I've read the "car with the hood welded shut" mantra before, but this is the first I saw about the follow-up question about how much the typical driver knows about internal combustion engines. Did he just come up with that analogy for this article or have I just not been paying attention?
Jon is right about a few blatantly unenforcable rules undermining the rest of the rules, but IP rules as they stand are worse than unenforcable, they're brutal, and selectively enforced.
University computing service policies are written in iron fist style to cater to scared school administrations, but the system operators accept them with a grin because they're typically only giving them lip service anyhow. Most of them probably broke every one of those rules ten years ago when they were learning CS in college.
We've seen a bunch of discussions in the past where system administrators come right out and say that they don't care what happens with bandwidth unless a student starts stepping on too many toes.
But then after, say, three years of a bunch of students doing discrete MP3 swapping, suddenly RIAA calls the university president and puts the fear of God into him. Now the president leans on the head of the computing services and quick as a flash, five or six dozen students lose their IPs and face judicial action because the supervisor needs some sacrificial lambs.
It's politics like that that make students and the younger generation suspicious of the system.
If the rules aren't fair, what good are they?
--
Just watch the cell-phone users.
on
Date Pagers
·
· Score: 3
We already have a wonderful radio-controlled device for eliminating potential mates: it's called a cell phone.
If you're flirting with someone and their cell-phone goes off, you learn one of three things by their response.
If they shunt the call into voicemail to continue their conversation with you, you know they are busy, but well balenced individuals who know how to seperate their leisure time.
If they shunt the call, but have to check the caller-id first, they have a little more difficulty seperating leisure time, but at least they know where their social priorities are.
If they take the call right there in front of you, you instantly know that they believe either they or their associate are more important than you are as a potential romantic interest. Make your getaway as fast as possible. Optionally suppliment their digital communication with a digit of your own if their snub was blatant enough.
Of course, if they left their cell-phone at home or turn it off completely, you know you've got someone who's down-to-earth enough to realize that communication isn't just about talking to people who aren't in the room with you.
Digital recording media? You mean like the binary digits on my hard drive? I figure, since my MP3s equate to about a megabyte per minute of stored audio data, then my next 2.3 gigabyte drive would cost me $113 in taxes alone.
Do you own and regularly use any computers located outside a 2000 mile radius of your home?
2. a. How long have you been using computers? b. How long have you been using the Internet?
Did your first computer cost more than my last car?
3. Do you use a computer at work?
Could your present job possibly be accomplished without a computer?
What do you use your computer for? Check all that apply.
Does your average bandwidth satuation exceed 90%?
5. Do you purchase any products or services on the Internet?
Is paper money almost meaningless to you?
6. Do you have an Internet account at home?
Do you have enough backup dialup and shell accounts to survive Armaggeddon without logging off?
b. At work?
Do you still regularly saturate your corporate T3?
7a. In an average week, how much time do you spend on your computer AT HOME and what percentage of time is spent on the Internet?
Is the Internet so closely integrated into your real life that attempting to distinguish the two would result in a completely meaningless number figure?
b. In an average week, how much time do you spend on your computer AT WORK and what percentage of time is spent on the Internet?
Do you stick around after hours just for the bandwidth?
8. On an average day, how many hours do you spend on the Internet (both at home and at work) and during what part of the day?
Is the only time you're without Internet on your daily commute, and only because you have a personal gripe about paying $.05 per packet?
9. Do you ever find that you remain on the computer much longer than you had planned?
10. Do you ever find that you remain on the Internet much longer than you had planned?
Was your plan actually to log off sometime in the next month or so?
11. When on the Internet, do you ever lose track of time or are you often surprised by how much time has elapsed?
Have you ever been surprised to realize that family and real life friends don't operate on Greenwich Mean Time?
12. Do you find the Internet to be intellectually stimulating?
Do you regularly set your comment threshold level to over 3?
13. Do you find the Internet to be sexually arousing?
Are you male and between the ages of 12 and death?
14. Do you ever log on to adult or sexually explicit Web sites?
Have you ever tagged more than a thousand articles in a.b.p.e and let uudecode sort it out while you got another cup of coffee?
If so, how many hours per week do you view such materials?
Do you change the nudie pic in your WM background regularly?
15. Have you ever purchased any sexually related material on the Internet?
Have you ever wondered why people would ever have to purchase material with all this free stuff lying around in Usenet?
16. What is your average monthly cost for Internet access?
Does your Internet access exceed your car payments or combined other essential utilities?
