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Cops Bust Starcraft Clan
I spoke with Patrick Barnes, identified as the lead member of the clan. He's a Comp. Sci. major, and I can tell from the sound of his voice that he likes the material (he finds it easy).
The way Patrick described it to me, there was a technical glitch in uploading the website -- I'm still not sure exactly how this happened, but apparently they contacted the wrong server. Anyway, whatever happened, it got the attention of someone at Kent State. The students with their names on the clan site got letters in the mail saying they were to have a meeting with their Resident Director in two days.
On the day of that meeting, it was cancelled. Then, on Thursday, the cops (campus cops, apparently) came to one of their dorm rooms, and confiscated a computer and CDs. Everyone in the clan was taken to the station and individually questioned about what it was, what it meant, whether they were hackers, who was the "leader," and so on.
The confiscated computer is having its hard drive copied and analyzed for evidence. According to Patrick, it might be returned tomorrow, or, as the law allows, not for a year.
Patrick was the only one of the members I spoke with who was willing to talk at any length. He predicted the other members of the clan would be more worried than he, and he was right (their lawyer had told them not to talk about it). I hope in a few years they can look back on this as simply a surreal trip into the land of university cops who don't understand gaming.
I'll hand the conclusion over to this story's submitter, Effugas, who asks:
"Instead of simply laughing and moving on, what can we, as a community do to prevent these kind of occurances in the future? Would something as simple as a confidential 'reality check' group of experts, made available to law enforcement as consultants, be helpful? Would a set of guidelines, peer reviewed by the community, be useful? Instead of cursing the darkness, how can we praise the light?"
Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Here's a funny stroy. Once upon a time I went to jail and it sucked. I was held without bail for 15 days (the case was later dismissed). But onto the fun stuff, in the holding cell a guy who'd recently overdosed on heroine was slipping in and out of consiousness. It took me 7 days to get a pat of soap to take a shower. But while I wasn't showering I got to watch the corrections officers steal milk and cookies from the diabetic cart. When I was a kid the cops would drive by my appartments and talk to the kids and hand out baseball and football cards (which I collected) so I liked the cops. Turns out they're just like everyone else 51% shit, 48% plain human, 1% good people. To give the police any deference is ridiculous, feign respect, and cover your own ass. All in all, the 15 or so people I was in a cell with, much better human beings that those who were guarding us.
"These players have either done a {BfD} member or a {BfD} ally wrong, or admitted to the lowest thing anyone could do: HACKED, or they are just plain bastards that deserve to die (in the game itself, not the REAL world!!!)"
Get that? In the game. Perhaps Kent State should use those tuition fees to teach their police corps how to read.
It's amazing out drunken frat boys can date rape women without getting in trouble, but some kids get tackled for playing a computer game.
I get paid a nickel for every email I read!
Uhh? This is irony, right? This is Slashdot, remember.
Plus, when they saw "Starcraft" and "clans", they probably had visions of 1/2 the dorm sleeping in their bunks under purple towels and wearing white Nikes.
...I mean, can't any of the editors try for at least a veneer of objectivity?
...and then we find out that jamie confirms the story through the Starcraft clan leader! Wow, talk about going the extra mile to get all the facts.
/. editors like to keep pointing out, /. is just an opinion page for the editors.
For example:
"That said, having spoken with another of the students, I think the essentials of the story are right: cops, confiscation, clan, and (absurd) worry about trash talk being death threats. "
I think that getting the "essentials of the story" would include talking to the school sysadmins, as well as the police officers involved, at a bare minimum. But hey, as the
- Concerned Reader
Since when is smack talk considered threats? Obviously these cops and judges havent played any video games. Also, how come eminem can rap about killing his wife and it's ok but kids cant write stories in school about killing someone? Democracy is dieing! kiss freedom goodbye
Here's why:
The 1980 Privacy Protection Act protects the freedom of American journalists, scholars and writers to publish freely by prohibiting all law enforcement agencies from searching for or seizing "any work product materials" or any related "documentary materials... possessed by a person... with a purpose to disseminate to the public a newspaper, book, broadcast, or other similar form of public communication" [42 U.S.C. SS2000aa].
The so-called law enforcement officers are forced to use some technique or gizmo that will inspect **only those portions** of a suspect journalist's hard disk which might pertain to a crime, and do so **without interrupting** the work in progress."
Since this "offensive" material was clearly meant for public dissemination, it is covered by this Act.
IMO, it's time for an enterprising lawyer to end the career of campus cop and an administrator or two. If this is handled properly, the students may never have to work again -- they can simply live off the proceeds of the inevitable (and richly deserved) lawsuit they will win.
Media operations guy, Kent state: let 'em know they are idiots. mailto:rkirksey@kent.edu
It's kinda funny (and appropriate) that the Ad-banner that I got showed the Cluelessness and Blame demotivators.
Come, now. Of course the officials have been educated. They _know_ that all those nasty terrorists use multiplayer net games to chat about their next bombing and practice tactics during relaxing sessions of CounterStrike slaughter or Starcraft mayhem. (They also use custom encrypting game clients and on-the-fly steganography engines to embed bomb maps into their game graphics, of course)
Hey, these guys were networking - they just had to be up to no good!
That was not my experience, admittedly, I went to Ohio State, another Ohio college...perhaps Ohio law/case law is different.
The role of the university was essentially as a landlord. They had certain rules which a regular landlord wouldn't have, for instance, they prohibited alcohol unless you were over 21. On the other hand, they couldn't search your room for alcohol *without* 24 hours notice--which is essentially what a landlord has to do to go through your apartment. Now, the university could bust you for alcohol if it was in plain sight.
There have apparently been some cases of police/federal authorities going through federal housing...and apparently courts have rules that while they may be owned by the federal government, public housing is protected by 4th amendment rights.
They already had weapons of the same power. They were replacing the older weapons due to age. The M16's were cheaper than the equivalent semi-automatic weapons and the M16's would have been modified to make them semi-auto. The reason the sale fell through, is they thought they were getting new guns and it turned out the ones for sale were used.
Vermifax
Vermifax
Logout
As long as you insist on having a society where anyone can get sued for millions of pounds for *anything*, this sort of stuff will go on. It's getting out of hand, and it's spreading over to the UK, where we'd rather keep our freedoms, thanks.
;)
Campus police? What a crazy idea. You'll be selling poeple machine guns for 'home defence' next!
--
--
--
Well I say, "You reap what you sow." You can't have freedom AND security. Please choose responsibly.
I choose freedom.
-30-
Not really. Without going into too much detail, I think he had access to several dial-up accounts to small ISP's that didn't concern me. I have no idea how he got them, though.
I had no idea he was using the lab Sparcs to then telnet to the ISPs. I really tried to ignore any of the stupid activities he took part in.
Yes, the shooters have indeed been driven by revenge... if people did stop being assholes, we probably would no longer have these shooting sprees. How do you propose to do this? Give people a big red sticker for their foreheads if they're being an asshole? For that matter, your definition of being an asshole may differ from mine; behaviour I find acceptable, you may riot over. How do "we", as a society, agree on what to agree on? The short answer is, "we can't". There is no fix to this problem that isn't rose-coloured glasses. This is what happens when you get one person living with another. You get disagreements. The more people living together, the stronger the disagreements.
Welcome to life in a democracy, people! It sucks! Sorry! At least it sucks less than everything else though, right?
Idea for the next game against the campus police:
Let the cops win.
From one of the "Least influential movies of all time" (according to something mentioned, I believe in a "quickie" a while back) called "Spaced Invaders".
Not exactly high quality art or anything, but I thought it was a rather sadly underrated movie.
But, then, I'm easily amused...
---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Actually at most American colleges and universities your rights are sacrificed when you sign the sheet saying "yes, I want to live in a dorm." Specifically sections where "I agree to abide by the rules and regulations of insert school here" can be used by campus police. It's also not well known that on-campus housing, although you live in it, is the property of the school. Therefore should they suspect something stupid is going on, you have no right of refusal.
I'm not saying I agree with what they did; I'm just saying that I'm not surprised.
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But the point being that said Universities are NOT entering into tenant/landlord agreements, this is irrelevant. I don't know of a single New Jersey public college that has an on-campus tenant/landlord agreement. What this school may be doing in the future is becoming landlord of several off-campus housing units, therefore said off-campus units would not be subject to the same search-and-seizure capabilities that on-campus housing is.
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So it's OK to shoot and kill people for arson and threats? Police use of force is supposed to be appropriate to the situation at hand; I don't see how it would be appropriate to shoot and kill someone unless they were about to cause imminent serious bodily harm to another person. Threats of bodily harm? To hear you tell it, those were some pretty insecure National Guardsmen :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Wow, you were in such a hurry to reply that you didn't actually read any of the post you were replying to, displaying a lack of comprehension of almost every salient fact from this thread. Allow me to apply a clue-by-four:
Thanks, and please don't change the topic on a thread ever again, at least until you're more subtle about it. At least those Starcraft lamers could spell :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
since you don't have an email address listed -- just for the record, I'm stealing this line for my email .sig
Here is a letter to the editor. This story seems old... hope they get their computers back.
--
You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me.
If your gonna insult me...insult me with substance, ya little wanker. That insult wasn't even thoughtful.
And my name being "TheCaptain" is more of an inside joke...it's actually more of a Star Trek reference. Nice try tho!
Why do you people insist on trying to associate him with something that he obviously had NO involvement with whatsoever?
Besides....there are pretty much no grounds for the kinda crap this kids going through. He needs to get a good lawyer and appeal/sue the crap out of the cops/rentacops/university officials who are giving him this grief without any solid grounds. I don't think that the federal government, or state police in general have a whole hell of a lot to do with this...more likely some overzealous rentacops.
The folks who did the shooting back on that May 4th were National Guard, as in "I'm not a jackbooted thug, but I play one on the weekend!"
The folks who did the shooting at Ruby Ridge and Waco were the Real Thing. I assume they learnt their lesson: It's OK to kill lefties and students, but better leave the right alone.
Information is not Knowledge
Maybe all we need is such a group for the *press* to go to when reporting on such stories.
I sometimes spend hours after work playing Starcraft/Brood War. Sure I trash talk, taunt and even threaten my opponents. I have even told my opponents to drop dead on more than one occasion.
After reading this article, I am deathly afraid!
I better run home now and delete Starcraft from my hard disk. Then I need to burn the CD's and spread the ashes in a river. Then, I need to call Blizzard and have them remove me from Battle.net servers, but only from a pay phone. I don't want anyone to know that it was me, and I don't want anyone to be able to track me down. I don't want them to take my computers and throw me in jail!!
But seriously, this is just plain dumb. Its a game man, that is all it is.
Did kids get busted in the 50's and 60's for taunting the pitcher in a baseball game?
Brian
http://www.assortedinternet.com
If your sick and tired of the endless YRO stories DON'T READ THEM!
and better yet don't post to them.
http://Lenny.com
Well, if the police are going to behave that way, I think I won't rescue any hostages tonight...
Really????
You mean I can just go into my tenant's apartment and take his computer equipment and oooh look some CDs that would add nicely to my collection... And hey! that's a NICE stereo system there! I'll bet he was using it for terrorist broadcasts or something just as criminal.
Jeez.. sounds a lot like Canada in general.
Don't ever get caught here saying chink, nigger, honkey, jerry, limey, jap, polak, russki, chug, or any other such naughty words unless you have a lot of cash to pay out for your heinous crimes.
Ah to live free...
I have seen my own high school brother talked about with much vulgarity on a website by some of his classmates that according to him, are 'messed up kids'. Now I know my brother and fully trust his judgement, but how can you tell if a person is just being really sarcastic or really has some mental issues?
I had a similar incident happen to me while I was in hellschool: A rather enterprising youth decided to publish a paper containing disparaging remarks with regards to my sexuality.
In response, I recified the situation in the best possible way: I beat the shit out of him.
Result: no more published papers. Ever.
Ever notice how ALL of the world's major conflicts were finally settled by violence?
The cops supposedly raid the dorm room because of the website. Yet the website is still up. Then one of the students say they somehow contacted the wrong server when uploading the website? Uhh, OK.
Ok, for all you slow learners out there:
1. The website has been running for 2 years.
2. Half the pages are 404.
Now put 2 and 2 together and understand how contacting the wrong site halfway through updating could cause such a situation.
If only it were so easy to clean out the shallow end...
Thank you for that - I was also having trouble with the lack of details on this. As a side note please remember that the guys in uniform are just doing their job and have little to do with the case as a whole. When the investigator shows up and asks for help in a warrant he gets it. The patrol officer dosn't even know any of the case details.
I also tend to see police officers get stereotyped here a lot in just the manner you accuse us of stereotyping others. If I walked up to you at a conference and introduced myself as a police officer would you stay and talk or would you walk away? Do you have any friends that are cops? If you get to know one you will find out that there are some side effects to the training and working the streets (if you want to stay alive). Its a different experience to get up and go to work knowing that some of the people will truely want to kill you today not for what you personaly have done but just because of the job that you do.
I work in law enforcement (part time, without pay) because most of the time I end up helping people solve problems and making my community a safer place. My goal is voluntary compliance with the law, I don't want to arrest anyone unless its necessary to protect the community but if a subject is posing a threat to lives or property I will do everything within the law to stop them, including the use of deadly force if necessary.
Yeah, I think making an CS map of your school may not be such a good idea. art...life...art...life Don't blur the lines too much. It's better for all of us. Besides, CS is recommended for Mature 17+ players. What, are you a senior?
Dude, nobody actually got killed at a Midwestern college while playing Dungeons & Dragons.
You are thinking of the Tom Hanks movie, "Mazes and Monsters". Work of fiction.
I didn't do it, nobody saw me, you can't prove anything. Bart Simpson
Yes, and increase the frag total for the judge.
There is a set of books out there which list lyrics most people misinterpret. You would not believe what people come up with... Well then again. ANd if you want a funny example of how that works, rent Jumpin Jack Flash and watch Whoopi Goldburg try to write down the lyrics to that Stone's tune.
But I have never heard that "lyric" in the hundred plus times I have listened to Wisconsin Death Trip.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Was the page updated recently or was that disclaimer always there?
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Not really. I like to call them "Obnoxious Industrial". Pretty cool band, though. The lead singer, Wayne Static, has awesome hair, and his voice sounds neat.
sup
Police state? That's Fear Factory, not Static-X.
sup
-Emperor Bush
(By the way, he was talking about free speech, specifically, censoring an anti-Bush web site.)
sup
No, there is a parallel - an overly oppresive government has no qualms about shooting unarmed protestors. Resurrect Nixon, then impeach him. Oppose U.S. aid to Israel as long as Israel opposes the peace process. Mourn the passing of Barak's government.
itachi
Well, it was better than what will replace it, I'm thinking. Going after rock throwing protestors with tanks and helicopters is bad, but Sharon makes Barak look tame, and Sharon is partly responsible for the current problems in the peace process. Besides, who ever said that political issues were black and white?
itachi
I went and looked at their web site. If you didn't know it was a starcraft clan, you might be a little thrown: Pictures of guys in prison garb tied to chairs are a little unsettling. But come on. Yeah yeah, it's "post-Columbine," but all it would take is a little more reading of the site to actually figure out that these guys are not the next trenchcoat mafia. It's a friggin' game!
