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Comments: 504 +- Science: Porn Surfing Rampant At US Science Foundation on Tuesday September 29, @11:23AM
Posted
by
samzenpus
on Tuesday September 29, @11:23AM
from the when-science-gets-dirty dept.
from the when-science-gets-dirty dept.
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schwit1 writes "The Washington Times reports, 'The problems at the National Science Foundation (NSF) were so pervasive they swamped the agency's inspector general and forced the internal watchdog to cut back on its primary mission of investigating grant fraud and recovering misspent tax dollars.' One senior executive at the National Science Foundation spent at least 331 days looking at pornography on his government computer, records show. The cost to taxpayers: up to $58,000. Why aren't they running a product like Websense?"
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bad idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
that the guy almost used a "think of the children" defense for his actions. now THAT's fucked up.
these young women are from poor countries and need to make money to help their parents
Re:bad idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have known people who look at porn at work, but I find it difficult to be outraged about it. Why? Those guys are paid to do a job, supposed to be 9-5 but the porn entertainment tended to be a way of relaxing when they were still in the office working at 10pm. Nobody actually cared, even the bosses, because the employees were being paid to do a job, which they did well. As long as watching porn doesn't impact your work or offend colleagues, then why should it be considered any worse than surfing YouTube, Facebook, or even Slashdot? It's just pictures of people having sex.
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
With the proliferation of poorly vetted 3rd party ads and social network plugin "apps" and things, no class of websites is fully safe; but porn sites have a well deserved reputation for being particularly hostile and malware infested. Ideally, IT should be enough on the ball that that isn't an issue; but (especially given the number of hairy zero-day exploits and such floating around) it isn't a risk you really want to bring on yourself, if you don't have to.
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Porn causes psych issues? Perhaps it just exposes them, particularly in people who judge people for looking at porn.
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Psych problems with other people daring to have sex (and fun in general without permission from various control freaks) have been at the root of nearly all imbecilic religious woo-woos and the subsequent witch-hunts by the fanatics of the said woo-woos since times immemorial, but they have truly and completely gone full-tilt mental with the raise of the Judeo-Christian flavours of lunacy.
Thus it is no surprise that maiming and killing people is considered "moral" and "necessary in bringing Enlightenment, Freedom (to buy our products and make us rich) and Democracy (to elect friendly to our interests leaders)" while sex, particularly amongst younger people, is an "evil", "sin" and "immoral", to be punished, with prejudice and by extreme measures, for life (e.g. the "sexual offender lists"). Ripping a girl's hands and feet off by a 500lb bomb is a sad by-product of a "good deed", but seeing her enjoy sex is the very bottom of the pit of moral depravity.
But because sex sells, the Western culture is getting increasingly positively schizophrenic about it, on one hand trying to please the Mammon (into worship of which all of the Judeo-Christian flavours of woo have morphed) and at the same time trying to reconcile the woo-fanatics' psychotic attitudes towards the fact that they are all mammals, no matter how much they pretend that evolution did not occur.
And if you add to this the fact that other branches of Judeo-Christian idiocy, i.e. the Muslim-medieval kind, are even more rabidly insane, the majority of human societies on Earth are, to use a topic-relevant term: fucked up beyond description, with no relief in sight.
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:4, Interesting)
If you can control their sex and their economics, they are at your disposal.
I will cut religion one small break, though. I think most cultures have rules regarding sexual behavior; the problem is, we're not living in 5th century Europe where the major provider of social order as long as anyone can remember, the Roman Empire, is collapsing and we need some rules to live by other than fucking anything you can get your hands on.
In an ancient civilization, the rules help keep the order. Unwanted offspring create succession problems (which in those civilizations is often a political problem, too), lack of sexual restraint can lead to your wife or daughter getting raped, and then there's the question of what to do with the women and the unwanted offspring.
The problem is they keep trying to enforce rules that maybe made sense in rural Europe in the 6th century in the 21st century when technology generally has solved the unwanted offspring problem and better socialization largely encourages people to not use violent means to satisfy their desires, sexual or otherwise.
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:4, Informative)
I have to disagree.
Your response is simply a demonstration of how deeply ingrained the Judeo-Christian woo has become in the world-view of people brought up under its ever-present influence. As I pointed out to another poster on this thread, your assumption about rules and sex is proven wrong by the fact that many societies existed before the Judeo-Christian woo took root and some long after, in isolation, which had a completely different approach to the problems of children and overpopulation. In many, children were thought to be a communal responsibility, looked after by women of the tribe together and sexual restraint was practised essentially by various means involving natural contraceptives. Also the concept of "marriage", which seems to be the base foundation of modern societies did not exist in the form that is considered unquestionable by most people today. So the current "method" or societal organization and dealing with children is not by any means the only one, even though you would never get this impression from watching the modern societies in action.
