Some people are born stupid. There's not a whole you can do to help them.
And some people are born without anyone that gives a damn about them and no way to find out that there is more to life than what goes on on their street corner, or that there is any possible way for them to have any other kind of life than what they see around them.
It's genetics and evolution. Stop equating it with politics.
Bullshit. There is a lot more to it than genetics and politics too. It's about people getting a chance that their parents couldn't or didn't bother to give them. There is no reason that people that screw up shouldn't get a second chance, unless they committed a crime so severe that they won't be getting out of jail anyway.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the education system in this country.
Who the hell are you to make such a declaration? I know a hell of a lot of teachers and administrators would disagree with you quite vehemently. But of course they must be wrong, seeing as you've pronounced the system to be free of any defects.
If, people who are dirt poor had a good chance to go to college without committing a felony to get there - this discussion becomes moot.
True, and as I said, I'm all for that too. But that hasn't happened yet, and it would be very wrong to just write off the lives of those who are already in prison.
Sure, just like Social Security cards weren't going to be used as IDs. Just try getting any sort of financial services (i.e. a savings or checking account, credit card, etc.) without one. Now, without having a savings or checking account, try cashing a check you get from your employer (companies often use out-of-state banks). You'll be gouged with a large fee (usually 1-2%) by whoever cashes it. Try investing without it. Try getting a loan. Basically, since there is no law prohibiting banks or other institutions from using your SS# as an ID, it gets done everywhere.
When Microsoft has control over authentication on the net, the Passport ID will become the SS# of the Internet (and will almost certainly be linked to your actual SS#). Passport IDs will be required for most transactions and then everything you do, online or offline, will be tied to your SS#.
What's the alternative? Live like a day-worker, stuffing money under your mattress and shelling out a generous portion of your paycheck to someone just so you can the money you worked for.
So write your own program instead of building on someone else's work. Or simply don't distribute the resulting program outside of your company after you add your module. Any way you look at it, it's still no more restrictive than copyright, and in most cases much less restrictive.
If it was open, Microsoft could implement it their own way and bundle it with the OS, making it a new defacto standard. If I were Sun, I wouldn't want to risk that.
What do you know about prisoners? How many do you talk to regularly? I'll tell you right now that many of them wouldn't be where they are if it weren't for the fact that they came from dirt poor families and lived in places that are as dangerous as some 3rd-world countries. You learn a whole different view of life when your own life is constantly in danger.
I know I wouldn't have been able to learn much if I had to go to a school where I was afraid of being attacked and possibly killed (the high schools I went to were bad enough for me, I can't even imagine what would have happened if I'd gone to a "bad" school.) There are a lot of problems that we don't address in this country. There are a lot of kids that don't really get a chance. A lot of them end up in prison. I think they at least deserve a real second chance. Just tossing them back on the street when they get out isn't even a chance.
As for whether it's fair or not, I think you're right. It's not fair. But neither is the fact that some people are born rich and others are born with nothing. Life isn't fair. This program could help some people out that had even less of a chance than most. That said, I agree that we need to do more for everyone as far as education is concerned. Education should be the foundation of this country, but instead it's just another thing for politicians to squabble over when election time rolls around. It's pathetic. The whole standardized testing crap pisses me off too. It's not teaching kids anything! They memorize crap and then forget it all after the test. They never actually had to use the information for anything, so it doesn't stick with them. I could go on and on about this, but I think you get the point. There are a lot of things we need to do for education, offering it to prisoners is just one of them, but I happen to think it's an important one. Perhaps if such a thing does come to pass, we could then use it as a lever to get more funding and common sense injected into education for everyone.
I couldn't afford college either. Unfortunately, I didn't qualify for loans for some reason either (Later I found out that I was apparently a bit too honest when filling out the forms. This was explained to me by a relative that works for a big college and deals with that sort of thing every day. Hint: don't fill in anything that isn't mandatory). I've had a job since I turned 16. Usually manual labor type jobs, at least until I was about 21. Then I had managed to save up enough for a semester of community college. I took classes at night and worked during the day. I'm still taking night classes (though I've had to skip a couple semesters), and someday I might even manage to finish my degree. I finally managed to get in on the bottom floor of a good (consulting) company (as a temp at first). Eventually I got hired on and I'm trying to build up my skills so I can keep advancing towards the job I want. The company pays my tuition now.