The fact that there seems to be some confusion over exactly why they went in there with a warrant is a little troubling, too. There are two stories: Worry over a "computer crime" and concern about "improper use" of the school's computers.
Was there really a crime there? Evidence of a crime? Is "improper" resource use enough for a search warrant?
Any why didn't anybody go and talk with them? Sheesh, they all had appointments with the dorm administrators, which were suddenly cancelled. This just reeks of improperly-implemented policies and paranoia, enabled by woefully bad fact-checking by whoever is supposed to be looking out for students.
-schussat
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Old?
It happened Feb 2 (Friday) (unless it was last year in which case I can see old) so the weekend stops play on getting comments from students. Therefore Monday comments on the incident from students - posted Tuesday. Sounds to me like this doesn't really count as old just delayed.
It is really worrying. Who ever wrote it has almost no concept of research or actually understanding what a person being interviewed is saying. For example : ' "It's a strategic game," Barnes said. "It's not like we were going to kill you or anything (speaking of the game's make-believe enemies). ' :)
The problem with this is that the game actually can be played against real people but his point was that it is a game.
Another line : ' where several Kent State students set up a "war-like" game.'
The article doesn't tell you that it is a game to be bought in the shops but suggests that the students wrote the game themseleves.
Doesn't even get me started on the number of terms surrounded in quotes - if you are quoting someone attribute them otherwise explain the term without quote marks and with a clear sign of where the term came from.
They already have a letter up complaining about the reporting but they haven't responded nor give any sign that they will correct the story. Don't they realise that not only do they have a responsibilty to their community but having posted it on the web they are now also reflecting their school and themselves.
Just the ramblings of someone who spent two years doing mass communication but decided that Comp Sci was more fun.
PS I'm allowed to use quotes, I'm showing sarcasm and disbelief and I'm not even trying to be a journalist anymore
Interesting comment, considering that the Clinton Administration has overseen the greatest reduction in your personal freedoms, ever.
I can see how, in these litigous days, the campus admin are between a rock and a hard place. If they don't track down every whack-ass seeming "threat" then if some mal-adjusted nutcase decides to go apeshit on the campus they're going to be reamed out for not being diligent in their efforts to keep the campus "safe". On the other hand, things like this make them come off as jack-booted thugs.
What is the middleground? Maybe we need students to sign a disclaimer that would state, in essence: "The campus powers respect the student's privacy. Including the students with heads full of bad wiring that are building pipe bombs. Watch your ass".
BTW, back when I lived in Kent I heard that the campus PD was bigger than the city's. Never found out if it was true, though.
No kidding.
It did say CAMPUS police did the seizure.
Laws concerning campus police are usually much more loose on the school's side, because they work according to the school's constitution.
The growth of the surveillance state is likely to continue, because there is not much of an organized contiutency for privacy and freedom.
We are up against Big Government, which uses hysteria over drugs, terrorism, violent crime, child endangerment, etc. as an excuse to increase its power over the individual; Big Business, which wants to maximize the value of their investments by eliminating risk and unpredictability; the Big Left, which wants to reprogram your minds to achieve a race-free, gender-free society; and the Big Right, which wants to win your soul for Jesus. They all want to track your movements, browse your hard drive, read your mail, and monitor your thoughts if they could. That's a lot of opposition.
- Have a picture
Dont forget that terran is the evil, we must togheter as zerg & protoss fight the evil.
What we all should do is offer to email the cops who screwed this poor college kid with descriptions and links to the thousands of other quake/starcraft/UT clan websites explaining that the point of the site is a "meeting place" of sorts for folks that play games. It's the same concept as poeple who go out on camping trips and play paintball over a weekend. It may at least serve as an enlightening point for those _un_enlightened cops who don't know about or understand "quake clans." Just a thought.
mrBob
No i think if they really looked into it and found out just what StarCraft was, they wouldn't have even left the office. If they saw the web page, they have access to the internet, and could have easily searched for starcraft on google or something. If they still weren't sure, they could have questioned them...but bringing them in and confiscating the computer is going to far. That was too much of an overreaction.
To you and I this web-site is just a StarCraft website, but to non-techies it has a lot of features that would make them nervous.
Ya well maybe if the nontechies actually took the time to look into things they'd find they have nothing to fear. Or is that asking too much?
Would an enterprising Kent Stater be so kind as to provide the Slashdot crowd with contact information for the campus police, so that we might politely provide supportive information to the misunderstanding cops and help out our fellow gamers?
When the cops come busting down your door, comply, comply, comply.
Also, ABSOLUTELY remember where you're going to school and don't march or protest or do anything stupid like that. It sure as shit beats the alternative: Diallo-esque caps in your back as you try to run.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
UGHHHHH!!! I hate people who blame others for their problems. I also hate people who sue other people as well.... 99% of the time their case is bullshit and they just want money to buy a new sports car or whatever. If this is what our society has become now, I say all the LESS STUPID people (ie, geeks) move to another world (somehow) where we dont have to deal with useless people. This kinda thing pisses me off so much!!! GROWL!
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
This story is not of "no worth or interest" to a lot of us. Maybe you don't live on a college campus, but I do, and I don't like the idea of someone being able to bust in to my room because of a failed file transfer.
Perhaps it's not your "totalitarian meltdown" but it is a constant battle against erosion of rights. These guys weren't even doing anything and yet they had their home raided and their possesions taken from them simply because of a file transfer problem and some rhetoric.
If this was a private home or workplace then this would be completely absurd (and even possibly fall under your definition of "real problems"), but you seem to think that because it happens to undergraduates (with their "holier than thou serious attitude") that it just doesn't matter. Well, when they come for you, no one will be crying and then we'll see if these problems are "real".
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Look at the bottom of their page:
"{BfD} is an anti-MTV clan."
Thank God they were caught. Just think what could've happened if they had gained any popularity. The downfall of MTV, that's what I've been trying to tell for years. They were a real threat too, they managed to spell it correctly!
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
He is so inarticulate that even a fourth grader would notice his poor usage of grammer and his complete butchering of the English language. I can't imagine myself carrying on a descent conversation with the man.
People with perfect grammar should know to capitalize Descent. Besides, why should the President of the United States care about an old computer game?
I really think that putting someone's name onto a dead-or-alive list, when they aren't in the game crosses the line. If it doesn't, then Bin Laden can give up on that encryption, and just claim its all a game. They could post the rules that nobody is to be hurt, and if someone goes overboard, its just a game.
Making up a dead-or-alive list, then posting it where others not in your game can read it could be construed as assault.
t
Just as the old saying goes: "Can't read, Can't write, Kent State"
Hell no, I bet they weren't. I bet they were just as human as the guards. They were just in an underdog situation. The real answer doesn't come until the situation has been reversed and the cops are on the inside and your friends on the outside.
Bet there were a bunch on the inside who would gladly steal the cookies from diabetics if given the chance under the right circumstances.
-
-
Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Egbert's family hired a private investigator who delivered a reasonably accurate account of his activities and acquaintances: there were D&D players, AND the local Society for Creative Anachronism, AND some kids who liked to explore the steam tunnels. Three groups, some overlap, and Egbert was on the fringes of all three, not being much of a joiner.
But the parents read this report as "[crazy] people who role-play at King Arthur and devil worship, and have sword fights IN the steam tunnels." All three real-life groups got mixed up into one fictional one, and in the scariest possible way.
(That's also how we ended up with "Rona Jaffe's Monsters and Mazes", in case you're a fan of the young Tom Hanks.)
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
I think these guys should find supporters to explain to the prosecution and the police just what happened. These students need someone on campus with enough clout to be able to get the cops (and the prosecuter remember) to sit down and listen to reason. The problem with this is that once police officers get into a bad situation they never want to admit that they made a mistake. They stay behind their actions and dig deeper. Maybe these guys should simply call the ACLU and get ready to sue.
Anyone from Kent State want to give us an update as this unfolds? This is insane.
A Jihad on the Authority Structor.
I could swear there was a tidbit on the news a couple weeks ago about the campus police deciding (after some deliberation) to cancel orders for several M-16 derivatives for their arsenal.
Imagine the bowl-cleansing horror of having a bunch of yokel campus cops armed with *assault rifles* storm your dorm room, having confused a video game enthusiast club with a murder conspiracy. What do we give the odds of an accidental shooting..?
It seems like society will never quite get over that whole part where they completely fear anything they don't understand. If you took the reaction of the campus cops (Look, something's fishy and we don't understand it, we should arrest them!) and wind the clock back 200 years, you end up with the Salem Witch trials. (Look, something's fishy and we don't understand it, we should burn them!).
The fact is, our society is reactionary. What is not understood is usually misunderstood, and panic sets in quickly. If you look back at the cycles over the years, we've always wanted something to fear on the whole, so we create it.
Salem witch trials.
Communism (McCarthy)
Goths (Columbine)
Terrorists (Oklahoma)
Hackers! (Most recently)
The only solution to the people as a whole NOT taking events they don't understand and persecuting vague demographics based on their perception begins, and ends, with mass media.
It used to be gossip, then it was the church, and now it's CNN and Time-Warner. In any case, the root cause is misinformation from "trusted" sources.
Actually, if they live on campus, they're on the university's private property, and the university can search their room at will.
Where is your sig from?
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
The KSU cops are real police, with both the authority and constraints this applies. (at least this was the case when they arrested me for giving a speech about industrial use of Hemp outside the Student Union in 1989.)
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
so what was the actual crime?
where are the victims?
who claimed to be robbed or attempted murder?
forget about this stupid story, well....
the police has the leet computer gear, ain't
that the crime here?
It seems there's as much overreacting from the /. community (if not more) than the Kent State campus cops. When should making a threat be taken seriously (at least to the point of investigation) and when should it be laughed off? Your supposition that you can't harrass anyone via email is false. Yes, I've heard of filters. I've also heard of people with multiple email accounts. How hard is it to create a new web-based account and send emails to your intended victim until they've effectively filtered out everything? If I make a threat against the president, does it matter that I made it via email or usmail or hired a skywriter? No. The threat is taken seriously until I can be evaluated.
As for the confiscation of computer equipment, it doesn't make much sense to tell someone suspected of a computer crime that they are a suspect and, "Oh, by the way, we're just going to leave any potential evidence in your possession until we can assemble an investigative team."
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
I would imagine that it is important to gather all potential evidence until it can be evaluated. If elements of the game are loaded on the computer how do you propose leaving just those elements behind? Sifting through the evidence in an uncontrolled environment is not very effective. Perhaps your presupposition is that gamers != script kiddies, an assumption that can't be made by the authorities. We know that these guys are gamers, but outside of their own testimony there's nothing to say that they aren't also involved in cracking.
By the way, I never said that the campus cops weren't overreacting. My point was that more than a few /. readers were too.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Anatomy of flamebait, example 1.
/. ...
/. editors would have us believe, we wouldn't hear about it in the first place.
1) Bitch about something entirely within your power to change: Besides from the fact that I am getting sick and tired of endless 'YRO' stories on
2) Make a statement that is blatantly incorrect, but sounds enough like what a real poster would say that people think you're serious: They are living on University property, the campus cops can do what they like.
3) Repeat: if this country were going into totalitarian meltdown as the
4) Add token hypocrisy, just to lock it in as flamebait for people who hadn't noticed yet: This site has such an undergraduate, holier than thou serious attitude, it gets my goat.
Bravo, bravo. Study up, kids-- you will seldom see such a textbook example. Moderators, take note-- anything less is simply a troll.
On a scale from
0 to You HAVE to be kidding me
You HAVE to be kidding me
This is totally insane! Shit I play UT every night, at some point or another fr4gm3 says "I will kill you all!" Am I breaking the law? Un-fucking-believable. Yet another gross overeaction by people ignorant of what the kids are doing.
---
This
Let's see, sysadmin at university knowingly allows friend to use University computer resources to gain illegal access to ISPs. Sounds to me like you should have been fired.
You've got to be kidding, right?  At least Bush does things to force personal responsibility (eg. school vouchers and letting us in California suffer with our damn electricity debacle we've gotten ourselves into) which is far more than Gore or Clinton did ("We could give it all back to you and hope you spend it right...")  Not that the Republicans are stellar in regard to making us far less dependent on government but at least they are a step in the right direction.  The Democrats are doing their best to strip that away from you in the form of hate crime legislation, gun control, excessive taxation and the latest (and greatest) reparation for past wrongs of slavery.  Heaven forbid that you should have to care for yourself and your family.  No, don't be silly!  We need the government to care for us and fix wrongs against ug.  Most of all, we need the government to keep us safe and secure. 
Well I say, "You reap what you sow."  You can't have freedom AND security.  Please choose responsibly.
And don't blame me.  I own a gun, care for my family and vote Libertarian...
I disagree with that view of John McCain.  Look no further than his campaign finance reform and his desire for "targeted" tax cuts.  McCain, while a great American, is nothing more than a liberal Republican.
Bush and the gang will take your freedoms as well.
Such as?  Let's not jump the gun and give the guy a chance.  Then, if he screws up, let him have it.  All in all, I'm very pleased with his first three weeks in office.  He's been true to his campaign promises and I think he is making a positive impact in Washington.
How about the fact that he is a total hypocrite.
How so?  I think we can safely label Bill Clinton a hypocrite.  Likewise for Jesse Jackson.  I'll reserve judgement on George W. Bush for the time being.
Regarding abortion and prayer in school.  I don't give a damn about prayer in school.  If somebody wants to pray, go for it.  And then there is abortion...  When on earth are we ever going to have a rational dialoge on it?  When can we rationally discuss the man's role (what if he wants to keep the baby?  What if he wants to abort it?)  When can we rationally discuss partial birth abortions?  Until their can be a rational discussion, one will easily be able to polarize views in the way that yours are which is a shame.  My views?  I'm kind of in the middle.  My wife and I would never have one (we have two children and we love them to pieces.)  However, I wish that people would exercise restraint and take responsibility for thier actions.  Abortion in some ways nullifies this need to be responsible.  On the other hand, I don't want somebody raising a child (poorly) that they don't want and will become a large burden on society later in life.  I would suggest adoption to that person over an abortion, but that would and should be their choice to make.
His appointment of John Ashcroft as attorney general leaves a lot to be desired. Ashcroft is a religious NUT!
Again, I think you're jumping the gun.  John Ashcroft by all rational accounts is a good and honest man.  His record as a Senator and A.G. of Missouri are very good.  Give the man a chance.  Anything has to be better than Janet Reno's office.
