Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Banco, Warez, Fiction
What about a Dvorak-layout program for the number keys? hex4def6 writes "Ticalc.org is back up for business after the unfortunate incident in which "inapropriate Content" was pressed onto the CD's that Texas Instruments included in their "Fun Kit" graphlink kit from the Ticalc archives. New things in the archives include a neat winamp plugin that allows you to control winamp from your Ti-89 webpage. Check it out here. All the archives are back up, but there is a backlisting of new files submited."
Many happy returns! Eileen Gunn writes "Last August, Slashdot ran a story about The Infinite Matrix, an online SF zine aimed at technogeeks, that posted its first and last issue in one fell swoop, after losing its funding (what's new?). The site was slashdotted, of course, and among those visiting it was a Slashdot reader who threw the zine a 6-month financial lifeline. The Infinite Matrix is now posting new material every day from both Bruce Sterling and Terry Bisson. Plus, there's a new story by SF giant Avram Davidson, more fiction by Richard Kadrey and Kathleen Goonan, columns by John Clute and David Langford. Thanks, Slashdot! You've made my life infinitely more complicated."
This is like reading Jules Verne when he was writing newspaper serials -- and no eBook reader is required.
The perils of translation and the world of international banking. Al Giordano of Narco News wrote from Cochabamba, Bolivia, with a correction of my (incorrect) correction on Yesterday's post about First Amendment protections granted online journalism. He provides a better explanation about nomenclature and the Mexican banking system:
"Banamex, or Banco Nacional de Mexico (the way the plaintiff's name appears on the now-dismissed complaint against us), is translated as National Bank of Mexico.The 'Mexican Fed' that you refer to is titled Banco de Mexico, or Bank of Mexico.
So you got it right the first time!
The confusion stems from this: All Mexican banks were nationalized before becoming privatized. It's a long and bloody story and in fact my own story about it is one of the exhibits used by Banamex in its now-fracased SLAPP suit.
When Banamex filed suit against Mario Menendez, Narco News and me, it was still a Mexican bank. The Citibank merger wasn't announced until May 2001 and wasn't finalized until July 20, 2001, ironically, the same day we had our court hearing in New York."
Unfortunately, there's no monopoly on sketchiness. S^(2) writes "Here is a better rundown of the warez crackdowns across the globe. I guess people are running scared a bit and this page is hopping from mirrored site to site, but for now at least check out; http://www.cyberworld.ru/scenebusted/ It breaks down what groups were suspected to have been FEDs, which groups/members will be needing legal defense funds, which groups have shutdown, and a bit on the howto of the crackdown, such as agents raiding a house and watching what connections happened without pulling the plug. That can't be legal, can it? Should I hide my pc behind a wall of something benign, like say VHS bootlegs?"
Or, on the other hand, not distributing warez is an option.
Since joining /. I can honestly say I've never trolled. However I've been marked many times unfairly. (abusive moderators seem to like the "over-rated" option for +2 comments or ppl they "don't like")
/. moderators on thier bullshit...to have a +2 comment modded to 0 in ~30 seconds smites of something foul. Moderators not even reading your comment but modding according to name.
How unfairly? Try going from 40 to 23 karma in the space of less than 2 weeks.
Essentially it started with a post by me calling
The irony here is even having an on topic post modded down and up so fast it was rather funny to watch. So, rather than get pissed that some a**hole(s) out there are being just that, I created another account.
What happened? less than 150 post, hit the karma cap on thanksgiving...leading to my lovely sig.
I've proved my point, to myself and all who read my comments (if at all).
Judging from the moderation on some of my best comments (wish I had a link) you notice that the "crack smoking" moderators are outnumbered by the non-CSM's.
My favorite went something like 4 insightfuls, 2 funny's 2 underated, 2 overrated, 1 flamebait, 1 troll (I think)...it wound up with around 12 points worth of moderation...all on one comment.
What strikes me as "wrong" with the system is this:
+2 comments get there for a reason and yes there is "bonus" abuse. However, I think the poster who posts at +2 should be given the benefit of the doubt, don't you?
So, I'd like to see +2 comments modded up, if they deserve it, but to prevent moderator abuse, only allow negative moderation to be effective after 3 or 4 "modding down" marks.
Reason: none of the newbie moderators nor the experienced CSM's seem to read the FAQ of "don't mod down what you don't agree with" and "don't mod down to punish"...ahem, never happen? just remember 40 down to 23, most moderation took place in literally less than a minute!
Heh, as a "tribute to CSM's" my sig at one time said "help! help! I'm being repressed!"... gee, wonder where that came from.
It strikes me as odd that no one has thought of a abuse filter not only for trolls, but for moderators as well.
You see, trolls can have their account "suspended" for a certain length of time as I understand from some of the -1 comments.
For moderators, I think, if more than 1/2 of your moderations (every 10 points, let's say) are marked as unfair...then how about "suspending" that account as well (i.e. no moderating for a month/year whatever the cycle, and for the # of unfair marks, apply those negative points to the moderator, perhaps?).
Anyone have any better ideas, I'd love to hear them.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
You wait and see how quickly those fuckers "retract" that little blurb by making the whole thread mysteriously disappear. This has been going on for ages...it seems that the authors have been fairly lucky for the most part, as they've only had to cover up those nasty "unwanted" posts on very few occasions.
Information wants to be free my hairy white ass.
I submitted this as a YRO, waiting for rejection now.
We all should submit this story to slashdot...
marotti.com
I too have posted over 700 comments, but on a day to day basis, I spend very little time posting, and most of it is when I'm stuck at work.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I don't think micheal understood Moose's comment at all. He wasn't complaining that he got modded down. He was complaining that he got modded down because he was logged in as A_Non_Moose, rather than based on his posts. THAT is the issue.
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
Add the following link to your .sig:
8 1& uid=169099
http://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=display&id=28
Perhaps if enough people find out about this bullshit, some change will come about...
It would be truly amazing if a moderation system existed that got rid of trolls and flamebaits quickly... but as it is, there's some turds who like noise over signal, and as long as that keeps up I'm fine with /. authors moderating, bitchslapping, whatever.
Don't like it? Ask yourself why.
Mr. Ska
If Slashdot can effectively remove comments from view (setting comments at -2 does this. Yes, I think it can be changed by manually editing the URL, but this is pure lawyerism, and not likely to stand up very well in court) then how can they defend themselves against M$?
/. was aiding and abetting in dissemination of stolen materials or some such? (Don't have a link, and too lazy to look). /. claimed that they don't censor anything. Clearly this is false.
/. is painting themselves into a legal corner.
Remember the lawsuit they got alleging that
I've got no problem with dropped submissions. But bitchslapping, tracking IP's, etc... Sounds like in the effort to make it easier to appeal to advertisers,
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
You, OTOH, are nothing but a troll wannabe who posts a bunch of senseless garbage that nobody bothers looking at because it's at -1. Your life is meaningless; you are nothing but a mimbleton with negative karma. You can come back and bitch at me when you actually get a couple of biters, or when you start posting intelligently. Until then, leave us trolls alone when we're doing our jobs.
~wally
You might want to look at what some of the 'trolls' are posting in this journal entry. They do have some insight into how the Slashdot editors (ab(use) their powers.
No replies made to AC posts. Please log in.
Can this account of yours metamoderate? Assuming positive karma, your account should be able to metamod, given the fairly low UID.
If you cannot metamod, your account probably has been flagged in $rtbl, the Real Time Black List. Flagging the account also makes the account ineligible for moderation, AFAIK. It can be flagged by account, ipid or even subnet. If ipid or subnet is used, any account using said ipid or subnet will be affected by the action. Comments can be sorted by these id's, and the resulting comment list looks like if you were just browsing a user's comments list from clicking a link in a discussion. You also might be on the Top Abusers list, but I'm not too sure. I have yet to use said feature myself.
This account, despite high karma and existing for over 6 months now, never has moderated either. Also, this account has lost metamod capabilities some time ago. I'm pretty certain that my ipid has been $rtbl'ed, put on the Top Abusers list or both.
You gotta admit, it does take care of the multiple account issue, listing by ipid/subnet pretty much merges your accounts together.
Wow, you sure showed him!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I've already gotten about 394 comments posted in the month or so I've been here (and karma hovering around 50 now)
When they reimported all the old files into the DB I checked my old account. Almost 4,000 comments. michal is basicaly insulting everyone who uses slashdot 'alot' instaid of just posting boring and poorly thought out stories.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I had a couple posts modded to -5 once, after a bug in slashcode that allowed images to be embeded in comments. I stuck a few in (nothing offensive). After a while a script was run that killed all image tags and modded them to -5.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Who would you rather piss off? Steve Case, or Osama Bin Laden. Both may be 'evil' in a certain light, but while AOL users may be stupid they aren't out on suicide bombing runs.
I wouldn't get into a legal battle LRONs minions over some stupid AC comment.
Microsoft isn't going to make your life into a living hell or anything...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
that was some present can I take it back to the store?
I don't even play computer games, and I've heard of one of the warez groups that looks like they were nearly wiped out, namely 'razor'.
Apparently this was actually rather comprehensive, as opposed to running around closing college students' ftp sites, yes?
Uhh, maybe I wasn't there or something, but what was that "inapropriate content" that was on the CDs?
TI's press release makes it sounds like pr0n...
cheers
which groups/members will be needing legal defense funds
"Uh, he didn't know it was copyrighted, your honor."
Seriously, what the fuck. How is some warez rat going to be better off with a non court appointed attorney?
--saint
If you want to ruin the rest of your life standing up the CoS go ahead. It may be noble to stand up to evil, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. The information was all on the web anyway, a google search would have gotten it for you. Fight evil yes, but choose your battles to.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I love slashback. Except that the links to the original stories are only sometimes listed in the slashback blurbs. Wouldn't it make sense to always link to the original slashdot story?
