Nice. Add an Ad Hominem to the Fallacy of Composition above.
I like the environment. It's where I live. Does that make me a hippy? In your world I guess it does.
In my world, I regard hippies with the same scathing disdain I reserve for the denialists who still try to pretend like any evidence of human involvement in the current climate change is just fairy dust and imagination.
There is solid evidence. A lot of respectable scientists have endorsed it. The steps we should take are things that would be a good idea ANYWAY.
Me: "Maybe I should drive a more fuel efficient car..." You: "Ha ha, you're a stupid hippy!"
It's good you only needed a few, because that's all you've got. I find it amusing how many of the same people who for years claimed there was no such thing as global warming, have now all jumped onto the bandwagon of saying that the global warming which everyone now agrees is occurring isn't caused by people...Not that they have a credible alternative except "It just happens".
Pardon me if I don't rush to embrace their opinion.
Sorry about the "dupe" post. Browser crashed, and I didn't think the first went up.
Shrug. A climate scientist with access to all the info probably can only make a rough guess as to how things will go, and I doubt things will ever get as bad as the worst case scenarios...But part of the reason I think that is because there is a lot of attention and research being directed at this issue now, and that is because the media has been covering it extensively.
Frankly, all credible evidence I've seen leads me to believe that there is a strong potential threat out there, and I am more inclined to be lenient to the media for hyping the threat than I am to forgive the conservative side for ignoring the issue, then claiming its all crap, and then moving on to the point of trying to discredit it without providing compelling research debunking it.
What you're really saying is, "The majority is always wrong." This is the same majority who stand behind most of the accepted principles of science...Are they wrong about all those things as well?
This exact argument is used in attempts to refute Evolution as well, which is truly ironic...Galileo wasn't really bucking the prevaling opinions in science as he was bucking the religious dogma of the day, and now the religious dogmatists use his name to try and discredit well supported scientific theories.
This is the second post in this thread to reference a blog post on the blog of the "most vocal skeptic of climate change in Congress" as equal to an article in a large reputable science magazine.
Inhofe is an idiot and a staunch creationist; why do you think his opinion matters in this context?
Okay, so it's all about sheep. It's sheep who believe articles by the liberal scaremongering "New Scientist" magazine, and intelligent non-sheep who listen to right thinking people like Drudge and Jim Inhofe, who is described in Wikipedia with the following line: "He is the most vocal skeptic of climate change (global warming) in Congress.[1] Inhofe often cites the Bible as the source for his stances on various political issues." You don't see a problem there?
Call people sheep if you like, but when you cite garbage like that to back up your position, it makes you look like a fool.
Shrug. Looking through this thread, there are a bunch of obviously over-emotional "there is no global warming people", and they all either make the argument that, "90% of the scientists in the world are wrong because of *insert anecdote here*" or that the whole thing is completely political and manufactured by the liberal media.
You at least bothered to make some citations, but the citations you made are irrelevant...Drudge talking about the weather? Jim Inhofe's blog? That bastard is so conservative he doesn't believe in fire, and he sure as hell doesn't know the first thing about science.
Now take the article that is the point of this thread...It's on New Scientist, which is at least scientific in nature (unlike either of your examples), and each point is made with citations to sites that also deal in science, some of which are quite reputable.
Given those arguments, who would you believe if you didn't have an obvious bias?
The only argument that makes any sense to me is, "Every time we force our customers to patch systems, we run the risk of creating incompatibilities and getting slews of angry phone calls, and that'll screw up our week" and they didn't even include that one.
Ideally the stuff should be reasonably secure out the gate; sure, they're talking about all the reasons they have for not patching after the fact, and all this stuff is true...Patching is a huge pain in the ass for everyone involved. But dammit, the amount of patching that gets done is inexcusable!
The thing that burns me is, you know that the developers don't incorporate those "tentative" fixes into the next product release either, not until the bugs make it public. You know that there is middle management who is perfectly aware of significant poor design decisions that could be solved by a well-planned rewrite, who instead tell their people to patch and baby weak code, because the cost of doing it right would impact their deliverables.
