Ever since all of those great opennap servers of MusicCity switched to their own Morpheus client, my Gnapster program has seemed next to worthless (and I haven't tried it for a bit...)
Are there any good opennap networks up now? Is anything being done?
Yeah, that annoyed me too... however, there IS help available. I personally use gnapfetch to download OpenNap network lists in formats both Gnapster and TekNap could understand. Of those, I personally prefer the OggVorbis and NecessaryEvil networks... while they are frequently full and take a couple of minutes to get in, actually getting a connection to the servers is usually not a problem (as opposed to other networks) and the selection is fairly decent.
Well, the history of Midway games on the PC hasn't been a very good one, at least not as of late. Not including the Arcade Classics series, the last decent game I played by Midway on PC was Mortal Kombat 3 for DOS. It went downhill from there. (Windows 95 MK3 won't play fullscreen without screen distortion, MK Trilogy won't work at all on video cards less than three years old without a modified video driver, and MK 4 didn't see my Voodoo 3 3000 card as being Glide-compatible). For that matter, the last Midway game I remember seeing for PC was NFL Blitz 2000.
I've heard it said before that PC gaming wasn't very profitable for them... so I wouldn't expect to see too much out of Windows versions of their games, let alone Linux versions.
I don't know if anyone noticed, but the BBC has been running Doctor Who books featuring all eight Doctors (yes, including Paul McGann's Doctor) since 1996 or 1997. Their official website has more details, along with lists of upcoming books.
As far as audio adventures go, this is nothing new, either; the BBC has licensed a company named Big Finish to produce a series of audio adventures available on CD (website here) featuring the fifth through eighth Doctors, accompanied by most of their companions. They're also in talks to bring in Tom Baker, as well as Anthony Ainley (the Master), but nothing concrete has come out of them yet.
This is news, but it implies Doctor Who has been dead. It's not; it's still alive and kicking...
Meanwhile, it's high time for a Dr. Who revival...
Well, the big revival was tried back in 1996 with the Fox TV-movie starring Paul McGann as the Doctor. Now, say what you will about the movie, but it IS considered canon. I guess a new TV or movie version would be considered a revival, but otherwise, Doctor Who is far from dead. The Fifth through Eighth Doctors (Davison, Colin Baker, McCoy, and McGann) and several companions have been starring in several audio adventures released recently by Big Finish, and the BBC has their own series of books out now, with stories for all eight Doctors.
The big problem with the revival would be that SEVERAL major happenings have happened in the book series (which are canon, seeing as the BBC produces them) that would at some point need to be explained in any revival. These are things such as the one of the Doctor's companions becoming a sentient TARDIS, the destruction of Gallifrey by the Doctor to prevent it falling into the wrong hands, etc.
Anyway, I for one would love to see a TV revival, but I'd just wonder how they're going to deal with the canon that's already out there...
I know a lot of people here are going on about how the US shouldn't be doing what we did, "hacking" into foreign computers, and the like, and tricking their nationals to come here and be arrested, but that does bring up a question I had... namely, should we really be feeling sorry for these morons? I mean... based on a prospective job offer, they came to a country against whose citizens they knew they had flagrantly committed crimes such as extortion and theft, and had identified themselves to their victims. Did they really think they wouldn't be identified at some point, especially when getting a work permit?
I dunno... the idiocy of some people amazes me sometimes.
>Maybe because the police force is for the most part reactive, not proactive?
So? What do you expect them to do? Walk two paces behind known villains till they do a crime?
>Think about it. It takes, on average, five to ten
>minutes for a police car to make it to a scene
>after a call comes in.
Cops have to be on the beat for 65 years (roughly) before coming across a crime in progress! In the modern world we have this technology called, wait for it, the MOTORCAR. You should try one sometime, they're much faster than walking. No, really, they're pretty good!
I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to make. (Not to mention the fact that the second statement you made about cars made no sense whatsoever...) I'm not saying that we should change how the police does things. What you (sarcastically) suggest would seriously violate the civil rights of those would-be "criminals". All I'm suggesting is that while the police can arrive and deal with the aftermath of a crime, they can't actually stop a crime in progress unless they happen to stumble onto it in progress. If you have a chance to defend yourself DURING the crime, then you're probably better off. I have no problem with firearms being carried, so long as they're used for DEFENSE only.
