People need to stop thinking of this as a minor inconvienance for large corporations, and examine the real damage that can be done using these tools.
Say such attacks were aimed at a small ISP on a regular basis over a period of weeks (months, years). This ISP is going to lose a lot of customers due to the attack. They may never be able to recover financially from the attacks.
Or what about the innocent user who happens to get on the bad side of some script kiddie? This user has a static IP, and is stuck without his internet access for however long the script kiddie decides to keep it up.
Or what about the university with hacked accounts on its systems which are being used for outgoing attacks, using up all the university's bandwidth and dropping them off the net for hours at a time, days on end?
These things happens every day, and have for years! These attacks didn't just suddenly pop into being with the large corporations - those are just the first the media payed any attention to (and thus, the first many people heard about)
I personally have either experienced, or know people who have experienced, all of the above.
And someone described these "protests" well in another post:
Its one thing to tie yourself to the gate of a nuclear power plant in protest.
Its another thing entirely to grab some innocent bystander off the street, tie them to the post, and then go home and drink hot cocoa or whatever.
These attacks are being committed by breaking into computers and using their bandwidth. Would you agree that this, at the least, should be illegal?
Well, besides the fact that the average citizen's freedom, anonmity, and enjoyment of the net are at risk because of the actions of these people...
Average citizens should care because 99% of the time, average citizens are the target and/or their connections are the ones being used in order to perform the attack.
DoS attacks have been a problem for years. Unfortunatly, it takes attacks against large corporations for the media/general public to pay attention to the problem.
Also, remember the capability that this shows. They've shown that they can take down very large sites. Yes, these sites may not be the most important things in the world to you. But just because they haven't aimed them at something you care about yet doesn't mean that there's no reason to care about the problem as a whole.
The FBI has been involved in similar cases for quite some time. They can get involved in such cases when losses are in excess of $10,000 or something and the attack crosses state lines.
DoS attacks are not a new thing. The involvement of law enforcement is nothing new. The only difference in this case is that the companies involved are very high profile.
What exactly is so threatening with law enforcement getting involved here? Assume that it was script kiddies and not a government conspiracy (which it could be, but script kiddies do have the possibility for such an attack). They could be causing companies to lose thousands (or more?) of dollars. Worse, they're doing this by breaking into systems and stealing their resources/bandwidth to perform the attack, causing even more losses.
Government conspiracy? Its a possibility. But apply Occam's Razor to the situation. The tools exist, and are widespread, for anyone with half a brain to perform such an attack (though one on this scale might actually take a whole brain, or a few half brains combined). They've been going on for years against individuals and less high profile entities. And there's been a recent explosion in 1. The number of such tools available, and 2. The number of idiots who don't know anything about security with relativly high bandwidth connections.
And think...if it were you being attacked, losing revenue, possibly being driven out of business - would you want something done with it?
If anything, I'm glad attention is being drawn to the problem.
I find myself prepared to grudgingly admire a group I've detested for a few years now. The brats and miscreants may have gotten their shit together and started to fight for something worthwhile, rather than simply for the hell of it.
But it isn't just the bloodthirsty marketers that they are targetting. Those just happen to be the ones who get the publicity.
They cause *huge* problems for the people who run, for example, IRC servers. These people are paying out of their own pockets to provide a free service, and are getting hammered for it. What's the purpose in that?
And they aren't using their own resources for these attacks. They're using resources stolen from other people. My university went through a period of time last year when there were so many hacked accounts being used for outgoing DoS attacks that we'd be dropped off the internet for hours at a time.
And do you think they were truly doing this as an attack on the bloodthirsty businesses? Or just to show off that they have the power to take down such a large site?
This means that we all have to take security seriously. That password matters. Don't share it. If you have resources, use two part authentication. Take reasonable precautions. Audit your setuid programs. Don't put "." in your path. Don't have world-writable files. If you can't afford commercial 2-part auth solutions, at least use ssh instead of telnet. Etc., etc., etc.
Problem being that you're assuming that the compromised systems being used in these attacks are some form of UNIX being administered by someone clueful enough to understand your instructions. I don't have any statistics, but I suspect the majority aren't.
The big problems are your average everyday home users who get a dsl/cablemodem connection, and your schools/small businesses without the money to hire someone capable of maintaining security. Some decide to make home networks using some screwy shareware windows proxy program that leaves them vulnerable. Some use linux, but have had little or no prior experience with it, and couldn't make heads or tails of your instructions.
Add to that the widespread problem of trojan horse client/server programs which basically allow anyone to hijack your connection. And the widespread infestation of script kiddies with nothing better to do with their time than attack people.
