It seems pretty obvious that this site is just some dweeb's personal crusade and not a general trend. Is someone fighting some feud with the owner of the site - attempting to/. his server?
Does anyone think that the release of Mac OS X will threaten Linux?
I love the wording, "threaten Linux". Do yourselves a favor and ditch the partisan/platform mentality in favor of pragmatism. I used to be a die-hard Mac developer way back when, but now run a Linux server for my mail and web serving, Windows 98 for my game playing and accounting needs, and a Macintosh Powerbook as my "every day" workstation.
Platform agnosticism has allowed me to get the best of all worlds. Why in the hell would I want to fight through X Windows just to get a crippled desktop system up and runnings? Why in the hell would I suffer through the hell of running my web server off a MacOS 9 machine that'll crash every day?
I think it's fantastic that I have so many solutions available to all of my geeky needs. If Mac OS X "threatens" Linux, and Linux doesn't respond to that threat, then oh well, so goes the dodo. If Linux meets the Mac OS X challenge with innovations of its own, then so much the better for all of us. Competition is a good thing, a thing to be encouraged - not feared.
Good, then we can just filter all traffic from the Cayman Islands. Who'd be hurt by that, us or the people of the Cayman Islands?
When it hurts enough, the people will demand that their government does something about it as well.
Re:This would only benefit spammers
on
Norway Bans Spam
·
· Score: 1
Your point is basically valid, but one thing to keep in mind is that the people harvesting addresses aren't necessarily the same people making the advertising decisions. Address harvesters just want to be able to say that they have lots of addresses. I've received lots of spam advertising "Millions of email addresses".
I'd imagine that these people aren't very worried about getting repeat business, since they're mostly fly-by-night operations.
Re:This would only benefit spammers
on
Norway Bans Spam
·
· Score: 1
Fine. That'll make it all the easier for groups like ORBS and MAPS to isolate spam-friendly IP blocks and mail servers from the rest of the Internet.
I can sacrifice the off chance of receiving something from someone I know from Switzerland if it eliminates all spam sent to my account. Sooner or later, the netizens of Switzerland will demand that their own government take action as well to end the Internet embargo.
Spam is about infringement of privacy and theft of resources. It's an infringement of privacy because your information: your name, address, telephone number, email address, etc. are yours. No one else has a right to catalog you or your habits without your explicit permission. No one has a right to contact you without a reasonable expectation that you desire the contact - and no, starting spam off with "I thought you might be interested in this" should not be good enough.
Spam is a theft of resources because unlike with even junk postal mail (which is already an infringement of privacy), the spammer pays for very little of the cost of sending you spam. The costs of their inordinate amount of bandwidth and storage usage are shouldered by you and me. When you consider that some users actually pay for their bandwidth by the byte, the theft becomes even more obvious - it's the same reason why making telemarketing calls to cell phones is illegal (in the USA).
Yes, it's sad that the government needs to step in. It's also sad that the there need to be cops, the FBI, and mall security dudes. Letting the "Industry" and the Internet regulate themselves just hasn't worked in this regard.
The media could give programmers credit for averting a disaster, but instead it's much easier for them to be cynical and claim that the whole Y2K thing was hype. Makes you really want to step in and help solve a problem before it truly manifests the next time too, huh?
Having personally been responsible for fixing Y2K bugs that would have cost businesses real money, it's disappointing to see/. latch onto the same media bandwagon position that we've seen in other less technically savvy venues.
They completely left out the truly innovative games that were the basis of many of the games that they listed. It's rather telling that most of the games that they mentioned were released in the very late 80's and 90's.
To name just a few classics off the top of my head:
Wizardry (or at very least the Bard's Tale)
Zork
Castle Wolfenstein (The original one, not that namby pamby 3D shooter (which also should have appeared in place of Doom))
Prince of Persia (Tomb Raider was just a gussied up 3D version of the Prince of Persia)
Rogue/Nethack (Was Diablo really more than just a 3D version of those classics?)
