I would like to say that I -never- looked at anyone's data, all of the times I maintained accounts for people. But I did only once, when I suspected that someone had shared their password with a non-employee and that person was logging into the company (which turned out to be correct). So I guess I can justify my snooping by -their- breach of trust. But I still wish that I had not marred my perfect record, although nobody cares about it but me.
And in this case, you were most likely enforcing the company's policies about access to the company network. You had due cause to believe that someone was acting against company policy, so this justified the investigation. Most companies state categorically that employees are NOT to allow access to the network to non-employees.
So right away you can tell that a cover-up is happening, because decommissioned warheads would not be fixed on cruise missile tips and flown to the base where mideast bombings are staged. It is very possible that both US and Russia violate their agreements in secret, so that part is not a major issue IMHO. But something very unfunny is going on.
If the Bush Administration were indeed planning a strike on Iran (which is what this implies, since they're the most likely target), it would hardly need nuclear weapons to do the job. Cruise missles are highly accurate. A conventional warhead would be more than up to the challenge of taking out any Iranian nuclear facilities. Nuclear warheads would be extreme overkill and would generate geopolitical fallout that I doubt even Bush wants.
Not everything the government does like this is a conspiracy. Sometimes it's just plain incompetence, as I suspect the case is here.
I am extremely angry they took down the F*ck Islam thread. It's a win for censorship, and from all accounts it was a critique of Islam more then a needless hate thread. Islam need some very aggressive critiquing.
Since the group was taken down before I could see it for myself, I will take your word for it that it was simply a critique and not a hateful diatribe. Now, if this was the case, perhaps if the group had been given a less inflammatory name it would have been more defendable (and might not even have shown up on the radar of all those other members that were slavering to have it removed). Perhaps something like "A critique on Islam", or "A dissenting opinion on Islam", or even "How Islam went wrong". Any of those titles suggests a much more intelligent discussion awaits the reader. Something called "Fuck Islam" (or "Fuck *anything*" for that matter) implies that you're about to read a rant rather than a well-reasoned essay.
I would not be surprised if the maintainers of Facebook simply read the title and decided to delete the group based on that alone.
...you very likely would have passed by a sign indicating that your entry serves as your consent to having your bags (and often other personal belongings) searched. The wonderful thing about rights is that they can be so quickly and easily be surrendered.
So? Just because a sign exists that claims I give them this consent doesn't mean they can exercise it. A business is owned by private individuals, and nowhere does the law give private individuals the right to arbitrarily search other individuals. Signs like this are just so much bullshit, but the stores count on people being sheep and just accepting it. "Oh look, it's in print and looks official-like, it must be true!"
Generally if someone wants to peek in the bag I'm carrying my purchased item in and show them my receipt, I don't have a problem with this. I'm willing to give them that amount of leeway. But I draw the line at them searching anything else I carry or my person. If they want to do that, let them make a charge of shoplifting against me, call the police, and let them search me.
It's still very much a niche market. Most users that know of Linux (and would buy a PC with it) prob either have enough experience with it to install, or want to try installing.
Then there are people like me, who are perfectly capable of doing a self-install, but want the convenience of being able to spec out a machine, order it, have it delivered, open the box, hook it up, and just have it WORK. My time is valuable, and I don't want to waste it worrying about possible hardware incompatibilities. Let someone else have the headache of dealing with it and just get me a machine that works when I boot it up. This is especially true of laptops. I got my wife to be a Linux convert once we found Linux Certified. She's using a laptop from them. Everything -- and I mean EVERYTHING -- just works, especially the USB support, which was a problem previously.
We're not going to get anywhere with regards to figuring out where culpability lies until we abandon all these analogies that simply don't work. So far, I've seen it compared to an open door of someone's house, a bike sitting in front of a house, a toilet on someone's front lawn (that one was just plain weird), harvesting corn cross-pollinated from another field. You can't adapt any of these analogies to work with this. You have to treat this as something separate and come up with its own set of ethics and etiquette.
What a fine, understanding attitude you have.
A: "WiFi is such a convenient tech, it makes doing all these networked things much easier."