Just my $1.34 Canadian
Buy Hex-Rated Stuff, fight the DMCA!
On an unrelated note, why don't you write about HP calculators some time? They are far superior from a technological and software standpoint, and RPN works a lot better than standard algebraic notation. Alas, I suppose now that HP's discontinuing them, they don't matter to the Slashdot crowd anymore...
Is your company running tools written by ma
Someone should port a TI-89 emulator to the Strong-ARM 206MHz based PDAs, like the new Zaurus. Hardest thing would be to make a good GUI because the regular keypad on the TI-89 would take up too much room.
Damn, it's really shocking to read the crap those agents pulled on the warez groups. Even ignoring the obvious immorality/illegality of it, it seems to me like they put a lot of time into the raids.
/. and go get the papers ready for my companies upcoming audit.
What the hell are they wasting their time for (and our money) on little stuff like this? It's like the federal government has no capability to distinguish between minor crimes and major ones.
If we don't watch out, the next war (after terrorism) will be on software. Damn, imagine if the BSA ever got to use guns. *shudder*
That's not a good thought. Sigh, I'd better stop posting to
Is that you?
If only we had had these back in the old days, maybe the soviet union wouldn't have collapsed afterall.
Since you mentioned tetris, I had to post this. At my high school, everybody was playing games on their calculators -- from Race to MARIO. However, the 83plus users couldn't play tetris, because it only worked on the 83. Anyway, I created a program called "TETRIS." What it did was displayed "Loading..." on the screen, while it archived every variable, including all of the unusual vars (such as the Str1 and Str2, etc.) except for the lists (I saved them for later). I put their screen in "split mode," while setting the graphing to Polar, with Xmin being larger than Xmax and Ymin larger than Ymax (resulting in a "Window Range" error screen). The program then filled a list named "SYS" up to 999 items, then going on to L1, L2, L3, etc.. until the program filled up the memory and threw an error.
I gave this to another kid (a snobby kid who never stopped playing games on his calc), and it crippled his calculator. He had to pay me five bucks to get it fixed.
I later lost my calculator, and I got it back two weeks with all of my games played repeatedly (with the high score list changed) and all my vars archived, lists filled, etc., resulting in it getting returned (they apparently thought it was broken). I lost it two more times, with the exact same results before it was returned to me.
All of the news articles are rather sketchy, but how were they caught? Did feds infiltrate the organizations by acting as couriers? Were sites insecure and not locked down for security as government hackers were able to bypass?
Aye aye aye aye, I am the Frito bandito.
Heh that's the same thing my father used to say about the computer.
But that was before I got him addicted to minesweeper.
I am sure those warez busts will help out the recession, put some of America's best and brightest (some MIT students and top IT executives supposedly) in jail. I am sure this will sky rocket the economy considering they supposed lky helped with the 6+ billion of dollars lost due to piracy? Give me a break.
As a student who has passed a whole lot of time in many mathmatics, physics, and computer science classes with my TI-89, I take exception to your notion that TI-89 games are "silly crap." I use my TI-89 to advance my programming skills thorough games. I also use it to gain attendance points. I, unfortunately, have been party to many boring professors, who's lack teaching ability, and adeptness at inducing sleep by lecture has forced me to find other ways to pass time in class. Maybe instead of complaining about the use of calculators for games you should encourage students to use their calculators to enhance their mathematics, programming, or scientific skills through creating games, algorithms, or some other activity. I don't know about your ability to bore students, but there are ways to teach that keep us deliquent geeks attentive. Try to reach them where they are. Give them a reason to pay attention.
Is how did they manage to get their site shut down? I mean I can see TI pulling the plug, but how did they manage to pull the site?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
As a former high school student, I can tell you that it's not the Tetris that caused students to stop paying attention in your class.
I dunno if you remember what it was like to be a high school student anymore, but if it's not the Tetris it'd be something else, like staring blankly out the window or day dreaming.
The Tetris on the calculator wasn't so fun that I would think about it when I wasn't playing it, it was just something I would do when I was bored to tears and needed a distraction. Rather than blame some calculator game for why your students no longer listen, maybe you should look at other possible causes........and yeah yeah, I know, you don't have a whole lot to be working with there, given the subject you're teaching to high-schoolers, but I have definitely had good and bad math teachers. The good teachers were the ones who made me think, and came up with interesting ways to link the subject back to real life. And even in their classes, I would play calculator games when they were spending too long on a subject (maybe for other people in the class) that I already understood.
So if all your students have stopped paying attention in your class, maybe rather than blaming the easy to blame calculator games, you should look at yourself and how you're teaching them.......
High School math teacher?
Did CS not work out?
#!/bin/bash /var/ftp/incomming/windowsxp.iso
/var/ftp/incomming/window95.iso
/var/ftp/incomming/photoshop.iso
/var/ftp/incomming/win2000.iso
echo "Fuck off FBI!" >
echo "Fuck off FBI!" >
echo "Fuck off FBI!" >
echo "Fuck off FBI!" >
Got Code?
Before all you scoff at the busts remember this: the group hit the hardest "DoD" where the ones who told that 16 year old kid how to crack CSS. They told him how to do it, he just wrote the code. I remember you guys all loved DeCCS right, well DoD are the ones who figured it out how to do it...
Oh if you notice nobody from FLT or DVN got busted, after evading that sting you gotta admit FLT is fucking ereet.
Look, I'm as much anti-copyright as anyone. And I'll haply use the results of these warez kids. But I don't really have much sympathy for them. They got lazy and stupid. They should have been using more secure setups, and been a lot less 'interconnected' operationally. (I'm not saying don't socialize, but for god sakes, don't go around giving out shell accounts and stuff to everybody).
The other thing is, how are these groups funded? As far as I can tell these kids are warezing just so they can feel like big criminals (witch they are, if he FBI is putting so much work into catching them) but they aren't making any money, are they? If so, how?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I am an excellent student, and did very well in math classes until middle school. You see, I have this strange problem with math; I can process mathematics just fine, but I am almost entirely unable to recall from memory almost any mathematical theory beyond simple logic or multiplication. Put a decent text or a good set of notes from such a text in front of me, and I can plow through math with no trouble. Take it away, and I am unable to even handle that pythagorean theorem stuff.
This, of course, led to terrible grades and multiple math class failures in high school; due to the fact that no matter how much I tried or studied the shit just would NOT stay in my fucking head. Know how I finally got through? I convinced my mom to buy me a TI-85 calculator that I plugged all of my math notes into every day, and used it during ever single test I took. If my teachers had been pompous pricks like you, I would have been simply branded a cheater and never finished high school.
Teachers like you prove the old adage "Those who can do, those who can't, teach." If inflexible morons like you were allowed to exist in the business world, programmers would suffer having to work without reference, sysadmins without man pages, et al.
I only hope that as mankind progresses, we can isolate the gene that produces personalities like yours, and destroy it- and people like you- utterly.
with a correction of my (incorrect) correction
Is that like !(!(!(a))) ?
To avoid creating world-wide panik the feds are claiming they are busting software pirates. In reality they are only after the al-Qaida network. All those busted are just nasty talibans trying to destroy our great free society and bring back rock-carving as the most influental information source.
I draw the "geekiness" line at pissing away your time writing silly crap like that for a computer. A computer is a tool of science and business, not a gaming machine. (s/calculator/computer/g)
Is that you meant to say? I'm guessing that a pencil is a tool of science and business, not a gaming tool, too. Doing anything serious on a TI-89 is a decent challenge, though less than the -83's or -85 that didn't come with a half meg of memory.
Not only has the rampant Tetris-playing caused my students to stop paying attention in class,
Really? Students will pay attention in math class without TI-89s? That's surprising; I wouldn't think a lot of students would pay attention no matter what you did.
If I recall correctly (it has been a while), one thing that always frustrated me about my physics and math courses is that they always seemed to want a numeric result at the end.
I seem to remember that I would generally solve a problem symbolically down to the point where it was just a matter of arithmetic, at which point I would whip out the calcuator. That last step is really trivial, however, and if it weren't needed, neither would be the calculator.
If calculators are such a problem, then why not just ban them?
Well I tried submitting a story on this earlier, but it was rejected. Anyways, for some information on what went down from people who are closely involved with the scene, check out this site , a detailed list of who was involved and the 'warez groups' they came from is there, as well as locations.
It just struck me WHY this happened now, to DoD! The group released less than 1% of total releases last year, but they were the ones behind the DeCSS algorithm (though not the code). They couldn't get anything out of punishing a 16 year old foreign national, so this is their tactic. There is no other reason for the FBI to target DoD over other groups with _much_ higher volume.
Welcome to the Corporate Republic.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
the real link, not that russian one is: www.urbanghetto.net/dod. it contains way more information and is more up to date. the other one is old news
Ahh, I agree. My HP 49g (the only HP calc in my school) is superior to my friends' TI's because of it's power and RPN entry system. We have great fun seeing who can do the largest computations and at least one of them really likes RPN. They still don't forgive me for being able to do 842! in ~15 seconds! Anyway, HP didn't stop production, only development; remember?
"I don't trust goats," --To Catch a Spy
Customs agent Allan Doody said each computer has between one to two terabytes of stolen software.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
A large part of hacking is making something that's not meant to do cool stuff do cool stuff. Are you suggesting that hacking isn't geeky?
It has gotten so far that we have had to require that only scientific calculators be used on the upcoming midterm exams.
