Asking for permission

[Ploaf]

Here's a news article/update on David McOwen. Apparently there was a plea deal and he's getting off with a small fine, which could possibly represent the true amount of wear/bandwidth that he actually used and then some. He also has to do community service and has 1 year probation. All in all I would have to say that, while he probably could have won in court, this is probably a fair way out of his mess and I'm glad to see that the prosecution let up, A LOT, from what they were going after.

http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.html?i=15341&t=an

[JetMech]

Originally posted by Ploaf
Here's a news article/update on David McOwen. Apparently there was a plea deal and he's getting off with a small fine, which could possibly represent the true amount of wear/bandwidth that he actually used and then some. He also has to do community service and has 1 year probation. All in all I would have to say that, while he probably could have won in court, this is probably a fair way out of his mess and I'm glad to see that the prosecution let up, A LOT, from what they were going after.

http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.html?i=15341&t=an I figured that would be the outcome. This was just an attention getter.

[S_Wilson]

Originally posted by Ploaf
Here's a news article/update on David McOwen. Apparently there was a plea deal and he's getting off with a small fine, which could possibly represent the true amount of wear/bandwidth that he actually used and then some. He also has to do community service and has 1 year probation. All in all I would have to say that, while he probably could have won in court, this is probably a fair way out of his mess and I'm glad to see that the prosecution let up, A LOT, from what they were going after.

http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.html?i=15341&t=an

I am glad to see this finished. I wish he would have fought but from and economical and time standpoint this is probably the cheapest and quickest way to get on with his life. Fighting would cost more and take longer than the sentence. The prosecution finally realized how weak and dumb their case was against him. For the rest of us, this should teach us to make sure we have permission before we put a DC client on a computer belonging to someone else. I know that Ploaf and others on the team preach this religously.

[Gandalf]

Originally posted by Ploaf
Here's a news article/update on David McOwen. Apparently there was a plea deal and he's getting off with a small fine, which could possibly represent the true amount of wear/bandwidth that he actually used and then some. He also has to do community service and has 1 year probation. All in all I would have to say that, while he probably could have won in court, this is probably a fair way out of his mess and I'm glad to see that the prosecution let up, A LOT, from what they were going after.

http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.html?i=15341&t=an

This is why I am asking first! :D

[Ploaf]

Wow. This thread was more recent than I thought.

Anyway. This topic has re-arisen, but with different players and different circumstances and I don't think anyone is going to court over it this time. So why do I mention it and dredge up old threads? Because a member of the forum had his girlfriends box hijacked for use of the Dnet client and he's not too happy about it. Here's the thread. http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=70764

[KFB]

hijacking for DC is like parasitic computing (http://www.nd.edu/~parasite/). when it is done for "education" it is ok, though?
i am wondering: what do you think about the possibility that our "donated" cpu time could be forming the foundation for important/lucrative pharmaceutical findings? i read "Science" and it is filled with protein-related advertisements, and now i have seen a television ad from the pharmacy companies proclaiming their "on target" protein advancements. granted, i am quite ignorant of the pharmabiological field, but my concern does not seem implausible.

[JetMech]

Originally posted by Kentucky Fried Bird
hijacking for DC is like parasitic computing (http://www.nd.edu/~parasite/). when it is done for "education" it is ok, though?
i am wondering: what do you think about the possibility that our "donated" cpu time could be forming the foundation for important/lucrative pharmaceutical findings? i read "Science" and it is filled with protein-related advertisements, and now i have seen a television ad from the pharmacy companies proclaiming their "on target" protein advancements. granted, i am quite ignorant of the pharmabiological field, but my concern does not seem implausible. If your wonderings are true then Intel/Stanford are either being duped also or in cahoots.:eek:

[Ploaf]

There are a lot of companies working on similar things, although in most cases they are studying the effects of different drugs on the proteins. Many are similar to the UD cancer project that Intel was sponsoring, although I suspect that most of the companies are running these tests on their own computers with their limited resources because they don't want anyone to know what type of advancements they are making with drugs. What they are doing won't even touch this, although they have made significant gains on their own in various fields of research even with less intense models. This project is definitely laying a foundation for new research, but it's not for any one company. The information that is being gathered is being published publicly, which means that any company can come along and see and use it to their advantage, but that is not a bad thing.

I don't know if making something educational would make parasitic computing any more desirable. I have this on a few machines that don't belong to me, but everyone knows that it's on there. I also have a couple of systems that I lend out to others to use in their office or home and I maintain/repair them and consider it my right to install anything that I want to on them. I just set it up so that it doesn't bother them and so that they can't tell that it's running without hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del. Saves confusion that way. In the case of the link I posted above the problem was that people in the same house took advantage of a system that did not belong to them or a family member. I doubt that they were responsible for the system in any way and they probably had no business touching that machine. If it's a family member and you are the one responsible for the maintenance of the system then the situation could be somewhat different, but permission is a good thing.

[NedClocker]

They really should not even use the other person's computer w/o permission, much less install that program on it. Although using it would not really hurt anything, as opposed to using your car w/o permission which would cost you more in depreciation.

The computer you use at work is not yours. You are allowed to use it to get your work done. That is the only use that is authorized by your employer, unless you have been specifically authorized to do other things on it.

Of course, I know that we all do other things on our work computers, just as we use our office phones to make personal phone calls.