Ethics. Hmmm, gotta get a bigger can. Ethic value can be situationally/occupationally dependant. I have written databases for conducting surveilance, including connecting such databases into other databases in order to produce capability that the original db's creator didn't foresee, mainly because he did not know what other databases I had.
Now, this is ethical for me: I work in law enforcement. If a friend told me he was stalking his ex and wanted me to write a DB for him to log it, that would not be ethical.
In both cases, a person's privacy is being invaded. In the former, law enforcement is trying to catch criminals. In the latter, a sicko is trying to spy on a private individual who has done no wrong. Both are individuals.
Now, you can argue "for the benefit of society", but then you can bring in Libertarian-esque arguments that everyone is entitled to full privacy.
Some may suggest that this is why he's such a good chess player.
Hmmm. You're right, food for thought. I'd never heard the psych perspective about killing the male. I thought Kasparov's father died when he was young but that he knew him: not quite the same as never knowning your father, but I can still see the applicability of the theory -- basic resentment at not having known him well enough to your satisfaction.
I think Fischer was just a flat-out nut case. I have read stories of his various antics, he, like Kasparov, falls into the category of "meet once, that's enough."
It's a self-audit. I don't know if they had (at that time) versions of the programs for Mac or OS/2: at that time Dos was still pretty much king.
I don't see what you perceive as a contradiction. The scanning software would have to be OS specific.
I don't know what they'd do about a multi-OS machine. If you had a PC that booted *nix but had FAT partitions that didn't auto-mount (i.e. booting Win from a Start floppy), how would they see them? If they poked hard enough, they could be found, but they wouldn't be casually visible. Likewise, there are similar tricks with FDISK. But I don't think you could do something like that with NT or Win2K.
The basic reason was that it gives you a starting point to know if you're in serious trouble. If you have, like I said, a couple copies of TurboTax that employees installed, you can remove them and you're probably OK. If, on the other hand, you have 30 copies of AttachMate installed: that might be a different matter. So what you're doing is forewarning yourself.
The company I audited had serious problems and didn't know it. They negotiated a settlement, which I'm sure cost them plenty, but by doing it up front I'm sure they saved themselves a lot of hassle. (at one point I think the fine was buying replacement copies for every illegal at full retail plus triple the cost for damages)
If you self-audit and you're clean, you know it and you can tell them to stuff it. If you're not, you might be able to negotiate before things get hostile.
As far as someone like BSA hitting your home, that almost never happens. What is more likely is if you are duping software at home and selling it and someone tips off the manufacturer. Then you're likely to have the police knocking with a warrent and a vendor accompanying them.
The nasty thing about laptops and Office is that MS changed their license, also their license changed depending on who you bought it from!
Back in the days of Office 4, as I recall, if you bought a MS boxed copy, the license said you could install it on a work machine, and if you were the main user of that PC, you could also install it on a home machine.
Sort of a variation of the Borland Paperback Book License.
But if you bought your licenses from ASAP, that particular clause wasn't there!
That clause also disappeared on later editions of Office. We had an awful lot of unhappy users when we told them they couldn't take home CD's and install it at home anymore.
About ten years ago, a former co-worker who was (then) working for a law office called me. One of their clients was being audited by the SPA. The SPA sent them a program on floppy that could be run on every PC: you entered an identifier for that PC, then it searched all local hard drives for EXE's and COM's and downloaded the info into a dBase III DBF. The program then cross-referenced known file names (of SPA members, I'm sure) to produce a report. (I'm sure their current software is somewhat more sophisticated, I'm curious what they'd do with a *nix shop.)
I ran a 'pre-SPA audit' audit for the client and produced a report showing all instances of the software they used (mainly AS/400 terminal emulator stuff) and turned it over to the lawyers. (at something like $50/hr, it was 10 years ago, after all)
I heard later that they were indeed in violation of their licensing, having installed it on more computers than they owned licenses. They coughed up a lot of money to come into license compliance. As far as I know and recall, there were no substantial amounts of illegal software, just the occasional person who brought in TurboTax or something.
A disgruntled former employee called the SPA and reported them, which is the normal source of investigations like this.