I really wish that I had been able to go right into college full-time after high-school. I think that given the importance of college today, it should be available to everyone, regardless of whether they happen to make it through the mess of the loan/grant system. If we want to keep progressing as a country, we really need a better education system. I happen to think that the current system sucks and isn't really helping to prepare kids for the world they will face when they get out of school. They memorize a bunch of crap for tests, but they don't really understand how to apply it in the real world. From what I understand, there have been studies that show that the methods used to drill these facts into kids for the tests don't have much success in creating lasting memory. They take the test and forget much of what they memorized after that since it isn't linked to anything else in their mind. I'm more of a believer in teaching kids to learn rather than the current method of "teaching to the test." I hope that America wakes up to the need for better education and begins to demand it.
And would what we consider "decent pay" be "decent" to some gang kid whose been making a thousand a day as a runner for the local corner patrol?
Factor in the fact that he's a lot less likely to get killed or arrested, and it might start looking better. Not to mention the fact that I don't think low-level dealers make that kind of cash. My step-brother used to deal, and he didn't make anywhere near that much (though when you're 15, it seems like a lot). You have to be higher up on the food chain.
but I know too many uneducated, good hearted people who bust their asses at a minimum wage job every day to try and pay the bills and feed their families to fully get behind giving criminals the opportunity that some law-abiding Americans won't get.
This sounds more like an argument for better education funding and opportunities in general. College is pretty much required if you want a good job anymore. I think that college should be an opportunity open to everyone, regardless of their income or status. Schools all over need better funding and better management. We, as a country, should be demanding this. We aren't going to get it from Bush. We need to make this a clear priority for the next election.
Oh come on! They aren't gonna be sending them to Harvard! They'll get an education similar to what you would get at a community college. As for the fairness of it, I don't see the problem. We suffer as a society due to crime. If we can reduce the crime rate by teaching criminals to do something worthwhile with their lives, then it helps us all. Whining about the fairness of it seems really petty and childish.
Some people choose to go to school, some people decide to do drugs and be a thug.
I don't think you can simplify it like that. There are extremely complex reasons why people commit crimes. Sure, there is a point where they actually decide to do something illegal, but there is usually a long list of circumstances that lead up to that point and have a huge influence on the decision. Before you flip out and start pounding out a reply, hear me out. I'm not trying to excuse criminals for their actions. I'm not saying they shouldn't go to prison for it. I'm saying that life isn't fair and some people get a big head start and others start with their feet shackled. But we're all expected to live together and not break the law. The least we can do is try to keep people that screw up somehow from spiralling downward in a way that means they'll never be anything but a burden to society.
And if you think people that murder and rape others can come out of prison rehabilitiated, then I just hope they move into your neighborhood rather than mine.
I don't think anyone was saying that every criminal should be rehabilitated and released. I'm sure that many will still spend their entire life in prison. But there are many others that will be released at some point. Some after only a couple of years. We should allow them to do something productive with their time so that they will have a viable alternative to crime. I think that the benefits to society of such a program outweigh the drawbacks.
You have absolutely no clue what US prisons are like, do you? I happen to know people that work in prisons, and one of my brother's friends happens to be in prison right now. It's a twisted, fucked up, sick place to be. You try to make it sound like the lap of luxury.
Seems like you've set up a nice straw man here, but let's try to get back to the original idea at hand. People go to prison when they commit a crime. They don't stay there forever usually. They are eventually released. Now, as it stands, they spend their time in prison learning new criminal tricks and probably developing some pretty bad psychological problems. So, what happens when they are released? Well, they are even worse off than when they went in. They have no new (legal) skills. They can't get a decent job. They are by all means second-class citizens. What's the likely outcome? They turn back to crime since they have no future.
The proposed alternative here is that we provide them with education so that they will have an alternative to crime when they are released. Nobody is saying that all criminals can or will be rehabilitated. But there are large numbers of criminals incarcerated for relatively minor crimes. They'll probably be in for 5 years or less. That's a lot of time that could be used in a productive way. We don't know what the success rate would be for such a program, but I think it's worth trying, simply because the possibility of improving society is worth the very little risk that such a program entails.
Why shouldn't higher education be a right just as K-12 education? You can't get a very good job with just a K-12 education anymore. Everyone knows this. So why don't we extend education for the extra 4 years? Why should it be limited to those who already have the means to pay for it? Seems like it's those who don't have the means that need it the most. As for educating people in prison, I'm all for it. I can't think of any reason why we shouldn't do what we can to make sure that the people coming out of prison are equipped to do something with their lives besides commit more crimes.
It's quite easy to change the detail levels and such in Quake3. Anyone could do it without even knowing a thing about graphics. Of course it's possible to get even finer control by juggling a dozen different variables, but it's by no means necessary. And ATI isn't giving them that fine control with this hack either. It does the same thing that the simple Q3 options let anyone do (i.e. increase framerate at the expense of image quality), except that ATI doesn't let the user choose for himself.
