If we are going to get serious about this, we must all ackowledge that most of the people in this discussion are COMPUTER hackers. This means our area of expertise is COMPUTERS. It would be arrogant to the most extreme to assume that just because computers a complicated we can just waltz into a whole new system of solving problems ie. politically and legally. We have to acknowledge that there are other people out there who are hackers in other fields LIKE law and politics. As a community we have to look up and see whats happening around us instead of aplying the same logic that we use in our work. Test our ideas before we put all of our faith in them. The best way to do this, IMHO, would be to introduce new people into our community who are just not computer hackers but hackers in other fields. We need to see them as the same sort of people as us, just with a different speciality. Computer hackers pose absolutely no threat at all by themselve. Even if every computer hacker in the world were to get together and try to sort things out their way it would fail because we will only end up scaring the general public and prompting legislation against similar behaviour in the future. We need people that know what they are doing and that ISN'T US!!!
A pity none of the more modern writers seem to read the classics. They never seem to have any original ideas compared to the older stuff!I must say, there are one or two surprises out there.
I agree completely with joss that programming is an art form. Akin to poetry, you can look at the world in a whole new way after reading a well written program. It reinforces the fact that there are many ways in which to view things. You can look at a table and see 4 poles and a wooden sheet. Someone else might see something else. BUT programming is completely separated from designing a SYSTEM. When you build a solution for a company, you don't only look at how a computer program should fit into the business, you look at what changes need to be made to the business. Software engineering is a discpline of designing stable programs. Programming well doesn't make you a software engineer. If we take the Denver Airport Baggage System as an example (a case study in system failures in my first year at uni: UMIST), one person would have a very hard time designing a system like that all by him/her self. You need teams of people who know how to look at the problem first. These people need to know how to express this formally so they can even remember whats going on or hand over to someone else to take over. There are good ways of doing this and bad ways, where do you suppose people are going to learn this sort of stuff with out unis? How can you prove you know what your doing without a BEng or MEng? The thing about Engineering as a profession is that projects tend to involve many people, the question of one person being incompetent is not important if you have trustworthy(ie. professionals) there to catch them. Since doctors often work alone, we don't detect any malpractice until later on. Usually when it's too late. As for the law in this matter, I think the BCS (British Computing Society - it even has a royal charter as far as I know) is trying to get Software Engineering accredited as a proper engineering discipline that needs a proper engineering degree!
Some of the reason we have so many aggressive geeks is that in this world they can be something. If they say they have a plonker as thick as their wrist then we have no way of verifying it! We measure their size by their personality. Just think, if we see a 5ft weed walking towards us we don't act in the same way as if there was a 7ft monster walking our way. In cyber space it doen't matter how big or small you are because other users just don't know. There will, of course, be a big temptation to take out a lot of frustrations on people in chat rooms etc. when you could do it in real life. Think how sweet revenge must be if you get to drive people out of a discussion through insult alone when thats what happens to you every day in the real world. There is no real way to solve this without some sort of system of accountability in place to reward good behavior and punish bad. Slashdot is an amazing step in that direction. I suppose, with a little work, it could be used all over the place to include aspects like being considerate, polite and all that.
The Chinese government letting people have a certain degree of freedom of information? What is the world coming to. Next people will be saying that they trust the western governments to always act in the best interest of the people rather than polititions and big businesses!
I think I'll have to disagree to this. The NSA is hiring a new INDIVIDUAL to do some very specialised work. This is just like hiring a new employee under a temporary contract for the singular purpose of building 1 peice of software. The NSA will still own the software because all it did was hire an INDIVIDUAL to build it on ITS behalf. It didn't go to someone and buy something that soneone else had already built.
What people should consider is this, if you aren't prepared to pick up a gun and kill the ENEMY face to face, you shouldn't be working for any organisation that will do it for you using something you made/designed/invented. Also, just because you can't SEE the people you are fighting doesn't mean it's OK to hurt them. The're still suffering!