I switched ISP's because my Concentric account was getting hammered so bad. I would have stayed with them, but they wouldn't let me have the email account name I wanted: I wanted a longer name with letters and punctuation, but they capped at 8 characters.
So, a new ISP and a non-dictionary word that contains numbers.
I haven't received a single piece of spam on my new account. And you'll notice that my email address here is not readily harvestable. A decent Perl script could probably fix the address, but why should they go to the trouble of that when so many other addresses are (or appear to be) valid.
The filter checking for your name in the To: or CC: is 90%+ effective. I had an account that got slammed regularly and found three tiers of filters to take care of everything.
1. Look for my addr in To: and CC:. If it's not there, put it in my Delete folder.
2. Look for the From: in the list of everyone I receive mail from, basically my full addr list. If it's there, put it in my Inbox.
3. If it survives steps 1 and 2, put it in my Spam box for review. It might be a friend who sent me something anonymously, or it might be directly targeted spam.
is that a standard cable is fine for video games, but if you want really good video, you want to buy a premium cable, such as a Monster cable. Those things get expensive at the lengths you are probably talking about.
Yes, I'm in the snob (but not elitist) category. My DVD is an $800 model and I probably have over $600 in premium CABLES for my home A/V system. But they do make a difference. Get 'em at Best Buy (or local equiv) and take them back if you don't see an improvement.
One thing that I do find adventageous about using the PS/2 as a DVD player is the controller as the remote. The remote for my DVD player died, and because of how the DVD's are programmed, an awful lot of them can't be played by simply plugging in the disc and hitting the Play button. It really ticked me off last night as I bought American Beauty over the weekend and I can't watch it until my new remote comes in.
But at the same time I can't really work with console game systems as I had five operations on my right thumb and I just can't handle the controls.
Bravo! Great definition! I had a nasty experience with a jock. I was a school photographer (a damn good one, too: I've made a good amount of money from it and have had a national magazine cover from it and was proudly kicked out of photography class!) and accidently took a crotch shot of a cheerleader at a game: she kicked at the exact moment I took the picture, it was massively unintentional.
This ass cornered me the next school day and was going to beat me to a pulp if the shot came out, as if the outer panties that cheerleaders wear would show anything. Well, as it happened, the frame in question was #12 on a twelve exposure roll. The shot came out just fine, then my scissors came out and snipped it off. "Gee, I guess the camera misfired."
Saved me a pulping.
The squid teacher of photography, who was in charge of the student art exhibit at the State Fair, kicked me out at the semester break. I transfered back to my original school at the summer break. The next year I entered the fair with four mounted 16x20 B&W's: won two Honorable Mentions, two First Place, and one rosette Best of Show.
I never did thank him for kicking me out of photography!
Unfortunately I didn't know this match was going on, thus I didn't follow it. I remember a match between Boris Gulko and Josh Waitzkin at a US Championship, either Modesto or Phoenix, in which at the mid game both had both rooks and both bishops active, fighting it out in the middle of the board. I watched for a few minutes, looked ahead in my own feeble way, and decided it was a draw. They drew, but a good 10+ moves later. I wish I'd stayed around to watch them analyze the game.
The thing that amazes me at this level of play (the 2400+ rating level) is that these guys can play (and conclude) a game, go into the break room, set it up again and go back and forth over moves that they'd done. I just can't imagine setting up their boards and positions so accurately from memory! I have enough trouble playing through games when the notation is available!
But the number of draws is interesting in any of the high-level matches. When I was working the Modesto Championship, it seemed like there were would only be 1 or 2 decisive games in the first 2 or 3 rounds! These guys are playing to win, but they can see quickly that they are both playing lines that, properly developed, will result in a draw. And they know how well their opponent plays that line and how likely their opponent will make a mistake, thus a draw is the best option rather than slugging it out for another six hours hoping that your opponent, and not you, will make a mistake and give you a decisive edge.
(but if you want to see a lot of draws, watch Roman Dzindachvilli! And no, I can't spell his name.)
