Great post, but let me give you two more:
3) What layers of security does the site in question have?
4) Does it share a password with a site with poor security?
My own security scheme is simple: Originality. My passwords are pronounceable nonsense. You won't find them in dictionaries, but they result from years of phrase mutation in my subconscious. I share passwords along sites, but I have multiple levels. Sites that don't have any financial information attached have one of a couple "I don't care" passwords. Sites that do have financial information but would not inconvenience me much have a couple more mixed "I care a little" passwords. Banks, credit cards, and high damage potential sites(i.e. Amazon) all have one-password-one-site, more mixed passwords but there's some amount of cohesion to them -- but only to me. I don't ever make passwords like $TegetGEvg4#@$g. Why would I make a password that I have to write down? What is more secure than something that resides solely in your mind?
Having never had even my "I don't care" passwords guessed (which in kind of surprises me) I have a hard time taking others' security advice seriously. (and I'm also annoyed when a software program tells me my password sucks)
As an aside, Hypercard was booming as early as 14 years ago. (I know, I used to use it before I got serious with programming) Also, it's only 23 years old and was sold until 2004, last update was 1998. Just thought I'd throw that in there before posts phrased like "the software, which celebrates its 35th birthday in September, was popular among..." start popping up.
I think their greater concern is that because their healthcare system is government run, the panic you describe would make people question the government's competency, thereby undermining its authority. I'm curious to how China would react if the subject of the documentary got HIV through sex.
Of course it won't be hella big later, but that hasn't stopped people from naming obscure standards with phrases relevant to the times before. If you really think about it, how absurd is it that we use Latin for so many standards today, when the language itself is all but dead outside of the Catholic church?
I don't think that this will work, as too many people in academia find pop culture more horrifying than the oil spill, but I won't be angry if it does happen to succeed.
They got the figures by mining information from each app via the Android Market, or through one of the many aggregator sites like this one. Permissions are publicly listed, so that's how they came to their figures.
But yeah, it's incredibly misleading. The user is warned on install and at the bottom of the application's description in the Market.
I'd +1 Insightful this if I still had mod points. In related events, Jammie Thomas got her penalty knocked down to $54k and the plaintiffs even offered a $25k settlement. I hope that means that they're running scared...
I've been doing two at work for years now -- up to three because sometimes I need to work on a mac, and look at code for an iPhone port when working with another platform.
I've hit 4 a few times, as I may bring in my home PC for Linux use, but currently only three at once ever get any significant attention. Still, the notion of 3-6 monitor gaming has always appealed to me. If they can thin the borders of monitors for cheap, I'd seriously consider a 6 setup...
I had this argument with someone else recently who hates Valve's model. It ended as an "internet required vs. cd required" argument. Not enough people are bothered by "internet required", especially with multiplayer-focused games, for it to ever go away. Unreal games require neither internet nor CD to play, and I like them for that, but CS, TF2, and L4D have far more players.
I'm part of the problem. As a laptop gamer with limited space, I'll take internet required over CD required any day.
If CBS is smart about it, they won't even acknowledge it. All a response will do is provide the PTC momentum in the media. FOX never (or rarely) did acknowledge them, and they've taken the top spot from the historic big three U.S. networks. Most people don't care that family-friendly American Idol is on the same network as Family Guy, so I doubt this will harm CBS one bit.
For some weird reason, I'm irked by the standard disclaimer in the article that discourages egg donation for (implied) paying your way through college. Risky as any surgical procedure may be, it's a far cry from any Ayn-Rand-gone-amuk dystopian cliche.
May not be true for this crowd, but the general public* has a buy-and-chuck mentality with their phones. They buy the latest and greatest device, watch a generation or two of "latest and greatest" devices dethrone their device, and end up buying that when their contract expires. Knowing this, they're not going to spend more than $10 on a game, let alone $35. (average DS release price)
*General public in this case refers to people who actually buy games on their phones, and these people generally don't get the free(with contract) phones.
There are many ways to draw parallels between the west (particularly the United States) and Rome, but this is not one of them. The evolution of vernacular is nothing new to any civilization, but the speed at which it is occuring is. As a culture, we place an unusually high value on proper grammar -- at least we used to. I've noticed this culture shift for a long time. It's not going to kill our civilization, but it will cause a clash similar to how geek culture created a second set of rules for the workplace. I've heard from many engineers that they've had awkward interviews for excessively dressing up. There's currently two brands of office culture which are co-existing, eventually either one will win or (more likely) one's dress and mannerisms will be used to define whether one belongs to the business class or "brains" class.
