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User: Matt+-+Duke+'05

Matt+-+Duke+'05's activity in the archive.

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  1. Re:Totally incorrect on Interview with Don Marti · · Score: 1

    "Please educate yourself next time before you go and make yourself look foolish".

    Dude. Do you know what an acronym is? Have you ever heard of scuba diving? Scuba happens to be an acronym for "self contained underwater breathing apparatus." The only reason that everyone, or at least everyone that I know, pronounces it the same way is that the acronym forms a conveniet English word.

    Now, on the other hand, the acronym PNG doesn't form a very convenient English word since it doesn't contain any vowels. Once again, perhaps you aren't aware, but every word in this language (except for the word nth) contains a vowel. Thus, there is no "correct" way to pronounce it. Likewise, for "gif", for the most part, English words beginning with a "gi" are pronounced with a hard "g", which would be pronounced just as the the "gi" in "gift" is.

    So bottom line, get off our high fucking horse. You don't represent absolute truth, so don't act like it in your fucking sig. Even if you did, at least have the deceny to not post anonymously.

    Ok, I'm now done educating you, you ignorant, self-righteous prick.

  2. Re:Fix the problem on WorldCom Forced To Block Questionable Sites · · Score: 1

    Riiiiiight.

    There really are some large similarities between a 4 year old eating Skittles and a 4 year old eating a 45 year old's dick.

    Get real.

  3. Re:Words can't hurt? on WorldCom Forced To Block Questionable Sites · · Score: 1

    Let me remind you of something quickly. Our country was founded by a bunch of guys who believed that there are some self-evident, universal truths, such as "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." In fact, this argument was their basis for the formation of our government. They believed that these very things were the reason why governments exist in the first place. Now, keeping this in mind, do you still believe that our rights are absolute? Can I be put to death for a crime I do (or maybe even do not) commit? Can I be put in jail as well? Can the government enact laws that I don't like. Surely all of these things violate my "unalienable" rights to a.)LIVE b.)be free and c.)be happy, respectively. If you truly believe that our rights are absolute, then good for you. However, as far as I can tell, you live in a different world than I do. It's a shame we can't all live in the worlds of Moore, Plato, Bacon, and Campanella.

  4. Re:Fix the problem on WorldCom Forced To Block Questionable Sites · · Score: 1

    Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the return to Havard currently fits into his current plan/plans. Assuming this is the right guy, he could very well be an intelligent guy. Who am I to judge... I don't know him. However, the whole "professional wrestling" career path does make me wonder why he was _really_ at Harvard.

  5. Re:Fix the problem on WorldCom Forced To Block Questionable Sites · · Score: 1

    Child porn doesn't hurt anyone? I really hope you were attempting to be facetious. Granted, you could argue that child porn doesn't hurt the people viewing it, I guess, but there is no way that you can tell me straight-faced that child porn doesn't hurt the children involved. Who acts in these pornos? You think these are paid actors? You think there's a union for 8 year old porn starlets? These kids are exploited, abused, and maniuplated. These children are mentally scarred for life. These children will never be able to lead normal lives. These kids aren't doing porn because it's something that they dig - they're doing porn because some sicko middle-aged fuck gets his rocks off having sex with pre-pubescent girls who aren't even old enough to know what sex is. But you know what, maybe that's just me. Perhaps you can enlighten me a bit since I seem to be a bit misinformed. How 'bout you paint me a picture of the rosier side of kiddie porn. I'd really like you to share with me the intrinsic "artistic merit" of little kids being forced into abusive sexual activities with people five times as old as themselves. To answer your question, we don't need anyone "policing something we do in our own private homes that effects no one." In fact, I'm one of the staunchest advocates of personal liberties. If you wanna smoke a joint in the comfort of your own house, be my guest. However, if afterwards you're going to cruise around the city trying to pick up runaways in order to show them a "better life" in the kiddie porn trade, then you're no longer doing things that affect no one. Don't marginalize the thousands of kids whose lives have been ruined by this sick fucking industry.