The saddest thing is that he doesn't realize that he lost it. He still makes lots of money, so he thinks that his movies are just peachy. In the interviews I've seen, he attributes the EP1 criticism to overly nostalgic lovers of the first movie who wouldn't be happy no matter what. Since many disappointed fans have spent a great deal of time in stating very real reasons for their disappointments, I can only assume that Lucas is in a state of denial.
Nah, the criticisms of EP1 are valid, and not just based upon nostalgic preference.
The reason that everyone likes Episodes 4 through 6
Here's your first mistake - episode 6 sucked. The first half of it was fine, but the Ewoks were absolutely awful and completely changed the feel that made episodes 4 & 5 great. If Lucas had stuck with the original plan of using Wookies instead of Ewoks, everything might have been okay, but by episode 6, Lucas got a little too impressed with the need for comic relief via cutesy characters.
The latest Star Wars films do not have such a luxury, and have always been doomed to be judged with a jaundiced eye
Even a quantitative inspection of, say, episodes 1 & 4 turns up some interesting discrepancies:
Name instances of slapstick in each. Episode four contained almost no slapstick. Sure, the droids moved around in an awkward (maybe comical) way, but that's about it. Episode one relied completely on slapstick and odd-ball special effects characters for its humor: Jar Jar, that flying merchant, the imperial robots, the frog people, etc.
Site clever dialogue in each. Episode four contained lots of little one-liners between Han Solo and Princess Leia, with Luke and Chewie playing the straight men. Episode one was utterly devoid of any clever interplays between the main characters.
Episode 1 was a perfect tribute to the film maker that George Lucas has become: all special effect, cutesy comic relief characters, and a perfect vehicle for kiddie merchandising - with little or no real character development or plot line. Yes, George Lucas is filthy rich, but sadly he reached his story-telling peak with The Empire Strikes Back.
How is your opinion relevant, even perhaps useful, to Slashdot readers - beyond the empathy value that you might generate from a bunch of other teenage geeks or former teenage geeks?
That is, how might your unique formative experiences and insights make this article more than just a fluff piece about some poor tubby geek?
That may sound a bit rude. Maybe it is, but I was actually thinking it, and decided that if he could answer it in a meaningful way, it might say a lot about why I should care about the rest of his responses enough to even look at them.
If a state is losing major revenue from online sales, it'll just try to make up the difference with higher local taxes. That disproportionately hurts poor people who don't have the access to eshopping.
If states would look at this Internet taxation as being a way to even out their tax structures (as opposed to being a big windfall), I'd have no problem with it.
What's really needed is some type of self-adjustable web of moderation.
Every single user could have moderation that affects only them and the people who rely upon them for "advice". A "web of trust" could then be built up (like PGP for all you buzz-word-activated/.ers) that could be used to filter through all the crap.
For example, if I like what Finkployd has to say in a post, I can moderate it up by some measure. My moderation up implies that I both like what Finkployd has to say, and that I see where he's coming from (or at least respect the fact that he put thought into his post). That respect for his post would also imply that I would most likely respect posters (and maybe specific articles) whom he respects.
Basically, I'd be giving some degree of proxy to Finkployd in order to help me to weed through all the posts and posters to find the really valuable ones. If in turn Finkployd has given some degree of proxy to other users, I get the benefit of their judgements as well, albeit to a lesser extent.
After a web of trust is built amongst most of the users, you could also do things like examine it statistically to see who is "the most trusted user of/.". From that, the editors of/. could get a really good idea of what's important to the/. community as a whole.
We don't have an incoming president. We have an incoming puppet who's being installed after an anti-democratic coup.
Yawn. So you say. Funny how half of the country thought that Gore was just being a sore loser, and half the country thought that 'every vote needs to be counted'.
Those half's wouldn't have been divided on party lines, would they?
