Sure, I'll agree with you on some of these points, but:
Your phone rings, you pick up. You hear a momentary "click" as you're transferred to an operator, who tells you that you've just won a trip to Jamaica, and that he needs your credit card information to proceed with awarding you your trip. What do you do? Do you assume that he's legit and dole out your credit card to him, or do you use your brain?
The same thinking isn't applied to web objects often enough at all. So, Average Joe may not understand the fundamentals upon which a web application is built -- nor should they have to -- but they should certainly understand the fundamentals of human behaviour. If not, clicking on every link and every popup is certain to teach them a thing or two, fairly quickly.
Also, how is this Facebook's problem? They provide the medium, but they can't be responsible for the message it delivers, or they'd be actively censoring everything everyone does on their site. Have you seen some of the drivel these sites deliver? Can you imagine being one of the operators charged with keeping it all in line? I can't. I'd go mad. Or, rather, I'd go mad if I were policing today's level of FB content -- if FB were censored, I doubt it would ever have become this popular.
This is not new news, really. There is always some scam going around that takes advantage of the inability of most users to distinguish untrusted content from trusted content, not to mention the people who click Yes to every pop-up without understanding what they've just done.
Facebook is a gold mine for scams like this. There are way too many people using the site that don't care about the dangers. Apathy and ignorance are best ways to spread this kind of thing, and they are found aplenty in any social networking crowd, at least when it comes to the technology behind the social aspect.
... the government decides to turn this botnet against the civilian population in some way?
I mean, at some point (if I recall correctly, I am not American, I am Canadian), there were laws created saying that Americans have the right to arm themselves in case their government turns against them. Does that include the case of computer warfare?
What would happen in the case of other countries that this botnet could be used against? Would that be considered an act of war?
>> It would be very easy to demonstrate to a judge in a court room that in the case >> of most ISPs, IP addresses are dynamic and do not stay fixed on a particular PC; >> I'm sure even the most basic of ISP logs would clearly show this.
And yet, the *AA have attempted to show that this doesn't matter at countless colleges and universities by forcing the burden of proof upon these institutions. "We know you have a thief among you, find them for us" is not how a case should be built.
>> that means that legal CD purchasers like me pay more for our purchasers and end >> up subsidising the thieves.
Afraid not. You pay more for your music because the record labels and the RIAA wish it to be so.
The fact is that sales have risen during these years where "piracy" has run rampant. I would link to statistics, but I am at work and don't have time to find them. I'm sure someone else will do it at some point.
>> If everyone chose to steal their music, what would happen then?
Well, hopefully, the RIAAs of the world would realize that their business model isn't something most people are interested in funding. I don't know about you, but I don't feel like paying $15 for a CD that has one or two interesting tracks and 10 garbage tracks, and that's what they are forcing me to do in most cases. Services like iTunes allow me to bypass this antiquated way of doing business, so I use iTunes where I can.
Where I can't use iTunes, I refuse to spend the money until I know that the product (in its entirety) is worth paying for, and I don't see anything wrong with that.
In this case, they are not even the providers of the information. They are the providers of a billboard, and on that billboard is their information, surrounded by a bunch of mostly tacky, and often completely unrelated, information from other people that usually have nothing to do with them in the first place.
They are facilitators, not providers, and the problem is that they often have no control over what information they are proxying to their customers.
"they actually are even smaller in terms of online spending"
Yes, and now, not only will we not wish to be bothered by the incessantly annoying ads that show up on your web sites, we won't care about your products, either.
If you, as a web site owner or developer, wish to alienate us from your products and services, this is a great way to do it. If presented with two sites with a competing product, one of which unjustly treats me like a criminal, and one of which does not, I guarantee you my (apparently non-existant) online spending will be done at the latter.
Do you understand the fallacy of this entire line of thinking?
One armed student STARTED this, right at the beginning. Irrespective of whether or not his weapons were legal, whether he had permits or none, whether the weapons were concealed or not, this man committed horrible acts by way of the weapons he carried. If you think that arming everyone is the solution to this problem, I have an idea for you.