So? There's no reason high school math students need graphing calculators. In fact, with the possible exception of Trig functions, they shouldn't need calculators at all. As a college level math tutor I think it's unfortunate that high school math teachers encourage the use of calculators. I've watched too many freshman flounder in Calculus because they never really understood Algebra. That's certainly not entirely because their high school teachers let them use calculators, but it's certainly a contributing factor. It's really sad to see someone who claimed to get A's in math all through high school who can't even multiply by 10's without picking up their calculator.
On an unrelated note, why don't you write about HP calculators some time? They are far superior from a technological and software standpoint, and RPN works a lot better than standard algebraic notation.
That would explain their popularity, or lack thereof. Personally I despise RPN, for the same reasons I despise Newtons notations for Calculus. Oh well, I guess if your going to be wrong you might as well be wrong about everything...
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Not only has the rampant Tetris-playing caused my students to stop paying attention in class
Then don't allow your students to bring Game Boy units to class. The only handheld units that can run Tetris® brand products are Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance. No TI, HP, or Casio calculator has a Tetris product available. The closest equivalents to "Tetris" on TI-89 are Jetris, Queue, etc. Of course, there are also Nibbles, SameGame, Dr. M****, and P*c-M*n.
but the ability to store "notes" in the calculator is a major source of cheating on tests
Bull. If your students (like supabeast!) use their calcs as a mnemonic aid for formulas, the problem lies not necessarily in the calcs but perhaps in the tests themselves. Design the tests to require a higher level of thought than simple recall (such as the ability to comprehend, apply, or analyze the underlying mathematics), and don't let them use cable or IR links during the test.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Of course you can do 842 calculations in 15 seconds if you mindlessly press 2 [ENTER] 2+2+ 2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2... I mean how hard is that? But I find that the CAS in the HP series could use some SERIOUS work. I hate that damn equation editor. I hate the stupid menus that you need to do almost everything. My TI-89 can handle things just fine. If you happen to have a short term memory and can't figure out where to put your parenthesis they make PRETTY PRINT for that! I admit that RPN has some nice features and that yes, the 49G can switch between the two systems, but c'mon the 89 is at least as technically advanced as the 49G.
This is why America is falling apart. Because the FBI are spending all their time tracking down non-physical data that has no real-world value apart from that put on it by big corporations. Shouldn't they be figuring out how to stop people getting past their crappy airline security instead, or is money more important? no, money is more important.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
kill yourself
"I don't care what you do, as long as you don't disturb others. Paint your nails or sleep for all I care. While you're in summer school, I'll be teeing off on the golf course at 9am."
>such as agents raiding a house and watching what connections happened without pulling the plug. That can't be legal, can it
By what logic? They are observing illegal activity taking place. They did not put up the site, they did not instigate people to use it, it's not entrapment.
That's like saying watching a drug transaction go down to find out who is involved instead of stopping it is illegal.
The New Zealand Herald's article on the whole warez crackdown is nothign short of awful.
It's a typical case of a clueless reporter trying to write an article on a technological issue they have no clue about.
For example:
US law enforcement officials said the raids targeted the "Warez" network, which breaks copy-protection schemes on everything from movies like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to computer operating systems like Microsoft Windows XP.
and
The US Customs Service said the ring was responsible for 95 per cent of all pirated software available online, causing at least $US1 billion ($2.38 billion) in lost sales annually.
I guess now that there's no more warez, we'll have to rely on juarez for our pirated software?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Here's another site that has a list much like cyberworld.ru:
http://phlow.digimagix.org/scenebusts.htm
Wether you hate warez of love em, i think everyone is gonna agree, the fed should be worrying about alot more important crap, like oh i donno maybe TERRORISTS.
Amen! I've seen a student who claimed to have gotten straight A's in AP calc get a C followed by an F in first year calculus. He told me ``...if I could just use my calculator, I'd be fine...''. He was partly right; he did know what buttons to push for some familiar problems. But he had never learned calculus, and he had never learned how to learn math. All he knew was how to push buttons, and learn button sequences. He couldn't reason.
See what I've been reading.
Hey, I wrote my first DDoS scripts on an 83. Never underestimate the value of a good education.
Of course you can do 842 calculations...
842! is not the same as doing 2+2+2+2+2... 842 times. It is doing 1*2*3...840*841*842. If my reasoning is right, it involves 841 calculations. There is a difference.
But I find that the CAS in the HP series could use some SERIOUS work. I hate that damn equation editor. I hate the stupid menus that you need to do almost everything.
So far, my only complaint with the CAS is that it doesn't understand that 2x and 2*x are equal. What "serious work" does it need? As for the equation writer, I find it useful for writing big/long equations and seeing what an equation looks like as it shows in pretty print. You can set it up so that most areas by default show equations in pretty print. As for the menus, I assume you mean the pain in the neck "windowed choose boxes". I hate them as well, but you can (and I did) flip a flag so that the calc uses only the "soft menus" (at the bottom of the screen, accessed by the F1-F6 keys).
but c'mon the 89 is at least as technically advanced as the 49G.
I'm not trying to bash the 89, it is a good calculator, but IMHO I find the 49g to be slightly better because of RPN, RPL (Reverse Polish Lisp), and the ability to rotate 3D graphs in realtime (unlike the 89 which can't do realtime rotation).
"I don't trust goats," --To Catch a Spy
I cant believe this. I dont get it. Ok now that its harder to get warez do they think they stoped it. I mean comon, a few months down the line and it will be back up, then they go and spend millions to track these people down to have them back up again, and again, and again. You cant stop them for fucks sake, put your money and effort into something better.
One more thing: If there is no more warez does that mean I get my software for cheaper now. I mean software is so high because of warez, so I am gessing I can get the latest game for, umm, lets see, $10 right, I mean no more warez, not as much pay.
YEAH RIGHT
It's interesting you said that. Back when I was in high school, I took the "Independent Study" Calculus course. It was the only one my school offered, and I was one of three who took it. I took the whole thing on a beat-up TI scientific that a friend of mine had found laying outside on the ground. It was so old, it had batteries only - no solar. Anyway, later that year, I took the Calc AP test. The rules said that a graphing calculator was recommended, but my math teacher said it would probably just get in my way. The morning of the test, my calculator died - big crack through the LCD. The guidance counselor lent me his calculator - a four-function. Ok, it had a square root button too, but that was it. I took the whole test with it, and had to leave a lot of the answers in symbolic form - I think I gave the height of a tree as ln(3.8) + 2 or something.
:)
Anyway, long story short, I got a 4 - first at my high school ever to pass.
So, in conclusion, symbolic answers can be a good thing.
woxy.com - Bam! The Future of Rock and Roll
Nonsense. Teaching does not involve pumping things into the heads of passive students. That isn't possible in the first place. Neither does teaching involve entertainment.
You can expect a teacher to let you know what you should learn, point you to information, and perhaps give some pointers to undertanding, some examples and maybe even (in undergraduate classes) some hints about what is going to be on the test. If you want your education to be entertaining, stay home and watch Sesame street.
If you can't find something interesting in a subject, any subject at all, then you probably are not a very interesting person. When I was little, I complained that I was bored, and my grandmother told me that boredom was an infallible sign of stupidity. I've decided that she was right. A stupid person is bored whenever no-one is entertaining him. An interesting person will interest himself in the things around him, perhaps even in a lecture about how to pass a test!
In short, the problem with most teachers is not in how they teach, but rather in the fact that most of their students belong outside with a pick and shovel, rather than inside with a calculator and tetris clone.
You have to be pretty stupid to pass up a chance to learn. Some one who needs a reason to pay attention doesn't belong in school.
Come back when you're 40; most folks have gotten over their superiority complexes by then and are ready to learn. Some of my most interested students have been older than me, but few have been younger.
hey, anybody have any of the inappropriate content? Did any of it involve nudity?
Interestingly, in the calculus class I'm taking (final's tomorrow) we're using graphing calculators to help visualize what we're doing. The instructor uses a TI 89, and most of the other students do as well, but I had fond memories of my HP-11C so I went out and bought an HP 49G. So now I've just spent several months observing some differences between the TI and the HP. And guess what? The TI does almost everything the HP does (no RPN that I've seen on the TI, and I must admit that that's one of my favorite things) and the TI has a nicer interface. Frankly, it's a Pain In The Ass to use the HP -- what takes maybe three keystrokes on the TI can take six or more on the HP. Feh. I love my HP geek toy, but I can see why people prefer the TI.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
It seems to me to be a decent way to learn a little programming. The fact that you can carry it around with you and whenever you are bored whip it out and code a few more lines is a plus factor, not like my computer where when I sit down on it there's a lot more to do that distracts me from ever learning how to program on it...
The whole point of hacking is to make things work above their abilities. I wrote a multiplayer Tic Tac Toe type game for the TI-83 that worked over the link cable, which was pretty cool. (Turns out though that the link cable connection isn't good enough to do anything requiring speed or anything close to two way communication, so any multiplayer action type games are out...)
For a lark I am now programming a 3D Wireframe Renderer for my TI-83. It reads XYZ points from a matrix variable and then reads which points to connect with lines from another matrix variable. It is pretty cool, not useful for anything, but still cool.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Instead of 31337 W4R3Z D00dZ? I suppose there's better use of the taxpayers money than busting down teenagers that pirate games. While a lot of time is devoted to these kids, the real bad guys are out there, planning, learning to fly...
I agree to a point--my high-school physics teacher, one of maybe 6 good teachers in the whole school, allowed both numeric and symbolic answers. If you forgot your calculator for a test, or you just wanted to avoid another possible place to err, you were in luck. He also gave partial credit for problems that were partially right--this might not sound like much, but it's certainly better than "I don't know what I'm teaching syndrome," where you get no credit for a large problem if the final answer doesn't match what's a teacher's manual.