Neither Republican nor Democrat are the answer to America's problems.
I agree with you there.  However, the Republicans are a hell of a lot closer to the Libertarians than the Democrats are...
Unless we change the government, the government won't change.
Yep, so send money to the Libertarian party and organizations like CATO.  And be sure to have rational discussions with others about the issues.  Speak with your mind and keep your emotions in check.
Just because he's president doesn't mean he was elected.
come for the naked robots, stay for the zombies
Really, though, why is this news? Some kids got hassled by the police. There is nothing sinister here.
Man, XFL, Homosexual Adoption, Cops Question Student. This is a pathetic day for Slashdot
nice chick tho :)
Yes.
s/crack/cracksmoking/
--
ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The problem is that the people in power are old. The old adage about never trusting anyone over twenty-five is reinforced, time and time again. The problem of course does stem from that attitude; Those people who consider themselves to be "adults" first and foremost have an instinctive distrust of "those punk kids", and "those punk kids" grow up to be the people who they look down on.
I really don't think that anything can be done (at least in our current societal situation) about this. We (as a group) do not trust our young people to grow up into the people we want them to, largely because we feel that we failed to do so, ourselves. Reflecting our failures upon our offspring (or at least that generation), we create a self-fulfilling nightmare in which we distrust our kids and teens (and even young adults) and fail to give them freedom, thus ensuring that they will not handle it properly when it's thrust upon them for the first time.
Of course, since we know they are ill-prepared to deal with the realities of their situations (never realizing that it's our own fault that they're in such a situation) we continue to treat them as children until they've made our same mistakes, and landed in our situations.
What can you do, as one of these younger types, to avoid being penalized for your youth and vigor by those who would harm your development? First, understand that they're bitter and disillusioned, and they need your help. When you can, go out of your way to explain things to them in subtle ways; Disclaimers, as unfortunate as the necessity seems to be, are effective measures to ensure that your elders, deserving of your respect or not, know where you're coming from. These people are trying so hard to forget what it was like to be your age, because of what the preceding generation did to them, that they never notice they're doing it to you. They deserve your pity more than your enmity, but whatever you do, don't let them know you feel sorry for them. They don't handle it well.
--
ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Pardon me while I kiss this guy"
sure am glad these guys weren't listening in our our IP games of Duke Nukem 3D...
What's worse is when you don't have a choice to live elsewhere (like where I went to school).
Good point. Many schools require first, or even second, year students to live in the dorms. They most times claim it's "for the good of the student", to help "better acclimate them to college life", but in reality it's just another way to leech some more money out of students.
If you want to get out of living in the dorms, the excuses that work pretty much come down to "I'm married", "My parents spent $90k for a house", or "I'm a football/basketball player".
From the article:
Friends of the student whose room was raided said the police might have been concerned about a Web site where several Kent State students set up a "war-like" game.
Isn't calling StarCraft a "war-like" game kinda like calling Jurassic Park a "science-like" movie?
A judge who gives out a warrant under such conditions as this should be taken to court. Sure, you can get a warrant for anything. But for something as lame as this, he should get sued.
I'm sorry, but the confiscation of private property due to a fear of shadows without a warrant is a violation of the fourth amendment, and busting these kids due to some junk they posted online is a violation of the first amendment. I think we have a reason to be up in arms because this seems to be all too common in this bloody world today.
First they came for Steve Jackson Games
and I did not speak out
because I did play Hacker.
Then they came for Palidin Press
and I did not speak out
because I was not a hit man.
Then they came for Clan Bled For Days
and I did not speak out
because I did not play with them.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Apoligies to Martin Niemoller.
I could not resist.
~~ What's stopping you?
Anyone been following reports of Starcraft's rather obscene popularity in South Korea? (Breakfast cereals, rock bands, cartoons, &c.) Methinks South Korea MUST be up to no good.
Isn't this the same Kent State where 4 students got killed for protesting the Vietnam War? This was before my time, and I don't know if the University itself had anything to with it, but still it seems kind of ironic.
Actually the only real difference between the Kent State thing and the Tiannenmen Square (sp?) massacre was the number of people killed. News flash: you're not supposed to kill ANY humans, not even four.
These cops just went in there thinking they would find an arsenal (like they did in that kid's dorm room last week at DeAnza college in San Jose). All they found was some kids, a computer, and not even any pot -- they are probably miffed at this point and trying to save face.
This is why we have defense lawyers. Let's hope they can get a good one if they need one.
Don't post on slashdot. Get back to work.
This thread is making me laugh... c'mon, go to the park or something and calm down. Life is not that bad! Smile!
Don't post on slashdot. Get back to work.
The only interesting thing I learned there in five years was Huffman encoding. ...and apparently not even that very well. It's "Hoffman."
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I think the very fact that they did not adequately describe the things to be siezed and that the cause was not just would render this warrant unconstitutional.
Enigma
Enigma
Ahh. To see a Kent State student suing the University, with the help of the Universities own Law School and students.
At my alma mater, the free legal advice came with the stipulation that it couldn't be used in an action against The University. I wouldn't be surprised if Kent had a similar policy.
Anti-Linux university attitudes?
Come on. This isn't the New World Order or a sekrit Microsoft plot or a post-Columbine anti-Geek conspiracy that'll get Jon Katz frothing at the mouth. (He'll froth anyway, though. No way around that.) There are more important things to worry about than sensationalizing a minor issue.
Of course, I give this about twenty minutes before I'm called a troll or a moron. If you think that this is the first step to a giant totalitarian goverment that rules this planet via the airwaves and partitions out information in such a way as to force us, the masses, to base our conclusions on erroneous evidence, you're clearly not enjoying life as much as the rest of us.
holly cow, I hope they won't be busting any slashdot users then.
Why did I have to be born on planet earth? Technology evolves but those damn humans don't. First they kill for freedom then they kill freedom. What a bunch of idiots.
How could someone of average intelligence think that that web site was of harm to anyone.... I'm mean it says in bright red letters "we don't mean kill anyone for real" Come on man, this is insanity.... I can't fathom what I would do if this happened to me... I'd probably go ballistic shouting at the police and swearing and I know that wouldn't help the situation... I'd probably get the shit kicked out of me by those cops!!
Right up his alley. Turn him loose, they'll be begging for mercy
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
????
Which music and lyrics? The stuff off the Static X album? I can assure you that such a lyric does not exist on that album. If not that, what are you referring to?
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
You can if they signed a agreement to. Most /.'ers forget that the dorm agreement does alow the school to come and and take anything out of the room whenever they wish. (btw, they had a warrant)
Sanchi
"They said we couldn't do it [Athlon]... but we built it, we shipped it... and we didn't have to recall it." Rich Heye
Funny story that... for a while I've been considering mapping my school for CS because my school would make the greatest map _ever_ IMHO. In any case, years ago a group of people did a Doom map (maybe Quake, don't remember) and some of the teachers played it and were all for it..
I'm kind of scared to do it now though, what with the change in climate for that sort of thing. I'm in Candana, so it's not so bad here, but we have had a "zero-tolerence" thing in my area for years, and although this is neither violence or drugs, you can never trust those law/school people not to make stuff up. What a let down.
If it weren't for Columbine, I'd do it in a second. I have no doubt it would be incredible fun, but OTOH I know that the administration would boot me in a second if they ever found out. I guess I graduate in a couple of months, maybe I should release it the day after graduation. Hrmm...
Depending on the University policy, Dorm rooms do not have the same expectation of privacy as a home does (although there have been all sorts of debates about high school lockers). Additionally, If they were using the Internet service provided by the university to connect to the server, the school could get to them that way.
A sig?!? I don't think so.....
Hey, can you explain something to me? How is it possible to operate a computer without opposable thumbs?
It must hurt like the dickens to use one, given how your knuckles must be all dragged up and torn.
Always remember: skinheads have more hair than brains.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
RE: your an idiot, I am in Portland!
But at least I can spell. RE: Rose city crew have all but driven the boneheads underground.. the reason people associate Skinheads with racsim IS because of people LIKE you
I dunno - the last big skinhead rally out in Germany wasn't Sharpies demanding a caring communist state. It was boneheads demanding the immediate death of all migrants. And by the way according to police organisations Portland is the bonehead capitol of North America.
RE: who keep throwing that shit out there and media who refuse to do any responsible reporting, and of course when you only report about the boneheads
Listen, I'm originally from England, and unfortunately the term "skinhead" has come to be a pejorative term for "bonehead" because of the way things are going. I sympathise with you totally, being both Goth and Geek and lumped in with Marilyn Mansonites and Urkels respectively. But take my original comment in the spirit it was uttered - in response to some psycho who doesn't realise that Hitler died with a bullet through the brain.
RE: Well you go on thinking that and I'll just go on perpetuating that geeks are high water tight pants wearing, glasses with tape around the middle, pocket protecting people that can't get girls like I saw with Urkel.. or because I caught revenge of the nerds one night.. and therefore it must be true!
Keep in mind that for every stereotype there is sadly enough evidence to support it to keep it going.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Well, i don't have to worry about "the man" or "big brother" bustin' in and taking my stuff, i follow a few strict guidelines that this guy could've used.
... errr .. sgt, do you know anything about computers??? Where's my doughnut???"
#1 - ALL (and i mean ALL) portable media should be kept in a fire-proof container, that has both a padlock and a built-in lock (different combos).
#2 - The media case should be secured and put on a pressure-switch system that will sound a loud squeal that will make both humans and hehe, kanines scream/cry/bark/etc if they fsck w/ your stuff
#3 - All your machines should be chained down and pressured locked to the same system as the media case, no exeptions, especially those external drives that always worry you when a room-mate has has a friend of theirs in.
#4 - Complete security on all machines, bios passwords, and screensaver passwords. Those fingerprint thingies might be kewl (i don't use one, don't trust 'em, too many spy movies i've seen, but they do look kewl - hehe just for show, that is =)
#5 - Shut down the machines when you leave, if you have to go to the can, log out. If it's a server, have a dummy login that just has the server processes running, even though the cops wouldn't be able to use linux, it would be kinda funny to see them try to use a blank desktop...haha... "Where's da windows
#6 - Make sure to have plenty of spare keyboards and mice, as well as cat5 & phone cables, just in case they take the wires or i/o devices instead. God, it's so funny when they think that they have stopped you...
#7 - Make sure to have either a really heavy monitor, or bolt it down. Cops may be brain dead, but they do still have strength from all those donut dunks and coffee cup curls =)
just a note, be paranoid, nobody will mess with your sh*t if they see all this security. plus, it would be really funny to see what the cops would do if my alarm went off, aside from glass breaking and eardrums popping, i wonder if they'd "discharge their firearms", lol.
another note, this guy's site sux. it looks like it was made by my little brother, maybe he deserves this from still playing starcraft and making crappy looking sites that look like they were made w/ frontpage or the homestead editor or any web based editor. It's really sad, and this guy didn't follow the simple paranoid geek procedure.
Anyway, keep kewl, and moderators, this took me a while to come up w/ so take that into consideration when you rate this funny post....lol =)
There were rocks and whatnot being thrown, but the return fire was not exactly a model of marksmanship.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
He was at Michigan State University, not the University of Michigan.
(WARNING: This may sound like flamebait, but it really isn't.) I feel sorry for the clan kiddies in a way, even though their website was even crappier than mine, and they write with a very limited command of the English language. we shouldn't crack down on them just because they're juvenile and prurient. arresting people or investigating them on a whim isn't worth the police time. concentrate on real crimes. In all honesty, should you care about 10 dead kids in some other state? Or 20 dead kids, or 30 dead kids? They're a statistic. A brutal statistic, but a number nonetheless. Unless you were related to one of them, or knew them, it isn't really your business.
!-- wit --!
Thanks! that's exactly what i would expect froma troll. too bad tis what i actually think, and have said many times (on my website, in classes, in papers. . .)
!-- wit --!
The death penalty?
Does that mean they'll deduct from their frag total?
tin soldiers and dubya coming
4 arrested in O-hi-O
naah, doesn't have the same ring
What's really funny is that about two weeks ago there was a big story in the Stater about how the campus police were getting M-16s (non-automatic, but even so ppl went crazy over it).
President Cartwright has made them get rid of them, but even so it's pretty funny how bad KSU's PR can be - busting a Starcraft clan? I knew there were some pretty stupid ppl here, but this takes the cake!
I recently heard the following from a friend of a friend of one of the national guard ppl who was there at the shooting:
the National Guardsmen did NOT fire first.
Someone in the crowd had a pistol and was shooting at the soldiers.
What would YOU have done?
The KSU cops ARE real cops. Accredited and everything. They're just as legit as the Kent cops, and do about as much (i.e. sit around eating donuts and pulling people over).
you know, that is exactly the kind of comment that will get you busted. you're going to be hauled off for 'intent to possibly incite to possibly commit terrorism'. its the word terrorism that makes it OK.
live off-campus, where you are a citizen like everyone else.
except that at some schools it is mandatory to live on campus the first year
Luckily this guy only had one computer... I wonder how creative they could get with their suspicion if he had several in a network?
Oh boy, curtail excessive ammendments? Where could you possibly get that? All ammendments to date were put in place to keep the government from stomping all over the people. The founding principles that the constitution was based upon in relevance to the federalists and anti-federalists, as well as the declaration of independance state implicitly that governments of an iron hand can and will fail. Let's see enlightened european countries? you must be talking nazi germany. Hitler banned guns before he became a dictator. How many lives could have been saved had one persecuted citizen had a gun? Hate-crime? Maybe you don't know it but hate is a little hard to define. A racial slur is apparently not a hate crime. Some people would like it defined that way, however those same people turn right around and use the same slur on their own people. And anything with a double standard can't stand on it's own. Like I stated before, political correctness has done far less good than mutual tolerance. By saying that you'd like to bring us back to sanity says that we somehow left sanity behind us. That doesn't mean updating the old to fit in with the new, going back to something you left behind means undoing all the new and going back to the old. And there is a lot of the new that is both useful and necessary. And the laws we have on the books are supposed to prevent "gangs of crack dealing youths" access to such weapons. Hell, in most states you can't even get a non-automatic revolving handgun unless you're 18 or older. If they're getting these guns from somewhere, it's certainly not from law abiding gun dealers. I consider gangs to be a detriment to society. So why are we concentrating on hindering other peoples rights rather than concentrating on getting kids out of gangs and into a place in society where they benefit others? I would not support any hate crimes legislation that either imposes double standards, does not cover all races/special interest groups, or curtails the rights of free thought. Yes we should be more responsible with the environment, how do you suggest we do that? Some people have suggested we stop using coal and oil for power and instead use nuclear. I have my own concerns with that since radioactive waste is far worse in my opinion. What else? How bout hydrogen, some say that the increased use of hydrogen to generate power would cause increased precipitation and rainfall (at least it would if we didn't bother to recondense it after it leaves the fuel cell/engine. I also think this would be a good way to go because it doesn't completely destroy the economy like going to electric cars would. Think about this a minute, we stop using gasoline, that puts drillers, refiners, and service stations out of business. That's a lot of people losing jobs. And it also puts a higher strain on the electric grid. (I'm sure california appreciates their electric car initiative at the moment.) But if we go to hydrogen, we'll have electralysis plants, storage tank manufacturers, and we'll keep service stations. Another alternative would be to power engines with grain alchohol. The US exports a large quantity of surplus grain. Many times this grain is not sold and sits in silos to rot away. We could have alchohol plants to distill fuel and still keep a lot of our infrastructure intact. The only ways to be responsible with the environment is to cohabit peacefully or as some environmental extremists want, almost a full degredation of human society. Forcing peoples hands doesn't necessarily always get things done, in some cases it just makes them bitter and gives them the upper hand later (as in the california power problem, they didn't want to disturb the environment and now they get to pay the price.) I bet you think we should abolish the electoral voting system too. Personally I don't think it right that a candidate could win just by carrying the 5 largest cities in the country. Funny thing is, is that before the vote they thought gore was gonna lose the popular vote and win the electoral, Hillary Clinton was qouted as saying the popular vote didn't matter, it was the electoral that counted, and now her position as well as the results have reversed. But before you start bashing me for being a bush supporter, let me say that I didn't vote at all this time around. In my mind I didn't like either of them, but I also think the lesser of two evils won. (but that's just my opinion and you are free to agree or disagree as you choose.)
