>> ...he was merely scanning, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.a
I think many people would find uninvited scanning to be intrusive and a privacy violation. Certain, many here would be quite angered if Microsoft, for example, periodically scanned the net for open shares.
In any case, the original poster claimed he was providing a service. Quietly finding open shares isn't much of a service, so I assume he plans to use those shares for something else.
Paying someone for services provided does not give you rights to their property. Paying my doctor bill doesn't mean I have a right to borrow his boat for a spin in the bay.
Many self-desciribed geeks seem to think any network that they can get into is, therefore, public. That's not true. Private networks are private property.
It's the college's private network, not his. He uses the network because the college grants him the privilege. They can withdraw that privilege. He has no "right" to use it.
...but, would your opinion about the scanning change if Microsoft was doing it? Or the college itself?
The shares are open to the network but they are not legally open to people. I left my back door open this evening when I took out the trash, but that doesn't give you a right to enter my house through that open door and rifle through my unlocked desk drawers.
Can you or anyone cite a legal precedent that states someone who has open shares on a PC in their possession retains no right to the privacy of those shares, and that that data on those shares is legally accessible by anyone who can get to it?
Thanks for proving my point. By telling us that it's important for you to see yourself as part of some larger group -- whose commonality consists of posting to a commercial website and hiding behind fake names -- you've just highlighted prime cult behavior.
So, tell me again the difference between publishing an opinion on a website called Slashdot versus some other web log.
Seems to me/. is a perfect example of a multi-authored weblog.
The antipathy toward weblogs, I'm sure, has little to due with honest and considered opinion and a lot more to do with the members of the Slashdot boy geek fetish cult once again proving their tribal membership by rising in unthinking conformity to express their distaste for anything that's different.
Apologies for coming in late, but I must ask: Why would a professional design shop, lacking any interest in or motivation by free software ideology, drop Photoshop for Gimp, and then expend additional resources to hire programmers to re-code Gimp to give themselves the capabilities they already with Photoshop and the other commercial product they were using? This just doesn't make any business sense at all. In addition, if their programmers modified Gimp to provide the shop with a competitive advantage, that advantage would be fleeting because the license would require them to share the code.
Open source and free software will not succeed by virtue of the ideology that engendered it, but by producing software that is better than the competition.
People have a perfect right to say and publish what they want, when they want, how they want. You, in turn, have a perfect right to ignore them. Get over it. What's a weblog to you, anyway?
BTW, there's moderation on Slashdot because the proprietors don't have the courage to hire real editors.
Your correct that writing content is the entire point of a weblog, which is why creating one should be as simple as possible. Someone interested in writing -- not computing -- should have a tool that is as simple as possible. Something that lets good writers with something to say get on the web without jumping a computer skills barrier.
Slashdotters often make the mistake of assuming more knowledge and experience on the part of mainstream computer users than is probably justified.(Hence, the frequent arrogant insults about "lusers".) Blogger requires you to understand that you must find space on a server to host your files. That requires you to understand the notion of clients and servers. MoveableType requires an awareness of what "code" is and an ability to successfully install and edit code. Radio comes close to being simple and intuitive, but drags you into the weeds as soon as you want to tweak it. ("What's XML?")
Blogging is simple from the perspective of/. readers, for whom learning is often more important than doing but/. readers don't represent mainstream computer users.
Surveillance of public places is very common in the UK, and has been for years.
In the U.S., private sector surveillance has been very common for years, too. At work, in hotel lobbies, restaurants, stores, malls, sports facilities, toll gates, etc. Look around, odds are you'll see a camera.
People instinctively resent surveillance, for obvious reasons. No one likes being "spied on". A court challenge, however, would first need to prove you have a right to expect privacy in a public place. That's very unlikely to happen.
They can track you, but why would they go to the expense of legal action against one individual? (Beyond blocking access to your online account?) What they're more likely to do if they catch you blocking ads is to use that as an excuse: "Sorry, we see you've broken the terms of our agreement, so we can no longer keep your credit card interest below our maximum rate."
I don't relish the idea of being watched in public anymore than the next person. But, I doubt using technology to observe people in public places is an invasion of privacy. (Private bathrooms are another matter.) Public seems to me the antithesis of private.
In principle, how is this different than getting a glance from a cop on the beat? Yes, you can see the cop, and you probably won't see the cameras. But, so long as notice is given that an area is under surveillance, the legalities are probably handled.
Another precedent: Police checking for speeders. They watch us; odds are we don't see them.
