I think it would be a good idea to discuss with them how computer science effects different aspects of society. I think the reason they like to focus on game programming is because that is the only exciting thing about CS they soft of understand.!
I wish I had mod points for this.
The stock market wouldn't be what it is today without computer science! Er, wait. Maybe you shouldn't mention that. How old are these kids, and are they likely to be more Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street types?:P
If you've got an Unlimited Data plan (as I have), this won't be an issue. The throttling of your service will be, however.
Actually, you can no longer get the plan you are referring to unless you had it prior to something like July 7. I know because I made a point to go out and purchase exactly that plan so that I would be grandfathered in for unlimited data before Verizon stopped selling the plan. Now any plan Verizon sells you has a data cap.
I don't think it's a matter of sanity. It's quite possible that someone knows right from wrong, but is completely unable to control themselves. Therefore they're not insane, but they pose a risk to society. So what do we do? Do we have to let them out and wait for them to commit a crime? Or can we commit them?
And this is why I find I'm torn by the existence of this law. I'm originally from the rural area where Nushawn Williams had unprotected sex with over 40 women (many teenagers) after being told he was HIV positive. He claims to have slept with over 300 women. He infected at least 13 women in Chautauqua County, NY with HIV, and may be responsible for up to 10 more HIV infections in former partners in the New York City area. In the end, all he could be charged with was two counts of statutory rape and one count of reckless endangerment for a maximum sentence of 4 to 12 years. While in prison, he had 21 disciplinary offenses, including throwing his urine on another inmate. He was due to be released April 13, 2010 but he is being held and his case is under review for civil confinement. Here's an article from the Jamestown, NY paper about the situation.
I do believe that there are people who are either criminally insane or are simply unable to control their actions who will endanger the public health and welfare and that our current system of laws can't always address this. Williams essentially handed multiple women, one as young as 13, what was thought to be a death sentence back in 1997. Some of them have died. He had the knowledge to avoid doing that. There wasn't really a law to cover what he did, so they went with what they could make stick, which I think most people feel resulted in a fairly light sentence for the actual gravity of the situation. Since his incarceration, he has used bodily fluids as a weapon. Overall, I am extremely leery of putting Williams back out on the street just yet.
That said, I don't like civil confinement laws. They're an incredibly slippery slope. If we can do this for one type of criminal, why not another? Who do I trust to make sure that they aren't being abused to lock inconvenient people away forever?
If they exist at all, they should only exist with extreme safeguards. 1) Only for violent offenders. 2) Only for those at an extremely high level of risk to reoffend. 3) Regular rehabilitation and treatment plan for each person, and routine reassessment of them for possible re-integration back into society. 4) Must be examined by multiple psychiatrists and consensus reached that person was still extreme threat. 5) Ability to have case for release argued before jury of citizens after a certain amount of time in civil confinement has passed.
But how practical is that?
Even then, the thought makes me sick to the stomach. I can see both sides. There are a few people I can see this being a good thing for... but at the same time, I just can't figure out how to implement it well enough so that it isn't abused the way I know it will be.
It's hard living in the world when you can see shades of grey and acknowledge that there's probably no good solution. The more time I spend thinking about civil confinement and the more cases I read where they are using it, the more convinced I am that I should oppose it. That said, my mind returns to Nushawn Williams and my reluctance to let him become modern day's Typhoid Mary.
I think we're going for the curious but technically non-savvy group with the print copies. In fact, exactly the people I'd rather just read the stuff and carefully put the book back rather than got viruses on their computers by wandering into someone's poorly documented "You can make a smoke bomb by doing this!" page which lacks any critical warnings.
Not that I doubt some people's ability to document important safety precautions but... yeah, I do.
You boys could really do with reading up on UK law, mere possession of these guides is now a criminal offence, although I'm not sure if it's a strict liability offence or not.
*looks happily at her American public library's book shelves and notes two copies of the book available for public checkout*
You know, I don't often burst into Lee Greenwood's song "Proud to Be an American", but this just might be one of those times. Admittedly, we're the only library in a very large system to have it, but we do.
I noticed it does say right on the title page that the recipes and tips are for entertainment purpose, should not be tried, and are not intended to be accurate. However now if I ever need to try to build a bug detector, I at least know where to look. I'd rather people satisfy their curiosity by reading the antiquated Anarchist Cookbook than wander into some of the stuff I'm sure is available on the Internet.
"The entire point of patents is to add to public knowledge, but that isn't happening."
Only in the most roundabout way. The point of patents is to give the creator a period of time to profit off their invention before everyone can completely copy it for free. It's to give people a reason and reward for innovation--if you are the one who comes up with something and patents it, you are the one who has the right to decide who can use your patent and how (and for how much) for that 17 years or whatever. Without that protection, in theory, people have little incentive to innovate because as soon as they create something, someone else just copies it and they've lost their invention and any money they put into it. So yes, it adds to public knowledge in that it encourages innovation and publication, but it then protects those rights for a period. I do think the protection is important. One of the biggest problems with the patent system today is how corrupt it is, with the little guy getting shut out by corporations who claim to have invented things. I happen to think that little guy should be compensated for his time and effort.