Slightly off, at least as far as USCF events are concerned. By the rules, you can't enter a "desktop" program into a match unless YOU wrote the software. The rules are rather specific on that point, which is why you can't enter your P3 with Chessmaster 9billion installed: you didn't write it.
Yeah, and one chess program rated me at 2400! Right!
Bad analogy. A car outperforms humans only in the realm of going fast from point A to point B. A F-16, assuming it's not testing it's ejection seat, by this standard outperforms cars so are cars obsolete? The car requires a human to operate it, as does the jet. It doesn't negate the value and purpose of a man.
Innovations in chess? Unfortunately chess is not really a game for pedestrians. The variations in chess are nigh infinite and new things emerge literally all the time. You can use the "nothing new under the sun" analogy in that they're all probably variations on something that was named a hundred years ago (the Dragon Variation of the Deaf Sicilian Opening) but if the Deaf Sicilian was considered silly and passe BEFORE the Dragon Variation was found, and the Dragon Variation give it new life, then it's considered new and an innovation.
Major Shakespearean scholar, consistently put off title defenses because he was "just finishing" a new edition! Gotta love it! That was back in the days when the World Champion chose the conditions of his defense. And he also gave us the Staunton chess pieces, which are pretty much the standard today.
I meant to mention that you'd have to do something about time pressure and sudden death. The FIDE rules governing computer play suggest giving the computer a different time control to allow for the lag with the human operator, but doesn't have a suggestion.
One thing I found interesting is that the FIDE rules say a computer "can only receive special computer prizes, if any" but doesn't say anything about rating points.
--
Re:Isnt Big Blue world chess champion?(It depends)
on
Kasparov King No More
·
· Score: 1
No. Blue is not a world champion. The match was an exhibition, no ratings points or standings were involved because Blue is effectively an unrated player. I don't know the FIDE rules, but USCF rules state that computers cannot play rated matches against human players.
It was my understanding that the incarnation that beat Kasparov was disassembled shortly after the match. I wish I'd had a chance to spend more time speaking with Joel Benjamin (US GM who worked with the IBM team) about it the last time I saw him but I didn't.
I won't speculate on how it would do against Kramnik. What I want to see is a round-robin against the men who played in the US Championship, three games each. THAT would be its true test: winning when customized against one player is meaningless, beating a large number of the best in tournament conditions (which Kasparov's series against it were not) would be much more significant.
Of course the match conditions would have to be modified from what USCF recommend for a regular or computer match, but that wouldn't be too difficult: human "repeater" player at the board who moves pieces, operates the clock, records notation and has to be there for the entire game; some way to monitor reprogramming between matches; the ability to offer or receive the offer of a draw; moving the terminal between boards between rounds, just like the humans have to move; etc.
I'm curious on one point, though, and it's one of the things I wanted to discuss with Benjamin: did they enter all of Kasparov's games and if so, all or a few? Did the enter anyone else's games, and if so, what was the criteria in selecting them? How much was working plies vs finding weaknesses and patterns in an opponent's position, which are not neccessarily the same thing.
2 years ago, Karpov in Las Vegas at the Nat'l Open and Kasparov in Peoria, AZ at a high school event. Karpov was much warmer, much more friendly and approachable. Kasparov was a cold, arrogant bastard. There's no way I'd want to associate with him.
And congrats to Boris Gulko, once again the U.S. Champion! VERY nice guy. (yes, he's a former Soviet but is now a US citizen, thus he can compete for the US Championship)
There's little doubt about that (read the decision.) Yeah, maybe he had a legit beef with Guinness. But they challenged him, he didn't respond, and WIPO ruled against him.
Life goes on.
If he really wants to have fun, he should incorporate a business as Guiness Beer Sucks and then sue them for the domain. He'd lose, but I'd find it more entertaining.
Steve Jackson sued and won against the Secret Service. He got his equipment back and also got damamges. I don't think the SS has yet apologized, but they ate enough crow to mean something.
The issue was more complicated than just writing the Cyberpunk supplement to Gurps: there were people who knew people who were cracking Ma Bell, it trickled down to Steve, and ultimately saw him raided.
