After reading some of the posts in here, I thought I would share something here ...

http://www.jimworld.com/gazette/issue-201/

Hope this will help some to think before they act.

That website is the biggest load of horse [self censored] I've seen in a long time.

For once Watchdog is right. OK we all know that piracy of copyrighted material is bad, but you wander down the street and just about anyone who can click a mouse button has probably thought about and even engaged in piracy of some form.

But to say the internet is entirely responsible for the downward trend in the US economy? *snort*. When a country starts panicing because it's companies can't write software or music or whatever profitably; its not the end of the world.
No one will die without hearing the latest CDs from their artists.
I doubt anyone would ever pirate software which is used in controlling nuclear facilities or hospitals or other life & mission critical roles.
So you can hardly say "OH NO THE WORLD IS FALLING TO BITS" when no one is making $35 a cd anymore.
Start worrying when you can't eat because people are stealing food and you can't afford a place to live thats wamr and dry. Well, thats my US 2 cents (which are losing value as we speak!)

For once Watchdog is right.

Well... it happens sometimes, even to me.

If WD said it's hmmm I don't even bother to open it!!

WooF! hehe, Usually I don't either but if it's likely to be someone's understanding of the world (or lack thereof) I always like to have my say. On this occasion, I was, well, to the point.

Thank you for sharing something that you thought might be of interest to others. Altho, about the only good thing i can say about it is that it tells ppl to not fileshare. No question filesharing does impact some industries. But, I cant help being amused when i see ppl blaming the internet for everything bad in the world. Its kinda like blaming the gun manufacturers when someone is shot. People are the problem. They dont behave one way IRL and another online. Their behavior and attitudes online are indicative of those they have IRL, its simply another venue to display them.

It might be good that it says not to trade files, but I doubt it will be effective. One of the rules to being a good persuasive speaker is NEVER insult your audience. And imho saying "YOU are the cause of everything wrong with the world" is a pretty big insult :P When you do that you usually get the opposite result, more of the undesired action simply because people will usually do it out of spite, something like "You come in here, tell me I'm the world's biggest problem, then you try to tell me how I should act? Who are you to tell me what I can and can't do? I think I'll go download some music right now just to spite you!" It's sorta the old example of you don't go into a Pro-Choice meeting to try and convince people abortion is wrong by starting out saying "Everyone who has an abortion is a murderer" if you want to convince people of your position, thats usually not the best way to do it [note: that was not meant to turn this into a discussion about abortion, just to provide a commonly used example]

* Hammer falls off his chair laughing, through the floor and sub-basement and on into the Earth's crust (coincidentally finding a nifty ore deposit)[/b]

That's classic, codemastr. I think I can find a few folks who post here quite regularly who should read that little gem.

* Hammer coughs politely in the general direction which codemastr, by some strange and mystical twist of fate, happens to be sitting. [/b]

Oh come now, Its hardly insulting to point out that any individual's values, ethics, attitudes and behavior, good or bad, impact others. To blame the internet or anything else for all the ills of the world, when its the people who USE the internet that take part in whatever behavior is absurd. Surely not a news flash or insulting to say its people that make the world go round.

Saying that "you usually get the opposite result, more of the undesired action simply because people will usually do it out of spite" is saying that MOST ppl are spiteful and immature. Now there's an insult! I must admit tho, seeing you say "NEVER insult your audience" did give me a chuckle, thanks.

There is a different between writing a persuasive paper, which that article is clearly intended to be, and my posting candid replies to people's comments. If no one is persuaded by anything I say, it doesn't hurt me at all, so I'm not about to spend a week preparing my replies, if someone sounds stupid, I'll say that. If you can't, for example, see the difference between an article in the New York Times having to shy away from offending people, and posts on an mIRC forum, well then I guess that explains why you'd write such a reply...