So the problem is that the US patent system is corrupt, slow, designed for a 19th century national business arena and timetable (as opposed to 21st century international), and it bogs down in litigation. It certainly needs an overhaul. So does copyright. Frankly, though, so long as big business interests have the ear of Congress, neither of those will happen.
The scary thing is that even with judgements like this and the patent trolls out there we are actually seeing the likes of Microsoft push for option 1.
Patents will be the death of innovation if the system continues in this way, particularly if the US judgements are assessed at insane levels of cost. If Microsoft had known about this patent when starting the development they'd have bought the company for less than this judgement.
This is exactly the wrong case to use for the argument of a broken patent system, I think, primarily because Microsoft DID know about the patent and deliberately ripped the feature off with the intent to crush the company's product out of the competition. In fact, if I recall correctly, they worked with i4i, visited with them, and were pretty blatant about the whole thing.
So while I often think that the patent system has a LOT of problems (a LOT a lot of problems), this particular case is one where Microsoft is getting what they deserve, in my opinion. i4i isn't a patent troll... Microsoft pretty much came along, took what they wanted, and expected their size and superior market share to protect them. That's not good enough.
I would conjecture that those who feel they are good at multitasking do _not_ feel this -- and that's both why they feel they are good at multitasking, and why they are actually bad at it.
Yes. And anyone who has ever played with a gamer who fancies him or herself a multitasker knows this. They never seem to understand that you're pissed off for a reason. Subtle outbursts like, "OMG, turn the damn movie off, stop IMing your friends, and pay attention to the screen. There's a reason the rest of us don't want to group with you and that you suck at doing quests!" seem to confuse them, because they are GOOD at multitasking!
Let me help you understand: the problem is that the consequences are inappropriate to the conduct. Your line of reasoning would have everyone accept whatever consequences are in place, no matter how draconian.
I don't know about the GP's line of reasoning, but mine pretty much goes, "If you sign a contract with someone and break the terms of it, expect them to treat you like you've broken the contract."
I don't really think this is about copyright infringement or anything else so much as it is that the student presumeably signed both network/computing contracts and housing contracts that laid out regulations and consequences. I would assume that using university networks to commit copyright infringement is probably specifically mentioned in one or both of the agreements.
If you don't like the possible consequences of contract clauses, don't sign them. If you do sign a contract, don't break the conditions unless you are prepared for the consequences. This is not a case of "A law is unfair and its consequences are too harsh." The consequences in this case are SOLELY the result of his decisions to live in a dorm and use uni resources for something he had agreed not to do. So he had choices. Don't live there. Don't use uni resources. Don't do it. Or take the consequences.
Sadly, you read the source of my quote and chose to focus on that rather than on what I'd actually said. Should you care to look, the study's results are published a number of other places, but I admit that USA Today had the pertinent bit I needed all in one place for me to quote.
The point is that in many places, literacy begets literacy. Print newspapers aren't losing readers to online newspapers so much as newspapers are losing dedicated readers overall.
As to the guy reading through the four-day-old USA Today on your plane flight (I've done that flight--my butt is still recovering), people read at different speeds and levels. While I could wish that everyone would pick up certain books that I think are fantastic and read them, I've come to realize that so long as someone is reading something, you haven't lost the battle. (I'd rather he was reading an old USA Today than flipping through some of the POS magazines that are all glossy ads, but that's my personal bias.) Besides, who knows what sort of week he'd had? I'm a librarian and a bibliophile, and I've had a week or two in my life where I couldn't read a book to save my life. I just didn't have the energy or attention span. Usually those weeks involved long periods in hospital waiting rooms flipping a quarter with my brother over who got first pick of the crossword puzzles in the various newspapers we'd managed to scrounge.
I've certainly had certain parents treat the Harry Potter books with the sort of contempt you've just shown USA Today. Apparently if it wasn't considered a classic novel by 1950 for some people, it isn't something anyone should waste their time reading.
So no, I do not think of USA Today as a great journalistic newspaper. I don't believe I ever made that claim or probably ever will. My argument was with the premise that print newspaper readers are replacing their newspapers with online newspapers.
Yes, this is an OT response. I should really know better.
Two things really creep me out in this world: People who present a dogma of the lack of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of faith, and those who continue to press economic systems that are known to be fundamental failures.
I'm curious. Do you know the poster, or are you basing this solely on his/. post?
Because simply saying that "some christians and or capitalists were uncomfortable with or offended by some of my past comments" does not mean he lacks faith or favors another economic system. He just might not share the same views as certain elements of those two groups. Many people are Christians or of another faith but are uncomfortable with some of the views of other Christians. Many people are capitalists but think that there's such a thing as hard-core capitalism that could be tempered. Very few systems encompass people who immediately share all beliefs without offense.
In particular, I think there's a big difference between saying "I made some Christians uncomfortable or offended them" and saying that someone presented a dogma of the lack of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of faith. In that context you are assuming that Christianity is the only faith, and that only by supporting atheism or possibly agnosticism would someone make a Christian uncomfortable. It simply depends on the Christian. The poster could easily be a Christian who disagreed with them on certain topics, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Jewish, or... you get the point.