The point is that users can already lower the settings to get better framerates. Why don't they let the users decide? Because that wouldn't help their scores in one of the most popular benchmarks, of course. The main problem with the claim that they are just tweaking the driver to help out with a certain game is that they didn't disclose this little tidbit to reviewers! If this is such a noble effort to help the gamers get more performance, why haven't they said anything about it?
But all people seem to care about is 3D speed. Can you really blame a company for catering to what the people who pay the bills want?
I certainly can, when they are deceptive about it. They are automatically dropping the image quality. The user could do this himself if he wanted to, the options are there. So, helping the users is obviously not why they are doing this. What does that leave? Helping themselves in benchmarks, of course. By not disclosing this tactic, they have committed fraud IMO.
While I tend to agree with you, I don't happen to know of an easy, understandable way to argue against RIAA (or anyone else) rhetoric about property rights. If copyright does not create a property right, it does seem to create something that is roughly analogous to property, which is control over something tangible.
What is needed is a concise way to re-direct the argument back into realistic terms in a way that can't be disputed by the copyright industry.
(considering that most Slashdot readers are openly hostile toward non-Linux Free Software operating systems, like OpenBSD, I think the original supposition was a correct evaluation of the Slashdot attitudes)
Where the heck do you get that from? MOST/. readers? There are probably over half a million/. readers now. do you really think that the majority of them are hostile towards non-Linux OSes? I think there is a rather vocal, but tiny minority that are. I don't think you can find evidence of anything beyond that.
The vendor is almost always notified in advance of an exploit being released by a reputable security group (usually a couple of weeks at least). Of course this doesn't mean that exploits didn't exist already, passed around in less-than-reputable circles.
Slashdot Mirror
No, request and proposal are two different things. A proposal is more akin to an offer than a request.
Some people are born stupid. There's not a whole you can do to help them.
And some people are born without anyone that gives a damn about them and no way to find out that there is more to life than what goes on on their street corner, or that there is any possible way for them to have any other kind of life than what they see around them.
It's genetics and evolution. Stop equating it with politics.
Bullshit. There is a lot more to it than genetics and politics too. It's about people getting a chance that their parents couldn't or didn't bother to give them. There is no reason that people that screw up shouldn't get a second chance, unless they committed a crime so severe that they won't be getting out of jail anyway.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the education system in this country.
Who the hell are you to make such a declaration? I know a hell of a lot of teachers and administrators would disagree with you quite vehemently. But of course they must be wrong, seeing as you've pronounced the system to be free of any defects.
If, people who are dirt poor had a good chance to go to college without committing a felony to get there - this discussion becomes moot.
True, and as I said, I'm all for that too. But that hasn't happened yet, and it would be very wrong to just write off the lives of those who are already in prison.
Sure, just like Social Security cards weren't going to be used as IDs. Just try getting any sort of financial services (i.e. a savings or checking account, credit card, etc.) without one. Now, without having a savings or checking account, try cashing a check you get from your employer (companies often use out-of-state banks). You'll be gouged with a large fee (usually 1-2%) by whoever cashes it. Try investing without it. Try getting a loan. Basically, since there is no law prohibiting banks or other institutions from using your SS# as an ID, it gets done everywhere.
When Microsoft has control over authentication on the net, the Passport ID will become the SS# of the Internet (and will almost certainly be linked to your actual SS#). Passport IDs will be required for most transactions and then everything you do, online or offline, will be tied to your SS#.
What's the alternative? Live like a day-worker, stuffing money under your mattress and shelling out a generous portion of your paycheck to someone just so you can the money you worked for.
It's the same old "Microsoft products are full of security holes" argument that's been bandied about elsewhere.
Well, they are full of security holes. The argument is "bandied about" a lot becuase it happens to be a very legitimate argument.
It's also a ton of paranoia related to the amount of data that's actually going to be stored in a Passport account.
Considering the sort of information that would be stored, and considering the first argument, I'd say the paranoia is quite justified.
So write your own program instead of building on someone else's work. Or simply don't distribute the resulting program outside of your company after you add your module. Any way you look at it, it's still no more restrictive than copyright, and in most cases much less restrictive.
If it was open, Microsoft could implement it their own way and bundle it with the OS, making it a new defacto standard. If I were Sun, I wouldn't want to risk that.
Most prisoners already have a career.
What do you know about prisoners? How many do you talk to regularly? I'll tell you right now that many of them wouldn't be where they are if it weren't for the fact that they came from dirt poor families and lived in places that are as dangerous as some 3rd-world countries. You learn a whole different view of life when your own life is constantly in danger.