17. When on the Internet, do you experience or engage in any of the following? Check all that apply.
Is the full range of your emotions while online strikingly similar to those in real life?
A sense of disinhibition (feeling free to express yourself)
Do you regularly post as A.C.?
Intense feelings of intimacy while communicating with others using e-mail, chat rooms or personal ads (i.e., more intense intimacy than you typically feel with in-person relationships)
Are you really sure that StalkerChick69 isn't a guy?
A need to spend greater amounts of time on the Internet to achieve satisfaction similar to previous events
Deja.com just not as thrilling as the old Deja anymore?
A need to seek greater sexually stimulating material in order to achieve the same result as previously
a.b.p.e or a.b.p.e.oh.man.is.she.really.doing.that?
A feeling of restlessness or irritability when attempting to cut back or stop using the Internet
Do you dream in code?
Spending what you consider an excessive amount of time on the Internet and vowing not to do so the next day, then finding yourself back the next day or soon after
Did you hack Slash code all last night again?
18. Do you experience an irresistible urge to log on to the Internet every day?
Is your home T1 already connected when you roll off the futon?
19. Do you find yourself keeping secrets from people regarding the amount of time you spend on the Internet?
Are you still a closet geek?
20. Do you find yourself looking forward to spending time on the Internet and feeling you can't wait to get to the computer?
Are you ever more than 20 feet from some sort of terminal?
21. Do you tend to seek out certain individuals in Internet chat rooms?
Have you ever set more than 80% of channel participants to/ignore?
22. Has your use of computers or the Internet interfered with any of your personal relationships, work or recreational activities?
Have personal relationships, work or recreational activities ever interfered with your use of computers or the Internet?
23. Have you ever experienced any serious, adverse consequences because of your Internet use?
Has an idea you created ever been purchased by Andover.Net?
24. Have you or others ever thought that you were addicted or dependent upon a substance or behavior?
The image of local law enforcement or even the FBI sneaking into houses in the dead of the night and calmly hacking subversive programs into my Linux box is difficult to picture. After they got past the high-security electric lockout mechanism (with only a cryptic 1/0 symbol to give any hint to its purpose), they'd be mystified by these unfamiliar penguin images everywhere.
Evidence of cracking from the root console of a Linux box would be just as conspicuous as hacking from outside when done by a hired gun of the Federal Government or the local police. Most security conscious Slashdot readers would be instantly aware if their computer systems had been compromised, and would take appropriate actions to plug the holes and further secure their data instantly.
Consider that for any sort of high level computer crime, the possible "benefits" of this bill are completely meaningless, because the perpetrator is likely to be better versed in computer security than the agents sent to investigate him or her. In fact, taking such action would instantly alert that person to the fact that an investigation was taking place and allow them time to purge their data entirely.
To join in the rising chorus of disgust, I must agree that it's just an altogether stupid idea.
It feels to me like Moody is simplifying the issues somewhat. Any geek worth his salt has read and taken to heart the classic fabled programming contest between Jesus and the devil. It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools, even if they are a little rusty.
In my opinion, if your employees are so slovenly in managing their mission critical digital information that it takes two hours to recover data from a program or OS crash, perhaps the operating system isn't your biggest problem.
I have, and continue to run an e-mail list server out of my home (and friend's homes, at times) for the last five years. I shudder to think what an impact even a small surcharge would have on me now that the outgoing volume of my machine exceeds 5 megs per day.
Not that I particularly worry about this coming about, since such a such an action here in the United States would instantly be responded to by a deluge of complaints to legislature by people in all walks of life who use e-mail in their day to day lives.
Unless, of course, the cries of "Wolf! Wolf! 601B!" have suitably dulled our senses by then.
Lets hope not.
--
Free information will find a conduit
on
Quack!
·
· Score: 1
If you don't give your kids the media and information they need at home, they will go elsewhere to find it. Parents who feel the need to keep budding geeks from exploring the world of information around them--whether inspired their own decision or from the influence of government, community or their family physician--will simply cut themselves out of an inevitable loop that will form with or without their help.
Please consider this is coming from a nineteen year old college student. I don't claim to know how to raise small children (or even relate to them, sometimes), but I know what it's like to have grown up in the early stages of the information age, and how important it was to me to be connected into the world.
About five years ago, my father decided that all the time I spent talking on BBSs, Usenet and email was affecting my schoolwork. Perhaps it was, although I prefer to think of it as not letting my education get in the way of my learning. As punishment for my poor grades, he locked up all the telecommunication devices in the house, including a Practical Peripherals 2400 that was serving as my life line to the digital world.