Except that I'm not convinced that this is a replacement of traditional print media by Internet sources so much as it is simply a decline in news readership. As a librarian, I've found that I don't really compete with bookstores. The more people read from the library, the more they also tend to buy from the bookstore. It tends to be a synergistic relationship.
On a related note, Central Connecticut State University President Jack Miller put out his annual Most Literate Cities study, which looks at what literary resources are available and used.
The findings come at a time when newspaper circulations across the USA are declining, and online newspaper reading is increasing. Miller's analysis suggests that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the availability of free online news is not to blame for the decline in newspapers' print circulation -- and that neither is the decline in bookstores across the country caused by the rise in online book buying.
Cities that ranked higher for having more bookstores also have a higher proportion of people buying books online, the analysis found, and cities with newspapers that have high per-capita circulation rates also have more people reading newspapers online. Likewise, cities that ranked higher for having well-used libraries also have more booksellers.
So I don't think it's necessarily that people are actually choosing to read their news online instead of subscribe to a traditional newspaper. I think more people are just not reading in general and may happen across news online as they do other things--but that isn't the point of their Internet usage.
And if we aren't reading, will that leave us with just television reporters?:O
1.42kw for the computer to run overnight has a cost of around 10 cents to the company. Waiting 5 minutes for your PC to boot at the federal minimum wage of $6.55 per hour has a cost of around 55 cents to the company. It costs the company at least 5 times as much to have you boot your PC in the morning as it does to let it run overnight.
Except that you made the following assumptions:
1) That the computers being turned off are staff computers used by a person every day, so that person is losing time having to boot a computer up in the morning.
2) That said staff persons do not log off of accounts for security purposes and just leave the computer ready to go in the morning when they sit down
If a company has a significant number of computers in a lab, for example, there is probably already a staff member responsible for logging all the computers off at night and logging them back on in the morning. Turning off all the computers and bringing them back up in the morning would be a one person job of presumeably not significantly much more time invested for savings for a number of computers.
Also, the longest part of computer procedures in the mornings may have nothing to do with turning the computers on. I know, because we just began turning off all the computers in the public library where I work, and it added about two minutes to my morning routine for five office/service desk computers and 32 lab computers. The longest part is logging in and waiting for settings to load, starting up software, and entering passwords, which I always had to do anyways for security purposes. So really, the library is paying me for only a few minutes more of my time than they were previously, but they're saving energy on the 37 computers that are not running for the 12 hours we're closed (more on weekends).
I don't necessarily agree that we should be turning these off every night, but that's simply because despite the assurances that a normal computer can be turned off and on 40,000 times before it dies, that's not my luck or experience. I subscribe to the school of "If it's electronic and you turn it off, there's no guarantee it will turn back on." While the computers are all under warranty so the beancounters don't care, it's a big issue for the users who put a very heavy load on the machines, so if one or two are out of action, it's noticeable and people start having to wait for computers. So service is impacted very quickly. I'll be interested to see how many computers spontaneously die on us this year compared to last year.
I'll also be curious to see exactly how well the remote powering-on technology works when they go to do updates at night when the computers are off.
So the biggest problem I see with this is that it essentially requires the driver to voluntarily use a matching key and cell phone that are sold as a set.
If the driver were going to voluntarily not talk on the cell phone, they could just not do it and save the money.
If you give this to a teenager and think this means they won't be texting or talking on a cell phone while driving, you need to spend more time with teenagers. As soon as there's another person with a cell phone in the car with them, they can borrow that cell phone to talk or text. If they're more devious (and have the money), they'll just get themselves another cell phone. If they really want to talk or text while driving, they will. This isn't going to stop them unless they're all alone in the car and very conscientious to begin with.
Giving it to adults as some sort of insurance incentive? That's a laugh. Adults are even worse than kids about working the system.
Aha. I read you as the scanning for multiple cancers at once being beneficial (which it definitely would be). Either way, we're agreed all around that how long it takes is less important than what it can offer in other areas.;)
However, the hour time frame is not the real story here - it's the ability to combine all of this screening in the first place.
Having lost a grandmother, aunt, and coworker to ovarian cancer, I have a slightly different perspective on this. Ovarian cancer is just extremely difficult to accurately discover in time to treat effectively. There are tests that can be done to test for it, but the rate of false positives and negatives really negate their usefulness. Usually by the time the cancer is discovered, it is in too late of a stage and a woman's chances for survival are not very good.
I will be interested to see how accurate the results of this scanner's test are. If it enables more reliable early detection of ovarian cancer, we're possibly talking the ability to give thousands of women a fighting chance.
So combining the ability to test for multiple cancers is nice, but if it's merely an accurate test for something that so far has been virtually undetectable until it's too late, that's good enough for me.
I'm aware that this is years down the road, but since right now the best they can do is say, "Well, you were on birth control pills for a number of years. That's a plus... I suppose we can run this test, but it gives a lot of bad results. Want that?" I think it's an excellent development.