If you saw the recent election debacle as anything more than just a power struggle initiated by the Democrats and won by the Republicans, you're just being partisan and/or naive.
Additionally, we don't live in a democracy. Get over it.
I was wondering about this apparent contradiction as well, and thought of another way to look at it.
Guns also add an extra damage element to any crime committed. If you rob someone with a gun, the likelihood that they'll be killed is dramatically higher than if you used a knife.
Encryption is about concealing the crime, but doesn't intrinsically add to the damage that could be inflicted.
The ACLU's makes a better analogy by saying that we don't add to the penalty of theft if the thief where's gloves to conceal the crime.
That negative externality is similar to the resources you use on other systems on the Internet,
Uh, no it isn't, since it's not just a question of resource usage, but also a question of permission. I use only publicly available resources and servers that I reasonably expect that I have the owner's permission to use: root name servers, publicly advertised FTP servers, publicly advertised web servers, etc. It's reasonable to assume that networks that provide transport for my packets have agreements to carry traffic to and from my provider in some approved above-board manner.
If you'd actually ask the owners of the resources that I use, they'd most likely tell you that I have their permission.
Do you think that most scanned Internet hosts would say the same? Would half of them okay it? 80%? 30%? I know that I'd deny any such requests, since no one not an employee or a client has any business poking around my machines. Yes, I firewall everything, but that doesn't mean that I should have to any more than I should have to lock the doors to my house.
It probably depends upon what type of agreement you signed with them:
Did they expressly mention in their agreement that you can't run a server?
Did they mention that they examine their own network addresses to look for violators?
Do they have an Internet monopoly in your area that would preclude their use of strong-arm contract tactics?
Do they have supportable evidence that their business is untenable without protecting their bandwidth from network hogs who put up porn servers?
What resellers of bandwidth require of (or impose upon) their users is a bit different than the case of a netizen just scanning for open ports on odd hosts on the Internet.
Yours is a bit more like the question of "Does your landlord have the right to enter your apartment to check to see if you have a cat when you signed a lease that said you'd have no cat and that the landlord would be allowed to confirm that fact?"
The analogy of port scanning to trying to open up doors does not hold true
Sure it does. You're looking to find possible openings in the system. You can't claim that your act is passive, since you actually have to talk to my network interface in order to gain your information - ie. you're not just sitting out on the street counting windows. Your act of (maybe) curiosity takes processor cycles from my hardware, and most likely registers as usage on my network. It's flat-out unasked for and intrusive.
And How can you even try to compare port scanning to rape?
I admit that the word has really strong negative connotations, but it's actually not that bad of an analogy. You said:
I'm sorry, but going with the doors and windows analogy, it is like having a door open, with a welcome sign on it, flashing, and then bitching when someone walks in.
You went from an analogy of just having a door, to the door being "open" with a "welcome sign on it, flashing". That kind of exaggeration of some kind of invitation to you reminded me of the excuses you hear from rapists: Did you see the way she was dressed? She was asking for it. A body like that is meant to be used. etc.
In other words, don't see invitations when there aren't any or because it seems harmless enough to you. Is it reasonable to think that I would want my host to be probed for possible services/openings by strangers? If you asked me first, I would say "no".
I would certainly have a right to ask you not to do it, and expect that you'd respect my wishes, since the host and network are my property.
A lot of this is about expectations. What are the expectations of reasonable people with hosts/networks on the Internet, and what are the expectations of reasonable people poking around on the Internet? The Internet has a long way to go so that the two sides can convey their expectations to one another easily. Maybe it would be appropriate to have some default port that could be queried to get a list of all public services being offered, and their intended uses. I don't know.
Until more of this can be hammered out technology-wise, it would be a great benefit if we defaulted to a mode that respected privacy more than anything else. Let's look for an "opt-in" scenario, rather than just putting up with the default "opt-out" one.
technically, when you go to a web site, that is a single port scan on port 80.
