The only reason you say all this stuff doesn't exist is because Panther doesn't have a task manager. I don't really know is running in the background of my Mac OS, but I'm sure it's not "nothing."
Uhh.. there most certainly is a "task manager" except it is called "Activity Monitor" instead. Which, frankly, is a far more logical name... but I digress..
You are right, though, that MacOS has many things running at all times. That is true of most all modern OSes.
You just can't blame the users for this crap. That isn't fair at all. Sure, sometimes there's no getting around it--someone was dumb and clicked the wrong thing. Hey, it happens. But if you want to blame the users, I suggest trying to figure out why it is that Mac users seem to have such a small amount of trouble compared to Windows users. Classically, Mac users were/are considered the cream of the dumb simply because they were crazy enough to just want their machine to work and not have to know how it functions under the hood.
If you're going to blame the users and say it is all their fault for clicking on everything that pops up, you'd think the Mac crowd would be just filled with viruses and that Mac machines would be bogged down with useless junk because the users on those systems are far more likely to just click and agree with anything that pops up so that they can get on with what they were doing. Yet that isn't the case at all.
It isn't just a numbers game, either. If it was easier to get Mac users to click and install spyware than Windows users, the spyware people would move there because there'd be an easier target audience. But they aren't. Perhaps because there are less opportunities for spyware to pop up messages that are disconnected with the activity the user is currently engaged in.
Blaming the user and considering a computer license is just plain lame and ignorant. Computers do not need to be the way Microsoft makes them be and there is functioning, commercial proof of that. You need a license to drive a car because cars are dumb and simple devices which are hard to use safely even with all of the built in safety features. Horses don't come with any safety features but you don't need a license to ride one of them. As far as I know, you can even race horses without a license. Why is that? Horses have their own intelligence, that's why. They work with you. You don't control them, you guide them. You create a sort of symbiotic relationship for a time. There are OSes that work like that. MacOSX is sort of like the friendly, easy horse anyone can hop up onto and take for a ride. Linux is more of a feisty wild horse that needs some taming, but once tame, you can count on it for the rest of its life. Windows is the cheap car that slowly degrades, breaks down, and eventually leaves you stranded on the side of the road with no one to talk to.
Why should you have to buy that stuff? You expect your new car to come with door locks, right? Maybe even an anti-theft system? A computer shouldn't be any different. Windows comes with almost no protection (that is changing, yes). Linux distros come with firewalls. MacOSX does, too. With a decent OS you get the locks you'd expect and thus the additional safety you'd expect.
Running a stock Windows computer is like leaving a car in downtown Detroit with no door locks and a big sign which says, "This car is unlocked. Please ignore." You'd have to pay extra to get rid of the sign and extra again to add door locks. And of course, if you didn't get those options from the factory, you'd probably have to spend even more to clean the interior that's all messed up thanks to the 3 homeless guys that moved into your car while you were at McDonalds ordering your super-sized fries and burger.
"The biggest problem with Windows is that Microsoft gave a very powerful OS to Joe Servicepack who has NO CLUE how to get it stable and keep it stable."
So the biggest problem with Windows is the users? The solution is clear, then, get rid of Windows users: have them all buy a Mac or install Linux.
Yes, that is odd. I've had a PowerBook for 2 years now. In that time, my dad has had no end of problems with his Windows machine and I've had to help bail him out over and over. Each time I show him my Mac and say, "You know, you should just get a Mac. I never have these problems. Here's why..." His reaction has always been very dismissive. Apple's are just toys. There's no software I need (like, um, email and Word and Photoshop?). Too expensive to re-buy everything. Etc.
Then the Mac Mini came out. Something about that machine's style has changed his mind. He's now actually considering a Mac. Not so much as a replacement, but as an addition. This is why Apple is going to make a killing in the near future, IMO. Something about the size of it, I think, speaks to people psychologically. It makes it seem less intimidating to get a Mac now. It isn't just the price... it is the idea that you can try one, not spend too much, but also hook it up to your old keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and safely tuck it out of view so you don't have to openly admit to being a switcher. It is just another appliance to be plugged into your already-purchased PC accessories. The timing is near perfect and the form factor is dead on.