The simple truth of it is, an aggressive response is almost guaranteed to save more lives. Look at 9/11...4 planes, 1 aggressive response. In every case the casualties on the flight were 100%, but in one case there were no secondary casualties. Columbine, UVA...in both cases the gunmen reloaded multiple times, and they had time to do it because people were barricading themselves in and trying to escape.
I think that in the context of a long series of drills and training, that it would be appropriate for a "surprise" drill of this sort, but having one out of nowhere, especially dealing with kids of that age, is just asking for a massive lawsuit.
I'm personally in favor of a more aggressive approach to school safety...Kids need to be taught to duck and cover when possible (e.g when you're in a secure room), and to mob the gunman when they're not...Hiding under desks is worthless.
I've never met a place yet that blocks newsgroups, so blocking porn is redundant, as well as impossible. Worked at a company once that ended up with a link to a porn page on the main page of their website, because the domain had expired, and a porn company had snapped it up.
So the argument isn't about porn, because a school will have to have a policy on that regardless, because no blacklist will ever stop porn, and that kind of thing even makes it on to whitelists occasionally, based on situations like the one I described above. Not to mention hardcopy.
The argument is about the use of a proxy, pure and simple.
It's the difference between a blacklist and a whitelist.
Blacklist says, "You can go anywhere you want" and quietly takes some of those places away. China does this because they're trying to pretend they don't block anything at all.
A whitelist, on the other hand, says right out, "You can go here, here, and here, and screw you if you want to go anywhere else, we're not a public service."
The school should have a whitelist. Period. No question. Secure, no place for a proxy, easy as pie. But they're trying to pretend like they don't work that way, and it's pathetic.
The setup was sloppy and unrealistic. There is absolutely no question about that. They picked up a half-assed blacklist solution, and the kids immediately circumvented it using a method that is as old as the blacklist itself.
A three month suspension is a joke. Either expel the kid, or provide a reasonable punishment. A three month suspension suggests to me that they couldn't prove a case for expulsion, which in turn suggests that the offense wasn't worthy of expulsion, which then suggests that it probably wasn't worthy of a 3 month suspension either.
And in terms of the internet, yes, you can expect people to circumvent your filters if you make it possible for them to do so. I don't care where you are, or what business you're in. To expect otherwise and act shocked when it happens is disingenuous.
See, I don't have a problem with a mild sort of punishment, along the lines of what you described, depending on what the offense was. Some things obviously cannot be tolerated in a school, and would merit a much longer suspension, but those things wouldn't be related to the trivial act of circumvention by means of proxy, but rather from whatever inappropriateness they had gotten up to once they had done that.
It's the proxy itself being treated as a problem that bugs me.
Second of all, this particular puppy is being suspended for 1/3rd of a school year for looking at something. To continue your "original" idea, if you beat the puppy all the time for no particular reason, what you're going to get is a crazy puppy, and it's not going to be his fault, it's going to be your fault for trying to instill a poorly defined sense of right and wrong.
Why not? What if I was in China, and I was bypassing the filters there? Would you be the Yahoo exec turning my name over to the Chinese government so they could throw my ass in jail for wanting to taste the wider world outside the little mental happy place my government has set up for me?
It's exactly the same thing, and you'll say, "But it's for their own good!" and I'll say, "Who? My kids, or the Chinese?"
Semantics. Where I am the EiC == the Executive Editor, and the editor that reports to the Executive Editor is the Managing Editor, and it goes down from there.
He sounds like a stand up guy. He certainly did the right thing...If your publication descends into newsvertisements there's really no way to get your credibility back. Look at PC Magazine...They gave Norton Antivirus a 4.5 out of 5 one year in a review, and the average customer response was a 1.5, where 1 was the lowest possible score. What a crock of crap.
People don't read things for the advertisements, hard as it may be for ad people to accept that, and if your content becomes one with your advertising, then you start hemorrhaging readers, and your days are numbered.