You make a very good point.
I find it very odd too... the fact that they were uploading to the wrong server is a little sketchy for computer science majors. I know it's easy to get server IP numbers mixed up but domain names?? Maybe they were drunk, baked, or tripping. I myself have done some weird shit to my computer will high before.
How did they get a warrant anyway? When did posting a shitlist become against the law and deserve a warrant? Jeez... Next thing you know they'll come after IRC channel operators for ban/kicking someone because it's a "crime of discrimination"
Nah - they'll be too stoned. I know I will.
Basically the same here at IMSA. You're also guilty until proven innocent. And the RCs are computer illeterate "you can't send e-mail from off-campus", "is that a mouse or a CD-ROM?", etc. How fun to live there :-)
My other car is first.
Sorry again, but that's a swing and a miss. Calling someone an asshole on the street cannot by law be construed as intent to violence without supporting statements, according to my attorney. For example, saying, "you're an asshole, and I'm gonna rid the world of all assholes" contains enough of a supporting statement for the target to construe a threat, but a simple insult, no matter how rude or nasty, is just that, and unless it's in a larger context like your boss saying it (creating a hostile workplace) or a judge (judicial bias) or slander/libel (telling someone a CPA is embezzling without being able to prove it, for example), there are no legal grounds for recourse. Notwithstanding your site reference, your example falls flat.
Virg
You seem hellbent on turning insults into injury. To take the context, here's the original line, and your response:
> > Being able to call someone else by vulgar
> > expressions is guaranteed (at least to
> > Americans) by the first ammendment.
> In fact, nowhere does the first amendment grant
> anyone the right to use intimidating behaviour
> against another.
Do you see the discrepancy? You cannot assume that every insult is a threat. To wit, someone disagreed with one of my posts, and replied calling me an idiot. Should I feel insulted? Of course, since that was the intent. Should I feel intimidated? Not unless I have a badly deranged sense of personal space. This person didn't threaten me in any way, other than bruising my ego. Your statement doesn't follow from his.
And in response to your other statement:
> It is high time we brought the constitution up
> to date for the new millenium. I'd like curtail
> the more excessive amendments, basically to try
> and bring America back to some semblance of sanity.
Firstly, what right have you (or anyone else individually) to decide which amendments are excessive? Second, why do you assume that there was some semblance of sanity in colonial America? If I recall correctly, women weren't allowed to vote. Most minorities weren't considered citizens, and some weren't even considered people. Beating one's wife and children to elicit obediance was allowed, as was killing someone for calling you names. One could be denied work, access to public places, and health care based on one's nationality or religion.
Every one of these things was allowed well after the establishment of the Constitution. What of this list do you consider sane? It's easy to look at abuses of Constitutional rights and say, "we need to change the Constitution", but that ignores the fact that it works very well, and invisibly, most of the time. Perhaps a review of the legal precedents that spring from Constitutional cases is warranted, but that's an entirely different approach than trying to change what works for a huge percentage of cases to avoid potential abuse. Eliminating rights is the easy way to fix things in the short run, but it's the wrong answer because it fails in the long run.
Virg
Accept their choices or go somewhere else, that simple.
Tired of sitting at that karma cap? Start a flame war today! See just how low you can go!
"They were looking for the fruits and instrumentalities of a computer crime," a spokesperson from Kent State University Police Department said. "They were concerned with possible improper use of a computer system."
This is what really scares me about the whole thing... shouldn't they, more specifically, have been looking for evidence that the student actually meant harm to anyone?? That term is way too vague. This needs to be broken down into specific things you are looking for, it should be specified in the warrant given, and looking elsewhere on the system needs to be made illegal. What if they searched through GNUcash and found a purchase from an Amsterdam seed company or other possibly controversial files? You better bet you're going down for what they found, because the warrant simply states possible improper use... is NOT sufficient.
"I've seen plays that were more exciting than this.
Honest to god... Plays!" Homer Simpson
...that the National Guard wasn't called out.
Just because I reside on someones property does not entitle them to search my property and damn sure does not give them the right to search me. You may need to read your states landlord/tenant laws before you tell me what people can and can't do on thier property.
Can I bum you a
I believe that this is how college justice works ... the student is always guilty.
In some 'hearings' the student is not to permitted to cross-examine witnesses, not to provide evidence in support of his/her innocence, and not to know who the identitiy of the accuser.
What makes this worse is that convictions follow the student for the rest of their life and yet the students are not allowed to even have a lawyer present during the 'hearings'.
In the most extreme cases, this problem is magnified in cases of knowingly false accusations of rape.
m.mmm..myyy
I agree completely, and I even consider myself a borderline pacifist, unless someone really completely pisses me off. Zero tolerance is just a way of saying 'I am too lazy to actually judge anyone's motives and reasons for doing something, so I'll give everyone the same punishment'... But this is quite the silliest thing I've ever read, If I was him I'd be quite pissed off, until they returned my PC... lol
Shit adds up at the bottom...
The real problem here is that the "Clue-Devide" is growing wider every day. There is a vast number of people in this country today that are having a trouble decerning reality from fantasy.
In a world where virtual reality is growing more realistic, how can we expect anyone to know the difference?
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
April 20th is also the anniversary of the Columbine shooting.
You too? Half my department is scared of me because I read /. and work on my puter every night or play games (currently in the middle of Deus Ex with occasional breaks to play CS) instead of ever going anywhere. Their view is that anybody who doesn't act like the cookie-cutter Joe Public (i.e. own a car, go to bars or clubs on the weekend, watch football, drink outrageous amounts of beer, etc.) are abnormal and to be shunned. Oh well...the worlds of Deus Ex and CS is so much more exciting ;)
"Christ what a design! I could eat a handful of iron filings and PUKE a better emergency pump than that!"
Nah...got lots of friends to play with who understand me =~) Besides I'm married...it fights the loneliness with startling efficiency ;)
"Christ what a design! I could eat a handful of iron filings and PUKE a better emergency pump than that!"
If you want to get out of living in the dorms, the excuses that work pretty much come down to "I'm married", "My parents spent $90k for a house", or "I'm a football/basketball player".
$90k? Wow. Now that's a good deal. Either that or a small house.
I'm making a
Also reported, "they were concerned with possible improper use of a computer system." This begs the obvious question "what exactly constitutes proper use?" If they were officials from Microsoft instead of campus police, they'd probably bust my ass for running Linux on my PC. I bet most of the people at Slashdot would do the same to some weenie trying to wire up a bunch of Windows boxes into a Beowulf cluster. It's all a matter of perspective, really.
omega_rob
So now its the adults who cannot see the difference between fantasy and reality.
Nerdy high-school students talking about killing jock classmates shouldn't be suspended, expelled, or impisoned.
What about Jock classmates talking about killing nerdy high-school students? What if you're the nerdy high-school student?
With anymore comments like this /. could get a bad rep. Ohh wait clan meeting tonight. Keep /. free of this kind of crap.
Definitley, here they busted these kids for playing Starcraft, and the "Kosher Food Tax Costs You Millions" guy is next door building his Nazi death chamber. Stupid people fear computer, thats why they made AOL.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Clinton? Hardly. In one sence it might be Lincon who decided which country all your property belonged to. But overall I'd have to go with Washington. Mearly because he was the 1st President to agree that African Americans were 3/5th human. Or how about the President that presided over prohibition. Most of the drug war philosophy springs from that font of knowledge, to say nothing of organized crime and the laws enacted to combat it. Wire taps, and its modernday equivalents Carnivore and Eschlon may owe their very existence to prohibition. Or how about Nixon for enacting prohibition v 2.0: The War on Drugs. It's called perspective, and it's a pretty (pardon my French) fucked up day when you're getting a history lesson from a Metallugical Engineer.
Yes I know it was probably a troll, and I should have a nice day. But still....
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
hehe, 20th April is also my 30th Birthday *bg*
Thank you Mr. AC. Actually, the song I was referring to was An Act of Attrition I believe. Psychosexuality was about the porno industry. Both songs were disturbing to say the least, but both looked at the dark side of the subject and, without being preachy about it, showed how vile and evil the actions described really were.
Dark Angel rocked! Have you heard the latest album from the old Dark Angel guitarist? I can't remember the name of it off-hand, but it's a little more death-metal oriented. A buddy of mine just bought it a while back. Very cool guitar wise, but the lyrics aren't nearly as deep (or as cool sounding) as the old-school Dark Angel.
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When Faulty Dreams started we were accused of being everything from a cult to a covert bunch of baby rapers out to destroy civilization. It never occured to anyone that we actually were a heavy metal band that enjoyed writing stories and poetry.
The fact is that we didn't/haven't drawn enough attention to bring down the big guns on our heads, but if the right group heard about us we would be in the same boat as these poor guys. Once the accusation line starts, there is no stopping it. Fear rules this society we live in. Especially fear of those who use and understand technology. Forget about being rational in the face of such accusations. It's the modern day witch-hunt. They ask you to prove you aren't a hacker, you say you can't, they say, 'AH-HA! WE KNEW IT!' and you are hosed.
They may not stick your head in a bucket of water(the old test for being a witch, drown and you are 'innocent' live and you are guilty), but I would look soon for suspected hackers to be asked to program something. If they succeed, they will be termed hacker and locked away. If they fail, it will be said that they are trying to hide their true powers and locked away. Freedom means nothing nowadays. Fear and accusations are all that really matter. Especially if it gives the establishment the opportunity to grab just a little more power (baby-steps). I can't wait to see how totally hosed society is by the time my kids have to deal with this garbage.
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So, because it was campus police rather than real police, they didn't need a warrent? Did the student sign away that right as a part of getting the dorm room, or what? And, the follow-up question to that: did they have to stay on-campus? -Jason-
Sorry 'bout this. This is why spelling is so important (warrent vs warrant).
-Jason-
I mean, for heaven's sake, it even says at the top of the list, Surely that must have been obvious, even to university admin staff!
My gun will be your angel of mercy!
I've been to Heaven and Hell, and all I got was this lousy sig.
Ahhh, the good ole US constitution. Where would we be without it eh ? The foundling fathers certainly came up with a serious instrument when they designed that baby.
In fact, nowhere does the first amendment grant anyone the right to use intimidating behaviour against another. Nor would it be desirable for it to. The first amendment is intended to ensure that all political arguments are allowed.
It's like the right to bear arms, that was there for a reason, but the reason was not to allow gangs of crack dealing youths full access to automatic weapons and unlimited ammo.
It is high time we brought the constitution up to date for the new millenium. I'd like curtail the more excessive amendments, basically to try and bring America back to some semblance of sanity.
I would see the enlightened countries of Europe to be the best model to follow (and Canada). Strict gun control, limitations on free speech to prevent hate-crime, and and more responsible attitude to the environment would all make America a much better place to live. IMO
I wonder what others think ?
I'm sorry, and maybe I am an idealist, but does it seem unreasonable to expect civilised behaviour from people, whether or not they hide behind the anonymity of an online persona ?
What do others think ?
Hey that's my boss - He actually fears me because I read slash dot. I'm "One of those Linex geeks".
Move 'zig'!
Ive regretted encouraging people to 'chain saw ' their friends http://cgs.wox.org hmm we even got in the cities paper as a strange club. Guess things are differe down under
1) The students contact a dodgy computer off-campus. This could easily be mis-interpreted as a hacker attack.
2)They are questioned by Campus cops. So what. They are living on University property, the campus cops can do what they like. And in this case things were suspicious.
3)It ends up plastered all over the web, and lots of people pontificate about how evil it all is. How ironic. If anything bad had really happened, if this country were going into totalitarian meltdown as the /. editors would have us believe, we wouldn't hear about it in the first place.
This story has no worth or interest. I'm getting fed up of all this whining, I really am. Nobody knows what real problems are anymore. This site has such an undergraduate, holier than thou serious attitude, it gets my goat. Enough.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
All I have to say is: GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!
If you are actually an intelligent programmer, there is not a thing that Kent State can do for you. The only interesting thing I learned there in five years was Huffman encoding. Seriously. Go and get a job right now and forget the degree - they might actually make you more stupid than when you started!
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Yeah, that's why one of the people killed was a girl who was not even taking part in the protest - she was walking to class. Both sides in that situation fucked up.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
And what's worse is that at Kent State, it is nearly impossible to get out of living in the dorms and paying for their ridiculous food plan your freshman and sophomore years. You have *no* say in living there, and *no* say in when they can enter your room. True, in this case they did get a warrant, but unless something has changed recently, they don't really have to do that.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Oh my god! I played dungeons and dragons *at* Kent State University! How in the name of all that is holy can I be allowed to roam freely amongst the innocents of the world?!?! ;)
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
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I think it is very disturbing that the grounds for a search Warrant can be so easily applied with so little research. Some laws and ordinances that govern our lives should be looked at with a fine tooth comb as well as the procedures to enforce them. If these guys have a good lawyer then maybe police in that area will be forced to think before leaping. There is just something fundamentally wrong when anything can be turned into probable cause. I realize the need for protection against crimes and so forth but at the same time we need protection against law enforcement abuse of power. Not just in the world of techies ether. just my nickel worth, StÄtic MÅgick "One day the people will rise. Right into another oppressive situation"
Instead of trying to come up with a new way to to secure personal property against undue search and seizure, why don't we start respecting the Constitution. Now someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think there was something in the Bill of Rights about this... The 4th Amendment perhaps?
nemo me impune lacessit
This whole thing about perceived violence as it is seen on the net is a tough issue to tackle. For instance, I have seen my own high school brother talked about with much vulgarity on a website by some of his classmates that according to him, are 'messed up kids'. Now I know my brother and fully trust his judgement, but how can you tell if a person is just being really sarcastic or really has some mental issues? I don't think their is a good way to tackle this, but I would like to at least know that those students had knowingly signed away their rights to proper search and seizure laws. Seems like the campus cops just came in and did what they wanted without much legal precedent. Anyone have some clarification on the laws in this case?