Slashdot Mirror
If we are going to get serious about this, we must all ackowledge that most of the people in this discussion are COMPUTER hackers. This means our area of expertise is COMPUTERS. It would be arrogant to the most extreme to assume that just because computers a complicated we can just waltz into a whole new system of solving problems ie. politically and legally. We have to acknowledge that there are other people out there who are hackers in other fields LIKE law and politics.
As a community we have to look up and see whats happening around us instead of aplying the same logic that we use in our work. Test our ideas before we put all of our faith in them. The best way to do this, IMHO, would be to introduce new people into our community who are just not computer hackers but hackers in other fields. We need to see them as the same sort of people as us, just with a different speciality.
Computer hackers pose absolutely no threat at all by themselve. Even if every computer hacker in the world were to get together and try to sort things out their way it would fail because we will only end up scaring the general public and prompting legislation against similar behaviour in the future. We need people that know what they are doing and that ISN'T US!!!
A pity none of the more modern writers seem to read the classics. They never seem to have any original ideas compared to the older stuff!I must say, there are one or two surprises out there.
I agree completely with joss that programming is an art form. Akin to poetry, you can look at the world in a whole new way after reading a well written program. It reinforces the fact that there are many ways in which to view things. You can look at a table and see 4 poles and a wooden sheet. Someone else might see something else.
BUT programming is completely separated from designing a SYSTEM. When you build a solution for a company, you don't only look at how a computer program should fit into the business, you look at what changes need to be made to the business. Software engineering is a discpline of designing stable programs. Programming well doesn't make you a software engineer. If we take the Denver Airport Baggage System as an example (a case study in system failures in my first year at uni: UMIST), one person would have a very hard time designing a system like that all by him/her self. You need teams of people who know how to look at the problem first. These people need to know how to express this formally so they can even remember whats going on or hand over to someone else to take over. There are good ways of doing this and bad ways, where do you suppose people are going to learn this sort of stuff with out unis? How can you prove you know what your doing without a BEng or MEng?
The thing about Engineering as a profession is that projects tend to involve many people, the question of one person being incompetent is not important if you have trustworthy(ie. professionals) there to catch them. Since doctors often work alone, we don't detect any malpractice until later on. Usually when it's too late.
As for the law in this matter, I think the BCS (British Computing Society - it even has a royal charter as far as I know) is trying to get Software Engineering accredited as a proper engineering discipline that needs a proper engineering degree!
Some of the reason we have so many aggressive geeks is that in this world they can be something. If they say they have a plonker as thick as their wrist then we have no way of verifying it! We measure their size by their personality. Just think, if we see a 5ft weed walking towards us we don't act in the same way as if there was a 7ft monster walking our way. In cyber space it doen't matter how big or small you are because other users just don't know.
There will, of course, be a big temptation to take out a lot of frustrations on people in chat rooms etc. when you could do it in real life. Think how sweet revenge must be if you get to drive people out of a discussion through insult alone when thats what happens to you every day in the real world. There is no real way to solve this without some sort of system of accountability in place to reward good behavior and punish bad. Slashdot is an amazing step in that direction. I suppose, with a little work, it could be used all over the place to include aspects like being considerate, polite and all that.
The Chinese government letting people have a certain degree of freedom of information? What is the world coming to. Next people will be saying that they trust the western governments to always act in the best interest of the people rather than polititions and big businesses!
I think I'll have to disagree to this. The NSA is hiring a new INDIVIDUAL to do some very specialised work. This is just like hiring a new employee under a temporary contract for the singular purpose of building 1 peice of software. The NSA will still own the software because all it did was hire an INDIVIDUAL to build it on ITS behalf. It didn't go to someone and buy something that soneone else had already built.
What people should consider is this, if you aren't prepared to pick up a gun and kill the ENEMY face to face, you shouldn't be working for any organisation that will do it for you using something you made/designed/invented.
Also, just because you can't SEE the people you are fighting doesn't mean it's OK to hurt them. The're still suffering!
Doesn't German law try to actively prevent 'cults' from spreading. I have a feeling that this is a side effect of thier anti nazism laws.