I recently got my fiancee a Mac off ebay and she loves the thing. She was up and running very quickly and is having a lot of fun with it. It is easy to use, it is safe to be on the net with it, and she's finding all sorts of fun shareware and freeware out there that has her fascinated. Her old Windows computer was freshly installed Windows 98 at the start of last semester and by this semester the thing was bogged down with general Windows decay. Oddly, Ad-aware claimed she had no adware and the virus scanners said she didn't have a virus--and yet the entire system felt to be about 200Mhz slower than it was at the start of the year (and it was an old box, only about 400Mhz to begin with...). Her new Mac is just a dual 500Mhz G4 but it is lighting fast by comparison and based on my 2 year old PowerBook, which has never had a fresh install, I expect it'll stay that way.
Why use Windows? There are MUCH better alternatives.
There was a lab that I used to hang out in. Being one of the few geeks in the school, I pretty much had run of the place. The teacher who oversaw the lab encouraged creativity and ingenuity. Sometimes he'd get pissed with something I did, but in those cases I just fixed it and moved on. This kind of activity, over a year or so, ended up earning his trust as I would also fix the odd problems with windows/autocad and such that would crop up.
Eventually I became the de-facto admin for that entire lab. During my required study period he would give me a pass to hang out in his lab--sometimes even when other classes were in there. Talk about heaven. I had the run of a computer lab that was networked. It was like being a king.:)
Around my junior year or so, they replaced the computers in the lab (aging 386/486 era machines with DOS, mostly) with shiny new Pentiums running Windows. For a few months they were basically just open and normal Windows machines. I think they even had Internet access. This was, of course, a total disaster. The net was new, then. People didn't have it at home. They downloaded anything and everything. Porn, viruses, music, etc.
The result was a *cough* admin *cough* who ended up being the room almost everyday for awhile. He would spend his time poking around in control panels and "fixing" the computers. Eventually be must have gotten sick of that because they hired a local consulting company to come in to secure them all. Pretty soon the whole place was all passworded up with all these layers of cheap third party locks, etc.
I broke all of them--with full (unofficial) support of the teacher who taught in the room. They had tried to lock the systems down so much that half his programs wouldn't work right anymore. He had endless problems with students just trying to save their completed CAD drawings. I made a lot of those problems go away by circumventing the security, showing him how, and then giving him pointers to try to minimize the visibility of the hole so that other kids and the admin dude wouldn't find it. Not perfect, but it helped.
After some time of this the teacher pulled me aside one day and tells me in a reasonably loud-so-that-others-near-by-can-hear voice that I need to be careful because Mr. Admin is getting pissed that someone keeps getting into his system and he's going to try for suspension of that person when he is caught. Of course nearly every one of his students knew it was me--but they weren't talking. I had helped them all out of jams at some point or other. So after doing the public speech, he later pulls me aside in private and says, "Hey, keep doing what you're doing. I'll make sure they don't do anything to you. Those bastards are making my life such a living hell and they won't listen to my needs that I've given up trying to deal with them. You at least make it possible for me to teach my classes."
So of course after the next round of "security upgrades" I was once again on the job. Eventually I figured the way into the system and changed all the screen savers to be the marquee one and had it read, "Ha ha! I got in Mr. Security Guy!" Hoo boy did the shit hit the fan. I was shielded from it, but the teacher just loved it. The admin dude was pissed. The consulting guy was there almost everyday for like 2 weeks. My teacher would just smile and nod. Eventually they locked it down pretty heavily, but by this point I was a senior and I was graduating early and was out of there.
Those were some good times. Seriously, though, I swear that in this day and age I'd be arrested for information terrorism or some such bullshit. Sure, I made life somewhat difficult for an admin or two, but they brought a lot of it on themselves. They had tried to lock the computers down so much so as to make them almost useless as a teaching tool. And of course Windows itself was so prone to holes, viruses, and other crap that it only made the problem worse. I sure did learn a lot, though. After all, isn't that what school is supposed to be for?
Selling elevates the severity a bit, I'll give you that. (Still, I don't think selling test answers in high school should be punishable by being arrested.)