Halfway around the world, there is another country that has this kind of problem every single day, yet we seem to turn a blind eye to their plight. I'm talking about Iraq. There are tens, hundreds of people killed in attacks in Iraq almost daily. Average citizens in Iraq are armed, trained, and defend themselves and their families, religions, beliefs and country every day. Consider the impact of this kind of system. You can read about and see the results every day in the news.
I know that I'm speaking to a wall here -- I won't engage further in this debate, but please try to understand the other side of the coin here.
Assuming there are no rules within the game environment to prevent this
This falls within the realm of a wholly contained artificial environment. It is up to the owners (or creators, or maintainers, or what have you) of that environment to set up "legal" codes to deal with situations like this. It has happened in Everquest, it has happened in World of Warcraft, and I'm sure that given enough abuse, it will happen in the EVE universe as well.
For the record, there used to be a vast number of "casino" scams in the Everquest world (random such-and-such a number and I'll pay you double your bet, triple your bet, etc). When a player would win at such a scam, the scammer would disconnect, keeping the player's virtual money. These people were reported en masse by the player base, and eventually, the majority of them disappeared as their accounts were suspended.
Internet access has been marketed to the better part of the world for years as an infinite resource, full of promise, that can solve all of your problems, tie your shoes, start your car and julienne your fries. All this for a low, low rate of $xx.yy per month.
Is this possible proposed policy to establish equity? If so, I'm okay with that. I've often wondered that for the same $30/month as my neighbor I can download five of the latest linux distributions, sample 20 or 30 trial software packages (large).
Why should I have to pay extra to download trial software packages and Linux distributions simply because my neighbour does not wish to do so? That's horrible. That's like saying that if my neighbour buys a car and doesn't use it as often as I use mine, I should have to pay more money. He can drive just as much as I do, I simply choose to do so more often, or to take different roads, or to take the longer way home. It costs me more gasoline, but one could argue that using my computer more often costs me more in electricity.
If we saw a lobby group advocating mass tolls on our roads so that we could tax those who drive more often (I'm not talking highways), there would be mass hysteria. Why is this any different?
I don't doubt a significant slice of internet bandwidth is absorbed by indiscriminate downloading and uploading, and streaming.
This is where a lot of people will disagree. What you call "indiscriminate", most people will call "my right". Granted, all of the providers that I've ever been with "reserve the right" to modify their access agreements at any time. I guarantee you, however, that if my ISP imposes this garbage on me, I'll simply find another. And there will always be others.
Businesses, by the way, are not here to charge us a fair price. They are here to make money.
Yet another ploy for the record industry to put fear into individuals. I hope one day the record industry burns and dies.
In order for this to happen, you have to stop supporting them. Don't buy (or download) their products. Don't listen to their mass marketed drivel. Tell your friends, your family, and everyone else you think will listen that every time you support these companies, you are chipping away at your freedoms.
As long as the majority of us continute to pay the record industries money, they will simply continue in their quest to make sure that we all pay them more money. If we stand up for our rights, stop buying their products, and make sure that they realize that they are here to sell entertainment to us, and that we do not exist to buy entertainment from them, then that will be a start.
All this talk of "screw them" and "I hope they die off" and whatever else will do nothing to protect our rights, especially when governments are making it easier and easier for these corrupt and greedy companies to infringe on our privacy.
... so that they are not victims of bots that harvest Whois information and use it to mass-mail. My whois information is correct (i.e. not intentionally falsified), and I get all kinds of junk mail for my domain(s) that is, I'm sure, a result of this practice.
So, I can't say as I blame these people, at least, those of them that are in the right. Sure, it opens the door for phishish, scamming and all kinds of maliciousness, but there are also those people that are simply attempting to hide from the exploiters of a known broken system.
There are some fairly important legal victories on that page. It is simply a case, it seems, of harping on the EFF for their failures without recognizing that they're human, and they lose cases. They also win cases.
We don't want ICANN to be run by the United Nations.
No, wait, we don't want ICANN to be run -like- the United Nations. Okay.
So, ICANN has already passed decisions on the major resolutions of interest until next year, and instead is now the subject of political tugs of war, so much so that nothing is being accomplished except idle banter between politicians, committees and private industry.