B: "I know, I just got a wireless router, plugged it in at home and it's so great to be able to use my laptop anywhere around the home"
A: "You did set WEP encryption didn't you?"
B: "Wha?"
Come on, get real. Setting WEP encryption is not brain surgery. Many wireless router manuals tell you exactly how to do it. No, I don't expect the user to understand all the nuances of how the technology works, but the WEP part should be considered such a basic part of it that there is no excuse for not setting this.
The person doesn't have to understand necessarly how the encryption physically works, they just need to know "this is an important part of setting up your home network." If the user can't understand that, they shouldn't be using it.
Despite the PR the corporations are trying to shove down our throats, using computer tech is NOT like using a kitchen appliance. You need to know what you are doing to use computer tech properly.
Just minding my own business, driving round in this car that wasn't mine and these cops came and pulled me over and arrested me, I was like "WTF? I was only joyrid.. I mean driving round in it for 20 seconds!".
This is a pet peeve of mine: analogies that are useless because they compare apples and oranges.
If you're taking a car for a joyride, it is assumed you broke into it in the first place, or otherwise did something to steal it. That in itself is a blatantly illegal act. It's a no-brainer.
Someone deciding to take a short clip of a movie to, in effect, promote it to someone they know is interested in it is not in the same league. The majority of people (read: non-Slashdot readers) would not consider this an illegal act. The person in question, from what we know of the case now, does not appear to have had any intentions of performing an illegal act. She had no intention of filming the entire picture and posting it on the internet.
This is where your analogy collapses. I'm not stating whether she was right or wrong in what she did, I am simply pointing out that analogies like this don't work.
I'm rather dismayed by the number of people immediately chiming in and saying "well, fuck the ISP, I'll just encrypt everything." While that would address privacy concerns, it does nothing for the main issue, which is the traffic-shaping itself. Your encrypted packets will be unrecognized, and thus shunted to the lowest priority. Problem solved, from the ISP's perspective.
Actually, the 192.168.100.1 IP is only for Motorola surfboard modems.
Not true. My Arris telephony modem is the same address. My RCA modem I had before I got Comcast VOIP was also the same address. What generally varies is whether the information you want is on the index page. For the old RCA modem, all I got was a summary page telling me whether it was connected or not. I had to go to http://192.168.100.1/moreinfo.htm to get the signal data. Some modems have it on a page called diagnostics.htm.
The key to working with Comcast is to have some basic technical knowledge of cable internet. Once you show you know the lingo and you know the basic technical aspects, you'll either get the support person to "talk up" to your level immediately or switch you to someone that knows. Most support people have at least heard some of the terminology, usually enough to know if they're in over their head and need to route you to someone else.
For example, if you buy your own modem, NEVER say "I need my new modem INSTALLED." Say "I need my new modem PROVISIONED". 95% of the support people will know right away what you need and won't bother asking you about Windows and you'll be online 15 minutes later.
Know how to get to the status page of your modem (usually http://192.168.100.1/ but may vary depending on model). Know that your downstream signal needs to be between -10 and +10 dBmV. Know that your downstream SNR should be above 33. Know that your upstream power should be between +30 and +50 dBmV. When my signal dropped because of a splice in the line gone bad, I didn't tell Comcast "my internet don't work", I told them, "my downstream power is -16, which is out-of-spec, I need a tech to take a look at this". I had a tech out the very next morning and was back online by the afternoon.
Also, whenever you have a problem, BEFORE you call do the mantra of restarting your cable modem, router, and computer. Even if you know this will not fix the issue, do it. Then take the router out of the loop and do it all over again. Then when you call, tell them you did all this already. This will save time.
In all the times that I have had to call Comcast for technical issues, not once did the subject of Windows ever come up.
What I'm saying is that unlike software (including music), you don't buy a license to use/listen to it. You buy the physical hardware and you can do whatever you want to it.
Yes, but nothing obligates Microsoft to support any use of the console that falls outside the intended use of the product. Just like if you buy a microwave oven from GE and hack its internals to play MP3s, then you go buy a later model and find you can't do this anymore, GE is under no obligation to respond to your complaints that you can't hack it anymore. Even if you find a way to do it, they are under no obligation to repair the product if it no longer operates as intended.
