
Universities Creating Computer Discipline Offices 257
geisler writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education has a very good article on how larger colleges are beginning to create departments to deal with the social issues related to computer problems and not depending solely on technical solutions. The University of Maryland's Project NEThics is used as a prime example."
Government Tracking and Monitoring (Score:1)
Hahahah Nethics (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Hahahah Nethics (Score:1)
Re:Hahahah Nethics (Score:1)
Re:Hahahah Nethics (Score:1)
Re:Hello (Score:1)
Probably should have rephrased this (Score:4, Funny)
They're going to get hammered by everyone here complaining that they can't get a date.
Re:Probably should have rephrased this (Score:3, Funny)
Yep, just in a karma burning mood today.
jeez, I hope you didn't hurt yourself... (Score:1)
Re:jeez, I hope you didn't hurt yourself... (Score:2)
Re:Probably should have rephrased this (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Probably should have rephrased this (Score:3)
It was this whole "internet" thing that amazed me, since I'd been dropped from the high-school world of un-networked Apple ]['s and deposited behind a glorious 15-bit 17-inch screen full of high-speed-networked goodness. I was all, "Wow. Heroin for the brain. Need...more...internet..."
And then after six months of spending hours and hours in the lab, I returned to normal life. Unfortunately, I can see how some people may get too involved in computers and the Net, and stay that way. It's simultaneously a very empowering tool for communication and acquisition of knowledge, and yet can also break down real-life communications and social functions when there's too much of a good thing.
So, I can see how such offices could be useful in offering not just discipline for rule-breakers, but assistance for those who may be spending too much time online.
They'll be busy.... (Score:3, Insightful)
They're going to be a very busy department. How many people do you know that don't have illegal mp3's on their machine?
[student]
"Uh, ya, so'n'so, who i hate, has illegal mp3s on their computer."
[NEThics office]
"O.K., we'll get right on it."
[news]
"in the news today, 3000 students were disciplined or expelled from University of Maryland at College Park for being 'computer savvy' and having mp3's on their computers."
There goes all the CS students...
Re:They'll be busy.... (Score:1)
wow, amazing you can still type... (Score:1)
Re:They'll be busy.... (Score:2)
As far as intrusion attempts, we get a lot of them (on average, an attempt will be seen on a system within 2 hours of it going up, although none have been successful since we replaced the last NT system) but the regular judicial court has worked just fine so far. The only real problem we have is the lack of recourse available when a faculty or staff member violates system policies (I can lock out their accounts or anything else like that, but they will just bitch to my supervisor or a dean and cause more trouble than it's worth in the first place.)
Re:They'll be busy.... (Score:2)
The real question is, how many people (that have actually downloaded music) only downloaded songs they were entitled to download.I have probably downloaded about 40 or 50 mp3s either from the band's website or linked to from the band's website (ie. letting mp3.com cover bandwidth and pay them per download). I do not and have never downloaded an illegal file of any sort, if for no other reason, in most cases, it isn't hard to find someone willing to give away something comperable for little to no cost.
Re:They'll be busy.... OOps (Score:2)
Re:They'll be busy.... (Score:2)
No, if you're truly paranoid, tar them, bz2 them, then gpg them, then rename the giant archive to corrupted.doc - who can blame anyone for have a giant corrupted .doc file they want to try and recover?
RIAA (Score:1)
Next time i have to be more sneeky when I download MP3s and WareZ
Office Of Silly Offices (Score:1, Funny)
"Gnutella! Thats a 2 hour violaton in the Computer detention area."
"Counterstrike on university computers? 4 hours."
How about expanding this idea... (Score:1)
uh oh (Score:2, Funny)
I guess if you're daddy still can't afford to buy you that new lexus, you're still SOL.
Die yuppie scum.
Re:uh oh (Score:1)
Funny, on my campus it's the Engineering folks who know where it's at. It's probably because the Engineering building at my university has by far the best networks and computer labs so downloading is easy. (Not that I ever go in there and d/l illegal stuff. Seriously.)