Steve Jackson Games by the narrowest of margins avoided going out of business due to this raid. It had one tremendously good effect, however: it was one of the events that spurred the creation of the EFF.
Hopefully your atty is used to dealing with the Feds.
IANAL, neither am I a cop, but I know lots of them including computer forensic guys. Standard procedure is to inspect your equipment then copy your HD's and examine the copies. Once this is done in a properly documented manner, i.e. the copies are verified as usable, the need for them to retain the equipment is minimal.
Get your attorney to write a letter petitioning the judge who authorized the warrant in the first place to get your equipment back. Stress that you are a student and the equipment is critical to completing your studies. Also point out that the logs should clearly show your accessing the site AFTER the defacement took place. And it wouldn't hurt to volunteer to talk to their forensic people to offer them info on what you looked at to examine the hack. I think everyone who works for the FBI is a sworn officer, so talking to one of their techs is talking to an investigator.
You want to show sincere humility. You are an innocent bystander whose fingerprints were at the crime scene. Suck up, just like you would to a professor. Quiet and humble, even though you were screwed. Getting mad at this point accomplishes nothing excepting guaranteeing feet-dragging when it comes to getting your stuff back.
Oh, and watch your porn collection. Different types of porn are illegal in different areas. For example, "shower" scenes are illegal in my area as is beastiality. Keep your collection at the Playboy level and you're good.
And why is the FBI involved? First, the Yankee's is a multi-million $ business, second, I'm guessing that your school is not in NY state, which makes it an interstate crime.
Idiot. SOP is the hard drives are removed and are never booted: they are copied, then the copies are worked.
You give them ERASE password: disks trashed, they load a new HD from the images, and start again. All you did is cost them an hour or two of time and pissed them off more.
You obviously don't have a clue what a modern forensics lab can do, and the FBI has the best in the country. You would need a huge incindiary device that would take out the building, and it by itself would leave more than enough forensic evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
canopener.open
canofworms.load
grindingnoise.sound.play
Ethics. Hmmm, gotta get a bigger can. Ethic value can be situationally/occupationally dependant. I have written databases for conducting surveilance, including connecting such databases into other databases in order to produce capability that the original db's creator didn't foresee, mainly because he did not know what other databases I had.
Now, this is ethical for me: I work in law enforcement. If a friend told me he was stalking his ex and wanted me to write a DB for him to log it, that would not be ethical.
In both cases, a person's privacy is being invaded. In the former, law enforcement is trying to catch criminals. In the latter, a sicko is trying to spy on a private individual who has done no wrong. Both are individuals.
Now, you can argue "for the benefit of society", but then you can bring in Libertarian-esque arguments that everyone is entitled to full privacy.
Where do you draw the line?
--
Some may suggest that this is why he's such a good chess player.
Hmmm. You're right, food for thought. I'd never heard the psych perspective about killing the male. I thought Kasparov's father died when he was young but that he knew him: not quite the same as never knowning your father, but I can still see the applicability of the theory -- basic resentment at not having known him well enough to your satisfaction.
I think Fischer was just a flat-out nut case. I have read stories of his various antics, he, like Kasparov, falls into the category of "meet once, that's enough."
--
It's a self-audit. I don't know if they had (at that time) versions of the programs for Mac or OS/2: at that time Dos was still pretty much king.
I don't see what you perceive as a contradiction. The scanning software would have to be OS specific.
I don't know what they'd do about a multi-OS machine. If you had a PC that booted *nix but had FAT partitions that didn't auto-mount (i.e. booting Win from a Start floppy), how would they see them? If they poked hard enough, they could be found, but they wouldn't be casually visible. Likewise, there are similar tricks with FDISK. But I don't think you could do something like that with NT or Win2K.
--
The basic reason was that it gives you a starting point to know if you're in serious trouble. If you have, like I said, a couple copies of TurboTax that employees installed, you can remove them and you're probably OK. If, on the other hand, you have 30 copies of AttachMate installed: that might be a different matter. So what you're doing is forewarning yourself.