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer is that we will simply never know, as they were destroyed and overrun (usually violently) by the much more aggressive followers of the dominant militant woos. In the case of Europe, Africa and America that being the Judeo-Christian one and in most places in Far East, Buddhism, Hinduism and the like.
So this isn't the case of "scalability", rather a case of "inferior warmongering". Possibly their attitudes towards sex were somehow related with their general outlook on life, apparently not conductive to leading wide-spread bloody conquests of others.
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
Uhm, no. The Old Testament is full of "immorality pisses off God and he nukes the fornicating sinners, their children and their children's children, cousins, second-cousins, cats, dogs etc" type of stuff. As to modernity, why, one has to only take a look at what the Hasidic characters are up to ....
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
On that particular episode, they could've claimed that porn doesn't make people more likely to commit sexual assault, but they didn't. They said they didn't know, and neither does anyone else. They did claim to like porn, and that it was silly to take away something that people like without any decent evidence that it is causing harm. That sounds like a reasonable conclusion to me.
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
You should try to be more vague.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I would love to see which study proves the causality of adult entertainment causing mental disease.
But even if what you said were true, it's stupid. Smoking causes disease, and that's allowed at work. Sedentary lifestyle causes disease, and that's required at work. All forms of "screwing around" at work should be treated equally; employers should not use their power to force their religious beliefs on workers.
Re:bad idea... (Score:5, Funny)
it usually causes a physiological response
Well, um, yes, that's the idea [wikipedia.org].
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Boy, you are really asking for it [youtube.com]. (Safe for work [slashdot.org] as long as you have your goggles on).
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:5, Funny)
(Porn causes phych issues).
Citation & spellchecker needed.
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:bad idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds to me like he was tugging on something else.
Parent
Spent or did during? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did he spend 331 days, or did he check at some point every day he was at work?
Once we get past "surfed porn at work", the number of hours seems more relvent than the number of days.
Re:Spent or did during? (Score:5, Insightful)
Once we get past "surfed porn at work", the number of hours seems more relvent than the number of days.
You know very well that the guy was doing what reporters do best: quoting whatever statistic would sound more shocking. 20 hours doesn't sound nearly as bad to an audience as 331 days.
Parent
Best Intentions (Score:5, Funny)
It all started out as innocent research on "Black Holes" and "Uranus"...
Re:Best Intentions (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
$58k? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like they need a better quality cacheing system, or get some of the pr0n served on a locally hosted CDN. Or stick it on their LAN fileservers. Let's get practical here!
FOSS (Score:5, Insightful)
Why aren't they running a product like Websense?"
Re:FOSS (Score:5, Insightful)
Some poor worker would end up having to administer it, and once you factor in his salary, and the salary of his replacement-- because he's spending too much time plugging censorware holes...
It's a bureaucracy. At some point, some accountant had to justify so many hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on maintaining an investigation squad, and somehow, because they spent some fraction of that time investigating Dr. X, Dr X gets blamed for costing the NSF some fraction times the entire budget of the investigation squad.
Parent
Old News? (Score:4, Informative)
First this is coming from the Washington Times. Its the newspaper equivalent of Fox News.
Second this was reported back in January 2009.
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=NSF+porn+surfing&scoring=a&hl=en&ned=us&um=1&sa=N&sugg=d&as_ldate=2000&as_hdate=2009&lnav=hist9 [google.com]
Certain Alibi (Score:3, Funny)
"But officer, it's research!"
Porn at work should be encouraged (Score:4, Insightful)
To begin with, this is a senior executive, not some lowly password changer in the basement. The policy against surfing porn at work may apply to all equally, but as we all know, some are more equal than others. So it's hard to expect that this person would somehow be subject to the rules considering his position.
Second, what's wrong with surfing porn at work? Work is a stressful environment, and finding ways to relieve this stress is actually a productive endeavor. Many companies have put in "game rooms" with pool tables and other recreational apparatus to help employees work off some stress and be more productive at their jobs. If porn helped this senior exec relieve stress and be more productive, then it's a good deal for the agency.
If someone is somehow offended by the viewing of porn, I suggest they give proof that they were forced to view it with the boss. Otherwise, even if they viewed it incidentally, their is no evidence that this exec was using the porn in a harassing way. If the porn itself wasn't illegal, then what's the big deal?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
oligitary sketch featuring Simon Pegg [youtube.com]
NSFw (Score:5, Funny)
I guess they'd better create an internal division called the National Science Foundation Watchdog, or NSFW for short...