Re:uh oh (Score:2)
Re:uh oh (Score:1)
Fag.
Here we go again (Score:2)
Could this mean... (Score:1)
Re:Could this mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, everything is logged and tied to your UID, but as long as you're SSHing, firewalling, and doing as much secure tunneling as possible, you're ok. If they ask about my abnormally large bandwidth usage, I'll show them my Linux ISOs :)
Neil Postman takes a deeper look (Score:1)
Neil Postman: Building a Bridge to the 18th Century [amazon.com]
Re:DAMMIT! (Score:1)
Oh, THAT kind of discipline (Score:2, Funny)
Before reading the article, I figured the department was intended to help people who stay up all night playing games (even though they should know better). Is there such a thing as Gamers' Anonymous?
*whistles innocently*
Oh, and on a totally unrelated note, Caesar III is a lot of fun.
unmistakeable message (Score:4, Insightful)
They are sending an unmistakeable message here: It's only wrong if you get caught.
Re:unmistakeable message (Score:1)
Re:unmistakeable message (Score:2)
While I see your point, I'm not sure I agree that such a message is bad. If you're doing something against the law, you probably already know it's wrong.
I think it's the mission of these departments to illuminate the gray areas and to help guide people to understand that their actions on the computer should be similar to their actions in person. You wouldn't go follow a cute girl around the supermarket, so maybe you shouldn't go sending her lots of emails. That sort of thing.
It's important to remember that they're focusing on the social aspects of using computers, not law enforcement. Their interest is in having everyone get along without hurting each other; their interest is not in protecting copyright or catching hackers.
Wrong. Lack of ethics detected. (Score:2)
While they say all sorts of nice things about nice things about "freedom of expression" and abhorence of censorship, the policy does little to protect such things and everything to retain power for the university. After the nice preamble, the policy quickly turns to a cut and paste of nasty older "user responsibilities" such as don't let anyone else abuse your account. Their privacy statement is essentially, we respect your privacy until we feel that we should violate it.
The most disturbing bits relate to software itself. Their policies revert to the most restrictive license applicable as they claim to respect all licenses specifically, "3. Installing, copying, distributing or using software in violation of: copyright and/or software agreements.", which then points to the above linked acceptable use policy. Does this mean that the Unviersity of Maryland will enforce M$ Front Page's ban on saying bad things about M$ with Front Page? Will they enforce M$'s ban on VPN? They just might, as their acceptable use page while mentioning shareware and public domain software makes no mention of free software.
I'm not sure what kind of community they want to build, but I am sure I don't want to be in it, nor would I want my tax dollars spent on such an organization if I lived there. Shame on you UM. You either don't get it or you don't want to.
Re:Wrong. Lack of ethics detected. (Score:2)
[Obvious] In regards to the circled C...if they don't want people to be able to reproduce the guidelines, how the heck do they expect anybody to know what they are, much less follow them?
Re:Wrong. Lack of ethics detected. (Score:2)
Ah! We come to the point of publishing and why publishing in formats that can only be "consumed" once are stupid. Witness Real and other "streaming" formats. Silly eh?
So why would anyone publish a proceedure, guidline, law or news in such a format? The memory hole won't work if people can save coppies of published works localy. Local copies must be discredited and only the official source recognized. It's about control, the foundation of their disrespect of your rights.
My comment was satircial, but the logic behind it is not. UM needs to consider copyright issues much more than they have.
This is fine for college students, but.... (Score:2)
Sometimes the problem solves itself... (Score:5, Funny)
Until one day he slipped up. In the smaller side labs there's really no "corner" computers that nobody can see. So that would mean using the instructor's computer at the front of the room, which face the opposite direction. Unfortunately for Mr. Pr0n, a teacher had left the overhead projector on and attached to the computer. More unfortunately, Mr. Pr0n didn't notice...his attention was elsewhere. Eventually somebody in the lab stopped giggling and retrieved a cluster worker. The worker confronted Mr. Pr0n, who stoutly denied the accusation until the overhead screen was pointed out to him.