My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20. My second was a Commodore 64. The VIC and the C-64 both cost under $300; a 1541 floppy drive for the C-64 cost a few hundred more. And Commodore was putting the things in shops everywhere -- you could buy them at Toy-R-Us!
Meanwhile, Apple ]['s were selling for about 5 times more.
Nuts to you. Here are 3 cliches, in sequence, that apply here: 1. Come the revolution, all will be better.
2. Been there, done that.
3. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
You're mechaniclally spouting nonsense you've heard from some other embittered soul . It is as if you really expect everyone else to automatically agree with your personal moral pronouncements. When you realize that isn't going to happen, you decide you're still right and the only way to fix things is violence. You're no different than that mythical plutocracy that animates your anger.
>> You move the mouse up, and the arrow goes up. You press the left mouse button and it does it's normal thing. You press the right mouse button and it does something special.
This is not intuitive. There is no way to know that the thing called a mouse has anything to do with the arrow on the screen until someone explains the connection betwen the two seemingly disconnected pieces.
Years ago, I had a chance to introduce computers to a group of people who, while literate and educated by their community's standards, ignored both the mouse and the mouse cursor until someone noticed and explained things. While using a word processor, they continued to attempt to type one page at a time, as on a typewriter.
That sort of behavior has nothing at all to do with someone's intelligence or skill level. It has everything to do with bad assumptions made by developers, interface designers, and marketers.
Making something intutively easy to use does not dumb it down. Granted, there's a lot of dumbing down that poses as UI design these days, but it doesn't need to be that way. All the capabilities of a computer should be available from a well-designed and easy to use interface.
Your last graf seems to imply that only techies have a right to use computers as tools, that mere users can only use them as playthings. I can't begin to tell you how much I disagree with that, or the notion that techies are some sort of elite priesthood ordained with the wisdom to do what others cannot.
An intuitive interface is one that, ideally, requires no training, no learning, no manuals. Your equation of failure to intuit unintuitive and poorly designed tools with mental defects is just one more indication that many in the tech community are contemptuous of users. Computers are tools for everyone, not just toys for techies.
For someone who has never seem a computer, a GUI is no more intuitive than the inside of a car is to someone who has never seen a car. (Think about it: If you'd never seen a car, would you even know how to start it?)
Spork, if your goal is to convince people that counterfeiting digital media is ethically correct, I'm not interested. Frankly, I don't care what people think about it.
What I do care about is preventing the passage of a new legislation that restricts traditional fair use even more than the DMCA. I fear the passage of legislation that mandates strict control of Internet use via required hardware controls and enforced ISP regulation. (Imagine a day when only "approved" hardware can legally access the net and when access providers are required to block unapproved hardware. Imagine a day when certain packets cannot be addressed to your IP address.)
Preventing all that comes down to old fashioned political effort in Washington, plus help from folks like Lessig, the EFF, and several new organizations that have sprung up. It is a matter of getting legislation drafted, getting it to a vote, and lobbying, campaigning and hard work. Nothing the P2P networks or the so-called community can do will change that.
All this will be especially difficult because copyright and intellectual property issues are below the radar of almost everyone in the U.S. Unless you belong to the small minority who have a personal or financial investment in filesharing, copyright and IP are just boring lawyer mumbo-jumbo.
Pseudo-metaphysical postings on/. that attempt to make the case for the morality/ethicality/legality of counterfeiting and unauthorized reproduction damage do not help. Coupled with the frequent vitrolic and unreasoned responses from the True Believers, they only serve to provide more evidence to the RIAA and others that the real goal of this "community" is the elimination of Constitutionally mandated copyright protection (note that eliminating copyright in the U.S. requires a Constitutional amendment), the end of IP, and the destruction of digital media commerce.
If I was an RIAA lobbyist testifying on the Hill, I'd show up with a stack of/. postings like yours.
Slashdot Mirror
If you do business in any country, your business in that country is subject to the laws of that country. Been that way for a l-o-n-g time, folks.
>> ...he was merely scanning, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.a
I think many people would find uninvited scanning to be intrusive and a privacy violation. Certain, many here would be quite angered if Microsoft, for example, periodically scanned the net for open shares.
In any case, the original poster claimed he was providing a service. Quietly finding open shares isn't much of a service, so I assume he plans to use those shares for something else.
Paying someone for services provided does not give you rights to their property. Paying my doctor bill doesn't mean I have a right to borrow his boat for a spin in the bay.