Hahaha! And in cs_jail, you find nothing but unbound textures and other map anomolies that lock your computer indefinitely, forcing a complete reboot!
Why isn't everyone more enraged over this?
You are slashdotters right?
They would probably have tried to seize any computers that were connected on the network (guilt by association, operation sundevil and steve jackson games anyone?). The authority comes from (not sure of the names of the laws, I WILL be corrected if I am wrong :) ) , RICO (it allows the seize of property that can is mildly associated with a crime, such as siezing a house for dealing drugs even if the house is not owned by the dealer), and the digital crimes act. (boy the freedoms and rights america fought for seem to be disappearing due to a lack of a fight from the general public [+1 irony]).
From what I was reading no crime had been committed nor were any of the students charged with a crime, thats supposed to mean maybe an apology and a return of the property. BTW there is a case in phoenix where a vehicle was seized as possible evidence for a crime but no criminal case was presented and the seized vehicle was sold, I read about it in the new times http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/
but that was Nixon's army (Ohio National Guard), but I think that it shows Kent State's attitude toward personal freedoms.
I didn't do it, and if I did, you can't prove it. Bart Simpson
Is there any way such racist and derogetory marks can be dealt with
/. boards and even though they are few they affect the rest of the board merely being there.
/. to read and discuss issus that are related to tech, NOT about how one race is evil or should be eliminate, or how whites need to take power back. It saddens and disturbs me that even such great boards as /. have to deal with exceedingly off-topic derogatory remarks.
I have seen several of them on the
Perhaps moderators could have a seperate category for (racist/derogatory/) remarks, especially if they are completely out of topic. Keep a track of users(IP addresses since they're all anonymous cowards) whose posts get marked in this way and penalize them in some way.
I do not want to see Pseudo-Reports that support race-supremacy or links to such sites. I came to
From what we've been told, it sounds to me like the administration had first planned a "what's this all about" sort of meeting, but someone in legal got wind of it, and then the cops decided to take action to make sure no one was doing anything ilegal. It sounds like their grounds for a search were pretty flimsy; I hope they've got good lawyers.
It's a great illustration of how paranoid our institutions have become because of the perceived climate of violence and the frivolous lawsuits thrown around these days.
Also, I find the disclaimer at the top of the campus paper unsettling... the threat of perceived harm due to lawsuits has had a severely chilling effect on speech, and I guess CYA rules the day on campus now. Everything must have its disclaimer, lest the unwary be offended into calling their lawyers and suing the school.
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
campuses haven't been a bastion of free speech since the early 90's, if not before.
Especially if you're a Republican, or if you don't toe the PC line, your views are shouted down or otherwise suppressed in the name of diversity and sensitivity.
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
Crazily enough, the cops involved have probably broken no law and have followed the policies of the department to a t. When you have recurring mass violent crimes (columbine, et al), law enforcement personell certianly dont' want that sort of thing to happen in thier community (does anyone?), and they have knee-jerked to the excessive side of the fence, overreacting and confiscating equipiment. If you read the article, you can see that they also searched furniture, 'probably for drugs' the article states.
I do not envy law enforcement thier jobs (those members who are interested in protecting and serving, not the bad ones). You are forced to balance the good of the community with the rights of an individual, even to the point of letting the guilty go free due to violations of thier rights. I think that this is the right thing to do, but it's gotta be a sh1tty job.
Another problem is that these 'old school' cops and administrators dont' understand the new technologies and the way that kids today think. My screaming of vulgarities and death threats at other poeple while I'm playing QIII is not a crime, it's ust me blowing off steam, but if someone who doesn't play or hasn't played anything of the type hears me, they'd think I was a psycho who needed medical attention. (this is, of course, still open to debate)
Regardless of what comes of this, the cops screwed up, and will get a ration of crap from the students there, and hopefully there will be a review of the situation, and something good will come of it. Maybe warrant/search procedure rules? Student government involvment?
Brant
Brant
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
Wasn't it Tipper Gore that lead the way for TV/Movie/Game censorship?
Those who will give up liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security.
The ROTC building was burned and the vandalism happened on Saturday night. The shootings happened on Sunday. That's a bit of a delayed reaction, wouldn't you say?
As someone else noted, the (minority of) protestors who engaged the Guardsmen made the mistake of taking rocks to a gunfight.
Jeffrey Miller didn't, however. He was a full 85 yards from the Guardsmen when he was shot. The other three killed were even farther away. But you probably would have shot them, too (at least, that's what you said). Damned hippies, why do they have to be different?
Er...By what perversion of the imagination is calling someone an asshole equivalent to a threat of physical violence?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
I seriously doubt it would've been any better under Al Gores administration. How soon we forget Lieberman's campagin against violence in videogames.
A different kind of animal
That is what they did. Granted their methods are different then ours, but so is their profesion.
You feel more sorry for 6 college kids that spend a night in jail and have stories for thier grandkids than you do for 10 dead kids? I do care if kids are killed in other states because tomorrow it could be mine.
Right on... With the apprehention of several students planning "Columbine copy-cat" type attacks, this kind of thing is going to happen. I am not even sure we would want it to stop, at least investigating something that seems like it could be a problem. To you and I this web-site is just a StarCraft website, but to non-techies it has a lot of features that would make them nervous. While law enforcement is already jumpy from all the school attacks, we can expect them to be a little cautious. I would rather them be a little cautious than read about 10 dead students tommorow. Hopefully the boys in this story will have all their stuff returned quickly and get back to life as usual.
Unfortunately it's exactly that sort of mongrolian mentality which leads to such disasters. "Ah, they were just a bunch of racists", or "They're on the fringe". Well, look the facts. It's disenfranchised white, middle class youths, their cultural and ethnic pride torn away, who are striking back, and who are being oppressed. They're the ones who are told "You're from an oppressive race; your people are responsible for all the wrongs of this country", etc. And you expect them to fit in. Stop marginalizing them. Let them celebrate themselves and their heritage. Don't put them out there, leaving them for government thugs to wipe out.
Fight for Euro-American Student Rights!
Every fascist over-reaction to a perceive threat just increases the chances that somebody innocent will get crucified 'cause somebody else set them up. I'm calling the anonymous tip line right now to report the jerk that just stole my girlfriend; it seems I recall him making some columbine-style threats a while back... and I'm almost certain he actually _owns_ a black trench coat _and_ plays computer games!
And a computer game is considered evidence pertaining to precisely what crime?
What the fuck?!? Q3 Arena is now contraband? Let's get something straight here -- you cannot assault someone by going through their modem. You can't even harass someone via email (ever hear of a filter?). Online is absolutely the most benign media for posing and posturing, simply because YOU CAN'T DO ANY REAL HARM as long as you remain online. Where do we send the money to contribute to the false arrest/malicious prosecution lawsuit?
Where I go to school (LSU), the campus police don't need a warrant to enter your dorm room. It's part of the contract that you sign. The Residential Assistant came into my room to turn my alarm clock off... he doesn't need a formal written form, he just needs a "good" reason. Anything in "plain view" can be confiscated if it's suspicious... at our school, at least, students, although adult, have no privacy rights.
First off all this article is about kids getting in trouble THIS YEAR, not those tree huggers from the past. The fact that the police had to be involved in this, is insane. If you want to call someone insecure, I'd call the Kent State Police insecure if anyone. They are the ones who had to go as far as to search these kids' room, and take their possesions needed for school. These kids were just trying to express themselves through the internet. For once they used the tecnology at hand and used their brains to come up with a great looking website, that dealt with a game that they like to play, AND NOTHING MORE!. The fact "there was a technical glitch in uploading the website" was somehow automatically blammed on the students and not the website itself, confuses me. The game starcraft is no more violent than any other game(popular ones that is). I encourage everyone to look at the website "www.bledfordays.50megs.com" and tell me if they see anything wrong with it. The Entertainment Software Rating boared(ESRB)gave it the game starcraft this rating"TEEN - Content may be suitable for persons ages 13 and older. May contain violent content, mild or strong language, and/or suggestive themes." If this "crime" was done by college students I assure you they are over the age of 13. LONG LIVE THE BfD CLAN!!!
If you were to play the character of Hamlet, be sure not to illegally gain access to and make alterations in a Kent State University web server. To do so not only damages the contents, disrupts the system, but also is a felony in the State of Ohio. (The Hamlet reference refers to my email where I compared arresting a trash talker with arresting an actor who plays Hamlet for killing the actor who plays his Uncle.)
There's no $$$ in 'team'...
www..--..net - for incisive, w
IMHO, this kind of stuff shouldn't be allowed to continue, so, I suggest (and am probably already beaten to) an email campaign:
The email address for the Chief of the Campus police is:
mailto:U301@peale.kent.edu
(His name is John Peach)
And their webpage is:
http://dept.kent.edu/vph/police/ksupd.htm
My humble suggestion: a brief email explaining, politely, why this is idiocy, and then a request for an answer/explanation/refutation of what you emailed. Then if he doesn't reply, kindly remail him your message asking him why he doesn't answer.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
Doubtme
There's no $$$ in 'team'...
www..--..net - for incisive, w
I dunno about this patrick guy. But I'd sue their asses to hell and back. Not just the cops, but the university as well.
On February 1, 2000, officers with the Kent State University Police Services executed a search warrant at 340 Verder Hall located on the Kent campus. The search warrant was issued in connection with a criminal investigation being conducted by the campus police regarding the illegal access to and alterations made to a Kent State University web server. Police suspect that a group of persons developed a web page and attached it to the web server and in doing so damaged some of the contents on the server. Repairs to the server are currently being made. Recent inquiries to the University suggest that there is a concern over whether or not the police have obtained the search warrant due to the contents of the groups web page. This is not correct. Assistant Chief of Police Daniel FitzPatrick said," The contents of the web page and the types of games played on it have never been issues which concerned the police. The illegal access to it and the costly repairs needed to restore it are the focus of our concern". FitzPatrick said the crimes being investigated are Unauthorized Use of a Computer System, a felony of the fifth degree, and Tampering With Records, a felony of the third degree. The computer believed to be used to access the server is being held as evidence by police. No arrests have been made
I'm a member of BfD (Bled for Days)... Although I do not attend Kent... Barnes and I are good friends, and we've talked about this alot... ITS COMPLETE BS... this just proves how f*cking stupid cops really are!
You live in a school dorm and use a school network. You expect to have some degree of privacy, but it appears if that is not the case.
Why would you expect that? Every school TOS I've ever seen explicitly states that they will monitor your network traffic for anything illegal, immoral, or indecent, and will expell you if you do anything suspicious. Heck, half the time they schools are using hubs for each floor of a dorm room, so even your next door neighbor can snoop on your activity.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
"How we gonna put an end to all this, General?"
"Kill 'em. Kill 'em all."
(Note: Skyshadow is joking. Suggestions are not to be taken literally. If you find yourself not finding this amusing given the context, you may be humor impared. If so, please shoot yourself between the eyes. No, wait! That was sarcasm! Aw, forget it.)
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
You are a funny monkey! FYI, my account has three figures - not six like yours - my income on the other hand, hehehehehehe. Anyway, lame-assed little boys like you are very late comers to /. and AC's have been around long before shitheads like you even knew about /. or the 'net. So, get off it, bug-boy. Your moniker is about as witty as your acne-studded asshole.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Your best bet is a wireless network, IR keyboards/mice, and hiding the servers in the air conditioning vents.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Many of my friends and myself used to listen to a death metal band called Cannibal Corpse. They had songs with titles such as "Entrails ripped from a virgin's c**t". Sooooo what? We've all grown up to be normal people. That band even appeared in "Ace Ventura Pet Detective" performing a song called "Hammer Smashed Face". The most fun I've ever had was at a CC concert, where I climbed speaker stacks and stage dived several times and did excessive amounts of crowd surfing. It's all entertainment. There was also an element of rebellion too. The more ignoramus's such as yourself complained, the more extreme people would go. Like I said, we've all grown up to be normal people, and toned down to various extents so that we're no different from anybody else in society. Just because we listened to such things didn't make us criminals or murdering and raping psychos. I look at those lyrics and images now and would be horrified if any of that were real. All it was, was a form of entertainment. It didn't cross into the real world. You're proposing restricting people's freedoms just because you don't understand. Sorry, you're a conservative fool.
Either we're going to live in a giant kindergarten or we're not. Personally I'd rather smokers took their chances and accepted the consequences while I pay $20 for a lift ticket and ski OB terrain without risking arrest. But that's me...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Uh...that was unintentional, right?
Though it might explain things...
[insert obligatory comment about Kent State campus police moderating slashdot here...]
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"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
"Potential outrage", ok. That's fair. But given the standard police response as documented recently, and given normal human nature, I believe it "provisionally".
Concentrations of authority are inherently dangerous. They are either bait for thieves (witness the recent heist of the power treasury from California) or locii of control that are seized by power-hungry individuals. Sometimes someone consistently refuse to make use of power that they control for their own interests over a period of time, but such events are so rare as to be newsworthy.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The point of the situation is that the students don't even dare sue the (expletive deleted). If they demand that their rights be respected, the (expletive deleted) university probably won't let them graduate. And they probably couldn't afford the lawyer anyway. Centralized power is evil.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Terrified of crime? Possibly. Possibly. But one may have suspicions that there is more going on than is obvious. This rigidity and centralization of control is something that tends to happen as civilations become moribund. I personally suspect that it's a big part of what caused the civilization to be moribund.
The US isn't the first place that this has happened.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
In the name of humanity I beg you to bust these clans too.
--Shoeboy
A semi-auto M-16 is an AR-15. Journalistic bias strikes again. Although, with Kent States history, I can understand how people could be upset.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I honestly don't quite know what to say. Yeah, it is bad at Kent State for these guys, but this whole "Remember Columbine!" crap is spreading like wildfire.
Today during lunch the TV was on one of the local "news" stations, WDAF. I use that word "news" lightly - they spend most of the time doing stories about skiing squirrels.
Their lead story was this. And of course they (along with the KC Star article I linked to) mentioned how "Columbine like" this was. WDAF TV went a step further though by mentioning that "police found three black trench coats"!
sigh.
That wasn't a chicken wing, that was a fish finger. If you have any idea how toxic most fish is nowadays you'll understand that was a lethal weapon...
They had a warranty.
Oh thank GOD! For a minute there I thought they wouldn't be able to get a manufacturer's reimbursement should the equipment turn out to be defective!
