I'm just a grad student, and one day, I installed something (I think it might've been an nfs server) without firewalling it (I did some sort of thing which had the deamon reject connections from outside my subnet). I was hacked. Funny thing is, they went straight from my machine to my roommate's, an old 486 which was also a webserver. From my roommate's machine, the hacker served a rootkit (cleverly named "..." in the root html directory).
Enter the FBI, who showed up in my roomate's lab asking about his computer (amoung other things). Picture yourself a grad student answering his lab door to find men in suits (an uncommon experience) who say they're part of the FBI (also uncommon), and mean it (still less common). After some questions, it was hesitantly established that my roomate was not the hacker serving root kits from his home computer.
From there, the FBI (with our permission) bugged our appartment. They put a "tap" in our appartment, which consistend of a special switch and a *very* loud windows machine that sat on our internet connection listening for hacker activity. The installation of the tap involved 7 FBI agents, none of which new nearly as much as my roomate about networking (that the broadcast ping couldn't get through their special switch with the word "tap" on it was a real mystery). Neadless to say, I didn't fool around with bittorrent or the like durring that time.
After a month or two, they caught the hacker (who was sweedish, apparently), and eventaully prosecuted him successfully.
Point is: sometimes it is useful to not reinstall immediately when hacked -- it can result in a good story:)
The rules of go are NOT simple. The rule telling which player wins is incredibly complicated -- to the point that compter programs sometimes don't get it right (who wins, what groups are dead, etc).
Sure, it is easy to describe how one is allowed to move. But the rules of the game include describing who wins.
The richest religions (per capita) are quakerism and judism.
I believe this to be due to the emense value placed on enducation in the two religions.
And I think it might be useful to define what the goal of an `education' is: a well educated person is one who has learned how to be competant in a large number of situations (even situations the person has not before encountered). A good education should supply all of the various meta-skills (ability to memorize facts (history), ability to express one's self (english / foriegn language), ability to listen to and follow directions exactly (math), ability to understand and apply complicated concepts rigorously (chemistry / physics / bio), etc).
The article's point is a good one, when applied to certain sorts of computer games: they are a form of communication (though very rarely are they trying to tell the ``truth'') and as a form of communication, should be regulated with the sorts of systems we currently have in place for regulating communication.
My question is, how far does this go? Does this apply to games like chess, poker, minesweeper? I feel like the logical conclusion of the author's argument is that we should restrict games based not entirely on their content, but on the sorts of actions such games promote in the real world. Doesn't this then allow restriction old-style non-computer games which promote undesirable behaviors (excessively aggressive play is very necessary for some forms of poker)? Can we find games which promote desirable behavior?
That is, it is different for me to develop and sell weapons to terrorists than it is for me to develop and sell those same weapons to the pentagon. It gets messier if I'm selling those weapons to both the terrorists and the pentagon...
My point is that you are over-generalizing the assessment of responsibility here. Do we want a society where companies are single-mindedly profit based and willing to directly help criminals? I'm not claiming this is what cisco is doing, but if the only practical application of anti-DDoS technologies turns out to be to protect criminals, shouldn't we worry a little?
Property has physical existence as its primary characteristic. A book may be physical property. But the stream of words and images within are is not.
You present a particular definition of property. What exactly `property' is is not the point of the conversation. The piracy / file-sharing debate is about the extent to which we should be carrying over the rules associated with property to information.
On one hand, it is important to reward people for creating information. Without a positive expected value, what reasonable person is going to put effort into creating ideas? Where will the ideas come from?
On the other hand, most IP laws are designed to give the idea's creator an effective monopoly, which is frequently unfairly exploited.
Instead of raving about semantics, try addressing the issue of creating a system where people will develop ideas in a world where P2P limits the advantage that can be gained from those ideas. Perhaps you think that those people will still be compensated for their efforts, but you must have some idea why that is...
Can anyone give me a reasonable answer to why anyone would ever want to ban teaching evolution in schools?
The fact is that evolution is based on a very subtle, interesting argument, that is, granted, hard to understand. The techniques and concepts needed to make the argument function are incredibly powerful and useful for all sorts of analysis. Capatilism, for instance, runs on lots the same principles (survival of the fittest, etc). Why would anyone ever be against teaching these arguments in any school? Particularlly when people are motivated to really engage the pro-evolution arguments and see what sorts of counter-arguments they're susseptable to? Banning the teaching of evolution just feels like an attempt to limit a student's intellectual capability...
