly stated laws is one thing, but signing in agreement on what you totally disagree with and only because you were compelled is suppression of expression. I'm NOT trying to convert Aaron's position to one of free speech, but there is a line when you decide that someone has broken the law whether they agree to it or not and making them against their beliefs sign on a paper that becomes public record stating that they knowingly broke the law. The case here is when a law's validity is being challenged, this signed piece of paper removes any doubts about wrong doing and seals the fate of the signer. The law is validated by invalidating the counterargument through coercion.

> Whatever else Aaron thought about his idealistic mission, being on the MIT subnet without permission was wrong (both morally and legally), as was entering into the MIT server farm to gain that access.

But this wasn't even something that Aaron naïvely didn't recognize... he knew this was wrong to do as he had the same level of JSTOR access at his own campus at Harvard. But he didn't leech JSTOR from his own campus, he traveled across the city to surreptitiously do it from MIT. He even once covered his face with his bicycle helmet when he noticed a security camera so let's know act like "I didn't commit a crime" was his big hang-up. He did know, even if he disagreed personally with the law itself.

This I totally agree with and even if he disagreed personally with the law itself he did what he did and it was at least in my opinion somehow not right and obviously illegal.

> Well for starters you don't need to prove your innocence, you need only demonstrate that the government was unable to prove your guilt. But either way Dr. Granick covered this point already, and her treatment was comprehensive.

The problem with this argument is that his life was already nuked. The prosecution and MIT were in cahoots. If you read the article carefully you can see that Aaron's lawyers were upset that the prosecution was getting documents from MIT without warrants and hence violating Aaron's 4th amendment rights.

Tensions at MIT heightened in October after Aaron’s lawyers filed a motion alleging the university was “acting in concert” with the prosecution, violating federal law and Aaron’s Fourth Amendment rights protecting him from unreasonable search and seizure. The motion sought to suppress the indictment and all information gathered during the investigation. MIT was afraid its employees might have to defend themselves on the stand, which Abelson concluded served to further align the university’s interests with the prosecution.

It did. In all the wrong ways. If she had any political ambitions, she can kiss them goodbye.

I used to think that NASA is exempt by the government from patent royalties when manufacturing equipment for NASA's missions and purposes. But after a little Googling it turns out I am wrong: http://www.cojk.com/nasa-ordered-to-pay-boeing-28-3m-in-pate...

What is more important is that national security can precede legality at times and trying to stop the NSA from using a particular software becomes moot once you consider that an adversary can do the same actions to undermine software. This means the NSA will have justification to ignore any clause of no use an hunt for exploits and may probably comply with a legal clause of no use as a regular user.

On the other hand you shouldn't look at the NSA as the bad guy. Remember that a security/spying agency is controlled by policy. If policies are bad the actor acts badly. Put your energy in fixing policy instead of beating down the NSA. I'm starting to feel sorry for an agency that acts on orders from the government at large.

Well it is in many crime movies except that our megapixels were not enough for such uses. Now with high resolution images it is relatively easier to do. I'm not surprised by it. It just is another use of tech.

Why does an IDE require a username and password to use it?

Well there have been reports already about changes: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/16/us-usa-nsa-transit...

WOW man that was deep!

Actually that is not true. When companies do it, laws can be passed to stop such behaviour but when government does it, you have to change governance which is more difficult. Also commercial entities cannot siphon people's data under the title of security.

The best analogy I've read in this thread so far.

I think the distinction is more like medical researchers and practitioners. CS is more like the research aspect of the craft but once it's done it has to be applied in practice. Sometimes you don't need to be a doctor when feel you have a cold and just take a day off and stay in bed, but a nurse can't help you with cancer. Most people get the common flu and for them you don't have to see a doctor, but what happens in our profession is that some people think that all problems are equivalent to the flu.

...and I officially envy you...

You missed the point on what I was inferring.

> The same way you make a real-world video editing suite work on an iPhone and have the guts to make that your seasonal and campaign: in a careful and considerate fashion without trying to be all things to all people.

It isn't about being all things. It is about a level of control you need while working. This is actually a mathematics problem namely Godel's second theorem of incompleteness which states and this is a brief description that "a system cannot contain itself" meaning that you can build a system of components but those components can't be built from inside the system. This equally applies to software.

> That said, if I had an editable Chrome dev tools on a tablet I'd be 50% of the way there some days. :)

Again you're conflating two issues. Not all dev tools can exist is a browser. If they do then by definition they don't exist in the browser anymore. A paradox. If your dev tools can exist in the browser alone then you definitely are using only a subset of necessary dev tools for other domains. It is obvious that you are a web dev but then I'm not and the browser doesn't cut it for me.

> And ... Don't read too much in the car/truck comment. Eventually even smart phones will behave like supercomputers. It's just a matter of time.

Then again you missed it. I wasn't reading into it. I was comparing how the CEO of Treehouse was dissing CS degrees because he wanted to sell his tutorials like Jobs was dissing the PC because he wanted to sell iPads.

You do know that one of Aaron's strengths, or at least a point of focus, was gamification. Looking at this article in that light you realize that he was trying to stir up a conversation. He also didn't seem to bother to be nice, at least when he had an opposing opinion.

