...you better read those rules carefully. I wouldn't put it past AO to try and pin federal charges on anyone breaking them. I agree that it's extremely likely that they will be logging any information they get for future use against people. As a generally non-paranoid and trusting person, I trust AO about as far as I could comfortably hurl a Buick.
The entomology department here has a two-day Bug Fair every year... there's a petting zoo with some really neat insects, kids draw bugs and make things, roach races, all kinds of stuff. The culinary tent is usually one of the more popular areas. They have cake made with mealworm flour, stirfried crickets, etc. Goes over really well - it's getting bigger every year!
for me, an animal has an extremely limited amount of say about its treatment. People can talk, but an animal just has to hope its behavior is enough to get the message across... Just because other problems exist in the world doesn't mean that everyone should ignore animal welfare in favor of all the other problems - then no one would take care of the animals. I don't think that they should come last on the list. (Sorry for the overly-cheesy philosophical bent) I think that when people treat animals with dignity and respect, that they then tend to treat other humans with more respect. All life is interconnected, it just doesn't make sense to ignore one piece of it.
How does this apply to the penguins at LinuxWorld? While these particular two penguins may have been the best choice for live penguins at the show, I don't think they were appropriate for that sort of atmosphere. I think the company will be remembered as "That company that thought it would be cute to have real penguins in a little cage. Feh!" Frankly, a convention atmosphere is almost cruelty to humans... let alone animals.
It has some rather hairy citizenship requirements, though - which is why my brother & I didn't join up.
Once a member is inducted, the association denies each member his own freedom of choice regarding his religious persuasion and political and aesthetic affiliation.
Um, yeah. It's a scam. Perhaps you should actually check out their site before spouting about scams. They're not asking for money. They're not implying that a CY passport will be useful in any way! I'm sure many become-a-citizen-reap-enormous-benefits scams do happen, but it would take one heck of an imagination stretch for this to be one of them. Their page is at http://www.juga.com.
The main problem with this is that people aren't learning the lessons. Extinction rates are still increasing exponentially. Poachers don't have any guilty nights over the animals they kill - most of them are doing it to get money to take care of their families. Most people don't even know when another species goes extinct, so where's the lesson? There are many problems to be addressed - but I don't think that the way to address them is by closing off a possible avenue to bringing them back. I honestly don't feel that it is immoral to keep a species alive in zoos, and would wholeheartedly condone places that keep species alive in controlled environments - because it's a step in the process to bringing them back. Only one step, but progress.
With such a limited genetic pool, it is unlikely to be feasible in the near future to actually reintroduce a species with any success. But then again, although the cheetah went through a genetic bottleneck (all cheetahs are genetically similar enough that you could graft skin from one to another without a rejection problem), they are still here. Even with the limited genes and the homogenous population, I still say it's better to have the animals/plants than not.
Some problems to be addressed are: habitat destruction - where can we put these animals, if they were driven to extinction by lack of a habitat to survive in; the human factor - if people are hungry, if they need firewood, if they need money, they will continue to hunt these animals and destroy their habitat; then there's that genetic problem - limited genes make for a less healthy population. So they're problems - they can be solved! Maybe not right now, but then again I never thought I'd be around when cloning finally became an option for extinct species - and yes, I have been waiting.
For more information on captive breeding and reintroduction (and maybe a little less dogma:) I'd suggest checking out the Wildlife Preservation Trust - founded by Gerald Durrell. Their work is excellent, particularly their captive breeding and reintroduction program.
Agreed - but he wasn't a student there, which complicates things. He signed no agreement of any kind with the university, so on one hand they have no explicit right to destroy the data. On the other hand, he was allowed to put data on there by someone at Harvard. Whether they had "legal" authority to offer him the space/bandwidth is another question. Without something explicit allowing that from the suits over there, I'm guessing they can do whatever they want - legally.
With that much information of that much importance - why does no one have a backup of the site? I wouldn't trust my college to hold the sole copy of anything I cared about. Is any of this data someplace else, or does anyone have copies of it?
After reading the article, I think the thing that hit me the most was the number of brains studied. While I understand they don't have thousands of brains sitting aroung, a study that uses only 35 brains as comparison seems ludicrous. Even saying that his brain structure/size might be a factor is vastly speculative given the number they considered. There are so many possible factors here that they seem to be ignoring - it sounds like another example of researchers with their own agenda to serve.
We're not talking about offensive messages - merely ones that Intel felt were untrue and that slammed the company. He's not following people around, calling them up, etc... I think that there is very little reason for a trespassing charge. I mean, it just doesn't work that way. If that were true, then any person would be trespassing any time they sent email to someone else! I don't endorse this kind of tactic, but I think this was an extremely poor decision.