That's where you're seeing the majority of your problems - and the problems that are going to be hardest to fix through education - not from people who are clueful enough to understand basic UNIX security concepts.
Better security tips:
Be aware of the security risks involved in being connected to the internet, especially 24/7 (many don't even realize that they can be "hacked")
If you aren't familiar with something (like setting up a network), make sure you research it first
Use good, up-to-date virus protection software. And keep it up to date
Don't download any executables (including word/excel documents and the like) unless absolutely necessary. If you must, get them from a trusted site. Don't warez. Don't execute anything from an untrusted site. Be suspicious of anything sent to you, even by people you know and trust - they may be spreading something unintentionally.
Then again, probably very few of the people these are aimed at are reading this, so why am I bothering?
Males, ask yourselves...Why do you want more women in the geek community, and what message are you sending to females?
The article says:
A quick straw-poll of hackers suggests that the reason for wanting more women in the field (hormonal urges aside) is that it is felt that they would bring a different perspective and generate new ideas.
But you can't put aside hormonal urges. That's the main reason males want more females in the geek community - because they are females, not because they possess any special inclination towards UI design. And this is intimidating to many females.
It seems that many consider intelligence to be simply another measure of sexual attractiveness. Teen magazines for example, teach us to be self confident and show our intelligence. Not because, heaven forbid, such traits might actually make us feel good about ourselves and lead to future success in school/work, but because they make us attractive.
Similarly, what message do the/. readers (and geeks in general) who say "We need more geek women", give? Not that they want more geeks in the world, but that they are looking for a mate with particular qualities, and the field isn't broad enough.
I haven't looked too heavily into the geek-chick websites, so don't flame me for this if I'm wrong, but a large part of the vibe I get from them is "I'm a geek. That makes me sexy."
Not that there's anything wrong with looking at intelligence/geekiness as a measure of sexual desirability. Its natural, and great that people are considering these traits attractive. They're traits I look for in males myself. But you aren't going to get more females into the field until you give them the impression that they're wanted for their technical abilities, not simply because they happen to be female and too many geeks aren't getting any.
In addition, the standards of geekiness for females are lower. Within geek social circles, we're judged largely in comparison to other females, not in comparison to other geeks.
I'd rather be accepted into the geek community because I'm better at computers than 95% of the general population. Not because I'm better than 98% of females.
The author of the article touches on this in a way when she says, in her list of things to do to encourage geekiness in children:
Reward perfection more highly than just excellence. As a child, I found that going the extra mile would not give me any greater return on investment, so I learned to stop bothering -- something which I greatly regret now.
Female geeks tend not to have to try as hard in order to be accepted. Accepted as a female, anyway. However, this acceptance can be enough to prevent them from striving further for true acceptance. Especially when the level they must reach to be viewed as a geek, rather than a sex object, is often high above the level of acceptance for males.
In closing, something that happened to me this morning. Pretty much enirely unrelated to the rest of the post, but it is semi-related to the topic of female geeks, and I feel like complaining about it:)
It was my roommate's 21st birthday party, and we had a large number of rather drunk geeks hanging around our house all night (she's a CS major). One of them decided that since he couldn't log into our router as root, that he'd reboot it into single user mode. Which didn't work, thankfully, or I could very easily not be here writing this right now. Anyway, for some reason it didn't come back up correctly, and I had to fix it. So I'm sitting there attempting to figure out what went wrong and why it didn't come back up correctly in the first place, when one of my roommate's (male) friends comes into the room and watches over my shoulder.
"What are you doing? That doesn't look good." pause. "That's not even DOS, is it?" (This guy is a CS major).
"No, its Linux."
"You'd better get an expert to do that, like Alex" (Alex being my roommate's boyfriend, a CS grad student. I probably have approximatly equal "real world" linux/networking knowledge to him, if not more).
I'm not entirely sure what prompted this particular comment. Was it because I'm female? Because I'm a human development major (stereotypically about the least computer-clueful major)? Because it was approx. 3:30 am, and I was mentally exhausted and mistyping stuff and forgetting that I was using debian and the file I needed was in/etc/init.d instead of/etc/rc.d? Because he didn't have enough background to know that "Illegal Operation" didn't mean I was trying to crack into the Pentagon? I don't know, and probably never will, as I didn't have the presence of mind to ask him at the time, and he was drunk enough that its doubtful he'd remember if I asked now, even if I felt like it.
She certainly apeared to be enjoying showing herself off to the camera (guess she hadn't been taught how traumatized she is suposed to feel yet)
She may have been enjoying herself. Kids are show offs.
That doesn't mean that when she's 12, 13, 14 or whatever and realizes that there's possibly thousands of people around the world seeing this, that she's going to be comfortable with it.