Just because he *could* have retrieved more sensitive information doesn't mean he did. The article doesn't even hint to that effect, so either it was amazingly well spun or there simply wasn't even an accusation of that in the case. If there was no accusation, no proof, and he freely admitted to only trying to copy the test answers (which it sounds like he did), then how is it right to punish the kid for what he could have done vs. what he actually did?
Let's say someone had, in a moment of rage, decided to stab someone else. They had the knife on them, but when they got in front of their intended victim, they backed off and only managed to cut the person's arm and then run away. Still a crime, yes, but would you charge the criminal with murder simply because he/she *could* have finished the job? No, you'd charge them with, at most, attempted murder. That would carry a whole different set of penalties that are less severe than straight up first-degree murder. What if our potential criminal had been coerced into a fight by the other person? Maybe self-defense was at play here. Now the very same action has an even lesser punishment as there was valid reason for the outburst.
I guess my point is that the punishment needs to fit the crime. I don't see how, just because he *could* have done more damage, that he should be charged and treated as if he did. I'm not saying the kid has a self-defense case here (that was just an example to show how the same action means different things in different contexts), but the point is that judges are supposed to take into account the facts of each individual case, and I just don't see any reason (based on what we know about this case) that the kid should be charged under some computer crime law simply because he tried to steal and sell test answers (and ONLY test answers by the sound of it) in high school. That kind of crap goes on all the time with old-school methods such as stealing copies of test keys or getting the answers from someone in the previous session of the same class and there's established procedures for dealing with it (such as detentions, expulsions, etc.).
Computers do not inherently amplify the severity of a crime.
Was Orwell right and the future basically unavoidable, or did he invent the idea which led some people to read it and think, "hey, this society is a good idea! I wish I'd have thought of this on my own!"
Wrong. These devices are invisible to the OS. They are hardware level. The OS and the computer itself don't even KNOW there's anything there but a keyboard. That's the point of devices like these. You don't need a driver or anything. In fact, detecting one should be impossible unless you assume that whenever a keyboard is unplugged for a moment it is a break-in attempt and the entire system should be locked out. That seems a bit extreme, don't ya think?
Of course one option would be to use laptops. The keyboards are built in (impossible to bypass with hardware without, say, a soldering iron) and teachers could simply close the lid whenever they get up from their desk. When the lid is opened, there'd be a password prompt. Tough to get past that--even on Windows. Require a password on boot, too, just to be safe.
Hey, this kid should get in trouble, yes, but I fail to understand why this is such an amazingly huge deal that it has to involve police and possible jail time. He was looking for test answers and then he tried to sell them and got caught. It appears that was the extent of his crime, too. There's no mention of stealing credit card numbers, account logins, etc.
Yes, he *could* have done that. The article, though, seems pretty clear it was just about the tests. Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime? Does potentially sending a kid to jail and giving him a huge fine fit the crime of trying to cheat on a couple tests in school?
I'm sure there's going to be many claims of "but he could have done more!" Except, by all accounts, he didn't do more. So.. I don't understand the idea of having extensive punishment for something he *could* have done if he had just been a smarter or more patient criminal. This is about as serious as finding a copy of the answer sheet sitting on the desk and copying it down while the teacher is busy somewhere else, isn't it? Isn't that the crime that was alleged and admitted to? Would a kid get charged with "breach of teacher's desk, a class B misdemeanor" in that case these days?
Maybe school has just changed a lot from when I was there. Scary world we live in.
How could they possibly miss my two languages? COW is a revolutionary system allowing for easy entry of bovines to the computer industry. There is a clear human bias in the list presented here.
There's also Whirl which was designed as an advanced and modern Java replacement.
I don't see why these two critical and important languages weren't included. I feel shocked and saddened by the dreadfully low academic standards represented here. Shocked, I tell you.
Not just the RAM.. the bus speed on the portables (and the Mac Mini) is very very slow compared to the speeds of the normal desktop machines. That can make a huge difference in terms of performance. Although, yes, not having enough RAM for OSX is a bad thing too. 512MB seems to be the sweet spot.
