You seriously disgust me. Right now, if I had you or the killers in front of me... I'd look them in the face and tell them they did a horrible, horrible thing. I'd just smack you.
Maybe you could give me something convincing to prove that these kids were "obsessed" with Hitler. Ironically, the only ones that have maintained these kids were racist Nazi's were those who taunted them mercilessly. Their friends have spoken to the media and denied the allegations. The media keeps repeating allegations that they spoke German to each other, or wore T-Shirts with German writing on them. I knew many, many people who fit that description in high school (mostly German industrial music fans), and none of them were racist neo-Nazis.
As far as the selection of the date as Hitler's birthday, I still consider that bullshit until I see convincing evidence from the sheriff. He's come out and announced information from a document (the diary) he has no doubt not even seen or examined in detail. Yes, 4/20 is Hitler's birthday. 4:20 is also a euphamism for smoking pot and all things pot related. Considering the context of a suburban high school, I'd imagine the pot connection is closer to the truth.
I think they fit the "profile" here to a T. They just lost all hope and perspective on their lives, and finally lost their humanity, which had been taken from them by force on a frequent basis by those who tortured and emotionally abused them.
Hell yeah. Reminds me of Pump up the Volume too, except he was more constructive and the ending was a lot more fairy tale. But imagine if his station got shut down and Christian Slater had access to fire-arms...
Sure, of course we should feel sympathy for their innocent victims. When does the rest of American have sympathy for the others just like these kids who under-go emotional abuse/torture on a daily basis that might be no worse than being shot dead? How many kids commit suicide as a result of the abuse they face in school every day? Are the people who tortured them into it any less guilty than these that actually pulled the trigger?
No one is underscoring ANYTHING. But you are wrong if you think this is an isolated event by isolated people. If there's one thing you need to be aware of, that is the simple fact as long as the level of abuse that persists in high school systems continue, these massacres will continue and repeat themselves. Get the picture?
One black teenager was killed. One girl heard them call him a "n*gger". Considering what-else they were doing that day, this might've been nothing more than them enjoying their ability to disregard all of society's rules, rather than a set goal of hunting down african-americans.
Racist/Hitler undertones: These have been brought up the same "popular" kids they were gunning for. Their friends within the "Trench Coat Mafia" that have been quoted in the media discount these stories. They insist the two were not racist. Frankly, I find these stories that they cheered "Heil Hitler" after every strike in bowling class hard to believe.
I will wait to see what evidence the sheriff has for his allegations that they purposely chose 4/20 for their killing spree because it was Hitler's birthday. Here's a news-flash for everyone who's older than the age of 25, 4:20 is also a euphamism for smoking marijuana.
Maybe it's just an urban myth, but supposedly 4-20 is the "police code" used in some California police departments in pot-related incidents. I do know, however, that there's often a well-attended smoke-out in Berkeley on April 20th, and I assure you it's not a Hitler/Nazi-Germany induced event. "4-20" is often heard in pot-related conversations.
Completely independently of anything that was posted here, my high school friends and I (some of whom I hadn't spoken to for five years..ever since graduation) came to the same conclusions you draw here. We knew the truth...that there was absolutely nothing "wrong" with these kids. These weren't fringe lunatics finally shoved over the edge by Marilyn Manson and Doom. These weren't racist facists looking to destroy American society...
These kids were NORMAL, and there are hundreds of thousands of other kids out there that feel what they felt, who truly understand the underlying message of their desperate actions.
Should they be treated as conquering heroes? As striking back at oppressors the rest of us could never truly over-throw? No. They committed acts of unimaginable violence that took human life, human life that was for all intents and purposes innocent.
But we shouldn't, we CAN'T, overlook the years of torment and abuse that finally allowed them to justify their actions... Not in a furious rage... Not in a drug/rocknroll-induced haze... Not as part of a plan to sabotage our faith in God and do the work of the devil...
These were kids that wanted to strike back, in some way leave a mark on a society that didn't want them. They wanted to break-down the cold concrete walls of social isolation they had been subjected to. They did not disregard the social values their parents, community, and pastor tried to force upon them... they REJECTED it because the living hell of every-day existence proved these same values as a fallacious lie! Why be kind and respect others... why behave yourself... why work hard... why, when the promised results of happiness never materialized.