Yes, some of the emotional pain over abuse is a societal construct. That's unfortunate, but it doesn't change the fact that it still hurts.
Its entirely possible that some kids are relativly unaffected by what is considered to be abuse. That doesn't mean that such behavior is ok - some other kid may be traumatized for life by the same experience.
What it comes down to in my mind - children in general don't have the frame of reference (including knowledge of our culture) to understand the meaning of what is happening. The adult responsible is taking advantage of this lack of knowledge, as well as quite possibly the child's need for attention, love, and approval.
Also, keep in mind that not all child pornography is as mild as you've described.
Didn't I say that consensual adult porn is an entirely different thing from child porn? While I have problems with it, I'm quite aware that it isn't illegal. And I don't think it should be, either.
However, my point was that the original poster claimed there was nothing wrong with the distribution of *any* porn, child or otherwise.
And yes, its true that it is harder to find child porn (especially when you aren't looking for it). That doesn't mean it doesn't happen (I've seen people spamming child porn sites on IRC, as well as channels that make no effort to hide their contents), or that its not a problem.
>> how the bloody hell can you pretend that kiddy porn, or any pornography at all, isn't bad?
> The WORST thing that has EVER happend when an otherwise mentally stable individual has downloaded or otherwise VEIWED ANY sort of pornography, is quite simply that they had to clean up a sticky mess from masturbating. Downloading, viewing, and exchanging porn is fine in my eyes.
You're ignoring the fact that for child porn to be produced, a child has to be abused. And often hurt badly (physically and/or mentally) in the process. "So what's wrong with redistributing stuff that's already been produced?" you ask...
1. Its an invasion of the child's privacy. They didn't ask for their picture to be taken in sexual situations, and I'm sure they don't want millions of people observing them in these situations. Once they get old enough to understand, the fact that pornography of them is widely available has got to be disturbing. Not to mention the fact that it makes them a target for further abuse - a kid who doesn't tell about one time is less likely to tell if it happens again.
This also applies to adult porn produced non-consensually.
2. Increased demand leads to increased production. Which leads to more kids getting victimized.
Not to mention you're assuming that the people who view porn are otherwise mentally stable. In many cases this may be true. But in some cases it is going to lead to further problems. Probably moreso in the case of child pornography, since people who view child pornography are probably much more likely to have further problems. After all, to have a child pornography habit, they have to already A. be attracted to children, and B. Have either the lack of willpower to ignore their impulse to view pictures of children being abused, despite what their conscience tells them, or they don't have a moral problem with it to begin with.
Consensual adult pornography is a different story. While I still have problems with it (many of the women involved have been raped/abused in the past, or are feeding a drug addiction, or otherwise have low self worth which is being taken advantage of), it is *their choice* to have their picture available.
This seems like an after the fact excuse to me. Yes, the publicity is a nice side effect. However, even if this was the intended outcome, couldn't the people who originally planned it have come up with a plan that isn't quite so easy to punch massive holes in?:)
This reminds me very much of that "Don't buy gas for a day to protest gas prices" campaign earlier this year. Possibly well intentioned, but ill thought-out and probably ineffectual.
As has already been pointed out by many people, Echelon probably has filters built in that will seperate out simple lists of keywords, which is what most people were sending. Or even emails with too many keywords (at some point it becomes obvious you're just trying to draw attention to yourself. A real threat would be more likely to have only one or two keywords, if any). Someone mentioned in the original post about this topic that this list may even have originally been released by the NSA, and is peppered with false keywords that would indicate a specific message should be ignored. Even if it wasn't actually released by the NSA, they certainly heard of it, and likely adjusted their search algorithms to adjust for it (such a system would unlikely be static. What particular words constitute threats must change on a daily basis).
This kind of thing may actually do more harm than good. Assume that this prank actually did have some effect. Do you think the NSA is going to say "Its obvious our system doesn't work. Lets give up!" No, they're going to put billions of taxpayer dollars into improving the checking algorithms.
The NSA is not stupid. They've got some of the best people in the industry. And they'll be able to learn from any mistakes that they do happen to make. Jam Echelon Day simply provides them with a proving ground for their system.
This is irrelevant. It refers to earthquakes that have already happened. I do in fact keep an eye on these official sites. However, it simply doesn't serve the same purpose. Why don't you just read cnn.com instead of/.? After all,/. is largely speculation and people's unofficial opinions, not actual official data. The interesting part of the site mentioned in my previous post is that they are attempting to develop systems, often based on the data from these official sites, to predict earthquakes and save lives.