I see shorthand popping up more and more often in office emails. It's already used regularly in instant messages, and I'm not motivated to call anyone on it. From time to time, I feel strange using proper grammar and typing words out. It won't be the end of our civilization, but it will make things difficult for people who can't adapt to the culture shift.
You say that manufacturers need to focus on "just working" out of the box more, and I'll find our middle ground there. I see that as a solution to the problem of "closed" manufacturers like Apple who are slowly taking over -- we need a serious open Apple competitor. I still think that users need to be trained in risk management, though.
We can't really agree on what the internet is. You have the "entirely bad neighborhood" mentality and I have the "typical city" mentality where it's up to the person to decide where not to go. I'm not armed to the teeth in my browsing, I just do basic things like checking links and taking pre-emptive caution with links I don't trust. If I have to go somewhere risky, I do some quick checks to ensure nothing managed to slip through. (which I've found and killed before rebooting before -- which is when you have to catch it) It's the e-quivalent (gag...) to street smarts -- humans need it to survive, they should need it to browse too.
Leaving with that terrible pun, I enjoyed our discussion!
Fair enough, but I'm still having trouble agreeing with you. What makes Apple's walled garden, out of the box, better than Toshiba and Fujitsu's(my preferred brands) open plains? It seems like your argument is creating an image of a newbie's Windows experience being like getting the machine out of a box mixed with packing peanuts and dirt, and everywhere the user goes online is like a neighborhood rife with gunfire on the streets. If it were that way, the walled garden argument would be valid, but it's not, and never will be. There's good manufacturers and there's poor ones, but at least in an open environment, the poor ones can be fixed to an extent by a tech-head. (Anyone else seeing the Liberty vs. Security parallel here?)
Furthermore, once an iPad exploit is found, our new user will be in that metaphorical neighborhood with an empty holster, and their tech-saavy friend or family member won't be able to help, unless they've bought a locked down computer and jailbroken it already. Ouch.
I've already admitted there's a market for these kinds of people, and I've noted your point with Windows vs. Apple drivers, but from a big picture perspective it's just a horrible way to go. Computers aren't cars, they require $0 of additional equipment to maintain if you know what you're doing -- they shouldn't be mystified. I do think that those who are too lazy to learn about computing deserve some level of derision, and if this leads to the mainstream swinging toward walled communities, it'll do a great amount of damage in the long run. So yeah, if calling them "sheep" gets them to change their ways and helps curb the trend, I'm all for it.
I'm a bit bothered by this, because it assumes that devices that aren't locked down are inherently flawed. Aside from removing trialware, I've never had problems with my customs or pre-builts -- Toshiba, Fujitsu, eMachines, even HP -- unless I did something stupid. I'm knowledgable enough about computers that I have my own list of what's trusted, can detect problems without programs and yet I can still rely on my desktop-replacement form factor gaming laptop to do what I need to do, always -- and I don't have to go through your daily regimen. My computing is kind of like walking through a city, using your instincts to decide which businesses and neighborhoods to avoid.
Furthermore, it's the open nature of early computing that earned so-called "trusted companies" their trust. They boosted our economy in the long run and more or less enhanced the lives of the so-called "sheep". I agree with this thread's OP in that people don't want to do maintenance, but it's especially flawed design to devote as much time and effort as Apple has to prevent those who want "untrusted" content from getting it. This attitude is going to stifle innovation if it becomes mainstream...good thing for Microsoft, ironically enough. (Linux and derivatives too, but M$ has been far below Apple on the evil scale lately, and they have the market share)
That's a pretty fair argument. I'm different in that even though my Pre is my only phone line, I got it because it's easily rooted, Palm isn't fighting the hacker community like Apple is, it's powerful, and has a decent homebrew community. I also gambled that it would someday get a decent commercial landscape, and that's starting to happen. (yay!)
I'm not really keen on relying on a single manufacturer when something goes wrong, though. I've already used my root access to fix a problem with the broken volume control that was my fault to begin with. (dropped phone onto hard floor -- ouch) Even if I hadn't rooted it and my warranty were still intact, would they have been able to realize I dropped it, thereby invalidating it anyway? Not to mention, I've enjoyed the numerous homebrew apps I've put on it, and the freedom I have with my own app-writing experimentation.
