A university student at Carleton is learning that no good deed goes unpunished. After picking the lock into what was probably a not-so-secure professor's office, this guy took the time to write a 16-page paper on his methods and sent it to facilities management. Sounds like White Hat behavior to me. Yes, he should have asked permission before trying, but throwing the book at the guy and wrecking his life with criminal charges (which stick for a long time) seems a little excessive.
See how stupid this sounds when you apply the same logic elsewhere? Weak security is not an excuse for hacking a system, any more than having crappy locks is an excuse to break in somewhere to demonstrate to the owners that their physical security sucks. It's irrelevant whether he thought he was being helpful, it doesn't excuse his actions.
He might not have done any damage, or looked at anything he shouldn't have had access to, or planted backdoors into the system, but what proof do they have of this until they tear everything down and check it all for themselves?
The truth is, some university students are going to have the desire to hack something, and not all of them have the judgment to stay out of trouble.
So what? Not all of them have the judgement to not drink and drive, too - should we excuse them from DUI convinctions, as well? By the time you hit university, you're an adult, and it's time to act like one.
Yes, it sucks that he was still able to plead down from the sentence he should get, but it's not just about punishing him. The deal included him confessing and waiving his right to appeal, so it all ends now. What's it worth to not have him game the appeals system for a decade? Or to avoid having to drag his kids into court to testify again in a new trial three or five years down the road? Or for Nina's family to finally be able to bury her? Or to keep her body from being found by some kids next summer?
...reflect on what the right to free speech actually entails. You have the right to speak your mind, in public, without initerference from the government or anyone else, subject to a few, very narrow, limitations (i.e. you can't yell fire in a crowded theater, or defame someone). The right to free speech does to mean that anyone is obligated to listen to you - they're free to walk away, hang up the phone, put their hands over their ears, whatever. Neither is any person or businiess obligated to provide you with a soapbox, or let you use theirs. That's what the democratization of the web is all about - if you don't like it that YouTube has banned video xyz, nobody's stopping you from putting your money where your mouth is and setting up a site to stream it yourself (or even from just releasing it via p2p services, if you don't have any cash).
Wikipedia announces that the number of accurate and well-written articles has now reached an all-time high of 11. Of course, seven of them are on Klingon culture.
First, I must solicit your strictest confidence in this transaction. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and 'TOP SECRET'. I am sure and have confidence of your ability and reliability to prosecute a trasnaction of this great magnitude involving a pending transaction requiring maxiimum confidence.
Why is this article considered interesting? Of the author's two main themes, one is an unoriginal rehashing of the inherent problem with MMPORGs (that a subscription based service has an interest in dragging out progression in the game for as long as possible, and this works against making the game as fun as it could be), and the other is the standard whine of the over-caffeinated Twitch Monkey (tm - ID Software) whenever he encounters a game that doesn't depend purely on reaction time and hand-eye coordination. It's doubtful he'd like any RPG (any real RPG, not that Diablo style crap), because as a rule, they don't worship at the throne of the caffeine god.
Hey Kids! Tune in next week for his article on why Civilization IV sucks!
Bono preseumes to lecture world leaders about how the world's economic problems should be handled, yet he's incapable of plugging an XBox into a television set?!? You could literally train a chimp to do this in less than five minutes...
It's not much consolation, but Canadian courts almost never award punitive damages. Even if the developer wins, the court is likely to simply try and work out a value for whatever damage to the complainant's reputation that the statements resulted in.
"Sounds like some people can get Linux to work in an 'enterprise environment' after all."
Who (besides Microsoft and their paid shills) have you heard arguing that Linux doesn't work in the enterprise? Linux is somewhere in the server room at any place big enough to have a server room. What people do argue is that Linux on the desktop isn't ready for the enterprise - but that's not what this is. A cash register isn't a desktop (though it might run on desktop hardware), it's a single purpose machine that's going to run one application only. Linux has been doing well in the embedded market for a long time, and that's essentially what this is.
...is really regretting the number of times he used the "I think 3% is a pretty good raise in the current business climate" line during the last performance review cycle.
Hmm, an HR drone on pogey - I like the sound of that.
This probably wouldn't affect Google or Yahoo in the way that you think. The most likely outcome of applying a GPL3 with that sort of provision in it would be a fork of that software under the old licence. The FSF can't just go "haha, we changed the GPL, give us all your code". The GPL is a contract like any other, and one of the basic principles of contract law is that one party cannot unilaterally go back and change the terms of the deal. Any F/OSS project is free to impose whatever new terms they want on new code, but they can't change the deal for the stuff that's already out there under the old licences.
I'm sick of reading news that's been sanitized and slanted by big corporate media. WikiNews will revoltionize how news works. Independent, on-the-scene local volunteers will provide an unbiased source of information on what's really happening during a major breaking story.