Web sites are store fronts and yard decorations. They're specifically out there for public examination, and normally if I go to a web site, it's because I have a reasonable expectation that the web host expects the intrusion.
Looking at a web site is like smiling at an unfamiliar woman who's dressed nicely. Port scanning is like walking up and frisking her. It's all a question of degree.
Maybe it would be helpful if there were specifically designated interfaces to the public that would demarcate network boundaries and give "expected" access information to interested passers by. That way, you could get an idea of when you might be intruding upon a private network or scanning a host that doesn't want to be probed.
There are lots of grays in the issue. My hope is that we can find ways so that reasonable administrators can make their stance on intrusion obvious, and reasonable net citizens can move around the net in a curious fashion without violating anyone's privacy.
I'm sorry, but why on gods good earth would have ports open, if you don't want people to use them.
Why would I have an unlocked door on my house if I didn't want strangers to just walk on it? Why would I have a telephone if I didn't want some schmuck telemarketer to call me? Why would I have an email address if I didn't want spam?
I'm sorry, but going with the doors and windows analogy, it is like having a door open, with a welcome sign on it, flashing, and then bitching when someone walks in.
So, available access is the same as an invitation for unrequested intrusion? By that logic, people who leave their doors unlocked deserve to be robbed, and women who dress sexy deserve to be raped.
Could we move more toward an "opt-in" world rather than an "opt-out" one? Please?
This port scanning controversy speaks to a larger issue of rationalizing privacy infringement in our society.
The justifications I've seen in this thread for scanning some Internet host/network read just like the justifications that spammers use for filling up our mailboxes and telemarketers use to call us while we're sitting down at dinner:
Spammer: By releasing your email address to news groups, a user relinquishes any right to privacy. If you don't want marketing email, don't post to news groups.
Scanner: By having a host/network on the Internet, a netizen relinquishes any right to privacy. If you don't want your network to be scanned, unplug it from the Internet.
Actually: I should have a right to not interact with other members of a society. If I don't initiate contact with you, don't call my house, send me junk mail, spam my emailbox, ring my doorbell, or probe my network.
Spammer: It's only an email, just delete it if you don't want it.
Scanner: They're only packets, just ignore them.
Actually: You are now using resources that I paid for and that I did not expressly give to you. It is irrelevant that you think that it's no trouble for me to absorb the cost or you think that the cost is negligible.
Spammer1: But if I can't email you, I can't market my service.
Spammer2: But if I can't email you, I can't tell you about Jesus.
Scanner: But if I can't scan your network, I can't satisfy my curiosity.
Actually: Your right to market your products, save my soul, or satisfy your curiosity does not trump my right to avoid your advances. If your advances send me an email alert, chime my doorbell, ring my phone, or set off my network alarms - you're intruding.
Folks, please don't run away from protecting privacy. Support privacy in every way you can. Allowing one type of infringement that you happen to like leaves the door open for all those infringements that you don't like. Close the door on all of them.
Yeah, let me know when I can wonder around your house or apartment looking at stuff.
I won't hurt anything or take anything, I'll just poke around - I love to know what people are doing. Having sex with your SO? Don't mind me, I was just looking.
I agree that the notion of giving a patent to someone for something I have inside of me seems intuitively unfair. But looked at another way, what they patented is the enormous effort that those companies expended in discovering a secret that I could never have discovered on my own.
If there hadn't been a chance for serious financial gain, the sequencing would have taken years longer. Maybe even a full decade.
Would you have set the whole process back that far just so you didn't have to worry about some licensing fee?
Can you see where that same rejection of capitalism would have utterly crippled the advancements of the computer industry over the past 30 years?
Without those computer advancements, we wouldn't have been ready to undertake the sequencing of genomes for decades. Can you see how these advances build upon each other, and if a system like capitalism can help us to build faster, it's probably a good thing?
