MySpace is free.. I can understand phishing for credit card numbers or bank logins, But MySpace?
People login to myspace with an email address and password.
If a person used the same password for their email, then not only is their email comprimised, but via their email, the attacker gets a list of other potential sites to try.
I would be extra suspicious of strange behaviour by ebay users for example. What is especially insidious about this is that once you've got someone's email account, you can run around clicking on all those "I lost my password" links and you'll be able to respond to all those emails.
Actually, I think he is being very professional. The trouble with web based citations is that they are in constant flux and cannot be guaranteed to exist in the future.
Did you even READ my post? You know, the part where you can link to a non-changing version of the article?
Paper records however are fairly robust
Like the Great Library of Alexandria? This is an argument that just doesn't work. You perceive them as more robust due to some irrational bias, the reality is quite different. The best way to preserve something is to keep lots of copies in lots of places. Digital media simply kicks paper's ass on this point.
The advantage of paper is that there is an audit trail to support an argument, you cannot do this with the web.
Sure you can.
Two painfully obvious examples would be achiving the HTML page yourself or using archive.org
Its not a case of living in the past, it's just sensible. In professional science you must have a reliable audit trail to support your argument.
Claiming that it is impossible to have an audit trail for electronic documents is just ignorant. Perhaps you should learn more about computing? People have been doing this for over 20 years! CVS would be one example.
And if the source no longer exists?
Then you'd deal with it the same way you do when you can't get your hands on a print source.
You seem generally ignorant regarding what is and is not possible with digital media. Quite likely because you have chosen to live in the past rather than embrace new technology and learn about it. I suggest you actually study the problems you believe exist and their readily availible solutions rather than embrassing youself by making such ridiculus claims.
1) The content is in flux and what a student sees today may not be the same tomorrow.
This is a non-issue. Click "Cite this article" link. You will be provided with a citation for a non-changing version of the article in just about every bibliographical standard imaginable. Try it.
2) Wikipedia makes a good resource to find other resources.
This is a problem how?
3) I don't allow any web based content to be a primary resource (stand alone), nor am I interested in seeing papers based on encyclopedias (only) either.
That's a shame. It's really silly for you have such an irrational bias. If the sources themselves are questionable that's one thing but disallowing web sources is just stupid. What if I'm doing a paper on some draft IEEE specification that hasn't even been published in print form?
What if the online source IS the primary source? I'm supposed to cite something else because of your personal bias? That's pretty unprofessional.
You are living and the past. Teach your students how to judge the credibility of sources not arbitrary biases against specfic media formats.
Wikipedia can never be used in research work with an authoritative citation, since it is constantly changing.
This is 100% false.
It is possible to cite a SPECFIC, NON-CHANGING version of a wiki article. Wikipedia will even provide the reference in standard MLA format for you. It's actually really easy. Theres a link right there on the page that says "Cite this article" for fucksake.
now the author must cite the date and exact time when the research was taken.
This is not new. This is why you include publication dates for magazines and copyright dates for books.
Have you ever even done a bibliography?
If scholars cannot work with authoritative citations, their work may not just be useless, it may be damaging.
It's called checking your sources. This is something that makes sense with ANY source.
I've run into errors in textbooks for example. Is all my work since then invalid? No, I noticed that my results didn't make sense and found alternative sources.
Ask yourself, "What makes a source authoritative?"
You'll discover that there's a list of criteria you're checking. If you apply a similar list to online sources you'll be fine.
Taking the stance that a new type of surce is useless because it requires dilligence that should have already been performed with print sources is pretty silly.
Actually, I think Stallman's changed more than the notion of free software. He's gone from "Source code should be free to anyone" to "Source code should be free to anyone who agrees with my politics." Right now, "politics" means DRM. But once that can of worms opens, it might be tough to close.
The above half-assed argument could be made against ANY provision of ANY GPL version you don't like. All you're doing is taking the one section you don't like and calling it "politics". The GPL is a POLITCAL document, it's as much a bill of rights for software users as it is a license.