Be afraid America, not because of computers, not because of games, not because of music, not because of moral decay in our youth... Be afraid because these kids are normal, their problems are normal, and their reactions are normal.
I'm utterly convinced that actions like this are only the first in a series. Until our society can re-create ourselves, much like the civil rights movement freed the blacks, and the equal rights movement freed women... those with the least invested in this country, the socially isolated teens, will continue to strike back blindly and angrily: as I knew I wanted.
eBay needs to be taken out and beaten severely for not taking this threat seriously. The potential for serious exploitation is huge, and I can't believe they're taking the stand that this is a minor challenge that won't affect most people.
Amongst the "cute" ideas I've read about below (that all seem immediately technically and socially possible):
- Virus idea. Take each login/pw pair and introduce new JavaScript bids that spread further.
- Redirection. No reason you can't take someone away from eBay, put up a "duplicate" site that requests credit-card info. Very few users regularly check their current address or security information, especially with a "well-known" site like eBay.
- Bid stealing. Immediately send information about bids to a third-party, which can be used to drive up the price to the maximum any user is willing to bid.
- Bid modification. Change all bids and triple the submitted price. With eBay's anal standards about bid-retrieval, this could be a major hassle.
Sheer stupidity. Whoever is in charge of their public relations/technical departments REALLY dropped the ball today (and whenever they decided that JavaScript was somehow necessary and acceptable in auction descriptions).
eBay needs to be taken out and beaten severely for not taking this threat seriously. The potential for serious exploitation is huge, and I can't believe they're taking the stand that this is a minor challenge that won't affect most people.
Amongst the "cute" ideas I've read about below (that all seem immediately technically and socially possible):
- Virus idea. Take each login/pw pair and introduce new JavaScript bids that spread further.
- Redirection. No reason you can't take someone away from eBay, put up a "duplicate" site that requests credit-card info. Very few users regularly check their current address or security information, especially with a "well-known" site like eBay.
- Bid stealing. Immediately send information about bids to a third-party, which can be used to drive up the price to the maximum any user is willing to bid.
- Bid modification. Change all bids and triple the submitted price. With eBay's anal standards about bid-retrieval, this could be a major hassle.
Sheer stupidity. Whoever is in charge of their public relations/technical departments REALLY dropped the ball today (and whenever they decided that JavaScript was somehow necessary and acceptable in auction descriptions).
And what would you say if the ActiveX control WAS asked to be removed?
Would you just nod your head and say.."It's legal..it's ok", or would you be up in arms about Microsoft's attempts to throttle competition and open-source? Netscape is just as guilty of that now.
If you could find somewhere in your account terms and conditions that you are promised timely and instant messaging via e-mail, you could conceivably have a case against the ISP (and persumably, they could pursue action against the spammer).
Since you are using a message medium that basically makes no such timeliness guarantees (and tell me if your ISP DOES...I'm changing over...), there's absolutely no grounds for your complaint. You might as well sue your post-office for that Christmas card that was delayed for 5 months.
Let's chalk this one up to clueless ISP
on
ISP Sues Spammer
·
· Score: 2
I totally disagree. There are certainly legitimate reasons for sending out mass mailings. The obvious things that comes to mind are large-distribution mailing lists, or corporate mailing lists where receivers *requested* the information.
Think about SlashDot's Headline News sent out every-night. I can easily imagine a few thousand emails being sent on a nightly basis. Instead of making it a policy that legitimate users of the Internet and mass-mailings at-large are punished, those who abuse the system should be punished. In my opinion, Virgin is absolutely within their rights to pursue action against someone who repeatedly violated stated account policies. I would imagine their financial losses can be pretty severe, and I hope the court finds for their cause an appropriate amount.
That doesn't mean "spammers" don't have a place on the Internet to pursue their antics (which you apparently advocate). A case could be made for violations of their civil liberties. Fine, let them find service providers who are capable and willing to source such spam-artists.
I hate this subject line, it makes me paranoid about the content of a post when I glance at it...
Anyways.
Consumers will of course pursue the best deal, but I strongly disagree this means lowest price. If I offered a standard Linux machine to half of the millions of AOL subscribers out there for half of the price of an expensive Windows machine, there's little doubt in my mind they'd generally go with the Windows machine.