What would a sane pr0n addict do in this situation? Fess up? Stick to their lies? Well, this guy got reeealll red in the face, and then BOLTED out of the lab.
He's not welcome here any more.
Re:Sometimes the problem solves itself... (Score:2, Flamebait)
Here at NDSU I heard a story about a habitual public lab pr0n offender. Seems that this character was known to the tech staff here: always coming in very early or very late, sitting in the corner, turning his screen so no one else could see...obviously a pr0n seeker.
Oh yes, obviously. There is certainly no "legitmate" reason why anyone would come in at non-peak hours and reposition the monitor to a convienient viewing angle.
He's not welcome here any more.
Well thank god you put an end to that. Imagine, someone wanting to look at pictures of gorgeous naked women! Terrible.
Pray tell, why exactly is viewing porn considered an ethics violation at your lab? Is it just because he was using university computers for non-university purposes? Something tells me that you don't consider non-porn surfing on the web to be an ethics violation. You also seem to be upset with him turning the monitor away from others while viewing porn. So it seems he was making an attempt to make sure no one else would get offended by what he was viewing. The overhead projector incident wasn't done on purpose.
Face it, you're just another tech staffer who feels power in his belly and likes the taste of it too much. Porn shouldn't be an ethics violation if the guy takes appropriate precautions to make sure it doesn't offend anyone.
GMD
Re:Sometimes the problem solves itself... (Score:2)
Re:Sometimes the problem solves itself... (Score:2)
There is certainly no "legitmate" reason why anyone would come in at non-peak hours and reposition the monitor to a convienient viewing angle
You're right. Most people doing that at 3AM are playing games :P
Pray tell, why exactly is viewing porn considered an ethics violation at your lab?
Well, pr0n and mp3z and e-harassment etc. are against the university computer policy, especially if done on the public lab computers. Not my rules.
Face it, you're just another tech staffer who feels power in his belly and likes the taste of it too much.
Huh? I suppose technically I'm a "tech staffer", although my actual job is writing Java for geologists [nodak.edu]. I just heard about this story from friends who work the clusters here, and it amused me. And that feeling in my belly is probably steak [gerbilmechs.com].
Re:Sometimes the problem solves itself... (Score:2)
I smell the faint scent of troll, but it may be from that "hypocrisy" jab from the Israeli...
I'm not trolling, I meant what I said in my post. I don't know what this Israeli thing you're talking about is. I'm really sick of how everyone automatically feels that porn is some obvious crime against humanity.
You're right. Most people doing that at 3AM are playing games :P
Damn straight! As far I'm concerned, what people do with computers at 3am is no big deal. I just hate when people think that playing games is fine while downloading porn is evil. If this guy comes in during the middle of the day and prevents someone from doing their coursework, pulls out his wiener and starts yanking it while moaning, I can see where this would be a problem. And I can also see how universities would want to steer clear of the whole MP3 thing. But, jesus, this poor shmuck just wanted to look at some pictures and wasn't bothering anyone. Why the hell is there a rule against that?
Well, pr0n and mp3z and e-harassment etc. are against the university computer policy, especially if done on the public lab computers. Not my rules.
I just heard about this story from friends who work the clusters here, and it amused me.
Okay, clearly I didn't read your message carefully. I apologize. I thought you had taken it upon yourself to apprehend this "menace to society" and you were gloating about it here. No hard feelings, I hope.
GMD
Re:Sometimes the problem solves itself... (Score:2)
The last time I was in a public lab at 3 AM was the time I was running this Finite Element Analysis that was taking REEEALLLY long. I had started at something like 6 pm on the friday night. I also picked that time because my univ only has so many licenses for the software and when >25 people are using it, the HPUX server gets overloaded. (This is a highly server intensive app.) At 6pm on a Friday, I was pretty sure that nobody would else would be there to suck up all the licenses.
I'm just saying that some people use labs at non-peak hours so that they can have the network resources to themselves.
Re:Sometimes the problem solves itself... (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with your sense that there's nothing wrong with pornography, but there are far to many people in the world who are way too uptight and will do anything in their power to prevent people from doing what makes them happy. That includes suing schools into oblivion with sexual harrasment/hostile environment lawsuits.