This is not really like buying a PC. With a PC, the hardware is manufactured by someone OTHER than MS, so MS can't dictate what you put on that PC, or deny you support for legitimate uses of their product on that hardware. But the Xbox IS manufactured by MS. They have the right to say what they will and will not support.
Now, if you do something that is enabling you to cheat in the game (and breaking the software license), then I don't see why Microsoft shouldn't ban you and the console. However, if you mod it in a way that does not affect gameplay, why should you be banned?
And how to you expect MS to detect the "bad" from the "good" mods? And why should they be obligated to do it in the first place since you're already using the product in a way that is not supported?
The bottom line is, if you modify your console, there is the potential for cheating whether the intent is there or not. To be on the safe side, MS just bans the modified console. Once again, a mod to the console is a use that falls outside of what MS will warranty for the product.
Possession, mere POSSESSION, of child porn is illegal.
I'll probably lose karma for this, but I really don't give a shit.
I personally have problems with this law. I have a problem with any law that makes the mere possession of a bunch of digital bits or a piece of paper that happens to have a certain kind of picture on it illegal. It's a dangerous precedent to set.
I don't buy the arguments about how this is meant to keep down demand so the supply dries up. It's a bullshit argument because the people downloading this stuff have urges, and those urges don't go away just because you take away their supply. Just like a drug addict will not stop being a drug addict just because you cut off supply. Instead, he'll just go looking for a new supply.
I certainly do agree with the laws against PRODUCING child porn (though I have certain arguments against the age of consent laws, but that's another topic). I do not want to see children exploited sexually. I just think that making it illegal to possess a bunch of data bits or a piece of paper is ridiculous.
Maybe you donwload a few vids of the next Traci Lords... bingo, child porn.
I thought I read somewhere that Traci Lords lied about her age when she first started doing porn movies, so there are some flicks with her in them when she was only 16. If this is not an urban legend, one wonders if those original videos are now classified as child porn.
I'm not condoning anything, but it's really getting out of hand. There are people dying by the thousands in this country and abroad, people in serious trouble with dope, women who aren't getting child support and who are getting beaten up, and yet with all these things going on, what America considers the most heinous crime is sex with children. I find it very bizarre that the same country that sobbed griveously over the death of Jon Benet Ramsey, who was dressed up like a hooker and paraded around in beauty contests before she turned 10, is chomping at the bit to put away pedophiles.
The main problem is that no one wants to take the time to examine each instance on a case-by-case basis. Instead, we cling to absolutes and hold everything up to a black-and-white litmus test. Things that should be no-brainers are not, and vice-versa. Examples (at least to me) of no-brainers:
30 year old man has sex with 5 year old girl. Pretty cut-and-dry there. I would not trust the 5 year old to have given informed consent.
30 year old man has sex with 17 years old girl. Odds are the girl knew exactly what she was doing and gave informed consent.
But guess what? The age of consent is 18 in your state. Sorry, player #2, go to jail, do not pass GO.
Stupid, isn't it? Yes, I agree, things get more difficult as the age goes down from 17 as to whether the person was giving informed consent. But we continue to apply a single standard and as a result, we get people branded freaking sex offenders when their only real "crime" was a lack of good judgement.
I suspect that if synthetic child porn were legal there would be quite a bit of substitution going on -- purveyors of real child porn would find it more profitable and less risky to just make the fake stuff and pretend it was real.
Computer generated child porn IS legal. The reason that the distributors have not switched to this is cost. It is still cheaper to get a real kid in front of a camera than it is to set up a render farm to produce realistic-looking graphics.
The real reason that the US government asked for postponement of the.xxx domain is because some lawmaker realized at the last minute that instituting a.xxx domain specifically for adult content effectively legitimizes it. It would give defense lawyers for those accused of violating "obscenity" laws new ammunition, allowing them to claim that the government effectively gave its blessing to adult content by granting this domain for that use. By preventing this from happening, the government eliminates this potential defense.
As for their heavy handed fingers-in-the-distribution-and-technology pie, give me a break. I set up a dvd recorder for my dad. I LOVED how simple it was to operate, and it did an excellent job of recording shows for him. He was a happy camper too. He loves to watch PBS, and was excited to record a recent Civil War special on his new dvd recorder and wanted to send the dvd to me to watch. He was concerned because his dvd would not play on other dvd players, something about a region code violation (we know what that is).