It goes through most of the install, then says that there is a new version of the installer - that it will download the new installer and then run it. Then it just closes all the &$^@! windows. Anyone have any ideas?
I thought it was pretty useful - it's not like the book is being pushed, and it's nice to be able to just click and get more information or to buy it. If I'm going to get it anyway, I'd also rather/. got a cut of it. Any book review will list the information necessary for a person to purchase the book - it's just that online, you can link them directly to that information.
"In their complaints to the Labor Department, the former volunteers do not make explicit demands for back pay."
They have requested an INVESTIGATION. There is an enormous difference between the two. It was explicitly stated that the former volunteers were not seeking compensation or back wages or anything. They are simply requesting the Labor Dept. check out whether this is a Fair Labor practice. I would tend to think that it is not, but that's up to them. Now, the Labor Dept. may decide that these people aren't volunteers - in which case they can require AOL to pay back wages for all of their volunteers. Thus the "explicit demands" line - the volunteers aren't asking for money, but they may end up receiving it anyway.
Slashdot might not be a not-for-profit, but unless Rob's getting a heck of a lot more money off of this than I think, he's not in any danger. Slashdot is more of a public service than a business, really. AOL is using these thousands of volunteers to do things that every other company pays people for. There is a problem with that.
I wanted to write regarding the "Computer hackers really are anti-social geeks" article by Mr. Stewart Bell. This article fails to cite any evidence collected by Mr. Marc Rogers to prove any of the points that he asserts. Now I understand that this is a newspaper, and not a scientific paper - but I found this article to be offensive in the extreme.
This gentleman asserts that "hackers" frequently come from broken families, and may have been abused. It is not explained why he might think that, or what scientific method he might have used to ascertain this knowledge. Nor is it anywhere compared to what percentage of the non-hacker population come from broken families or are abused. I would think that by using some basic statistics, it is far more likely that a non-hacker would have been abused than a hacker.
If such an article had been written about a racial or religious group, this article would have never made it into your paper - it would have been judged to be trash science, only an attempt to justify ridiculous stereotypes. The assumptions made in it are ludicrous in the extreme, and I am outraged that such an item would appear in an otherwise prestigious newspaper. I hope that in future, journalistic integrity and facts will win out over sensationalism and assumptions.
Agreed. It would be more useful if you were to include the text of your message, and perhaps his response verbatim. I know it's a lot longer, but you're asking people to make a judgement on someone based on a snippet from an email... I don't think it's right to base such a judgement on so little evidence.
Maybe instead we need to re-examine the idea that in order to be a community, there must not be any kind of disagreement between anyone. The idea that total harmony was essential in family situations was disproved long ago.
Flamings happen, whether they happen online or whether they are hashed out on the front walk - it doesn't really matter. I think the entire Open Source community is able to realize that two people sniping at each other is not going to somehow destroy the whole thing. If the rest of the world is unable to grasp the idea that the petty grievances of two people isn't going to stop this movement, then that's their own (expletive) problem. They'll find out soon enough. Corporate America is sending out internal emails like this all the time - maybe what needs to happen is that more of those emails should make it public.
Not that I'm supporting people acting like a bunch of spoiled 3-year-olds, but I think we should remember that the world's been through a hell of a lot of 3-year-olds in its time.
bug fixes will be available online (free) as part of a service pack for Win 98. They'll be charging for the Win 98 SE, but you can still get the service pack separately.
Ok, so if we assume that this many people will see it on the first day, and then we assume that X percent of those people work full-time, and then we assume that those people get paid a certain amount of money each, and we assume that none of these people do the logical thing and go see it after work....
... then we'd have an equation that meant absolutely NOTHING, because all of the numbers in it are just made up!!
The big three are all down - userfriendly, bedope, segfault... I sure as hell hope it's an April Fools joke. (No disrespect to Linus, of course - whatever he wants to do is fine.:)
Why is this posting getting moderated down?? This seems to be the most relevant post for this whole article! I understand that it's in as an AC posting, but that shouldn't be any reason to drop its score down - it is on topic, flames no one, etc, etc. What the heck is the deal here?
Um, terrorism generally means something that causes PHYSICAL harm to someone or something. Give that this virus doesn't cause physical harm, or even do any unrepairable damage... I would hesitate to devaluate terrorism in such a way. Blowing up a building? Bombing a plane? Now those are terrorist acts. Crashing some mail servers? It's not even remotely close. If they can figure out actual damages, that would be a much better punishment as far as fitting the crime.