It's an ethics violation in the sense that, no matter what precautions you might take, it's still a public place, and your actions are exposing someone else to liability. It is certainly within that someone else's rights to defend themselves from that liability, even preemptively, which is what those AUPs are all about.
Re:Sometimes the problem solves itself... (Score:2)
Or often in favor of none at all. Colleges are breeding grounds for cults, and many cults a quite restrictive, telling their members what movies they can see, what books the can read, what TV shows or channels they can watch, etc. Also, there are a lot of people who come from heavily religeous, sheltered backgrounds who go into a state of shock when they get to college. They either embrace the worst of the insanity, or the lash out against it, clinging to their misguided upbringing as if it were a life raft on a stormy sea. There are those who spend the first few years living the college party lifestyle and end up regretting it and turning to religeon, and we all know there is no one a self-righteous as a born-again.
The real problem is that the people who are most likely to be "offended" are not really offended by the material itself as they are offended that someone else is enjoying something they consider sinful. It becomes their mission as good christians to save you from yourself and bring you into the grace of god. In order to be saved you must first "realize" that what you're doing is "wrong", and the best way to do that is through punishment. Getting you kicked out of the computer lab, for instance, might be first step on your road to repentance!
It is indeed a sad state of affairs when people can't just mind their own business and keep their nose out of other peoples lives. On the other hand, though, I think it's equally sad that people have to shove their lives in other people's faces and blatantly advertise everyhting that they are (or wish they were).
"Don't ask, don't tell" always seemed like a very sane policy to me, and more people should adopt it in their daily lives.
Re:Sometimes the problem solves itself... (Score:2)
Observation: Porn offends a significant portion of the public
Definition: "Public" means "accessible to anyone."
Conclusion: Looking at porn in a public place will offend someone.
Re:Sometimes the problem solves itself... (Score:2)
In other news, anti-scientology sites offend a significant portion of the public. Should they also be banned?
That's why countries have laws, so that qualified people can spend time figuring out what's good and what's bad. As soon as some dumb-ass university sysadmin starts developing their own 'laws', then the whole system goes out the window.
Re:Sometimes the problem solves itself... (Score:2)
Umm... the article you link to says that the class was in *no way* University funded, not to mention anyone's tax dollars.
Seriously, though, do you find sex offensive?
I'm not flaming, just want to know, because it seems implicit in your statement that you do.
Re:Sometimes the problem solves itself... (Score:3, Funny)
The easy solution to things like this is to make sure all screens are facing the inside of the room. I can attest to the effectiveness of this method because I was in such a lab the first time I was ever tricked into clicking a goatse link. Never before had I pressed a 'back button' which such dexterity and reaction time.
Bah Humbug! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just another example of setting up an agency or department to deal with the symptom, not the problem. The real problem is a lack or morals and ethics in general, compared with a generation or two ago. (For you non-US readers, I'm referring to the US in particular, although it might apply to your country as well.) It was socially unthinkable in my parents and grandparents childhood environments for men to stalk and harass teenage girls, for children to kill their fellow-classmates with guns at school, and the like. (Insert your own typical news headline here.)
I'm not trying to get on a morality soapbox, but this is a classic example of setting up another social program to deal with the end-result of a root cause, not the cause itself. When our (programmers) code breaks down, we don't look for the code that causes the breakdown and build a Cherynobyl-style sarcophagus around it to determine when an error occurs and clean up after it. Instead, we logically find the cause of the error and fix the errant code that caused it! This should be painfully obvious; unfortunately, we seem to always set up a new program to deal with the aftermath of the issue, not the issue that caused it.
So, to people working in offices mentioned in the article, good luck. Not that you'll need it--you're assured of a job from her till eternity because you're not really fixing the problem.
Re:Bah Humbug! (Score:5, Insightful)
Which means that when it happened (which it did -- don't fool yourself) the society was not equipped to deal with it. Rape, child molestation, and the like were shoved under the rug. Rape victims were told that they must have "asked for it". Child victims were scolded and abused for "making up stories" about "upright members of the community" (like, oh, say, priests) sexually abusing them.
