Couldn't agree more... {shameless advertisement: OPENBSD - Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 10 years! http://www.openbsd.org/}
I couldn't have said this better myself. Companies always figure that because a programmer lives, breathes, eats, and sleeps code that they will be cheap and easy to maintain. They have very little concept of what it takes to stay on the edge of the game.
We had one "upper management" individual that "frustrated" many of us. So I set about building a "skin" of him for one of the feminine Bot meshes. Then we spent many hours, after work, "dealing with our growing frustation".... All in all, a VERY satisfying experience... (FOR ALL THOSE NON-GAMERS: UT2K4 is Unreal Tournament 2004)
This is NOT a free speech issue... Our community lawmakers are NOT book burners, etc. We simply opted to enforce the ratings system in our community. Unrated Movies, etc have been and always will be available and those are left to the discretion of the particular venue. We have an Adult Bookstore in town, as well as several movie rental businesses and 1 computer store that sells video game software... All of these were consulted and were part of the lawmaking process so that undue damages would not be brought to bear on their businesses... Unlike you, who seems bent on making this a "free speech" issue, the shop owners/managers, etc were MORE THAN happy to work with the community of which they are apart. As the other reply to your enraged and enflamed post states:
"The poster is correct in stating that laws that require vendors to be responsible for checking the age of customers who buy certain games/videos/music cds has generally been upheld for the same reason that laws requiring stores to check ages for cigarettes/alcohol/firearms/pornography."
This is all that was being stated... nothing more... I apologize if something I said was unclear to you, however your use of profanity and feeling the need to write the post in such a manner begs the question of what I may have done to offend YOU?
At least I wonder about that until I read some of your other posts and realized that profanity seems to be just a natural part of your vocabulary. Again, My apologies for your misinterpretation of the information being presented.
Actually, they have been challenged and DID survive... Small community municipalities sometimes are an ADVANTAGE. No one has said that parents can't buy the games for their children. As a matter of fact, they just make it MANDATORY that the parent/guardian DOES. Are there ways around it? Yep, sure there are... Much like the ways around buying alcohol or tobacco products when you are underage. But at least SOME communities are trying to put responsibility back in the parent's court.
While that may be true in your state/municipality, it is NOT true in mine. City ordinances are in place that STRICTLY enforce the Movie and Game rating systems. There are HEFTY fines associated with being caught violating those ratings-based ordinances>
I couldn't agree with you more about the telemarketer end of the house. I worked for a telemarketing company for approx. 2 years and ran one of their teams. I taught the team about ethics and true marketing and knowing their "target audience". They were not allowed to call at dinner time (5 to 7 pm in whatever time zone they were dialing). I re-worded "prepared scripts" to be less deceptive and to make it easy for the call receiver to know that this was a marketing call. In the end, my marketing team had the highest call-to-sale ratio in the company and had NO complaints lodged against them in the 2 years I ran that team.
On the score of spammers, however, I find myself disagreeing with you. I work for an ISP now. If you had any concept of the amount of money and manpower that is expended in an effort to curtail inbound spam to our customers, you might re-thing your statement. We are currently filtering more than 80000+ spam messages a day at our mail gateways - and STILL some manages to slip through. We have churches and school systems that are our customers (among others). It's not just a fight to stop spam from coming INTO our servers either. We have to closely monitor servers and customers to make sure that one of our CUSTOMERS isn't some spammer in disguise.
Between personnel time, software, and hardware used to fight the in-flux of spam, and the cost of bandwidth that the spam chews up in the course of a day, our small ISP setup could save an average of about 80k to 100K per year if we did not have that as a problem to contend with. Heck, I could hire on another Network Admin for that amount of money.
Just some of the "OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN" perspective for you to consider.
Speaking as someone who runs mail servers for multiple domains (yes, I work for an ISP), let me just say that I, for one, think the comparison is apt and accurate. Maintaining a server environment where our paying customers are not inundated with the 80,000+ spam messages a day that we end up filtering out at our mail gateway takes MUCH time and money (both for personnel and equipment/software).
You may see this individual as merely taking advantage of a situation - "the confluence of internet/SM protocols, not the spammer, that puts the email on your server" - but I certainly do not. That would be like saying that the bank robber is not guilty because it was Smith & Wesson that built the firearm, and the gun dealer that sold it to him (legally), and the cab driver that drove him to the bank (unknowingly) all allowed him to rob this bank, so therefore he is not guilty of it. That is a confluence of EVENTS that leads to the same end. Criminal trespass and robbery.