The whole damn thing is politcal. More to the point, you're severely misguided if you think getting into politics means that you're automatically wrong. Politics is god damned important. Politics is what keeps people in or out or jails, armies and mass graves.
If you have an actual, thought-out reason then state it. Claiming "politics" is a bunch of nonsense. Of course it's politics!
Alright, how about a model that states that people will invest money whereever they feel that the total return will be the best.
This is not a model. Even if it was, you haven't shown how it predicted, in advance these contributions.
(I wouldn't bother formalizing it either, since it doesn't account for even simple, obvious things like gambling.)
You seem not be be getting my point. Economics is our own inaccurate attempt to model human behavior in certain situations. Certain people have this line of thinking that society obeys economic models, when in reality it the economic models that must be conformed to society. To state that specfic events or items are that way because of a model is asking to be made a fool of.
I'd never said anything about following the law in the first place.
Yes, you did. You were presented with the case where you had two choices:
A) Follow the law and be punished for no good reason
B) Break the law and avoid punishment
These were the two choices availible in the situation under discussion. You chose A.
When I tried to point this out
And failed miserably since you never made any specfic allegations.
For someone who says he never lies, you're certainly trying to squirm around a lot regarding what you did and did not say. You said you would never commit perjury. That makes you a sheep. An honorable man would be more than willing to do this an a variety of situations. A mans first obligation is to his fellow man, not his government.
So does this not imply a scout's obedience to governing laws, including copyright laws?
No.
Why?
Because LAW != MORALITY
If the gov't passed a law tomorrow that every foreign national residing in the US was to be hunted down and killed, would following it be the "moral" thing to do? Do you honestly believe that morality is defined by the decisions of a bunch of corrupt old white men?
Because words like truth, honor, duty, and integrity actually have some meaning to me.
SHEEP HAVE NO HONOR.
Following the law in EVERY situation does not make you honorable, it makes you a sheep. If you cannot think for yourself, you are less than a man. Playing by somebody else's rules, even when you know they are dishonest is not in itself a noble act. Quite often it is a stupid waste.
You are a criminal. You have broken some law at some point in time. It's basically impossible not to. Why didn't you turn yourself in? Doesn't your "honor" dictate that you must?
George S. Patton: "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."
Falling on your sword because the other side says you should is simply stupid.
Economics isn't about predicting anything. It's about understanding the behavior of people with regards to goods and services.
I suggest you read that sentence to yourself about at dozen times.
It's flat out wrong. People don't spend all this effort creating economic models just to explain past events. Economic models ARE used to predict the future. This is public knowedge. Your assertion otherwise is provably false.
The grandparent's assertion that economics cannot account for charity is utterly wrong.
You turning my argument into a strawman is utterly wrong. I cited specific, highly influential events. I asked for a model that predicted either. Try responding to that actual statements I made.
It is a poor and amateur model of economics that cannot account for charity, donations, bequeaths, and other forms of giving/sharing.
It appears you are the one with a poor understanding of economic models.
It's not a question of what model you use. People fail to understand that these were created by fitting to past data and constitute the creator's bias as to what is important. People then treat these models as gospel.
I defy you to point to a model that predicted Bill Gate's recent charitable contributions.
You just don't have one. You can go BACKWARDS in time and design a model that fits all the data you have, but that doesn't mean it will accurately predict future events. What it comes down to is that the economy is composed of PEOPLE, not deterministic algorithms. You simply cannot predict their actions in many cases.
This is not to say that economics is useless. The point is that many people treat economics as if it where based on real physical models (like chemistry), rather than assumptions about behavior and statistical data.
Point me to a model that predicted the start of the free software foundation. I dare you.
Quite often, something free is worth what you paid for it.
Nonsense. I don't pay anything for the air I breathe, but that neither means that is is unimportant, not lacks value to me.
To put it another way, there's no reason to believe that the mere act of paying money for something, actually makes it worth paying for.
The fault in your thinking is a failure to account for the development of free software existing OUTSIDE of the typical capitalist economic model. If your ECON 101 teacher was right, GNU/Linux would not exist.