Developmentally speaking, at almost two a child does not really want to sit down at a computer and learn about it. From 18-24 months old, kids are generally becoming more aware of routines, people around them, are learning new words, and are starting to imitate what they see done. So rather than assuming that he's born to be a computer scientist (and he may well be, but there's LOTS of time for that later), you're better off assuming that he's learning about the world in general.
And really, rather than giving him something that you'll have him play games on, the healthiest thing to do is to spend time with him and help him explore the world. The computer games won't stimulate his brain the way play in the real environment will, and that's what he needs right now. Brain stimulation and exploration = good (along with plenty of healthy food and rest). That's what develops his brain so that in a few years when he's truly ready for a computer, he'll have the basic building blocks to learn.
And really, I bet you're more fun to spend time with than a computer. Especially when you make his favorite stuffed animal do that funny dance and sing that song...
I don't know if it will prevent any other hackers at Carleton from coming forward and reporting problems they find, legally or not. If I were there, this wouldn't scare me off.
Why?
1. I would report a problem to one person, in IT, who might be able to fix it. NOT a secretary. I would not e-mail it to 37 students.
2. In my report, I would not give out the personal account information of the 32 students whose accounts I had violated, thus making sure that at least 38 people (plus whoever else they e-mailed it to) would now have that information.
It's one thing to find a problem with a system. HOW YOU HANDLE the problem is key. He handled it poorly and revealed his victims' information that is used to access email accounts, living quarters, educational records, and even to buy things on campus.
I don't care to stop would-be white hat hackers from hacking. I would, however, like them to realize that what they do with the information is what makes them culpable and have them handle it responsibly. He did not and deserves every slap down he gets.
Do you know that no significant damages have occurred? If I were one of the 32 students whose personal information he e-mailed to 37 other students plus sent to a secretary and God knows who else, I would be pressing charges against him. Just because he didn't damage the infrastructure doesn't mean that no one else he shared the information with didn't abuse it to access educational records, email accounts, or to buy things on campus pretending to be a different student.
If a corporation, let's say a large store, had this happen to 32 of its customers, and the guy who did it e-mailed the personal account information of those customers (which provided access to their store credit card information, personal address and contact information, and credit history) to a bunch of other people, would we not all expect him to be charged with a crime? I sure as hell would.
If you reveal personal information protected by law, expect to be charged.
Actually, if I were one of the 32 students whose information he e-mailed to 37 students (so not even just the other affected students), I'd be pressing charges. To hell with university sanctions. He gave other students information that would have allowed them to access my email account, my school records, my library records, and buy things as me on campus. Fantastic, that.
He may have meant well in the beginning, but he didn't then take the information to someone in charge; he revealed it to multiple people, compromising financial and personal records of his victims. That's what takes this beyond a slap on the wrist.
Actually, did you read the article? The bottom line is that he revealed account information on students to multiple people who were not in the position to fix any problems (including other students via e-mail).
White hat hacking, my ass.
He used a keylogger and magnetic card reader to capture the information to break into accounts. After that, he sent the 16-page paper (which WAS sent under a psudonym, since people keep suggesting that) not to a system administrator or someone who could deal with it quietly, but instead to a secretary, and eventually he e-mailed it to 37 other students. Fantastic move, that. Included in the paper was the personal account information of the students. So yes, he revealed the account information of his victims to other people.
Maybe he had good intentions, but that puts him pretty firmly in the "Please, prosecute me!" camp. If he'd revealed information on me that allowed someone to make campus purchases as me as well as check my school records and access my email, I'd be pressing charges too.
Maybe there was no damage to the university's infrastructure that we know about, but I'm pretty sure that those students would have been damn lucky if no one went into their accounts and took advantage of them, the way he handled it. And THAT, my friend, is why he's being charged.
Libel in Britain tends to be taken more seriously than in the US. There is no automatic right to free speech (except on Speaker's Corner, where even the slander laws can't touch you) and the penalties aren't gentle - the satirical magazine Private Eye found that one out.
Okay. Let's clear this sucker up. For the last damn time (in my dreams, eh?), your right to free speech in the US is your right to free speech AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT. You do not have the right to libel anyone or anything you want. The Constitution protects your right to make comments about the government, to agitate peacefully for government change, to seek redress, to petition the government, etc.
When people say "I can say whatever I want! I'm entitled to my free speech!"? They're usually freaking morons. Unless they were talking to or about the government, it just ain't so. There are ramifications for what you say about other people or institutions.
Actually, my public library ends up proctoring two to three distance education students per week. For free, of course. A reference librarian goes through the rigamarole with the student and sticks him/her at a table and the reference staff keeps an eye on him/her as we all wander around. If it's a computer-based test, we reserve a computer in the Computer Center for the student and the Computer Center staff watches him/her. Either way, you end up with multiple proctors at the same time (harder to cheat), though we have the same official person sign off on the test every time.
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I think it would be a good idea to discuss with them how computer science effects different aspects of society. I think the reason they like to focus on game programming is because that is the only exciting thing about CS they soft of understand.!