Linux has a long ways to go before the man utilities can compare with Windows help files. Linux has a long ways to go before RPMs are as intuitive and easy to obtain, install, and un-install as standard Win32 Install-Shield products. There are so many utilities provided by standard Windows OS that are incomparable within the Linux environment... Linux has come a long way, no doubt... but when can I expect a netconfig control panel that is actually intuitive and as easy to use as its dual in Windows? Why do I still need to known how to re-compile and install my kernel if I choose to enable or disable sound? Why do I *WANT* to deal with multi-user administration when I'm the only one that uses my desktop?
Developers have done a fine job of getting reliable, useful products out there. To the masses? Uhm, disagree. You've got to know where the standard RPM repositories are (which are generally very non-user-friendly). You have to know WHAT you need to install. You have to have a pretty good grasp for what the various dependencies are (er, what's this libc.so thing) and how to check what you have in place.
I could hand my mom an Office 97 CD, tell her to put it in the CD-ROM drive, and answer the simple questions... What's the comparable Linux alternative?
PS. As far as the Internet goes.."people wanting to get onto the Internet"? There's a progression here (obviously), people have to become informed OF the Internet. The computing elite already had access to the Internet, but it had hardly exploded onto the scene as far as consumer content. I really feel it took Windows 3.1 and the mass availability of Navigator/Winsock installations that made this appealing to the masses.
Your right, free software predates the stuff sitting on store shelves.
But, it was the stuff on store shelves that BROUGHT us the billions of potential consumers across the globe. The free stuff has been around for decades. Web-browsers are not exactly exciting technology, and neither is HTML. Why the sudden explosion? Because software became USABLE through these commercial products. Because open-source developers have less interest in making their product "sell-able" to the open-market, in packaging and testing and verifying and doing market research to figure out what consumers want...
Uhm, I personally wouldn't hang my billion-dollar development project for the next telephone switch, relational DBMS, or IA-64 operating system on the whims and capabilities of people I have no control over, no knowledge of, and no direct interaction with.
Until formal specification and code verification becomes a practicality... I don't think so. The software engineering process is as important as the supposed final result, and I'd have a hard time integrating a component someone else wrote until I went through every-line with a microscope.
I don't think this is a desirable way of approaching the situation.
Do you really think users want to take their computer software to the shop, much like their cars? Can you imagine the mark-up that would have to exist to allow the software industry to support the huge development effort?
I see almost all of you are incredibly passionate about Open Source, and have spoken at lengths about its advantages. But I haven't seen anyone actually address the concerns expressed in the article as far as the "starving software engineer" affect.
I've seen people claim Open Source will still conquer all, and its explosion has allowed us, as users, to experiment and create all kinds of neat toys.... Great... One question. If a development effort like Linux was all that existed in the world, do you think the Internet explosion (and there-fore, half of the people involved in this discussion who might not have been) would've occured? This might be blasphmy, but don't you think there's a strong correlation between the appearence of an OS (Win95, MacOS...whatever) that approached the ideal information appliance and the explosive growth in Internet popularity? Linux might be powerful, wonderful to use... but it is *not* mom-friendly. It is *not* friendly for the millions of AOL users who just want to click on "Check Mail..."
You might have also noticed that Linus is working for profit at Transmedia. What if they went Open Source and worked for no commercial profit as well? Would Linus still be able to approach Linux as a commercial-effort?
Some of you mentioned how Linux has broadened your educational experience at school. Without the millions of corporate donations, don't you realize that computer science departments across the country would start to resemble the other "non-profit" fields... like history, english... with their broken-down desks, poor infrastructure, and little capital investment? I got my CS degree from Berkeley and am now in graduate school at MIT, and I know both schools have been strongly affected by corporate donations that would disappear if the profit motive was truly removed.
All of you CS graduate students out there.. don't you realize that you would be grant-less without the industry connection?
I'd appreciate the solution to this question that some of you appear to hold. If anything, this is my only concern about my support for, and the growth of, Open Source. If the commercial software industry really is decimated through popular support for OS, what kind of people (age, job...) would still be able to persist in open-source development?
Slashdot Mirror
Are you listening here?