And if by due process, a restriction on the handling of fuel is made effective, that too is the perogative of government.
That statement assumes that we, as citizens, have not power, ability, or bligation to influence the government and its decisions.
This is a rule that is really a negative for society. The risk is so tiny as to be basically unmeasureable, while the effect on hobbiests and educators is very real.
This is a particular chemical that is being treated in a manner that is not consistent with common sense.
This is a really silly argument to make.
You're picking something unrelated and acting as if it is inextricably tied.
So your argument is that if people are allowed to posess even small quantites of dangerous materials, we'll all of a sudden be forced to use child labor?
"Definitions of troll on the Web:
From the fishing term. As a noun, synonymous with flamebait. As a verb, to post controversial or provocative messages in a deliberate attempt to provoke flames."
A moderation of the parent post as "troll" is simple modertaion abuse.
It's amazing the way things have changed in this country.
One used to be able to ride their horse down to the general store and buy whole sticks of dynamite.
What happened to personal responsibility? Land of the free?
We're all a bunch of scared little babies. In my state, you can't even buy sparklers anymore!
These regulations should be relaxed by at least a factor of ten. Model rocketry is a great hobby. It is something the state should promote.
There are entirely too many people willing to treat every citizen as a potential terrorist in response to a threat that is much more remote than even a simple traffic accident.
Sure, there's a risk associated with every freedom, but let's be realistic. Being terrified because someone has three ounces of explosives does no one any good.
What good is a UPS going to do in the case the machine powers off because of a problem with the power unit, a motherboard short circuit, and so on? Any filesystem with serious data loss on a power failure is not acceptable, period.
How about a diskless workstation, that isn't going to have ANY data left after power loss, regardless of file system?
It's really foolish to make blanket statements like that.
Perhaps it's not useful to you, but consider the situation where you've got hundreds of redundant servers rebuilding their dataset every 24 hours. Even a 1% speed increase is going to more than justify the cost of keeping one extra server around in the case of filesystem corruption.
What you're doing is like looking at a Ferrari and saying "That's stupid and useless. It's much less reliable than my Toyota."
Although I would never run my personal workstation on this filesystem, I can see obvious cases where it could prove useful.
But the sending of priority mail and boxes must be up with ebay and all that. I wish the post office opened more small kiosks around the place, in strip malls, supermarkets and such, every time I go into a main branch it is a long wait. It would be profitable for them, especially as they are cheaper than the competition.
I wish they'd start letting us put packages in mailboxes again!
I wanted to mail a book to a friend of mine. I slapped the proper amount of stamps on it and swung by the nearest mailbox. No luck. For security reasons blah blah blah. So I have to take time out of my lunch break to wait in line in order to hand to box to a person.
It's a completely useless waste of time.
Maybe if people were actually allowed to use mailboxes, they would get used.
However, it is also worth pointing out the pervasive hypocrisy.
So do it already!
For example, during all the instantiations of Robert A Kennedy's election conspiracy theories, the +5 modded comments have taught us the error of judging the validity of content by the politics of the source.
Still waiting.... "Consider the source" does not mean "Dismiss all information form someone whose political viewpoints do not agree with your own."
In short, people only care about logical fallacies when they're not amicable to their own personal cause.
Perhaps you should drop the straw man arguments if you're going to bitch about logical fallacies.
You are implying that either no one with stated politcal views can but modded +5, or we're all a bunch of hippocrites.
Slashdot Mirror
MySpace is free.. I can understand phishing for credit card numbers or bank logins, But MySpace?
People login to myspace with an email address and password.
If a person used the same password for their email, then not only is their email comprimised, but via their email, the attacker gets a list of other potential sites to try.
I would be extra suspicious of strange behaviour by ebay users for example. What is especially insidious about this is that once you've got someone's email account, you can run around clicking on all those "I lost my password" links and you'll be able to respond to all those emails.
Actually, I think he is being very professional. The trouble with web based citations is that they are in constant flux and cannot be guaranteed to exist in the future.
