why is it worse to shoot "old men and women and children" than it is to shoot anyone else?
That's a good point, but the fact seems to be that our culture-- maybe all cultures for all I know-- places a higher value on the lives of the very young, the very old, and women than on the lives of adult men.
But you're absolutely right. From a thousand feet away and on the wrong side of a rifle barrel, a 35-year-old white man is just as defenseless as anybody else.
Hmm, I just described half of Slashdot. I hope you have your alibis
Dude, last night my girlfriend was watching the Dateline story while I cooked dinner. They interviewed a profiler who described their idea of what the killer is like-- around 30 years old, unemployed, not particularly successful in his career or personal life, with a recent event in his life that sent him over the edge, and so on.
My girlfriend was looking at me real closely during that little segment. Good thing we live a thousand miles from the scenes of the crimes.
Usually of the older type, granted, but I can at least speak English to them.
You're lucky. My freshman-level intro to data structures class was taught by a Mandarin, the TA was Israeli, and the class was a pretty even mix of Americans, Japanese, Chinese, and Indians. The only language our whole class had in common was C++!
By allowing a user to login w/out a password, the server has authorized the client to use its services.
That's exactly like saying that by leaving my back door unlocked, I've authorized the psycho down the block to come in to my house. It just doesn't hold water to me.
Further more, I would argue that by responding to connection requests, the servers have authorized the client to connect and attempt further authentication.
Ye-es... I would agree that the fact that I have a door means people are welcome to knock... to the extent that they don't make a nuisance of themselves. I'll buy this one.
After all, it is fairly trivial with most recent operating systems to firewall ports to remove access from groups of IPs that are 'unauthorized" to connect.
I think your definition of "fairly trivial" could use some revising. Yes, it's trivial to me and to you, but it's not at all trivial to the sociology major two dorms over who bought her computer to write her senior thesis.
Besides, I have to go back to my analogy. Just because it's trivial to lock your door doesn't mean that the law requires it before offering you protection from illegal trespass.
For instance, if everybody set a secure password for their administrator accounts (on NT based systems), and made sure to share everything with a password, then his search engine wouldn't do any damage.
You're assuming that the school's only justification for prohibiting the kid's activity is the potential for damage. That doesn't necessarily have to be the case. If we were talking about a truly public network, then an argument based around the potential for harm (or the absence thereof) might make sense. But this is a private network. The school can revoke a student's access for any reason at all, with or without due process. So I don't think saying that the software wouldn't do any harm really makes a difference to anybody in this situation.
He has a property right in his computer and network access, by virtue of the fact that he pays fees.
If this school is like the others that I'm familiar with, payment of fees do not entitle the student access to the computer network. I suppose it's possible that a school might have an "Internet access fee" line item on their annual bill, but I've never seen one. Instead, access to the computer network is a privilege that can be revoked at any time for, essentially, any reason.
So no, he probably doesn't have any sort of right to network access.
Which could explain why colleges are so terrible at it. [teaching people how to think]
I think it's fair to say that you take out of the college experience what you put into it, and most people who graduate with a bachelor's degree aren't particularly wise or insightful individuals. But it seems to me that it's easier for a person to learn to think critically in college than out of college.
College is nothing more than an environment, like a petri dish for teenagers. Some of them will keep their heads down, finish their assignments, and walk away with a piece of paper. Others will thrive, and emerge much better off for it.
I don't know. Maybe I'm idealistic about college because I dropped out of it and never got the chance to go back.
Unsure where you are, but if you leave your blinds open you can expect to have zero privacy.
I think a more appropriate analogy would be of trespassing. Privacy is a complex and cloudy issue, but criminal trespass is well defined.
The protection of law on this issue is not conditional; in other words, you don't have to secure your home in order for unauthorized entry into it to be illegal. If your door is unlocked and I wander in off the street, I can be arrested and charged with the crime of criminal trespass.
If I then take something from your home, I can be charged with burglary, which is the crime of unlawful entry with the intent of committing a felony or theft. All this, even though the door was unlocked the whole time.
If there were a legal question here-- which there isn't-- I think the argument that a person's computer is comparable to his home is a compelling one. If you don't put a password on it, shame on you. But whether there is one or not, it's still against the rules to log in without authorization.
Slashdot Mirror
More importantly, if life was like UT2003, we could shoot back...
I'm pretty sure, under these circumstances, that shooting back would be just fine.
why is it worse to shoot "old men and women and children" than it is to shoot anyone else?