You seriously disgust me. Right now, if I had you or the killers in front of me... I'd look them in the face and tell them they did a horrible, horrible thing. I'd just smack you.
Maybe you could give me something convincing to prove that these kids were "obsessed" with Hitler. Ironically, the only ones that have maintained these kids were racist Nazi's were those who taunted them mercilessly. Their friends have spoken to the media and denied the allegations. The media keeps repeating allegations that they spoke German to each other, or wore T-Shirts with German writing on them. I knew many, many people who fit that description in high school (mostly German industrial music fans), and none of them were racist neo-Nazis.
As far as the selection of the date as Hitler's birthday, I still consider that bullshit until I see convincing evidence from the sheriff. He's come out and announced information from a document (the diary) he has no doubt not even seen or examined in detail. Yes, 4/20 is Hitler's birthday. 4:20 is also a euphamism for smoking pot and all things pot related. Considering the context of a suburban high school, I'd imagine the pot connection is closer to the truth.
I think they fit the "profile" here to a T. They just lost all hope and perspective on their lives, and finally lost their humanity, which had been taken from them by force on a frequent basis by those who tortured and emotionally abused them.
Hell yeah. Reminds me of Pump up the Volume too, except he was more constructive and the ending was a lot more fairy tale. But imagine if his station got shut down and Christian Slater had access to fire-arms...
Sure, of course we should feel sympathy for their innocent victims. When does the rest of American have sympathy for the others just like these kids who under-go emotional abuse/torture on a daily basis that might be no worse than being shot dead? How many kids commit suicide as a result of the abuse they face in school every day? Are the people who tortured them into it any less guilty than these that actually pulled the trigger?
No one is underscoring ANYTHING. But you are wrong if you think this is an isolated event by isolated people. If there's one thing you need to be aware of, that is the simple fact as long as the level of abuse that persists in high school systems continue, these massacres will continue and repeat themselves. Get the picture?
Read the comments below. You are part of the ignorant minority, and you've proven your idiocy by opening your mouth when you should've been listening.
Facts:
One black teenager was killed. One girl heard them call him a "n*gger". Considering what-else they were doing that day, this might've been nothing more than them enjoying their ability to disregard all of society's rules, rather than a set goal of hunting down african-americans.
Racist/Hitler undertones: These have been brought up the same "popular" kids they were gunning for. Their friends within the "Trench Coat Mafia" that have been quoted in the media discount these stories. They insist the two were not racist. Frankly, I find these stories that they cheered "Heil Hitler" after every strike in bowling class hard to believe.
I will wait to see what evidence the sheriff has for his allegations that they purposely chose 4/20 for their killing spree because it was Hitler's birthday. Here's a news-flash for everyone who's older than the age of 25, 4:20 is also a euphamism for smoking marijuana.
Maybe it's just an urban myth, but supposedly 4-20 is the "police code" used in some California police departments in pot-related incidents. I do know, however, that there's often a well-attended smoke-out in Berkeley on April 20th, and I assure you it's not a Hitler/Nazi-Germany induced event. "4-20" is often heard in pot-related conversations.
Got it now?
Wow, this article just blew my mind away.
Completely independently of anything that was posted here, my high school friends and I (some of whom I hadn't spoken to for five years..ever since graduation) came to the same conclusions you draw here. We knew the truth...that there was absolutely nothing "wrong" with these kids. These weren't fringe lunatics finally shoved over the edge by Marilyn Manson and Doom. These weren't racist facists looking to destroy American society...
These kids were NORMAL, and there are hundreds of thousands of other kids out there that feel what they felt, who truly understand the underlying message of their desperate actions.
Should they be treated as conquering heroes? As striking back at oppressors the rest of us could never truly over-throw? No. They committed acts of unimaginable violence that took human life, human life that was for all intents and purposes innocent.
But we shouldn't, we CAN'T, overlook the years of torment and abuse that finally allowed them to justify their actions... Not in a furious rage... Not in a drug/rocknroll-induced haze... Not as part of a plan to sabotage our faith in God and do the work of the devil...