Did you even READ my post? You know, the part where you can link to a non-changing version of the article?
Paper records however are fairly robust
Like the Great Library of Alexandria? This is an argument that just doesn't work. You perceive them as more robust due to some irrational bias, the reality is quite different. The best way to preserve something is to keep lots of copies in lots of places. Digital media simply kicks paper's ass on this point.
The advantage of paper is that there is an audit trail to support an argument, you cannot do this with the web.
Sure you can.
Two painfully obvious examples would be achiving the HTML page yourself or using archive.org
Its not a case of living in the past, it's just sensible. In professional science you must have a reliable audit trail to support your argument.
Claiming that it is impossible to have an audit trail for electronic documents is just ignorant. Perhaps you should learn more about computing? People have been doing this for over 20 years! CVS would be one example.
And if the source no longer exists?
Then you'd deal with it the same way you do when you can't get your hands on a print source.
You seem generally ignorant regarding what is and is not possible with digital media. Quite likely because you have chosen to live in the past rather than embrace new technology and learn about it. I suggest you actually study the problems you believe exist and their readily availible solutions rather than embrassing youself by making such ridiculus claims.
1) The content is in flux and what a student sees today may not be the same tomorrow.
This is a non-issue. Click "Cite this article" link. You will be provided with a citation for a non-changing version of the article in just about every bibliographical standard imaginable. Try it.
2) Wikipedia makes a good resource to find other resources.
This is a problem how?
3) I don't allow any web based content to be a primary resource (stand alone), nor am I interested in seeing papers based on encyclopedias (only) either.
That's a shame. It's really silly for you have such an irrational bias. If the sources themselves are questionable that's one thing but disallowing web sources is just stupid. What if I'm doing a paper on some draft IEEE specification that hasn't even been published in print form?
What if the online source IS the primary source? I'm supposed to cite something else because of your personal bias? That's pretty unprofessional.
You are living and the past. Teach your students how to judge the credibility of sources not arbitrary biases against specfic media formats.
Wikipedia can never be used in research work with an authoritative citation, since it is constantly changing.
This is 100% false.
It is possible to cite a SPECFIC, NON-CHANGING version of a wiki article. Wikipedia will even provide the reference in standard MLA format for you. It's actually really easy. Theres a link right there on the page that says "Cite this article" for fucksake.
now the author must cite the date and exact time when the research was taken.
This is not new. This is why you include publication dates for magazines and copyright dates for books.
Have you ever even done a bibliography?
If scholars cannot work with authoritative citations, their work may not just be useless, it may be damaging.
It's called checking your sources. This is something that makes sense with ANY source.
I've run into errors in textbooks for example. Is all my work since then invalid? No, I noticed that my results didn't make sense and found alternative sources.
Ask yourself, "What makes a source authoritative?"
You'll discover that there's a list of criteria you're checking. If you apply a similar list to online sources you'll be fine.
Taking the stance that a new type of surce is useless because it requires dilligence that should have already been performed with print sources is pretty silly.
Actually, I think Stallman's changed more than the notion of free software. He's gone from "Source code should be free to anyone" to "Source code should be free to anyone who agrees with my politics." Right now, "politics" means DRM. But once that can of worms opens, it might be tough to close.
The above half-assed argument could be made against ANY provision of ANY GPL version you don't like. All you're doing is taking the one section you don't like and calling it "politics". The GPL is a POLITCAL document, it's as much a bill of rights for software users as it is a license.
The whole damn thing is politcal. More to the point, you're severely misguided if you think getting into politics means that you're automatically wrong. Politics is god damned important. Politics is what keeps people in or out or jails, armies and mass graves.
If you have an actual, thought-out reason then state it. Claiming "politics" is a bunch of nonsense. Of course it's politics!
Alright, how about a model that states that people will invest money whereever they feel that the total return will be the best.
This is not a model. Even if it was, you haven't shown how it predicted, in advance these contributions.
(I wouldn't bother formalizing it either, since it doesn't account for even simple, obvious things like gambling.)