Disagree on the TV analogy. It's more like when I come over to watch your TV, and you have infinite channels, and you say, "You can't go to channels 1-1000" and I say, "Ok" and then go to channels 10,000-11,000 which I know are mirrors of the 1-1000 channels.
If you don't want people to go to it, you have got to block it. They didn't block the proxies, therefore they must have been alright with that, right?
Heh. I learned to hack Novell networks in AP CompSci (not what I was supposed to be learning), so I agree with you. Not that I ever had a use for those skills, but it's all part and parcel with learning to use technology. Fiddling with networks and network security is something that you have to do to be good at creating networks and network security.
Making kids afraid to test the limits of the system stunts their potential. Even if they circumvented security, as long as they didn't wreck things, or do anything overly illegal, who cares? It's a learning experience.
I don't know if it's easier. I mean, there are a hell of a lot of sites to blacklist on the internet, and comparatively "few" that are actually educational. Put a policy in place that allows students to request access to new sites barring approval from faculty, and your good to go.
As far as rule breaking, it's too close to a thought crime for me to agree with it. Either throttle it down intelligently, or accept that people will find things you may find objectionable.
What if they were trying to figure out who to blow up the school?!?! ZOMG!!!
Seriously, I can't believe you said that. Child porn? Where the hell did that come from?
And blacklists are retarded specifically BECAUSE of proxies. If you want to control access you have to whitelist, and the reason people don't do that is because they want to pretend like they're not censoring your information.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice. Add an Ad Hominem to the Fallacy of Composition above.
I like the environment. It's where I live. Does that make me a hippy? In your world I guess it does.
In my world, I regard hippies with the same scathing disdain I reserve for the denialists who still try to pretend like any evidence of human involvement in the current climate change is just fairy dust and imagination.
There is solid evidence. A lot of respectable scientists have endorsed it. The steps we should take are things that would be a good idea ANYWAY.
Me: "Maybe I should drive a more fuel efficient car..."
You: "Ha ha, you're a stupid hippy!"
Way to go buddy, way to go.
It's good you only needed a few, because that's all you've got. I find it amusing how many of the same people who for years claimed there was no such thing as global warming, have now all jumped onto the bandwagon of saying that the global warming which everyone now agrees is occurring isn't caused by people...Not that they have a credible alternative except "It just happens".
Pardon me if I don't rush to embrace their opinion.
Sorry about the "dupe" post. Browser crashed, and I didn't think the first went up.
Shrug. A climate scientist with access to all the info probably can only make a rough guess as to how things will go, and I doubt things will ever get as bad as the worst case scenarios...But part of the reason I think that is because there is a lot of attention and research being directed at this issue now, and that is because the media has been covering it extensively.
Frankly, all credible evidence I've seen leads me to believe that there is a strong potential threat out there, and I am more inclined to be lenient to the media for hyping the threat than I am to forgive the conservative side for ignoring the issue, then claiming its all crap, and then moving on to the point of trying to discredit it without providing compelling research debunking it.
That's just me.
I love this argument.
What you're really saying is, "The majority is always wrong." This is the same majority who stand behind most of the accepted principles of science...Are they wrong about all those things as well?
This exact argument is used in attempts to refute Evolution as well, which is truly ironic...Galileo wasn't really bucking the prevaling opinions in science as he was bucking the religious dogma of the day, and now the religious dogmatists use his name to try and discredit well supported scientific theories.
So how do you prove the correlation between what's happening there and what's happening here? I think we're all curious to know.
You already shot your credibility above where you referenced Jim Inhofe as a reliable source.
On the list which is published where? Jim Inhofe's Senate Blog.
Frankly, anyone who mentions his name in a positive light loses all credibility as far as I'm concerned.
This is the second post in this thread to reference a blog post on the blog of the "most vocal skeptic of climate change in Congress" as equal to an article in a large reputable science magazine.