And having grown up in southern california, I'm aware of the magnitude, frequency, and usual damage caused by a 5.0 quake:) (at least in places with decent building codes)
I'm no expert in geology, and therefor can't say whether this current rash of earthquakes/storms/natural disaster du jour is unusual historically. I have heard it said that this past century has actually been very light in terms of natural disasters, and we're simply returning to usual levels. Then we've got other people saying that this means the end of the world:)
I stumbled across a board of earthquake predictions the other day. These are based on various factors...some geologically based, some hunches, some more astrologically based. There were some startlingly accurate ones. (Incidently, if this site is at all accurate, the quakes in Taiwan may not be the tech industry's biggest worry...)
http://www.syzygyjob.com/Boards/predict ion/. Some posts of particular note: #1369, #1364, #1365 (not an actual prediction, in fact kinda skeptical sounding, but mentions almost the exact location of the quake - a region which was apparently discussed frequently.), and #1359. Note the times of these quakes...all were before the Hector quake which took place near 29 Palms/Joshua Tree on 10/16.
As for Y2K...well...if disaster (either electronic, natural, or God-sent) happens, it happens. While being prepared for a medium-case scenario (you can't prepare for a worst case scenario, which would be the world exploding or something:) is probably a good idea in general, stressing about it probably isn't going to do a heck of a lot of good.
As far as non-US companies/people registering in the.com,.net domains....is this supposed to happen? Ever since I can remember you're supposed to use the proper suffix, i.e..co.uk,.com.au, etc. So far the.us suffix has been relegated to state governments here.
Isn't this really a rather US-centric idea? These TLDs gives no indication as to the physical location of the entity, so why should US entities be the only ones allowed to register them? I'd object much more to people in the US registering domains in countries they have no affiliation with (which they do all the time. NSI even advocates this in order to protect your "valuable product, brand and company names").
According to Network Solutions,.com,.net, and.org are global, and anyone can register them. The registration policy for country specific domains is dependant on the country (see http://www.idnames.com/about-intl-web.ht ml).
Yes, definetly targeted at the home user who hasn't used Linux before. I saw the demo at LinuxWorld back in August, and its been very much Windowsified.
The desktop is KDE, which looks rather windowsish to begin with. They seem to have configured it so that by default it appears as much like Windows as possible:) The configuration looks like windows, as well. All crucial configuration can be done graphically, as far as I know (though the files are still there, so you can do them manually). The install is also streamlined - likely overly so for people already familiar with linux, but if it actually works even semi-reliably it really will make Linux significantly easier to install than windows (which isn't saying much...when I set up my computer at work, the linux setup took approx. half an hour, and the windows closer to 3). They've also created a nice graphical front-end for apt.
My first instinct was to hate it - I like Linux because it isn't windows (amongst other reasons). I'd still be happier if they'd made Linux easier to install/use without making it a Windows look-alike. However, it makes sense considering that a good portion of their market is people who are used to Windows and aren't as likely to switch to something that looks entirely unfamiliar.
I'm also glad its based on Debian and not RedHat. Perhaps this will lead to a more widespread availability of Debian packages and acceptance of Debian in general (since the initial learning curve of dselect seems to be what turns a lot of new Debian users off of it).
I still wouldn't use it, personally. But if the real world results are anything near what I saw in the demo, I may attempt to talk my parents into letting me install it on their computer:)
The results of a computer in the bathroom...
on
$200 Linux PCs
·
· Score: 1
One of my friends has a computer in his bathroom. This is a source of great amusement at parties, as can be seen in the following excerpts from logs...
-----
/I have officially baptised a strange bathroom... Long live my contribution to the stains of yore.
huhuhuh... that's disgusting.
I am a space mutant.
It's not just char. It's char *
Who chown'd the throne?
you men... keep the damn toilet seat down! there are drunk women here that can fall in!
Matt says lifes a bitch and then you die. His only question is "when do we get to the dying part?"
Don't make me kick your ass in the morning...
Oh man, I'm so drunk right now that I m respoinding to by owb comment and It's cufnny... hehe
commando chickens of death. "Moo!"
Hmm, I think I like this computer-in-the-bathroom thing! --- yeah, it makes looking at porn in the bathroom MUCH easier
btw - i hope everyone washed their hands BEFORE typing on this. maybe i'd bette r wash my hands again, just... in... case....
na tualyetye, ya picala eti slova.
what about the tatoo that says "die bart, die!" oh, no, that's just german for "the bart, the"
You can outlaw discrimination on the basis of genes (ie. Looking at someone's genetic code and hiring them on the basis of that). However, it's more difficult to prevent people from hiring based on qualification, which may be enhanced through genetic engineering.