The company I audited had serious problems and didn't know it. They negotiated a settlement, which I'm sure cost them plenty, but by doing it up front I'm sure they saved themselves a lot of hassle. (at one point I think the fine was buying replacement copies for every illegal at full retail plus triple the cost for damages)
If you self-audit and you're clean, you know it and you can tell them to stuff it. If you're not, you might be able to negotiate before things get hostile.
As far as someone like BSA hitting your home, that almost never happens. What is more likely is if you are duping software at home and selling it and someone tips off the manufacturer. Then you're likely to have the police knocking with a warrent and a vendor accompanying them.
--
The nasty thing about laptops and Office is that MS changed their license, also their license changed depending on who you bought it from!
Back in the days of Office 4, as I recall, if you bought a MS boxed copy, the license said you could install it on a work machine, and if you were the main user of that PC, you could also install it on a home machine.
Sort of a variation of the Borland Paperback Book License.
But if you bought your licenses from ASAP, that particular clause wasn't there!
That clause also disappeared on later editions of Office. We had an awful lot of unhappy users when we told them they couldn't take home CD's and install it at home anymore.
--
It ain't neccessarily a bluff.
About ten years ago, a former co-worker who was (then) working for a law office called me. One of their clients was being audited by the SPA. The SPA sent them a program on floppy that could be run on every PC: you entered an identifier for that PC, then it searched all local hard drives for EXE's and COM's and downloaded the info into a dBase III DBF. The program then cross-referenced known file names (of SPA members, I'm sure) to produce a report. (I'm sure their current software is somewhat more sophisticated, I'm curious what they'd do with a *nix shop.)
I ran a 'pre-SPA audit' audit for the client and produced a report showing all instances of the software they used (mainly AS/400 terminal emulator stuff) and turned it over to the lawyers. (at something like $50/hr, it was 10 years ago, after all)
I heard later that they were indeed in violation of their licensing, having installed it on more computers than they owned licenses. They coughed up a lot of money to come into license compliance. As far as I know and recall, there were no substantial amounts of illegal software, just the occasional person who brought in TurboTax or something.
A disgruntled former employee called the SPA and reported them, which is the normal source of investigations like this.
--
I switched ISP's because my Concentric account was getting hammered so bad. I would have stayed with them, but they wouldn't let me have the email account name I wanted: I wanted a longer name with letters and punctuation, but they capped at 8 characters.
So, a new ISP and a non-dictionary word that contains numbers.
I haven't received a single piece of spam on my new account. And you'll notice that my email address here is not readily harvestable. A decent Perl script could probably fix the address, but why should they go to the trouble of that when so many other addresses are (or appear to be) valid.
--
- 1. Look for my addr in To: and CC:. If it's not there, put it in my Delete folder.
- 2. Look for the From: in the list of everyone I receive mail from, basically my full addr list. If it's there, put it in my Inbox.
- 3. If it survives steps 1 and 2, put it in my Spam box for review. It might be a friend who sent me something anonymously, or it might be directly targeted spam.
Eudora really simplifies this.--
Try Win2K Pro. It supports FAT32, I don't know if you could convert from NTFS to FAT32 but at least NT can coexist to a degree.
--
is that a standard cable is fine for video games, but if you want really good video, you want to buy a premium cable, such as a Monster cable. Those things get expensive at the lengths you are probably talking about.
Yes, I'm in the snob (but not elitist) category. My DVD is an $800 model and I probably have over $600 in premium CABLES for my home A/V system. But they do make a difference. Get 'em at Best Buy (or local equiv) and take them back if you don't see an improvement.
One thing that I do find adventageous about using the PS/2 as a DVD player is the controller as the remote. The remote for my DVD player died, and because of how the DVD's are programmed, an awful lot of them can't be played by simply plugging in the disc and hitting the Play button. It really ticked me off last night as I bought American Beauty over the weekend and I can't watch it until my new remote comes in.
But at the same time I can't really work with console game systems as I had five operations on my right thumb and I just can't handle the controls.
--
Bravo! Great definition! I had a nasty experience with a jock. I was a school photographer (a damn good one, too: I've made a good amount of money from it and have had a national magazine cover from it and was proudly kicked out of photography class!) and accidently took a crotch shot of a cheerleader at a game: she kicked at the exact moment I took the picture, it was massively unintentional.