Best of all, the wiki can be updated directly, in real time - by other witnesses, or volunteer editors seeking to distill all of the data into a coherent news item, or activists with an agenda to push, or government spin doctors, or drunken university students amusing themselves by anouncing that heavy fighting between US marines and Iraqi insurgents has broken out in the parking lot of Chuck E. Cheese.
There are some uses for which wikis are well suited. Providing accurate or authoritative information is not one of them. Wiki true believers: this is a fact of life, get over it.
IMHO, the EULA parts that I've seen are so vague Microsoft could collect anything they want without worrying about legal action against them. After all, they are masters of vague verbiage in license agreements, are they not?
Why does everyone think that EULA terms trump everything else? Microsoft is bound by HIPAA just like anyone other vendor in the healthcare industry, no matter what they say. Contracts don't trump law, especially criminal law.
Umm, the one to the moon. I would have thought that it was obvious that's what the original poster meant, even though it was phrased poorly.
It is important to note that the Americans got off to a slow start, but all the "firsts" you're pointing to have one thing in in common: they were the easy stuff. All they required were some big rockets (and for the human orbit, a willful disregard for the safety and well-being of your test pilot). How many of those have been duplicated by others countries since? How many other countries have duplicated the moon landing?
On a final note, pointing to Wikipedia to back up your argument is dangerous. In this case they apparently didn't get anything wrong, but on the whole, Wikipedia generally has all the authority and accuracy of lecture notes borrowed from your roommate (who had a hangover when he took them).
Slashdot Mirror
A university student at Carleton is learning that no good deed goes unpunished. After picking the lock into what was probably a not-so-secure professor's office, this guy took the time to write a 16-page paper on his methods and sent it to facilities management. Sounds like White Hat behavior to me. Yes, he should have asked permission before trying, but throwing the book at the guy and wrecking his life with criminal charges (which stick for a long time) seems a little excessive.
See how stupid this sounds when you apply the same logic elsewhere? Weak security is not an excuse for hacking a system, any more than having crappy locks is an excuse to break in somewhere to demonstrate to the owners that their physical security sucks. It's irrelevant whether he thought he was being helpful, it doesn't excuse his actions.
He might not have done any damage, or looked at anything he shouldn't have had access to, or planted backdoors into the system, but what proof do they have of this until they tear everything down and check it all for themselves?
The truth is, some university students are going to have the desire to hack something, and not all of them have the judgment to stay out of trouble.
So what? Not all of them have the judgement to not drink and drive, too - should we excuse them from DUI convinctions, as well? By the time you hit university, you're an adult, and it's time to act like one.
Yes, it sucks that he was still able to plead down from the sentence he should get, but it's not just about punishing him. The deal included him confessing and waiving his right to appeal, so it all ends now. What's it worth to not have him game the appeals system for a decade? Or to avoid having to drag his kids into court to testify again in a new trial three or five years down the road? Or for Nina's family to finally be able to bury her? Or to keep her body from being found by some kids next summer?
...reflect on what the right to free speech actually entails. You have the right to speak your mind, in public, without initerference from the government or anyone else, subject to a few, very narrow, limitations (i.e. you can't yell fire in a crowded theater, or defame someone). The right to free speech does to mean that anyone is obligated to listen to you - they're free to walk away, hang up the phone, put their hands over their ears, whatever. Neither is any person or businiess obligated to provide you with a soapbox, or let you use theirs. That's what the democratization of the web is all about - if you don't like it that YouTube has banned video xyz, nobody's stopping you from putting your money where your mouth is and setting up a site to stream it yourself (or even from just releasing it via p2p services, if you don't have any cash).
What law has been broken?
What jurisdiction was it broken in?
Are you absolutely certain there's a similar law against it there, too?
Be glad it wasn't real money you got suckered out of and quit whining.
So is it standard policy now at Slashdot to only post the most popular entries off of yesterday's Digg frontpage?
Wikipedia announces that the number of accurate and well-written articles has now reached an all-time high of 11. Of course, seven of them are on Klingon culture.
FROM: DARL MCBRIGERIA, UTAH
First, I must solicit your strictest confidence in this transaction. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and 'TOP SECRET'. I am sure and have confidence of your ability and reliability to prosecute a trasnaction of this great magnitude involving a pending transaction requiring maxiimum confidence.
Why is this article considered interesting? Of the author's two main themes, one is an unoriginal rehashing of the inherent problem with MMPORGs (that a subscription based service has an interest in dragging out progression in the game for as long as possible, and this works against making the game as fun as it could be), and the other is the standard whine of the over-caffeinated Twitch Monkey (tm - ID Software) whenever he encounters a game that doesn't depend purely on reaction time and hand-eye coordination. It's doubtful he'd like any RPG (any real RPG, not that Diablo style crap), because as a rule, they don't worship at the throne of the caffeine god.