For instance: Say you're hiring for some position that requires intelligence. One applicant is genetically engineered to have an IQ of 200. The other is not genetically engineered and has an IQ of 150. Which would you hire? Sure, the non-genetically engineered applicant is about as smart as you're going to get naturally. That doesn't mean s/he is going to be able to compete with the genetically engineered applicant. Should the company be required to hire some set amount of non genetically engineered individuals (Affirmative Action in the 21st century...)? Is that really fair to the company?
This is entirely different from not hiring someone based on some genetic factor that doesn't effect performance, and, as people have already pointed out, that already happens.
Getting rid of genetic diseases would be great, yeah. But what qualifies as a genetic disease? Is my bad eyesight a genetic disease? My freckles? My skin color? (After all, these last two combined increase my risk of skin cancer!). How about depression? I'm pretty certain there's a genetic factor there, as my dad has many of the same symptoms. These are all things that could concievably be considered disorders that should be corrected for, but they also help define who I am (well, except the eyesight. Go ahead and fix that:).
Should a low IQ be corrected for? After all, that can severly effect a person's life. What do we do there? Bump them up to exactly average?
Yes, it would be great to correct for genetic disorders. Its just not that simple to decide what qualifies as something to be "fixed", and what doesn't. Or exactly what the result of this fix should be.
You are relating this sort of thinking to Hitler, yes? Hitler and his ideas are almost incomparable (I say almost).
Hitler didn't only advocate genocide. This is simply what he was most famous for. He advocated killing anyone who didn't fit his idea of a perfect person. And many physically and mentally disabled people were killed under his regime. Interestingly enough, this was done under the guise that it was humane to kill them, saving them from a miserable existance.
Slashdot Mirror
People need to stop thinking of this as a minor inconvienance for large corporations, and examine the real damage that can be done using these tools.
Say such attacks were aimed at a small ISP on a regular basis over a period of weeks (months, years). This ISP is going to lose a lot of customers due to the attack. They may never be able to recover financially from the attacks.
Or what about the innocent user who happens to get on the bad side of some script kiddie? This user has a static IP, and is stuck without his internet access for however long the script kiddie decides to keep it up.
Or what about the university with hacked accounts on its systems which are being used for outgoing attacks, using up all the university's bandwidth and dropping them off the net for hours at a time, days on end?
These things happens every day, and have for years! These attacks didn't just suddenly pop into being with the large corporations - those are just the first the media payed any attention to (and thus, the first many people heard about)
I personally have either experienced, or know people who have experienced, all of the above.
And someone described these "protests" well in another post:
Its one thing to tie yourself to the gate of a nuclear power plant in protest.
Its another thing entirely to grab some innocent bystander off the street, tie them to the post, and then go home and drink hot cocoa or whatever.
These attacks are being committed by breaking into computers and using their bandwidth. Would you agree that this, at the least, should be illegal?
Average citizens should care because 99% of the time, average citizens are the target and/or their connections are the ones being used in order to perform the attack.
DoS attacks have been a problem for years. Unfortunatly, it takes attacks against large corporations for the media/general public to pay attention to the problem.
Also, remember the capability that this shows. They've shown that they can take down very large sites. Yes, these sites may not be the most important things in the world to you. But just because they haven't aimed them at something you care about yet doesn't mean that there's no reason to care about the problem as a whole.
DoS attacks are not a new thing. The involvement of law enforcement is nothing new. The only difference in this case is that the companies involved are very high profile.
What exactly is so threatening with law enforcement getting involved here? Assume that it was script kiddies and not a government conspiracy (which it could be, but script kiddies do have the possibility for such an attack). They could be causing companies to lose thousands (or more?) of dollars. Worse, they're doing this by breaking into systems and stealing their resources/bandwidth to perform the attack, causing even more losses.
Government conspiracy? Its a possibility. But apply Occam's Razor to the situation. The tools exist, and are widespread, for anyone with half a brain to perform such an attack (though one on this scale might actually take a whole brain, or a few half brains combined). They've been going on for years against individuals and less high profile entities. And there's been a recent explosion in 1. The number of such tools available, and 2. The number of idiots who don't know anything about security with relativly high bandwidth connections.
And think...if it were you being attacked, losing revenue, possibly being driven out of business - would you want something done with it?
If anything, I'm glad attention is being drawn to the problem.
But it isn't just the bloodthirsty marketers that they are targetting. Those just happen to be the ones who get the publicity.
They cause *huge* problems for the people who run, for example, IRC servers. These people are paying out of their own pockets to provide a free service, and are getting hammered for it. What's the purpose in that?