I'd say there was something wrong with your Dad's recorder or he's not using it right.
My wife's parents are currently building their retirement home in a little middle-of-nowhere town in New Mexico. They're living out of an RV right now as construction commences. They have stretches of nothing to do, and they have no cable hookup, so my wife records movies for them off TCM and burns them onto DVD for them. They haven't had a single problem playing them.
Slashdot Mirror
Not everything the government does like this is a conspiracy. Sometimes it's just plain incompetence, as I suspect the case is here.
I would not be surprised if the maintainers of Facebook simply read the title and decided to delete the group based on that alone.
Generally if someone wants to peek in the bag I'm carrying my purchased item in and show them my receipt, I don't have a problem with this. I'm willing to give them that amount of leeway. But I draw the line at them searching anything else I carry or my person. If they want to do that, let them make a charge of shoplifting against me, call the police, and let them search me.
We're not going to get anywhere with regards to figuring out where culpability lies until we abandon all these analogies that simply don't work. So far, I've seen it compared to an open door of someone's house, a bike sitting in front of a house, a toilet on someone's front lawn (that one was just plain weird), harvesting corn cross-pollinated from another field. You can't adapt any of these analogies to work with this. You have to treat this as something separate and come up with its own set of ethics and etiquette.
The person doesn't have to understand necessarly how the encryption physically works, they just need to know "this is an important part of setting up your home network." If the user can't understand that, they shouldn't be using it.
Despite the PR the corporations are trying to shove down our throats, using computer tech is NOT like using a kitchen appliance. You need to know what you are doing to use computer tech properly.
This is a pet peeve of mine: analogies that are useless because they compare apples and oranges.
If you're taking a car for a joyride, it is assumed you broke into it in the first place, or otherwise did something to steal it. That in itself is a blatantly illegal act. It's a no-brainer.
Someone deciding to take a short clip of a movie to, in effect, promote it to someone they know is interested in it is not in the same league. The majority of people (read: non-Slashdot readers) would not consider this an illegal act. The person in question, from what we know of the case now, does not appear to have had any intentions of performing an illegal act. She had no intention of filming the entire picture and posting it on the internet.
This is where your analogy collapses. I'm not stating whether she was right or wrong in what she did, I am simply pointing out that analogies like this don't work.
I'm rather dismayed by the number of people immediately chiming in and saying "well, fuck the ISP, I'll just encrypt everything." While that would address privacy concerns, it does nothing for the main issue, which is the traffic-shaping itself. Your encrypted packets will be unrecognized, and thus shunted to the lowest priority. Problem solved, from the ISP's perspective.
Not true. My Arris telephony modem is the same address. My RCA modem I had before I got Comcast VOIP was also the same address. What generally varies is whether the information you want is on the index page. For the old RCA modem, all I got was a summary page telling me whether it was connected or not. I had to go to http://192.168.100.1/moreinfo.htm to get the signal data. Some modems have it on a page called diagnostics.htm.
The key to working with Comcast is to have some basic technical knowledge of cable internet. Once you show you know the lingo and you know the basic technical aspects, you'll either get the support person to "talk up" to your level immediately or switch you to someone that knows. Most support people have at least heard some of the terminology, usually enough to know if they're in over their head and need to route you to someone else.
For example, if you buy your own modem, NEVER say "I need my new modem INSTALLED." Say "I need my new modem PROVISIONED". 95% of the support people will know right away what you need and won't bother asking you about Windows and you'll be online 15 minutes later.
Know how to get to the status page of your modem (usually http://192.168.100.1/ but may vary depending on model). Know that your downstream signal needs to be between -10 and +10 dBmV. Know that your downstream SNR should be above 33. Know that your upstream power should be between +30 and +50 dBmV. When my signal dropped because of a splice in the line gone bad, I didn't tell Comcast "my internet don't work", I told them, "my downstream power is -16, which is out-of-spec, I need a tech to take a look at this". I had a tech out the very next morning and was back online by the afternoon.