I went through a Tetris addiction awhile back--even that game isn't immune to the strange effects of the mind... I had one of those half awake/half asleep dream thingys one night after having spent way too long with the game. In the dream I was playing Tetris the entire night. It was like I could move the blocks with my mind. I saw the entire board there, the blocks would build up as they should, and it would get just as hard as it did in real life. I woke up totally exhausted the next morning.
I imagine they have TV access. Maybe video games. Radio. Books. Etc. Why would computers be any different than any of those other technologies they have to adapt to?
Kids are built to adapt. They come into the world with pretty much a blank slate and continuously discover and adapt to the world as it is. This is exactly what you want them to be doing because otherwise they won't be able to deal with reality later in life. It is their job to do the adapting at this point in life.
They should be exposed to as much as possible in a controlled manner while they are young. The control is there so that they can pace themselves and don't get hurt. It is your job to protect them but also to get them ready for an adult life. Contrary to what most parents want, kids will not be kids most of their lives. The worst thing you can do to them is deny them access to knowledge of key elements of their world. Bring the computers to them early just like everything else. Teach them to pace their lives. Teach them the priorities you believe would be best. Then sit back and let them adapt to the world. They will be infinitely more prepared for the future this way and will be able to adapt to the next big things that come down the line in 25 years when you're sitting on your couch in front of your old-fashioned PC connecting to the Web with all of your other elderly friends while the youngsters moves on to other things.
The very end of the article mentions how "Forest" has setup a company to promote stuff by actually seeding the topsites:
"The topsites don't care where their files come from, as long as no one else has them," he says. Last summer Jun Group dropped a collection of live videos and MP3s from Steve Winwood on the topsites. "We got 2.9 million downloads," says Forest, "and album sales took off."
It is interesting this guy could even find a client for his promotion methods given the outrage towards piracy within the industry.
Freenet is fun. I set up a 10gb permanent node yesterday just for kicks. Too bad it is so freaking slow and hard to use to really be.. well.. useful, I guess.
I don't see why local sponsorship would be unlikely. Ever try, ya know, asking? When I was in high school we had a few projects that required some money (including racing an all-electric vehicle). It took some doing, but when you start asking around, like, "where does your dad work?" and such, you inevitably find that someone's dad or mom is some executive somewhere local and or close to the executive or close enough that an inquiry from them will land the school a nice chunk of money.
We got a few hundred dollars as well as actual materials donated in exchange for stickers on our car. I'm sure you could do something similar. Make it known via local radio stations and you'll get companies more than willing to sign up. Spin it as something safe and entertaining for area teens to do on a saturday night (or whatever) and you might even get some TV time out of it. It doesn't take much. Just a phone call or two to a TV station and radio station and newspaper. They love local interest student-run things. Makes for great fluff stories. It is easier to get attention for this kind of thing than you might expect.
I love this story, but I have to wonder something here... Didn't the C64 come with schematics? I don't remember for sure, but I know that computers of that era commonly came with them or had them available. If that is the case, did she really reverse engineer it or was it most of a... "hmm.. I have schematics, I can understand them, how about I just translate them to an FPGA and see if I can make it go?"
Even if that was the case, she still deserves props for thinking of doing it in the first place and then making it happen. I don't mean to make light of her accomplishments or anything.
Consults Google... Yep, there were schematics available. here is one place to see them.
I remember just a few weeks ago I was watching The Mummy on TV and there's the part where, after the big sand storm, the crashed airplane sinks in the sand. And I remember we sort of chuckled at that, but then I said, "Ya know, I don't see why quicksand would need water anyway. Air would probably work, too." And so, ya know, I just assumed that was known or something or I was completely wrong. And now this article comes out like it is some amazing new invention to use air to create quicksand.
I'm not really sure what my point is, but I felt I needed to share. I'm not sure if I should feel smart, like I reasoned myself to some fancy cutting-edge conclusion, or if this really isn't anything special and it is just someone's attempt to get some more money from the Army through publicity...
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The only reason you say all this stuff doesn't exist is because Panther doesn't have a task manager. I don't really know is running in the background of my Mac OS, but I'm sure it's not "nothing."