And they aren't using their own resources for these attacks. They're using resources stolen from other people. My university went through a period of time last year when there were so many hacked accounts being used for outgoing DoS attacks that we'd be dropped off the internet for hours at a time.
And do you think they were truly doing this as an attack on the bloodthirsty businesses? Or just to show off that they have the power to take down such a large site?
Problem being that you're assuming that the compromised systems being used in these attacks are some form of UNIX being administered by someone clueful enough to understand your instructions. I don't have any statistics, but I suspect the majority aren't.
The big problems are your average everyday home users who get a dsl/cablemodem connection, and your schools/small businesses without the money to hire someone capable of maintaining security. Some decide to make home networks using some screwy shareware windows proxy program that leaves them vulnerable. Some use linux, but have had little or no prior experience with it, and couldn't make heads or tails of your instructions.
Add to that the widespread problem of trojan horse client/server programs which basically allow anyone to hijack your connection. And the widespread infestation of script kiddies with nothing better to do with their time than attack people.
That's where you're seeing the majority of your problems - and the problems that are going to be hardest to fix through education - not from people who are clueful enough to understand basic UNIX security concepts.
Better security tips:
Then again, probably very few of the people these are aimed at are reading this, so why am I bothering?
The article says:
A quick straw-poll of hackers suggests that the reason for wanting more women in the field (hormonal urges aside) is that it is felt that they would bring a different perspective and generate new ideas.
But you can't put aside hormonal urges. That's the main reason males want more females in the geek community - because they are females, not because they possess any special inclination towards UI design. And this is intimidating to many females.
It seems that many consider intelligence to be simply another measure of sexual attractiveness. Teen magazines for example, teach us to be self confident and show our intelligence. Not because, heaven forbid, such traits might actually make us feel good about ourselves and lead to future success in school/work, but because they make us attractive.
Similarly, what message do the /. readers (and geeks in general) who say "We need more geek women", give? Not that they want more geeks in the world, but that they are looking for a mate with particular qualities, and the field isn't broad enough.
I haven't looked too heavily into the geek-chick websites, so don't flame me for this if I'm wrong, but a large part of the vibe I get from them is "I'm a geek. That makes me sexy."
Not that there's anything wrong with looking at intelligence/geekiness as a measure of sexual desirability. Its natural, and great that people are considering these traits attractive. They're traits I look for in males myself. But you aren't going to get more females into the field until you give them the impression that they're wanted for their technical abilities, not simply because they happen to be female and too many geeks aren't getting any.
In addition, the standards of geekiness for females are lower. Within geek social circles, we're judged largely in comparison to other females, not in comparison to other geeks.
I'd rather be accepted into the geek community because I'm better at computers than 95% of the general population. Not because I'm better than 98% of females.
The author of the article touches on this in a way when she says, in her list of things to do to encourage geekiness in children:
Reward perfection more highly than just excellence. As a child, I found that going the extra mile would not give me any greater return on investment, so I learned to stop bothering -- something which I greatly regret now.
Female geeks tend not to have to try as hard in order to be accepted. Accepted as a female, anyway. However, this acceptance can be enough to prevent them from striving further for true acceptance. Especially when the level they must reach to be viewed as a geek, rather than a sex object, is often high above the level of acceptance for males.
In closing, something that happened to me this morning. Pretty much enirely unrelated to the rest of the post, but it is semi-related to the topic of female geeks, and I feel like complaining about it :)
It was my roommate's 21st birthday party, and we had a large number of rather drunk geeks hanging around our house all night (she's a CS major). One of them decided that since he couldn't log into our router as root, that he'd reboot it into single user mode. Which didn't work, thankfully, or I could very easily not be here writing this right now. Anyway, for some reason it didn't come back up correctly, and I had to fix it. So I'm sitting there attempting to figure out what went wrong and why it didn't come back up correctly in the first place, when one of my roommate's (male) friends comes into the room and watches over my shoulder.
"What are you doing? That doesn't look good." pause. "That's not even DOS, is it?" (This guy is a CS major).
"No, its Linux."
"You'd better get an expert to do that, like Alex" (Alex being my roommate's boyfriend, a CS grad student. I probably have approximatly equal "real world" linux/networking knowledge to him, if not more).
I'm not entirely sure what prompted this particular comment. Was it because I'm female? Because I'm a human development major (stereotypically about the least computer-clueful major)? Because it was approx. 3:30 am, and I was mentally exhausted and mistyping stuff and forgetting that I was using debian and the file I needed was in /etc/init.d instead of /etc/rc.d? Because he didn't have enough background to know that "Illegal Operation" didn't mean I was trying to crack into the Pentagon? I don't know, and probably never will, as I didn't have the presence of mind to ask him at the time, and he was drunk enough that its doubtful he'd remember if I asked now, even if I felt like it.