Well if you think of it, a CEO like Steve Jobs will call the PC a truck... to sell the iPad.

• Computer Science = Truck

• Treehouse = iPad

But how do you make iPad dev tools?

hahaha that is a whole new can of worms...

In my experience, mentors matter more than the course title. I've had the privilege of being taught by some of the best teachers and witnessed some of the worst. When your instructor deals with the course material as the sole purpose of a student being in class then the important lessons of computer science become nothing more than an exercise in regurgitation. However I've had my eyes opened by certain individuals who showed me what mathematics means in real life, how algorithms fail, why project management is important and how it's done and even how all coding has a mathematical basis (like SQL and compiler decisions). Personally my CS appreciation was a byproduct of being in the presence of these mentors rather than reading a book. They showed me the essence of the science. Mind you I love the books and still read my university books sometimes for fun, sometimes to brush up on the science after getting rusty.

The guy isn't bored of programming, he is over worked.

So you are bored and your job has lost its luster. For that do something completely different and do it just for fun. If you work as X and even if you are good at X you will eventually get bored of X. Imagine if you had ice-cream or chocolate all the time. Eventually you will hate eating anymore of it. The thing is to do something you like or you feel you need but do it only for yourself and not because you have or need to.

Stand in front of the mirror and ask yourself what you like to do. I, for example, started exercising more after trying it and stopping because of life matters. Choose something that you like and make you feel you're experiencing a new thing. Don't learn another programming language like everyone on HN is suggesting. You know that saying about when you're a hammer...

Just because you are good at something doesn't mean that it's enough to fulfill you. It will make you proud of yourself for a while but then it'll start wearing off. You need something that makes you feel in touch with your purely human nature that is different from your daily job. How about painting, cooking, exercising, stamp collection (a dying hobby), reading poetry (I won't do that but you might), theater, dancing lessons, gardening, sightseeing, photography, magic tricks. Don't pick something like your job.

Your argument doesn't hold because transparency will mean there will eventually be a state of equilibrium after you take many employees and after many employees are taken away from you. Talent snatching cannot go on forever. After that, employees will feel compensated, safe and complacent. If still you want to pay more for other employees then they probably deserve it because the market is supply and demand.

The article does mention that he did fight deportation. On the other hand not going to China or working on Chinese rocket projects would have been ludicrous considering his ethnicity and field of expertise. You expect a human to simply drop their life's opus because of accusations of being a communist. Frankly it doesn't matter if he was or wasn't a communist. It doesn't matter in the larger scope of things because being a communist doesn't mean betraying your country. The question is why was he charged with communism (which is not a crime) without proof. Any charge without prior proof is over reach. And him ending in China is the best option he had after being stalled in the USA.

Looking at it through your lens: if he stays he's a spy, if he leaves he's a spy.

Any third option?

I remember playing Half-Life and finishing the game and only after I replayed the intro again did I bother to understand the premise of aliens teleported to us. I only wanted to wind the game. FPS are fun to me because of the speed I have to react and not because of the weapons detail. In fact weapons don't interest me if they don't have a sci-fi feel to them. So yeah, it's just a game.

> So whilst you may lose economy of scale on the motherboard side, I think you will gain it back via integration, however, you will lose the ability to customise.

True but if the SoC was advanced enough it can make customization unnecessary. After all a phone or tablet or laptop or a desktop or a server is just a computer with some processing power and memory. Old super computers can now fit on a Samsung Galaxy Gear. Add more of the same to the SoC or make SoCs of varying specs. Who needs customization in such an environment.

But I don't think this is a workable task in a political system. The views of the guy you voted for are going to be different from the one you didn't vote for. In a perfect system every person will be impartial in evaluating elected officials. In the real world, if you evaluate the guy you DID NOT elect you would be perceived as being biased. On the other hand, if you evaluate the person you DID elect you would be perceived as being biased as well. Both cases you would be perceived as being biased. So the only workable approach is to focus less on individuals and more on the system and its results.

You nailed it. What also changes is people in authoritarian posts. The system has to be resilient to the occasional wrong guy being chosen for a powerful post. Also it doesn't make sense to fight individuals since it gives a fake sense justice. If the system allows injustice then it is bound to happen and abundantly so.

> Now the President is distancing himself from them for his own political reasons.

But whether the President distances himself or not is irrelevant. The agency is still nothing more than a tasked employee. So when people object to the NSA's actions they are essentially objecting to the policy and the choices the policy makers set in place.

Also when the NSA is blamed with overreach, it is blamed for not following orders within the boundaries of the law.

So if it was the first point that is the center of this debacle then both the President and Congress are responsible for the NSA's actions. If it is the second point then the NSA, the President and Congress shoulder the blame. Either way, this has nothing to do with the President distancing himself.

Full disclosure: I am not an American citizen.

Having said that, isn't it out of place for PR people from the NSA be asking that the president show a form of political endorsement for NSA actions while the NSA is just an agency that does what it is told to do. I mean they are not policy makers and all the noise about NSA surveillance expects Congress and the White House to instigate policy change rather than to "show the love" or hate. The NSA in effect is just an employee, not a policy maker. Am I missing something?