Slashdot Mirror
...you better read those rules carefully. I wouldn't put it past AO to try and pin federal charges on anyone breaking them. I agree that it's extremely likely that they will be logging any information they get for future use against people. As a generally non-paranoid and trusting person, I trust AO about as far as I could comfortably hurl a Buick.
Leilah
The entomology department here has a two-day Bug Fair every year... there's a petting zoo with some really neat insects, kids draw bugs and make things, roach races, all kinds of stuff. The culinary tent is usually one of the more popular areas. They have cake made with mealworm flour, stirfried crickets, etc. Goes over really well - it's getting bigger every year!
Leilah
for me, an animal has an extremely limited amount of say about its treatment. People can talk, but an animal just has to hope its behavior is enough to get the message across... Just because other problems exist in the world doesn't mean that everyone should ignore animal welfare in favor of all the other problems - then no one would take care of the animals. I don't think that they should come last on the list. (Sorry for the overly-cheesy philosophical bent) I think that when people treat animals with dignity and respect, that they then tend to treat other humans with more respect. All life is interconnected, it just doesn't make sense to ignore one piece of it.
How does this apply to the penguins at LinuxWorld? While these particular two penguins may have been the best choice for live penguins at the show, I don't think they were appropriate for that sort of atmosphere. I think the company will be remembered as "That company that thought it would be cute to have real penguins in a little cage. Feh!" Frankly, a convention atmosphere is almost cruelty to humans... let alone animals.
Leilah
Leilah
Um, yeah. It's a scam. Perhaps you should actually check out their site before spouting about scams. They're not asking for money. They're not implying that a CY passport will be useful in any way! I'm sure many become-a-citizen-reap-enormous-benefits scams do happen, but it would take one heck of an imagination stretch for this to be one of them. Their page is at http://www.juga.com.
Leilah
The main problem with this is that people aren't learning the lessons. Extinction rates are still increasing exponentially. Poachers don't have any guilty nights over the animals they kill - most of them are doing it to get money to take care of their families. Most people don't even know when another species goes extinct, so where's the lesson? There are many problems to be addressed - but I don't think that the way to address them is by closing off a possible avenue to bringing them back. I honestly don't feel that it is immoral to keep a species alive in zoos, and would wholeheartedly condone places that keep species alive in controlled environments - because it's a step in the process to bringing them back. Only one step, but progress.
:) I'd suggest checking out the Wildlife Preservation Trust - founded by Gerald Durrell. Their work is excellent, particularly their captive breeding and reintroduction program.
With such a limited genetic pool, it is unlikely to be feasible in the near future to actually reintroduce a species with any success. But then again, although the cheetah went through a genetic bottleneck (all cheetahs are genetically similar enough that you could graft skin from one to another without a rejection problem), they are still here. Even with the limited genes and the homogenous population, I still say it's better to have the animals/plants than not.
Some problems to be addressed are: habitat destruction - where can we put these animals, if they were driven to extinction by lack of a habitat to survive in; the human factor - if people are hungry, if they need firewood, if they need money, they will continue to hunt these animals and destroy their habitat; then there's that genetic problem - limited genes make for a less healthy population. So they're problems - they can be solved! Maybe not right now, but then again I never thought I'd be around when cloning finally became an option for extinct species - and yes, I have been waiting.
For more information on captive breeding and reintroduction (and maybe a little less dogma
Wildlife Preservation Trust International
Leilah
Agreed - but he wasn't a student there, which complicates things. He signed no agreement of any kind with the university, so on one hand they have no explicit right to destroy the data. On the other hand, he was allowed to put data on there by someone at Harvard. Whether they had "legal" authority to offer him the space/bandwidth is another question. Without something explicit allowing that from the suits over there, I'm guessing they can do whatever they want - legally.
With that much information of that much importance - why does no one have a backup of the site? I wouldn't trust my college to hold the sole copy of anything I cared about. Is any of this data someplace else, or does anyone have copies of it?
Leilah
After reading the article, I think the thing that hit me the most was the number of brains studied. While I understand they don't have thousands of brains sitting aroung, a study that uses only 35 brains as comparison seems ludicrous. Even saying that his brain structure/size might be a factor is vastly speculative given the number they considered. There are so many possible factors here that they seem to be ignoring - it sounds like another example of researchers with their own agenda to serve.
Leilah
I must've been out of touch. I've never heard of this case - could you expound on it?
Leilah
We're not talking about offensive messages - merely ones that Intel felt were untrue and that slammed the company. He's not following people around, calling them up, etc... I think that there is very little reason for a trespassing charge. I mean, it just doesn't work that way. If that were true, then any person would be trespassing any time they sent email to someone else! I don't endorse this kind of tactic, but I think this was an extremely poor decision.