You seem not be be getting my point. Economics is our own inaccurate attempt to model human behavior in certain situations. Certain people have this line of thinking that society obeys economic models, when in reality it the economic models that must be conformed to society. To state that specfic events or items are that way because of a model is asking to be made a fool of.
What did you do about swap files, temp files, caching, etc?
Did all these workstations have read-only physical disks or no physical disks at all?
You said: I was never presented with a case
"This is a case in which.."
Yes, you were.
You said: nor was there ever any such stringent limitations on choices
"That is not an option when in front of a grand jury."
You were presented with only two choices. Lie or don't lie. No other option.
The thread is right there available for all to see. Perhaps it is you who should read the thread you are replying to?
I'd never said anything about following the law in the first place.
Yes, you did. You were presented with the case where you had two choices:
A) Follow the law and be punished for no good reason
B) Break the law and avoid punishment
These were the two choices availible in the situation under discussion. You chose A.
When I tried to point this out
And failed miserably since you never made any specfic allegations.
For someone who says he never lies, you're certainly trying to squirm around a lot regarding what you did and did not say. You said you would never commit perjury. That makes you a sheep. An honorable man would be more than willing to do this an a variety of situations. A mans first obligation is to his fellow man, not his government.
Funny, you didn't actually point out where anything I said was wrong.
Perhaps you simply can't defend your own arguments?
So does this not imply a scout's obedience to governing laws, including copyright laws?
No.
Why?
Because LAW != MORALITY
If the gov't passed a law tomorrow that every foreign national residing in the US was to be hunted down and killed, would following it be the "moral" thing to do? Do you honestly believe that morality is defined by the decisions of a bunch of corrupt old white men?
Because words like truth, honor, duty, and integrity actually have some meaning to me.
SHEEP HAVE NO HONOR.
Following the law in EVERY situation does not make you honorable, it makes you a sheep. If you cannot think for yourself, you are less than a man. Playing by somebody else's rules, even when you know they are dishonest is not in itself a noble act. Quite often it is a stupid waste.
You are a criminal. You have broken some law at some point in time. It's basically impossible not to. Why didn't you turn yourself in? Doesn't your "honor" dictate that you must?
George S. Patton: "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."
Falling on your sword because the other side says you should is simply stupid.
Economics isn't about predicting anything. It's about understanding the behavior of people with regards to goods and services.
I suggest you read that sentence to yourself about at dozen times.
It's flat out wrong. People don't spend all this effort creating economic models just to explain past events. Economic models ARE used to predict the future. This is public knowedge. Your assertion otherwise is provably false.
The grandparent's assertion that economics cannot account for charity is utterly wrong.
You turning my argument into a strawman is utterly wrong. I cited specific, highly influential events. I asked for a model that predicted either. Try responding to that actual statements I made.
It is a poor and amateur model of economics that cannot account for charity, donations, bequeaths, and other forms of giving/sharing.
It appears you are the one with a poor understanding of economic models.
It's not a question of what model you use. People fail to understand that these were created by fitting to past data and constitute the creator's bias as to what is important. People then treat these models as gospel.
I defy you to point to a model that predicted Bill Gate's recent charitable contributions.
You just don't have one. You can go BACKWARDS in time and design a model that fits all the data you have, but that doesn't mean it will accurately predict future events.
What it comes down to is that the economy is composed of PEOPLE, not deterministic algorithms. You simply cannot predict their actions in many cases.
This is not to say that economics is useless. The point is that many people treat economics as if it where based on real physical models (like chemistry), rather than assumptions about behavior and statistical data.
Point me to a model that predicted the start of the free software foundation. I dare you.
Quite often, something free is worth what you paid for it.
Nonsense. I don't pay anything for the air I breathe, but that neither means that is is unimportant, not lacks value to me.
To put it another way, there's no reason to believe that the mere act of paying money for something, actually makes it worth paying for.
The fault in your thinking is a failure to account for the development of free software existing OUTSIDE of the typical capitalist economic model. If your ECON 101 teacher was right, GNU/Linux would not exist.