Uhh.. there most certainly is a "task manager" except it is called "Activity Monitor" instead. Which, frankly, is a far more logical name... but I digress..
You are right, though, that MacOS has many things running at all times. That is true of most all modern OSes.
If I would have been drinking something when I read that, my screen would be soaked right now...
You just can't blame the users for this crap. That isn't fair at all. Sure, sometimes there's no getting around it--someone was dumb and clicked the wrong thing. Hey, it happens. But if you want to blame the users, I suggest trying to figure out why it is that Mac users seem to have such a small amount of trouble compared to Windows users. Classically, Mac users were/are considered the cream of the dumb simply because they were crazy enough to just want their machine to work and not have to know how it functions under the hood.
If you're going to blame the users and say it is all their fault for clicking on everything that pops up, you'd think the Mac crowd would be just filled with viruses and that Mac machines would be bogged down with useless junk because the users on those systems are far more likely to just click and agree with anything that pops up so that they can get on with what they were doing. Yet that isn't the case at all.
It isn't just a numbers game, either. If it was easier to get Mac users to click and install spyware than Windows users, the spyware people would move there because there'd be an easier target audience. But they aren't. Perhaps because there are less opportunities for spyware to pop up messages that are disconnected with the activity the user is currently engaged in.
Blaming the user and considering a computer license is just plain lame and ignorant. Computers do not need to be the way Microsoft makes them be and there is functioning, commercial proof of that. You need a license to drive a car because cars are dumb and simple devices which are hard to use safely even with all of the built in safety features. Horses don't come with any safety features but you don't need a license to ride one of them. As far as I know, you can even race horses without a license. Why is that? Horses have their own intelligence, that's why. They work with you. You don't control them, you guide them. You create a sort of symbiotic relationship for a time. There are OSes that work like that. MacOSX is sort of like the friendly, easy horse anyone can hop up onto and take for a ride. Linux is more of a feisty wild horse that needs some taming, but once tame, you can count on it for the rest of its life. Windows is the cheap car that slowly degrades, breaks down, and eventually leaves you stranded on the side of the road with no one to talk to.
Why should you have to buy that stuff? You expect your new car to come with door locks, right? Maybe even an anti-theft system? A computer shouldn't be any different. Windows comes with almost no protection (that is changing, yes). Linux distros come with firewalls. MacOSX does, too. With a decent OS you get the locks you'd expect and thus the additional safety you'd expect.
Running a stock Windows computer is like leaving a car in downtown Detroit with no door locks and a big sign which says, "This car is unlocked. Please ignore." You'd have to pay extra to get rid of the sign and extra again to add door locks. And of course, if you didn't get those options from the factory, you'd probably have to spend even more to clean the interior that's all messed up thanks to the 3 homeless guys that moved into your car while you were at McDonalds ordering your super-sized fries and burger.
"The biggest problem with Windows is that Microsoft gave a very powerful OS to Joe Servicepack who has NO CLUE how to get it stable and keep it stable."
So the biggest problem with Windows is the users? The solution is clear, then, get rid of Windows users: have them all buy a Mac or install Linux.
Yes, that is odd. I've had a PowerBook for 2 years now. In that time, my dad has had no end of problems with his Windows machine and I've had to help bail him out over and over. Each time I show him my Mac and say, "You know, you should just get a Mac. I never have these problems. Here's why..." His reaction has always been very dismissive. Apple's are just toys. There's no software I need (like, um, email and Word and Photoshop?). Too expensive to re-buy everything. Etc.
Then the Mac Mini came out. Something about that machine's style has changed his mind. He's now actually considering a Mac. Not so much as a replacement, but as an addition. This is why Apple is going to make a killing in the near future, IMO. Something about the size of it, I think, speaks to people psychologically. It makes it seem less intimidating to get a Mac now. It isn't just the price... it is the idea that you can try one, not spend too much, but also hook it up to your old keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and safely tuck it out of view so you don't have to openly admit to being a switcher. It is just another appliance to be plugged into your already-purchased PC accessories. The timing is near perfect and the form factor is dead on.
