The generational gap is more than just a cliche to toss into a discussion on fashion. The inability or unwillingness of some adults to understand the positions of youth, and some youths' refusal to try to empathize with their elders, leads to mutual distrust, stereotyping, and operation without a true, fair sense for the other party.
Computers and video games are, even as they become more accessible, still mostly the domain of youth, especially amongst the most avid power users. Not caring to, or refusing to understand the complexities of a new generation's own distinct preferences (whether they be computers, or music, or political ideas), or appreciation for the older generation's, leads to fights and accusations. Parents are "out of touch;" children's hobbies are too rowdy and violent and loud. Both sides, no matter what moral high ground they scramble to, reap what they sow in it.
But guess who hold the money, the TV networks, the jobs, the votes for the similar-minded elected officials? The adults, of course. So they will always use their position to press down upon the youth. The youth will yell at the adults and press forward, but be pushed back by adults in riot gear. Which, in turn, inspires more rebellion for the hell of it...
This neverending cycle is the source of the oft-touted ideas that rock music or video games or hip-hop or computers or whatever the youth prefer at the time will be the downfall of society. So far, we're still up and running (though in what shape is debateable) -- and the Beatle kids assault Rammstein fans, and pinball players look down on those who blaze through the classically fearsome Doom and Quake.
Video games, trenchcoats, dark music...what will we current Slashdotters be claiming is worse than just harmless release, thirty years from now?
My school has its share of legendary pranks, too. There are the students who took the "easy way" and disassembled a VW Beetle, then put it back together in the school cafeteria. But better still were those daring souls who set loose two pigs, one labeled "1," the other "3"...
Ah, if only I'd been around to see those halcyon days.
At the high school I attend, the actual stated homework standard is three hours per night, or half an hour per class (thus, three and a half hours if one takes an elective beyond six required solid courses). I spend seven hours in school, but if you factor in the transportation to and from, it comes to nine hours devoted to school and school activities.
Even with the more conservative number, that's 5/12, or almost half the day, spent on schoolwork.
On top of that, one still has to feed the soul as well as the brain. Factoring in a reasonable couple hours of downtime, plus all the other things associated with "not-school" (such as eating, bathing, etc.), I'm quickly reduced to about five hours of sleep a night. At the same time, within a few months of starting school I have to hold off the (inevitable) symptoms of burnout.
Clearly, the schedule set by my school isn't balanced at all. Although it may like to believe otherwise, there are some things better and more important than schoolwork, schoolwork, and more schoolwork. While I recite a series of concepts, I miss out on exploring interesting things on my own and learning how to APPLY knowledge.
Some may find academics truly interesting enough to pursue all the time. However, most of us have other hobbies, and too much of ANY thing, good or bad, is harmful.
After another 2-1/4 years at this school, the first independent action that comes to my mind is a week of solid sleep.
This is exactly the philosophy I subscribe to. My downloads of music or video are, first and foremost, to try out a new band, or a band's new releases, or a film I've heard/read about; if I happen to like what I hear and/or see, I check Amazon for a good deal. Thanks to what I read online, and what I can try online, my musical tastes have expanded dramatically in just the past year. My only restriction from giving back is a high school budget vs. the RIAA's cartel pricing, so it can be months (with all the other worthy things I spend money on) before I do finally get around to that CD. I do still maintain that effort, though.
I also download copies of what I already legally own on other media. Though some would like to say it's of questionable legality, is there anything wrong with paying a few bucks for a Pink Floyd cassette and not wanting to pay again just to get it in "the best format ever" (after records and 8-tracks and cassettes and CDs...)?
If the RIAA and MPAA would loosen their grip and stop making it into such a "forbidden fruit" issue, maybe the general public could actually hear this presented as a valid argument. I like to know what I'm paying for beyond the hype of paid-off disk jockeys and industry-owned magazines -- especially when an hour-long audio experience makes my wallet $15 lighter.
And, if you want other people to play fair, you have to start playing fair yourself.