At this point in my life I was regularly logging into 8 local BBSs, and particpating in FidoNet and and the Fido-esque nets out there, and also running a small UUCP leaf node from the computers to communicate via e-mail and receive an early Usenet feed from a benevolent sysop at a local COCOT company.
Did the removal of my ability to communicate make any difference in the degree that I was actually getting this information? No. I didn't spend as much time at home because I'd be over at friends houses clandestine QWK packets onto disks and sneaking them back into the house in my Chemistry textbook, or pulling out my secret 300 baud acoustic modem once a week when the house was empty to keep my UUCP feed from overflowing my provider's spool.
Did it keep me from telling my father about all the neat things that I was reading and doing in the BBS community and on the Internet? Hell, yeah. Usually I would tell him all about the neat things I was reading on comp.dcom.telecom or the programming or politics newsgroups and we could talk about it, but it was impossible to discuss the latest tech news without letting him know that I was logging in without his permission.
Thankfully, he realized this, and not long afterwards we discussed the situation and worked out an agreement so that he could feel like my studies were coming first, and I could still get access to the information and to discussions with my online peers.
The free flow of information and ideas is now, and will probably always be integral part of my life. I'm glad I had the opportunity to expand my horizons and understanding through interacting with others over the Internet so early on, and I would hate to see that chance denied to other young people.
Feh. I just submitted this on the main form when Roblimo's post shows up on the page.
The LA Times has a nice summary article titled Red Hat's IPO Battles Timing, Microsoft detailing the positives, flaws, and hurt feelings of the Red Hat, Inc. IPO. Perhaps the most interesting line reads, 'Analysts worry that this could destroy the cooperative mood that has been a feature of the Linux community and a key reason for its success.'
Any comments on this?
--
Draft of the legistlation available
on
UCITA is passed
·
· Score: 2
Slashdot Mirror
I've read the "car with the hood welded shut" mantra before, but this is the first I saw about the follow-up question about how much the typical driver knows about internal combustion engines. Did he just come up with that analogy for this article or have I just not been paying attention?
--
Jon is right about a few blatantly unenforcable rules undermining the rest of the rules, but IP rules as they stand are worse than unenforcable, they're brutal, and selectively enforced.
University computing service policies are written in iron fist style to cater to scared school administrations, but the system operators accept them with a grin because they're typically only giving them lip service anyhow. Most of them probably broke every one of those rules ten years ago when they were learning CS in college.
We've seen a bunch of discussions in the past where system administrators come right out and say that they don't care what happens with bandwidth unless a student starts stepping on too many toes.
But then after, say, three years of a bunch of students doing discrete MP3 swapping, suddenly RIAA calls the university president and puts the fear of God into him. Now the president leans on the head of the computing services and quick as a flash, five or six dozen students lose their IPs and face judicial action because the supervisor needs some sacrificial lambs.
It's politics like that that make students and the younger generation suspicious of the system.
If the rules aren't fair, what good are they?
--
We already have a wonderful radio-controlled device for eliminating potential mates: it's called a cell phone.
If you're flirting with someone and their cell-phone goes off, you learn one of three things by their response.
If they shunt the call into voicemail to continue their conversation with you, you know they are busy, but well balenced individuals who know how to seperate their leisure time.
If they shunt the call, but have to check the caller-id first, they have a little more difficulty seperating leisure time, but at least they know where their social priorities are.
If they take the call right there in front of you, you instantly know that they believe either they or their associate are more important than you are as a potential romantic interest. Make your getaway as fast as possible. Optionally suppliment their digital communication with a digit of your own if their snub was blatant enough.
Of course, if they left their cell-phone at home or turn it off completely, you know you've got someone who's down-to-earth enough to realize that communication isn't just about talking to people who aren't in the room with you.
--
--
--
I think I speak for everyone when I say that I'll be very disappointed if this script doesn't become a televised episode one day very soon.
Great work!
--
Digital recording media? You mean like the binary digits on my hard drive? I figure, since my MP3s equate to about a megabyte per minute of stored audio data, then my next 2.3 gigabyte drive would cost me $113 in taxes alone.
--
1. Do you own a computer? If yes, how many?
Do you own and regularly use any computers located outside a 2000 mile radius of your home?
2. a. How long have you been using computers? b. How long have you been using the Internet?
Did your first computer cost more than my last car?