She may have been enjoying herself. Kids are show offs.
That doesn't mean that when she's 12, 13, 14 or whatever and realizes that there's possibly thousands of people around the world seeing this, that she's going to be comfortable with it.
Yes, some of the emotional pain over abuse is a societal construct. That's unfortunate, but it doesn't change the fact that it still hurts.
Its entirely possible that some kids are relativly unaffected by what is considered to be abuse. That doesn't mean that such behavior is ok - some other kid may be traumatized for life by the same experience.
What it comes down to in my mind - children in general don't have the frame of reference (including knowledge of our culture) to understand the meaning of what is happening. The adult responsible is taking advantage of this lack of knowledge, as well as quite possibly the child's need for attention, love, and approval.
Also, keep in mind that not all child pornography is as mild as you've described.
Didn't I say that consensual adult porn is an entirely different thing from child porn? While I have problems with it, I'm quite aware that it isn't illegal. And I don't think it should be, either.
However, my point was that the original poster claimed there was nothing wrong with the distribution of *any* porn, child or otherwise.
And yes, its true that it is harder to find child porn (especially when you aren't looking for it). That doesn't mean it doesn't happen (I've seen people spamming child porn sites on IRC, as well as channels that make no effort to hide their contents), or that its not a problem.
> The WORST thing that has EVER happend when an otherwise mentally stable individual has downloaded or otherwise VEIWED ANY sort of pornography, is quite simply that they had to clean up a sticky mess from masturbating. Downloading, viewing, and exchanging porn is fine in my eyes.
You're ignoring the fact that for child porn to be produced, a child has to be abused. And often hurt badly (physically and/or mentally) in the process. "So what's wrong with redistributing stuff that's already been produced?" you ask...
1. Its an invasion of the child's privacy. They didn't ask for their picture to be taken in sexual situations, and I'm sure they don't want millions of people observing them in these situations. Once they get old enough to understand, the fact that pornography of them is widely available has got to be disturbing. Not to mention the fact that it makes them a target for further abuse - a kid who doesn't tell about one time is less likely to tell if it happens again.
This also applies to adult porn produced non-consensually.
2. Increased demand leads to increased production. Which leads to more kids getting victimized.
Not to mention you're assuming that the people who view porn are otherwise mentally stable. In many cases this may be true. But in some cases it is going to lead to further problems. Probably moreso in the case of child pornography, since people who view child pornography are probably much more likely to have further problems. After all, to have a child pornography habit, they have to already A. be attracted to children, and B. Have either the lack of willpower to ignore their impulse to view pictures of children being abused, despite what their conscience tells them, or they don't have a moral problem with it to begin with.
Consensual adult pornography is a different story. While I still have problems with it (many of the women involved have been raped/abused in the past, or are feeding a drug addiction, or otherwise have low self worth which is being taken advantage of), it is *their choice* to have their picture available.
This seems like an after the fact excuse to me. Yes, the publicity is a nice side effect. However, even if this was the intended outcome, couldn't the people who originally planned it have come up with a plan that isn't quite so easy to punch massive holes in? :)
As has already been pointed out by many people, Echelon probably has filters built in that will seperate out simple lists of keywords, which is what most people were sending. Or even emails with too many keywords (at some point it becomes obvious you're just trying to draw attention to yourself. A real threat would be more likely to have only one or two keywords, if any). Someone mentioned in the original post about this topic that this list may even have originally been released by the NSA, and is peppered with false keywords that would indicate a specific message should be ignored. Even if it wasn't actually released by the NSA, they certainly heard of it, and likely adjusted their search algorithms to adjust for it (such a system would unlikely be static. What particular words constitute threats must change on a daily basis).
This kind of thing may actually do more harm than good. Assume that this prank actually did have some effect. Do you think the NSA is going to say "Its obvious our system doesn't work. Lets give up!" No, they're going to put billions of taxpayer dollars into improving the checking algorithms.
The NSA is not stupid. They've got some of the best people in the industry. And they'll be able to learn from any mistakes that they do happen to make. Jam Echelon Day simply provides them with a proving ground for their system.
And having grown up in southern california, I'm aware of the magnitude, frequency, and usual damage caused by a 5.0 quake :) (at least in places with decent building codes)
I stumbled across a board of earthquake predictions the other day. These are based on various factors...some geologically based, some hunches, some more astrologically based. There were some startlingly accurate ones. (Incidently, if this site is at all accurate, the quakes in Taiwan may not be the tech industry's biggest worry...)
http://www.syzygyjob.com/Boards/predict ion/. Some posts of particular note: #1369, #1364, #1365 (not an actual prediction, in fact kinda skeptical sounding, but mentions almost the exact location of the quake - a region which was apparently discussed frequently.), and #1359. Note the times of these quakes...all were before the Hector quake which took place near 29 Palms/Joshua Tree on 10/16.