Many self-desciribed geeks seem to think any network that they can get into is, therefore, public. That's not true. Private networks are private property.
It's the college's private network, not his. He uses the network because the college grants him the privilege. They can withdraw that privilege. He has no "right" to use it.
...but, would your opinion about the scanning change if Microsoft was doing it? Or the college itself?
The shares are open to the network but they are not legally open to people. I left my back door open this evening when I took out the trash, but that doesn't give you a right to enter my house through that open door and rifle through my unlocked desk drawers.
Can you or anyone cite a legal precedent that states someone who has open shares on a PC in their possession retains no right to the privacy of those shares, and that that data on those shares is legally accessible by anyone who can get to it?
>> ...We all agree ...
Thanks for proving my point. By telling us that it's important for you to see yourself as part of some larger group -- whose commonality consists of posting to a commercial website and hiding behind fake names -- you've just highlighted prime cult behavior.
So, tell me again the difference between publishing an opinion on a website called Slashdot versus some other web log.
/. is a perfect example of a multi-authored weblog.
Seems to me
The antipathy toward weblogs, I'm sure, has little to due with honest and considered opinion and a lot more to do with the members of the Slashdot boy geek fetish cult once again proving their tribal membership by rising in unthinking conformity to express their distaste for anything that's different.
Wouldn't it be easier just to write better software than to try to change the world?
Apologies for coming in late, but I must ask: Why would a professional design shop, lacking any interest in or motivation by free software ideology, drop Photoshop for Gimp, and then expend additional resources to hire programmers to re-code Gimp to give themselves the capabilities they already with Photoshop and the other commercial product they were using? This just doesn't make any business sense at all. In addition, if their programmers modified Gimp to provide the shop with a competitive advantage, that advantage would be fleeting because the license would require them to share the code.
Open source and free software will not succeed by virtue of the ideology that engendered it, but by producing software that is better than the competition.
People have a perfect right to say and publish what they want, when they want, how they want. You, in turn, have a perfect right to ignore them. Get over it. What's a weblog to you, anyway?
BTW, there's moderation on Slashdot because the proprietors don't have the courage to hire real editors.
If you don't like it, don't read it.
Badmouthing weblogs is like badmouthing books, and makes about as much sense.
Your correct that writing content is the entire point of a weblog, which is why creating one should be as simple as possible. Someone interested in writing -- not computing -- should have a tool that is as simple as possible. Something that lets good writers with something to say get on the web without jumping a computer skills barrier.
/. readers, for whom learning is often more important than doing but /. readers don't represent mainstream computer users.
Slashdotters often make the mistake of assuming more knowledge and experience on the part of mainstream computer users than is probably justified.(Hence, the frequent arrogant insults about "lusers".) Blogger requires you to understand that you must find space on a server to host your files. That requires you to understand the notion of clients and servers. MoveableType requires an awareness of what "code" is and an ability to successfully install and edit code. Radio comes close to being simple and intuitive, but drags you into the weeds as soon as you want to tweak it. ("What's XML?")
Blogging is simple from the perspective of
So, how did you learn HTML? By osmosis?
How did you learn to move files to someone else's server? By osmosis?
How did you learn to use an editor? By osmosis?
How did you learn to register a domain? By osmosis?
Sounds like your one of those folks who think the web belongs only to people who write Perl and use Emacs.
Writing a weblog is just that: an exercise in writing, not a playground for techies.
Surveillance of public places is very common in the UK, and has been for years.
In the U.S., private sector surveillance has been very common for years, too. At work, in hotel lobbies, restaurants, stores, malls, sports facilities, toll gates, etc. Look around, odds are you'll see a camera.
People instinctively resent surveillance, for obvious reasons. No one likes being "spied on". A court challenge, however, would first need to prove you have a right to expect privacy in a public place. That's very unlikely to happen.
They can track you, but why would they go to the expense of legal action against one individual? (Beyond blocking access to your online account?) What they're more likely to do if they catch you blocking ads is to use that as an excuse: "Sorry, we see you've broken the terms of our agreement, so we can no longer keep your credit card interest below our maximum rate."
I don't relish the idea of being watched in public anymore than the next person. But, I doubt using technology to observe people in public places is an invasion of privacy. (Private bathrooms are another matter.) Public seems to me the antithesis of private.
In principle, how is this different than getting a glance from a cop on the beat? Yes, you can see the cop, and you probably won't see the cameras. But, so long as notice is given that an area is under surveillance, the legalities are probably handled.