3. Do you use a computer at work?
Could your present job possibly be accomplished without a computer?
What do you use your computer for? Check all that apply.
Does your average bandwidth satuation exceed 90%?
5. Do you purchase any products or services on the Internet?
Is paper money almost meaningless to you?
6. Do you have an Internet account at home?
Do you have enough backup dialup and shell accounts to survive Armaggeddon without logging off?
b. At work?
Do you still regularly saturate your corporate T3?
7a. In an average week, how much time do you spend on your computer AT HOME and what percentage of time is spent on the Internet?
Is the Internet so closely integrated into your real life that attempting to distinguish the two would result in a completely meaningless number figure?
b. In an average week, how much time do you spend on your computer AT WORK and what percentage of time is spent on the Internet?
Do you stick around after hours just for the bandwidth?
8. On an average day, how many hours do you spend on the Internet (both at home and at work) and during what part of the day?
Is the only time you're without Internet on your daily commute, and only because you have a personal gripe about paying $.05 per packet?
9. Do you ever find that you remain on the computer much longer than you had planned?
10. Do you ever find that you remain on the Internet much longer than you had planned?
Was your plan actually to log off sometime in the next month or so?
11. When on the Internet, do you ever lose track of time or are you often surprised by how much time has elapsed?
Have you ever been surprised to realize that family and real life friends don't operate on Greenwich Mean Time?
12. Do you find the Internet to be intellectually stimulating?
Do you regularly set your comment threshold level to over 3?
13. Do you find the Internet to be sexually arousing?
Are you male and between the ages of 12 and death?
14. Do you ever log on to adult or sexually explicit Web sites?
Have you ever tagged more than a thousand articles in a.b.p.e and let uudecode sort it out while you got another cup of coffee?
If so, how many hours per week do you view such materials?
Do you change the nudie pic in your WM background regularly?
15. Have you ever purchased any sexually related material on the Internet?
Have you ever wondered why people would ever have to purchase material with all this free stuff lying around in Usenet?
16. What is your average monthly cost for Internet access?
Does your Internet access exceed your car payments or combined other essential utilities?
17. When on the Internet, do you experience or engage in any of the following? Check all that apply.
Is the full range of your emotions while online strikingly similar to those in real life?
A sense of disinhibition (feeling free to express yourself)
Do you regularly post as A.C.?
Intense feelings of intimacy while communicating with others using e-mail, chat rooms or personal ads (i.e., more intense intimacy than you typically feel with in-person relationships)
Are you really sure that StalkerChick69 isn't a guy?
A need to spend greater amounts of time on the Internet to achieve satisfaction similar to previous events
Deja.com just not as thrilling as the old Deja anymore?
A need to seek greater sexually stimulating material in order to achieve the same result as previously
a.b.p.e or a.b.p.e.oh.man.is.she.really.doing.that?
A feeling of restlessness or irritability when attempting to cut back or stop using the Internet
Do you dream in code?
Spending what you consider an excessive amount of time on the Internet and vowing not to do so the next day, then finding yourself back the next day or soon after
Did you hack Slash code all last night again?
18. Do you experience an irresistible urge to log on to the Internet every day?
Is your home T1 already connected when you roll off the futon?
19. Do you find yourself keeping secrets from people regarding the amount of time you spend on the Internet?
Are you still a closet geek?
20. Do you find yourself looking forward to spending time on the Internet and feeling you can't wait to get to the computer?
Are you ever more than 20 feet from some sort of terminal?
21. Do you tend to seek out certain individuals in Internet chat rooms?
Have you ever set more than 80% of channel participants to /ignore?
22. Has your use of computers or the Internet interfered with any of your personal relationships, work or recreational activities?
Have personal relationships, work or recreational activities ever interfered with your use of computers or the Internet?
23. Have you ever experienced any serious, adverse consequences because of your Internet use?
Has an idea you created ever been purchased by Andover.Net?
24. Have you or others ever thought that you were addicted or dependent upon a substance or behavior?
Have you ever worked at an ISP?
--
The image of local law enforcement or even the FBI sneaking into houses in the dead of the night and calmly hacking subversive programs into my Linux box is difficult to picture. After they got past the high-security electric lockout mechanism (with only a cryptic 1/0 symbol to give any hint to its purpose), they'd be mystified by these unfamiliar penguin images everywhere.