I'd say that it's already being run like the UN! =)
The company distributing many of the world's Internet addresses is taking more steps this week to fend off criticism that it gives the U.S. government too much control over its operations.
[...]
For instance, in August, many countries weren't happy about a proposal to have porn sites' Web addresses end in.xxx, rather than.com. But only one government, the United States, was able to actually intercede and eventually scuttle the plan, even though the plan had ICANN's backing.
This is not the opinion of the poster, but rather a pretty decent paraphrasing of the article itself. The heart of the issue is the fact that ICANN should (or should not) fall under U.S. jurisdiction, and this is just one of the reasons why some people have a problem with the involvement of the U.S. Government.
Don't get me wrong, I applaud the idea of all of these ideas to make ICANN seem more internationally minded, but in the end, this kind of example (the.xxx issue) will remain dominant, as they have changed nothing that would stop the U.S. Government from stepping in in much the same way and putting a stop to anything that they do not approve of.
We will probably not see a true resolution to this issue until a resolution is overturned that the rest of the world favours, and the U.S. does not. Only at that point will ICANN truly be able to show where they stand.
Even in the introductory paragraph, we can see that there is some confusion here.
The ICANN (the company that distributes most of the world's internet addresses) is denying that it gives the US government too much control over its operations.
And yet...
For instance, the US was the only country able to stop ICANN from using.xxx for pr0n domains, instead of.com.
So, the US doesn't have much control over its operations, and yet it was the only country that was able to step in and strike down an ICANN resolution. Isn't this kind of like saying "1 + 1 = 2, but 1 + 1 = 3"?
2. It was locked by me, both on consoles and in X, and,
3. It wasn't one of my IT co-workers, it was an employee from out of town that needed a place to work. My desk was not a friendly place to sit just anyone at, what with all of the equipment that I was testing sitting on it, and even if that CD that I made was "ready for deployment", as it were, MY installation of Linux was certainly not set up for the layman.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there weren't still issues with the use of this particular image on the desktop, for everyone, including the guy that tried to sit at my desk. I am saying that it was very close, and things have to come close before they're complete. This only happens if people work on the problem. I'm sorry to say that I was out of a job before I could recommend this to the director of IT; but since the company I was working for had purchased a site license for Windows client installations, I doubt it would have mattered right then and there anyway.
No, that is certainly not why I was let go. I was downsized.
I was in charge of corporate Linux servers across the company and installed Linux on my workstation as it enabled me to do my job more efficiently. All of the Windows users that I helped during the course of my helpdesk duties never noticed that I was running Linux -- why would they? -- and it did not adversely affect my productivity in any way that would have resulted in my being let go. My boss(es) knew that I ran Linux. If they were bothered by this, it was only because I was one of the only IT types that knew how to fix it if it broke.
Ironically enough, though, I was also the project manager for corporate desktop standards and OS deployment, and that certainly wasn't using Linux, much to my dismay.
I was able, at some point a few years back, to produce a Ghost image with Red Hat, OpenOffice, and a login model that used my office's Windows infrastructure to authenticate users automatically. It worked very well. I used it on several test PCs and was able to boot them up, ghost them, and have them come up connected and ready to use.
It was fairly straightforward to set things up with simple additions to/etc/skel. The only real kneebiter was the fact that the vast majority of the office required Outlook, and for some reason (I don't recall what) Evolution wouldn't quite cut it. I seem to recall problems with lookups in the Active Directory using Evolution, but for all I know that's been fixed by now.
I ran this thing on my PC for months before my employer even noticed. I used VMware for my Windows needs (as I was a network administrator, I needed to run some troubleshooting in Windows for user support) and Samba for all of my day-to-day shares and printing. In the end, the only reason anyone knew what I was running was that I was sick one day, and someone tried to sit at my desk, with very small amounts of success.
It takes exorbitantly large fines and jail terms to stop bars and convenience stores from selling alcohol and cigarettes to children. You think that retailers are going to care about selling M-rated games to children when no penalties are in place if they do so? Sorry, no dice.
If you are a parent, become more active in your child's life. If they want to buy games that are rated as too violent or suggestive or whatever for them, get involved. Tell them why this is the case. Make sure that they understand why they shouldn't buy the game(s). And, after all this, if they still feel like buying the game(s), step in and stop them from doing it. You are a parent -- this is your JOB, to steer your children away from things that they should not be doing.
