At 15:08 1998-09-16 +0300, Jukka Tapani Santala wrote:
>On Wed, 16 Sep 1998, Vincent J. Mooney Jr. wrote:
>> Should the GIMPS effort discard Alan Blosser's results on the grounds that
>> they were improperly obtained? Surely we can wait for the whole story, not
>> just a newspaper article, but then if the news stories are indeed right,
>> should we discard the results?
>
>Let's see if I can get through now... ;) The real question, ofcourse, is
>will GIMPS list all results, or only "properly obtained". My morals say
>improperly obtained should be dropped from the main-list...
Of course they should not be dropped. Knowledge is knowledge, not matter
how you find it, using a good or an evil way. The facts are also the same
no matter if the fact-finder is a good or evil person.
An other example is medicine. A lot of modern medicine has Germany and
Japan to thank from the unethical experiments they conducted during world
war 2 in concentration camps and on prisoners of war. There were cruel and
painful experiments made up by depraved minds, but their results are still
the same and could come to good use today.
The essence is, facts are neutral. It is if you use them for good or evil
that matters.
johan
altough
>mentioning them in a some sort of "hall of shame" might still come into
>question (Problem is, while I do see this acton as moral one, it would
>probably encourage people into doing it even more than leaving them on the
>main list;). It would seem this would needed to be done sooner or later
>just for PR reasons, too; GIMPS will probably get lots of unwarranted
>attention when the top-people start to be convicted hackers.
>
>Now, ofcourse, there's an at least as important question: How to define
>'improper' means? Personally, I feel if he had permission from one person,
>he wasn't acting "improper" in the way that GIMPS should be concerned.
>It's possible the courts will still find him guilty, though, and while I
>feel GIMPS should be moral in the way of just holding thru it, including
>any possible negative PR, from keeping him listed in that case... proving
>(or for that matter disproving) claim of a verbal permission isn't really
>one of the easiest things around.
>
>To end this ramble... I think the simplest approach is to just decide to
>not touch the listings at all. The very nature of GIMPS is that it deals
>with provable, scientific facts. The list standings are, to some degree,
>such. Starting to judge the "properness" of such isn't.
>
>Ps. Anybody who's followed the computer-industry at all shouldn't really
>be surprised by this. To me, it brings echoes of Randall Schwarz's case,
>published author who got to be Intel's scapegoat. The case has been
>adequately covered online so I don't touch that right now. Actually, when
>you think back, there's Operation Sundevil etc. which have clearly
>demonstrated the whole techno-phobic picture: Just owning a computer makes
>you criminal. I myself have been characterized as "copyright terrorist"
>and "unknown hacker affiliated with organized crime" in the general media
>(in cases unrelated to GIMPS/Mersenne). The funny thing is, when you do
>something that actually is illegal, nobody pays any attention ;>
>
> -Donwulff
>
>
>
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Ett brev fr�n Johan Sm�ros, tel 08-21 71 26, http://www.nada.kth.se/~f90-jos