I telnetted into kent state. started a process. Then tried to kill it with kill -9. The process died. Kent State Homicide arrested me for murder.
Guess I shouldn't have tried to kill something on their server.
J:)
Oh well, no point in steering now.
They had a warranty.
"They executed a search and confiscated a computer, CDs and computer games from Room 304. Kent State University police obtained a warrant after consulting with the prosecutor."
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
OK, given the recent quality of Slashdot journalism, I don't know how accurate the information actually is. That said, if it is true, WTF?
Aren't universities supposed to be the last bastion of free speech? Doesn't it now seem like they're the first to crumble any time something threatens individual rights (banning Napster, overzealous political correctness, busting "hackers", etc.)?
We live in a sad world...
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Do it! A coworker of mine found the blueprints to our new workplace's office. He spent a month making a quake 2 map of about half of it. We were then killing each other aronud the cubicles(including the bathroom that had a stairway to the cieling). Fortunately, he hid a nice gun in the QA lab. It was fun.
If anyone here considers the following a flame, they need to dislodge their head from their colon... I grew up in a cop-family.
Police are often very excitable people. In an environment (such as a small town or an University) with little action, such a grossly hypothetical possible infraction as this clan-gamer site thing can easily lead to a few officers jumping the gun, leaving their supervisors in a position where they have to go ahead to save face ("umm.. yeah! that's what i, er, told my officers to do, sir!"), even after initial procedures and civil liberties have been violated.
In such a small environment, there's rarely a proper procedure or infrastructure to investigate allegations of illegal activity. This leads to cops jumping up, getting some absolutely asinine warrant (thanks to the equally clueless judge or justice who approved the warrant!), and a clan-gamer gets their room raided.
It's a matter of idiots, acting outside of their responsible authority. Idiots. lots of them. in unison and cheerful coordination.
Heh, it's also humourous that the scheduled meeting to ask the kids about this website was just cancelled. I've had this happen to me before, regarding educational facilities and technical goings-on, and then just rashly cancel a program they don't understand that's already half-started (such as a high school starting an animation class and needing networking equipment). The intellectually out-of-touch often act rashly to 'protect' their perceived authorities and possible loss of authority.
The police were idiots. they were poorly tamed and irresponsible idiots. they did a piss-poor job. they'll get slapped on the wrist and the whole cycle will repeat again somewhere else. The worst thing is that all of this confusion could so easily be solved with a minimal application of common sense.
The other solution would have been for them to actually read the webpage, and perhaps do a Search-Engine search for terminology they didn't understand. Good luck getting people to read these days, though..
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
And Kent State having such a good reputation for being accomodating of student free speach rights. Hey, at least they didn't shoot these guys.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Kent State again... Has anyone notified Neil Young?
Not that I'm a big fan of litigation, but since you're talking about the police -- who are about as good at internal reform as, say, the CIA -- lawsuits may be your best in forcing changes in policy. I think it's quite fair to say that the threat of having your dorm room raided because you posted trash-talk online constitutes a pretty major violation to the First Amendment. It would be well within the jurisdiction of organizations like the ACLU or the EFF to take Kent State to court over this, and I hope they do so.
Do domain names matter?
Nobody got killed at a midwestern college playing D&D. Some student who happened to play D&D once in awhile disappeared from the University of Michigan's campus but he later turned up and his disappearance had nothing to do with D&D (the kid had serious issues with his parents, his sexuality, and a whole lot of other things).
"Let's just switch our collective quantuum state over to a happy one!" eh?
What you're suggesting is a process which begins with _you_ and _me_. It requires you to be strong enough for everyone around you, so you don't take your "rightful" revenge. Or else, any little tiny negative event will bring down humanity to the current level and below again.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
This over reaction by Kent State authorities is nothing new. 30 years ago, then Mayor of Kent, Leroy Satrom, declared a state of emergency, imposed a curfew on the city and college; then requested the Ohio National Guard protect the University from "radical activities." 3 days later: 4 students were dead and 9 wounded. It should not come as no surprise what lengths people in power will go to in order to assure their continued rule. If you don't think it can happen to you... it will. D
I came on to /. to see this link to the Daily Kent Stater. After reading the article, I am making the following comment:
ResNet (network and Internet service provider for all of the KSU residence halls) has been having network problems due to someone on the network doing something suspicious. Whether or not that this student was the one responsible for the network problems is yet to be determined. I believe ResNet was doing their job in policing the activity on the network, although I feel that a further investigation would reveal that what was said here would warrant that the computer not be confiscated and all charges against the student be dropped.
Special note to all other KSU students who read this: If you haven't taken Social and Ethical Issues in Computing, please take that class.
Everyone knows that any child can go on a killing spree with the guns he has stockpiled just from hearing the word 'Kill'. The lesson here is that you should always threaten people by saying you'll send them to another dimension.
----
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it:
cs_prison (AKA the 'lets all fall off ladders' map)
es_jail (one of the two maps in the 'failed' escape map type)
----
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
The point is that The Man has no sense of humour, and that trash talking can bring a world of hurt, even if it's technically protected and innocuous. You may get off eventually, but it can be very annoying and expensive.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
Hi,
As reactionary as it sounds, I do believe that revolutions and massive civil disorders resulting in the overthrow of governments have been bred by actions such as this.
Isn't the Bill of Rights supposed to prevent this type of storm trooper tactic? Or was I dreaming that federally-secured civil liberties exist in the United States? I mean, hell, this isn't North Korea or Red China.
Shit. Did I spend 15 years in the military propping up a government that is screwed like some two-bit banana republic?
It sure seems like it to me.
You guys realize that you'll be seeing ALOT more of this now that George 'double ya' Bush got elected.. tsk tsk
I know, spelling flames are lame and all, but I can't figure out what this was supposed to be. Mongolian? I'm missing the reference, apparently.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Geek compound?
I'm having this sudden mental image of Perl Whirl 2002, a submarine, and some torpedos...
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Well, I'm not going to get too upset if a couple of Racists get killed, in fact I enjoy it. That probably has a lot to do with the reaction to Waco and Ruby Ridge in comparison to Kent State, etc, since the victems were societal rejects (cult members, nazis) rather then Liberal collage students.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
You want to penalize someone for something they have said? Keep track of ip addresses (their all anon cowards anyway) and penalize them for speaking their mind and presenting another point of view (No matter how much you disagree) ? What exactly makes you different from the police who siezed this kids computer? Why don't you think for a minute before you open your mouth, because its statements like that and the mentality that they represent that has gotten us in the present stupid legal situations that we are in now.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
That must be pretty lonely though.
They were busted for posting threats, or something.. about a game who's main point is to kill the enemy.... the irony is simply delicious.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
when people like this, people with moderate amount of power, yet dont understand what they should be using it for, get scared, strange things happen.
about two years ago, a friend of mine was contacted, they wanted to ask him a few questions about a "recent security violation". apparently the isp he read his email from was setup ni an incredibly odd way, they had a couple of mail servers, pop.theirname.com and popp.thiername.com. pop was the standard mail server that this guy should have been using, however, being moderately slow, he was using popp (its one extra keystroke). apparently popp was reserved for the local rcmp branch (canadas version of the fbi) email, as well as the local police departmnet's email. fine, but apparently everyone else's login/pass works on this server.
my analysis is that they read a log quickly, saw that he had repeatedly logged in successfully to this supposedly secure box, and the isp started thinking legal action. anyhow onto the story, after being called by a threatening sounding person, he got in touch with a friend of his, a lawyer. by the end of that day, pretty much every law enforcement official in the town had swarmed into his place (with a questionable warrant), and taken everything that resembled a peice of electronics. of course after analyzing the poor guys setup, the isp quickly realized what idiots they were, and quickly dropped everything. the local rcmp apparently kept everything for another 6 months out of paranoia. no body seemed to understand that what he was doing was based off of a simple error, the friend didnt even notice, as his email still came in a-o.k.
had the tech reading the log thought for about three minutes, the entire situation could have been avoided. had the law agencies thought, hey, maybe we should get someone to take a second and third look at those logs, the entire situation could have been avoided. had someone spoken to him long enough to realize he didnt know what telnet, tracert, ping, ftp, or even pop stood for (let alone how any of them worked), the entire situation could have been avoided. what im basically saying, is most situations like my friends, and the one in the story could have been avoided. all people need is a bit of logic when dealing with computer security issues.
.brad
Drink more tea
organicgreenteas.com
flesh eating ants records
But recently, KSU's security had made a purchase of M-16s. The administration claimed that it was necessary to help maintain order in case of any problems which may arise.
The administration for nearly 30 years failed to closed the parking lot where the students from the massacre had fallen, even after protest of students and alumni. They finally, I believe in 1998, erected memorials for those who died at the spots where they had died.
I guess their inability to comprehend just how horrible this act was is still apparent. They finally cancelled the orders for the M-16s, after it was pointed out to them often that there hasn't been a violent protest or affair where students had ever had guns in Kent State's history.
And now they're confiscating computers of students who were playing a game. The administration feels that playing a fantasy game and having a page where you talk about defeating enemies in such a game is similar to those students back in 1970 who had those guns firing at the police. Oh, wait, it never happened that way.
Excuse the rant, but since I live close to KSU, I often hear of the extremely asinine policies and decisions the administrators constantly make and saying they are to protect from things which never happened, on the possibility they may happen some day in the future.
Dragon Magic
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Great googly moogly, does Slashdot ever need a story moderation system.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you read, Jamie writes...
The way Patrick described it to me, there was a technical glitch in uploading the website -- I'm still not sure exactly how this happened, but apparently they contacted the wrong server
Now it sounds like the boys just typed in the wrong IP address while FTP'ing up their web site. However, there could be more here that BfD is telling us. Suppose they're glossing over the fact that they were actually doing a port scan and found an older version of Bind running, and other scripts followed. Now I know not all University sys admins are the cream of the crop, but how many do you think would panic over an incoming ftp connection.My guess is these guys were attempting to hack something (maybe at the university, maybe not) and got caught at it. Let's face it, I think we the campus police have better things to do then bust somebody with a webpage that has a shitlist/Wanted Dead or Alive page.
These are the same campus cops that don't bat an eye when you smoke a joint in the field in front of the library, but theyre arresting people for talking smack in a video game?
I guessing this will be hushed up once the parents start calling in and the school administration realizes what is going on.
...would be education. Education of the law enforcement officials who carry out this kind of knee-jerk action because they truly do not understand the culture or the technology. Not that ignorance is a valid excuse, but you would be suprised how many cops, prosecuters, etc think all geeks are made from the templates in the movie Hackers. (How's that for scary?)
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
The story states that the "police" (campus or otherwise) legally obtained a warrant before searching the dorm room.
Averye0
--o You're just jealous cause the voices talk to me and not to you! o--
Oh shut up.
If you're in Germany or England or Jerry Springer or Portland, and a bunch of shaven headed bootclad yoofs come down the road, chances aren't that they're S.H.A.R.Pies.
I happen to be somewhat familiar with how it went from skinhead to bonehead; but the fact that it has means you mourn it and move on. The swastika was a sun symbol before it was corrupted by the Nazis: but you don't see me tattooing it on my forehead and then whining that no, it isn't Nazi, do some research, check out India, whine rant whine.
If skinheadism is mostly SHARPs, with a few bad seeds thrown in, then why does 99% of the human race associate skinheads with fascism? Could it possibly be that the old skinheads died out and the ones that remain are the Zundelites?
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
They didn't arrest and confiscate because of suspected violence! They were not in compliance with DMCA for using copyrighted material in a digital form without license.
----------------------
The subject title pretty much says it all. But I'll elaborate for the challenged. Multi User Dungeons, be it the old style text based or the newer graphical ala everquest, the players are not governed by any law from the real world since the players themselves do not exist inside the computer. The players have an avatar which being a figment of someones imagination do not have rights. Anything said or done in the game is considered role play. As in acting like on tv. it is not real therefore anyone taking something an actor says in a movie as context to the real world could be considered a false accusation since the event in question did not in actuallity happen due to the nature that the person who says the statement does not exist in the real sense of being a person. Yes the actor exists, but the acter is not really a nazi (at least we would hope actors aren't like the people they portray :P) Yes sometimes poeple in games will issue comments that are not "in character" and do apply to the real world. In that case perhaps the law does apply. But trying to discern which is and isn't IC and OOC is a little difficult at times. In terms of starcraft or any other strategy game, the player takes on the role of some commander. They really aren't a commander any more than the troops they command go out and die. Therefore anything said in the game against another "general" that pertains to the game cannot be construed as threatening in the real world sense. And I don't personally believe a mistyped ftp could be considered a hack attempt. Usually hackers try more than once. If a single connect could be construed as an attempt to illegally access information then I guess just about everyone is guilty. And I'm sorry to say it, but the politically correct nonsense has gone too far once again. You cannot possibly please everyone. What one person believes is obscene may not be obscene to someone else. Being able to call someone else by vulgar expressions is guaranteed (at least to americans) by the first ammendment. Whether or not you agree with it. Otherwise we'd have people finding offense at anything anyone else says or does, and we'd run out of prison space pretty quick. Not only that but unless we all lie in bed all day we're almost certain to be offending someone else. (of course lying in bed all day may be offensive to someone else.) My suggestion, live your life and let others live theirs. Mutual tolerance has done more for public relations than political correctness ever could.
No you are wrong...
it would not be illegal to call anyone on the street a " slashdot-reading no-life asshole". It's not a nice thing to do, and in some parts of the country it may result in you getting an ass-wupping but it's far from illegal.
What is illegal is knowingly telling a lie in order to destroy some ones credibility or standing in society. Saying "Dr. Jon eats babies I have proof, don't let Dr. Jon see your baby"... if you said that in order to do Dr. Jon harm that would be slander, and that would be illegal.
As far as I know your free to call any one an asshole.
Ban Fiction in which murder is depicted! Ban wrestling, definitely. It's full of threats!
Seriously, I think the police are using any tactic they can to search for anything they can, and to bust as many people as they can.
Burke discussed how he thought it seemed like the police were searching for something else, possibly drugs, because they searched furniture as well. "They shouldn't be allowed to do that," he said. "It's just not right, especially since they are keeping the guy's computer for a year."
Give everything that the police seize to charity, or to groups like NORML that they don't like. that should cut down on their seizing.
Goat sex free since 2001
I fear that this harassment will worsen as 4/20 approaches. Student athletes and popular kids may increase their harasssment of geeks and nerds, and geeks and nerds will come under increased surveillance, one needs only to think about the copy cat crime committed on 4/18 (worst act of terrorism against Americans ever) to realize how serious law enforcement will be taking the threat of another Columbine.
I see a few solutions, fighting the power, quietly drawing attention to oppressed geeks, or integrating into society.