I wish I had mod points for this.
The stock market wouldn't be what it is today without computer science! Er, wait. Maybe you shouldn't mention that. How old are these kids, and are they likely to be more Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street types? :P
If you've got an Unlimited Data plan (as I have), this won't be an issue. The throttling of your service will be, however.
Actually, you can no longer get the plan you are referring to unless you had it prior to something like July 7. I know because I made a point to go out and purchase exactly that plan so that I would be grandfathered in for unlimited data before Verizon stopped selling the plan. Now any plan Verizon sells you has a data cap.
I'll note that this was mentioned in the article.
I don't think it's a matter of sanity. It's quite possible that someone knows right from wrong, but is completely unable to control themselves. Therefore they're not insane, but they pose a risk to society. So what do we do? Do we have to let them out and wait for them to commit a crime? Or can we commit them?
And this is why I find I'm torn by the existence of this law. I'm originally from the rural area where Nushawn Williams had unprotected sex with over 40 women (many teenagers) after being told he was HIV positive. He claims to have slept with over 300 women. He infected at least 13 women in Chautauqua County, NY with HIV, and may be responsible for up to 10 more HIV infections in former partners in the New York City area. In the end, all he could be charged with was two counts of statutory rape and one count of reckless endangerment for a maximum sentence of 4 to 12 years. While in prison, he had 21 disciplinary offenses, including throwing his urine on another inmate. He was due to be released April 13, 2010 but he is being held and his case is under review for civil confinement. Here's an article from the Jamestown, NY paper about the situation.
I do believe that there are people who are either criminally insane or are simply unable to control their actions who will endanger the public health and welfare and that our current system of laws can't always address this. Williams essentially handed multiple women, one as young as 13, what was thought to be a death sentence back in 1997. Some of them have died. He had the knowledge to avoid doing that. There wasn't really a law to cover what he did, so they went with what they could make stick, which I think most people feel resulted in a fairly light sentence for the actual gravity of the situation. Since his incarceration, he has used bodily fluids as a weapon. Overall, I am extremely leery of putting Williams back out on the street just yet.
That said, I don't like civil confinement laws. They're an incredibly slippery slope. If we can do this for one type of criminal, why not another? Who do I trust to make sure that they aren't being abused to lock inconvenient people away forever?
If they exist at all, they should only exist with extreme safeguards. 1) Only for violent offenders. 2) Only for those at an extremely high level of risk to reoffend. 3) Regular rehabilitation and treatment plan for each person, and routine reassessment of them for possible re-integration back into society. 4) Must be examined by multiple psychiatrists and consensus reached that person was still extreme threat. 5) Ability to have case for release argued before jury of citizens after a certain amount of time in civil confinement has passed.
But how practical is that?
Even then, the thought makes me sick to the stomach. I can see both sides. There are a few people I can see this being a good thing for... but at the same time, I just can't figure out how to implement it well enough so that it isn't abused the way I know it will be.
It's hard living in the world when you can see shades of grey and acknowledge that there's probably no good solution. The more time I spend thinking about civil confinement and the more cases I read where they are using it, the more convinced I am that I should oppose it. That said, my mind returns to Nushawn Williams and my reluctance to let him become modern day's Typhoid Mary.
I think we're going for the curious but technically non-savvy group with the print copies. In fact, exactly the people I'd rather just read the stuff and carefully put the book back rather than got viruses on their computers by wandering into someone's poorly documented "You can make a smoke bomb by doing this!" page which lacks any critical warnings.
Not that I doubt some people's ability to document important safety precautions but... yeah, I do.
You boys could really do with reading up on UK law, mere possession of these guides is now a criminal offence, although I'm not sure if it's a strict liability offence or not.
*looks happily at her American public library's book shelves and notes two copies of the book available for public checkout*
You know, I don't often burst into Lee Greenwood's song "Proud to Be an American", but this just might be one of those times. Admittedly, we're the only library in a very large system to have it, but we do.
I noticed it does say right on the title page that the recipes and tips are for entertainment purpose, should not be tried, and are not intended to be accurate. However now if I ever need to try to build a bug detector, I at least know where to look. I'd rather people satisfy their curiosity by reading the antiquated Anarchist Cookbook than wander into some of the stuff I'm sure is available on the Internet.
Gah. I hate when someone says what I'm trying to say much better than I say it while I'm off typing out a response. Nicely done.
"The entire point of patents is to add to public knowledge, but that isn't happening."
Only in the most roundabout way. The point of patents is to give the creator a period of time to profit off their invention before everyone can completely copy it for free. It's to give people a reason and reward for innovation--if you are the one who comes up with something and patents it, you are the one who has the right to decide who can use your patent and how (and for how much) for that 17 years or whatever. Without that protection, in theory, people have little incentive to innovate because as soon as they create something, someone else just copies it and they've lost their invention and any money they put into it. So yes, it adds to public knowledge in that it encourages innovation and publication, but it then protects those rights for a period. I do think the protection is important. One of the biggest problems with the patent system today is how corrupt it is, with the little guy getting shut out by corporations who claim to have invented things. I happen to think that little guy should be compensated for his time and effort.