No matter how many committees or advisory boards or ratings exist out there, if you're not doing your job as a parent, 100% of the fault rests squarely on your shoulders.
Now, if you feel that your child should be allowed to play GTA: Vice City at the age of 10, so be it, but do the right thing, and make sure they know that this is a game, not reality. There is definitely a problem out there with (admittedly, a small number of) kids that think the subject matter of games is far too real.
I used my laptop (Eurocom D500P, basically a branded Clevo) for gaming for quite a while. It had a mobile ATI 9600 Pro, 1 GB of RAM, 60 GB HD, and was a very reasonable gaming machine. Still is, but it can't handle some of what I play, notably Everquest, and that is mostly due to the game's horrible graphics engine.
Games like q3 arena, BF1942, Steam and all of its bits, and even Battlefield 2, Doom 3, Quake 4 run pretty decently with appropriate settings levels. This would probably go for any laptop that is similarly outfitted, including the Compaq/HP nc8000 that I use at work (which also has a Mobility Radeon in it). I haven't played around with any geForce Go laptops, so no idea how they fare.
Now, keep in mind that this machine, like most that can be used for high end gaming, are laptops of the "portable but plugged in" variety. They'd likely run out of battery life in minutes rather than hours if left unplugged.
I have played World of Warcraft, Everquest, and text MMORPGs (well, MUDs) for many, many years. Before this, I was a D&D fan, and other such games.
Never, ever, have I tried to anything this absurd as a result of my experiences in these games.
This is NOT the fault of the game or the company that brought into being. This does not have anything to do with the fact that these kinds of games support the idea of behavioural reinforcement (which I agree with entirely). This was the case of a child that did something that he should not have done. Where were his parents?
When I was very young, I burned myself on the furnace. I learned what "hot" was. Who neglected to teach this child that he could not fly? And, in any case, how does this differ from the whole "kid jumps off roof because he thought he could fly" thing? I'm fairly sure that that wasn't a MMORPG (or gaming in general) problem either. Perhaps we should sue Superman?
Slashdot Mirror
You're doing it wrong. The EU is not a country, it's a union of like-minded sovereign nations.
http://www.malcolmsteward.co.uk/?p=2495
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The SATA Cable Saga
Posted by Malcolm Steward on 8/20/10 Categorized as Audio
I have withdrawn the article that appears to have upset so many computer enthusiasts.
---
etc. He claims that he received death threats. Some people have too much time on their hands, and/or take things way too far.
Sure, I'll agree with you on some of these points, but:
Your phone rings, you pick up. You hear a momentary "click" as you're transferred to an operator, who tells you that you've just won a trip to Jamaica, and that he needs your credit card information to proceed with awarding you your trip. What do you do? Do you assume that he's legit and dole out your credit card to him, or do you use your brain?
The same thinking isn't applied to web objects often enough at all. So, Average Joe may not understand the fundamentals upon which a web application is built -- nor should they have to -- but they should certainly understand the fundamentals of human behaviour. If not, clicking on every link and every popup is certain to teach them a thing or two, fairly quickly.
Also, how is this Facebook's problem? They provide the medium, but they can't be responsible for the message it delivers, or they'd be actively censoring everything everyone does on their site. Have you seen some of the drivel these sites deliver? Can you imagine being one of the operators charged with keeping it all in line? I can't. I'd go mad. Or, rather, I'd go mad if I were policing today's level of FB content -- if FB were censored, I doubt it would ever have become this popular.
This is not new news, really. There is always some scam going around that takes advantage of the inability of most users to distinguish untrusted content from trusted content, not to mention the people who click Yes to every pop-up without understanding what they've just done.
Facebook is a gold mine for scams like this. There are way too many people using the site that don't care about the dangers. Apathy and ignorance are best ways to spread this kind of thing, and they are found aplenty in any social networking crowd, at least when it comes to the technology behind the social aspect.
... the government decides to turn this botnet against the civilian population in some way?