With that said, I don't think that issuing patents for things should be undertaken lightly. We have to weigh the benefits of encouraging capitalistic interests to make tough discoveries vs the detriment of letting greedy companies squat on obvious discoveries. It's not as black and white an issue as your original post depicted.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems pretty obvious that this site is just some dweeb's personal crusade and not a general trend. Is someone fighting some feud with the owner of the site - attempting to /. his server?
Looks pretty fishy to me.
Does anyone think that the release of Mac OS X will threaten Linux?
I love the wording, "threaten Linux". Do yourselves a favor and ditch the partisan/platform mentality in favor of pragmatism. I used to be a die-hard Mac developer way back when, but now run a Linux server for my mail and web serving, Windows 98 for my game playing and accounting needs, and a Macintosh Powerbook as my "every day" workstation.
Platform agnosticism has allowed me to get the best of all worlds. Why in the hell would I want to fight through X Windows just to get a crippled desktop system up and runnings? Why in the hell would I suffer through the hell of running my web server off a MacOS 9 machine that'll crash every day?
I think it's fantastic that I have so many solutions available to all of my geeky needs. If Mac OS X "threatens" Linux, and Linux doesn't respond to that threat, then oh well, so goes the dodo. If Linux meets the Mac OS X challenge with innovations of its own, then so much the better for all of us. Competition is a good thing, a thing to be encouraged - not feared.
Good, then we can just filter all traffic from the Cayman Islands. Who'd be hurt by that, us or the people of the Cayman Islands?
When it hurts enough, the people will demand that their government does something about it as well.
Your point is basically valid, but one thing to keep in mind is that the people harvesting addresses aren't necessarily the same people making the advertising decisions. Address harvesters just want to be able to say that they have lots of addresses. I've received lots of spam advertising "Millions of email addresses".
I'd imagine that these people aren't very worried about getting repeat business, since they're mostly fly-by-night operations.
Fine. That'll make it all the easier for groups like ORBS and MAPS to isolate spam-friendly IP blocks and mail servers from the rest of the Internet.
I can sacrifice the off chance of receiving something from someone I know from Switzerland if it eliminates all spam sent to my account. Sooner or later, the netizens of Switzerland will demand that their own government take action as well to end the Internet embargo.
Spam is about infringement of privacy and theft of resources. It's an infringement of privacy because your information: your name, address, telephone number, email address, etc. are yours. No one else has a right to catalog you or your habits without your explicit permission. No one has a right to contact you without a reasonable expectation that you desire the contact - and no, starting spam off with "I thought you might be interested in this" should not be good enough.
Spam is a theft of resources because unlike with even junk postal mail (which is already an infringement of privacy), the spammer pays for very little of the cost of sending you spam. The costs of their inordinate amount of bandwidth and storage usage are shouldered by you and me. When you consider that some users actually pay for their bandwidth by the byte, the theft becomes even more obvious - it's the same reason why making telemarketing calls to cell phones is illegal (in the USA).
Yes, it's sad that the government needs to step in. It's also sad that the there need to be cops, the FBI, and mall security dudes. Letting the "Industry" and the Internet regulate themselves just hasn't worked in this regard.
The media could give programmers credit for averting a disaster, but instead it's much easier for them to be cynical and claim that the whole Y2K thing was hype. Makes you really want to step in and help solve a problem before it truly manifests the next time too, huh?
/. latch onto the same media bandwagon position that we've seen in other less technically savvy venues.
Having personally been responsible for fixing Y2K bugs that would have cost businesses real money, it's disappointing to see
To name just a few classics off the top of my head:
All in all, Lucas has lost it.
The saddest thing is that he doesn't realize that he lost it. He still makes lots of money, so he thinks that his movies are just peachy. In the interviews I've seen, he attributes the EP1 criticism to overly nostalgic lovers of the first movie who wouldn't be happy no matter what. Since many disappointed fans have spent a great deal of time in stating very real reasons for their disappointments, I can only assume that Lucas is in a state of denial.
