It's precisely this sort of attitude, stonecypher, that will prevent any other hackers at Carleton from coming forward and reporting any problems they happen to find, legally or not.
But at least your ethics are intact.
Though perhaps there's some sort of happy medium where you could get your punishment rocks off while at the same time places like Carleton don't have to scare everyone into never reporting anything. You're never, ever going to stop a hacker who loves what they do from hacking. Ever.
Those of us active in the security field would really appreciate your help on this.
If I found out that one of my engineers turned in and made moves to press charges against a hacker who broke in and then told them exactly how it was done, I would fire that engineer on the spot, for two reasons:
1. As was said in the story, you have an opportunity there to pull a potential fence-sitter over to the white-hat side of things, and you can only do that if you don't send them to prison on the spot. To not understand this is to be missing a fundamental requirement of anyone on the payroll -- "don't be a jerk!"
2. They're not very good at their job if some pinhead waltzes into the network and screws around like that.
But maybe that's why some engineers and administrators get so hot headed about this sort of thing. When it happens it draws unwanted attention to their own potential incompetence, and any rational human being would be pretty threatened by that.
Hi, I'm the one in this comment forest that has actual contract law experience, and here's the deal:
The reason why that clause is in so many TOS contracts is because big corporations are stupid--but not in the way you think.
They're covering their OWN asses, just in case some part or whole of your content ends up, as a result of the bureaucracy inherent in all large organizations, mistakenly used in some sort of public way by that organization. Lets say for example Google wants to take out a magazine ad in Wired this month, and they decide to include in that ad some wizened soul sitting at a Blogger screen looking at some content, which is actually a screenshot taken of a blogger page by the marketing firm Google hired to do the ad. Lets say that it turns out to be some real person's page, and that the content is clearly recognizable as both real and theirs.
I'm sure you can see the trouble there.
So, there is really no problem with this clause, it's probably not enforceable for an offensive maneuver anyway, and everyone here just needs to settle down.
Whoops! Hot dump that is. Wow. That was a great slip. But just to be very specific here, I was of course not bashing MSSQL or MySQL, but rather putting them in their proper place. Neither one of them has anywhere near the tools that Oracle or DB2 (IBM's implementation) do, but each does definitely have their place in the continuum of databases.
You can do what I've done and seen done a number of times, and write a hunk of middleware that parses SQL statements for runaways and send back a warning to the user. That, and not using medium and low duty databases lile MSSQL and MySQL can go a very long way to keeping users happy.
Precisely. It bothers me deeply that Gates assumes that the best way to help an illiterate person is to sell them (or sell to someone to give to them) a computer that doesn't use words, instead of using that money instead to MAKE THEM LITERATE.
But, one is a negative revenue stream, and one is ultimately positive. Guess which one Bill's "charity" will always pick.
What you see as "the deal" is nowhere near my experience.
I was a comp sci major for a little while at UPenn, then I changed to something a bit less unrewarding. At UPenn in the late 80s and early 90s, Comp Sci sucked as much as it did nearly anywhere (but not everywhere) else. And yes, we learned all about algorithms and theory and stuff.
Just like they do *right now* at any comp sci school worth its salt, and I'm talking about places like Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Ga. Tech, NYU, Caltech, MIT, etc. They all have wonderful comp sci departments, they all treat it like a science, and they are all well funded and have faculty who are actually active in research.
I don't know what you're basing your information on, but if it's a school, its a crappy one.
Hi initdeep. I'm talking about QA sampling, which has been standard practice in the computer industry since I first entered it in the late 70s. It's also standard practice in the making of cars, wines and spirits, tool and dye making...pretty much any industry which needs to produce a very large number of identical objects.
And of course micron does testing---but they do not test every last individual stick of RAM that they sell, no. They take a "sample" of a fabrication run, just like everyone else does. They, like all other RAM fabricators, leave it up to the reseller to test each individual one they buy, if they want to do that.
Now admittedly, Micron is an example of a company that does extensive testing post-assembly (thats when they stick all the parts together), but they still do not routinely check *every last one* unless there's been some kind of issue with manufacturing that needs attention.
Now, before you stick your foot down your throat some more, understand that we're probably agreeing on something here, and furthermore that you have no idea of who you're talking to, sonny.
I'm aware of Apple's distribution channel and who else is on it, and Dell isn't. It seems to me that Slashdot has deteriorated into modding up posts that "sound right".
Ahem. I am a computer engineer, and I wrote the parent, (sorry for the anonymous thing there) and I know well what the inside of Apple RAM looks like. Let me explain:
Most RAM fabrication is pretty much the same. If it works in your machine, its going to look very much like anything else that works in your machine. And the companies that actually do the fabrication often resell their product to larger companies like Apple and Dell, and it's true that the physical difference between Apple RAM and anything else is almost nothing.