I mean, at some point (if I recall correctly, I am not American, I am Canadian), there were laws created saying that Americans have the right to arm themselves in case their government turns against them. Does that include the case of computer warfare?
What would happen in the case of other countries that this botnet could be used against? Would that be considered an act of war?
>> It would be very easy to demonstrate to a judge in a court room that in the case
>> of most ISPs, IP addresses are dynamic and do not stay fixed on a particular PC;
>> I'm sure even the most basic of ISP logs would clearly show this.
And yet, the *AA have attempted to show that this doesn't matter at countless colleges and universities by forcing the burden of proof upon these institutions. "We know you have a thief among you, find them for us" is not how a case should be built.
>> that means that legal CD purchasers like me pay more for our purchasers and end
>> up subsidising the thieves.
Afraid not. You pay more for your music because the record labels and the RIAA wish it to be so.
The fact is that sales have risen during these years where "piracy" has run rampant. I would link to statistics, but I am at work and don't have time to find them. I'm sure someone else will do it at some point.
>> If everyone chose to steal their music, what would happen then?
Well, hopefully, the RIAAs of the world would realize that their business model isn't something most people are interested in funding. I don't know about you, but I don't feel like paying $15 for a CD that has one or two interesting tracks and 10 garbage tracks, and that's what they are forcing me to do in most cases. Services like iTunes allow me to bypass this antiquated way of doing business, so I use iTunes where I can.
Where I can't use iTunes, I refuse to spend the money until I know that the product (in its entirety) is worth paying for, and I don't see anything wrong with that.
In this case, they are not even the providers of the information. They are the providers of a billboard, and on that billboard is their information, surrounded by a bunch of mostly tacky, and often completely unrelated, information from other people that usually have nothing to do with them in the first place.
They are facilitators, not providers, and the problem is that they often have no control over what information they are proxying to their customers.
"they actually are even smaller in terms of online spending"
Yes, and now, not only will we not wish to be bothered by the incessantly annoying ads that show up on your web sites, we won't care about your products, either.
If you, as a web site owner or developer, wish to alienate us from your products and services, this is a great way to do it. If presented with two sites with a competing product, one of which unjustly treats me like a criminal, and one of which does not, I guarantee you my (apparently non-existant) online spending will be done at the latter.
Do you understand the fallacy of this entire line of thinking?
One armed student STARTED this, right at the beginning. Irrespective of whether or not his weapons were legal, whether he had permits or none, whether the weapons were concealed or not, this man committed horrible acts by way of the weapons he carried. If you think that arming everyone is the solution to this problem, I have an idea for you.
Halfway around the world, there is another country that has this kind of problem every single day, yet we seem to turn a blind eye to their plight. I'm talking about Iraq. There are tens, hundreds of people killed in attacks in Iraq almost daily. Average citizens in Iraq are armed, trained, and defend themselves and their families, religions, beliefs and country every day. Consider the impact of this kind of system. You can read about and see the results every day in the news.
I know that I'm speaking to a wall here -- I won't engage further in this debate, but please try to understand the other side of the coin here.
This falls within the realm of a wholly contained artificial environment. It is up to the owners (or creators, or maintainers, or what have you) of that environment to set up "legal" codes to deal with situations like this. It has happened in Everquest, it has happened in World of Warcraft, and I'm sure that given enough abuse, it will happen in the EVE universe as well.
For the record, there used to be a vast number of "casino" scams in the Everquest world (random such-and-such a number and I'll pay you double your bet, triple your bet, etc). When a player would win at such a scam, the scammer would disconnect, keeping the player's virtual money. These people were reported en masse by the player base, and eventually, the majority of them disappeared as their accounts were suspended.
I hope that the first thing out of our collective mouths is not "bug-eyed freaks"!
Internet access has been marketed to the better part of the world for years as an infinite resource, full of promise, that can solve all of your problems, tie your shoes, start your car and julienne your fries. All this for a low, low rate of $xx.yy per month.
Why should I have to pay extra to download trial software packages and Linux distributions simply because my neighbour does not wish to do so? That's horrible. That's like saying that if my neighbour buys a car and doesn't use it as often as I use mine, I should have to pay more money. He can drive just as much as I do, I simply choose to do so more often, or to take different roads, or to take the longer way home. It costs me more gasoline, but one could argue that using my computer more often costs me more in electricity.