I know I wouldn't have been able to learn much if I had to go to a school where I was afraid of being attacked and possibly killed (the high schools I went to were bad enough for me, I can't even imagine what would have happened if I'd gone to a "bad" school.) There are a lot of problems that we don't address in this country. There are a lot of kids that don't really get a chance. A lot of them end up in prison. I think they at least deserve a real second chance. Just tossing them back on the street when they get out isn't even a chance.
As for whether it's fair or not, I think you're right. It's not fair. But neither is the fact that some people are born rich and others are born with nothing. Life isn't fair. This program could help some people out that had even less of a chance than most. That said, I agree that we need to do more for everyone as far as education is concerned. Education should be the foundation of this country, but instead it's just another thing for politicians to squabble over when election time rolls around. It's pathetic. The whole standardized testing crap pisses me off too. It's not teaching kids anything! They memorize crap and then forget it all after the test. They never actually had to use the information for anything, so it doesn't stick with them. I could go on and on about this, but I think you get the point. There are a lot of things we need to do for education, offering it to prisoners is just one of them, but I happen to think it's an important one. Perhaps if such a thing does come to pass, we could then use it as a lever to get more funding and common sense injected into education for everyone.
I couldn't afford college either. Unfortunately, I didn't qualify for loans for some reason either (Later I found out that I was apparently a bit too honest when filling out the forms. This was explained to me by a relative that works for a big college and deals with that sort of thing every day. Hint: don't fill in anything that isn't mandatory). I've had a job since I turned 16. Usually manual labor type jobs, at least until I was about 21. Then I had managed to save up enough for a semester of community college. I took classes at night and worked during the day. I'm still taking night classes (though I've had to skip a couple semesters), and someday I might even manage to finish my degree. I finally managed to get in on the bottom floor of a good (consulting) company (as a temp at first). Eventually I got hired on and I'm trying to build up my skills so I can keep advancing towards the job I want. The company pays my tuition now.
I really wish that I had been able to go right into college full-time after high-school. I think that given the importance of college today, it should be available to everyone, regardless of whether they happen to make it through the mess of the loan/grant system. If we want to keep progressing as a country, we really need a better education system. I happen to think that the current system sucks and isn't really helping to prepare kids for the world they will face when they get out of school. They memorize a bunch of crap for tests, but they don't really understand how to apply it in the real world. From what I understand, there have been studies that show that the methods used to drill these facts into kids for the tests don't have much success in creating lasting memory. They take the test and forget much of what they memorized after that since it isn't linked to anything else in their mind. I'm more of a believer in teaching kids to learn rather than the current method of "teaching to the test." I hope that America wakes up to the need for better education and begins to demand it.
And would what we consider "decent pay" be "decent" to some gang kid whose been making a thousand a day as a runner for the local corner patrol?
Factor in the fact that he's a lot less likely to get killed or arrested, and it might start looking better. Not to mention the fact that I don't think low-level dealers make that kind of cash. My step-brother used to deal, and he didn't make anywhere near that much (though when you're 15, it seems like a lot). You have to be higher up on the food chain.
but I know too many uneducated, good hearted people who bust their asses at a minimum wage job every day to try and pay the bills and feed their families to fully get behind giving criminals the opportunity that some law-abiding Americans won't get.
This sounds more like an argument for better education funding and opportunities in general. College is pretty much required if you want a good job anymore. I think that college should be an opportunity open to everyone, regardless of their income or status. Schools all over need better funding and better management. We, as a country, should be demanding this. We aren't going to get it from Bush. We need to make this a clear priority for the next election.
Oh come on! They aren't gonna be sending them to Harvard! They'll get an education similar to what you would get at a community college. As for the fairness of it, I don't see the problem. We suffer as a society due to crime. If we can reduce the crime rate by teaching criminals to do something worthwhile with their lives, then it helps us all. Whining about the fairness of it seems really petty and childish.
Some people choose to go to school, some people decide to do drugs and be a thug.
I don't think you can simplify it like that. There are extremely complex reasons why people commit crimes. Sure, there is a point where they actually decide to do something illegal, but there is usually a long list of circumstances that lead up to that point and have a huge influence on the decision. Before you flip out and start pounding out a reply, hear me out. I'm not trying to excuse criminals for their actions. I'm not saying they shouldn't go to prison for it. I'm saying that life isn't fair and some people get a big head start and others start with their feet shackled. But we're all expected to live together and not break the law. The least we can do is try to keep people that screw up somehow from spiralling downward in a way that means they'll never be anything but a burden to society.
