So the principle threatens me with jail. Whatever. Threaten me with anything...I'm not killing myself.
Good for you. Are you 13? Do you remember what it was like to be 13? People seem to be forgetting that most teenagers are depressed. On top of that, it sounds as if he was brought up to believe very strongly in honor, and the pain of disappointing his family may have been so great that suicide seemed the better option.
Most of us (or at least the most rational of us) aren't upset that he was punished. I'm all for punishment, personally. The problem is, we don't have enough information to go on. We don't know exactly what he hacked into, and we don't know whether or not the principal scared him with "jail time" or not.
If we are to believe that the principal did scare him with the prospect of going to jail, then I, for one, would place partial blame on him for insensitivity. The thing is, as you point out, normal people don't kill themselves over punishments. How could anyone have predicted he would kill himself over it?
I suppose no one could've known. On the other hand, when you're 13, you aren't really a "normal person." Thirteen year olds overreact to things; it's in their nature. You've gotta be careful.
Hate to reply to my own post, but I have to correct an error I made before I get moderated down into oblivion. His dad did pick him up from school, but then went back to work.
I still don't think he should have been left alone. If his dad had stayed at home with him, this wouldn't have happened. On the other hand, it doesn't sound like there was any indication the boy was this upset, so we really can't blame his father.
This whole story is just a shame, and it would be convenient if there was someone we could blame for it, but in the end, I guess there was just no way to know.
It is like banning forks in school because someone was killed with one.
Yeah, it's like banning DeCSS because someone could copy DVDs with it. Wait, that's not what we were talking about. I think they should definitely reconsider something; if not their policy, at least their methods. You don't threaten a frightened 13 year old kid with jail time and send him home without his parents. You just don't. How can you predict what might happen?
I have to agree with you there. When you're thirteen, just starting puberty, your whole body is changing and your hormones are raging, you don't know which end is up. Thirteen year olds are not adults. They may think they have a grip on reality, but it's not uncommon to overreact to bleak situations (for example, facing jail time).
On the other hand, we don't know if he actually was threatened with jail time. If the principal did say something along those lines just to scare him, then he certainly had a role in pushing this kid over the edge.
The writeup for the story didn't blindly insult Microsoft, or insult them at all, for that matter. It just said that there was a vulnerability, and that it's a potentially large problem. Both are true statements.
Most of the comments I've read haven't bashed Microsoft either. So your post is completely irrelevant. I don't blame you; it's the poor moderators that make karma whoring possible.
Of course, this will get modded down to -1 Flamebait in a matter of seconds, because I went and insulted the moderators. Oh well.
They really are in it just for the publicity.
So? Yeah, maybe it is sleazy of them, but at least someone found this exploit so that it could be patched. So what if it's free publicity for them? Would it have been better if a black-hat had found it and exploited it? I don't think so.
Yes, I do understand what you're saying. (This goes for the other two replies as well.)
If I could stop this from happening, I would. Make no mistake, I think that it's a bad idea. My point was that most people either won't care because it doesn't affect them directly, or just won't do anything about it because they don't feel they can make a difference anyway (which would be the category I fall into).
So I'm not saying I agree with this. Just that it seems unavoidable, because most people are willing to give up privacy for security.
I agree completely, although for a different reason, perhaps. If you ever watch a like America's Most Wanted, you'll realize that there are criminals all over the place who've evaded capture for years, simply because no one they came in contact with had any idea who they were. By doing "background checks" on Amtrak passengers in this way, there is a much better chance of catching criminals, or at least making it harder for them to get from place to place.
I admit that it's disturbing that a company is giving away my personal information like this, essentially providing the means for the government to track my movements. But I don't personally see it as a huge problem. I've done nothing illegal. The government has no reason to be paying any attention to me. If it helps get criminals off the streets, I'm okay with it, and I suspect most people will be.
Microsoft has already responded to this. In fact, they were only testing their MP3 plugin in a beta of Windows XP. RC1 will not have any MP3 encoding support at all. It sounds like the few quotes from MS were taken completely out of context. Obviously they want to push their own standards, but it doesn't sound like they're actually doing anything to stop people from using MP3.
My roomate installed Mandrake recently, which uses CUPS for printing. The other night, all of a sudden, someone else's homework started printing on his printer. He insisted that he hadn't set up Samba yet, so it made no sense that someone else could be using his printer.