This ass cornered me the next school day and was going to beat me to a pulp if the shot came out, as if the outer panties that cheerleaders wear would show anything. Well, as it happened, the frame in question was #12 on a twelve exposure roll. The shot came out just fine, then my scissors came out and snipped it off. "Gee, I guess the camera misfired."
Saved me a pulping.
The squid teacher of photography, who was in charge of the student art exhibit at the State Fair, kicked me out at the semester break. I transfered back to my original school at the summer break. The next year I entered the fair with four mounted 16x20 B&W's: won two Honorable Mentions, two First Place, and one rosette Best of Show.
I never did thank him for kicking me out of photography!
--
Unfortunately I didn't know this match was going on, thus I didn't follow it. I remember a match between Boris Gulko and Josh Waitzkin at a US Championship, either Modesto or Phoenix, in which at the mid game both had both rooks and both bishops active, fighting it out in the middle of the board. I watched for a few minutes, looked ahead in my own feeble way, and decided it was a draw. They drew, but a good 10+ moves later. I wish I'd stayed around to watch them analyze the game.
The thing that amazes me at this level of play (the 2400+ rating level) is that these guys can play (and conclude) a game, go into the break room, set it up again and go back and forth over moves that they'd done. I just can't imagine setting up their boards and positions so accurately from memory! I have enough trouble playing through games when the notation is available!
But the number of draws is interesting in any of the high-level matches. When I was working the Modesto Championship, it seemed like there were would only be 1 or 2 decisive games in the first 2 or 3 rounds! These guys are playing to win, but they can see quickly that they are both playing lines that, properly developed, will result in a draw. And they know how well their opponent plays that line and how likely their opponent will make a mistake, thus a draw is the best option rather than slugging it out for another six hours hoping that your opponent, and not you, will make a mistake and give you a decisive edge.
(but if you want to see a lot of draws, watch Roman Dzindachvilli! And no, I can't spell his name.)
--
Slightly off, at least as far as USCF events are concerned. By the rules, you can't enter a "desktop" program into a match unless YOU wrote the software. The rules are rather specific on that point, which is why you can't enter your P3 with Chessmaster 9billion installed: you didn't write it.
Yeah, and one chess program rated me at 2400! Right!
--
Bad analogy. A car outperforms humans only in the realm of going fast from point A to point B. A F-16, assuming it's not testing it's ejection seat, by this standard outperforms cars so are cars obsolete? The car requires a human to operate it, as does the jet. It doesn't negate the value and purpose of a man.
Innovations in chess? Unfortunately chess is not really a game for pedestrians. The variations in chess are nigh infinite and new things emerge literally all the time. You can use the "nothing new under the sun" analogy in that they're all probably variations on something that was named a hundred years ago (the Dragon Variation of the Deaf Sicilian Opening) but if the Deaf Sicilian was considered silly and passe BEFORE the Dragon Variation was found, and the Dragon Variation give it new life, then it's considered new and an innovation.
--
Major Shakespearean scholar, consistently put off title defenses because he was "just finishing" a new edition! Gotta love it! That was back in the days when the World Champion chose the conditions of his defense. And he also gave us the Staunton chess pieces, which are pretty much the standard today.
--
I meant to mention that you'd have to do something about time pressure and sudden death. The FIDE rules governing computer play suggest giving the computer a different time control to allow for the lag with the human operator, but doesn't have a suggestion.
One thing I found interesting is that the FIDE rules say a computer "can only receive special computer prizes, if any" but doesn't say anything about rating points.
--
No. Blue is not a world champion. The match was an exhibition, no ratings points or standings were involved because Blue is effectively an unrated player. I don't know the FIDE rules, but USCF rules state that computers cannot play rated matches against human players.
--
It was my understanding that the incarnation that beat Kasparov was disassembled shortly after the match. I wish I'd had a chance to spend more time speaking with Joel Benjamin (US GM who worked with the IBM team) about it the last time I saw him but I didn't.