Nah, the criticisms of EP1 are valid, and not just based upon nostalgic preference.
The reason that everyone likes Episodes 4 through 6
Here's your first mistake - episode 6 sucked. The first half of it was fine, but the Ewoks were absolutely awful and completely changed the feel that made episodes 4 & 5 great. If Lucas had stuck with the original plan of using Wookies instead of Ewoks, everything might have been okay, but by episode 6, Lucas got a little too impressed with the need for comic relief via cutesy characters.
The latest Star Wars films do not have such a luxury, and have always been doomed to be judged with a jaundiced eye
Even a quantitative inspection of, say, episodes 1 & 4 turns up some interesting discrepancies:
Name instances of slapstick in each. Episode four contained almost no slapstick. Sure, the droids moved around in an awkward (maybe comical) way, but that's about it. Episode one relied completely on slapstick and odd-ball special effects characters for its humor: Jar Jar, that flying merchant, the imperial robots, the frog people, etc.
Site clever dialogue in each. Episode four contained lots of little one-liners between Han Solo and Princess Leia, with Luke and Chewie playing the straight men. Episode one was utterly devoid of any clever interplays between the main characters.
Episode 1 was a perfect tribute to the film maker that George Lucas has become: all special effect, cutesy comic relief characters, and a perfect vehicle for kiddie merchandising - with little or no real character development or plot line. Yes, George Lucas is filthy rich, but sadly he reached his story-telling peak with The Empire Strikes Back.
How is your opinion relevant, even perhaps useful, to Slashdot readers - beyond the empathy value that you might generate from a bunch of other teenage geeks or former teenage geeks?
That is, how might your unique formative experiences and insights make this article more than just a fluff piece about some poor tubby geek?
That may sound a bit rude. Maybe it is, but I was actually thinking it, and decided that if he could answer it in a meaningful way, it might say a lot about why I should care about the rest of his responses enough to even look at them.
If a state is losing major revenue from online sales, it'll just try to make up the difference with higher local taxes. That disproportionately hurts poor people who don't have the access to eshopping.
If states would look at this Internet taxation as being a way to even out their tax structures (as opposed to being a big windfall), I'd have no problem with it.
What's really needed is some type of self-adjustable web of moderation.
/.ers) that could be used to filter through all the crap.
/.". From that, the editors of /. could get a really good idea of what's important to the /. community as a whole.
Every single user could have moderation that affects only them and the people who rely upon them for "advice". A "web of trust" could then be built up (like PGP for all you buzz-word-activated
For example, if I like what Finkployd has to say in a post, I can moderate it up by some measure. My moderation up implies that I both like what Finkployd has to say, and that I see where he's coming from (or at least respect the fact that he put thought into his post). That respect for his post would also imply that I would most likely respect posters (and maybe specific articles) whom he respects.
Basically, I'd be giving some degree of proxy to Finkployd in order to help me to weed through all the posts and posters to find the really valuable ones. If in turn Finkployd has given some degree of proxy to other users, I get the benefit of their judgements as well, albeit to a lesser extent.
After a web of trust is built amongst most of the users, you could also do things like examine it statistically to see who is "the most trusted user of
We don't have an incoming president. We have an incoming puppet who's being installed after an anti-democratic coup.
Yawn. So you say. Funny how half of the country thought that Gore was just being a sore loser, and half the country thought that 'every vote needs to be counted'.
Those half's wouldn't have been divided on party lines, would they?
If you saw the recent election debacle as anything more than just a power struggle initiated by the Democrats and won by the Republicans, you're just being partisan and/or naive.
Additionally, we don't live in a democracy. Get over it.
I was wondering about this apparent contradiction as well, and thought of another way to look at it.
Guns also add an extra damage element to any crime committed. If you rob someone with a gun, the likelihood that they'll be killed is dramatically higher than if you used a knife.