I also have exactly the same problem has supabeast--I can plow through almost any sort of math you want to throw at me if I have sufficient reference. I did terribly in my higher math classes because of this, and also because of the fact that two of the three math teachers simply could not teach. One of them actually managed to somehow shut one of her breasts in her desk drawer once--sure, accidents happen, and I've done some awfully stupid things, but this wasn't far from the norm. (This is the same teacher with a phobic disorder involving raisins)
Anyway, back on topic--I'm not a huge fan of banning anything, but I could live with it if symbolic answers were allowed and at least an equation reference was provided. I really don't think students should be required to memorize for almost the sole purpose of forgetting them. Ask a handful of people who have been out of the educational arena for a year to give you a handful of the equations they were forced to memorize during the schooling; I'm willing to wager the majority by far would have a very hard time unless they were mathematicians or decent math teachers.
Like it or not, copying commercial software is ILLEGAL. Although I agree that today's software licensing situation is beyond ridiculous, that methods used by the industry to calculate losses to "piracy" straight out of la-la land, and that small-scale piracy of products such as Windows 2000 have helped companies such as MS by letting would-be MCSE's get more practice, the laws currently on the books and the decisions currently being made by the courts say that unauthorized distribution of commerical software is copyright infringement and that such infringement is illegal.
This isn't about outlawing Linux or personal firewalls. This isn't about invasion of privacy. This isn't about the legal grey area that is file sharing software. This isn't about arresting Torvalds or raiding Transmeta. This is simply the police doing their job, enforcing well-understood and court-tested laws in what appears to be a very well-planned sting operation.
If you think that improvements in motor vehicle technology mean that 65 mph speed limits are too slow, you don't drive 120 and then expect people to listen to you when you are locked up for reckless driving. Similarly, you don't distribute warez and then go whining about censorship and the like once the law catches up with you. You won't get any points for calling it civil disobedience either, because you know full well that these people weren't doing this for the greater good, they were doing it because they wanted Photoshop for free.
Yeah, it sucks. But, as they say, if you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime. Besides, it's not like the police did anything new. Undercover cops posed as warez kiddies much as undercover cops have posed as drug dealers and prostitutes in the real world. With all the security technology out there, if warez kiddies couldn't avoid falling into a trap as simple as this, did they really deserve to survive?
Rest in Peace Drink or Die and Razor. You will not be forgotten soon. The wonderful thing about this is that the feds still haven't pulled two of the biggest cracking orgs around. Their names are not to be mentioned, just to send a finger to the FBI. So fear not! There will still be quality warez distributed. Actually, I think that the people that weren't taken down will actually join other groups. There is no way that the feds can stop warez- its impossible. Find one way to crack down on warez, and there will be people to find another way.
Isn't America Grand?
I understand your concern, my school has to battle the same problem. But the teachers have the stance that if they pass the test, they don't seem to fuss. I'd see the previous post about summer school.
Seriously, before a midterm or regents, the teacher in one menu managed to reset the calculator. It wipes out the notes (and games, darn), and resets things like radians, but is the only foolproof thing when everyone's in the test room. Just check inside the cases for cheat sheets.
Sure this is probably the biggest bust like it. But remember a few years back 1999 i think people from a couple rip groups mainly Paradigm members got raided and busted. That was a little blip, but it blew over and things where back to normal in like a week. This will blow over. It's like trying to stop drugs or something, it's impossible to stop. Does this incident suck though? well ya, don't get me wrong, but things will continue on in time. I wouldn't be suprised to see razor bust back on the scene with some big release like 2 years from now after this blows over.
As a high school student, I remember the first games to come out for the TI-85. Yeah I played them in classes when they were boring. I also had lots of fun programming on that TI-85. Me and my friends would see how could write the fastest, shortest math program. I got some programming experience on that calculator during boring math classes. With the calculator you can do some amazing things that would not be possible with just pencil and paper. Any teacher that is afraid of them and wants to take that away from their students is an utter fool.
As fair as puting the equations and notes in their calculator, when in real life as a programmer would you not look up something if you were unsure? Forcing the memozing of math formulas is counter productive and takes away from grading their ability to *USE* them instead of just spit them back at you with little thought. Physics courses that use calculus always give you the formulas. They don't rely on grading your ability to recall obsure equations, but to be able to use them correctly.
you know, every time i read this i want to punch you more and more. the taco snotting thing is old, lame, boring, and over done. it never was remotely funny or good though. it sounds like a 10th grader wrote it too. so please, go play in traffic or shut the fuck up so real trolls can post.
All you weenies using calculators to help you in calculus are a bunch of fucking panzies. Newton didn't use some fucking panzy graphing calculator. What school lets you use a fucking calculator on a math test thats lame as hell. What schools are these? Some public school in the south bronx? or some football and beer party college? you guys suck.
Claiming to be same as the old Amiga group. Rebels PC is fairly new in the scene, can't be older than 1992.. Besides, the Amiga group was into demo creation and not warezing. Funny thing is M:et had a strange story he told everyone about founding Rebels but he didn't join until 1989. When Rebels was founded M:et was in a no-name group named Neutron Dance or something like that. M:et was however a member of Rebels [Amiga] for a limited time. The founding members of Rebels Amiga were originally from the two groups Chaos Cooperation and Roadrunners and are as follows (taken from "ON THE WHEELS OF STEEL" scrolltext): BJ, Codex, Pac-Man (Cruncher), Droopy, Jake, Jason, Joz, OBX, Raz, Static, Thrasher, Vandal, Xod and Yoyo. Besides, busting a group named "Drink Or Die" makes for better headlines than a group like "Rebels". I am sure they have marketing people at FBI too, they are in executive positions everywhere!
I was kind of wondering what the general feeling about the lack of discussion on the video today. I feel that while /.'ers can tire very quickly of hearing (not caring) about UBL, having the video and transcrpits online along without having the servers get overloaded was IMHO newsworth for us. Another reason I have been apart of the slashdot community is because this forum has the background to make intelligent comments, rather than the shit that gets posted everywhere else.
"Get them before they get....
Pretty much everytime i read slashdot i am overcome with the urge to punch people in the face. Most of the people are fucking total morons. They are totaly lost in a maze of FUD and misconceptions with no chance of escape and they will not allow themselves to be led out of it. Then the people that aren't morons have massive delusions of grandeur and think they are fucking Euclid reborn or something, which still leads to face punching urges. The best way to avoid this problem is to quit slashdot today!I am a recovering Slashdotter in the midst of a relapse do to all the busts. Trust me if you quit you will have more free time you will learn more, have more skills, and spend significantly less time per day annoyed by idiocy. Ok i have to put an end to this binge. Good day.
Sorry, had to do it. Oblink for them:
i st /glance/-/88810/ref=m_art_dp/107-0093169-3520543
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/art
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
I'm a former mathematics teacher. You should be. Let me pick your post apart line by line. I'll be quite harsh, so stop reading now if you don't want your day ruined...
I'm sorry, but I draw the "geekiness" line at pissing away your time writing silly crap like that for a calculator.
Do you think it's silly for football players to lift weights because there are no weights on the football field? Learning to program in a small space develops excellent mental muscles. Learning to program in Z80 assembler (or whatever language is used) is invaluable to ANYONE who wants to understand computers. YOU don't see the usefulness in it, therefore you conclude it's pointless; I must disagree. I'd point out also (something that you as a teacher MUST come to understand) that anything that motivates a student to learn something, ANYTHING, is invaluable.
A calculator is a tool of science and business, not a gaming machine.
Ever hear of a computer? Ever hear of the IBM PC? Speak of facts, not wishes.
I cannot begin to describe the problems that it has caused me as a high-school math teacher.
Yes, you can. You go on to do so in the next sentence. It would have been better to say "I can only begin to describe..."
Not only has the rampant Tetris-playing caused my students to stop paying attention in class, but the ability to store "notes" in the calculator is a major source of cheating on tests.
You have a classroom management problem. The game-playing and cheating are symptomatic. It could be note-passing, it could be talking, it could be throwing pencils at the ceiling. The problem is not the paper, the mouths, or the pencils, it is the students' lack of respect and motivation. Like it or not, responsibility (if not causation) lies with you. Students play games because they have nothing better to do. As for the cheating, you make it sound as if you didn't understand the potential of these "tools", and I have no patience with this. You have no business teaching with them if you don't understand them. I worked with some of the early pioneers of the graphing calculator in secondary mathematics education, and rapidly learned that a teacher who didn't understand the technology would do more harm than good. Students would not only fail to progress in their mathematical skills; they would regress as they lost competence in skills they'd previously developed.
It has gotten so far that we have had to require that only scientific calculators be used on the upcoming midterm exams.
More evidence that you have NO business teaching with graphing calculators. You apparently hand students a tool, teach them to use it, and test them on their ability to accomplish tasks without the tool. You may as well teach them to do long division with paper and pencil and require oral examiniations in which they do all the work in their head. The analogy is almost exact. Here's what we did to solve your problem. On test days...
1. Students place all books under the desk as class starts; only the calculator and some writing implements are on the desk.
2. Students remove batteries from the calculators.
3. The teacher walks to each desk and verifies that the batteries are out.
4. The students replace batteries and place calculators under their desk.
5. The teacher passes out Part 1 of the test; it measures rote memorization of formulas, proofs, etc. This portion of the test is timed.
6. When Part 1 is completed, the teacher passes out Part 2; students could use their calculators.
This worked quite well for us.
On an unrelated note, why don't you write about HP calculators some time?
I believe they have...
They are far superior from a technological and software standpoint, and RPN works a lot better than standard algebraic notation.
Right, and Esperanto is far superior from a linguistic standpoint and works better than standard English phonics. But no one speaks Esperanto at my supermarket because everyone speaks English. RPN is a poor choice in a pedagogical environment because you must teach not one, but two mathematical languages. If you want to teach RPN, by all means do so..but teach only RPN and use textbooks whose notation makes RPN obvious.