Combining this with the fact that creationism runs off a thoroughly uninteresting argument (not for it's potential to be correct or incorrect, but simply because it must appeal to God instead of actually trying to explain phenomena). That isn't proof that it is false, it just makes me feel that teaching it should be less of a priority.
(all of the above is said under the assumption that both are valid theories for which no school should assert as true)
I was once on a job with a bunch of laptops (all windows). The mousepad on one of the laptops broke, and there was no chance of getting it repaired. It sort of force fed me all the keyboard shortcuts for windows, and led to this interesting situation where I could all of a sudden do thing three or four times as fast as anyone else (even on laptops without broken touchpads).
If we could type and use the mouse at the same time, mice might be worth it. But, as it stands, reaching for the mouse is an inefficient move, and one that I avoid at all costs now.
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Enter the FBI, who showed up in my roomate's lab asking about his computer (amoung other things). Picture yourself a grad student answering his lab door to find men in suits (an uncommon experience) who say they're part of the FBI (also uncommon), and mean it (still less common). After some questions, it was hesitantly established that my roomate was not the hacker serving root kits from his home computer.
From there, the FBI (with our permission) bugged our appartment. They put a "tap" in our appartment, which consistend of a special switch and a *very* loud windows machine that sat on our internet connection listening for hacker activity. The installation of the tap involved 7 FBI agents, none of which new nearly as much as my roomate about networking (that the broadcast ping couldn't get through their special switch with the word "tap" on it was a real mystery). Neadless to say, I didn't fool around with bittorrent or the like durring that time.
After a month or two, they caught the hacker (who was sweedish, apparently), and eventaully prosecuted him successfully.
Point is: sometimes it is useful to not reinstall immediately when hacked -- it can result in a good story :)
The rules of go are NOT simple. The rule telling which player wins is incredibly complicated -- to the point that compter programs sometimes don't get it right (who wins, what groups are dead, etc).
Sure, it is easy to describe how one is allowed to move. But the rules of the game include describing who wins.
I believe this to be due to the emense value placed on enducation in the two religions.
And I think it might be useful to define what the goal of an `education' is: a well educated person is one who has learned how to be competant in a large number of situations (even situations the person has not before encountered). A good education should supply all of the various meta-skills (ability to memorize facts (history), ability to express one's self (english / foriegn language), ability to listen to and follow directions exactly (math), ability to understand and apply complicated concepts rigorously (chemistry / physics / bio), etc).
My question is, how far does this go? Does this apply to games like chess, poker, minesweeper? I feel like the logical conclusion of the author's argument is that we should restrict games based not entirely on their content, but on the sorts of actions such games promote in the real world. Doesn't this then allow restriction old-style non-computer games which promote undesirable behaviors (excessively aggressive play is very necessary for some forms of poker)? Can we find games which promote desirable behavior?
That is, it is different for me to develop and sell weapons to terrorists than it is for me to develop and sell those same weapons to the pentagon. It gets messier if I'm selling those weapons to both the terrorists and the pentagon...
My point is that you are over-generalizing the assessment of responsibility here. Do we want a society where companies are single-mindedly profit based and willing to directly help criminals? I'm not claiming this is what cisco is doing, but if the only practical application of anti-DDoS technologies turns out to be to protect criminals, shouldn't we worry a little?
hey baby, I wish you were x^2 and I were x^3/3 so that I could be the area underneath you.
The fact is that evolution is based on a very subtle, interesting argument, that is, granted, hard to understand. The techniques and concepts needed to make the argument function are incredibly powerful and useful for all sorts of analysis. Capatilism, for instance, runs on lots the same principles (survival of the fittest, etc). Why would anyone ever be against teaching these arguments in any school? Particularlly when people are motivated to really engage the pro-evolution arguments and see what sorts of counter-arguments they're susseptable to? Banning the teaching of evolution just feels like an attempt to limit a student's intellectual capability...
Combining this with the fact that creationism runs off a thoroughly uninteresting argument (not for it's potential to be correct or incorrect, but simply because it must appeal to God instead of actually trying to explain phenomena). That isn't proof that it is false, it just makes me feel that teaching it should be less of a priority.
(all of the above is said under the assumption that both are valid theories for which no school should assert as true)
I was once on a job with a bunch of laptops (all windows). The mousepad on one of the laptops broke, and there was no chance of getting it repaired. It sort of force fed me all the keyboard shortcuts for windows, and led to this interesting situation where I could all of a sudden do thing three or four times as fast as anyone else (even on laptops without broken touchpads). If we could type and use the mouse at the same time, mice might be worth it. But, as it stands, reaching for the mouse is an inefficient move, and one that I avoid at all costs now.