And as for parabrat:


It's offensive to me "Everybody, repeat after me: 'Hello, my name is _______, and I operate a .com business. I'm sorry.'"
I've worked for 2 .com companies, and co-owned one. I'm not at all sorry for it. If trying to make an honest living providing a service to someone is something that I should be sorry for, well then I guess I'm living in the wrong country, because I thought that is what America was all about, but I must be mistaken if I have to appologize for having worked for businesses that were unsuccessful. And then it's talked about us .com'ers "greed and waste" As I said, I've been with 3 .com companies, none of them had "wine-tasting breaks" in fact I've never been to any wine-tasting parties ever, the 'thousands of employees' well the .com company I'm currently seeking employment at has an employee base of 15 people, and the 'gold toilet flushers' the only thing that was made out of gold in any of the .com companies I worked at was the gold paint used on the logo, and that wasn't even real gold. Are you telling me I shouldn't feel insulted being told I'm a greedy wasteful person who should appologize to the world?


Again I go back to saying persuasive writing, thats different than general comments which is what I'm posting on this forum. If you've ever seen me debate, or read any papers I've written, you'd clearly see that when I plan out my paper/speech it follows that rule very strictly. As I said above, if no one here is convinced by anything I said, it doesn't hurt me at all, so why should I bother writing up 20+ drafts of a reply to someone's post? If I have something I want to say, I'll say it. This is hardly a formal medium, I'm writing what comes to mind, I'm not taking the time to edit it thoroughly, and from the posts everyone else makes, that seems to be the way everone does it. Oh and by the way, you don't agree that most people are spiteful and immature? So I take it this is the first day you've come to these forums and you've never read more than 5 posts here? Because if you had, you'd agree that I'm right. Like a certain guy named "loser" who decided to post the same post 5+ times even though it kept getting deleted, or that other guy "therat" or something like that who decided to do nothing but swear and insult everyone, and I could list many others but I'd rather not turn this into a 50 page reply.

The danger about generalizing is that someone is going to be offended because they are outside the percieved "norm". Altho i dont see any point in continuing to debate this on open forum, and would like it to end, there is one thing i would like to say. Honesty, i say it knowing you will find something to argue with about it, but its by way of a thank you and pat on the back to many ppl so i'll deal with that.

Between here, help channels, and my chosen profession, i tend to see the dregs of society on a regular basis. Luckily, for every rude, argumentative,spiteful, abusive person i see, i can think of several that arent any of those things. Within your example of these forums, for each person you named i can easily think of many who go out of their way to help, many who take the time to say thank you, and many who simply ask their question and are glad for the answer. Sadly, its the bad that tends to stick out in ppl's memories.

So, for those of you who volunteer your help and go out of your way to find an answer, those of you who take the time to say thank you, and those of you who stand out just because you are polite, be it here, IRC, or IRL, thanks!

Yes I agree with what you said. But I think you misunderstood me. I never meant to say that people are spiteful and immature 100% of the time. I meant, if sufficiently provoked, it will occur. And if there is anyone out there who claims that there are never times when they act childish, well then they're just lying imho. Even the most mature person will act childish in the right circumstance.

Mmmm what about DDoS attacks ? what is the government doing about That ? a small kid get pissed from a company or just for the fun of it he controls around 5,000 PC's attack the company and cost them a fortune.
Who cares about that ?

• I intimately understand the difference between persuasion, debate and argument. There is ALSO a distinct difference between arguing for the sake of argument and a genuine wish to improve the subject under discussion by adding arguments that the original poster might not have considered. We have seen many of examples of both from you. Personally, I prefer to see the latter from you because you can bring up potential gotchas and roadblocks to think around that others might not have thought of, or perhaps just didn't care enough to comment on.
  
  From your above comment, it is also clear that you don't care whether or not your replies have answered the questions posed or not or even contributed something to the discussion; if that is the case, why do you bother (leaving aside the obvious enjoyment you derive from being the "Devil's Advocate" in any discussion)?