This is kind of like the ancient liberty vs. security option, though in this case I can't really fault you for taking the security route. I'm just trying to say that the liberty route has its merits too.
If I'm playing a GTA game, I'd probably be jarred by real life advertisements because one of the things I've come to expect from the series is parody. I get a chuckle out of all the fake ads, the obligatory talk radio parody, etc.
If I'm playing a NASCAR racing game, or an EA sports game(which I never do, but just saying), I would expect real advertisements, as the games are based on real life. I'm not in love with the idea of AT&T and others lining the walls of the stadium, but if I want realism in a game, I'd rather have AT&T than AR&R or a blank wall.
I would likely accept real ads in a game like RB:Beatles if the ads were vintage, or modern ads any other GH/RB game.
But there's a time and a place for everything. It's silly to be completely anti-advertisement -- you have to accept that they're a part of modern culture. No one with any sense would put real ads in a Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest game, just like you won't ever see McDonalds ads along the trails of Yosemite in real life.
But the article reaked of bias when it got to the Mother (aka Earthbound) series. It elevated a controversial cult game to same level of the works of Chopin, who happens to be on my mind as I'm playing through Eternal Sonata. Earthbound in particular had some great features, but it also had some nasty downsides. I couldn't play with sound on after 30 minutes because the soundtrack literally induced headaches. There were many gross-out parts to the game that are best compared to fart humor. The esoteric references in the game typically are received two ways, with cheers from those who catch them and in-one-ear-out-the-other from those who don't.
An article purporting to be the "essentials of RPG design" needs to acknowledge when a game gets a lot of hate, and why.
Like this post, for instance, probably should have been made on Friday. Oh well.
From the female software engineer fringe department, there's a time and a place for everything. I like some things that are stereotypical and I hate some things that are stereotypical. I don't really want to see them when I'm shopping for a computer. My take on it:
- The designs: Good idea, one I think could be extended to men as well. Dell's big thing has always been customization and aesthetics would be the next logical step.
- Selling laptop-specific accessories: Also a good idea, again, could be extended to men.
- Fashion tips/dieting tips/whatever else was there: Bad, bad, bad. I think that even from within my little geekish bubble I can tell you can tell you that most women will find this condescending. It simply does not make sense. Big mistake for Dell jumping on the weight insecurity just 'cause. I won't lie and say computers aren't useful for information on whatever they had up, and I won't try and say it's not a concern of their targer audience, but why push it in our faces when we're trying to buy a computer? Especially the dieting thing. I can just imagine advocates of eating disorder related causes just pouncing that one.
Also, why aren't they pointing out things that you actually need a computer to accomplish? Big example: Social networking.
Three days later and it looks like they've already toned down the site. The most ridiculous parts have been taken down and performance stats are available. I just don't see why they need to segregate it. They could mix designs/accessories in with the main site, and since this is obviously targeted toward inexperienced computer users, find a way to mix newbie-friendly tips into the main site without alienating experienced users.
Probably one of society's eternal problems
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Censorship By Glut
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The writer touched on this near the end with the increasingly convoluted measures and counter-measures. We live in a society of people with 16-20 hours per day, and far less than that can be diverted from work, hobbies, etc. There's hundreds of millions of internet connected people and a societal requirement to be able to discuss things with other people to achieve any sort of solid social footing. (that's just fancy speak for "mob mentality") Unless the fundamentals of society change, and I doubt they ever will, the snowball effect will never go away.
Note how we still discuss ancient greek philosophers from over 2000 years ago, who became famous over pondering problems that nearly everyone thinks about at some point in their lives. There's no doubt in my mind that they were merely rewarded by the snowball effect...and had (or acquired) the resources to not be burdened by a real job.
The thing is, we don't know that for certain. One other poster suggested that they could have been the more intelligent species and were the meaner one.
Though I feel I'm walking an ethical tightrope as I type this reply. I have to admit, the curiousity is getting the better of me. Which is worse, giving Neanderthals a second chance and having it turn out horribly for them, or not doing anything at all?
Honestly? If a group can pull it off, I say go for it. But I don't want to ever be aware of it. (unless I'm a part of said group) It would be the most intriguing experiment of all time, to clone a sample of neanderthals and let them live normal lives, aside from occasional tests perhaps done under the guise of routine checkups. Not only would it be completely ethical from a good number of peoples' point of view, it would tell us so much about them. First of all, would they look enough like us to fit in? Would they turn out being superior? Leaders perhaps? Or would they live relatively mundane lives? Can they understand spoken and/or written language?