...is that privacy is officially dead for the common man, alongside celebrities. Gradually the principle that being left alone is a basic right has been slowly disregarded. Obviously, it would happen to the high-profile characters first (evidence for which includes various tabloids and the TV Guide Channel's coverage of the Anna Nicole Smith tragedy-of-the-century media event). However, especially with the rise of technology which makes it easy to create, store, and share information, people take the raw power and run with it without considering the consequences -- or with direct intentions for its use, which is even worse.
Records are stored about us from birth -- a birth certificate quickly proceeds to a billion "quick surveys" as to what baby food we prefer; then our academic records and MySpace accounts as teenagers and young adults; financial information and buying habits as we enter the workforce; and so on. There have even been debates as of late as to whether insurance coverage should be determined by the genetic fitness of a client. I hate to make the comparison due to the cliché, but we really are in the Matrix, being fed upon by marketing companies and marketing companies' suppliers galore without gaining anything in return (except the golden opportunity to own or play a minorly, critically important part in Next Big Thing 2.0).
Though we can't stop the march of technology, there need to be trustable non-profit lobbying groups dedicated to at least turning the march in the proper direction -- to benefit the consumer, to provide safety and a level of appealing innovation, without invading the sanctitiy of our homes, our lives, and even our bodies. The government has quickly proven that it alone definitely cannot be trusted to look after the citizens' best interests in this and other matters, especially when they're interested in the spying tech themselves.
Constantly staring at me from afar is still stalking, and it should be recognized and punished as such. As for I, I feel like putting up more curtains, and wearing sunglasses when I go out. No man is an island, but that doesn't mean he should let anyone in his domain to peek under the bed or search in his cabinets to gather ideas about what to charge him for.
I'm still using 1.5.0.9, giving 2.0 a little bit of time for all or most of my favorite extensions to catch up, and some bugs to be resolved. (I'm also telling myself "I have to organize my bookmarks so I can switch," as if that's ever happening anyway.)
* A search engine that rec0gn!s3s 4|_|_ 5p3c!4L cH4rAters
You do realize that t3h h4x0rz came up with 13375p34k in the first place just to avoid searches for "73h 600|) 57|_|ph" by the unwashed and undeserving masses.
Any 14m3r can get ahold of LimeWire these days to search the joke that is Gnutella. The slightly more-dedicated will search for torrents on websites and via IRC. It's the real 1337 m4$t0rz amongst us who will Google-hack for open folders on servers and simply get our 1337 w4r3z shipped "express." (Mmm, mmm, leeching.)
Screw the great equalizer that is the Intereweb, you should get what you deserve. Open MP3 folders galore to explore the highs and lows of house mixes for the h4x0rz, and teasing pr0n0 trailer WMVs for everyone else. Plus the resultant spyware for the exclusively Norton-bound 1us3rz. =P
The DE-9 (9 pin D-shell connector) is a type of D-subminiature electrical connector most commonly used for the RS 232 serial port on the IBM AT and compatible computers. DB-9 is a common misnomer for the DE-9. (A true DB-9 connector would have 9 pins in a connector the shape and size of a DB-25, the other 16 pins would just be missing.) (Wikipedia)
Seriously, do people even work on catching themselves on errors like this? I know that they sound quite the same, but we did, after all, decide to move to a smaller physical connector instead of trying two data streams on a DB-25, or even just leaving the pins out. How many years have we had to catch up?
Yes, I'm a nit-picker, and quite proud of it when I'm not shoving my homework aside half-finished.
All of the Blu-ray and HD-DVD hype is all very nice, but there are two points to consider.
First off, DVD players were first released a decade ago. It's only been within the past few years that they've come down to a consumer-friendly price, many of the quality issues have been resolved (I cringe at how much my discs like to skip on the player I have), and they've finally surpassed VHS in ubiquity. At the same time, the industry is heavily pushing not one, but TWO new formats which, aside from the trendy (and I should say money-laden) technophiles, are being almost totally ignored. Even with the greed of marketing departments and yacht-sailing executives, it's going to be awhile before their new conspiracy pays off and we've jumped to yet another format, in a cycle that seems it'll never end.