These were kids that wanted to strike back, in some way leave a mark on a society that didn't want them. They wanted to break-down the cold concrete walls of social isolation they had been subjected to. They did not disregard the social values their parents, community, and pastor tried to force upon them... they REJECTED it because the living hell of every-day existence proved these same values as a fallacious lie! Why be kind and respect others... why behave yourself... why work hard... why, when the promised results of happiness never materialized.
Be afraid America, not because of computers, not because of games, not because of music, not because of moral decay in our youth... Be afraid because these kids are normal, their problems are normal, and their reactions are normal.
I'm utterly convinced that actions like this are only the first in a series. Until our society can re-create ourselves, much like the civil rights movement freed the blacks, and the equal rights movement freed women... those with the least invested in this country, the socially isolated teens, will continue to strike back blindly and angrily: as I knew I wanted.
eBay needs to be taken out and beaten severely for not taking this threat seriously. The potential for serious exploitation is huge, and I can't believe they're taking the stand that this is a minor challenge that won't affect most people.
Amongst the "cute" ideas I've read about below (that all seem immediately technically and socially possible):
- Virus idea. Take each login/pw pair and introduce new JavaScript bids that spread further.
- Redirection. No reason you can't take someone away from eBay, put up a "duplicate" site that requests credit-card info. Very few users regularly check their current address or security information, especially with a "well-known" site like eBay.
- Bid stealing. Immediately send information about bids to a third-party, which can be used to drive up the price to the maximum any user is willing to bid.
- Bid modification. Change all bids and triple the submitted price. With eBay's anal standards about bid-retrieval, this could be a major hassle.
Sheer stupidity. Whoever is in charge of their public relations/technical departments REALLY dropped the ball today (and whenever they decided that JavaScript was somehow necessary and acceptable in auction descriptions).
eBay needs to be taken out and beaten severely for not taking this threat seriously. The potential for serious exploitation is huge, and I can't believe they're taking the stand that this is a minor challenge that won't affect most people.
Amongst the "cute" ideas I've read about below (that all seem immediately technically and socially possible):
- Virus idea. Take each login/pw pair and introduce new JavaScript bids that spread further.
- Redirection. No reason you can't take someone away from eBay, put up a "duplicate" site that requests credit-card info. Very few users regularly check their current address or security information, especially with a "well-known" site like eBay.
- Bid stealing. Immediately send information about bids to a third-party, which can be used to drive up the price to the maximum any user is willing to bid.
- Bid modification. Change all bids and triple the submitted price. With eBay's anal standards about bid-retrieval, this could be a major hassle.
Sheer stupidity. Whoever is in charge of their public relations/technical departments REALLY dropped the ball today (and whenever they decided that JavaScript was somehow necessary and acceptable in auction descriptions).
And what would you say if the ActiveX control WAS asked to be removed?
Would you just nod your head and say.."It's legal..it's ok", or would you be up in arms about Microsoft's attempts to throttle competition and open-source? Netscape is just as guilty of that now.
If you could find somewhere in your account terms and conditions that you are promised timely and instant messaging via e-mail, you could conceivably have a case against the ISP (and persumably, they could pursue action against the spammer).
Since you are using a message medium that basically makes no such timeliness guarantees (and tell me if your ISP DOES...I'm changing over...), there's absolutely no grounds for your complaint. You might as well sue your post-office for that Christmas card that was delayed for 5 months.
I totally disagree. There are certainly legitimate reasons for sending out mass mailings. The obvious things that comes to mind are large-distribution mailing lists, or corporate mailing lists where receivers *requested* the information.
Think about SlashDot's Headline News sent out every-night. I can easily imagine a few thousand emails being sent on a nightly basis. Instead of making it a policy that legitimate users of the Internet and mass-mailings at-large are punished, those who abuse the system should be punished. In my opinion, Virgin is absolutely within their rights to pursue action against someone who repeatedly violated stated account policies. I would imagine their financial losses can be pretty severe, and I hope the court finds for their cause an appropriate amount.
That doesn't mean "spammers" don't have a place on the Internet to pursue their antics (which you apparently advocate). A case could be made for violations of their civil liberties. Fine, let them find service providers who are capable and willing to source such spam-artists.
I hate this subject line, it makes me paranoid about the content of a post when I glance at it...
Anyways.