While fighting the power that is oppressing us geeks may seem the fun thing to do, let's not forget what happens to other oppressed groups that try to fight the entrenched powers that be, can we forget MOVE, WACO, Wounded Knee or Ruby Ridge? I'm not sure about you, but I certainly don't want to die in a geek compound surrounded by Federal Storm Troopers intent on killing us. True, we do have a second amendment, but you need a whole nation to support that, not just a few gun owning geeks, ESR not withstanding.
A second option is quietly drawing attention to oppressed geeks. Since the rainbow is taken, perhaps we can think of another symbol for geek-pride, perhaps the Penguin? We can also convince the do-gooders at Amnesty Internaitional to write letters to various school administrators letting htem know that their oprression and silent co-operation in this geek pogrom will not go undetected, indeed, for some geeks, silence == death.
The best option might be to integrate oneself with society at large, following the model of America's most successful minorities, the Jews. Perhaps we geeks can learn a little about American culture at large,a nd fit in better with our non-geek neighbors. LEt's appreciate football as examples of Newtonian physics, let's appreciate loud fast cars, and maybe we can all jsut get along.
They probably legitimize this granting of a warrant by saying that there was a death threat. I wasn't there, but there's no way the University police looked at the names (allegedly just handles) and said "quick, we need to warn these people! Search the phonebook for a "5uP4_Ki114_666!" Just cause you have a warrant doesn't mean its not unreasonable search and seizure. You need probable cause (I doubt that the prosecutor elaborated on the death threats when asking the judge for a warrant). Just cause a judge gives you a warrant doesnt mean you can go stripsearch a supermodel.
They students were not using University web space to run this website, and even if they were using the University ISP, it doesn't give them the rights to censor them and confiscate a PC. AOL can't break down doors of a user whos looking at porn, take his computer, and charge him with "misuse". (though they can kick him off the ISP, which Kent State SHOULD have done)
What's that leave to charge these guys with? Profanity and running a Starcraft clan (neither of which are illegal though I believe the latter should be ;-))
While what the University cops did SHOULD be illegal, it may not be. Lawmakers have been passing cybercrime laws that do more to make them look "tough on hackers" than to actually do anything. These laws often have provisions that could be unconstitutional, but since judges don't understand (many don't use computers at all, and still have their law clerks and secretaries type things) they can stand. These 'cybercrime' laws don't get much opposition by either the public, or the media, because, hey, who wants to stand up for a hacker, right?
Bottom Line: The Internet is becoming a much less free place. Offending anyone in power (even if the offense is a misunderstanding) can now get your place searched and computer taken. Perhaps 2001 will end up being a little less Kubrick and little more Orwell.
Given a reasonably level playing field, who would win a fight between a bear and a shark?
--
ok, i agree with this completely, but.....
when i was in university in the late 80's, i had the pleasure of working for The Man (The Woman actually) in the capacity of hired day-to-day organizer/administrator of a "theme" dorm (read: small, clean, nice, most people with similar majors). what i learned from my interactions with the university housing administration was Frightening in the Extreme - and this long before the campus/student/hacker/gamer/geek paranoia had reached any kind of critical mass.
anyway, my point is: i learned quickly that the 4th-amendment (and other) rights of students living in university dorms are, shall we say, very limited.
the solution?
live off-campus, where you are a citizen like everyone else.
PS, it was a public university in california.
PPS, before anyone yells "but that's expensive," i should mention that my own experience and very informal (word-of-mouth) research indicates that dorm living is a colossal rip-off perpetrated in the interest of parents' feeling you are protected and, in some cases, in the interest of the socially incompetent actually meeting a few fellow students out of class. but unless you live in manhattan, you're spending too much if you live in a dorm (in the US anyway).
This Like That - fun with words!
That would be understandable if they did two things:
1) never do irreparable harm
2) admit your mistakes, say you're sorry, and give the stuff back.
I bet in this case they didn't do 1 and they won't do 2.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Kent State University was placed in an international spotlight after a tragic end to a student demonstration against the Vietnam War and the National Guard on May 4, 1970. Shortly after noon on that Monday, 13 seconds of rifle fire by a contingent of 28 Ohio National Guardsmen left four students dead, one permanently paralyzed, and eight others wounded. Not every student was a demonstration participant or an observer. Some students were walking to and from class. The closest student wounded was 30 yards away from the Guard, while the farthest was nearly 250 yards away.
The divisive effect of the Vietnam War on American society was especially evident on campuses throughout the country. At Kent, the day after the announcement to send U.S. troops into Cambodia marked the start of a weekend of anti-war protests that began on campus and spilled into the city of Kent's downtown. Broken windows and other damage to a number of downtown businesses prompted fear, rumors, and eventually a call by the city's mayor to the governor for assistance.
The National Guard arrived Saturday night. That day some students assisted with the downtown cleanup. That night some other students set fire to the campus headquarters of the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). Sunday morning the governor came to Kent and in the city's firehouse held a press conference saying the University would remain open. After a Sunday of relative calm, an anti-war rally at noon on Monday brought 2,000 to 3,000 people to the University Commons area. When the Guard gave the order to disperse, some in the crowd responded with verbal epithets and stones. The Guard answered with tear gas, but when the spring winds altered its effect, the Guard attempted to enforce the Ohio Riot Act with raised bayonets, forcing demonstrators to retreat. The Guard then changed formation. As the Guard approached the crest of Blanket Hill, some Guardsmen turned toward the Taylor Hall parking lot and between 61 and 67 shots were fired. Four students were killed and nine wounded. That afternoon, University President Robert I. White ordered the University closed.
History, sorrow and healing remain a part of Kent State University. The University Library has dedicated a Memorial Room containing books, papers, studies, and other materials relating to the events. In addition, the University has established an academic program designed to help students and others employ peaceful conflict resolution to resolve disputes. On May 4, 1990, the University community dedicated a permanent memorial. Each year, the May 4 Task Force student organization holds a candlelight vigil and commemoration program to enable the University, the Kent community, and others to privately and publicly express their feelings. In observance of the 25th anniversary in 1995, a series of commemorative programs and events were held throughout the Spring Semester at Kent, highlighted by two-day scholarly symposium titled "Legacies of Protest" which examined political and civil unrest.
The University will continue to remember the four students who died -- Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder -- through scholarships in their names and in the words inscribed on the May 4 Memorial: "Inquire. Learn. Reflect." The Memorial site is next to Taylor Hall, on a hill overlooking the Commons, near the site of the shootings. Pamphlets are available at the site.
To learn more about annual commemorative activities on compus, such as the candlelight walk and vigil, please contact the May 4 Task Force student organization at (330) 672-3096.
For general information about the events of May 4, 1970, contact the May 4 Task Force, the Kent Alumni Association at (330) 672-KENT, or the Office of University News and Information at (330) 672-2727. You may also e-mail margaret@ksunews.kent.edu for more information.
2) Apparently this was not as amusing as you had hoped it would be because nobody on /. is old enough to remember the Kent State massacre.
3) The students that were shot WERE actually threatening someone (by throwing rocks and bottles) unlike these gamers, who were just indulging in testosterone-tinged trash talk.
4) Why stop at online games? Why not arrest the students at football games carrying banners threatening the opposing team? Oh wait -- those are school sanctioned death threats, so that's ok!
Seeing as how most of the shooting sprees I've read about over the past several years - the shooters have mostly been driven by revenge; they got fucked over by somebody, and were willing to kill and die to set things right - perhaps if people stopped being assholes, stopped screwing eachother over, other people wouldn't get so upset that their only option in life would be to go on a shooting spree. . .
.
No wait. That's wrong. lets just ban the guns, video games, books, tv, movies, abberant thought. .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Kudos to Jamie for investigating this further; the following was my original submission on this topic:
=======
The mind boggles. Police have apparently raided a student's dorm room due to his participation in a heavy metal music inspired gaming clan, "Bled For Days." The article goes to some length not to mention the exact game, including ominous references to a "war-like" "game of chess" where "it's not like we were going to kill you or anything". The game in question, of course, is the seminal Humans vs. Bugs vs. Yellow Psychic Aliens wargame, Starcraft. The presence of a web page listing in-game rivalries was apparently taken for death threats. For all the talk of "children" being unable to differentiate fake violence from the real thing, it seems to me that "adults" were the ones breaking into someone else's home, carrying loaded weapons, confiscating expensive goods while availing themselves of the opportunity to search for anything more valuable(i.e. drugs).
As hilariously pitiful as this seems, there's a real problem here. The tragedy is that, sooner or later, the credibility of authorities trying to fight real computer crime will be so stretched that even when society desperately requires their intervention, the police will find themselves unable to get even the slightest shreds of voluntary cooperation. A bizarre and ultimately truly dangerous attitude, the apathetic chuckle, has spawned over recent years by Zero Tolerance(and apparently, Intelligence, Accountability, or Political Responsibility) policies; the exact policies that have lead to first graders being suspended for pointing chicken at eachother and being expelled for kissing a girl on the cheek. People are willing to quickly accept these ridiculous and flagrantly neglectful abuse of power because "it's funny to laugh at...but I can't do something about it, isn't that someone else's job?"
This threatens the core legitimacy of what really are genuinely critical services; the police, the school, and the administrators all become jokes, not to be taken seriously. The immediate reaction my friends had to this incident at Kent State was, "The last time police at Kent State didn't understand what the students were up to, somebody won a Pulitzer Prize". Since the most damaging effect of any computer security violation is the long term degradation of trust in a given service, the ignorance these busts show eventually makes it harder to actually control and address genuine security issues, such as DDoS attacks. Instead of simply laughing and moving on, what can we, as a community do to prevent these kind of occurances in the future? Would something as simple as a confidential "reality check" group of experts, made available to law enforcement as consultants, be helpful? Would a set of guidelines, peer reviewed by the community, be useful? Instead of cursing the darkness, how can we praise the light?
Actually, the body count was 5 but the 5th was a young man who wasn't politically savvy enough to die right away and get counted during the 15 minutes that anyone was paying any attention to the story, but rather lingered for a day or three before succumbing to his wounds.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
...but I'm wondering if whoever is running the "wrong server" they accidentally contacted and uploaded to saw the page, thought they'd been cracked (perhaps the pages being uploaded were about to be used to "deface" whatever was supposed to be there, the sysadmin may have thought), and made a panicked call to the cops saying somebody was "hacking" his system.
We all know how rational US law enforcement/government is about anything involving computers, and perhaps they looked at the pages uploaded in the supposed "hacking", saw the "death threats" [in the game] and did their usual ridiculous overreaction.
Mind you, this is all wild speculation on my part. The article doesn't really say much.
---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I'm sure that the university would like to allow free speech, but this isn't about that. The university sees potential fault on their part. If one of the kids snaps, and they have evidence that he was making threatening statements, and the threats were posted on their computers, don't you think they'd be sued? This is the headline that the university sees in the future:
"Kent allows group of kids to post death threats on their own servers, even after being alerted to their presence. This 'hate board' was a key factor in the organization of actions that led to the murder of Joe Smith, a fellow game player 25 miles from Kent State. The Smith family is suing the university for not forcing the students to take the hate messages off their computer system."
I'm no journalist, but you can imagine a (better worded) message with that content in the news. Whether they "did wrong" or not, they got sued. Bad press doesn't wash away with a not guilty. Which is why they're trying to cover their ass prematurely.
I'm not saying that the university is right in cracking down on l33t starcrafters, it's just a sucky situation all around. The nation's tense over all these stupid mass murders, and companies are so afraid of these rampant, frivolous lawsuits, so everything is getting more paranoid.
I offer no solution, just trying to shed some light on the problem.
I couldn't quite tell if the cops involved were campus cops or municipal cops. Since in some areas campus cops at state universities are effectively state troopers, I suppose it doesn't really make any difference. The point here is an issue of jurisdiction. You live in a school dorm and use a school network. You expect to have some degree of privacy, but it appears if that is not the case. You can be monitored, and while a warrant was obtained, it was probably rather easy to obtain due to the extra fine print that is inserted all over university documents with regards to use of the school's network and what is considered acceptable behavior in dorms.
There are extenuating circumstances here that create extra problems. If these students lived in their own house and paid for their own isolated internet connection that had no connection to the university, the "evidence" collecting methods that caused the problems in the first place wouldn't exist and nobody would ever have obtained a warrant against them, let alone ever found out about the website in the first place.
I'm quite certain these types of issues have been going on for quite some time, but before Columbine people generally turned a blind eye to the activity since it wasn't on their radar screen. I had my account canceled on a university computer back in 1992 because I telnet'ed into the system from another university when I was visiting there and was accused of unauthorized access as a result. They apparrenly watch things like that pretty closely and I don't doubt they have stepped up their surveillance in past years as computers have gotten more powerful and networks have been used more.
I don't suppose there's an easy solution to this problem. Part of the advantage of living in a dorm room is unfettered access to the university's often ample internet bandwidth, and in many cases you don't curtail any activities based soley on what someone else might think of them. But the network is not public. There are restrictions in place and like it or not, the university has probably gone to great lengths to assure they they will have the means to "protect" themselves and others from any "dangerous" students, no matter how they go about discovering this information.
The solution isn't really simple. The solution to this problem is to isolate yourself from the university. Don't use a university network and don't live in dorms. Rent a local house with your roommates and pick up a dsl or cable connection for your bandwidth. It might cost more (in some cases it might not), but that is sometimes the price of freedom. On a separate network, this wouldn't have happened. On a separate network, the student who had his equipment confiscated for "hacking" a website by running some dns tests on it after it was cracked would not have heard a peep about it.
-Restil
restil@alignment.net
Play with my webcams and lights here
Welcome to the new America, where you're guilty until proven innocent, at least in some regards. The proliferation of kooks who go on a tear and wipe out a bunch of people (witness Illinois yesterday, Edgewater Technology recently, etc) you should expect that people will tend to go a bit over the top where random violence (real or perceived) is concerned.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, but watch the civil liberties, boys! It's the sort of thing that can come back to snap you in the ass if you're not careful.