Remember the old saying... "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." It's very true. Do you HONESTLY think criminals will give up their guns if they become illegal? It hasn't stopped other illegal contraband.:p All you're doing is taking the weapons out of law-abiding citizens.
Maybe I'm stupid and Canadian, but in an urban population with a decent sized police force, there should be no good reason for people to have to carry around weapons.
Maybe because the police force is for the most part reactive, not proactive?
Think about it. It takes, on average, five to ten minutes for a police car to make it to a scene after a call comes in. I'm guessing here, but I don't think I'm too far off. PLUS, the call generally comes in AFTER the incident. And to be quite blunt... our society has created criminals that WILL kill you, regardless of whether or not you're armed or not. The police won't do you much good if you're already dead. This isn't a gun problem, it's a social problem.
Also, keep this in mind... carrying a concealed weapon in public may or may not be legal depending on where you are. Here in Texas (where Dubya got us a concealed handgun law), we CAN carry concealed firearms, but we have to have permits for them, plus we're somewhat restricted as to where we can carry them. Finally, a tale of two areas: crime went down in Texas after the concealed handgun permit went into effect. Crime in Australia skyrocketed after they started outlawing THEIR firearms. Remember, criminals don't like to target people who they might suspect of being able to fight back...
Okay, that's my rant for the day... mod up or down at your leisure.:p
any state where Guinness can not be sold as "beer" (it is a "stout", therefore not sold as beer and harder to find than hens teeth),
Funny, I have no problem finding it at my local Kroger's or Randall's...
hand guns can be carried anywhere, concealed, even in church
Illegally? Sure, you can get that anywhere. Legally? Um... no. You have to have a permit for said firearm. Also, I'm not sure about churches, but for example, it's HIGHLY illegal to have a firearm anywhere NEAR a school, permit or no. AND, all a company/church/business needs to do is post a sign stating that firearms are not permitted on the premises, and said permit won't help you if you're caught with the weapon.
As for the topic at hand... I don't see this going through, simply because Dell and Compaq are going to fight this through their teeth, if only because the corporate customers won't be too happy...:)
See those ICQ logs that were posted? Don't you think that's a horrific invasion of privacy? What right have you to complain about Carnivore snooping on you if it's ok for other people to invade people's privacy, even if you don't like the victims?
Well, I will be the first to admit that I haven't read some of the articles, so I have no idea how the logs were acquired, but based on what I know so far, the answer would be no.
Why, you ask? It's quite simple: I take the attitude that anything transmitted via ICQ and logged is no longer private. AFAIK, ICQ themselves take that attitude. It's like when people complain about me posting IRC logs: stuff said is, IMHO, public domain, especially if on a channel itself.
If the person whose logs were posted wants to complain, maybe he should consider that this could have been avoided had he used something that DIDN'T log his words.:p Or even better, not been such an ass in the first place...
Well, I for one am glad to see that this has happened. Why? Simple: because maybe now we'll see DivX;-) encoders for platforms OTHER than Windows. I prefer to do my ripping in Linux, simply because my system handles resources better in Linux than in Windows, and would probably do the job faster.
Not that I have anything against Windows, mind you... in fact, I'll probably be using my Windows-based laptop to watch DivX;-) encoded versions of my DVD movies while on long plane flights. I just would rather have a choice of operating systems when it comes to creating the things.:)
Well, true, AIM users who are NOT AOL subscribers are possibly vulnerable, but there were a couple of exceptions to this vulnerability, according to a SecurityFocus article:
Once an AOL account exists under an AIM screen name it cannot be hijacked again--although a separate loophole allows hackers to create AOL accounts that automatically disappear from the system shortly after creation.
Users of AOL's subscription service are not vulnerable. Because of the nature of the bug, AIM users with screen names that, minus the first two letters, are already taken are also immune: i.e., if Hn Doe has an AIM account, then John Doe's is safe.
Makes me glad I already have an AOL account as a backup dialup...
Why don't we simply have a system whereby mail server A and B encrypt the entire mail exchange transaction?
The only real problem then would be getting people to employ it, and that could be done if it were made backwards compatible by accepting older smtp connections but adding a header that indicated it was at some point transmited in the clear, and accepting a security header that commanded it not to forward to in older servers.
It would seems like it would be a simple modification to SMTP. Though I suppose it would have to get through the IETF first.