I can understand why people would have objections to this, but I think it could work well if executed properly.
Slashdot Mirror
Great post, but let me give you two more:
3) What layers of security does the site in question have?
4) Does it share a password with a site with poor security?
My own security scheme is simple: Originality. My passwords are pronounceable nonsense. You won't find them in dictionaries, but they result from years of phrase mutation in my subconscious. I share passwords along sites, but I have multiple levels. Sites that don't have any financial information attached have one of a couple "I don't care" passwords. Sites that do have financial information but would not inconvenience me much have a couple more mixed "I care a little" passwords. Banks, credit cards, and high damage potential sites(i.e. Amazon) all have one-password-one-site, more mixed passwords but there's some amount of cohesion to them -- but only to me. I don't ever make passwords like $TegetGEvg4#@$g. Why would I make a password that I have to write down? What is more secure than something that resides solely in your mind?
Having never had even my "I don't care" passwords guessed (which in kind of surprises me) I have a hard time taking others' security advice seriously. (and I'm also annoyed when a software program tells me my password sucks)
As an aside, Hypercard was booming as early as 14 years ago. (I know, I used to use it before I got serious with programming) Also, it's only 23 years old and was sold until 2004, last update was 1998. Just thought I'd throw that in there before posts phrased like "the software, which celebrates its 35th birthday in September, was popular among..." start popping up.
I think their greater concern is that because their healthcare system is government run, the panic you describe would make people question the government's competency, thereby undermining its authority. I'm curious to how China would react if the subject of the documentary got HIV through sex.
Of course it won't be hella big later, but that hasn't stopped people from naming obscure standards with phrases relevant to the times before. If you really think about it, how absurd is it that we use Latin for so many standards today, when the language itself is all but dead outside of the Catholic church?
I don't think that this will work, as too many people in academia find pop culture more horrifying than the oil spill, but I won't be angry if it does happen to succeed.
They got the figures by mining information from each app via the Android Market, or through one of the many aggregator sites like this one. Permissions are publicly listed, so that's how they came to their figures.
But yeah, it's incredibly misleading. The user is warned on install and at the bottom of the application's description in the Market.
I was thinking "goodluckwiththat" when I saw the headline.
I'd +1 Insightful this if I still had mod points. In related events, Jammie Thomas got her penalty knocked down to $54k and the plaintiffs even offered a $25k settlement. I hope that means that they're running scared...
I've been doing two at work for years now -- up to three because sometimes I need to work on a mac, and look at code for an iPhone port when working with another platform.
I've hit 4 a few times, as I may bring in my home PC for Linux use, but currently only three at once ever get any significant attention. Still, the notion of 3-6 monitor gaming has always appealed to me. If they can thin the borders of monitors for cheap, I'd seriously consider a 6 setup...
...then I don't want you taking my tax money. It's only fair.
I had this argument with someone else recently who hates Valve's model. It ended as an "internet required vs. cd required" argument. Not enough people are bothered by "internet required", especially with multiplayer-focused games, for it to ever go away. Unreal games require neither internet nor CD to play, and I like them for that, but CS, TF2, and L4D have far more players.
I'm part of the problem. As a laptop gamer with limited space, I'll take internet required over CD required any day.
If CBS is smart about it, they won't even acknowledge it. All a response will do is provide the PTC momentum in the media. FOX never (or rarely) did acknowledge them, and they've taken the top spot from the historic big three U.S. networks. Most people don't care that family-friendly American Idol is on the same network as Family Guy, so I doubt this will harm CBS one bit.
For some weird reason, I'm irked by the standard disclaimer in the article that discourages egg donation for (implied) paying your way through college. Risky as any surgical procedure may be, it's a far cry from any Ayn-Rand-gone-amuk dystopian cliche.
(says one geek with laissez-faire ethics...)
May not be true for this crowd, but the general public* has a buy-and-chuck mentality with their phones. They buy the latest and greatest device, watch a generation or two of "latest and greatest" devices dethrone their device, and end up buying that when their contract expires. Knowing this, they're not going to spend more than $10 on a game, let alone $35. (average DS release price)
*General public in this case refers to people who actually buy games on their phones, and these people generally don't get the free(with contract) phones.