It turns out that the kid's name was on the printout, so we looked him up and gave him a call. It turns out that he had just installed Mandrake, and it helpfully searched the entire network and made my roomate's printer his default printer. Not to mention the fact that Mandrake enabled Samba by default on my roommate's machine and shared his printer with the world.
How ridiculous is that? Everyone here uses Mandrake; maybe now they'll listen to me when I tell them what a horrible distro it is.
Yeah, what was up with that? A few questions into the interview I couldn't stand reading it anymore. Whoever wrote this article made himself and Wall look like morons. I mean, aside from the excessive smileys, there were spelling errors and a slew of sentences that just made no grammatical sense. Does that website even have an editor?
Hell, just look up the somewhat-recent slashdot story on the kid who heard a site had been hacked, then sat around trying to figure out what the site had been running. For those actions his system was taken away, and probably won't be returned until the investigation is completed.
Maybe you should look it up. His stuff was returned quite some time ago.
The perl-5.6 upgrade was the biggest Debian fiasco I have ever seen, and you can believe that zillions of people had the same problem you did, and it has been fixed. A trip to #debian on irc.openprojects.net would've saved you a lot of trouble. Whenever something major is broken, as in the perl-5.6 case, or in the case of the new Xwrapper config that only let root run X, the problem and solution will be right in the topic line of the channel.
Unstable is unstable, and sometimes (but not too often) it breaks. In general I find it to be more stable than the so-called "mainstream" distro's stable versions.
Not really. Just because you have a filter doesn't mean it's not effective for the spammers. You wouldn't have responded anyways, and they have no way of knowing whether you have a filter or not.
Oh I know, I'm not knocking it - in fact, I'm sure KOffice will eventually become an outstanding product. Konqueror hasn't been around long at all, and in my opinion it already far surpasses both Netscape and Mozilla in many ways. I'd bet that fairly soon it will become the browser of choice for Linux (it's already mine).
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I agree; frankly I don't understand the fascination with putting Linux on PlayStations, Dreamcasts, etc. Why bother? It's a game machine!
On the other hand, I fail to see what this has to do with being gay. Could you elaborate?
So the principle threatens me with jail. Whatever. Threaten me with anything...I'm not killing myself.
Good for you. Are you 13? Do you remember what it was like to be 13? People seem to be forgetting that most teenagers are depressed. On top of that, it sounds as if he was brought up to believe very strongly in honor, and the pain of disappointing his family may have been so great that suicide seemed the better option.
Most of us (or at least the most rational of us) aren't upset that he was punished. I'm all for punishment, personally. The problem is, we don't have enough information to go on. We don't know exactly what he hacked into, and we don't know whether or not the principal scared him with "jail time" or not.
If we are to believe that the principal did scare him with the prospect of going to jail, then I, for one, would place partial blame on him for insensitivity. The thing is, as you point out, normal people don't kill themselves over punishments. How could anyone have predicted he would kill himself over it?
I suppose no one could've known. On the other hand, when you're 13, you aren't really a "normal person." Thirteen year olds overreact to things; it's in their nature. You've gotta be careful.
Hate to reply to my own post, but I have to correct an error I made before I get moderated down into oblivion. His dad did pick him up from school, but then went back to work.
I still don't think he should have been left alone. If his dad had stayed at home with him, this wouldn't have happened. On the other hand, it doesn't sound like there was any indication the boy was this upset, so we really can't blame his father.
This whole story is just a shame, and it would be convenient if there was someone we could blame for it, but in the end, I guess there was just no way to know.
It is like banning forks in school because someone was killed with one.
Yeah, it's like banning DeCSS because someone could copy DVDs with it. Wait, that's not what we were talking about. I think they should definitely reconsider something; if not their policy, at least their methods. You don't threaten a frightened 13 year old kid with jail time and send him home without his parents. You just don't. How can you predict what might happen?
I have to agree with you there. When you're thirteen, just starting puberty, your whole body is changing and your hormones are raging, you don't know which end is up. Thirteen year olds are not adults. They may think they have a grip on reality, but it's not uncommon to overreact to bleak situations (for example, facing jail time).
On the other hand, we don't know if he actually was threatened with jail time. If the principal did say something along those lines just to scare him, then he certainly had a role in pushing this kid over the edge.
Tragedies like this just should not happen.