Alas, I suppose now that HP's discontinuing them, they don't matter to the Slashdot crowd anymore...
Not a homogenous group...but you're probably mostly correct.
Some of this has been pointed out in other posts, but I wanted to be thorough. BTW, I'm a former mathematics teacher because I was a bad mathematics teacher. I loved mathematics, I loved my students, and I loved being in the classroom. I just really, really sucked at it. Anyway, I can see the symptoms from a thousand miles. You really need to either leave the field (as I did) or seek some drastic change to your teaching. A few years reflection on my failure has lead me t believe that classroom management (aka discipline) skills are the core competencies of good teachers.
First: With so many groups with such great organization and skills (obviously more than some software makers) this is part of our culture. If you agree with their actions or not - you must realize these could be the Al Capone & Baby Face Nelsons of our time.
Do they really have the press conference saying:
"Today a judge issued warrants for John Smith also known as; Arsdigi..."
and so forth?
That has to be a riot to the persons parents or whoever. They all know he just sits in his house all day.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Dude! I just hate Jon Katz....
No, seriously, I just come here for the articles.
I don't know if the parent of this comment was intended to be funny or not. I didn't find it funny.
I'd just like to make a distinction between writing silly games for your calculator, and cheating in class.
I had a great time programming my TI-85 and TI-82 when I was in my high school math classes, I never once used them to cheat, and I went on to major in Math in college. Lots of my other friends played with them when they were bored, but didn't ever cheat. Sure, sometimes we didn't pay attention to the lecture - but we wouldn't have been paying attention to the lecture without a calculator either - often we figured out what was going on in the first 10 minutes of class and were bored, while all of the other students were still struggling.
My suggestion is this: encourage use of graphing calculators to understand math. Tolerate use of calculators during class (but take them away from any students who abuse this privelege). Disallow them during exams.
One other suggestion: if you're a Math teacher, take the time to learn how to use these calculators. If you suspect a student of cheating, take their calculator and examine it for notes. If you want to be fair, you'll tell your students about this policy ahead of time.
You didn't notice the attribution to Reuters at the bottom of that story? That's not NZ journalism.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
the ability to store "notes" in the calculator is a major source of cheating on tests
dont let the students use calculators on exams. my best courses were the ones where we were not alowed to use calculators on exams. the problems used easy enough numbers that you didnt get caught up with number crunching on the calc. but you had to demonstrate a clear understanding of the material in order to get a correct answer. if you ask me most people use calculators far far to much for simple problems and they are so reliant on the calculator that they never really stop to think about the problem. or they are so trusting of the calculator that they make stupid typos and never catch them. for example take 100/10=? someone types 100/100 in to the calculator on accident they get 1 as the answer and just write it down. they never think about the problem.
"Shut up brain or ill stab you with a Q-tip" Homer Simpson
You have to be pretty stupid to pass up a chance to learn. Some one who needs a reason to pay attention doesn't belong in school.
Come back when you're 40; most folks have gotten over their superiority complexes by then and are ready to learn. Some of my most interested students have been older than me, but few have been younger.
Looks like your superiority complex is still alive and kickin'...
I don't even know who timothy is, but I must agree.
Am I the only one who noticed one key thing in all those Raid's? How the FBI got so far into the scene? Now its not like you can goto www.warez.com and find links to a DOD / Razor FTP site! The only way to get there is by TRADING. From that link, apparently certain sites were actually FED sites! Think about it, how many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of software did the fed's trade to catch those few groups? :)
Regardless, this is not going to dent the warez scene at all, maybe a slight slow-down but it will be back bigger and better! Maybe more lame groups tho. But one thing, from now it will be much harder to catch them! A previous posters parallels with Drugs is appropriate, zero-tolerance policy doesnt work, as soon as you catch one big drug dealer another three take his place!
(Sorry almost Redundant, this i touched on in another reply, but i think its worth more thought)
... has been a mess since it was nationalized in 1982. Basically, one day all the investments companies like Bank Of America and Citi had in Mexico back then was for all practical purposes stolen, and the country paid the price for the next 15 years - no investment institutions would do business there no matter how good the odds were.
Things have gotten better over the last few years, where now they're at the point of allowing foreign companies to acquire what was once the "pride" of the mexican financial system, Banamex (mentioned in the article). The problem is that Banamex was supremely in bed with the ruling party, and thus it can still do whatever the heck it pleases. Having said that, US law should hopefully shoot them down in this sad case.
FWIW, the mexican 'fed' is technically not the Banco De Mexico, but the board of governors headed by the Minister of Finance and the governor of the bank itself. For many years this 'bank' was really just a money production factory, back in the golden days of the banana republic mindset when the government printed more money if it suddenly ran out for some reason. 40% inflation baby!
Parent article should not have been modded as flamebait.
There seems to be some confusion on when copywrite and license violation should be enforced. The greatest crime agains humanity is transgressing GPL. On the other hand, defending ones ability to breach copywrite and licensing is a noble task.
I submit that these are contrarian concepts and that greater thought should be applied. For what is a law without proper enforcement?
_____
::Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength. --Corrie TenBoom
--- "1.21 Jigawatts!" -Doc
TI calculators are programmed either in TI-BASIC, which you only need the calculator to do, or in assembly, but then you need the Computer to Calculator Link Cable and some special software.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Why the hell are you even allowing calculators? What it will kill them to have to use the stuff between those ears? Only geeks talk about HP stuff. Normal people avoid it.
Obviously this is pertinent to the case of these busted warez organizations. From my humble participation in the scene in '94 and thereabouts, I never saw anyone from the larger groups (Razor, DoD, PwA, RTS) selling CDs, selling FTP access, or otherwise trying to make a buck from warez. Everybody just wanted to get the biggest and best 0-day releases, the coolest demos, and the hardest cracks, then spend all night in IRC bragging about it and trying to take over channels (yay EFnet).
Have there been any laws since the LaMacchia case that make priacy without profit a federal crime?
If you haven't got the faintest idea what I'm talking about, Google for David LaMacchia and Harvey Silverglate (civil libertarian and author of The Shadow University)
Yea, you fucker. I hate you. Teachers like your are fuckers. Why don't you learn how to teach and stop forcing students to learn 1000 meaningless equations that they will never use? Oh yea, I am a computer scienctist, so there goes your "its for science" bullshit. Go fuck yourself. Heaven fobid giving students equations if they know how to use them like it is in the real world. I suppose programmers can't look at referneces sources? That would be cheating! I guess everyone in the real world cheats? So what are you preparing us for? You are a Nazi bitch!
"An interesting person will interest himself in the things around him..."
"...with a calculator and tetris clone."
The TI89's do indeed do real time rotation as I am doing them right now. If you are thinking of the 92 which does not, that is a big difference but the 92+ model does. The only lacking feature of the 89 is RPN and yeah, it might be nice, but I find that even the buttons are more comfortable on the 89. And BTW, I do in fact own both calculators.
My TI89 can do that many calculations in about 15 seconds as well... 842! will do exactly what you just claimed was 842 calculations. I doubt anyone could even TYPE the numbers 1-842 with no spaces or enter keys, etcetera on a computer keyboard in under 15 seconds, even 2+2+2+2... is a stretch.... If this guy can do what he claims, I would really love to see an MPEG... there should be a new category in the Guinness Book of World records.
Your RIAA notice is in the post.
1)Write programs to do my repetitive homework assignments for me while the few morons in my class struggled with something basic.
2)Actually see the full calculation I was attempting to perform, in standard notation, before hitting Enter.
3)Being able to quickly recall the last few things I did... and edit them efficiently to correct mistakes or perform repetitive tasks.
4)Cheat. Polyatomic ions (which I eventually learned just from using them so much). As I recall, that was the extent of my cheating.
5)Check my calculus answers. It was impossible to cheat in my high school calculus class because we always had to show our work. Checking (not cheating) on the calculator saved my butt more than once.
6) Spiffy self-written Pythagorean program clued me in as to whether or not I would get an answer at the end of my work, and if so, what it would be. As I had a mere TI-82, it was actually necessary for me to write this program. (Half-cheating - The pythagorean theorem is so damn easy. I only wrote the program after seeing how much time I was wasting doing it by hand.)
7)Programs to reset the variables to various sets of constants, depending on what class I was in, or after another program had just destroyed my variables... it was so much easier in Chem class to just hit "N" than do the SciNotation for Avogadro's number.
My biggest gripe about graphing calculators in high school are the schools that standardize on one type of calculator and waste valuable time to teach the kids how to use them. There would also be less program (and thus game!) sharing if a few kids had Casios, maybe some HPs for variety, and a few more had various flavors of TI, among which there are minimal compatibilities. (For example, 83 is mostly backwords compatible to 82, but not at all w/ 85. Same with the 86 w.r.t. the 85.).
As I recall, there was only one test on which my high school calculus teacher didn't allow graphing calculators. All the other times it didn't matter, but the multi-line display sure was a much bigger help than anything else in the calculator.
You didn't lose it...it seems like it was stolen from you. ;-)
mailto:<?=implode("@", array("chris", implode(".", array("php", "net"))))?>
Your grandmother was fucking stupid...you are too.Asshole.
People who think differently from the Government Line! Gay people! People who question authorities! People who refuse to consume too much!
My high school math teacher (had him from precalc/trig through AP calc BC) had the philosophy that "what's allowed on the AP test will be allowed on my tests." Since you can use calculators/notes/programs on the test, he allowed it in his tests as well.
Not only did he have a phenomenal ratio of students that passed the test (80% or so got a 5, and virtually everyone who took the test passed), but most of those who had taken the his class performed significantly better in college math courses than their peers.