If we saw a lobby group advocating mass tolls on our roads so that we could tax those who drive more often (I'm not talking highways), there would be mass hysteria. Why is this any different?
This is where a lot of people will disagree. What you call "indiscriminate", most people will call "my right". Granted, all of the providers that I've ever been with "reserve the right" to modify their access agreements at any time. I guarantee you, however, that if my ISP imposes this garbage on me, I'll simply find another. And there will always be others.
Businesses, by the way, are not here to charge us a fair price. They are here to make money.
In order for this to happen, you have to stop supporting them. Don't buy (or download) their products. Don't listen to their mass marketed drivel. Tell your friends, your family, and everyone else you think will listen that every time you support these companies, you are chipping away at your freedoms.
As long as the majority of us continute to pay the record industries money, they will simply continue in their quest to make sure that we all pay them more money. If we stand up for our rights, stop buying their products, and make sure that they realize that they are here to sell entertainment to us, and that we do not exist to buy entertainment from them, then that will be a start.
All this talk of "screw them" and "I hope they die off" and whatever else will do nothing to protect our rights, especially when governments are making it easier and easier for these corrupt and greedy companies to infringe on our privacy.
... so that they are not victims of bots that harvest Whois information and use it to mass-mail. My whois information is correct (i.e. not intentionally falsified), and I get all kinds of junk mail for my domain(s) that is, I'm sure, a result of this practice.
So, I can't say as I blame these people, at least, those of them that are in the right. Sure, it opens the door for phishish, scamming and all kinds of maliciousness, but there are also those people that are simply attempting to hide from the exploiters of a known broken system.
See the EFF's legal victories page.
There are some fairly important legal victories on that page. It is simply a case, it seems, of harping on the EFF for their failures without recognizing that they're human, and they lose cases. They also win cases.
We don't want ICANN to be run by the United Nations.
No, wait, we don't want ICANN to be run -like- the United Nations. Okay.
So, ICANN has already passed decisions on the major resolutions of interest until next year, and instead is now the subject of political tugs of war, so much so that nothing is being accomplished except idle banter between politicians, committees and private industry.
I'd say that it's already being run like the UN! =)
Incorrect. Read the article.
This is not the opinion of the poster, but rather a pretty decent paraphrasing of the article itself. The heart of the issue is the fact that ICANN should (or should not) fall under U.S. jurisdiction, and this is just one of the reasons why some people have a problem with the involvement of the U.S. Government.
Don't get me wrong, I applaud the idea of all of these ideas to make ICANN seem more internationally minded, but in the end, this kind of example (the .xxx issue) will remain dominant, as they have changed nothing that would stop the U.S. Government from stepping in in much the same way and putting a stop to anything that they do not approve of.
We will probably not see a true resolution to this issue until a resolution is overturned that the rest of the world favours, and the U.S. does not. Only at that point will ICANN truly be able to show where they stand.
Even in the introductory paragraph, we can see that there is some confusion here.
And yet...
So, the US doesn't have much control over its operations, and yet it was the only country that was able to step in and strike down an ICANN resolution. Isn't this kind of like saying "1 + 1 = 2, but 1 + 1 = 3"?
Downsizing, see above.
Because 2 or 3 people asked this, my boss was all in favour of me using Linux as it increased my productivity.
Well,
1. It wasn't their workstation,
2. It was locked by me, both on consoles and in X, and,
3. It wasn't one of my IT co-workers, it was an employee from out of town that needed a place to work. My desk was not a friendly place to sit just anyone at, what with all of the equipment that I was testing sitting on it, and even if that CD that I made was "ready for deployment", as it were, MY installation of Linux was certainly not set up for the layman.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there weren't still issues with the use of this particular image on the desktop, for everyone, including the guy that tried to sit at my desk. I am saying that it was very close, and things have to come close before they're complete. This only happens if people work on the problem. I'm sorry to say that I was out of a job before I could recommend this to the director of IT; but since the company I was working for had purchased a site license for Windows client installations, I doubt it would have mattered right then and there anyway.
Baby steps.