That depends on how much you're willing to spend on the box. If you bought one of the popular Compaq Presarios, you would get Works 2000, not Word.
The writeup for the story didn't blindly insult Microsoft, or insult them at all, for that matter. It just said that there was a vulnerability, and that it's a potentially large problem. Both are true statements.
Most of the comments I've read haven't bashed Microsoft either. So your post is completely irrelevant. I don't blame you; it's the poor moderators that make karma whoring possible.
Of course, this will get modded down to -1 Flamebait in a matter of seconds, because I went and insulted the moderators. Oh well.
They really are in it just for the publicity. So? Yeah, maybe it is sleazy of them, but at least someone found this exploit so that it could be patched. So what if it's free publicity for them? Would it have been better if a black-hat had found it and exploited it? I don't think so.
Um.... that post did *not* come from Michael.
Yes, I do understand what you're saying. (This goes for the other two replies as well.)
If I could stop this from happening, I would. Make no mistake, I think that it's a bad idea. My point was that most people either won't care because it doesn't affect them directly, or just won't do anything about it because they don't feel they can make a difference anyway (which would be the category I fall into).
So I'm not saying I agree with this. Just that it seems unavoidable, because most people are willing to give up privacy for security.
I agree completely, although for a different reason, perhaps. If you ever watch a like America's Most Wanted, you'll realize that there are criminals all over the place who've evaded capture for years, simply because no one they came in contact with had any idea who they were. By doing "background checks" on Amtrak passengers in this way, there is a much better chance of catching criminals, or at least making it harder for them to get from place to place.
I admit that it's disturbing that a company is giving away my personal information like this, essentially providing the means for the government to track my movements. But I don't personally see it as a huge problem. I've done nothing illegal. The government has no reason to be paying any attention to me. If it helps get criminals off the streets, I'm okay with it, and I suspect most people will be.
Good going, genius. By posting you reversed your moderation.
Microsoft has already responded to this. In fact, they were only testing their MP3 plugin in a beta of Windows XP. RC1 will not have any MP3 encoding support at all. It sounds like the few quotes from MS were taken completely out of context. Obviously they want to push their own standards, but it doesn't sound like they're actually doing anything to stop people from using MP3.
In the spirit of free software, people should have the FREE CHOICE of how to license and distribute their software.
Um, no. The Free Software movement believes that all software should be free. You're thinking of the Open Source movement.
My roomate installed Mandrake recently, which uses CUPS for printing. The other night, all of a sudden, someone else's homework started printing on his printer. He insisted that he hadn't set up Samba yet, so it made no sense that someone else could be using his printer.
It turns out that the kid's name was on the printout, so we looked him up and gave him a call. It turns out that he had just installed Mandrake, and it helpfully searched the entire network and made my roomate's printer his default printer. Not to mention the fact that Mandrake enabled Samba by default on my roommate's machine and shared his printer with the world.
How ridiculous is that? Everyone here uses Mandrake; maybe now they'll listen to me when I tell them what a horrible distro it is.
Of course. Meta-moderation has been around for quite some time now.
Well, duh. It is for outgoing calls only. Or have you not been paying attention?
Yeah, what was up with that? A few questions into the interview I couldn't stand reading it anymore. Whoever wrote this article made himself and Wall look like morons. I mean, aside from the excessive smileys, there were spelling errors and a slew of sentences that just made no grammatical sense. Does that website even have an editor?
Seems fair to me. The author's anti-Netscape rant shows what an arrogant person he is. Quite frankly, I think he deserves whatever he gets.
Maybe you should look it up. His stuff was returned quite some time ago.
I guess I need to dig up my old DR-DOS and Windows 3.1 disks and take a screenshot...
Actually, that would be pretty cool. Let us know if you post it somewhere.
Unstable is unstable, and sometimes (but not too often) it breaks. In general I find it to be more stable than the so-called "mainstream" distro's stable versions.
Not really. Just because you have a filter doesn't mean it's not effective for the spammers. You wouldn't have responded anyways, and they have no way of knowing whether you have a filter or not.
Oh I know, I'm not knocking it - in fact, I'm sure KOffice will eventually become an outstanding product. Konqueror hasn't been around long at all, and in my opinion it already far surpasses both Netscape and Mozilla in many ways. I'd bet that fairly soon it will become the browser of choice for Linux (it's already mine).