Being able to refer to notes doesn't prevent you from learning something -- in fact, it helps you learn to seperate the "theory that you need to understand" from the enormous set of equations that you can always look up if you need.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
What is wrong with busting warez distributors? I mean, I'm all in favor of free speech and I believe that source code (even deCSS) and compiled programs should never be banned from distribution, provided that the copyright owner allows it.
But these people were actually distributing copyrighted material which they *didn't* own the copyright to. I mean, they did something that they new was illegal, is clearly illegal (and has been so for many, many years) and they got caught red-handed. This is not a "free Kevin" or "free Dmitry" type of issue.
Besides, these guys will all get deals to rat out someone else, just like Dmitry did.
I'll probably get flamed, but I had to put up my $0.02.
MM
--
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
I agree with most of what you ahd to say but one small thing about what you said. Pulling the batteries out of the calculators isn't really gonna work as most have a watch battery type backup. And in the case of the TI-83 you would need a screw driver to remove this. Good comments otherwise.
hmm, about this. You say it's not a free kevin issue. so that means kevin didnt' do anything wrong and was a perfect law abiding citizen?
The only clubbing i do is when people look at me funny
Imagine if the FBI had spent millions of dollars setting up dragnets on known jaywalkers around the world. These people KNOW they're breaking the law, and they've been caught red-handed. You don't have the RIGHT to jaywalk. Jail time is the only possible answer, right? And to top it all off, undercover agents secretly were telling suspects how to jaywalk, and where to jaywalk.
Puts things a little more in perspective, right?
(Note: I'm assuming that jaywalking is illegal in most jurisidictions.. if not, insert your own silly law here)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
This is not "censorship" or "oppression." Maybe the tactics used seem heavy handed, but these people were producing and trafficking pirated goods. This is not some new draconian consequence of the DMCA or the WIPO. It has ALWAYS been illegal to pirate other people's creations.
Frankly, I've used pirated software and am happy I was able to get it. But these folks knew the risks they were taking. They got caught. Let's not whine and complain as if it was somehow sneaky or unfair of the government to enforce basic copyright law.
I'd like to introduce you to some of the teachers I had in High School.
Will Dyson
"We can't stop here
As long as I've been a member of the Boy Scouts of America, I can't help but imagine hordes of Boy Scouts pouring through doors, windows, etc, all dressed in Class A uniform in some raid...
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
I have a problem remembering certain things, like mathematical formulas for example. Without my TI-89 on big tests that require you to remember a large number of formula (finals) I would surely fail. I have notes from about 2 years of college math stored on my TI-89 :|
I *definitely* know what you mean about most students just playing tetris on their calculators instead of paying attention.
However, if not for my TI-85 I got in my freshman year of high school, I might not have become obsessed with programming it and then moved on to bigger and better things, leading to a career in programming. There was something about the simplicity of the calculator that opened the door for me.
So what I wish is that, if students are supposed to have calculators with these programming capabilities, why not teach students how to use it and expose them to programming?
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Pulling out the big batteries will however erase most things stored like notes or equations. And if not, they've all got keystrokes to reset them.
You know, I was just about to be blatantly and outrageously rude to you, but slashdot seemed to have a little burp so this is coming out tamer than it was originally.
All your comments make you sound like a whiny bitch. You don't seem to be doing anything about your problems other than complaining about them. What's worse is that your lack of understanding is the primary reason you seem to be having most of your problems anyway.
If you were my teacher in highschool, I would have rather dropped out of school before putting up with garbage like yours. You obviously can't even gain the respect of a roomfull of you own students, but instead of trying to do something about it, you play the bastard and accomplish nothing in your goals as a teacher.
Maybe you should heed the replies to your comment that you are reading here. I'd guess that some of those folks playing games in the back of your class are probably a lot smarter than you are. Maybe you could ask them what they'd do to improve the situation. Obviously you have no idea.
God Dam RR is working on the network.
I have to say. I knew this would comeing sooner or later. But it would be nice if the FBI was going after real crime.
<SARCASIM>
Its just nice to know the guy that robed the store last week is going to get less time then software traders.
</SARCASIM>
If people are so devoted to the warez scane why do thay not set up an acount at SeaLand(I think thats it) or build their own server floating outside the WTO borders. How about a satelite. People could use the big C-Band dishes laying aounrd everywere(I think thats the big ones pepole used to watch tv on). What about useing HAM radio or Wireless LAN(Word Wide Wireless Network).
every teenager and collager kide could be geting warez. Of couse this would be better served servering a more speritual[sic] qust such as Open Source. But in ~10 years it might just seam logical. I cold see OSS being outlawed on a certen level. Of course this could go far beyound software and into information. How about the cure for ADIS or other information that could better huminity. Just upload it to a network and the world has it.
Just a note I am not aginst Copyrights/Corporations/big goverment I am aginst Copyrights/Coporations/big goverments not suported by the population.
Is it "For the people. By the people" or "For the company by the company"
011000011001111
Guess what...the activities Kevin Mitnick was imprisoned for were illegal too, very illegal actually...the issue there was that he was held for ~5 years or so without being convicted of anything.
Same thing with Sklyarov (sp?), under current laws, what he did was illegal...the challenge there is to get the law overturned.
This is what I don't get, isonews.com openly sells MOD chip for PS2, (so ppl can play copied/ pirated games) and encourages piracy, why is the site op not arrested?
The reason the banks were nationalixed in 1982 was twofold: certainly the goverment was looking for a suitable scapegoat for all its shortcomings in handling the economy. But Mexican banks were notorious for lacking the most basic business skills that any bank should have (i.e. take care of the bottom line) and they made a bad situation worst facilitating the exit of money from Mexico in disproportionate amounts (which forced the devaluation of the Mexican peso). Once the banks were nationalized the country entered a period of relative stability that would last until 1994 in which the banks, that had been returned to private ownership, were marred by bad debts (and in many cases by outright criminal dealings. Several former new bankers are in jail or hiding from the Mexican justice accussed of all kind of "white collar" crimes).
Even Citibank, a very respectable American bank, had dealings with Raul Salinas de Gortari, convicted for all kind of different crimes (and brother of former president Carlos Salinas). In US congressional hearings it was demonstrated beyond any doubt that Citibank's procedures were lax, to be polite, when dealing with funds of dubious origin, all this with banks back in private hands.
The previous posting gives the impression that Banks were somehow harrassed by the bad commie Mexican goverment which, IMVHO, was not the case. Bankers have probed to be even more corrupt than politicians in Mexico (no small feat).
FWIW, I believe that now the Banco de Mexico (the Mexican "Fed") is independent from the Finance minsiter and they fix interest rates without consulting with the goverment to ensure politics do not taint technical economic decissions.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I just want to point out that the guy who got caught at MIT was a sysadmin, not a student..
Bravo!!
As someone (like many here) who works for a software company, the thing that worries ME about this story is that it seems the way the FBI managed this infiltration was by trading their way in. Yes, those nice government people who we pay taxes to were illegally giving software away in order to look 31337 with these guys. I'm all for busting warez crews, but not by having the FBI do their job for them first.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Bravo !
Finally a teacher that've actually understood a couple of things about teaching. Bravo !
> 842! will do exactly what you just claimed was 842 calculations. I doubt anyone could even TYPE the numbers 1-842 with no spaces or enter keys, etcetera on a computer keyboard in under 15 seconds
It was five keys on the calculator I had in school. "8" "4" "2" "function shift" "factorial". My calculator would have then displayed an overflow error, but I expect any calculator capable of handling 842! will have a factorial function built in. Or rather an adequately accurate approximation to it - it doesn't actually have to do all those integer multiplications.
http://www.rskey.org/gamma.htm
rant
You still do not understand his statement.
842! is entered, and the calculator/computer does the 1*2*3*...*841*842 for you.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Duh, you think so?
I'd like to introduce you to Mrs Gander, because I hate you so much.
Well, I don't agree with the clearing of the memory. In my 10th grade Biology class, my teacher made me erase the memory on my calculator, even though I offered to put it up so I wouldn't have to (I had been working on some rudimentary TiBasic programs, and had hacked Tetris to hell and back, adding title screens, changing point values, I even changed the bit pattern for the block graphic). The stupid teacher WOULDN'T LET ME PUT THE CALCULATOR UP and still made me erase it. Stupid bitch. I bet she still teaches, too.
What? Doesn't your calculator have a ! function?
And what's so good about RPN? It makes no sense at all.
Sorry, I think I was unclear in my original post. When I said that "They still don't forgive me for being able to do 842! in ~15 seconds!" I didn't mean I actually do the work. A better sentence would have been "They still don't forgive me for having a calculator able to do 842! in ~15 seconds!" Sorry for any confusion, and yes, that would be quite a feat which would deserve Guinness's attention.
"I don't trust goats," --To Catch a Spy
They watched someone's client and pounced on people who came into the channels during that period. There is talk of there being a server that is spying, but I personally do not believe this due to the fact the server would have to be run in debugging mode (using a lot of resources), the amount of information that would be generated and have to be sifted through and of course the admins and opers would have a thing or two to say about it.
One of my friends was "busted", and so I guess I am biased. I am not into the warez scene myself, but I really do not like the fact they watched someone's client. It seems that every day the police are eating away at our freedom of speech, our right to privacy. Supposing someone had messaged this person (I believe "avec" was the nick) with some confidental information, about thier personal lives or similar. What right have the police to see this information? IRC has traditionally been a medium for free speech, and while I do not condone "warez" or similar activities, I do not like being spyed on. A lot of people are now much more cautious about what they are saying, and some (myself including) are considering implementing client-side encryption.