So the problem is that the US patent system is corrupt, slow, designed for a 19th century national business arena and timetable (as opposed to 21st century international), and it bogs down in litigation. It certainly needs an overhaul. So does copyright. Frankly, though, so long as big business interests have the ear of Congress, neither of those will happen.
The scary thing is that even with judgements like this and the patent trolls out there we are actually seeing the likes of Microsoft push for option 1.
Patents will be the death of innovation if the system continues in this way, particularly if the US judgements are assessed at insane levels of cost. If Microsoft had known about this patent when starting the development they'd have bought the company for less than this judgement.
This is exactly the wrong case to use for the argument of a broken patent system, I think, primarily because Microsoft DID know about the patent and deliberately ripped the feature off with the intent to crush the company's product out of the competition. In fact, if I recall correctly, they worked with i4i, visited with them, and were pretty blatant about the whole thing.
So while I often think that the patent system has a LOT of problems (a LOT a lot of problems), this particular case is one where Microsoft is getting what they deserve, in my opinion. i4i isn't a patent troll... Microsoft pretty much came along, took what they wanted, and expected their size and superior market share to protect them. That's not good enough.
I would conjecture that those who feel they are good at multitasking do _not_ feel this -- and that's both why they feel they are good at multitasking, and why they are actually bad at it.
Yes. And anyone who has ever played with a gamer who fancies him or herself a multitasker knows this. They never seem to understand that you're pissed off for a reason. Subtle outbursts like, "OMG, turn the damn movie off, stop IMing your friends, and pay attention to the screen. There's a reason the rest of us don't want to group with you and that you suck at doing quests!" seem to confuse them, because they are GOOD at multitasking!
Not that I'm bitter. *coughs*
Let me help you understand: the problem is that the consequences are inappropriate to the conduct. Your line of reasoning would have everyone accept whatever consequences are in place, no matter how draconian.
I don't know about the GP's line of reasoning, but mine pretty much goes, "If you sign a contract with someone and break the terms of it, expect them to treat you like you've broken the contract."
I don't really think this is about copyright infringement or anything else so much as it is that the student presumeably signed both network/computing contracts and housing contracts that laid out regulations and consequences. I would assume that using university networks to commit copyright infringement is probably specifically mentioned in one or both of the agreements.
If you don't like the possible consequences of contract clauses, don't sign them. If you do sign a contract, don't break the conditions unless you are prepared for the consequences. This is not a case of "A law is unfair and its consequences are too harsh." The consequences in this case are SOLELY the result of his decisions to live in a dorm and use uni resources for something he had agreed not to do. So he had choices. Don't live there. Don't use uni resources. Don't do it. Or take the consequences.
Sadly, you read the source of my quote and chose to focus on that rather than on what I'd actually said. Should you care to look, the study's results are published a number of other places, but I admit that USA Today had the pertinent bit I needed all in one place for me to quote.
The point is that in many places, literacy begets literacy. Print newspapers aren't losing readers to online newspapers so much as newspapers are losing dedicated readers overall.
As to the guy reading through the four-day-old USA Today on your plane flight (I've done that flight--my butt is still recovering), people read at different speeds and levels. While I could wish that everyone would pick up certain books that I think are fantastic and read them, I've come to realize that so long as someone is reading something, you haven't lost the battle. (I'd rather he was reading an old USA Today than flipping through some of the POS magazines that are all glossy ads, but that's my personal bias.) Besides, who knows what sort of week he'd had? I'm a librarian and a bibliophile, and I've had a week or two in my life where I couldn't read a book to save my life. I just didn't have the energy or attention span. Usually those weeks involved long periods in hospital waiting rooms flipping a quarter with my brother over who got first pick of the crossword puzzles in the various newspapers we'd managed to scrounge.
I've certainly had certain parents treat the Harry Potter books with the sort of contempt you've just shown USA Today. Apparently if it wasn't considered a classic novel by 1950 for some people, it isn't something anyone should waste their time reading.
So no, I do not think of USA Today as a great journalistic newspaper. I don't believe I ever made that claim or probably ever will. My argument was with the premise that print newspaper readers are replacing their newspapers with online newspapers.
Yes, this is an OT response. I should really know better.
Two things really creep me out in this world: People who present a dogma of the lack of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of faith, and those who continue to press economic systems that are known to be fundamental failures.
I'm curious. Do you know the poster, or are you basing this solely on his /. post?
Because simply saying that "some christians and or capitalists were uncomfortable with or offended by some of my past comments" does not mean he lacks faith or favors another economic system. He just might not share the same views as certain elements of those two groups. Many people are Christians or of another faith but are uncomfortable with some of the views of other Christians. Many people are capitalists but think that there's such a thing as hard-core capitalism that could be tempered. Very few systems encompass people who immediately share all beliefs without offense.
In particular, I think there's a big difference between saying "I made some Christians uncomfortable or offended them" and saying that someone presented a dogma of the lack of faith as somehow superior to a dogma of faith. In that context you are assuming that Christianity is the only faith, and that only by supporting atheism or possibly agnosticism would someone make a Christian uncomfortable. It simply depends on the Christian. The poster could easily be a Christian who disagreed with them on certain topics, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Jewish, or... you get the point.