Leilah
Yeah, it's fine - as long as the movie theaters don't follow our local high school's lead and ban the d*mn things! :)
Leilah
It goes through most of the install, then says that there is a new version of the installer - that it will download the new installer and then run it. Then it just closes all the &$^@! windows. Anyone have any ideas?
Leilah
I thought it was pretty useful - it's not like the book is being pushed, and it's nice to be able to just click and get more information or to buy it. If I'm going to get it anyway, I'd also rather /. got a cut of it. Any book review will list the information necessary for a person to purchase the book - it's just that online, you can link them directly to that information.
Leilah
They have requested an INVESTIGATION. There is an enormous difference between the two. It was explicitly stated that the former volunteers were not seeking compensation or back wages or anything. They are simply requesting the Labor Dept. check out whether this is a Fair Labor practice. I would tend to think that it is not, but that's up to them. Now, the Labor Dept. may decide that these people aren't volunteers - in which case they can require AOL to pay back wages for all of their volunteers. Thus the "explicit demands" line - the volunteers aren't asking for money, but they may end up receiving it anyway.
Slashdot might not be a not-for-profit, but unless Rob's getting a heck of a lot more money off of this than I think, he's not in any danger. Slashdot is more of a public service than a business, really. AOL is using these thousands of volunteers to do things that every other company pays people for. There is a problem with that.
Leilah
*grin* Now that's a well-written article. Thanks, I needed that.
Leilah
I wanted to write regarding the "Computer hackers really are anti-social geeks" article by Mr. Stewart Bell. This article fails to cite any evidence collected by Mr. Marc Rogers to prove any of the points that he asserts. Now I understand that this is a newspaper, and not a scientific paper - but I found this article to be offensive in the extreme.
This gentleman asserts that "hackers" frequently come from broken families, and may have been abused. It is not explained why he might think that, or what scientific method he might have used to ascertain this knowledge. Nor is it anywhere compared to what percentage of the non-hacker population come from broken families or are abused. I would think that by using some basic statistics, it is far more likely that a non-hacker would have been abused than a hacker.
If such an article had been written about a racial or religious group, this article would have never made it into your paper - it would have been judged to be trash science, only an attempt to justify ridiculous stereotypes. The assumptions made in it are ludicrous in the extreme, and I am outraged that such an item would appear in an otherwise prestigious newspaper. I hope that in future, journalistic integrity and facts will win out over sensationalism and assumptions.
Sincerely,
Leilah Thiel
Agreed. It would be more useful if you were to include the text of your message, and perhaps his response verbatim. I know it's a lot longer, but you're asking people to make a judgement on someone based on a snippet from an email... I don't think it's right to base such a judgement on so little evidence.
Leilah
Maybe instead we need to re-examine the idea that in order to be a community, there must not be any kind of disagreement between anyone. The idea that total harmony was essential in family situations was disproved long ago.
Flamings happen, whether they happen online or whether they are hashed out on the front walk - it doesn't really matter. I think the entire Open Source community is able to realize that two people sniping at each other is not going to somehow destroy the whole thing. If the rest of the world is unable to grasp the idea that the petty grievances of two people isn't going to stop this movement, then that's their own (expletive) problem. They'll find out soon enough. Corporate America is sending out internal emails like this all the time - maybe what needs to happen is that more of those emails should make it public.
Not that I'm supporting people acting like a bunch of spoiled 3-year-olds, but I think we should remember that the world's been through a hell of a lot of 3-year-olds in its time.
Leilah
bug fixes will be available online (free) as part of a service pack for Win 98. They'll be charging for the Win 98 SE, but you can still get the service pack separately.
Leilah
*grin*
Leilah
... then we'd have an equation that meant absolutely NOTHING, because all of the numbers in it are just made up!!
Honestly. Sheesh.
Leilah (going at night, thank you.)
The big three are all down - userfriendly, bedope, segfault... I sure as hell hope it's an April Fools joke. (No disrespect to Linus, of course - whatever he wants to do is fine. :)
Leilah
Why is this posting getting moderated down?? This seems to be the most relevant post for this whole article! I understand that it's in as an AC posting, but that shouldn't be any reason to drop its score down - it is on topic, flames no one, etc, etc. What the heck is the deal here?
Leilah
Um, terrorism generally means something that causes PHYSICAL harm to someone or something. Give that this virus doesn't cause physical harm, or even do any unrepairable damage... I would hesitate to devaluate terrorism in such a way. Blowing up a building? Bombing a plane? Now those are terrorist acts. Crashing some mail servers? It's not even remotely close. If they can figure out actual damages, that would be a much better punishment as far as fitting the crime.
-Just because we can doesn't mean we should.
Leilah