Evidence of cracking from the root console of a Linux box would be just as conspicuous as hacking from outside when done by a hired gun of the Federal Government or the local police. Most security conscious Slashdot readers would be instantly aware if their computer systems had been compromised, and would take appropriate actions to plug the holes and further secure their data instantly.
Consider that for any sort of high level computer crime, the possible "benefits" of this bill are completely meaningless, because the perpetrator is likely to be better versed in computer security than the agents sent to investigate him or her. In fact, taking such action would instantly alert that person to the fact that an investigation was taking place and allow them time to purge their data entirely.
To join in the rising chorus of disgust, I must agree that it's just an altogether stupid idea.
--
It feels to me like Moody is simplifying the issues somewhat. Any geek worth his salt has read and taken to heart the classic fabled programming contest between Jesus and the devil. It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools, even if they are a little rusty.
In my opinion, if your employees are so slovenly in managing their mission critical digital information that it takes two hours to recover data from a program or OS crash, perhaps the operating system isn't your biggest problem.
--
Serves them right for not coming up with something even more banal: like "I Seek You."
AOL's likely response can probably be summed up in the family words of the other patently annoying, yet infuriatingly ubiquitous desktop client.
Ut oh!
--
I have, and continue to run an e-mail list server out of my home (and friend's homes, at times) for the last five years. I shudder to think what an impact even a small surcharge would have on me now that the outgoing volume of my machine exceeds 5 megs per day.
Not that I particularly worry about this coming about, since such a such an action here in the United States would instantly be responded to by a deluge of complaints to legislature by people in all walks of life who use e-mail in their day to day lives.
Unless, of course, the cries of "Wolf! Wolf! 601B!" have suitably dulled our senses by then.
Lets hope not.
--
If you don't give your kids the media and information they need at home, they will go elsewhere to find it. Parents who feel the need to keep budding geeks from exploring the world of information around them--whether inspired their own decision or from the influence of government, community or their family physician--will simply cut themselves out of an inevitable loop that will form with or without their help.
Please consider this is coming from a nineteen year old college student. I don't claim to know how to raise small children (or even relate to them, sometimes), but I know what it's like to have grown up in the early stages of the information age, and how important it was to me to be connected into the world.
About five years ago, my father decided that all the time I spent talking on BBSs, Usenet and email was affecting my schoolwork. Perhaps it was, although I prefer to think of it as not letting my education get in the way of my learning. As punishment for my poor grades, he locked up all the telecommunication devices in the house, including a Practical Peripherals 2400 that was serving as my life line to the digital world.
At this point in my life I was regularly logging into 8 local BBSs, and particpating in FidoNet and and the Fido-esque nets out there, and also running a small UUCP leaf node from the computers to communicate via e-mail and receive an early Usenet feed from a benevolent sysop at a local COCOT company.
Did the removal of my ability to communicate make any difference in the degree that I was actually getting this information? No. I didn't spend as much time at home because I'd be over at friends houses clandestine QWK packets onto disks and sneaking them back into the house in my Chemistry textbook, or pulling out my secret 300 baud acoustic modem once a week when the house was empty to keep my UUCP feed from overflowing my provider's spool.
Did it keep me from telling my father about all the neat things that I was reading and doing in the BBS community and on the Internet? Hell, yeah. Usually I would tell him all about the neat things I was reading on comp.dcom.telecom or the programming or politics newsgroups and we could talk about it, but it was impossible to discuss the latest tech news without letting him know that I was logging in without his permission.
Thankfully, he realized this, and not long afterwards we discussed the situation and worked out an agreement so that he could feel like my studies were coming first, and I could still get access to the information and to discussions with my online peers.
The free flow of information and ideas is now, and will probably always be integral part of my life. I'm glad I had the opportunity to expand my horizons and understanding through interacting with others over the Internet so early on, and I would hate to see that chance denied to other young people.
--
Feh. I just submitted this on the main form when Roblimo's post shows up on the page.
The LA Times has a nice summary article titled Red Hat's IPO Battles Timing, Microsoft detailing the positives, flaws, and hurt feelings of the Red Hat, Inc. IPO. Perhaps the most interesting line reads, 'Analysts worry that this could destroy the cooperative mood that has been a feature of the Linux community and a key reason for its success.'
Any comments on this?
--
See this for the full (889k) 1999 draft text.
http://www.law.upenn.edu/lib rary/ulc/ucita/citam99.htm
I can't believe we're Slashdot-effecting a zoo. They'll probably never understand the huge influx of sudden interest in their penguin exhibit.
But perhaps some things are better left unexplained.