Except that I'm not convinced that this is a replacement of traditional print media by Internet sources so much as it is simply a decline in news readership. As a librarian, I've found that I don't really compete with bookstores. The more people read from the library, the more they also tend to buy from the bookstore. It tends to be a synergistic relationship.
On a related note, Central Connecticut State University President Jack Miller put out his annual Most Literate Cities study, which looks at what literary resources are available and used.
From a USA Today article on this year's study:
The findings come at a time when newspaper circulations across the USA are declining, and online newspaper reading is increasing. Miller's analysis suggests that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the availability of free online news is not to blame for the decline in newspapers' print circulation -- and that neither is the decline in bookstores across the country caused by the rise in online book buying.
Cities that ranked higher for having more bookstores also have a higher proportion of people buying books online, the analysis found, and cities with newspapers that have high per-capita circulation rates also have more people reading newspapers online. Likewise, cities that ranked higher for having well-used libraries also have more booksellers.
So I don't think it's necessarily that people are actually choosing to read their news online instead of subscribe to a traditional newspaper. I think more people are just not reading in general and may happen across news online as they do other things--but that isn't the point of their Internet usage.
And if we aren't reading, will that leave us with just television reporters? :O
Haunted herring makes me scared.
1.42kw for the computer to run overnight has a cost of around 10 cents to the company. Waiting 5 minutes for your PC to boot at the federal minimum wage of $6.55 per hour has a cost of around 55 cents to the company. It costs the company at least 5 times as much to have you boot your PC in the morning as it does to let it run overnight.
Except that you made the following assumptions:
1) That the computers being turned off are staff computers used by a person every day, so that person is losing time having to boot a computer up in the morning.
2) That said staff persons do not log off of accounts for security purposes and just leave the computer ready to go in the morning when they sit down
If a company has a significant number of computers in a lab, for example, there is probably already a staff member responsible for logging all the computers off at night and logging them back on in the morning. Turning off all the computers and bringing them back up in the morning would be a one person job of presumeably not significantly much more time invested for savings for a number of computers.
Also, the longest part of computer procedures in the mornings may have nothing to do with turning the computers on. I know, because we just began turning off all the computers in the public library where I work, and it added about two minutes to my morning routine for five office/service desk computers and 32 lab computers. The longest part is logging in and waiting for settings to load, starting up software, and entering passwords, which I always had to do anyways for security purposes. So really, the library is paying me for only a few minutes more of my time than they were previously, but they're saving energy on the 37 computers that are not running for the 12 hours we're closed (more on weekends).
I don't necessarily agree that we should be turning these off every night, but that's simply because despite the assurances that a normal computer can be turned off and on 40,000 times before it dies, that's not my luck or experience. I subscribe to the school of "If it's electronic and you turn it off, there's no guarantee it will turn back on." While the computers are all under warranty so the beancounters don't care, it's a big issue for the users who put a very heavy load on the machines, so if one or two are out of action, it's noticeable and people start having to wait for computers. So service is impacted very quickly. I'll be interested to see how many computers spontaneously die on us this year compared to last year.
I'll also be curious to see exactly how well the remote powering-on technology works when they go to do updates at night when the computers are off.
So the biggest problem I see with this is that it essentially requires the driver to voluntarily use a matching key and cell phone that are sold as a set.
If the driver were going to voluntarily not talk on the cell phone, they could just not do it and save the money.
If you give this to a teenager and think this means they won't be texting or talking on a cell phone while driving, you need to spend more time with teenagers. As soon as there's another person with a cell phone in the car with them, they can borrow that cell phone to talk or text. If they're more devious (and have the money), they'll just get themselves another cell phone. If they really want to talk or text while driving, they will. This isn't going to stop them unless they're all alone in the car and very conscientious to begin with.
Giving it to adults as some sort of insurance incentive? That's a laugh. Adults are even worse than kids about working the system.
Aha. I read you as the scanning for multiple cancers at once being beneficial (which it definitely would be). Either way, we're agreed all around that how long it takes is less important than what it can offer in other areas. ;)
Cheers!
However, the hour time frame is not the real story here - it's the ability to combine all of this screening in the first place.
Having lost a grandmother, aunt, and coworker to ovarian cancer, I have a slightly different perspective on this. Ovarian cancer is just extremely difficult to accurately discover in time to treat effectively. There are tests that can be done to test for it, but the rate of false positives and negatives really negate their usefulness. Usually by the time the cancer is discovered, it is in too late of a stage and a woman's chances for survival are not very good.
I will be interested to see how accurate the results of this scanner's test are. If it enables more reliable early detection of ovarian cancer, we're possibly talking the ability to give thousands of women a fighting chance.
So combining the ability to test for multiple cancers is nice, but if it's merely an accurate test for something that so far has been virtually undetectable until it's too late, that's good enough for me.