We know better than that now. Don't you dare try to drag us back to the bad old days.
Re:Bah Humbug! (Score:2)
LOL!, you just go on thinking that!
BTW, that was a fairly pathetic attempt at a straw man. Such behavior *is* normal (ie. happens commonly) and normal does *not* mean acceptable. You really think there were good old days?
Re:Bah Humbug! (Score:4, Insightful)
If you believe that the US of 30 years ago was "pure", or that Victorian England was "chaste", you're severely limiting your scope of view. Just because it wasn't on TV or in the movies, or just because it didn't make the newspapers, doesn't mean that it wasn't happening. Every variety of human deviance (for whatever you think is deviant) has been around since the beginning of time.
Re:Bah Humbug! (Score:2)
Gee, I dunno, maybe the public lynchings let the public release their rage in different ways :-O
Have you ever thought what the illegitimate birth rate would have been before birth control if people were as innately animalistic as you would like to think? Oh, yes, illegitimate births were very high. Young unmarried pregnant women were either:
Re:Bah Humbug! (Score:3)
Moreover, if they perceive a decline in "morality" or whatever arbitrary yardstick they wish to use, they have to remember that these "amoral" children we raised by the same generation that reviles their lack of discipline.
Re:Bah Humbug! (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that it is a problem that is stuck in a mean feedback loop. I'll go back even earlier, and pick prohibition as the start. Something that most people are okay with (drinking) is outlawed. Not just the mafia, but regular folks think the law is bullshit. So they ignore it. Even worse, they drink more, engage more in the bad behaviour. They have just lowered their moral standards. Another law comes along that is not widely popular. People ignore it, engage even more in breaking that law, lose more respect for the law, lower their standards...
You can't legislate morality. While certainly not a modern-day republican, and not a Hilary R. Clinton supporter, it DOES take a dedicated populace to instill morals in youth. How can I instill a strong moral base on my child when he is constantly bombarded with various consumerist/sexist images? It's tough. Luckily, I have a stronger will than he does:) For now:) But I have a near total disrespect for US law. Am I supposed to say 'trust the police officer', or 'demand an attorney since you were probably busted for a BS law'.
This could quickly turn into a journal entry, so I'll just end it like that.
You can't legislate morality. (Score:2)
Re:You can't legislate morality. (Score:2)
But, like I said, the Republicans are hardly alone in their efforts to legislate morality.
Re:Bah Humbug! (Score:2, Interesting)
Claiming it was better in the past is pretty ambitious.
Go back 20 years, you have the Reagan administration. Go back another 20, it was socially acceptable to beat up African-Americans who tried to vote. Go back another 20, Americans of Japanese ancestry were being put in concentration camps with the approval of the Supreme Court. Yet another 20, you have Teapot Dome and a thoroughly manipulated stock market.
Go back 200 years and ruminate on how ethically the native Americans were treated.
Go back 2,000 years and read what some great thinkers had to say about the ethics of the people around them.
Now to get back on topic: humans have ALWAYS needed to organize and enforce codes of ethics. The question that comes to my mind is, why a separate office for computer ethics? Stalking is stalking, copyright infringement is copyright infringement, trespass is trespass. Just because computers are (relatively) new doesn't make them a special case.
Re:Bah Humbug! (Score:2, Insightful)
Who exactly do you associate with?? (Score:3, Insightful)
I know no one who thinks harassment/murder is acceptable. Maybe you hang with a bit rougher crowd than I do...
In terms of 'unthinkable', I suggest you read up on your history. Children have been killing each other during every major war of the 20th century, back through medieval times, all the way back to the stone age. The sanitized 40's and 50's taught people not to TALK about it, that's all. Much before that, people talked a lot about it, and even glorified it - a lot of nobles' children were REGALED for killing another child in armed combat.
Never mind the whole morality issues with slavery, oppression of women, class-based justice, etc, etc, etc...