I recently got my fiancee a Mac off ebay and she loves the thing. She was up and running very quickly and is having a lot of fun with it. It is easy to use, it is safe to be on the net with it, and she's finding all sorts of fun shareware and freeware out there that has her fascinated. Her old Windows computer was freshly installed Windows 98 at the start of last semester and by this semester the thing was bogged down with general Windows decay. Oddly, Ad-aware claimed she had no adware and the virus scanners said she didn't have a virus--and yet the entire system felt to be about 200Mhz slower than it was at the start of the year (and it was an old box, only about 400Mhz to begin with...). Her new Mac is just a dual 500Mhz G4 but it is lighting fast by comparison and based on my 2 year old PowerBook, which has never had a fresh install, I expect it'll stay that way.
Why use Windows? There are MUCH better alternatives.
There was a lab that I used to hang out in. Being one of the few geeks in the school, I pretty much had run of the place. The teacher who oversaw the lab encouraged creativity and ingenuity. Sometimes he'd get pissed with something I did, but in those cases I just fixed it and moved on. This kind of activity, over a year or so, ended up earning his trust as I would also fix the odd problems with windows/autocad and such that would crop up.
:)
Eventually I became the de-facto admin for that entire lab. During my required study period he would give me a pass to hang out in his lab--sometimes even when other classes were in there. Talk about heaven. I had the run of a computer lab that was networked. It was like being a king.
Around my junior year or so, they replaced the computers in the lab (aging 386/486 era machines with DOS, mostly) with shiny new Pentiums running Windows. For a few months they were basically just open and normal Windows machines. I think they even had Internet access. This was, of course, a total disaster. The net was new, then. People didn't have it at home. They downloaded anything and everything. Porn, viruses, music, etc.
The result was a *cough* admin *cough* who ended up being the room almost everyday for awhile. He would spend his time poking around in control panels and "fixing" the computers. Eventually be must have gotten sick of that because they hired a local consulting company to come in to secure them all. Pretty soon the whole place was all passworded up with all these layers of cheap third party locks, etc.
I broke all of them--with full (unofficial) support of the teacher who taught in the room. They had tried to lock the systems down so much that half his programs wouldn't work right anymore. He had endless problems with students just trying to save their completed CAD drawings. I made a lot of those problems go away by circumventing the security, showing him how, and then giving him pointers to try to minimize the visibility of the hole so that other kids and the admin dude wouldn't find it. Not perfect, but it helped.
After some time of this the teacher pulled me aside one day and tells me in a reasonably loud-so-that-others-near-by-can-hear voice that I need to be careful because Mr. Admin is getting pissed that someone keeps getting into his system and he's going to try for suspension of that person when he is caught. Of course nearly every one of his students knew it was me--but they weren't talking. I had helped them all out of jams at some point or other. So after doing the public speech, he later pulls me aside in private and says, "Hey, keep doing what you're doing. I'll make sure they don't do anything to you. Those bastards are making my life such a living hell and they won't listen to my needs that I've given up trying to deal with them. You at least make it possible for me to teach my classes."
So of course after the next round of "security upgrades" I was once again on the job. Eventually I figured the way into the system and changed all the screen savers to be the marquee one and had it read, "Ha ha! I got in Mr. Security Guy!" Hoo boy did the shit hit the fan. I was shielded from it, but the teacher just loved it. The admin dude was pissed. The consulting guy was there almost everyday for like 2 weeks. My teacher would just smile and nod. Eventually they locked it down pretty heavily, but by this point I was a senior and I was graduating early and was out of there.
Those were some good times. Seriously, though, I swear that in this day and age I'd be arrested for information terrorism or some such bullshit. Sure, I made life somewhat difficult for an admin or two, but they brought a lot of it on themselves. They had tried to lock the computers down so much so as to make them almost useless as a teaching tool. And of course Windows itself was so prone to holes, viruses, and other crap that it only made the problem worse. I sure did learn a lot, though. After all, isn't that what school is supposed to be for?
Selling elevates the severity a bit, I'll give you that. (Still, I don't think selling test answers in high school should be punishable by being arrested.)