  6. Re:Fix the problem on WorldCom Forced To Block Questionable Sites · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Uhm, and what constitutional right is being restricted, may I ask? I'm sure you're aware of the fact that the first amendment (freedom of speech) is by no means absolute. With this in mind, kiddie porn definitely doesn't fall under the category of protected speech.

  7. Re:Wrong on Ask Eric Blossom about Software-Defined Radio · · Score: 1

    If your upstream provider were to follow your own logic, then you should have no problem with them listening to any of your packets that happen to come into their network space.

  8. Re:My guess is... Bill Gates on Million-Dollar Donation To Fight Abusive Copyrights · · Score: 1

    nah... when they donate to us they don't do it anonymously =)

    Melinda Gates is a Duke graduate (computer science/economics '86 and MBA '87) and also serves on the Board of Trustees. In 1998 they donated $20 million to Duke and then again, last May, they donated $35 million to us.

    I'd highly doubt they'd donate again anonymously, with a much smaller sum than in the past, and to a center whose primary goal goes against the core principals of Billy Boy's business model =)

  9. Sounds great =) on Million-Dollar Donation To Fight Abusive Copyrights · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For anyone who's interested, the law school's website has a press release with a little bit more information than was mentioned in the C|Net article. It is great to see that some people (esp. the lawyers!) can see the harm that is being done by our outdated system of intellectual property laws.

    Even at the undergrad level, it seems that Duke has taken an interest in the subject. This year, for the first time ever, the CS department is offering a course that I'm currently enrolled in whose primary focus is intellectual property issues. It's panning out to be a pretty cool course, and is actually the only CS course I've taken thus far that doesn't involve any coding.

    I think more CS departments should offer curriculum like this, since we (the techies) have a unique perspective on the issues, because we are the ones opening the public's eyes to the fact that our system of intellectual property law needs to be completely revamped.

    If anyone out there has an interest in the topic, I'd highly reccommend reading John Barlow's The Economy of Ideas as a starting point.

  10. Re:subqueries on MySQL A Threat To The Big Database Vendors? · · Score: 1

    "ALTER TABLE tablename DROP columnname;" seems to work fine for me.

  11. Re:Slap on the Wrist on FTC Goes After Spammers · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is just a slap on the wrist for Napster/Morpheus/[Insert P2P program here] users. What they need to do is impose a per download fine per copyright infrigement from a particular P2P user, and if the violations keep stacking up, blacklist them from ISPs or start posting names/addresses of the downloaders involved. All of those would be good. Ruin their reputation even more, take away most of the music/pictures/movies that isn't theirs, and make it damn hard for them to get decent internet access again. And if they do get internet access, it should be monitored for large amounts of incoming and outgoing traffic on the ports used by P2P programs. Maybe a per-day quota could be set up for the file sharer.

    You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either the Internet is regulated or it is not. You can't ask the FTC to penalize and enforce the law on spammers when in the next breathe, you ask the government NOT to penalize and enforce the law on intellectual property/copyright.

    You feel this way because someone is breaking a law designed to protect you, so you feel violated. Now, the innocent little P2P users may not be hurting you, but they are certainly infringing on laws designed to protect someone else.

    Your logic is a great example of the selfish me-me-me whining prevalent in a majority of slashdot posters. Pirated software, MP3s, movies, etc are good because they benefit me!! Don't enforce the laws against this!! Spam is bad because although someone else is getting a free-ride, I am not. Enforce the laws against this!!

    Now, I'm not saying by any means that P2P users are evil or should be prosecuted. I just think that before people run around asking for any statutory regulation of the net, they need to think about the flipside of the situation as well. Do you want the net regulated or don't you? You can't have the both and allowing any sort of regulation and enforcement (i.e. spam) only leads the government to further believe that the net should be regulated and all laws fully enforced.

    Just my two pennies...

  12. Any more information? on Fed Raids Software Pirates in 27 Cities · · Score: 1

    I actually read the article on ABCNews.com not the article on the NY Times, but the ABC article seemed to be devoid of any useful information. I attend Duke, one of the schools that was issued a search warrant, but I haven't been able to find any relevant information on campus. Anyone know anything else? Who exactly got raided? What they did? Etc?