Another precedent: Police checking for speeders. They watch us; odds are we don't see them.
Sorry. "Graf" is newspaper speak for "paragraph".
Great post and great question!
My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20. My second was a Commodore 64. The VIC and the C-64 both cost under $300; a 1541 floppy drive for the C-64 cost a few hundred more. And Commodore was putting the things in shops everywhere -- you could buy them at Toy-R-Us!
Meanwhile, Apple ]['s were selling for about 5 times more.
Nuts to you. Here are 3 cliches, in sequence, that apply here:
1. Come the revolution, all will be better.
2. Been there, done that.
3. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
You're mechaniclally spouting nonsense you've heard from some other embittered soul . It is as if you really expect everyone else to automatically agree with your personal moral pronouncements. When you realize that isn't going to happen, you decide you're still right and the only way to fix things is violence. You're no different than that mythical plutocracy that animates your anger.
>> You move the mouse up, and the arrow goes up. You press the left mouse button and it does it's normal thing. You press the right mouse button and it does something special.
This is not intuitive. There is no way to know that the thing called a mouse has anything to do with the arrow on the screen until someone explains the connection betwen the two seemingly disconnected pieces.
Years ago, I had a chance to introduce computers to a group of people who, while literate and educated by their community's standards, ignored both the mouse and the mouse cursor until someone noticed and explained things. While using a word processor, they continued to attempt to type one page at a time, as on a typewriter.
That sort of behavior has nothing at all to do with someone's intelligence or skill level. It has everything to do with bad assumptions made by developers, interface designers, and marketers.
Making something intutively easy to use does not dumb it down. Granted, there's a lot of dumbing down that poses as UI design these days, but it doesn't need to be that way. All the capabilities of a computer should be available from a well-designed and easy to use interface.
Your last graf seems to imply that only techies have a right to use computers as tools, that mere users can only use them as playthings. I can't begin to tell you how much I disagree with that, or the notion that techies are some sort of elite priesthood ordained with the wisdom to do what others cannot.
Remind me to avoid hiring or working with you.
An intuitive interface is one that, ideally, requires no training, no learning, no manuals. Your equation of failure to intuit unintuitive and poorly designed tools with mental defects is just one more indication that many in the tech community are contemptuous of users. Computers are tools for everyone, not just toys for techies.
Good post. My experience mirrors yours.
For someone who has never seem a computer, a GUI is no more intuitive than the inside of a car is to someone who has never seen a car. (Think about it: If you'd never seen a car, would you even know how to start it?)
Yes, but Perl and the kernel aren't UI issues.
Building the world's slickest transmission won't do the driver any good if you forget to show him how to find third gear.
Folks who want to see Linux leave the server ghetto should take some of these observations to heart.
Spork, if your goal is to convince people that counterfeiting digital media is ethically correct, I'm not interested. Frankly, I don't care what people think about it.
/. that attempt to make the case for the morality/ethicality/legality of counterfeiting and unauthorized reproduction damage do not help. Coupled with the frequent vitrolic and unreasoned responses from the True Believers, they only serve to provide more evidence to the RIAA and others that the real goal of this "community" is the elimination of Constitutionally mandated copyright protection (note that eliminating copyright in the U.S. requires a Constitutional amendment), the end of IP, and the destruction of digital media commerce.
/. postings like yours.
What I do care about is preventing the passage of a new legislation that restricts traditional fair use even more than the DMCA. I fear the passage of legislation that mandates strict control of Internet use via required hardware controls and enforced ISP regulation. (Imagine a day when only "approved" hardware can legally access the net and when access providers are required to block unapproved hardware. Imagine a day when certain packets cannot be addressed to your IP address.)
Preventing all that comes down to old fashioned political effort in Washington, plus help from folks like Lessig, the EFF, and several new organizations that have sprung up. It is a matter of getting legislation drafted, getting it to a vote, and lobbying, campaigning and hard work. Nothing the P2P networks or the so-called community can do will change that.
All this will be especially difficult because copyright and intellectual property issues are below the radar of almost everyone in the U.S. Unless you belong to the small minority who have a personal or financial investment in filesharing, copyright and IP are just boring lawyer mumbo-jumbo.
Pseudo-metaphysical postings on
If I was an RIAA lobbyist testifying on the Hill, I'd show up with a stack of
Why should anyone stoop so low as to insult you, when you're doing such a fine job of it yourself?