I also think it will be interesting to see what evidence they use, because IRC logs are so easily faked, they are just text. I hope someone makes a stand about this before our civil liberties are eroded too much.
</soapbox>
No, of course it does.
RPN is more logical and follows my flow to thought much better than an algebraic entry system. Plus, you don't need parantheses.
"I don't trust goats," --To Catch a Spy
What's an eader?
As an employee and student of Purdue, the recent "raids" have been completely ignored by all local media. The only coverage I've seen was from national sources: Wired, etc. Who was raided?
:-), a tiny joint satellite campus shared between Indiana University and Purdue. I'm sure the spin-doctors changed it, because IUPUI doesn't have the name-recognition that Purdue has. I don't think IUPUI is known to anyone outside of Indiana.
The site mentions a raid occuring in Indianapolis, IN, but Purdue's main campus is in West Lafayette, IN. I don't know of any Purdue campuses in Indianapolis other than IUPUI (pronounced EEyoo-POOey
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
2. Students remove batteries from the calculators.
3. The teacher walks to each desk and verifies that the batteries are out.
4. The students replace batteries and place calculators under their desk.
Tee hee, I remember my HP48GX had a mega-capacitor inside of it that would keep the memory for up to 10 minutes with no batteries. The idea was to make it easier to change the batteries without losing data, but it made it great for those who didn't understand the technology :)
Not to mention it had symbolic maniuplation and automatic built-in unit conversion YEARS before TI caught up.
Personally, I like the attitude of my calculus teacher. You had to show the steps on the test, so I wrote some programs that used the symbolic maniuplation to come up with the right results. A few of the other students thought this was an unfair advantage, but her opinion was, "If you understand the subject well enough to write a program to do it for you, more power to ya."
...and he had never learned how to learn math...
This is a real problem in high schools in my experience. I had some pretty good math teachers in high school, but it sometimes seemed like they were coming from a whole different plane of existence. (Also every math text I ever used from middle school algebra through Calc I in undergrad sucked). I think part of the problem was that my teachers seemed to be 'naturals' at math so it was hard for them to translate for the 'un-naturals', so to speak. Almost like having Barry Sanders[1] as your football coach - "You need to be evade tacklers better, like I did.", "How?", "Dodge 'em, spin, run backwards, reverse field, whatever.", "When I try that I get crushed like a grape!", "I know - that's why I said you need to get better."
[1]This is a American football, not soccer. Barry Sanders was probably the most evasive runner ever. Somebody once described him by saying "People always claim say Barry Sanders defies the laws of physics - that's crazy, he just embodies some of physics' more outrageous concepts."
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
Fuck dude, everybody hates Jon Katz. Even people that claim, "He isn't that bad" have a fucking picture of him for throwing darts at. He's like a really good villian. Even if you like him, you still hate him.
Bite my yammer.
I can find plenty to interest me in programming languages; that's why I designed one myself. But it damn well does matter how a teacher teaches; the student isn't even going to bother trying to find something interesting in the subject if there's no hint of something interesting being there. IMHO you'd find a lot more kids being interested in Math if they knew the implications of what awaited them when they hit calculus class, but we drown them in seemingly unrelated items without giving them a clue of how they connect, with the result being that a lot of kids are lucky to even see trigonometry before they get done with high school, never mind calculus.
As for entertainment... something tells me you never had a chemistry teacher who blew things up in class. You get a kid's attention by putting a piece of sodium in water, he or she is going to be a lot more interested when you explain the deal with reactive metals than if you simply lay out a few notes in class.
As for your grandmother... what a bitch, if she reacted to life in general with roughly the same attitude. No wonder you grew up to have an attitude like that.
The test arrived. I turned it on. The power drain was so great that it was unusable. I sighed and stuck a paperclip into the reset hole.
I got a 3, though. Good enough to skip a semester at college!
[pink beam of light]
What does "put it up" mean?
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Jaywalking law is legitamite because it establishes culpability in an accident. If someone walks out from between two cars in the middle of the street and I hit them, it's not my fault; they were the ones breaking the law (and I can sue for damage to my car!). However, if they are in a crosswalk and I hit them then it's my fault.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Perhaps many members of the Slashdot community are indeed making a good many comments on the non-IT news in other forums.
Maybe "without having servers get overloaded" is in fact expected. Perhaps the impact on news servers is minimal, because most people have been getting this news via more conventional sources.
Slashdot is "News for Nerds". This means basically "whatever interests Taco". It doesn't mean "major world news items". Go elsewhere for those. news.bbc.co.uk has many user contribution forums, go comment in those.
Just because people on Slashdot manage to read, consider and comment on issues other than those in the mainstream news doesn't mean they aren't following those issues elsewhere.
Has it not occurred to you that maybe people visit Slashdot _because_ it gives them a distraction from the real world?
Incidentally, news about a warez crackdown holds far more personal interest to me than news about bin Laden being on video. I don't speak Arabic, I suck at determining whether videos have been faked. So I'll wait a few days and see how world opinion views the tape. Much like i've waited a few days for the response to the raids on warez groups.
Incidentally, UBL is OBL in the UK.
~Cederic
great for those who didn't understand the technology
Yup. Those who don't understand the technology have NO business using it for teaching. I have more patience for Luddites (those who disallow technology out of fear that it may someday replace them) than technophiles (those who incorporate as much technology as possible, regardless of the benefits) when it comes to teaching.
The calculators my students used were Casios (FX something I think? It's been nearly ten years...) and the backup battery was easily removable. Both sets of batteries were removed before tests. Come to think of it, though, all that's needed is a simple, failsafe memory-wipe method. Someone else mentioned a capacitor that maintained memory for ten minutes; that won't be removable, obviously. I'd have no problem with a calculator that had a paperclip-sized hole with a reset button under it...walk around the room with a paperclip, and in two minutes the room is ready for the test.
So did John Ashcroft want to send a signal here? If he did it's muddy. You would think that DeCSS would have been mentioned explicitly as a reason for the raid. The reasons given were music and M$ junk, and other coppied cracked comercial software. Also, if he wanted the public to confuse thak kind of trash with banned free software he would have mentioned it as an "encryption circumvention device".
He might have wanted the news to filter up through the community through some kind of Mad_Quacker.... Ahhhh! the conspiracy theorists are the conspirators.
Disinformation Nation: where the un fettered flow of non peer moderated publications has exactly the opposite effect of free speech.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
as many as there's free PCI slots and fill them with 80gig HDDs.
In most municipalities Jay Walking laws also cover crossing with/against the light, and yet in most cases the driver is still culpable if you hit the pedestrian in the crosswalk (take a look at how Cali law says motorists have to stop as soon as the pedestrian enters the crosswalk).
Yet in New York for instance, Jay Walking laws aren't enforced (even though there are definate times when they should be), simply because its impractical. Heck I know several friends who ended up getting Jay Walking tickets in other cities specifically because they were from New York where Jay Walking is viewed as rediculous (ie. a person should be brighter than to run between cars, and if you do it and no one gets hurt/no accident or traffic hicup, then all is good).
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
At my university each candidate is issued a standard calculator at the start of each exam, and they're collected up afterwards. You're not allowed to bring your own calculator into the exam room any more than your own answer booklet to write on. (Your own pens are okay since nobody's found a magical cheat-helping pen.)
Calculators are so cheap nowadays that you don't have much excuse not to do this. Although your solution of requiring only 'scientific' (I assume this means, not graphical) calculators is also a good answer.
Unfortunately, people aren't going to stop building features into calculators just because teachers would prefer it that way. It's the schools' responsibility to decide what type of calculators are and are not acceptable in class or in tests.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
For the record, I wasn't suggesting that the banks were victims of the big bad corrupt mexican government - not at all. They were all in cahoots at one time or another. You seem to know about all this. Remember the director of Banca Cremi that had to hide in Spain or get busted for financial fraud?
As for the independence of the monetary boards from the government, yes, that's beggining to look better every day. Under president Zedillo the Finance minister was given a lot more leeway than in all previous administrations (at least that I remember), and I see this trend being continued and expanded under Fox.
Here's hoping that Mexico can one day be a lot more than a banana republic with make believe banks =)
Nobody learns math from books, you have to have a good teacher. By the time I got to Calc III I had gotten to the point where I could figure out from the book how to solve most of the problems, but I didn't really understand the concepts until they were explained to me by someone who really knew them.
I think part of the problem was that my teachers seemed to be 'naturals' at math so it was hard for them to translate for the 'un-naturals', so to speak.
This is really an excellent point. One of the things that made me a good tutor was that I actually had to work at it myself, and it hadn't been so long that I couldn't remember how hard it had been. One of the things I always told my most struggling students was that I took Calc I 4(!) times. The first 3 times I don't feel too bad about dropping. In each of those classes there were over 40 students the first day, and no more than 3 ever took the final. I transfered to a different school before I took it again, and I passed with little difficulty.
I think mathematicians make terrible teachers. All the good math teachers I've had were Engineers and Physicists by training. Understanding the connection between math and the real world is essential to teaching math. For the record, my first 3 Calc I teachers were mathematicians, the last was a Nuclear Engineer.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I would like to mod this +1 "good thought out post from someone who understands WTH he's talking about"
Its Ironic that someone who can use hindsight to relize that they where a bad teacher and why, isn't teaching. I think a lot of teachers need to step back and think this way about there teaching. So they can constantly improve there skills.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
a few comments, as I've been intimately involved in warez proceedings since May 2000. Trust me, I've "been there and done that".
http://www.cybercrime.gov/pwa_verdict.htm
1. lawyers/defense are not going to change the laws. they are not interested in doing so. find a lawyer who *wants* to go to trial for the possibility of winning is hard enough - many seem to want to go to trial to bill you more. also, have fun trying to afford a good lawyer to represent you in the federal court system -- do you have a minimum of a hundred thousands dollars to spare? maybe not, after all, warez is a non-profit activity. go the federal defender route and witness getting what you paid for.