Secondly, if we are going to advance, and lord knows we are, why should we be stuck with a device that can store only 15 or 25 gigabytes per disc layer, when even nearly-5GB DVD-Rs are proving inadequate against the ballooning size of hard drives and the content we store on them? The old tape back-up drives are currently the only relatively common formats even close to keeping pace with real-world hard disk sizes.
In my opinion, Blu-ray and HD-DVD should be overlooked entirely. At the same time as we're hearing the hype for 50GB Sony Blu-ray discs, Wikipedia lists no less than six new formats, the more competitive of which store anything from 300GB per disc (Tapestry Media), enough to cover the most common large hard drive sizes as it is; to 3.9 terabytes (Holographic Versatile Disc), which will take care of even the largest of geeks' drive set-ups for months to come; to finally the most promising, the protein-coated disc, which may very well give us up to 50 TB of biologically engineered storage.
That's a lot of geek pr0n.;)
On the whole, it seems that the "Next Big Thing" marketers, while certainly tall enough to see over the giant piles of money inherent in effective consumer manipulation, are too short-sighted to realize that if they try to commit us to these formats now, they'll miss out on the truly Bigger Things coming up......and will have to play catch-up in five years with this week's formats, at even greater cost.
Well. Maybe they do know what they're doing after all.:P
Re:The number of the counting shall be three
on
How Many Windows?
·
· Score: 1
I myself have a minimum of five windows in at any one time, often 10 or 15 for normal work, and up to about 25 when I'm really busy. In Firefox I have anywhere from 5-150 tabs, depending on whether or not I'm checking e-mail, IT news, Wikipedia, everything2, or some subtle combination. I also have a few tabs open in two Trillian windows. And I'll often be found messing with another computer directly to the left or right while waiting for a program or webpage to load. Multitasking truly is nice.
Slashdot Mirror
The generational gap is more than just a cliche to toss into a discussion on fashion. The inability or unwillingness of some adults to understand the positions of youth, and some youths' refusal to try to empathize with their elders, leads to mutual distrust, stereotyping, and operation without a true, fair sense for the other party.
Computers and video games are, even as they become more accessible, still mostly the domain of youth, especially amongst the most avid power users. Not caring to, or refusing to understand the complexities of a new generation's own distinct preferences (whether they be computers, or music, or political ideas), or appreciation for the older generation's, leads to fights and accusations. Parents are "out of touch;" children's hobbies are too rowdy and violent and loud. Both sides, no matter what moral high ground they scramble to, reap what they sow in it.
But guess who hold the money, the TV networks, the jobs, the votes for the similar-minded elected officials? The adults, of course. So they will always use their position to press down upon the youth. The youth will yell at the adults and press forward, but be pushed back by adults in riot gear. Which, in turn, inspires more rebellion for the hell of it...
This neverending cycle is the source of the oft-touted ideas that rock music or video games or hip-hop or computers or whatever the youth prefer at the time will be the downfall of society. So far, we're still up and running (though in what shape is debateable) -- and the Beatle kids assault Rammstein fans, and pinball players look down on those who blaze through the classically fearsome Doom and Quake.
Video games, trenchcoats, dark music...what will we current Slashdotters be claiming is worse than just harmless release, thirty years from now?
("We're all living in Amerika...")
My school has its share of legendary pranks, too. There are the students who took the "easy way" and disassembled a VW Beetle, then put it back together in the school cafeteria. But better still were those daring souls who set loose two pigs, one labeled "1," the other "3"...
Ah, if only I'd been around to see those halcyon days.
At the high school I attend, the actual stated homework standard is three hours per night, or half an hour per class (thus, three and a half hours if one takes an elective beyond six required solid courses). I spend seven hours in school, but if you factor in the transportation to and from, it comes to nine hours devoted to school and school activities.