Almost.
The difference is in the QA. While DELL may pull one stick out of 100 or 1000 for a quick test to see if the run is good or not, Apple tests *every single stick of RAM they sell*--and they don't just pop it in a RAM tester for the one second it takes for a cheap green light to come on. Their tests are substantially more involved, take quite a while, and again, are done on every single stick they sell. Why?
Image. Apple wants it's RAM to be the most reliable and guess what---it is.
Again, you get what you pay for. If you decide to buy cheap RAM, there's a good chance you'll be buying it twice.
I can tell you why I'm not working for DARPA:
Because I can make three times as much money in the private sector, inventing and patenting things that hopefully help people out, rather than you know....KILLING THEM ALL.
Pretty simple decision.
I saw four or five episodes, and every last one of them was filled with lukewarm, academic performances by mediocre actors forced to recite flat lines from a boring script that traced an entirely been-there-done-that plot.
Bleh. No wonder lucas makes so much money. Y'all gotcherselves REAL low expectations.
If you're good at what you do and you live in a place that isn't utterly lame, it is still (and always will be) exceedingly easy to find exhorbitant salaries in gainful employment.
I make what even in New York City is considered a high salary, and I have tattoos that are impossible to cover.
That said, please don't move to New York City looking for jobs. We don't have any. Nothing to see here. Move along.
I too have gotten to the age where I just want to use an OS that works. But I'm mad at Apple for switching to Intel chips (the biggest reason to buy Apple hardware is that it is SUPERIOR hardware) and Windows' propensity for viruses, malware and spyware makes me itch. So I took a risk some time ago and dropped in an operating system whos family I've worked professionally with for years, but which I have never tried as a home workstation.
And I've never been happier with an operating system. FreeBSD 5.4 Release. It's a little bit like Linux, except that it actually works.
Slashdot Mirror
It's precisely this sort of attitude, stonecypher, that will prevent any other hackers at Carleton from coming forward and reporting any problems they happen to find, legally or not.
But at least your ethics are intact.
Though perhaps there's some sort of happy medium where you could get your punishment rocks off while at the same time places like Carleton don't have to scare everyone into never reporting anything. You're never, ever going to stop a hacker who loves what they do from hacking. Ever.
Those of us active in the security field would really appreciate your help on this.
If I found out that one of my engineers turned in and made moves to press charges against a hacker who broke in and then told them exactly how it was done, I would fire that engineer on the spot, for two reasons:
1. As was said in the story, you have an opportunity there to pull a potential fence-sitter over to the white-hat side of things, and you can only do that if you don't send them to prison on the spot. To not understand this is to be missing a fundamental requirement of anyone on the payroll -- "don't be a jerk!"
2. They're not very good at their job if some pinhead waltzes into the network and screws around like that.
But maybe that's why some engineers and administrators get so hot headed about this sort of thing. When it happens it draws unwanted attention to their own potential incompetence, and any rational human being would be pretty threatened by that.
Still, Don't be a jerk.
Hi, I'm the one in this comment forest that has actual contract law experience, and here's the deal:
The reason why that clause is in so many TOS contracts is because big corporations are stupid--but not in the way you think.
They're covering their OWN asses, just in case some part or whole of your content ends up, as a result of the bureaucracy inherent in all large organizations, mistakenly used in some sort of public way by that organization. Lets say for example Google wants to take out a magazine ad in Wired this month, and they decide to include in that ad some wizened soul sitting at a Blogger screen looking at some content, which is actually a screenshot taken of a blogger page by the marketing firm Google hired to do the ad. Lets say that it turns out to be some real person's page, and that the content is clearly recognizable as both real and theirs.
I'm sure you can see the trouble there.
So, there is really no problem with this clause, it's probably not enforceable for an offensive maneuver anyway, and everyone here just needs to settle down.
"Avout" and "Saecular"?
I shut the video off right there. We need better writers than that.
Whoops! Hot dump that is. Wow. That was a great slip. But just to be very specific here, I was of course not bashing MSSQL or MySQL, but rather putting them in their proper place. Neither one of them has anywhere near the tools that Oracle or DB2 (IBM's implementation) do, but each does definitely have their place in the continuum of databases.
Let me know when MySQL is able to do a real hot dumb without locking tables, and I'll stick it right up there with Sybase on the spot. :)
You can do what I've done and seen done a number of times, and write a hunk of middleware that parses SQL statements for runaways and send back a warning to the user. That, and not using medium and low duty databases lile MSSQL and MySQL can go a very long way to keeping users happy.