2. if the government charges a warez group as a conspiracy, the individuals are railroaded into entering a guilty plea. other options include: turn in your friends and family for 1/3 off your sentence, testify against other members of your group for 1/3 off, or go to trial and be immediately found guilty by a jury of people who have no clue what warez groups are all about.
3. you get to witness government (prosecutorial) misrepresentations, stonewalling, withholding evidence, tampering with evidence, etc. first-hand. As one lawyer in the above case phrased it, "You haven't been fucked until you've been fucked by the government."
Not in the "mathematically simple" sense, but in the "of little worth or importance" sense.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
RPN only makes no sense if you've never used it. Look at it this way:
When you're doing a math or physics or whatever problem, you generally have a bunch of numbers, and you need to figure out what to do with them.
In RPN, you put in the bunch of numbers. Then you decide what to do with them. When you hit the * key, for example, the bottom two numbers get multiplied together, and that result is now in your bunch of numbers in their place.
In algebraic notation, you have to concentrate on the formula, because of keeping track of where the parentheses go and all that. You also have to either do everything in one step, or use something like the [Ans] key to keep using a number that you got as a result. In RPN notation, the numbers you get as results are immediately ready for you to use. Once you learn it, it really feels like you're working with the numbers.
The one drawback to RPN is that you can't directly put in a formula you see on paper - but this does not slow you down if you understand what the formula does.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Here in the US they usually call him "Osama Bin Laden" as well - but they abbreviate his name UBL. I speculate that the problem is that "Usama" begins with "USA".
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Any math teacher that worries about students cheating by storing things in their caclulators should not be teaching. It means that they are testing the studens more on straight memorization than on thinking and reasoning. If you made tests that actually tested student's understanding of the material rather than what they memorized would eliminate the worry of notes in caclulators, since you can't store understanding in a calulator.
Hmm... I wonder what would happen if he found out that I was the "michael is a wanker" troll. Ooops. =)
501 Not Implemented
I lost it, then somebody found it, and decided to keep it. It was my fault for losing it.
Well, I wouldn't say that! He admitted many illegal acts, and perhaps comitted some that he was never accused of (who knows).
But some of the allegedly illegal things that Mitnick did apparently were kind of a stretch.
Also, he spent a lot of time in jail without a trial. I don't know if he somehow waived his right to a speedy trial or what, but you're not supposed to have to spend years in jail awaiting a trial in the USA.
I think the bottom line is that eventually they were out to get him, no matter what. He was villifed in the press, (anonymous high-level sources), etc.
I think, ultimately, Kevin was a victim of demonization by law enforcement and industry players.
What I meant when I said that it is not a "free Kevin" issue, is that there did not appear to be any miscarriage of justice going on with these warez busts. The crime is not theoretical or any kind of stretch.
MM
--
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
It is questionable whether what Sklyarov did was illegal because he did it in Russia. Anyway, he got a deal so the challenge to the law will have to wait.
Anyway, I don't feel that copyright law is ridiculous or stupid (I observe it pretty carefully, as a matter of fact).
On the other hand, the provisions of the DMCA, which apparently make it illegal to distribute some source code or compiled programs are, to me, an outrage. Hopefully those provisions will be overturned.
Others have raised good points about entrapment and so on. Something interesting is that apparently, Hoover himself didn't approve of using under-cover agents in the FBI.
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
Heh. I hear you. It is a bit unsavory isn't it?
Did you see _Training Day_?
MM
--
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
You can't be doing very well with it. Please tell me this post is a joke. I've had bad math teachers before, but...
Fist of all, a calculator is a tool of science and business. This does not mean it is a single-purpose device, or even that it should be a single-purpose device. The games are fun, and a good way to pass time when you're not in math class and the calculator is handy. If you programs the games yourself, even better!! You're probably getting more logical-thinking experience from programming than from most classes you have in high-school.
Second, if you have problems with cheating and taking notes, you aren't teaching your class effectively. Sure, the calculators can store notes and such calculators as TI-89's allow a student to take shortcuts. So what? You aren't teaching facts, figures and formulas; you're teaching the method for arriving at the answers, and any decent math teacher will require that all work be shown. How else can you tell where a student went wrong in a problem, and draw his attention to the mistake and how to correct it?
I am currently enrolled in my high school's AP Calculus class. My teacher allows the use of graphing claculators, allows full use of written and calculator notes on tests, and frequently gives us example problems for these notes. Then he gives us completely new problems on the tests, often with twists added to see if we learned the material. All work is shown, he marks students' mistakes on the papers, and hands them back in the next class period. Then we go over any questons we had problems with, work them out again, and do our best to insure mistakes aren't repeated.
I find it hard to imagine a class with more free access to tools and information, and yet we learn the material. Why? Because he teaches us how to find answers on our own, then shows us exactly how we made our mistakes and what we could do better. This doesn't require restrictions on calculators or notes: all it requires is an active and helpful teacher.
"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself." -Richard Feynman
Ok, I have to admit that Galvatron and Michael were quite amusing by completely ignoring what I had said and drew their own conclusions based on that.
/. team does things a certain way because it works the majority of the time.
Lovely.
However, like turbine, I do make very valid points but lack the coherency at times trying to make that point clear. C'est la vie.
When most people talk about "Crack Smoking Moderators", I think what they are really trying to say is; 2/3's of the moderators really do make an effort to do a good job, the other 1/3, however, don't seem to have a clue.
Why?
Well, IMO the 1/3 have never read the faq I think.
I've seen well done sarcasm modded as a troll.
For me, I fell for it, but I think of it this way:
if you read something that makes you angry, read it again. If you get angrier, that's flamebait. If you think it is dumb, that is a troll. If you laugh, heh funny, informative, insightful or a + score of your choosing.
Now I've gotten mod points, what? a grand total of 3 times...read the faq the first two time, beacuse: I did NOT want to fall into a CSM.
I don't recall modding anyone down, either, because the trolls had been taken care of.
Now, IIRC, does it or does it not say "don't mod people down because you disagree with them?".
That is exactly what I saw going on. Modding down (censorship, if you will) not because of what I said, but "who" I was.
I'll admit, it was the same "pissed offedness" that lead to things such as the the Boston Tea party, and the various wars.
I've said it before (as have others): Moderators are the "other white meat" aka Anon. Cowards.
Or, in someone's better words: Moderators should not be both *anonymous* and *unaccoutable*.
Does metamoderation do any good? Hell if I know, for I gave up metamoderating for a while.
Now I just look for modding down of comments and apply the rules I've mentioned above. Blatant troll/flamebait is modded as fair, otherwise I mark it unfair.
Hence my benefit of the doubt philosophy, Mike.
The point of all this?
Simple: The
We get angry when it does not work or is applied unjustly.
We, as techs, like to fix problems. It is our nature. I'm sure if I gave it some thought I could think of something, but, alas, I'm too tired, too buzzed, and too relaxed at the moment to give a shit and think about this particular thread anymore.
Cheers, my friends.
Moose.
PS. Could we add a "reply karma" category? 75 replies so far..heh, and I did not say "First post either".
Anywho...
.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
I mean, it's shaky..
If they put up a site, and just let people 'do whatever'...
Thing is... I mean, I think entrapment is wrong.
But... I think there is some legal (and common sense) validity to allowing them to pose as drug dealers, or put up a warez site, or whatever, to catch people. I mean, in one sense, they are encouraging it.. but in another, they are merely posing as one of many, many such sites out there. In other words, it's fairly easy to see they are not trying to 'trick' someone into doing something they would not otherwise do.
How this gets modded as a troll never ceases to amaze me, when "you need to adjust your tinfoil hat" (a la michael) gets passed over *and* other post pointing out the *exact* same thing I was talking about are passed over or even modded up!
You see this is the exact kind of hypocritical behaviour that this discussion is targeting.
And whilst I'm at it: Does metamoderation actually *DO* anything? Seriously, Mike, does it?
Consider that if a post is marked as a troll, and it is not a troll, does the moderation get *undone*? Or is the moderator just marked for a period of time?
If you see my point of view, you have to admit that if a moderator is doing a bad job, his/her moderations *should* be undone if at all possible.
Because the point we are making is: No good deed goes unpunished and the opposite is also true.
On the whole, Slashdot is doing an excellent job.
But, that good job is being undermined by (and this is my opinion, mind you) by a certain few.
{I'd also be willing to bet that Galvatron recently got mod points on that day. If it were possible...hey, a new slashcode idea...I'd bet, oh, say 10 karma points---what else are they good for? Nothing, really--- that it was him. J'accuse! If I am right I get 10 of his, If I am wrong, he/she gets 10 of mine}
:)
Gotta love the new math, tho, at the kap, got a +4 from a comment...but one -1 and now at 49.
Heh, 50+4-1=49? cute.
Oh, well, ever since hitting the cap on the other account, I stopped taking moderation seriously (and metamoding for that matter)... I just post here to realax.
hasta.
Moose
.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
We must expose the evil ways of the slashdot staff!
I'm with you on the meta-moderation...
I go through the meta-mods fairly quickly, looking for things that have been down-mod'd, and if it's Redundant or Over-rated, I check the context of the post (but not the author), and it usually gets mod'd back up.
Redundant is actually the one I'm hardest on...
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Yes.
In the field displaying the post's vital information (posted by, subject, etc.), the ipid and Subnet are also displayed. Clicking the displayed info lists all posts made from the ipid or Subnet. Anyone with editor status may view the ipid and Subnet hashes.
The info is discarded in approximately two weeks.