This article is misleading at best (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, this is reported by the Washington Times, so you know it's not biased in the least. OK, let's take a look.
The only substantive abuse claim here is a quote from the NSF's inspector general making a budget request to Congress. The Times article implies that "this dramatic increase," forcing fraud detection efforts to be reduced, refers to employees browsing porn.
But that's not the case, is it. If we read the Times article very carefully, we see that the very first graf references:
Subsequent references to "the problems," "this dramatic increase," and "the misconduct cases" are all really talking about employee misconduct as a whole, not porn surfing specifically.
Maybe that's why this article is big on rhetoric and small on actual cases. One lengthy case is detailed on the article's first page. How much did that case cost taxpayers? "Between $13,800 and $58,000." Out of the NSF's $6.49 billion budget [nsf.gov]. That's 0.0006%.
How often is "often"? Six times as often as before. Misconduct cases -- not porn specifically -- went from 3 in 2006, to 7 in 2007, to 10 in 2008. The Times hints repeatedly that this is a huge problem, but despite its lavish use of adjectives -- "pervasive," "swamped," "well-publicized" -- it has to report that the actual number of porn-related misconduct cases in 2008 was seven.
Slashdot's headline "Porn Surfing Rampant" is exactly the kind of exaggeration that the Washington Times was hoping secondary media would slap on this story. "Rampant" is just not true, there's no possible way seven cases in a year can be described that way.
If each case was as bad as the one "between $13,800 and $58,000" case that was identified, those seven cases probably cost 0.004% of the NSF's budget.
But the Times article gets worse, moving from exaggeration to outright lies. Later, its author Jim McElhatton writes:
That's a flat-out lie. The OIG told Congress it was diverted by "employee misconduct," not porn. Here, read the actual budget request [docstoc.com]. (Full quote below.)
There is one paragraph in a 7-page report that references employee misconduct, and nowhere are "porn cases" referenced. Surely some of the cost to the agency was specifically from porn-surfing misconduct. And some was not. How much? We still don't know.
Look, any major institution, private or public, that employs a large number of people and gives them access to the internet, is going to have a few employees who abuse that access. It's ridiculous to think otherwise. Employees are capable of wasting time in a wide variety of creative ways. I daresay some employees in the private sector are wasting time reading Slashdot right at this very moment when they are nominally getting paid to do other things.
Republicans aren't fans of science; we know that. Smearing the NSF in the media by associating their name with porn for a news cycle is a fun yuk I suppose, but for conservatives it's another shot fired in the culture war. I find it depressing. There's actual news out there; this is at best People magazine type crap.
And it's ironic that this gets spread over the internet that the NSF helped create, and the story is brought to you thanks to the Freedom of Information Act that was passed by Democrats [wikipedia.org] over the objections of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Scalia.
Finally, as someone who 10 years ago was writing stories for Slashdot
Re:This article is misleading at best (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, Jaime, and just to be clear, the people reportedly looking at porn were NSF staffers, not scientists. The NSF administers funding for basic research, but doesn't conduct it directly. The work is usually done at universities.
The staffers under scrutiny were certainly acting unprofessionally and should be reprimanded or fired. But the NSF is a gem among federal programs: it funds high risk long-term research that no private company would be capable of supporting. Historically basic research pays off enormously, but the return time is very long.
The occasional news reports on ridiculous research topics usually fail to give context for the work. Even when news reports are accurate, high-risk research has to involve occasional missteps.
In my opinion, the long-term return on NSF spending is orders of magnitude greater than what we'll get back on military, entitlement, or even NIH spending.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Your analysis is well thought out, informative, and factually accurate.
Are you sure you meant to post it here on slashdot?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's a scam perpetrated by the Republican created NSFW tag.
It makes them think the link is for National Science Foundation Work.
Honestly, "The Washington Times reports..." enough (Score:4, Insightful)
I read the first three words and that was enough for me. I'm glad you took the time to specifically point out the flaws in this particular story for those who aren't familiar with the complete lack of journalistic integrity at that paper and may have otherwise taken the article seriously.
From my point of view, it may as well be "The Onion reports..." with the only difference that it isn't intended to be haha funny but actually trying to fool you instead.
Parent
Re:This article is misleading at best (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot's headline "Porn Surfing Rampant" is exactly the kind of exaggeration that the Washington Times was hoping secondary media would slap on this story.
Aren't you an editor?
Parent
Re:This article is misleading at best (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
331 days? But how many minutes? (Score:5, Informative)
We all know if you count your 'visits' by the day it seems to have big implications. But lets be realistic here. We all know you only visit for between 2-5 minutes.