I won't speculate on how it would do against Kramnik. What I want to see is a round-robin against the men who played in the US Championship, three games each. THAT would be its true test: winning when customized against one player is meaningless, beating a large number of the best in tournament conditions (which Kasparov's series against it were not) would be much more significant.
Of course the match conditions would have to be modified from what USCF recommend for a regular or computer match, but that wouldn't be too difficult: human "repeater" player at the board who moves pieces, operates the clock, records notation and has to be there for the entire game; some way to monitor reprogramming between matches; the ability to offer or receive the offer of a draw; moving the terminal between boards between rounds, just like the humans have to move; etc.
I'm curious on one point, though, and it's one of the things I wanted to discuss with Benjamin: did they enter all of Kasparov's games and if so, all or a few? Did the enter anyone else's games, and if so, what was the criteria in selecting them? How much was working plies vs finding weaknesses and patterns in an opponent's position, which are not neccessarily the same thing.
--
2 years ago, Karpov in Las Vegas at the Nat'l Open and Kasparov in Peoria, AZ at a high school event. Karpov was much warmer, much more friendly and approachable. Kasparov was a cold, arrogant bastard. There's no way I'd want to associate with him.
And congrats to Boris Gulko, once again the U.S. Champion! VERY nice guy. (yes, he's a former Soviet but is now a US citizen, thus he can compete for the US Championship)
--
There's little doubt about that (read the decision.) Yeah, maybe he had a legit beef with Guinness. But they challenged him, he didn't respond, and WIPO ruled against him.
Life goes on.
If he really wants to have fun, he should incorporate a business as Guiness Beer Sucks and then sue them for the domain. He'd lose, but I'd find it more entertaining.
--
Steve Jackson sued and won against the Secret Service. He got his equipment back and also got damamges. I don't think the SS has yet apologized, but they ate enough crow to mean something.
The issue was more complicated than just writing the Cyberpunk supplement to Gurps: there were people who knew people who were cracking Ma Bell, it trickled down to Steve, and ultimately saw him raided.
The full story is here.
Steve Jackson Games by the narrowest of margins avoided going out of business due to this raid. It had one tremendously good effect, however: it was one of the events that spurred the creation of the EFF.
--
Hopefully your atty is used to dealing with the Feds.
IANAL, neither am I a cop, but I know lots of them including computer forensic guys. Standard procedure is to inspect your equipment then copy your HD's and examine the copies. Once this is done in a properly documented manner, i.e. the copies are verified as usable, the need for them to retain the equipment is minimal.
Get your attorney to write a letter petitioning the judge who authorized the warrant in the first place to get your equipment back. Stress that you are a student and the equipment is critical to completing your studies. Also point out that the logs should clearly show your accessing the site AFTER the defacement took place. And it wouldn't hurt to volunteer to talk to their forensic people to offer them info on what you looked at to examine the hack. I think everyone who works for the FBI is a sworn officer, so talking to one of their techs is talking to an investigator.
You want to show sincere humility. You are an innocent bystander whose fingerprints were at the crime scene. Suck up, just like you would to a professor. Quiet and humble, even though you were screwed. Getting mad at this point accomplishes nothing excepting guaranteeing feet-dragging when it comes to getting your stuff back.
Oh, and watch your porn collection. Different types of porn are illegal in different areas. For example, "shower" scenes are illegal in my area as is beastiality. Keep your collection at the Playboy level and you're good.
And why is the FBI involved? First, the Yankee's is a multi-million $ business, second, I'm guessing that your school is not in NY state, which makes it an interstate crime.
Again, IANAL or a cop, I just know a lot of them.
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Idiot. SOP is the hard drives are removed and are never booted: they are copied, then the copies are worked.
You give them ERASE password: disks trashed, they load a new HD from the images, and start again. All you did is cost them an hour or two of time and pissed them off more.
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You obviously don't have a clue what a modern forensics lab can do, and the FBI has the best in the country. You would need a huge incindiary device that would take out the building, and it by itself would leave more than enough forensic evidence.
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My thought was to get a mag stripe scanner and use one of your credit cards for PW entry. The CueCat would definitely simplify that.
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