Actually, there's a program out there called stunnel which allows you to create SSL functionality in any server. What it does is listen on a designated port and then tunnel any connections to it to a local (or even remote) port. We've actually started using it at where I work, by having stunnel listen on the pop3s port (995, I believe) and it tunnels connections to it to its local pop3 port. Outlook and Outlook Express at the very least have the capability for SSL-encrypted SMTP and POP3, and I believe Netscape 4.7x supports SSL-encrypted SMTP.
Just my $.02...
"For a dark man shall come unto the House of God, and the darkness shall be upon him, yea, even within him." -- from Noctropolis: Night Visions
-We may inspect your premises with a software agent team at any time, 24/7/365. If you are not there to assist us with entering your premises, we may let ourselves in.
Heh, it's clauses like these that make me glad our building's vicious guard dogs can't read.:)
Unfortunately, parents don't tend to take the time to understand what their children are playing. The more info we can give them on the subject, the better they can prolly understand what their children are up to. I worked for Toys R Us in their video game department for two and a half years, and I repeatedly informed parents of the rating system. It was very rare that I found a parent who didn't think it was a good thing.
I guess the best analogy I could give was this one time I was working at the game booth itself. This woman in her mid-30's came up to me, holding a ticket for a copy of DOOM for SNES. I got her the game, and as I got her to sign the ticket, I casually asked her who it was for. She smiled, and said it was for her five-year-old son. I just looked up, and asked her if she knew what the game was about. She said no, and I proceeded to describe the game in detail. When I was done, she was noticably paler and wanted to know where she could get a refund (the cartridges themselves weren't handed out until the game was paid for). I'm firmly convinced that a lost sale is better than a refund later and an irate former customer.
I guess my point here is that parents don't know about a lot of these games, and that at least this way they have a chance to take a look at what it is their kids are buying/playing, and gives them a say in it.
Heh, I've already encountered a problem with how Outlook 2000 sends mail at where I work. Apparently, if you choose to send mail to someone in RTF format, a copy of the message itself (along with any attachments) is put into one big attachment called winmail.dat, that is nigh unreadable unless you have Outlook 2000 yourself or an Exchange server that's willing to translate it for you. I found out about this when our financial manager had problems receiving an emailed file from our parent company's controller, who claimed he didn't have problems sending the file to anyone else. It turned out that he was using Outlook 2000 in RTF format, and our financial manager was using Netscape Messenger... and I only learned that could be an issue from reading Bugtraq. It also didn't help that we're prolly the only one of the parent's companies that use qmail instead of Exchange server...
Standards. They're a wonderful thing. Too bad MS has yet to learn that...
Microsoft has the right to produce whatever kind of program it wants to, and we have no right to judge its endeavors.
Sure we do. We do it all the time, be it in the form of reviews, purchasing the product, etc. You're right in that MS has the right to produce whatever they want, but one would think that they would want to release a product that keeps the consumer happy in order to keep making money.
I'm not going to pretend I'm somehow more important than Bill Gates.
Um, you are more important than Bill Gates. We all are. We don't need him, but he does need us in order to keep making his money. If MS was to go out of business tomorrow, then companies and individuals out there would survive without him. They'd simply find alternatives for MS products. The two credos to keep in mind are, "The customer is always right", and "The customer is in charge".
Of course you can still use a boot disk. ME is just stopping people from being able to use autoexec.bat/config.sys during startup.
Actually, I forget where the article is offhand (you can probably find it by doing a search on LinuxToday), but according an article reviewing the beta of Win ME, they stated that the only boot disk you can make is one of their rescue disks. The/s switch in format no longer works, and I don't believe there's a "Copy system files" option in the GUI format command.
This is not good, seeing as I can't see newbies trying to flash a BIOS knowing which files to delete off the boot disk to make room for the BIOS image. On the other hand, some recent motherboards (my Epox mobo being one them) do allow you to flash the BIOS via a command option in the CMOS setup...
Actually, if this is the episode that I'm thinking of, it wasn't the Doctor, per se. What happened was that Voyager passed through a region of space just as a war started, and one of the sides attacked Voyager and stole a couple of components, including an EMH backup module. So, basically what they found was not the Doctor himself but an archived copy.:)
No, they don't have the right...no more than your landlord has a right to randomly enter your apartment and check your wife's underwear drawer for drugs...its like a rent agreement.
Not exactly. A lot of companies are like mine: they make you sign a form stating that you understand the rules of the company and agree to abide by them. At where I work, it specifically states that the company owns the PC's and everything on them, which isn't the case in something like an apartment rent agreement. Therefore, they do have the right to be searching them...