Even with the more conservative number, that's 5/12, or almost half the day, spent on schoolwork.
On top of that, one still has to feed the soul as well as the brain. Factoring in a reasonable couple hours of downtime, plus all the other things associated with "not-school" (such as eating, bathing, etc.), I'm quickly reduced to about five hours of sleep a night. At the same time, within a few months of starting school I have to hold off the (inevitable) symptoms of burnout.
Clearly, the schedule set by my school isn't balanced at all. Although it may like to believe otherwise, there are some things better and more important than schoolwork, schoolwork, and more schoolwork. While I recite a series of concepts, I miss out on exploring interesting things on my own and learning how to APPLY knowledge.
Some may find academics truly interesting enough to pursue all the time. However, most of us have other hobbies, and too much of ANY thing, good or bad, is harmful.
After another 2-1/4 years at this school, the first independent action that comes to my mind is a week of solid sleep.
This is exactly the philosophy I subscribe to. My downloads of music or video are, first and foremost, to try out a new band, or a band's new releases, or a film I've heard/read about; if I happen to like what I hear and/or see, I check Amazon for a good deal. Thanks to what I read online, and what I can try online, my musical tastes have expanded dramatically in just the past year. My only restriction from giving back is a high school budget vs. the RIAA's cartel pricing, so it can be months (with all the other worthy things I spend money on) before I do finally get around to that CD. I do still maintain that effort, though.
I also download copies of what I already legally own on other media. Though some would like to say it's of questionable legality, is there anything wrong with paying a few bucks for a Pink Floyd cassette and not wanting to pay again just to get it in "the best format ever" (after records and 8-tracks and cassettes and CDs...)?
If the RIAA and MPAA would loosen their grip and stop making it into such a "forbidden fruit" issue, maybe the general public could actually hear this presented as a valid argument. I like to know what I'm paying for beyond the hype of paid-off disk jockeys and industry-owned magazines -- especially when an hour-long audio experience makes my wallet $15 lighter.
And, if you want other people to play fair, you have to start playing fair yourself.
...is that privacy is officially dead for the common man, alongside celebrities. Gradually the principle that being left alone is a basic right has been slowly disregarded. Obviously, it would happen to the high-profile characters first (evidence for which includes various tabloids and the TV Guide Channel's coverage of the Anna Nicole Smith tragedy-of-the-century media event). However, especially with the rise of technology which makes it easy to create, store, and share information, people take the raw power and run with it without considering the consequences -- or with direct intentions for its use, which is even worse.
Records are stored about us from birth -- a birth certificate quickly proceeds to a billion "quick surveys" as to what baby food we prefer; then our academic records and MySpace accounts as teenagers and young adults; financial information and buying habits as we enter the workforce; and so on. There have even been debates as of late as to whether insurance coverage should be determined by the genetic fitness of a client. I hate to make the comparison due to the cliché, but we really are in the Matrix, being fed upon by marketing companies and marketing companies' suppliers galore without gaining anything in return (except the golden opportunity to own or play a minorly, critically important part in Next Big Thing 2.0).
Though we can't stop the march of technology, there need to be trustable non-profit lobbying groups dedicated to at least turning the march in the proper direction -- to benefit the consumer, to provide safety and a level of appealing innovation, without invading the sanctitiy of our homes, our lives, and even our bodies. The government has quickly proven that it alone definitely cannot be trusted to look after the citizens' best interests in this and other matters, especially when they're interested in the spying tech themselves.
Constantly staring at me from afar is still stalking, and it should be recognized and punished as such. As for I, I feel like putting up more curtains, and wearing sunglasses when I go out. No man is an island, but that doesn't mean he should let anyone in his domain to peek under the bed or search in his cabinets to gather ideas about what to charge him for.
I'm still using 1.5.0.9, giving 2.0 a little bit of time for all or most of my favorite extensions to catch up, and some bugs to be resolved. (I'm also telling myself "I have to organize my bookmarks so I can switch," as if that's ever happening anyway.)