  13. Re:Disturbing Disparity in tone of News Posts on Linux Kernel Bugs · · Score: 1

    Can someone _please_ mod this up? This was the most level-headed and accurate post that I've read so far on this thread. So sad, but so true.

  14. Re:Full Disclosure on Rootkit Developers And Legal Liability · · Score: 1

    Can someone please mod this up? This was the most well though out post that I've read so far. Enough of these "well, shouldn't we just outlaw hammers" analogies... their logic is so flawed. It seems that every time an arguement such as this arises (i.e. Napster, etc.) this same defensive analogy is used, and if it continues to be used, the previous poster's scenario will definitely come true and the government regulation that ensues will be far more restrictive than merely making rootkit developers liable for their products' usage. There is definitely a clear distinction between publishing a piece of software's vulnerabilites (or an OS's for that matter) and writing a tool that even a brainless monkey can easily use to exploit said vulnerability. As the previous author stated, yes, there probably are a few "script kiddies" who can take a security adivsory and have enough skill to whip up a program to exploit this, but on the whole, a vast majority of "script kiddies" do not possess the know-how to do this. Why give them the tools that they need so they can eventually end up causing us usage outages due to DDOS's executed from compromised machines? The only valid arguement here is that published rootkits/exploits/whatever force a software publisher to fix a flawed product, but why not just send the publisher the exploit or an in-depth analysis of the hole? In the end, the only people who lose are us, because our legitimate uses of the Internet will be lost. A perfect example of this can be seen in EFNet. EFNet used to be a nice place to hang out and chat, but because of the prevalance of these published exploits and rootkits, stupid script kiddies have ruined EFNet for the rest of us by causing MANY servers to leave EFNet and by disrupting the flow of the few servers that do remain. With time, this same phenomenon will undoubtedly apply to the Internet at large. Just my two pennies....
    -Matt

  15. Re:NJ policy: gifted == 'special needs' on 13-Year-Old Suspended For Hacking Commits Suicide · · Score: 1

    I'm currently a senior in high school in New Jersey and in regard to your statement that "the State of New Jersey mandates that the 'bottom 2%' of public school students, AND the 'top 2%' of public school students are ALL to be given Individual Education Plans," I have NEVER heard of this. Perhaps it is just my school? I know that there are special needs programs for kids towards the bottom of the academic ladder (i.e. "classified" classes). In fact, I have friends that are in these such classes. However, with respect to the top 2% of the students, I have never seen nor heard anything about this from any of the people I know who are obviously in the top 2%. Weird...

  16. Re:poor bastard on 13-Year-Old Suspended For Hacking Commits Suicide · · Score: 1

    Yeah, "blame the jocks." That makes a lot of sense. The kid cracked in to his school's computer system, and although the extent of what he actually did wasn't explained in the article, it said that what he did was illegal. Now whether or not what he did should actually be illegal is another question, but the point remains that it was illegal and obviously broke school rules. Accordingly, the school administrators did what they are supposed to do and suspended him. Once again, whether or not you deem this punishment appropriate is not the issue - this was the punishment that school policy dictated. To say that the administrators acted inappropriately would be ignorant, as we have no idea what the kid even did. So now, the kid goes and hangs himself as a result of this punishment. How in the hell do you get off "blaming the jocks" because "they're always to fault like with Columbine"????? Saying this is tantamount to asserting that it is "always the geeks who have to go and blow up the goddamned schools." As someone who happens to be very active in sports (2 sport varsity athlete), yet also is very interested in Linux, the Internet, and computers in general, I take umbrage to your statement. Go troll somewhere else please.

  17. Re:Unfortunate decision on "Nuremberg Files" Decision Overturned · · Score: 1

    Just out of curiosity.. is "RIGHTS don't require demonstration of need. RIGHTS require demonstration of need-to-prevent" a personal quote or did someone else say that? I really like that, it's clever =)