There are many ways to draw parallels between the west (particularly the United States) and Rome, but this is not one of them. The evolution of vernacular is nothing new to any civilization, but the speed at which it is occuring is. As a culture, we place an unusually high value on proper grammar -- at least we used to. I've noticed this culture shift for a long time. It's not going to kill our civilization, but it will cause a clash similar to how geek culture created a second set of rules for the workplace. I've heard from many engineers that they've had awkward interviews for excessively dressing up. There's currently two brands of office culture which are co-existing, eventually either one will win or (more likely) one's dress and mannerisms will be used to define whether one belongs to the business class or "brains" class.
I see shorthand popping up more and more often in office emails. It's already used regularly in instant messages, and I'm not motivated to call anyone on it. From time to time, I feel strange using proper grammar and typing words out. It won't be the end of our civilization, but it will make things difficult for people who can't adapt to the culture shift.
You say that manufacturers need to focus on "just working" out of the box more, and I'll find our middle ground there. I see that as a solution to the problem of "closed" manufacturers like Apple who are slowly taking over -- we need a serious open Apple competitor. I still think that users need to be trained in risk management, though.
We can't really agree on what the internet is. You have the "entirely bad neighborhood" mentality and I have the "typical city" mentality where it's up to the person to decide where not to go. I'm not armed to the teeth in my browsing, I just do basic things like checking links and taking pre-emptive caution with links I don't trust. If I have to go somewhere risky, I do some quick checks to ensure nothing managed to slip through. (which I've found and killed before rebooting before -- which is when you have to catch it) It's the e-quivalent (gag...) to street smarts -- humans need it to survive, they should need it to browse too.
Leaving with that terrible pun, I enjoyed our discussion!
Fair enough, but I'm still having trouble agreeing with you. What makes Apple's walled garden, out of the box, better than Toshiba and Fujitsu's(my preferred brands) open plains? It seems like your argument is creating an image of a newbie's Windows experience being like getting the machine out of a box mixed with packing peanuts and dirt, and everywhere the user goes online is like a neighborhood rife with gunfire on the streets. If it were that way, the walled garden argument would be valid, but it's not, and never will be. There's good manufacturers and there's poor ones, but at least in an open environment, the poor ones can be fixed to an extent by a tech-head.
(Anyone else seeing the Liberty vs. Security parallel here?)
Furthermore, once an iPad exploit is found, our new user will be in that metaphorical neighborhood with an empty holster, and their tech-saavy friend or family member won't be able to help, unless they've bought a locked down computer and jailbroken it already. Ouch.
I've already admitted there's a market for these kinds of people, and I've noted your point with Windows vs. Apple drivers, but from a big picture perspective it's just a horrible way to go. Computers aren't cars, they require $0 of additional equipment to maintain if you know what you're doing -- they shouldn't be mystified. I do think that those who are too lazy to learn about computing deserve some level of derision, and if this leads to the mainstream swinging toward walled communities, it'll do a great amount of damage in the long run.
So yeah, if calling them "sheep" gets them to change their ways and helps curb the trend, I'm all for it.
I'm a bit bothered by this, because it assumes that devices that aren't locked down are inherently flawed. Aside from removing trialware, I've never had problems with my customs or pre-builts -- Toshiba, Fujitsu, eMachines, even HP -- unless I did something stupid. I'm knowledgable enough about computers that I have my own list of what's trusted, can detect problems without programs and yet I can still rely on my desktop-replacement form factor gaming laptop to do what I need to do, always -- and I don't have to go through your daily regimen. My computing is kind of like walking through a city, using your instincts to decide which businesses and neighborhoods to avoid.
Furthermore, it's the open nature of early computing that earned so-called "trusted companies" their trust. They boosted our economy in the long run and more or less enhanced the lives of the so-called "sheep". I agree with this thread's OP in that people don't want to do maintenance, but it's especially flawed design to devote as much time and effort as Apple has to prevent those who want "untrusted" content from getting it. This attitude is going to stifle innovation if it becomes mainstream...good thing for Microsoft, ironically enough.
(Linux and derivatives too, but M$ has been far below Apple on the evil scale lately, and they have the market share)
That's a pretty fair argument. I'm different in that even though my Pre is my only phone line, I got it because it's easily rooted, Palm isn't fighting the hacker community like Apple is, it's powerful, and has a decent homebrew community. I also gambled that it would someday get a decent commercial landscape, and that's starting to happen. (yay!)