And if you think people that murder and rape others can come out of prison rehabilitiated, then I just hope they move into your neighborhood rather than mine.
I don't think anyone was saying that every criminal should be rehabilitated and released. I'm sure that many will still spend their entire life in prison. But there are many others that will be released at some point. Some after only a couple of years. We should allow them to do something productive with their time so that they will have a viable alternative to crime. I think that the benefits to society of such a program outweigh the drawbacks.
You have absolutely no clue what US prisons are like, do you? I happen to know people that work in prisons, and one of my brother's friends happens to be in prison right now. It's a twisted, fucked up, sick place to be. You try to make it sound like the lap of luxury.
Seems like you've set up a nice straw man here, but let's try to get back to the original idea at hand. People go to prison when they commit a crime. They don't stay there forever usually. They are eventually released. Now, as it stands, they spend their time in prison learning new criminal tricks and probably developing some pretty bad psychological problems. So, what happens when they are released? Well, they are even worse off than when they went in. They have no new (legal) skills. They can't get a decent job. They are by all means second-class citizens. What's the likely outcome? They turn back to crime since they have no future.
The proposed alternative here is that we provide them with education so that they will have an alternative to crime when they are released. Nobody is saying that all criminals can or will be rehabilitated. But there are large numbers of criminals incarcerated for relatively minor crimes. They'll probably be in for 5 years or less. That's a lot of time that could be used in a productive way. We don't know what the success rate would be for such a program, but I think it's worth trying, simply because the possibility of improving society is worth the very little risk that such a program entails.
Why shouldn't higher education be a right just as K-12 education? You can't get a very good job with just a K-12 education anymore. Everyone knows this. So why don't we extend education for the extra 4 years? Why should it be limited to those who already have the means to pay for it? Seems like it's those who don't have the means that need it the most. As for educating people in prison, I'm all for it. I can't think of any reason why we shouldn't do what we can to make sure that the people coming out of prison are equipped to do something with their lives besides commit more crimes.
It's quite easy to change the detail levels and such in Quake3. Anyone could do it without even knowing a thing about graphics. Of course it's possible to get even finer control by juggling a dozen different variables, but it's by no means necessary. And ATI isn't giving them that fine control with this hack either. It does the same thing that the simple Q3 options let anyone do (i.e. increase framerate at the expense of image quality), except that ATI doesn't let the user choose for himself.
The point is that users can already lower the settings to get better framerates. Why don't they let the users decide? Because that wouldn't help their scores in one of the most popular benchmarks, of course. The main problem with the claim that they are just tweaking the driver to help out with a certain game is that they didn't disclose this little tidbit to reviewers! If this is such a noble effort to help the gamers get more performance, why haven't they said anything about it?
But all people seem to care about is 3D speed. Can you really blame a company for catering to what the people who pay the bills want?
I certainly can, when they are deceptive about it. They are automatically dropping the image quality. The user could do this himself if he wanted to, the options are there. So, helping the users is obviously not why they are doing this. What does that leave? Helping themselves in benchmarks, of course. By not disclosing this tactic, they have committed fraud IMO.
the last thing they want is for it to spread and be seen...
More like spread and be seen and analyzed for all the misinformation, errors of omission, and outright lies it contains.
While I tend to agree with you, I don't happen to know of an easy, understandable way to argue against RIAA (or anyone else) rhetoric about property rights. If copyright does not create a property right, it does seem to create something that is roughly analogous to property, which is control over something tangible.
What is needed is a concise way to re-direct the argument back into realistic terms in a way that can't be disputed by the copyright industry.
Nitpicky in the context of his post. He's talking about copyright, which is a creation of the government.
regarding your sig: while I am in no way religious, I believe that the quote is ignorant and actually false.
You make a powerful argument there. I don't think I can form a response to that.
(considering that most Slashdot readers are openly hostile toward non-Linux Free Software operating systems, like OpenBSD, I think the original supposition was a correct evaluation of the Slashdot attitudes)
Where the heck do you get that from? MOST /. readers? There are probably over half a million /. readers now. do you really think that the majority of them are hostile towards non-Linux OSes? I think there is a rather vocal, but tiny minority that are. I don't think you can find evidence of anything beyond that.
I live in the world's most motorized city, L.A. and have since 1997. I have never driven.
I'm guessing they either have halfway decent public transportation (which most cities don't), or you live very close to where you work.
The vendor is almost always notified in advance of an exploit being released by a reputable security group (usually a couple of weeks at least). Of course this doesn't mean that exploits didn't exist already, passed around in less-than-reputable circles.