Also, whenever you have a problem, BEFORE you call do the mantra of restarting your cable modem, router, and computer. Even if you know this will not fix the issue, do it. Then take the router out of the loop and do it all over again. Then when you call, tell them you did all this already. This will save time.
In all the times that I have had to call Comcast for technical issues, not once did the subject of Windows ever come up.
(Shut up, someone had to say it
Yes, but nothing obligates Microsoft to support any use of the console that falls outside the intended use of the product. Just like if you buy a microwave oven from GE and hack its internals to play MP3s, then you go buy a later model and find you can't do this anymore, GE is under no obligation to respond to your complaints that you can't hack it anymore. Even if you find a way to do it, they are under no obligation to repair the product if it no longer operates as intended.
This is not really like buying a PC. With a PC, the hardware is manufactured by someone OTHER than MS, so MS can't dictate what you put on that PC, or deny you support for legitimate uses of their product on that hardware. But the Xbox IS manufactured by MS. They have the right to say what they will and will not support.
Now, if you do something that is enabling you to cheat in the game (and breaking the software license), then I don't see why Microsoft shouldn't ban you and the console. However, if you mod it in a way that does not affect gameplay, why should you be banned?
And how to you expect MS to detect the "bad" from the "good" mods? And why should they be obligated to do it in the first place since you're already using the product in a way that is not supported?
The bottom line is, if you modify your console, there is the potential for cheating whether the intent is there or not. To be on the safe side, MS just bans the modified console. Once again, a mod to the console is a use that falls outside of what MS will warranty for the product.
Perhaps he was dictating ...
I'll probably lose karma for this, but I really don't give a shit.
I personally have problems with this law. I have a problem with any law that makes the mere possession of a bunch of digital bits or a piece of paper that happens to have a certain kind of picture on it illegal. It's a dangerous precedent to set.
I don't buy the arguments about how this is meant to keep down demand so the supply dries up. It's a bullshit argument because the people downloading this stuff have urges, and those urges don't go away just because you take away their supply. Just like a drug addict will not stop being a drug addict just because you cut off supply. Instead, he'll just go looking for a new supply.
I certainly do agree with the laws against PRODUCING child porn (though I have certain arguments against the age of consent laws, but that's another topic). I do not want to see children exploited sexually. I just think that making it illegal to possess a bunch of data bits or a piece of paper is ridiculous.
I thought I read somewhere that Traci Lords lied about her age when she first started doing porn movies, so there are some flicks with her in them when she was only 16. If this is not an urban legend, one wonders if those original videos are now classified as child porn.
The main problem is that no one wants to take the time to examine each instance on a case-by-case basis. Instead, we cling to absolutes and hold everything up to a black-and-white litmus test. Things that should be no-brainers are not, and vice-versa. Examples (at least to me) of no-brainers:
But guess what? The age of consent is 18 in your state. Sorry, player #2, go to jail, do not pass GO.
Stupid, isn't it? Yes, I agree, things get more difficult as the age goes down from 17 as to whether the person was giving informed consent. But we continue to apply a single standard and as a result, we get people branded freaking sex offenders when their only real "crime" was a lack of good judgement.
Computer generated child porn IS legal. The reason that the distributors have not switched to this is cost. It is still cheaper to get a real kid in front of a camera than it is to set up a render farm to produce realistic-looking graphics.
The real reason that the US government asked for postponement of the .xxx domain is because some lawmaker realized at the last minute that instituting a .xxx domain specifically for adult content effectively legitimizes it. It would give defense lawyers for those accused of violating "obscenity" laws new ammunition, allowing them to claim that the government effectively gave its blessing to adult content by granting this domain for that use. By preventing this from happening, the government eliminates this potential defense.
What's scary is that someone modded this "Funny".
The MPAA is already doing this. It's called the broadcast flag.
I'd say there was something wrong with your Dad's recorder or he's not using it right.
My wife's parents are currently building their retirement home in a little middle-of-nowhere town in New Mexico. They're living out of an RV right now as construction commences. They have stretches of nothing to do, and they have no cable hookup, so my wife records movies for them off TCM and burns them onto DVD for them. They haven't had a single problem playing them.