Personally, I think the mail should be monitored (not actually read), with reading only taking place when you have evidence of suspicious activity... but then, that's just my $.02.
Privacy is definately still an issue. Users may not have the legal/contractual *right* to privacy, but I believe that common decency dictates that you shouldn't push into other peoples business without reason. I believe earlier posts stated the reason quite clearly: downloading porn on company time is a no-no. You're supposed to be working, not looking at pics.:) Again, just my $.02...
This is a very good point... I was actually going to say this.:) The thing to keep in mind is this, though: if the place you work for is anything like mine, you have to sign an agreement stating that you understand the rules of the company, and that you agree to abide by them. This means these people should know full well that everything put on their machines is the company's property. Therefore, they should accept responsibility for what happens.
As for the aforementioned suggestions... I doubt the sysadmin has any choice. He just has to provide the logs/information, and then management and/or human resources determines what to do with it. If someone gets terminated, it's due to the management's decision, not the sysadmins... and if you go against them and don't do the scans, they prolly will terminate you. If you have a problem with this, leave the company.
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Are there any good opennap networks up now? Is anything being done?
Yeah, that annoyed me too... however, there IS help available. I personally use gnapfetch to download OpenNap network lists in formats both Gnapster and TekNap could understand. Of those, I personally prefer the OggVorbis and NecessaryEvil networks... while they are frequently full and take a couple of minutes to get in, actually getting a connection to the servers is usually not a problem (as opposed to other networks) and the selection is fairly decent.
Just my $.02...
I've heard it said before that PC gaming wasn't very profitable for them... so I wouldn't expect to see too much out of Windows versions of their games, let alone Linux versions.
Just my $.02...
As far as audio adventures go, this is nothing new, either; the BBC has licensed a company named Big Finish to produce a series of audio adventures available on CD (website here) featuring the fifth through eighth Doctors, accompanied by most of their companions. They're also in talks to bring in Tom Baker, as well as Anthony Ainley (the Master), but nothing concrete has come out of them yet.
This is news, but it implies Doctor Who has been dead. It's not; it's still alive and kicking...
Well, the big revival was tried back in 1996 with the Fox TV-movie starring Paul McGann as the Doctor. Now, say what you will about the movie, but it IS considered canon. I guess a new TV or movie version would be considered a revival, but otherwise, Doctor Who is far from dead. The Fifth through Eighth Doctors (Davison, Colin Baker, McCoy, and McGann) and several companions have been starring in several audio adventures released recently by Big Finish, and the BBC has their own series of books out now, with stories for all eight Doctors.
The big problem with the revival would be that SEVERAL major happenings have happened in the book series (which are canon, seeing as the BBC produces them) that would at some point need to be explained in any revival. These are things such as the one of the Doctor's companions becoming a sentient TARDIS, the destruction of Gallifrey by the Doctor to prevent it falling into the wrong hands, etc.
Anyway, I for one would love to see a TV revival, but I'd just wonder how they're going to deal with the canon that's already out there...
I dunno... the idiocy of some people amazes me sometimes.
So? What do you expect them to do? Walk two paces behind known villains till they do a crime?
>Think about it. It takes, on average, five to ten
>minutes for a police car to make it to a scene
>after a call comes in.
Cops have to be on the beat for 65 years (roughly) before coming across a crime in progress! In the modern world we have this technology called, wait for it, the MOTORCAR. You should try one sometime, they're much faster than walking. No, really, they're pretty good!
I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to make. (Not to mention the fact that the second statement you made about cars made no sense whatsoever...) I'm not saying that we should change how the police does things. What you (sarcastically) suggest would seriously violate the civil rights of those would-be "criminals". All I'm suggesting is that while the police can arrive and deal with the aftermath of a crime, they can't actually stop a crime in progress unless they happen to stumble onto it in progress. If you have a chance to defend yourself DURING the crime, then you're probably better off. I have no problem with firearms being carried, so long as they're used for DEFENSE only.
Remember the old saying... "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." It's very true. Do you HONESTLY think criminals will give up their guns if they become illegal? It hasn't stopped other illegal contraband. :p All you're doing is taking the weapons out of law-abiding citizens.
Okay, I drifted off topic... so sue me. :p
Maybe I'm stupid and Canadian, but in an urban population with a decent sized police force, there should be no good reason for people to have to carry around weapons.