As for Y2K...well...if disaster (either electronic, natural, or God-sent) happens, it happens. While being prepared for a medium-case scenario (you can't prepare for a worst case scenario, which would be the world exploding or something :) is probably a good idea in general, stressing about it probably isn't going to do a heck of a lot of good.
Isn't this really a rather US-centric idea? These TLDs gives no indication as to the physical location of the entity, so why should US entities be the only ones allowed to register them? I'd object much more to people in the US registering domains in countries they have no affiliation with (which they do all the time. NSI even advocates this in order to protect your "valuable product, brand and company names").
According to Network Solutions, .com, .net, and .org are global, and anyone can register them. The registration policy for country specific domains is dependant on the country (see http://www.idnames.com/about-intl-web.ht ml).
The desktop is KDE, which looks rather windowsish to begin with. They seem to have configured it so that by default it appears as much like Windows as possible :) The configuration looks like windows, as well. All crucial configuration can be done graphically, as far as I know (though the files are still there, so you can do them manually). The install is also streamlined - likely overly so for people already familiar with linux, but if it actually works even semi-reliably it really will make Linux significantly easier to install than windows (which isn't saying much...when I set up my computer at work, the linux setup took approx. half an hour, and the windows closer to 3). They've also created a nice graphical front-end for apt.
My first instinct was to hate it - I like Linux because it isn't windows (amongst other reasons). I'd still be happier if they'd made Linux easier to install/use without making it a Windows look-alike. However, it makes sense considering that a good portion of their market is people who are used to Windows and aren't as likely to switch to something that looks entirely unfamiliar.
I'm also glad its based on Debian and not RedHat. Perhaps this will lead to a more widespread availability of Debian packages and acceptance of Debian in general (since the initial learning curve of dselect seems to be what turns a lot of new Debian users off of it).
I still wouldn't use it, personally. But if the real world results are anything near what I saw in the demo, I may attempt to talk my parents into letting me install it on their computer :)
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huhuhuh... that's disgusting.
I am a space mutant.
It's not just char. It's char *
Who chown'd the throne?
you men... keep the damn toilet seat down! there are drunk women here that can fall in!
Matt says lifes a bitch and then you die. His only question is "when do we get to the dying part?"
Don't make me kick your ass in the morning...
Oh man, I'm so drunk right now that I m respoinding to by owb comment and It's cufnny... hehe
commando chickens of death. "Moo!"
Hmm, I think I like this computer-in-the-bathroom thing!
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yeah, it makes looking at porn in the bathroom MUCH easier
btw - i hope everyone washed their hands BEFORE typing on this. maybe i'd bette r wash my hands again, just... in... case....
na tualyetye, ya picala eti slova.
what about the tatoo that says "die bart, die!"
oh, no, that's just german for "the bart, the"
For instance: Say you're hiring for some position that requires intelligence. One applicant is genetically engineered to have an IQ of 200. The other is not genetically engineered and has an IQ of 150. Which would you hire? Sure, the non-genetically engineered applicant is about as smart as you're going to get naturally. That doesn't mean s/he is going to be able to compete with the genetically engineered applicant. Should the company be required to hire some set amount of non genetically engineered individuals (Affirmative Action in the 21st century...)? Is that really fair to the company?
This is entirely different from not hiring someone based on some genetic factor that doesn't effect performance, and, as people have already pointed out, that already happens.
Getting rid of genetic diseases would be great, yeah. But what qualifies as a genetic disease? Is my bad eyesight a genetic disease? My freckles? My skin color? (After all, these last two combined increase my risk of skin cancer!). How about depression? I'm pretty certain there's a genetic factor there, as my dad has many of the same symptoms. These are all things that could concievably be considered disorders that should be corrected for, but they also help define who I am (well, except the eyesight. Go ahead and fix that :).
Should a low IQ be corrected for? After all, that can severly effect a person's life. What do we do there? Bump them up to exactly average?
Yes, it would be great to correct for genetic disorders. Its just not that simple to decide what qualifies as something to be "fixed", and what doesn't. Or exactly what the result of this fix should be.
Hitler didn't only advocate genocide. This is simply what he was most famous for. He advocated killing anyone who didn't fit his idea of a perfect person. And many physically and mentally disabled people were killed under his regime. Interestingly enough, this was done under the guise that it was humane to kill them, saving them from a miserable existance.