Precisely. It bothers me deeply that Gates assumes that the best way to help an illiterate person is to sell them (or sell to someone to give to them) a computer that doesn't use words, instead of using that money instead to MAKE THEM LITERATE.
But, one is a negative revenue stream, and one is ultimately positive. Guess which one Bill's "charity" will always pick.
What you see as "the deal" is nowhere near my experience.
I was a comp sci major for a little while at UPenn, then I changed to something a bit less unrewarding. At UPenn in the late 80s and early 90s, Comp Sci sucked as much as it did nearly anywhere (but not everywhere) else. And yes, we learned all about algorithms and theory and stuff.
Just like they do *right now* at any comp sci school worth its salt, and I'm talking about places like Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Ga. Tech, NYU, Caltech, MIT, etc. They all have wonderful comp sci departments, they all treat it like a science, and they are all well funded and have faculty who are actually active in research.
I don't know what you're basing your information on, but if it's a school, its a crappy one.
Whoops, I of course meant "die" up there. Die die die. Die.
Hi initdeep. I'm talking about QA sampling, which has been standard practice in the computer industry since I first entered it in the late 70s. It's also standard practice in the making of cars, wines and spirits, tool and dye making...pretty much any industry which needs to produce a very large number of identical objects.
And of course micron does testing---but they do not test every last individual stick of RAM that they sell, no. They take a "sample" of a fabrication run, just like everyone else does. They, like all other RAM fabricators, leave it up to the reseller to test each individual one they buy, if they want to do that.
Now admittedly, Micron is an example of a company that does extensive testing post-assembly (thats when they stick all the parts together), but they still do not routinely check *every last one* unless there's been some kind of issue with manufacturing that needs attention.
Now, before you stick your foot down your throat some more, understand that we're probably agreeing on something here, and furthermore that you have no idea of who you're talking to, sonny.
Micron doesn't QA it, APPLE DOES, you fucking pinhead.
Christ, how you people manage to own computers is beyond me.
I'm aware of Apple's distribution channel and who else is on it, and Dell isn't. It seems to me that Slashdot has deteriorated into modding up posts that "sound right".
You sir, are fibbing for street cred.
Ahem. I am a computer engineer, and I wrote the parent, (sorry for the anonymous thing there) and I know well what the inside of Apple RAM looks like. Let me explain:
Most RAM fabrication is pretty much the same. If it works in your machine, its going to look very much like anything else that works in your machine. And the companies that actually do the fabrication often resell their product to larger companies like Apple and Dell, and it's true that the physical difference between Apple RAM and anything else is almost nothing.
Almost.
The difference is in the QA. While DELL may pull one stick out of 100 or 1000 for a quick test to see if the run is good or not, Apple tests *every single stick of RAM they sell*--and they don't just pop it in a RAM tester for the one second it takes for a cheap green light to come on. Their tests are substantially more involved, take quite a while, and again, are done on every single stick they sell. Why?
Image. Apple wants it's RAM to be the most reliable and guess what---it is.
Again, you get what you pay for. If you decide to buy cheap RAM, there's a good chance you'll be buying it twice.
I can tell you why I'm not working for DARPA: Because I can make three times as much money in the private sector, inventing and patenting things that hopefully help people out, rather than you know....KILLING THEM ALL. Pretty simple decision.
I saw four or five episodes, and every last one of them was filled with lukewarm, academic performances by mediocre actors forced to recite flat lines from a boring script that traced an entirely been-there-done-that plot. Bleh. No wonder lucas makes so much money. Y'all gotcherselves REAL low expectations.
And it was recycled, tepid, unadulterated crap.
SCSI, SATA and ATA controllers found on each and every hard drive made take quite a bit more than a couple transistors.
And you're evidently a sycophant.
If you're good at what you do and you live in a place that isn't utterly lame, it is still (and always will be) exceedingly easy to find exhorbitant salaries in gainful employment.
I make what even in New York City is considered a high salary, and I have tattoos that are impossible to cover.
That said, please don't move to New York City looking for jobs. We don't have any. Nothing to see here. Move along.
I too have gotten to the age where I just want to use an OS that works. But I'm mad at Apple for switching to Intel chips (the biggest reason to buy Apple hardware is that it is SUPERIOR hardware) and Windows' propensity for viruses, malware and spyware makes me itch. So I took a risk some time ago and dropped in an operating system whos family I've worked professionally with for years, but which I have never tried as a home workstation. And I've never been happier with an operating system. FreeBSD 5.4 Release. It's a little bit like Linux, except that it actually works.