Maybe because the police force is for the most part reactive, not proactive?
Think about it. It takes, on average, five to ten minutes for a police car to make it to a scene after a call comes in. I'm guessing here, but I don't think I'm too far off. PLUS, the call generally comes in AFTER the incident. And to be quite blunt... our society has created criminals that WILL kill you, regardless of whether or not you're armed or not. The police won't do you much good if you're already dead. This isn't a gun problem, it's a social problem.
Also, keep this in mind... carrying a concealed weapon in public may or may not be legal depending on where you are. Here in Texas (where Dubya got us a concealed handgun law), we CAN carry concealed firearms, but we have to have permits for them, plus we're somewhat restricted as to where we can carry them. Finally, a tale of two areas: crime went down in Texas after the concealed handgun permit went into effect. Crime in Australia skyrocketed after they started outlawing THEIR firearms. Remember, criminals don't like to target people who they might suspect of being able to fight back...
Okay, that's my rant for the day... mod up or down at your leisure. :p
any state where Guinness can not be sold as "beer" (it is a "stout", therefore not sold as beer and harder to find than hens teeth),
Funny, I have no problem finding it at my local Kroger's or Randall's...
hand guns can be carried anywhere, concealed, even in church
Illegally? Sure, you can get that anywhere. Legally? Um... no. You have to have a permit for said firearm. Also, I'm not sure about churches, but for example, it's HIGHLY illegal to have a firearm anywhere NEAR a school, permit or no. AND, all a company/church/business needs to do is post a sign stating that firearms are not permitted on the premises, and said permit won't help you if you're caught with the weapon.
As for the topic at hand... I don't see this going through, simply because Dell and Compaq are going to fight this through their teeth, if only because the corporate customers won't be too happy... :)
Well, I will be the first to admit that I haven't read some of the articles, so I have no idea how the logs were acquired, but based on what I know so far, the answer would be no.
Why, you ask? It's quite simple: I take the attitude that anything transmitted via ICQ and logged is no longer private. AFAIK, ICQ themselves take that attitude. It's like when people complain about me posting IRC logs: stuff said is, IMHO, public domain, especially if on a channel itself.
If the person whose logs were posted wants to complain, maybe he should consider that this could have been avoided had he used something that DIDN'T log his words. :p Or even better, not been such an ass in the first place...
Not that I have anything against Windows, mind you... in fact, I'll probably be using my Windows-based laptop to watch DivX;-) encoded versions of my DVD movies while on long plane flights. I just would rather have a choice of operating systems when it comes to creating the things. :)
Once an AOL account exists under an AIM screen name it cannot be hijacked again--although a separate loophole allows hackers to create AOL accounts that automatically disappear from the system shortly after creation.
Users of AOL's subscription service are not vulnerable. Because of the nature of the bug, AIM users with screen names that, minus the first two letters, are already taken are also immune: i.e., if Hn Doe has an AIM account, then John Doe's is safe.
Makes me glad I already have an AOL account as a backup dialup...
The only real problem then would be getting people to employ it, and that could be done if it were made backwards compatible by accepting older smtp connections but adding a header that indicated it was at some point transmited in the clear, and accepting a security header that commanded it not to forward to in older servers.
It would seems like it would be a simple modification to SMTP. Though I suppose it would have to get through the IETF first.
Actually, there's a program out there called stunnel which allows you to create SSL functionality in any server. What it does is listen on a designated port and then tunnel any connections to it to a local (or even remote) port. We've actually started using it at where I work, by having stunnel listen on the pop3s port (995, I believe) and it tunnels connections to it to its local pop3 port. Outlook and Outlook Express at the very least have the capability for SSL-encrypted SMTP and POP3, and I believe Netscape 4.7x supports SSL-encrypted SMTP.
Just my $.02...
"For a dark man shall come unto the House of God, and the darkness shall be upon him, yea, even within him." -- from Noctropolis: Night Visions
Heh, it's clauses like these that make me glad our building's vicious guard dogs can't read. :)
Unfortunately, parents don't tend to take the time to understand what their children are playing. The more info we can give them on the subject, the better they can prolly understand what their children are up to. I worked for Toys R Us in their video game department for two and a half years, and I repeatedly informed parents of the rating system. It was very rare that I found a parent who didn't think it was a good thing.