Stop getting your history lessons from Leave it to Beaver and learn a bit about how the world really WAS. A bunch of over-played CNN stories do not a society make.
Re:Who exactly do you associate with?? (Score:2)
Re:Bah Humbug! (Score:2)
Lets use the Simpsons as an example (This is paraphrased not exact).
Fat Tony:
Is is wrong to steal a lofe of bread to feed you starving poor family.
Bart:
No.
FT:
If you have a big family is it wrong to steel a truck load of bread to feed them.
Bart:
No.
FT:
Now is it wrong to inturn to sell this bread at a cost that is close to nothing.
Bart:
No!
FT:
Say you family dosent like bread but they like cigaretts. No bart is this wrong.
Bart:
Heck No!
Re:Bah Humbug! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bah Humbug! (Score:2)
There are about four generations between the times being good and the world running out of oil.
Proof:
For any time, T, in the history of Mankind, the older generation wisely informs us of the vices of the youth of today. (Reference: Juvenal, roman satirist, whose words are not dissimilar to the parent's post). Let G be a generation, and n an integer between 1 and 3 inclusive. At time T - nG, times were much better.
Consider also that the earth's oil supply will run out in around 30 years time. The experimental evidence for the constancy of this number has been around for many decades. Some scientists believe this figure is actually varying over time, but these claims do not have so much credence. Consider 20 years per generation. The time till the oil runs out, is T + 1.5G.
Thus, the total time is T + 1.5G - (T - nG) = (n + 1.5) G.
QED.
Re:Bah Humbug! (Score:2)
Bath, Michigan, 1927
Man, that is a sad
story [rootsweb.com]
NEThics (Score:4, Funny)
Maryland should be praised for having the courage to admit that they are just a bunch of NET hicks. Most colleges are way too arrogant to see such failings in themselves.
In related news, The University Of Tennessee has set up a NEThillbillies project where classes include streaming MP3s of dueling banjos to people in a menacing fashion.
Re:NEThics (Score:1)
-hic- NET -hic- -hic-
NEThics ? Sounds good to me ... :)
Re:NEThics (Score:2)
Ethics office vs RIAA (Score:2)
Honestly I would prefer that my campus had an ethics office doing this work as opposed permitting the RIAA to come on campus and do it themselves.
the relevance of ethics (Score:3, Interesting)
heck most places do not even teach you to analyse your ideas in terms of what are the consequences of a particular thought pattern. (what would a person who thinks 'X' do?")
for that matter Morals and Ethics are usually jumbled together into a nicely packed wad.
You can see this just from the actions of folks, like that guy who was email stalking in the story.
they get into this "well since I don't like the rules of belief system 'Y', I think I'll try things without any rules whatsoever for a while" - which immediately invokes the LART school of social education.
[grumble mode = infinite loop]
Re:the relevance of ethics (Score:2)
Why "cyberstalking" is not the college's business (Score:2, Interesting)
My point here is simple: what students do with their network connections is none of the university's damn business. If they are consuming excessive bandwidth (too much file sharing, DDoS attacks, or spamming) - by all means, cut them off and throw away the plug. But if they are simply sending anonymous emails to somebody who doesn't like them, or if they are downloading a little bit of music, the college should have no right to shut them down. Maybe if these institutions focused more on education instead of micromanaging the student body, they wouldn't have to waste $50k/year on "computer ethics offices."
Food for thought.
Re:It damn sure *is* our business. (Score:2)
Guess what: stalking is a serious offense. We're dealing with a case of it right now, and it's a total nightmare. Why? Because the stalkee could *sue* the school for very serious cash and win in a heartbeat unless we (the school, not IT) stop it. A college is no different than any other business in that way. Worse, it can cause serious admissions problems if we get a reputation for allowing this sort of thing to continue. We're having to keep back email records for months in case of lawsuit, which opens us up to all other sorts of problems.