Uh, if it's a diskless workstation, what exactly are you formatting with XFS or Reiser?
RAM
How is a diskless workstation at all relevant in a discussion about the merits of various filesystems?
RAMdisks
And if by due process, a restriction on the handling of fuel is made effective, that too is the perogative of government.
That statement assumes that we, as citizens, have not power, ability, or bligation to influence the government and its decisions.
This is a rule that is really a negative for society. The risk is so tiny as to be basically unmeasureable, while the effect on hobbiests and educators is very real.
This is a particular chemical that is being treated in a manner that is not consistent with common sense.
This is a really silly argument to make.
You're picking something unrelated and acting as if it is inextricably tied.
So your argument is that if people are allowed to posess even small quantites of dangerous materials, we'll all of a sudden be forced to use child labor?
Although your comment is correct, it is outside the scope of this discussion.
The restriction under discussion here is not upon where or when launches may occur.
It is a restriction on fuel.
I certainly argee launches should only take place where it is safe to do so.
Not to mods
PARENT POST IS NOT A TROLL
These are my honest opinions on the subject.
"Definitions of troll on the Web: From the fishing term. As a noun, synonymous with flamebait. As a verb, to post controversial or provocative messages in a deliberate attempt to provoke flames."
A moderation of the parent post as "troll" is simple modertaion abuse.
It's amazing the way things have changed in this country.
One used to be able to ride their horse down to the general store and buy whole sticks of dynamite.
What happened to personal responsibility? Land of the free?
We're all a bunch of scared little babies. In my state, you can't even buy sparklers anymore!
These regulations should be relaxed by at least a factor of ten. Model rocketry is a great hobby. It is something the state should promote.
There are entirely too many people willing to treat every citizen as a potential terrorist in response to a threat that is much more remote than even a simple traffic accident.
Sure, there's a risk associated with every freedom, but let's be realistic. Being terrified because someone has three ounces of explosives does no one any good.
What good is a UPS going to do in the case the machine powers off because of a problem with the power unit, a motherboard short circuit, and so on? Any filesystem with serious data loss on a power failure is not acceptable, period.
How about a diskless workstation, that isn't going to have ANY data left after power loss, regardless of file system?
It's really foolish to make blanket statements like that.
Perhaps it's not useful to you, but consider the situation where you've got hundreds of redundant servers rebuilding their dataset every 24 hours. Even a 1% speed increase is going to more than justify the cost of keeping one extra server around in the case of filesystem corruption.
What you're doing is like looking at a Ferrari and saying "That's stupid and useless. It's much less reliable than my Toyota."
Although I would never run my personal workstation on this filesystem, I can see obvious cases where it could prove useful.
Aren't they illegal?
When asking a question like this it is important to state where you live.
But the sending of priority mail and boxes must be up with ebay and all that. I wish the post office opened more small kiosks around the place, in strip malls, supermarkets and such, every time I go into a main branch it is a long wait. It would be profitable for them, especially as they are cheaper than the competition.
I wish they'd start letting us put packages in mailboxes again!
I wanted to mail a book to a friend of mine. I slapped the proper amount of stamps on it and swung by the nearest mailbox. No luck. For security reasons blah blah blah. So I have to take time out of my lunch break to wait in line in order to hand to box to a person.
It's a completely useless waste of time.
Maybe if people were actually allowed to use mailboxes, they would get used.
However, it is also worth pointing out the pervasive hypocrisy.
So do it already!
For example, during all the instantiations of Robert A Kennedy's election conspiracy theories, the +5 modded comments have taught us the error of judging the validity of content by the politics of the source.
Still waiting....
"Consider the source" does not mean "Dismiss all information form someone whose political viewpoints do not agree with your own."
In short, people only care about logical fallacies when they're not amicable to their own personal cause.
Perhaps you should drop the straw man arguments if you're going to bitch about logical fallacies.
You are implying that either no one with stated politcal views can but modded +5, or we're all a bunch of hippocrites.