No, that is certainly not why I was let go. I was downsized.
I was in charge of corporate Linux servers across the company and installed Linux on my workstation as it enabled me to do my job more efficiently. All of the Windows users that I helped during the course of my helpdesk duties never noticed that I was running Linux -- why would they? -- and it did not adversely affect my productivity in any way that would have resulted in my being let go. My boss(es) knew that I ran Linux. If they were bothered by this, it was only because I was one of the only IT types that knew how to fix it if it broke.
Ironically enough, though, I was also the project manager for corporate desktop standards and OS deployment, and that certainly wasn't using Linux, much to my dismay.
I was able, at some point a few years back, to produce a Ghost image with Red Hat, OpenOffice, and a login model that used my office's Windows infrastructure to authenticate users automatically. It worked very well. I used it on several test PCs and was able to boot them up, ghost them, and have them come up connected and ready to use.
/etc/skel. The only real kneebiter was the fact that the vast majority of the office required Outlook, and for some reason (I don't recall what) Evolution wouldn't quite cut it. I seem to recall problems with lookups in the Active Directory using Evolution, but for all I know that's been fixed by now.
It was fairly straightforward to set things up with simple additions to
I ran this thing on my PC for months before my employer even noticed. I used VMware for my Windows needs (as I was a network administrator, I needed to run some troubleshooting in Windows for user support) and Samba for all of my day-to-day shares and printing. In the end, the only reason anyone knew what I was running was that I was sick one day, and someone tried to sit at my desk, with very small amounts of success.
Now if only I'd kept a copy when I was let go!
It takes exorbitantly large fines and jail terms to stop bars and convenience stores from selling alcohol and cigarettes to children. You think that retailers are going to care about selling M-rated games to children when no penalties are in place if they do so? Sorry, no dice.
If you are a parent, become more active in your child's life. If they want to buy games that are rated as too violent or suggestive or whatever for them, get involved. Tell them why this is the case. Make sure that they understand why they shouldn't buy the game(s). And, after all this, if they still feel like buying the game(s), step in and stop them from doing it. You are a parent -- this is your JOB, to steer your children away from things that they should not be doing.
No matter how many committees or advisory boards or ratings exist out there, if you're not doing your job as a parent, 100% of the fault rests squarely on your shoulders.
Now, if you feel that your child should be allowed to play GTA: Vice City at the age of 10, so be it, but do the right thing, and make sure they know that this is a game, not reality. There is definitely a problem out there with (admittedly, a small number of) kids that think the subject matter of games is far too real.
Yes. People do.
I used my laptop (Eurocom D500P, basically a branded Clevo) for gaming for quite a while. It had a mobile ATI 9600 Pro, 1 GB of RAM, 60 GB HD, and was a very reasonable gaming machine. Still is, but it can't handle some of what I play, notably Everquest, and that is mostly due to the game's horrible graphics engine.
Games like q3 arena, BF1942, Steam and all of its bits, and even Battlefield 2, Doom 3, Quake 4 run pretty decently with appropriate settings levels. This would probably go for any laptop that is similarly outfitted, including the Compaq/HP nc8000 that I use at work (which also has a Mobility Radeon in it). I haven't played around with any geForce Go laptops, so no idea how they fare.
Now, keep in mind that this machine, like most that can be used for high end gaming, are laptops of the "portable but plugged in" variety. They'd likely run out of battery life in minutes rather than hours if left unplugged.
I have played World of Warcraft, Everquest, and text MMORPGs (well, MUDs) for many, many years. Before this, I was a D&D fan, and other such games.
Never, ever, have I tried to anything this absurd as a result of my experiences in these games.
This is NOT the fault of the game or the company that brought into being. This does not have anything to do with the fact that these kinds of games support the idea of behavioural reinforcement (which I agree with entirely). This was the case of a child that did something that he should not have done. Where were his parents?
When I was very young, I burned myself on the furnace. I learned what "hot" was. Who neglected to teach this child that he could not fly? And, in any case, how does this differ from the whole "kid jumps off roof because he thought he could fly" thing? I'm fairly sure that that wasn't a MMORPG (or gaming in general) problem either. Perhaps we should sue Superman?