Hey Kids! Tune in next week for his article on why Civilization IV sucks!
Bono preseumes to lecture world leaders about how the world's economic problems should be handled, yet he's incapable of plugging an XBox into a television set?!? You could literally train a chimp to do this in less than five minutes...
"we're all well educated athiests so I guess that's to be expected"
Really? Exactly how many uneducated atheists do you know who believe in creationism?
It's not much consolation, but Canadian courts almost never award punitive damages. Even if the developer wins, the court is likely to simply try and work out a value for whatever damage to the complainant's reputation that the statements resulted in.
- Inventor has no relevant education
- Ignores valid critiques of his theories
- Continually produces lab results nobody else can duplicate
- Has been six months away from commericializing the technology for over a decade
- Just needs a bit of cash from you to make it big
Damn, where's my chequebook?
I can only imagine what potential (non-Canadian) employers will think when they see I have a degree from the University of Saskatchewan.
GE liked my U of S degrees just fine when they hired me. Now, if you had a University of Regina degree, that would be a different story....
Wikipedia has quality issues?
I don't believe it. Next thing you'll be telling me that there's pornography on the internet.
Check it out, just approved after this decision came through:
U.S. Patent #1024359876
Type: Business Model
Abstract: A generalized business model for extracting maximum profits in new and emerging industries.
1. Collect underpants.
2. ???
3. Profit!
Next IPO bubble that comes along, I'm going to be RICH!
"Sounds like some people can get Linux to work in an 'enterprise environment' after all."
Who (besides Microsoft and their paid shills) have you heard arguing that Linux doesn't work in the enterprise? Linux is somewhere in the server room at any place big enough to have a server room. What people do argue is that Linux on the desktop isn't ready for the enterprise - but that's not what this is. A cash register isn't a desktop (though it might run on desktop hardware), it's a single purpose machine that's going to run one application only. Linux has been doing well in the embedded market for a long time, and that's essentially what this is.
...is really regretting the number of times he used the "I think 3% is a pretty good raise in the current business climate" line during the last performance review cycle.
Hmm, an HR drone on pogey - I like the sound of that.
This probably wouldn't affect Google or Yahoo in the way that you think. The most likely outcome of applying a GPL3 with that sort of provision in it would be a fork of that software under the old licence. The FSF can't just go "haha, we changed the GPL, give us all your code". The GPL is a contract like any other, and one of the basic principles of contract law is that one party cannot unilaterally go back and change the terms of the deal. Any F/OSS project is free to impose whatever new terms they want on new code, but they can't change the deal for the stuff that's already out there under the old licences.
...to the following questions:
What can we do to make sure that for profit enterprises won't ever consider using GPL3 code in any projects?
How can we best add legitimacy to Microsoft's FUD about the GPL?
And most of the people with titles like "software engineer" put just as much time, effort, and money into getting their computer science degrees.
I'll take "software engineer" off my business card as soon as I see engineering professors stop referring to themselves as "Dr.".
...before we find out who the ghostwriter on the script was?
I'm sick of reading news that's been sanitized and slanted by big corporate media. WikiNews will revoltionize how news works. Independent, on-the-scene local volunteers will provide an unbiased source of information on what's really happening during a major breaking story.
Best of all, the wiki can be updated directly, in real time - by other witnesses, or volunteer editors seeking to distill all of the data into a coherent news item, or activists with an agenda to push, or government spin doctors, or drunken university students amusing themselves by anouncing that heavy fighting between US marines and Iraqi insurgents has broken out in the parking lot of Chuck E. Cheese.
There are some uses for which wikis are well suited. Providing accurate or authoritative information is not one of them. Wiki true believers: this is a fact of life, get over it.
IMHO, the EULA parts that I've seen are so vague Microsoft could collect anything they want without worrying about legal action against them. After all, they are masters of vague verbiage in license agreements, are they not?
Why does everyone think that EULA terms trump everything else? Microsoft is bound by HIPAA just like anyone other vendor in the healthcare industry, no matter what they say. Contracts don't trump law, especially criminal law.
Which first race?
Umm, the one to the moon. I would have thought that it was obvious that's what the original poster meant, even though it was phrased poorly.
It is important to note that the Americans got off to a slow start, but all the "firsts" you're pointing to have one thing in in common: they were the easy stuff. All they required were some big rockets (and for the human orbit, a willful disregard for the safety and well-being of your test pilot). How many of those have been duplicated by others countries since? How many other countries have duplicated the moon landing?
On a final note, pointing to Wikipedia to back up your argument is dangerous. In this case they apparently didn't get anything wrong, but on the whole, Wikipedia generally has all the authority and accuracy of lecture notes borrowed from your roommate (who had a hangover when he took them).
...that's like two iLamps and a bundle of CD-Rs, right?