Inhofe is an idiot and a staunch creationist; why do you think his opinion matters in this context?
Okay, so it's all about sheep. It's sheep who believe articles by the liberal scaremongering "New Scientist" magazine, and intelligent non-sheep who listen to right thinking people like Drudge and Jim Inhofe, who is described in Wikipedia with the following line: "He is the most vocal skeptic of climate change (global warming) in Congress.[1] Inhofe often cites the Bible as the source for his stances on various political issues." You don't see a problem there?
Call people sheep if you like, but when you cite garbage like that to back up your position, it makes you look like a fool.
Shrug. Looking through this thread, there are a bunch of obviously over-emotional "there is no global warming people", and they all either make the argument that, "90% of the scientists in the world are wrong because of *insert anecdote here*" or that the whole thing is completely political and manufactured by the liberal media.
You at least bothered to make some citations, but the citations you made are irrelevant...Drudge talking about the weather? Jim Inhofe's blog? That bastard is so conservative he doesn't believe in fire, and he sure as hell doesn't know the first thing about science.
Now take the article that is the point of this thread...It's on New Scientist, which is at least scientific in nature (unlike either of your examples), and each point is made with citations to sites that also deal in science, some of which are quite reputable.
Given those arguments, who would you believe if you didn't have an obvious bias?
The only argument that makes any sense to me is, "Every time we force our customers to patch systems, we run the risk of creating incompatibilities and getting slews of angry phone calls, and that'll screw up our week" and they didn't even include that one.
Ideally the stuff should be reasonably secure out the gate; sure, they're talking about all the reasons they have for not patching after the fact, and all this stuff is true...Patching is a huge pain in the ass for everyone involved. But dammit, the amount of patching that gets done is inexcusable!
The thing that burns me is, you know that the developers don't incorporate those "tentative" fixes into the next product release either, not until the bugs make it public. You know that there is middle management who is perfectly aware of significant poor design decisions that could be solved by a well-planned rewrite, who instead tell their people to patch and baby weak code, because the cost of doing it right would impact their deliverables.
They started doing it in Texas last year.
The simple truth of it is, an aggressive response is almost guaranteed to save more lives. Look at 9/11...4 planes, 1 aggressive response. In every case the casualties on the flight were 100%, but in one case there were no secondary casualties. Columbine, UVA...in both cases the gunmen reloaded multiple times, and they had time to do it because people were barricading themselves in and trying to escape.
Hiding under as desk just doesn't work.
I think that in the context of a long series of drills and training, that it would be appropriate for a "surprise" drill of this sort, but having one out of nowhere, especially dealing with kids of that age, is just asking for a massive lawsuit.
I'm personally in favor of a more aggressive approach to school safety...Kids need to be taught to duck and cover when possible (e.g when you're in a secure room), and to mob the gunman when they're not...Hiding under desks is worthless.
I've never met a place yet that blocks newsgroups, so blocking porn is redundant, as well as impossible. Worked at a company once that ended up with a link to a porn page on the main page of their website, because the domain had expired, and a porn company had snapped it up.
So the argument isn't about porn, because a school will have to have a policy on that regardless, because no blacklist will ever stop porn, and that kind of thing even makes it on to whitelists occasionally, based on situations like the one I described above. Not to mention hardcopy.
The argument is about the use of a proxy, pure and simple.
Agreed, but they don't treat it that way.
It's the difference between a blacklist and a whitelist.
Blacklist says, "You can go anywhere you want" and quietly takes some of those places away. China does this because they're trying to pretend they don't block anything at all.
A whitelist, on the other hand, says right out, "You can go here, here, and here, and screw you if you want to go anywhere else, we're not a public service."
The school should have a whitelist. Period. No question. Secure, no place for a proxy, easy as pie. But they're trying to pretend like they don't work that way, and it's pathetic.
The setup was sloppy and unrealistic. There is absolutely no question about that. They picked up a half-assed blacklist solution, and the kids immediately circumvented it using a method that is as old as the blacklist itself.