I'm aware that this is years down the road, but since right now the best they can do is say, "Well, you were on birth control pills for a number of years. That's a plus... I suppose we can run this test, but it gives a lot of bad results. Want that?" I think it's an excellent development.
A little harsh, but kind of true.
Developmentally speaking, at almost two a child does not really want to sit down at a computer and learn about it. From 18-24 months old, kids are generally becoming more aware of routines, people around them, are learning new words, and are starting to imitate what they see done. So rather than assuming that he's born to be a computer scientist (and he may well be, but there's LOTS of time for that later), you're better off assuming that he's learning about the world in general.
And really, rather than giving him something that you'll have him play games on, the healthiest thing to do is to spend time with him and help him explore the world. The computer games won't stimulate his brain the way play in the real environment will, and that's what he needs right now. Brain stimulation and exploration = good (along with plenty of healthy food and rest). That's what develops his brain so that in a few years when he's truly ready for a computer, he'll have the basic building blocks to learn.
And really, I bet you're more fun to spend time with than a computer. Especially when you make his favorite stuffed animal do that funny dance and sing that song...
I don't know if it will prevent any other hackers at Carleton from coming forward and reporting problems they find, legally or not. If I were there, this wouldn't scare me off.
Why?
1. I would report a problem to one person, in IT, who might be able to fix it. NOT a secretary. I would not e-mail it to 37 students.
2. In my report, I would not give out the personal account information of the 32 students whose accounts I had violated, thus making sure that at least 38 people (plus whoever else they e-mailed it to) would now have that information.
It's one thing to find a problem with a system. HOW YOU HANDLE the problem is key. He handled it poorly and revealed his victims' information that is used to access email accounts, living quarters, educational records, and even to buy things on campus.
I don't care to stop would-be white hat hackers from hacking. I would, however, like them to realize that what they do with the information is what makes them culpable and have them handle it responsibly. He did not and deserves every slap down he gets.
Do you know that no significant damages have occurred? If I were one of the 32 students whose personal information he e-mailed to 37 other students plus sent to a secretary and God knows who else, I would be pressing charges against him. Just because he didn't damage the infrastructure doesn't mean that no one else he shared the information with didn't abuse it to access educational records, email accounts, or to buy things on campus pretending to be a different student.
If a corporation, let's say a large store, had this happen to 32 of its customers, and the guy who did it e-mailed the personal account information of those customers (which provided access to their store credit card information, personal address and contact information, and credit history) to a bunch of other people, would we not all expect him to be charged with a crime? I sure as hell would.
If you reveal personal information protected by law, expect to be charged.
Actually, if I were one of the 32 students whose information he e-mailed to 37 students (so not even just the other affected students), I'd be pressing charges. To hell with university sanctions. He gave other students information that would have allowed them to access my email account, my school records, my library records, and buy things as me on campus. Fantastic, that.
He may have meant well in the beginning, but he didn't then take the information to someone in charge; he revealed it to multiple people, compromising financial and personal records of his victims. That's what takes this beyond a slap on the wrist.
Actually, did you read the article? The bottom line is that he revealed account information on students to multiple people who were not in the position to fix any problems (including other students via e-mail).
White hat hacking, my ass.
He used a keylogger and magnetic card reader to capture the information to break into accounts. After that, he sent the 16-page paper (which WAS sent under a psudonym, since people keep suggesting that) not to a system administrator or someone who could deal with it quietly, but instead to a secretary, and eventually he e-mailed it to 37 other students. Fantastic move, that. Included in the paper was the personal account information of the students. So yes, he revealed the account information of his victims to other people.
Maybe he had good intentions, but that puts him pretty firmly in the "Please, prosecute me!" camp. If he'd revealed information on me that allowed someone to make campus purchases as me as well as check my school records and access my email, I'd be pressing charges too.
Maybe there was no damage to the university's infrastructure that we know about, but I'm pretty sure that those students would have been damn lucky if no one went into their accounts and took advantage of them, the way he handled it. And THAT, my friend, is why he's being charged.
Libel in Britain tends to be taken more seriously than in the US. There is no automatic right to free speech (except on Speaker's Corner, where even the slander laws can't touch you) and the penalties aren't gentle - the satirical magazine Private Eye found that one out.
Okay. Let's clear this sucker up. For the last damn time (in my dreams, eh?), your right to free speech in the US is your right to free speech AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT. You do not have the right to libel anyone or anything you want. The Constitution protects your right to make comments about the government, to agitate peacefully for government change, to seek redress, to petition the government, etc.
When people say "I can say whatever I want! I'm entitled to my free speech!"? They're usually freaking morons. Unless they were talking to or about the government, it just ain't so. There are ramifications for what you say about other people or institutions.
Actually, my public library ends up proctoring two to three distance education students per week. For free, of course. A reference librarian goes through the rigamarole with the student and sticks him/her at a table and the reference staff keeps an eye on him/her as we all wander around. If it's a computer-based test, we reserve a computer in the Computer Center for the student and the Computer Center staff watches him/her. Either way, you end up with multiple proctors at the same time (harder to cheat), though we have the same official person sign off on the test every time.