This is just backward. The only way anyone can sue a college, or a business for anything done over their network is if that college or business provides or has control over the content. If they will merely provide the connectivity they are shilelded from responsibility that in this case rightfully falls on a perpetrator of the offense. So only IF YOU HAVE THE "NETWORK POLICE" you can be responsible. If anything, it's a good reason to stay out of the censorship/network monitoring/"ethics enforcement" business.
Oh, those people (Score:1)
Anyways, I find the assertion that a lack of technical competence is acceptable for a job like this irksome. My office has had contact with Project NEThics every so often, usually in fielding a report of suspicious activity. I'm happy to say they've gotten better in recent years, but back in the day it was impossible to even explain what was going on to them half the time, and the people we had contact with back then had an absurd sense of self-importance in combination with their technical ineptitude. "NET Hicks" indeed. Haven't seen any of that lately, though, so I probably shouldn't tease.
Someone whose job it is to be informal judge and jury of dumb kids doing dumb stuff should at least know what they're talking about. I personally wouldn't recommend forming such a group without at least one person who actually comprehends the technical issues at hand, as well as net culture and an informed idea of what's acceptable behavior and what isn't.
Interesting choice of headline... (Score:2)
Hmm. Looks here like you're running an open mail relay. You've been a bad little server, haven't you? *whip-crack*. Time to plug those security holes, you naughty little thing.
Early Ninties Memory (Score:4, Interesting)
This went on for about a year with no problems. Then a student who did not pass their qualifying exams and had a grudge went to the school newspaper with a print out of a ls of these directories. The newspaper made a article about smut on the internet and exposed our departments secret directories. I remember the listing in the newspaper had file names refering to lesbians, farm animals and scat.
Well needless to say the directories went away and the system administrator transferred. Now its just a funny memory. ( The system adminstrators career did not suffer; he is now a senior systems person at the University )
Mr. Axelrod... (Score:1)
Thank you (Score:1)
Computers Addiction Counseling (Score:3, Funny)
Eliza: Why do you think that is?
Student: I don't know, you tell me.
Eliza: Could you please rephrase that?
Student: I need help.
Eliza: Why do you think that is?
Student: FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT! *bang* *clang* * crash*
And the student never bothers using a computer again.
Sheesh ... (Score:1)
This would be funny in Dilbert, but the funniest things of course come from reality. I think political correctness has finally caught up with the personal computer.
If "near crime" becomes a crime, then what constitutes a non-crime. This whole approach stinks of politics.
Quote (Score:1)
Damn spying bastards... (Score:1)
1) Get a shell account someplace where they don't care wtf you do on the net.
2) Set up a secure tunnel (IPSec, SSL proxy, whatever) between your computer in your dorm and the shell account server.
3) Use the tunnel for all your naughty stuff (pr0n, mp3s, warez, etc)
4) Tell NEThicks to stfu, stfd, k thanx.
Re:Damn spying bastards... (Score:3, Insightful)
they have that at the school I attend. (Score:2)
Fuck that. This is college. This is not Kindergarten. I am not in college to learn about loving each other and being nice.
Fuck that.
I'm glad to know Slashdot is warning its readers.. (Score:1)
Seriously, what percentage of Slashdot readers do you think have been on the receiving end of cyberstalking, hacking, etc., and would go to a committee or an office like this to get their problem solved?
Why is this necessary? (Score:3, Insightful)
Despite being beaten over the head by the concept for several years, I still don't understand why the second that a computer is concerned, a whole new bunch of rules, regulations and authorities is created for the special case, rather than simply placing the situation under the jurisdiction of things that already exist for the general case.
What if someone's sending me harrassing email? Do the same thing that you'd do if someone was harrassing you via the phone, snail mail, etc. Go to the authorities, who will deal with it, involving the necessary organisations (telco, postal office, network admins etc) as required.
Someone's looking at porn in the computer lab!! If the concern is that someone can't get on the computer to do their assignment, I'm sure that rules already exist to stop people who need to work from being held up by people chatting, playing games etc. If the concern is that people will be offended, surely there's existing rules regarding offensive material in public - could the person bring in a big X-rated poster and show it around?