I guess the best analogy I could give was this one time I was working at the game booth itself. This woman in her mid-30's came up to me, holding a ticket for a copy of DOOM for SNES. I got her the game, and as I got her to sign the ticket, I casually asked her who it was for. She smiled, and said it was for her five-year-old son. I just looked up, and asked her if she knew what the game was about. She said no, and I proceeded to describe the game in detail. When I was done, she was noticably paler and wanted to know where she could get a refund (the cartridges themselves weren't handed out until the game was paid for). I'm firmly convinced that a lost sale is better than a refund later and an irate former customer. I guess my point here is that parents don't know about a lot of these games, and that at least this way they have a chance to take a look at what it is their kids are buying/playing, and gives them a say in it.
Heh, I've already encountered a problem with how Outlook 2000 sends mail at where I work. Apparently, if you choose to send mail to someone in RTF format, a copy of the message itself (along with any attachments) is put into one big attachment called winmail.dat, that is nigh unreadable unless you have Outlook 2000 yourself or an Exchange server that's willing to translate it for you. I found out about this when our financial manager had problems receiving an emailed file from our parent company's controller, who claimed he didn't have problems sending the file to anyone else. It turned out that he was using Outlook 2000 in RTF format, and our financial manager was using Netscape Messenger... and I only learned that could be an issue from reading Bugtraq. It also didn't help that we're prolly the only one of the parent's companies that use qmail instead of Exchange server...
Standards. They're a wonderful thing. Too bad MS has yet to learn that...
Sure we do. We do it all the time, be it in the form of reviews, purchasing the product, etc. You're right in that MS has the right to produce whatever they want, but one would think that they would want to release a product that keeps the consumer happy in order to keep making money.
I'm not going to pretend I'm somehow more important than Bill Gates.
Um, you are more important than Bill Gates. We all are. We don't need him, but he does need us in order to keep making his money. If MS was to go out of business tomorrow, then companies and individuals out there would survive without him. They'd simply find alternatives for MS products. The two credos to keep in mind are, "The customer is always right", and "The customer is in charge".
Just my $.02...
Actually, I forget where the article is offhand (you can probably find it by doing a search on LinuxToday), but according an article reviewing the beta of Win ME, they stated that the only boot disk you can make is one of their rescue disks. The /s switch in format no longer works, and I don't believe there's a "Copy system files" option in the GUI format command.
This is not good, seeing as I can't see newbies trying to flash a BIOS knowing which files to delete off the boot disk to make room for the BIOS image. On the other hand, some recent motherboards (my Epox mobo being one them) do allow you to flash the BIOS via a command option in the CMOS setup...
Just my $.02...
Actually, if this is the episode that I'm thinking of, it wasn't the Doctor, per se. What happened was that Voyager passed through a region of space just as a war started, and one of the sides attacked Voyager and stole a couple of components, including an EMH backup module. So, basically what they found was not the Doctor himself but an archived copy. :)
Just my $.02...
No, they don't have the right...no more than your landlord has a right to randomly enter your apartment and check your wife's underwear drawer for drugs...its like a rent agreement.
Not exactly. A lot of companies are like mine: they make you sign a form stating that you understand the rules of the company and agree to abide by them. At where I work, it specifically states that the company owns the PC's and everything on them, which isn't the case in something like an apartment rent agreement. Therefore, they do have the right to be searching them...
Personally, I think the mail should be monitored (not actually read), with reading only taking place when you have evidence of suspicious activity... but then, that's just my $.02.
Privacy is definately still an issue. Users may not have the legal/contractual *right* to privacy, but I believe that common decency dictates that you shouldn't push into other peoples business without reason. :) Again, just my $.02...
I believe earlier posts stated the reason quite clearly: downloading porn on company time is a no-no. You're supposed to be working, not looking at pics.
This is a very good point... I was actually going to say this. :) The thing to keep in mind is this, though: if the place you work for is anything like mine, you have to sign an agreement stating that you understand the rules of the company, and that you agree to abide by them. This means these people should know full well that everything put on their machines is the company's property. Therefore, they should accept responsibility for what happens.
As for the aforementioned suggestions... I doubt the sysadmin has any choice. He just has to provide the logs/information, and then management and/or human resources determines what to do with it. If someone gets terminated, it's due to the management's decision, not the sysadmins... and if you go against them and don't do the scans, they prolly will terminate you. If you have a problem with this, leave the company.
Just my $.02...