Erring on the high side... 5 x 331 = 1655 minutes = 27.6 hours. And if we consider it work days, (about 8 hours), then that's actually hardly over 3 days.
Exaggerate much? Oh, but we wanted the headlines so so bad; we had to make it look big! (sarcasm)
----------
And right now, somewhere, people are reading this and frowining-- all the while having recently masturbated at work. Yes, everyone's shit still stinks. Yes, we all tug it. I wonder how much human time has been wasted worrying about this petty garble; consider the average time it takes to read and the average number of slashdot headline readers and I bet we're well over 27.6 hours!
I wouldn't recommend Websense (Score:5, Informative)
People are people (Score:4, Insightful)
A) this is no different then what people do in some private companies
B) That had to dig to find one extreme example
C) They didn't define porn in this context. Is it just a random hit? I ahve hit porn site accidently while looking up job related sites. Hopefull if the record is reviewed that also not when I left the site. Which would be immediatly.
D) Yes, this is not good, but there is no real indication of how bad it is. They make it SOUND bad, but there aren't based on any baseline.
Of course then give an example of a guy and how much he did and then said he wasn't detected. If he wasn't detected then how would they know how much online activity they had?
Not too surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
I know one of my friends told her supervisor of porn she found on her "hand me down computer" that came from the new director of a major metropolitan museum. There was no investigation, no action taken, no nothing.
Re:Not too surprised (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
What is it about "porn"? (Score:4, Interesting)
What is it about porn that provokes such an outrage?
If I was a manager in that organisation, I'd be putting the porn-surfing under the larger categories of "non-work activity" and "non-work-related use of NSF resources" and disciplinging employees on that basis.
If employees did ridiculous amounts of porn-surfing, I'd be addressing matters of how they feel about their job, and whether they had a psychological issue that drove their porn addiction; at their next review I'd prescribe a course of counselling as an assessable item of job performance.
If someone is so heavily pulled to porn, something is badly off-track in his/her life. S/he might otherwise be an excellent worker, but needing to be brought into line and pushed in a direction of emotional/psychological healing.
What I'd like to ask is - why is it a scandal if employees wasted company resources accessing porn, but not if they waste similar resources accessing (say) medieval re-enactment sites and forums?
Re: (Score:3)
"all-pervasive"??? (Score:5, Insightful)
and on page 2 it says "foundation's inspector general closed 10 employee misconduct investigations last year, up from just three in 2006. "
Ten staff were caught, out of a total of 1200. That's "all pervasive"? It's less than 1%. That "swamped" the investigators?
Investigate how productive these investigators are, that sounds more like the story.
And what the hell does that phrase "senior executive who spent at least 331 days looking at pornography" mean? He spent 8 hours a day for a almost a year looking at porn? Or does it actually mean he looked at porn at least once on 331 days? Some people take a smoke break, others take a coffee break, maybe he took porn breaks. How much time did he actually waste, and is that the issue or is it "PORN"? He's an adult, everyone in the office is an adult, and if anyone had been disturbed by his habit, I'm sure we would have heard all about it.
And on page three: The report caught the attention of Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee... Right, this story was sourced from the "ranking Republican" on the committee. So we can be sure he has no agenda to embarrass the government by turning this trivial misconduct of a dozen staff into a "scandal".
I'm baffled (Score:5, Insightful)
Billions and Billions... (Score:3, Funny)
of boobs.
Proof or retract (Score:3, Funny)
What nonsense hysteria (Score:3, Funny)
Give us a break: "Spent 331 days looking at porn"! This isn't the fault of the summary, the article itself has the same silliness. I am certain that the executive in question didn't *spend* 331 days looking at porn, but rather that there were 331 days *when* he looked at porn. Not sure the time interval, but even assuming a year, sure he looked at some porn every day. So what?!
If the guy (or any employee) isn't performing is job duties, worry about that. But that's a matter of specifying duties, not of stupid prurience about pornography. It's no better if he's looking at Facebook, or Slashdot, or a vacation planning site, or (god forbid) Fox News... nor even if he's just spending all day sharpening pencils.
I actually mostly agree that porn seems banal and boring, and fairly pointless. But unless employees expose other employees to what they're looking at unwillingly, it makes no differences whatsoever *what* someone is wasting time on. And it's not obvious that looking at porn actually means wasting time. In the real world, humans can't concentrate on work for 10 hours a day without interruption, or at least a lot of otherwise excellent employees can't. Taking little breaks to distract oneself "during work time" is just the human condition and part of our mental limits.