If we allow this kind of illegal tipoff as evidence to police, then it gives criminals who have the skill to plant fake evidence a very big lever against everyone.
"Hey buddy... look at all the pics I put in My Documents for you. How about you wire me $1000 to my account in so I keep quiet about it"
My PC has a whole raft of programming languages installed... I have millions of programming books... are my kids interested ?
Not on your life... they like eMail, MP3's, P2P, MSN, Neopets, web browsing etc. They love the PC as a social and information tool.
We older computers lovers who grew up with ZX81, Commodore64, Spectrum etc only learned to program because there was very little decent software available except games, and we had to save up for weeks for those. We bought magazines with games programs you could type in. We learned basic (and maybe assembler if you were a geek) so we could correct the typos, fix the bugs and port that really cool C64 game to the Spectrum. Later we learned about modems so we didn't get disconnected so often from our favourite BBS (and later the internet)
It's much different now... software is given away "apparently" free to make money (usually advertising, paid add ons etc etc).
Kids prefer consoles for gaming as they are more reliable and consistent with what they get at their friends house. Money for games doesn't come into it as much as they seem to have more disposable income than when I was a kid.
Actually, this is a common misconception.... on Windows platforms its petty trivial to do damage as even unprivileged users have access to many things they shouldn't need to have access to. In addition, security restrictions can be bypassed in many ways..... Google (or Yahoo) for "privilege escalation" to find out more.
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If we allow this kind of illegal tipoff as evidence to police, then it gives criminals who have the skill to plant fake evidence a very big lever against everyone.
"Hey buddy... look at all the pics I put in My Documents for you. How about you wire me $1000 to my account in so I keep quiet about it"
My PC has a whole raft of programming languages installed... I have millions of programming books... are my kids interested ? Not on your life... they like eMail, MP3's, P2P, MSN, Neopets, web browsing etc. They love the PC as a social and information tool. We older computers lovers who grew up with ZX81, Commodore64, Spectrum etc only learned to program because there was very little decent software available except games, and we had to save up for weeks for those. We bought magazines with games programs you could type in. We learned basic (and maybe assembler if you were a geek) so we could correct the typos, fix the bugs and port that really cool C64 game to the Spectrum. Later we learned about modems so we didn't get disconnected so often from our favourite BBS (and later the internet) It's much different now... software is given away "apparently" free to make money (usually advertising, paid add ons etc etc). Kids prefer consoles for gaming as they are more reliable and consistent with what they get at their friends house. Money for games doesn't come into it as much as they seem to have more disposable income than when I was a kid.
Actually, this is a common misconception.... on Windows platforms its petty trivial to do damage as even unprivileged users have access to many things they shouldn't need to have access to. In addition, security restrictions can be bypassed in many ways..... Google (or Yahoo) for "privilege escalation" to find out more.