Slashdot Mirror
Couldn't agree more... {shameless advertisement: OPENBSD - Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 10 years! http://www.openbsd.org/}
I couldn't have said this better myself. Companies always figure that because a programmer lives, breathes, eats, and sleeps code that they will be cheap and easy to maintain. They have very little concept of what it takes to stay on the edge of the game.
We had one "upper management" individual that "frustrated" many of us. So I set about building a "skin" of him for one of the feminine Bot meshes. Then we spent many hours, after work, "dealing with our growing frustation".... All in all, a VERY satisfying experience... (FOR ALL THOSE NON-GAMERS: UT2K4 is Unreal Tournament 2004)
This is NOT a free speech issue... Our community lawmakers are NOT book burners, etc. We simply opted to enforce the ratings system in our community. Unrated Movies, etc have been and always will be available and those are left to the discretion of the particular venue. We have an Adult Bookstore in town, as well as several movie rental businesses and 1 computer store that sells video game software... All of these were consulted and were part of the lawmaking process so that undue damages would not be brought to bear on their businesses... Unlike you, who seems bent on making this a "free speech" issue, the shop owners/managers, etc were MORE THAN happy to work with the community of which they are apart. As the other reply to your enraged and enflamed post states: "The poster is correct in stating that laws that require vendors to be responsible for checking the age of customers who buy certain games/videos/music cds has generally been upheld for the same reason that laws requiring stores to check ages for cigarettes/alcohol/firearms/pornography." This is all that was being stated... nothing more... I apologize if something I said was unclear to you, however your use of profanity and feeling the need to write the post in such a manner begs the question of what I may have done to offend YOU? At least I wonder about that until I read some of your other posts and realized that profanity seems to be just a natural part of your vocabulary. Again, My apologies for your misinterpretation of the information being presented.
Limestone County, Alabama
Actually, they have been challenged and DID survive... Small community municipalities sometimes are an ADVANTAGE. No one has said that parents can't buy the games for their children. As a matter of fact, they just make it MANDATORY that the parent/guardian DOES. Are there ways around it? Yep, sure there are... Much like the ways around buying alcohol or tobacco products when you are underage. But at least SOME communities are trying to put responsibility back in the parent's court.
While that may be true in your state/municipality, it is NOT true in mine. City ordinances are in place that STRICTLY enforce the Movie and Game rating systems. There are HEFTY fines associated with being caught violating those ratings-based ordinances>
I couldn't agree with you more about the telemarketer end of the house. I worked for a telemarketing company for approx. 2 years and ran one of their teams. I taught the team about ethics and true marketing and knowing their "target audience". They were not allowed to call at dinner time (5 to 7 pm in whatever time zone they were dialing). I re-worded "prepared scripts" to be less deceptive and to make it easy for the call receiver to know that this was a marketing call. In the end, my marketing team had the highest call-to-sale ratio in the company and had NO complaints lodged against them in the 2 years I ran that team.
On the score of spammers, however, I find myself disagreeing with you. I work for an ISP now. If you had any concept of the amount of money and manpower that is expended in an effort to curtail inbound spam to our customers, you might re-thing your statement. We are currently filtering more than 80000+ spam messages a day at our mail gateways - and STILL some manages to slip through. We have churches and school systems that are our customers (among others). It's not just a fight to stop spam from coming INTO our servers either. We have to closely monitor servers and customers to make sure that one of our CUSTOMERS isn't some spammer in disguise.
Between personnel time, software, and hardware used to fight the in-flux of spam, and the cost of bandwidth that the spam chews up in the course of a day, our small ISP setup could save an average of about 80k to 100K per year if we did not have that as a problem to contend with. Heck, I could hire on another Network Admin for that amount of money.
Just some of the "OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN" perspective for you to consider.
Speaking as someone who runs mail servers for multiple domains (yes, I work for an ISP), let me just say that I, for one, think the comparison is apt and accurate. Maintaining a server environment where our paying customers are not inundated with the 80,000+ spam messages a day that we end up filtering out at our mail gateway takes MUCH time and money (both for personnel and equipment/software).
You may see this individual as merely taking advantage of a situation - "the confluence of internet/SM protocols, not the spammer, that puts the email on your server" - but I certainly do not. That would be like saying that the bank robber is not guilty because it was Smith & Wesson that built the firearm, and the gun dealer that sold it to him (legally), and the cab driver that drove him to the bank (unknowingly) all allowed him to rob this bank, so therefore he is not guilty of it. That is a confluence of EVENTS that leads to the same end. Criminal trespass and robbery.