* A search engine that rec0gn!s3s 4|_|_ 5p3c!4L cH4rAters
You do realize that t3h h4x0rz came up with 13375p34k in the first place just to avoid searches for "73h 600|) 57|_|ph" by the unwashed and undeserving masses.
Any 14m3r can get ahold of LimeWire these days to search the joke that is Gnutella. The slightly more-dedicated will search for torrents on websites and via IRC. It's the real 1337 m4$t0rz amongst us who will Google-hack for open folders on servers and simply get our 1337 w4r3z shipped "express." (Mmm, mmm, leeching.)
Screw the great equalizer that is the Intereweb, you should get what you deserve. Open MP3 folders galore to explore the highs and lows of house mixes for the h4x0rz, and teasing pr0n0 trailer WMVs for everyone else. Plus the resultant spyware for the exclusively Norton-bound 1us3rz. =P
The DE-9 (9 pin D-shell connector) is a type of D-subminiature electrical connector most commonly used for the RS 232 serial port on the IBM AT and compatible computers. DB-9 is a common misnomer for the DE-9. (A true DB-9 connector would have 9 pins in a connector the shape and size of a DB-25, the other 16 pins would just be missing.) (Wikipedia)
Seriously, do people even work on catching themselves on errors like this? I know that they sound quite the same, but we did, after all, decide to move to a smaller physical connector instead of trying two data streams on a DB-25, or even just leaving the pins out. How many years have we had to catch up?
Yes, I'm a nit-picker, and quite proud of it when I'm not shoving my homework aside half-finished.
You darned blue-seeing terrorists.
All of the Blu-ray and HD-DVD hype is all very nice, but there are two points to consider. First off, DVD players were first released a decade ago. It's only been within the past few years that they've come down to a consumer-friendly price, many of the quality issues have been resolved (I cringe at how much my discs like to skip on the player I have), and they've finally surpassed VHS in ubiquity. At the same time, the industry is heavily pushing not one, but TWO new formats which, aside from the trendy (and I should say money-laden) technophiles, are being almost totally ignored. Even with the greed of marketing departments and yacht-sailing executives, it's going to be awhile before their new conspiracy pays off and we've jumped to yet another format, in a cycle that seems it'll never end. Secondly, if we are going to advance, and lord knows we are, why should we be stuck with a device that can store only 15 or 25 gigabytes per disc layer, when even nearly-5GB DVD-Rs are proving inadequate against the ballooning size of hard drives and the content we store on them? The old tape back-up drives are currently the only relatively common formats even close to keeping pace with real-world hard disk sizes. In my opinion, Blu-ray and HD-DVD should be overlooked entirely. At the same time as we're hearing the hype for 50GB Sony Blu-ray discs, Wikipedia lists no less than six new formats, the more competitive of which store anything from 300GB per disc (Tapestry Media), enough to cover the most common large hard drive sizes as it is; to 3.9 terabytes (Holographic Versatile Disc), which will take care of even the largest of geeks' drive set-ups for months to come; to finally the most promising, the protein-coated disc, which may very well give us up to 50 TB of biologically engineered storage. That's a lot of geek pr0n. ;)
On the whole, it seems that the "Next Big Thing" marketers, while certainly tall enough to see over the giant piles of money inherent in effective consumer manipulation, are too short-sighted to realize that if they try to commit us to these formats now, they'll miss out on the truly Bigger Things coming up... ...and will have to play catch-up in five years with this week's formats, at even greater cost.
Well. Maybe they do know what they're doing after all. :P
I myself have a minimum of five windows in at any one time, often 10 or 15 for normal work, and up to about 25 when I'm really busy. In Firefox I have anywhere from 5-150 tabs, depending on whether or not I'm checking e-mail, IT news, Wikipedia, everything2, or some subtle combination. I also have a few tabs open in two Trillian windows. And I'll often be found messing with another computer directly to the left or right while waiting for a program or webpage to load. Multitasking truly is nice.