Encryption is about concealing the crime, but doesn't intrinsically add to the damage that could be inflicted.
The ACLU's makes a better analogy by saying that we don't add to the penalty of theft if the thief where's gloves to conceal the crime.
That negative externality is similar to the resources you use on other systems on the Internet,
Uh, no it isn't, since it's not just a question of resource usage, but also a question of permission. I use only publicly available resources and servers that I reasonably expect that I have the owner's permission to use: root name servers, publicly advertised FTP servers, publicly advertised web servers, etc. It's reasonable to assume that networks that provide transport for my packets have agreements to carry traffic to and from my provider in some approved above-board manner.
If you'd actually ask the owners of the resources that I use, they'd most likely tell you that I have their permission.
Do you think that most scanned Internet hosts would say the same? Would half of them okay it? 80%? 30%? I know that I'd deny any such requests, since no one not an employee or a client has any business poking around my machines. Yes, I firewall everything, but that doesn't mean that I should have to any more than I should have to lock the doors to my house.
- Did they expressly mention in their agreement that you can't run a server?
- Did they mention that they examine their own network addresses to look for violators?
- Do they have an Internet monopoly in your area that would preclude their use of strong-arm contract tactics?
- Do they have supportable evidence that their business is untenable without protecting their bandwidth from network hogs who put up porn servers?
What resellers of bandwidth require of (or impose upon) their users is a bit different than the case of a netizen just scanning for open ports on odd hosts on the Internet.Yours is a bit more like the question of "Does your landlord have the right to enter your apartment to check to see if you have a cat when you signed a lease that said you'd have no cat and that the landlord would be allowed to confirm that fact?"
The analogy of port scanning to trying to open up doors does not hold true
Sure it does. You're looking to find possible openings in the system. You can't claim that your act is passive, since you actually have to talk to my network interface in order to gain your information - ie. you're not just sitting out on the street counting windows. Your act of (maybe) curiosity takes processor cycles from my hardware, and most likely registers as usage on my network. It's flat-out unasked for and intrusive.
And How can you even try to compare port scanning to rape?
I admit that the word has really strong negative connotations, but it's actually not that bad of an analogy. You said:
I'm sorry, but going with the doors and windows analogy, it is like having a door open, with a welcome sign on it, flashing, and then bitching when someone walks in.
You went from an analogy of just having a door, to the door being "open" with a "welcome sign on it, flashing". That kind of exaggeration of some kind of invitation to you reminded me of the excuses you hear from rapists: Did you see the way she was dressed? She was asking for it. A body like that is meant to be used. etc.
In other words, don't see invitations when there aren't any or because it seems harmless enough to you. Is it reasonable to think that I would want my host to be probed for possible services/openings by strangers? If you asked me first, I would say "no".
I would certainly have a right to ask you not to do it, and expect that you'd respect my wishes, since the host and network are my property.
A lot of this is about expectations. What are the expectations of reasonable people with hosts/networks on the Internet, and what are the expectations of reasonable people poking around on the Internet? The Internet has a long way to go so that the two sides can convey their expectations to one another easily. Maybe it would be appropriate to have some default port that could be queried to get a list of all public services being offered, and their intended uses. I don't know.
Until more of this can be hammered out technology-wise, it would be a great benefit if we defaulted to a mode that respected privacy more than anything else. Let's look for an "opt-in" scenario, rather than just putting up with the default "opt-out" one.
technically, when you go to a web site, that is a single port scan on port 80.
Web sites are store fronts and yard decorations. They're specifically out there for public examination, and normally if I go to a web site, it's because I have a reasonable expectation that the web host expects the intrusion.
Looking at a web site is like smiling at an unfamiliar woman who's dressed nicely. Port scanning is like walking up and frisking her. It's all a question of degree.
Maybe it would be helpful if there were specifically designated interfaces to the public that would demarcate network boundaries and give "expected" access information to interested passers by. That way, you could get an idea of when you might be intruding upon a private network or scanning a host that doesn't want to be probed.