• "Everyone does it"? This statement is simply patently untrue. I know that I rarely post a reply that has not gone through 5 revisions; 20 or more is a frequent occurance as well. This is simply part of my desire for the questioner to not only get the answer, but also to understand how and why that answer (or at least the general principle involved) is a correct answer or approach. There are others on these forums who do similar revisions prior to posting. This is, after all, a medium that can be considered "publication," in that a URL might easily be quoted and correctly annotated in any of the major publication standards now in use (American Psychological Association (APA), Modern Language Association (MLA), Chicago Manual of Style, or Council of Biology Editors (CBE), to name 4 of the most popular).
  
  You choose not to treat your post writing in any formal way, and that attitude shines through brilliantly. You are also not alone in that; many others (possibly even most) treat their posts in the same off-handed way. However, there are a few who do their level best to keep their writing at its highest communicative level (which is necessarily more formal). I try to keep my writing such that I wouldn't mind it being printed in such an article as you mentioned. I don't expect others to do the same -- that is simply what makes me most comfortable in posting. Grammar, spelling, punctuation and diction are all tools you can use in more formal writing to change the meaning of what you write, sometimes in quite subtle ways, that affect how the reader will react to what you've written.
  
  As I'm quite sure that you don't much care one way or the other, I haven't revised this post as much as I probably should have. Why should I bother writing up drafts when you likely will either disregard it completely or find a few points to argue for whatever reason?

If anyone's interested, I found this article and it's related links to be worth a read.

Because DDoS attacks are not easy to police. Technically the users infected with the trojan are just as much to blame, as they are responsible for how their connection is used. At the end of the day though, I doubt that someone will be sent to prison because they got owned.

I'm sorry my life doesn't provide me with the time to write each of my posts 20 times. But if you are suggesting that people who don't do that shouldn't bother posting, well then you've reduced this forum down from maybe ~5000 people who actively post, to about 3 who in your opinion should post.

Having run about 5 IRC networks before, I know that you're right, the government doesn't really do much. the NIPC (National Infrastructure Protection Center) has a policy of not getting involved unless the damages exceed 1 million dollars. But, what is more astonishing is the people affected first hand do even less. In one DoS attack, I was able to trace some of the attack back to about 15 pcs at Arizona State University. So the first thing I did was alert them that their machines had been compromised. About 3 weeks later I get an email saying "A trouble ticket has been issued to address the problem, you should hear back from us in 1-2 days" well it's now been about 5 months and I still never heard back. And, I know for a fact that the machines are, today, still compromised. So I guess what I'm getting at is, if the people who are infected don't care... why should the government?

I think people should at least check what they have written even if it's just a quick speed-read. I do and have been known to correct spelling and grammar, maybe not 20 times, but at least a few times on a few occasions. Judging by some of the typos I see, many users just post then move to the next forum or thread.

Well yes, I often spell/grammar check, but what I mean is, when I'm writing a paper, I'll print out maybe 20-30 hard copies, make comments and notations in the margins, and by the final draft, the paper contains less than 5% of what the original did. I, and I'm assuming most others here, don't have the time to do that for every post they make.

I do know of one instance at Arizona State University, that was on the local news here a few months ago, as well as I know a few people that are enrolled there currently, that the FBI busted a student and confiscated his PC over some of his internet activity which some major US companies were losing money because of this.

It turned out that the FBI had the wrong guy and all they did was give him an apology accompanied by a warning to not do this ever again. They later found the right person and destroyed his pc on the spot and he is not allowed to touch a computer unsupervised.

I just thought I would share this based on the information provided by friends and the media and the similarity you brought up even though the instances are probably different. But still it is kinda interesting though. Anyways just thought I would share it due to the similarities.

I apologize if I inferred that you or anyone else should revise any post you write before you post it. What I meant was that I, personally, prefer to keep my own posts publishable whenever possible, as do a few others here. I do not expect anyone at all to hold to whatever standards I hold myself to, be they higher or lower than whatever standards someone else uses.

The point of that portion of the post was in direct response to your hasty generalization of what "everyone does." Everyone knows that words like "everyone" or "always" or even "never" will always get you into trouble because they are never true. (That statement is obviously and inherently completely false.) Perhaps "from the posts nearly everyone else makes" or "the way almost everyone does it" would be accurate.