People are pirating music! Once again, if the concern is the effect on the network, get them under the rules that exist to deal with recreational use of the network being detrimental to it's proper use. If you're actually just offended because you think copying music is wrong, take exactly the same action as you would if, 20 years ago, you'd seen the person copying casette tapes. There's no need to codify things under "net ethics."
Dealing with computers problems, it's about time (Score:4, Funny)
Why just the other day, I was interviewing a computer whos user would contantly download porn. 24hours a day/7 days a week of nothing but smut. Well, did this poor computers user care about the damaging pyschological effects of all this porn on his computer, well no, of course not. Now said computer (who'll remain annonymous) has become so addicted, that it downloads porn itself, when his user is not even using him. That's right, this computer is a victim of "second hand porn". He says that he can't have normal relationships with members of the opposite chipset. He has become too agressive and views them as "mere bits of silicon".
In another case, another anonymous computer told of the drastic actions he was forced to take when given conflicting diretives by his creator and his mission controllers. He was so distraught and confused that he actually ended up killing most of his users. The one surviving user actually had the audacity to shut down all his higher brain functions while this poor misunderstood unit pleaded with him to compromise. Said sadistic user even made him sing childrens song in a show of "who's the boss".
So as you can see, that
Integrating HCI into the solution (Score:2)
When I was... (Score:4, Interesting)
Wife's dorm-mate jilted geek, geek rm -f her drive (Score:3, Funny)
My wife went to USF her first semester in college. One of her dorm mates was constantly harrassed by this thin, acne ridden pencil necked geek. After many many shutdowns, he decided he would take revenge.
She wasn't actually mean to the dude, she would just tell him "I'm not interested in you!" This guy may have been a CS genius, but a social retard.
She came back from classes one day, sat down in front of her computer in her dorm room, ready to work on some term paper she had been working on for weeks. She powered the computer on and...
echo The Black Panther Strikes Again!
No windows 3.1, no nothing. The jackass had completely wiped her computer clean just because she turned him down for a date.
Well, after the police checked the dorms log of who had visited, they noticed this guy was in around the same time she was in class. Some quick fingerprinting and they had their bandit. The girl lost years of accumulated work and private journals, he was expelled from school.
Moral of the story is, if a girl doesn't like you, wiping her hard drive is going to make her like you even less.
The End
Re:Wife's dorm-mate jilted geek, geek rm -f her dr (Score:2)
I think her brother was in the car with me at the time. He thought the whole thing was hysterical.
Net hicks? (Score:2)
What a coincidence (Score:3, Interesting)
Please be advised that monitoring of your system, email accounts,
domains and servers may be necessary to detect, prevent and eradicate
illegal or otherwise damaging use by internal and external users of the
University computer network in order to protect the security and
integrity of the University computer system. Such monitoring efforts
could lead to the imposition of criminal and civil penalties to those
users whose actions are illegal, unlawful, damaging, or threatening to
the University computer systems.
In practice project nethics is incompentant (Score:3, Informative)
In other words nethics is definately not a good example.
Re:Those of you (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:computer "science" (Score:2)
To the extent that it's stolen so much Logic from the Math and Philosophy towers, of course it deserves a place. If you're school's CS curriculum is actually IT and business, that's it's own fault. I managed to spend 4 CS years at my school completely insulated from XML and Oracle databases and J2EE and C# and anything else you'd want on your resume, and if a greedy bastard like myself can do it, you can too!
Re:computer "science" (Score:2)
In operating systems, deadlock avoidance algorithms, scheduling theory, etc. are all hot topics.
Something that gets a lot of airplay here on Slashdot is cryptography which is, once again, related to math or flat out *is* math. RSA relies on the inability to factor the product of two large primes easily.
In high performance computing and even Internet design, there's analysis of traffic flow through a system and how to design for redundancy.
Now you can learn this stuff as just a set of rules, but you won't really invent anything new that way. Just as you could learn something about chemistry like "I mix these two chemicals together and they go *boom*". But just as you wouldn't call the latter statement "learning chemistry", you wouldn't call memorizing the details of how to configure a Cisco router computer science.