Just because he *could* have retrieved more sensitive information doesn't mean he did. The article doesn't even hint to that effect, so either it was amazingly well spun or there simply wasn't even an accusation of that in the case. If there was no accusation, no proof, and he freely admitted to only trying to copy the test answers (which it sounds like he did), then how is it right to punish the kid for what he could have done vs. what he actually did?
Let's say someone had, in a moment of rage, decided to stab someone else. They had the knife on them, but when they got in front of their intended victim, they backed off and only managed to cut the person's arm and then run away. Still a crime, yes, but would you charge the criminal with murder simply because he/she *could* have finished the job? No, you'd charge them with, at most, attempted murder. That would carry a whole different set of penalties that are less severe than straight up first-degree murder. What if our potential criminal had been coerced into a fight by the other person? Maybe self-defense was at play here. Now the very same action has an even lesser punishment as there was valid reason for the outburst.
I guess my point is that the punishment needs to fit the crime. I don't see how, just because he *could* have done more damage, that he should be charged and treated as if he did. I'm not saying the kid has a self-defense case here (that was just an example to show how the same action means different things in different contexts), but the point is that judges are supposed to take into account the facts of each individual case, and I just don't see any reason (based on what we know about this case) that the kid should be charged under some computer crime law simply because he tried to steal and sell test answers (and ONLY test answers by the sound of it) in high school. That kind of crap goes on all the time with old-school methods such as stealing copies of test keys or getting the answers from someone in the previous session of the same class and there's established procedures for dealing with it (such as detentions, expulsions, etc.).
Computers do not inherently amplify the severity of a crime.
Was Orwell right and the future basically unavoidable, or did he invent the idea which led some people to read it and think, "hey, this society is a good idea! I wish I'd have thought of this on my own!"
:P
Which would be worse?
Do the consequences of cheating on a test in school involve possible jail time these days? Wow...
Wrong. These devices are invisible to the OS. They are hardware level. The OS and the computer itself don't even KNOW there's anything there but a keyboard. That's the point of devices like these. You don't need a driver or anything. In fact, detecting one should be impossible unless you assume that whenever a keyboard is unplugged for a moment it is a break-in attempt and the entire system should be locked out. That seems a bit extreme, don't ya think?
Of course one option would be to use laptops. The keyboards are built in (impossible to bypass with hardware without, say, a soldering iron) and teachers could simply close the lid whenever they get up from their desk. When the lid is opened, there'd be a password prompt. Tough to get past that--even on Windows. Require a password on boot, too, just to be safe.
Hey, this kid should get in trouble, yes, but I fail to understand why this is such an amazingly huge deal that it has to involve police and possible jail time. He was looking for test answers and then he tried to sell them and got caught. It appears that was the extent of his crime, too. There's no mention of stealing credit card numbers, account logins, etc.
Yes, he *could* have done that. The article, though, seems pretty clear it was just about the tests. Shouldn't the punishment fit the crime? Does potentially sending a kid to jail and giving him a huge fine fit the crime of trying to cheat on a couple tests in school?
I'm sure there's going to be many claims of "but he could have done more!" Except, by all accounts, he didn't do more. So.. I don't understand the idea of having extensive punishment for something he *could* have done if he had just been a smarter or more patient criminal. This is about as serious as finding a copy of the answer sheet sitting on the desk and copying it down while the teacher is busy somewhere else, isn't it? Isn't that the crime that was alleged and admitted to? Would a kid get charged with "breach of teacher's desk, a class B misdemeanor" in that case these days?
Maybe school has just changed a lot from when I was there. Scary world we live in.
I didn't.
How could they possibly miss my two languages? COW is a revolutionary system allowing for easy entry of bovines to the computer industry. There is a clear human bias in the list presented here.
There's also Whirl which was designed as an advanced and modern Java replacement.
I don't see why these two critical and important languages weren't included. I feel shocked and saddened by the dreadfully low academic standards represented here. Shocked, I tell you.
Not just the RAM.. the bus speed on the portables (and the Mac Mini) is very very slow compared to the speeds of the normal desktop machines. That can make a huge difference in terms of performance. Although, yes, not having enough RAM for OSX is a bad thing too. 512MB seems to be the sweet spot.
