Chas - Slashdot User

Researcher Trolls MMO, Ethical violations-> 0

Submitted by Chas on Sunday July 17 2011, @01:29AM

Chas writes "Approximately two years ago, a story popped up on Slashdot about a researcher, David Meyers (aka Twixt) who had supposedly spent time "studying" players in the City of Heroes MMO. At the time, there was a lot of media attention about the subject. After a short time, it dropped and nothing more was heard on it until now.

Apparently one of the players who was upset did more than simply rant on a board. The player, who had some of their own training in sociology contacted both NCSoft and Loyola University to notify them about the ethical violations of experimenting on people (especially minors) without their permission.

Since then the Mr. Meyers has scrubbed almost all reference to his paper from his CV, and a book deal was quietly killed."
Link to Original Source

ProtestWarrior hacker gets 2 years in ClubFed

Submitted by FreeJeremyDOTcom on Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:21PM

FreeJeremyDOTcom writes "Jeremy Hammond, of Chicago was sentenced last Thursday to two years in Federal Prison for hacking into the ProtestWarrior.

According to his plea-bargain agreement, he admitted to hacking into the ProtestWarrior servers and stealing upwards of 5000 credit card numbers. Reportedly, he had plans to use them to make fraudulent donations to various liberal causes.

In addition to his two year sentence, he was ordered to pay $5,250 in fines and restitution, and is barred from participating in any of the various hacking and anarchist groups for a period of 3 years after his release.

For the most part, all the various links point back to this article (may require registration/login) at the Chicago Tribune.

Of surprising note is the marked lack of support in the local hacker and anarchist communities for this person."

I am so SICK of brand-fapping.

Submitted by

Chas

on Wednesday August 30 2006, @01:31PM

Chas writes "I guess it's just me, but I find the notion that sound purchase decisions for IT-based solutions can be achieved solely on brand-name recognition by the luddite "general public" is not only insulting, but ridiculous as well.

I mean, YES, there ARE mental defectives out there who will simply buy ANYTHING with a specific brand name on it (*COUGH*APPLE*COUGH*). But using that to gauge technical merit of a purchase?

Again, I'm not saying that various-and-sundry intellectual cripples don't do this. But I'd like to think that the rest of the people researching solutions, or making the purchase decisions are at LEAST making the attempt to inform themselves before making a purchase decision.

Whether this means they go with *INSERT BRAND HERE* or *INSERT ANOTHER BRAND HERE*, doesn't make a bit of difference. Merely that they made an informed choice (even if the information was wrong/incomplete/biased)."