That's a good point, but the fact seems to be that our culture-- maybe all cultures for all I know-- places a higher value on the lives of the very young, the very old, and women than on the lives of adult men.
But you're absolutely right. From a thousand feet away and on the wrong side of a rifle barrel, a 35-year-old white man is just as defenseless as anybody else.
Hmm, I just described half of Slashdot. I hope you have your alibis
Dude, last night my girlfriend was watching the Dateline story while I cooked dinner. They interviewed a profiler who described their idea of what the killer is like-- around 30 years old, unemployed, not particularly successful in his career or personal life, with a recent event in his life that sent him over the edge, and so on.
My girlfriend was looking at me real closely during that little segment. Good thing we live a thousand miles from the scenes of the crimes.
Usually of the older type, granted, but I can at least speak English to them.
You're lucky. My freshman-level intro to data structures class was taught by a Mandarin, the TA was Israeli, and the class was a pretty even mix of Americans, Japanese, Chinese, and Indians. The only language our whole class had in common was C++!
By allowing a user to login w/out a password, the server has authorized the client to use its services.
That's exactly like saying that by leaving my back door unlocked, I've authorized the psycho down the block to come in to my house. It just doesn't hold water to me.
Further more, I would argue that by responding to connection requests, the servers have authorized the client to connect and attempt further authentication.
Ye-es... I would agree that the fact that I have a door means people are welcome to knock... to the extent that they don't make a nuisance of themselves. I'll buy this one.
After all, it is fairly trivial with most recent operating systems to firewall ports to remove access from groups of IPs that are 'unauthorized" to connect.
I think your definition of "fairly trivial" could use some revising. Yes, it's trivial to me and to you, but it's not at all trivial to the sociology major two dorms over who bought her computer to write her senior thesis.
Besides, I have to go back to my analogy. Just because it's trivial to lock your door doesn't mean that the law requires it before offering you protection from illegal trespass.
For instance, if everybody set a secure password for their administrator accounts (on NT based systems), and made sure to share everything with a password, then his search engine wouldn't do any damage.
You're assuming that the school's only justification for prohibiting the kid's activity is the potential for damage. That doesn't necessarily have to be the case. If we were talking about a truly public network, then an argument based around the potential for harm (or the absence thereof) might make sense. But this is a private network. The school can revoke a student's access for any reason at all, with or without due process. So I don't think saying that the software wouldn't do any harm really makes a difference to anybody in this situation.
He has a property right in his computer and network access, by virtue of the fact that he pays fees.
If this school is like the others that I'm familiar with, payment of fees do not entitle the student access to the computer network. I suppose it's possible that a school might have an "Internet access fee" line item on their annual bill, but I've never seen one. Instead, access to the computer network is a privilege that can be revoked at any time for, essentially, any reason.
So no, he probably doesn't have any sort of right to network access.
Tell them that you didn't violate their agreement, offer to write up what you did so they can modify the agreement and promise not to do it again.
Nolo contendere: I didn't do it, and I promise never to do it again.
Which could explain why colleges are so terrible at it. [teaching people how to think]
I think it's fair to say that you take out of the college experience what you put into it, and most people who graduate with a bachelor's degree aren't particularly wise or insightful individuals. But it seems to me that it's easier for a person to learn to think critically in college than out of college.
College is nothing more than an environment, like a petri dish for teenagers. Some of them will keep their heads down, finish their assignments, and walk away with a piece of paper. Others will thrive, and emerge much better off for it.
I don't know. Maybe I'm idealistic about college because I dropped out of it and never got the chance to go back.
Unsure where you are, but if you leave your blinds open you can expect to have zero privacy.
I think a more appropriate analogy would be of trespassing. Privacy is a complex and cloudy issue, but criminal trespass is well defined.
The protection of law on this issue is not conditional; in other words, you don't have to secure your home in order for unauthorized entry into it to be illegal. If your door is unlocked and I wander in off the street, I can be arrested and charged with the crime of criminal trespass.
If I then take something from your home, I can be charged with burglary, which is the crime of unlawful entry with the intent of committing a felony or theft. All this, even though the door was unlocked the whole time.
If there were a legal question here-- which there isn't-- I think the argument that a person's computer is comparable to his home is a compelling one. If you don't put a password on it, shame on you. But whether there is one or not, it's still against the rules to log in without authorization.