I went through a Tetris addiction awhile back--even that game isn't immune to the strange effects of the mind... I had one of those half awake/half asleep dream thingys one night after having spent way too long with the game. In the dream I was playing Tetris the entire night. It was like I could move the blocks with my mind. I saw the entire board there, the blocks would build up as they should, and it would get just as hard as it did in real life. I woke up totally exhausted the next morning.
I imagine they have TV access. Maybe video games. Radio. Books. Etc. Why would computers be any different than any of those other technologies they have to adapt to?
Kids are built to adapt. They come into the world with pretty much a blank slate and continuously discover and adapt to the world as it is. This is exactly what you want them to be doing because otherwise they won't be able to deal with reality later in life. It is their job to do the adapting at this point in life.
They should be exposed to as much as possible in a controlled manner while they are young. The control is there so that they can pace themselves and don't get hurt. It is your job to protect them but also to get them ready for an adult life. Contrary to what most parents want, kids will not be kids most of their lives. The worst thing you can do to them is deny them access to knowledge of key elements of their world. Bring the computers to them early just like everything else. Teach them to pace their lives. Teach them the priorities you believe would be best. Then sit back and let them adapt to the world. They will be infinitely more prepared for the future this way and will be able to adapt to the next big things that come down the line in 25 years when you're sitting on your couch in front of your old-fashioned PC connecting to the Web with all of your other elderly friends while the youngsters moves on to other things.
The very end of the article mentions how "Forest" has setup a company to promote stuff by actually seeding the topsites:
"The topsites don't care where their files come from, as long as no one else has them," he says. Last summer Jun Group dropped a collection of live videos and MP3s from Steve Winwood on the topsites. "We got 2.9 million downloads," says Forest, "and album sales took off."
It is interesting this guy could even find a client for his promotion methods given the outrage towards piracy within the industry.
Freenet is fun. I set up a 10gb permanent node yesterday just for kicks. Too bad it is so freaking slow and hard to use to really be.. well.. useful, I guess.
I don't see why local sponsorship would be unlikely. Ever try, ya know, asking? When I was in high school we had a few projects that required some money (including racing an all-electric vehicle). It took some doing, but when you start asking around, like, "where does your dad work?" and such, you inevitably find that someone's dad or mom is some executive somewhere local and or close to the executive or close enough that an inquiry from them will land the school a nice chunk of money.
We got a few hundred dollars as well as actual materials donated in exchange for stickers on our car. I'm sure you could do something similar. Make it known via local radio stations and you'll get companies more than willing to sign up. Spin it as something safe and entertaining for area teens to do on a saturday night (or whatever) and you might even get some TV time out of it. It doesn't take much. Just a phone call or two to a TV station and radio station and newspaper. They love local interest student-run things. Makes for great fluff stories. It is easier to get attention for this kind of thing than you might expect.
I love this story, but I have to wonder something here... Didn't the C64 come with schematics? I don't remember for sure, but I know that computers of that era commonly came with them or had them available. If that is the case, did she really reverse engineer it or was it most of a... "hmm.. I have schematics, I can understand them, how about I just translate them to an FPGA and see if I can make it go?"
Even if that was the case, she still deserves props for thinking of doing it in the first place and then making it happen. I don't mean to make light of her accomplishments or anything.
Consults Google... Yep, there were schematics available. here is one place to see them.
I remember just a few weeks ago I was watching The Mummy on TV and there's the part where, after the big sand storm, the crashed airplane sinks in the sand. And I remember we sort of chuckled at that, but then I said, "Ya know, I don't see why quicksand would need water anyway. Air would probably work, too." And so, ya know, I just assumed that was known or something or I was completely wrong. And now this article comes out like it is some amazing new invention to use air to create quicksand.
I'm not really sure what my point is, but I felt I needed to share. I'm not sure if I should feel smart, like I reasoned myself to some fancy cutting-edge conclusion, or if this really isn't anything special and it is just someone's attempt to get some more money from the Army through publicity...
First I cannot believe the author is advocating bloaty, useless things like side-bars?
I don't know... can you believe it or not?
No, that's backwards. It was most certainly Return to Zork. Nemesis came a year or two later.