There are lots of grays in the issue. My hope is that we can find ways so that reasonable administrators can make their stance on intrusion obvious, and reasonable net citizens can move around the net in a curious fashion without violating anyone's privacy.
I'm sorry, but why on gods good earth would have ports open, if you don't want people to use them.
Why would I have an unlocked door on my house if I didn't want strangers to just walk on it? Why would I have a telephone if I didn't want some schmuck telemarketer to call me? Why would I have an email address if I didn't want spam?
I'm sorry, but going with the doors and windows analogy, it is like having a door open, with a welcome sign on it, flashing, and then bitching when someone walks in.
So, available access is the same as an invitation for unrequested intrusion? By that logic, people who leave their doors unlocked deserve to be robbed, and women who dress sexy deserve to be raped.
Could we move more toward an "opt-in" world rather than an "opt-out" one? Please?
More like wandering by your house and counting the number of windows it has.
If they're doing it from the public street, no big deal, since it's non-intrusive and passive.
Port scanning, however, is much more intrusive. If it's setting off network alarms, isn't it obvious that it's not passive?
This port scanning controversy speaks to a larger issue of rationalizing privacy infringement in our society.
The justifications I've seen in this thread for scanning some Internet host/network read just like the justifications that spammers use for filling up our mailboxes and telemarketers use to call us while we're sitting down at dinner:
Spammer: By releasing your email address to news groups, a user relinquishes any right to privacy. If you don't want marketing email, don't post to news groups.
Scanner: By having a host/network on the Internet, a netizen relinquishes any right to privacy. If you don't want your network to be scanned, unplug it from the Internet.
Actually: I should have a right to not interact with other members of a society. If I don't initiate contact with you, don't call my house, send me junk mail, spam my emailbox, ring my doorbell, or probe my network.
Spammer: It's only an email, just delete it if you don't want it.
Scanner: They're only packets, just ignore them.
Actually: You are now using resources that I paid for and that I did not expressly give to you. It is irrelevant that you think that it's no trouble for me to absorb the cost or you think that the cost is negligible.
Spammer1: But if I can't email you, I can't market my service.
Spammer2: But if I can't email you, I can't tell you about Jesus.
Scanner: But if I can't scan your network, I can't satisfy my curiosity.
Actually: Your right to market your products, save my soul, or satisfy your curiosity does not trump my right to avoid your advances. If your advances send me an email alert, chime my doorbell, ring my phone, or set off my network alarms - you're intruding.
Folks, please don't run away from protecting privacy. Support privacy in every way you can. Allowing one type of infringement that you happen to like leaves the door open for all those infringements that you don't like. Close the door on all of them.
Yeah, let me know when I can wonder around your house or apartment looking at stuff.
I won't hurt anything or take anything, I'll just poke around - I love to know what people are doing. Having sex with your SO? Don't mind me, I was just looking.
I agree that the notion of giving a patent to someone for something I have inside of me seems intuitively unfair. But looked at another way, what they patented is the enormous effort that those companies expended in discovering a secret that I could never have discovered on my own.
If there hadn't been a chance for serious financial gain, the sequencing would have taken years longer. Maybe even a full decade.
Would you have set the whole process back that far just so you didn't have to worry about some licensing fee?
Can you see where that same rejection of capitalism would have utterly crippled the advancements of the computer industry over the past 30 years?
Without those computer advancements, we wouldn't have been ready to undertake the sequencing of genomes for decades. Can you see how these advances build upon each other, and if a system like capitalism can help us to build faster, it's probably a good thing?
With that said, I don't think that issuing patents for things should be undertaken lightly. We have to weigh the benefits of encouraging capitalistic interests to make tough discoveries vs the detriment of letting greedy companies squat on obvious discoveries. It's not as black and white an issue as your original post depicted.
You owe me a beer if you're wrong. :)