Slashback: Cheaters, Spammers, Chessmen

Slashback brings you more words tonight on catching CS cheaters (and whom to credit for the software that does so), giving money near-painlessly to another worthy cause, complications in wiretapping California's phones, and more. Read on, and enjoy!

GA Tech TAs not given credit for program exposing those who don't give credit. zorba1 writes: "Chalk another one to the 'TAs get no credit' department. CNN is running an article on how on how Georgia Tech's College of Computing professors wrote a cheat-finder program that discovered 186 Intro to Computing cheaters. As a former CS TA at GaTech, some clarification points:

1. The app was developed by TAs, not by professors.
2. It doesn't detect 'exact duplications of computer code.' It removes variable names and examines duplication in code structure.
3. The only reason it's in the news is that GaTech recently required nearly all students to take one or two introductory CS courses."

The stench whiffed 'round the world ... Kelsevinal writes "A look at this article on the Chicago Tribune website reveals that our good friend Bernie Shifman is getting a little publicity... Think what you want about the situation, but I think it's funny as hell. I bet Shifman likes it too ... think of all the human resources depts. who might see this!"

After all, not everything is Free. xueexueg writes: "I just noticed that the Free Software Foundation has finally gotten around to setting up secure servers for orders and donations. For ages you actually had to print out and mail an order form to them, but now, at last, you can give them money for goods or charity, in your proverbial underwear."

And let's face it, there aren't that many places in the world where you can order T-shirts adorned with a levitating gnu.

Does this remind you of Gorman Seedling's electric collars? koganuts writes: "Updating a story posted by Slashdot on January 9th, according to The Los Angeles Times, "Gov. Gray Davis' proposal to let state and local police obtain roving wiretaps on suspected criminals was dropped from the legislation containing it Tuesday after the legislative counsel's office concluded that it was illegal." There were also provisions in the proposed bill which extended wiretapping to e-mail and the Internet. One thing I never knew was that "...wiretaps cost an average of $56,767.""

Have you learned your lesson? Eblis writes: "The Learning Machine Challenged hosted by AI has finally ground to a halt, with results available at lmw.a-i.com. Congratulations to the winners and to AI for hosting such a successful contest!"

Comments

Well worth the $$$

[Guitarzan]

If you could pay $56,767 to wiretap a 900 number, imagine how much cash you could save!

To take care of some spammers!

[www.sorehands.com]

When I get the SPAM for the software to make unlimited copies of DVDs so I never have to pay for a DVD again, I forward it to hotline@mpaa.org. See if the MPAA is really after piracy, or just to scaare people.

CS wasn't what I thought it was...

[Malor]

I was pretty surprised that Counterstrike had made it to a Slashback -- I knew the cheating was terrible, but didn't think there was a Linux client.

Turns out it was actually unimportant... just real life. Pfaugh. :-)

Catching CounterStrike cheaters...

[BigJim.fr]

Cheaters really are the bane of Counterstrike. A good cheater is a kickbanned one. Here are a few programs that help catching CounterStrike cheaters :

Punkbuster

Paladin

I may have forgotten some, but these are the main ones.

What ? Offtopic ? Surely sire you jest !

Re:my school

[SimJockey]

Actually, you are doing your part to reinforce every stereotype I have ever held about americans.
BTW, you may want to check your own grammar. I'm pretty sure the contraction that is is that's.
Dick.

Re:FP

[rm-r]

Slashback time eh? That means it really is on-topic to bring up this thread. Can we now have a sensible discussion about the moderation system? Or shall I and all who answer me be mod'ed to oblivion? Well, I'll just say now that I don't care what happens to my karma- and we're away!

I present two opinions. Firstly, it is quite clear that the editors made a massive moderation to the thread mentioned above (all replies set to -1, on more than 1 occasion). There is nothing wrong with this per se- it is their site, however /. does claim to be a *user* moderated site, the readership is generally anti-censorship and pro-freedom of speech and the site claims to be built from it's community. While the /. editors waste no time in pointing out other censors on the net they have, hypocritically, maintained a complete silence on this issue. The thread's parent has now been mod'ed over 600 times, it is quite clear that there is a massive depth of feeling about this that needs attention, I don't imagine 'negativekarma now' has much karma but I imagine his friends list is longer than mosts following this. This Slashback should have had a part on the matter, the people whose paychecks are paid for by site impressions from the readership owe it to us.

Secondly- on moderation itself, as the original thread postulated, the system is not working. In many respects it is good and I propose only a minor tweak. Currently it is possible to mark up or down a post by up to 5 points on whether it is a friend's or foe's post or if it has been mod'ed as any particular type (troll, funny, flamebait, etc) ,and to set AC's to -1. Additionally it is possible to set the threshold score, posts scoring less than that do not appear. I propose that in addition to these it be made possible to completly block, in effect setting to -2 perhaps, any post by a foe, anonymous coward or by modification keyword. Many people, myself included like to browse at -1. This isn't because I want to see page-lengthening posts or ascii goatse.cx, it's because some of the funniest posts are called trolls by the majority and because some of the most thought provoking are caled flamebait. By making this simply change it would be possible for people like myself to read what we want to from this site, and would in all probability kill off the real crap-flooders, as most everyone would foe list them and exlude them completely. This modification would have no effect on those people who are happy with the system in it's current state.

Discuss...