No, I shouldn't expect an irrational, dangerous reaction to the proliferation of kooks who kill. You see, there is *no* proliferation of kooks who kill. Nothing is happening today that didn't happen fifty years ago, or a hundred for that matter. There is just a mistaken popular perception that violence is on the rise, when in fact it is on the decline. And the kooks--well, they were around way back when--they aren't new. Watching the History Channel recently, they were talking about a kook who made headlines in the late 40s by going into a school full of preteens and opening fire, killing several. There were disgruntled office workers back then, too. And children also went nuts and murdered other children for bizarre reasons--remember Leopold and Loeb, anyone? So, what's the difference between then and now? Well, now we have CNN, FoxNN, MSNBC, HNN, CNBC, and your local news all blaring about these incidents, presenting so-called experts who convince us that there must be something wrong with our society, that it's unprecedented when so and so kills such and such over whatever it is. Horseshit. Violence, random or otherwise, is nothing new, and no amount of ill informed backlash will diminish it. But I guarantee that all these measures we're putting in place to curb violence will only make it worse, because the worse you treat people, the more you take away their rights and sense of worth, the more likely it is that they'll explode and try to take as many overbearing bastards with them as they can. Example: a few unbalanced kids feel picked on and pressured by school admins and especially fellow students; taunted and made to feel worthless, they take their own lives after indiscriminately killing as many students and teachers as they can--except, curiosly, for the one boy one of the gunmen warned to stay away because he'd treated the gunman right in school. Example 2: a man watches the TV news day after day and is angered at the U.S. government's mishandling of an investigation into the leader of a religious community in Waco, Texas, during which they trample all of the suspect's rights one by one and try to villify him with false allegations of child abuse, which have no place in a raid which was actually based on the selling of a single sawed-off shotgun by the partner of a licensed gun dealer--in fact, it would have been a routine arrest and fine, except that when the ATF decided that their suspect's congregation was a "cult", ignoring the religious freedom which founded this country, they decided to "take him down" on live TV as a media stunt. The man watching this is so angered when ATF and FBI bungling first ignores rights and then kills people by accidentally starting a fire, that he and a friend decide to pay the government back in kind by bombing a large government building.
So, let me slightly amend what I said about there being no more kooks or violence now than there's ever been. If there are more kooks and violence now, it's a direct result of the media causing hysteria by constantly harping on the few incidents which do occur and will always occur by nature, causing the people and government to become vengeful idiots who strip away the fundamental rights of the people, some of whom are prone to react violently to having their rights and human dignity stripped away.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
The news story doesn't ONCE even mention the name "Starcraft"! It's pretty obvious to us from the group's web site... but in the Stater article all it says is "a possible computer crime", "students set up a 'war-like' game", "the site includes a list of rules, rankings of members, allies and the enemies...", etc. Come on, couldn't they spare a single sentence to say "It's a game of STARCRAFT, one of the most popular online games since 1998 by industry juggernaut Blizzard"?
Cruddy media like that only serve to distort issues and panic people. Budding journalists: you've got to at least give a shit when you apply pen to paper.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I go to school at Kent State University, and one night in October, I was trying to meet new people and I came across a room in my hall which was occupied by several individuals. The door was wide open, with the guys inside sitting around playing or watching Tony Hawk on the TV in the far corner of the room. I peeked in and said "wazzup" and found myself sitting there with them.
No more than fifteen minutes later, a police officer came to the door, saying we were being too loud, something which I can't contest since it it was quite late at night. The officer asked us why we were still up, and why we were being so loud. The kid whom the room belonged to appologized for the noise and assured the officer that we were just getting a little carried away in a conversation. The officer didn't exactly take that too well, and then asked to do a room search. Why he felt compelled to do a room search is still beyond me, my guess is that if you are up past a certain point at night, you must do drugs, being considered "suspicious"... but whatever... my story continues.
The kid said it would be alright if the cop looked around, and quite matter-of-factly stated he had nothing to hide. As soon as the cop turned around, he found several marijuana seeds sitting on the desk behind the door.
I'm now fucked.
The officer then asked to see anything else in the room that may be of illegal nature, and the kid pointed out that there was probably (!!) naddy light in the fridge.
Fucked x 2.
So for the record, since I was simply in the room, I was charged with not only violating my dorms quiet hours policy (low volume levels between 8pm-11am) but was in "possession" of both alcohol and marijuana under Kent State's "Joint Responsibily" clause.
The schools policy on the matter is stated very clearly in the student handbook: First marijuana violation = $100 fine. Nowhere in the book was I able to find a punishment for an alcohol violation. When I went to the schools proprietary court system called Judicial Affairs for an intake hearing, I was told that the pressing punishment was to be kicked out of Kent State.
Let me recap: I was at the wrong place at the wrong time and I am now being told that I face being kicked out of college little over a month after starting. I had no prior offenses.
Paranoid that the school would actually kick me out, I had gone, two days after the late-night incident, to the local health clinic on my own free will, hoping to help clear the charges. I paid $85 for a drug test, which came up negative of all "street drugs," weed included. Armed with the knowladge of both my clean drug screening, and the fact that the school never gave me a sobriety test, I felt a little comfortable going into my hearing.
My parents were there, two KSUPD officers representing the officer which was there that night, my RD, the RA of the floor this happened on, and finally the judge.
Soon after the actual trial started, which was a full month after the incident, I began to feel very cornered and nervous. The judge attacked me for the fact that I was around the guys at all, would not accept that I did not know them before that night, that I did not know the seeds and beer were in the room, and that my grades were low enough (2.0GPA, and this wasn't even at midterms yet, what the fuck...) to warrant my being shoved out the door.
I Fired back stating that they broke their own policies for room search seing that the cop had already entered the room before he asked to search. The punishment being pressed upon me was not in accordance with the printed university handbook. The fact that I had no previous criminal nor Kent State record. The fact that my grades were in the toilet because I had missed a test in Algebra and still needed to make it up, thus giving me an F in the class. (FYI, before the test, I had an "A" and ended up with an "A" as a final grade...)
Finally, the hearing officer told me that I was being both irresponsible for own actions, and being arrogant. He then proceded to actually YELL at me, telling me that I "NEED TO GROW UP AND ACCEPT RESPONSIBLITY" for something which I had no responsiblity for. I didn't see the weed seeds(!) in the room, and I sure as hell don't have x-ray vision to see through refrigerator doors.
I waited till the very end to show him my drug test results. This enfuriated him even more.
The Resident Assistant ( a student ) tried pleading for my case, but to no luck. My Resident Director ( the Kent state employee who is hired to watch after a whole dorm building ) sided with my judge. The cops was obviously clueless, since they weren't there that night.
The judge finally left, came back, and said that he really wanted to remove me from Kent State, but would instead be "lenient" and give me a $100 fine plus 12 months of strict diciplinary probation. In this time, I can not violate any rules, including another noise violation, or even simply locking my keys inside my room. The drug thing was my warning card, I guess. Perfect.
The appeal I had was answered by the school in a rejection stating that the punishment was fair due to the "overwhelming perponderance of evidence against [me]." Evidence which was never hashed out during the trial.
Oh the joys of being a Kent State Student...
* The M-16 Fiasco
* The "War-Games" and computer confiscation blunder
*Constant reminder of our great 1970 year
*Foreign speaking English teachers...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We asked for this, you know... we really did.
The Zero tolerance stuff is fine for 4yr olds who can't think and reason. It's perfectly appropriate to tell a kid that of age range "We don't hit, now kiss your brother and say you're sorry."
For ADULTS and even adolescents, we are doing them an intellectual disservice by teaching them that all violence is wrong. All violence is NOT wrong (step off me, you pacifists... I'm just warming up...) Self defense is a perfectly legitmate scenario for violence. You can also make a strong argument for the existance of a legitimate WAR (OK, you pacifists... take your best shot).
We are robbing people of the ability to reason and evaluate for themselves their moral justifications for their actions. I'm not just talking about simple rationalization here... a 6yo kid can do that.
We've done this to ourselves by caving into our fear, and promoting simple-minded drivel like this... sheesh.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
You are wrong about the Kent State Massacre. The students that were shot were ones that were merely walking between classes. They were not participating in the protests.
Their only crime was being in the way of the bullets of some government jack booted thugs.
It seems that we as citizens have learned NOTHING from that event. Though the public reaction to the Kent State Massacre was outrage, the 1990's saw more American citizens than ever massacred by government stormtrooper "mistakes". I'm referring to Waco and Ruby Ridge. And there wasn't the outrage that was seen in 1970. For one thing, the news media in 1970 was NOT the establishment's puppet as it is today. Waco and Ruby Ridge were both reported incorrectly with a pro-government slant.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Yep, god knows that listening to heavy metal, much like watching a horror movie, is proof of guilt.
If I hear one more person say that I should be a good little boy and put my evil, vile, disgusting guitars away for good I'm gonna puke. I'm a 27 year old that plays and listens to heavy metal. While I probably wouldn't listen to music where the lyrics are what you are claiming, if the music was cool enough I might. Does that make me a terribly evil man? If you even heard this (which is doubtful), it was probably a song about the evils of pedophilia (just like people thought the song about how evil and terrible rape is done by Dark Angel was thought to be a diatribe about how good it feels to rape someone by the elite christian idiots).
Grow up. People express themselves in different ways. The violent music is a way to work out your agressions without hurting anyone. If I were forced to stop playing violent music, who knows what evil things I would actually do. I feel pent up enough if I don't play for a couple of weeks to do something um, not very nice. If I was told I could never play again, I don't even want to think about where that would lead.
Some people have a violent nature, or need to blow off some steam every now and then due to stress in their life. Some of us have found constructive ways of dealing with our violent tendencies, or the stress that causes serious mental problems for us otherwise. People that claim this is proof of just how fucked up we are are the fucked up ones in my mind. What kind of shit are you holding back? You've never watched a horror movie? You've never had an evil thought? You've never written a naughty poem? Come on, dude. Nobody would believe that of even the most tight-laced anal son-of-a-****. People are guilty of nothing just for creating or listening to music, writing or reading a story, or creating or watching a movie which depicts terrible acts. Unless you want to start arresting Stephen King and all the other good horror writers? Ah, just as well go ahead. It won't be long before that will be on the governmental "policing" efforts radar anyway.
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Heh, these guys don't seem to be the smartest, no. They seem to be stupid kids or whatever to whom 'sex' is still a big deal, heh.. fun. No biggie.. move along now.
;-)
I'm a tad bit jealous of Adam, though (read the part about the female member)
Moz.
see a Text Widget
Wow! Not only does their page look horrible, they also created a whole NEW web design sin just for their page:
Giving their real names *and* listing that their interests include pot smoking, sex, and underage drinking.
Man, that has to be the easiest "computer crime" search warrant those cops have ever gotten!
BfD member page (with self-incriminating statements)
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
This implies that at least one other supposedly intelligent adult (the judge) looked at this case and decided it had enough merit to send in the storm troopers. Of course, this really shouldn't surprise you too badly -- America has become so terrified of crime that civil rights fell along the wayside a decade ago; getting a warrent to deprive an individual of their civil rights is little more than a formality these days. And hey, why not? If you don't have anything to hide, you shouldn't mind the police searching your house, right? God Bless America.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Anyways, being an Admin I would leave myself logged into a Sparc and just use screen to resume the session. This friend would log onto the same Sparc and then telnet out to the ISPs using his hacked accounts. This was all the proof they needed, I was brought in for questioning.
"I have a printout of a log that shows that every time 'slow learner' used this computer for illegal activity, you were also logged in. How do you explain that? Why won't you tell us how you were helping him?"
"Uh, I can show you a log that shows that I have been logged in for about 5 months straight."
This went on for a while.
A large group of us (mostly locals) would hang out on IRC and even get together every so often for a party. I attended a majority of these parties, so did "slow learner". Unfortunately, so did my gf (now wife). So she was brought in for questioning.
"So you would attend these 'Hacker Parties'? What went on there? Why are you getting yourself into computer crimes? Who was the leader of this 'Hacker Party'".
"Uh, we just got together a lot."
Again, this went on for quite a while. A large number of us were just good friends at school and used IRC to keep in touch while some of us were out co-op'ing and such. We'd throw a party after finals and such and just do stupid, but not yet illegal, stuff. Drinking, music, standard party stuff really.
This guy kept threatening to drag me downtown (the *real* cops) if I kept refusing to cooperate. The worse part was my boss had to sit there and listen to this guy, pretty much powerless to make him stop pestering me. And threatening to take my computers.
Without getting lost in the details, here is the deal on the dead kid in the midwest:
On August 15, 1979, James Dallas Egbert disappeared from the campus of Michigan State University. A gazillion rumors churned up, most of them centered around the idea that he was a D&D player who got so involved with the game that he ended up in the steam tunnels under the university and died. In fact, that wasn't the case...he committed suicide in his apartment almost exactly a year later.
The astute reader will notice that I didn't say that Dungeons and Dragons killed him. In fact, Egbert had a whole lot of other problems that were much more serious that a role playing game. But an awful lot of other people, including the major news services latched onto the evils of the game and that's all that it took for the players to find themselves on the outside of societal norms.
-h-
30 Years ago they'd have teargassed and shot!
Yup. If the kids are as innocent as most /.ers appear to believe (i.e. if the warrant was for the "threats" implicit in the shitlist, and the "threat" was that players on the list would be blown up in the game), a civil suit will likely show by a preponderance of evidence that whoever demanded the warrant was an idjit.
If they were involved in cracking, or if there was evidence to suggest that the "shitlist" was a list of, say, players to be harassed in real life, or have their machines DOSsed, or what-not, then any civil case they launch will fail.
I'm filing this case under "potential outrage", not "confirmed outrage" until I see more evidence.
Two teenagers were just picked up by the kent state campus police department for being 'lamers', and 'campers' in Quake.
They will be attempting for the death penalty for such disasterous crimes.
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I can now breathe easier, thanks to that crack force of Kent State campus police!
The cops supposedly raid the dorm room because of the website. Yet the website is still up. Then one of the students say they somehow contacted the wrong server when uploading the website? Uhh, OK.
I am guessing that either they were seriously harrasing people over the net, email bombs or some DOS attacks, or they were trying to crack someones system. We need to get the whole story before damning the cops on this one.
Q.
What is the problem? I think that it's a combination of hysteria and lack of communication. Take a look at the clan's web site. Looks scary, doesn't it. But in the context of the game, it's just in character. But since we're (I mean the collective "we're") gripped in a panic over the possibility of another Columbine, sites like these get special scrutiny. Do these guys deserve their treatment? Of course not. And in the end, the police will give back their stuff, the administration will issue some sort of press release praising the police for protecting the rest of the student body, implicitly suggest that the members of the clan are some kind of social deviants and then give a great sigh of relief that a potential disaster was averted.
Can we stop it? Probably not. Social inertia is a powerful force. This kind of thing has been going on for about as long as there have been universities.
On the other hand, over time, what was perceived as revolutionary becomes commonplace...it's just that the revolutionaries eventually forget just what is revolutionary.
=h=
Several years from now, campus police or real police will raid Counterstrike/Quake/Firearms matches. No, they won't raid the students' dorms, but will show up as actual players in the game(complete with police skins). Any of the clans attempt to shoot one of these Police players will be charged with assaulting an officer and be taken to cs_jail.
They can then spraypaint their warrants somewhere on the map's walls.
Okay I made that up since I'm dyin for a cigarette.
Disturbing? Yes. Surprising? No: if suspending children over pointing at a teacher with a chicken wing (potential deadly weapon!) and going 'bang' is OK, this makes sense as well.
This all is a result of this 'zero tolerance' thing that people seem to want (or at least don't protest against -- pretty much the same). When 'zero tolerance' towards drugs was new, students got suspended for keeping Tylenol in their lockers. But I guess it was worth it, since our schools are now 100% drug free and we're about to achieve the same for violence!
(exits stage left, laughing hysterically)