A three month suspension is a joke. Either expel the kid, or provide a reasonable punishment. A three month suspension suggests to me that they couldn't prove a case for expulsion, which in turn suggests that the offense wasn't worthy of expulsion, which then suggests that it probably wasn't worthy of a 3 month suspension either.
And in terms of the internet, yes, you can expect people to circumvent your filters if you make it possible for them to do so. I don't care where you are, or what business you're in. To expect otherwise and act shocked when it happens is disingenuous.
See, I don't have a problem with a mild sort of punishment, along the lines of what you described, depending on what the offense was. Some things obviously cannot be tolerated in a school, and would merit a much longer suspension, but those things wouldn't be related to the trivial act of circumvention by means of proxy, but rather from whatever inappropriateness they had gotten up to once they had done that.
It's the proxy itself being treated as a problem that bugs me.
First of all, nice "original" idea.
Second of all, this particular puppy is being suspended for 1/3rd of a school year for looking at something. To continue your "original" idea, if you beat the puppy all the time for no particular reason, what you're going to get is a crazy puppy, and it's not going to be his fault, it's going to be your fault for trying to instill a poorly defined sense of right and wrong.
Well, we could just round up all the people who go to MySpace and kill 'em.
Or we could accept that there is information on the internet that we don't approve of, and that people are going to see it, whether we like it or not.
Why not? What if I was in China, and I was bypassing the filters there? Would you be the Yahoo exec turning my name over to the Chinese government so they could throw my ass in jail for wanting to taste the wider world outside the little mental happy place my government has set up for me?
It's exactly the same thing, and you'll say, "But it's for their own good!" and I'll say, "Who? My kids, or the Chinese?"
Semantics. Where I am the EiC == the Executive Editor, and the editor that reports to the Executive Editor is the Managing Editor, and it goes down from there.
He sounds like a stand up guy. He certainly did the right thing...If your publication descends into newsvertisements there's really no way to get your credibility back. Look at PC Magazine...They gave Norton Antivirus a 4.5 out of 5 one year in a review, and the average customer response was a 1.5, where 1 was the lowest possible score. What a crock of crap.
People don't read things for the advertisements, hard as it may be for ad people to accept that, and if your content becomes one with your advertising, then you start hemorrhaging readers, and your days are numbered.
Agreed on the K-12 thing.
Disagree on the TV analogy. It's more like when I come over to watch your TV, and you have infinite channels, and you say, "You can't go to channels 1-1000" and I say, "Ok" and then go to channels 10,000-11,000 which I know are mirrors of the 1-1000 channels.
If you don't want people to go to it, you have got to block it. They didn't block the proxies, therefore they must have been alright with that, right?
Heh. I learned to hack Novell networks in AP CompSci (not what I was supposed to be learning), so I agree with you. Not that I ever had a use for those skills, but it's all part and parcel with learning to use technology. Fiddling with networks and network security is something that you have to do to be good at creating networks and network security.
Making kids afraid to test the limits of the system stunts their potential. Even if they circumvented security, as long as they didn't wreck things, or do anything overly illegal, who cares? It's a learning experience.
I don't know if it's easier. I mean, there are a hell of a lot of sites to blacklist on the internet, and comparatively "few" that are actually educational. Put a policy in place that allows students to request access to new sites barring approval from faculty, and your good to go.
As far as rule breaking, it's too close to a thought crime for me to agree with it. Either throttle it down intelligently, or accept that people will find things you may find objectionable.
Actually I work for a print media company (newspapers), but I'm a coder, not a writer.
If you googled me, I think it'd be more likely that you thought I worked for Slashdot. =P
What if they were trying to figure out who to blow up the school?!?! ZOMG!!!
Seriously, I can't believe you said that. Child porn? Where the hell did that come from?
And blacklists are retarded specifically BECAUSE of proxies. If you want to control access you have to whitelist, and the reason people don't do that is because they want to pretend like they're not censoring your information.