Consumers will of course pursue the best deal, but I strongly disagree this means lowest price. If I offered a standard Linux machine to half of the millions of AOL subscribers out there for half of the price of an expensive Windows machine, there's little doubt in my mind they'd generally go with the Windows machine.
Linux has a long ways to go before the man utilities can compare with Windows help files. Linux has a long ways to go before RPMs are as intuitive and easy to obtain, install, and un-install as standard Win32 Install-Shield products. There are so many utilities provided by standard Windows OS that are incomparable within the Linux environment... Linux has come a long way, no doubt... but when can I expect a netconfig control panel that is actually intuitive and as easy to use as its dual in Windows? Why do I still need to known how to re-compile and install my kernel if I choose to enable or disable sound? Why do I *WANT* to deal with multi-user administration when I'm the only one that uses my desktop?
Developers have done a fine job of getting reliable, useful products out there. To the masses? Uhm, disagree. You've got to know where the standard RPM repositories are (which are generally very non-user-friendly). You have to know WHAT you need to install. You have to have a pretty good grasp for what the various dependencies are (er, what's this libc.so thing) and how to check what you have in place.
I could hand my mom an Office 97 CD, tell her to put it in the CD-ROM drive, and answer the simple questions... What's the comparable Linux alternative?
PS. As far as the Internet goes.."people wanting to get onto the Internet"? There's a progression here (obviously), people have to become informed OF the Internet. The computing elite already had access to the Internet, but it had hardly exploded onto the scene as far as consumer content. I really feel it took Windows 3.1 and the mass availability of Navigator/Winsock installations that made this appealing to the masses.
Your right, free software predates the stuff sitting on store shelves.
But, it was the stuff on store shelves that BROUGHT us the billions of potential consumers across the globe. The free stuff has been around for decades. Web-browsers are not exactly exciting technology, and neither is HTML. Why the sudden explosion? Because software became USABLE through these commercial products. Because open-source developers have less interest in making their product "sell-able" to the open-market, in packaging and testing and verifying and doing market research to figure out what consumers want...
Uhm, I personally wouldn't hang my billion-dollar development project for the next telephone switch, relational DBMS, or IA-64 operating system on the whims and capabilities of people I have no control over, no knowledge of, and no direct interaction with.
Until formal specification and code verification becomes a practicality... I don't think so. The software engineering process is as important as the supposed final result, and I'd have a hard time integrating a component someone else wrote until I went through every-line with a microscope.
I don't think this is a desirable way of approaching the situation.
Do you really think users want to take their computer software to the shop, much like their cars? Can you imagine the mark-up that would have to exist to allow the software industry to support the huge development effort?
I see almost all of you are incredibly passionate about Open Source, and have spoken at lengths about its advantages. But I haven't seen anyone actually address the concerns expressed in the article as far as the "starving software engineer" affect.
I've seen people claim Open Source will still conquer all, and its explosion has allowed us, as users, to experiment and create all kinds of neat toys.... Great... One question. If a development effort like Linux was all that existed in the world, do you think the Internet explosion (and there-fore, half of the people involved in this discussion who might not have been) would've occured? This might be blasphmy, but don't you think there's a strong correlation between the appearence of an OS (Win95, MacOS...whatever) that approached the ideal information appliance and the explosive growth in Internet popularity? Linux might be powerful, wonderful to use... but it is *not* mom-friendly. It is *not* friendly for the millions of AOL users who just want to click on "Check Mail..."
You might have also noticed that Linus is working for profit at Transmedia. What if they went Open Source and worked for no commercial profit as well? Would Linus still be able to approach Linux as a commercial-effort?
Some of you mentioned how Linux has broadened your educational experience at school. Without the millions of corporate donations, don't you realize that computer science departments across the country would start to resemble the other "non-profit" fields... like history, english... with their broken-down desks, poor infrastructure, and little capital investment? I got my CS degree from Berkeley and am now in graduate school at MIT, and I know both schools have been strongly affected by corporate donations that would disappear if the profit motive was truly removed.
All of you CS graduate students out there.. don't you realize that you would be grant-less without the industry connection?
I'd appreciate the solution to this question that some of you appear to hold. If anything, this is my only concern about my support for, and the growth of, Open Source. If the commercial software industry really is decimated through popular support for OS, what kind of people (age, job...) would still be able to persist in open-source development?