I'm not really keen on relying on a single manufacturer when something goes wrong, though. I've already used my root access to fix a problem with the broken volume control that was my fault to begin with. (dropped phone onto hard floor -- ouch) Even if I hadn't rooted it and my warranty were still intact, would they have been able to realize I dropped it, thereby invalidating it anyway?
Not to mention, I've enjoyed the numerous homebrew apps I've put on it, and the freedom I have with my own app-writing experimentation.
This is kind of like the ancient liberty vs. security option, though in this case I can't really fault you for taking the security route. I'm just trying to say that the liberty route has its merits too.
If I'm playing a GTA game, I'd probably be jarred by real life advertisements because one of the things I've come to expect from the series is parody. I get a chuckle out of all the fake ads, the obligatory talk radio parody, etc.
If I'm playing a NASCAR racing game, or an EA sports game(which I never do, but just saying), I would expect real advertisements, as the games are based on real life. I'm not in love with the idea of AT&T and others lining the walls of the stadium, but if I want realism in a game, I'd rather have AT&T than AR&R or a blank wall.
I would likely accept real ads in a game like RB:Beatles if the ads were vintage, or modern ads any other GH/RB game.
But there's a time and a place for everything. It's silly to be completely anti-advertisement -- you have to accept that they're a part of modern culture. No one with any sense would put real ads in a Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest game, just like you won't ever see McDonalds ads along the trails of Yosemite in real life.
(sort of anyway...)
But the article reaked of bias when it got to the Mother (aka Earthbound) series. It elevated a controversial cult game to same level of the works of Chopin, who happens to be on my mind as I'm playing through Eternal Sonata. Earthbound in particular had some great features, but it also had some nasty downsides. I couldn't play with sound on after 30 minutes because the soundtrack literally induced headaches. There were many gross-out parts to the game that are best compared to fart humor. The esoteric references in the game typically are received two ways, with cheers from those who catch them and in-one-ear-out-the-other from those who don't.
An article purporting to be the "essentials of RPG design" needs to acknowledge when a game gets a lot of hate, and why.
Like this post, for instance, probably should have been made on Friday. Oh well.
From the female software engineer fringe department, there's a time and a place for everything. I like some things that are stereotypical and I hate some things that are stereotypical. I don't really want to see them when I'm shopping for a computer. My take on it:
- The designs: Good idea, one I think could be extended to men as well. Dell's big thing has always been customization and aesthetics would be the next logical step.
- Selling laptop-specific accessories: Also a good idea, again, could be extended to men.
- Fashion tips/dieting tips/whatever else was there: Bad, bad, bad. I think that even from within my little geekish bubble I can tell you can tell you that most women will find this condescending. It simply does not make sense. Big mistake for Dell jumping on the weight insecurity just 'cause. I won't lie and say computers aren't useful for information on whatever they had up, and I won't try and say it's not a concern of their targer audience, but why push it in our faces when we're trying to buy a computer? Especially the dieting thing. I can just imagine advocates of eating disorder related causes just pouncing that one.
Also, why aren't they pointing out things that you actually need a computer to accomplish? Big example: Social networking.
Three days later and it looks like they've already toned down the site. The most ridiculous parts have been taken down and performance stats are available. I just don't see why they need to segregate it. They could mix designs/accessories in with the main site, and since this is obviously targeted toward inexperienced computer users, find a way to mix newbie-friendly tips into the main site without alienating experienced users.
The writer touched on this near the end with the increasingly convoluted measures and counter-measures. We live in a society of people with 16-20 hours per day, and far less than that can be diverted from work, hobbies, etc. There's hundreds of millions of internet connected people and a societal requirement to be able to discuss things with other people to achieve any sort of solid social footing. (that's just fancy speak for "mob mentality") Unless the fundamentals of society change, and I doubt they ever will, the snowball effect will never go away.
Note how we still discuss ancient greek philosophers from over 2000 years ago, who became famous over pondering problems that nearly everyone thinks about at some point in their lives. There's no doubt in my mind that they were merely rewarded by the snowball effect...and had (or acquired) the resources to not be burdened by a real job.
The thing is, we don't know that for certain. One other poster suggested that they could have been the more intelligent species and were the meaner one.
Though I feel I'm walking an ethical tightrope as I type this reply. I have to admit, the curiousity is getting the better of me. Which is worse, giving Neanderthals a second chance and having it turn out horribly for them, or not doing anything at all?
Honestly? If a group can pull it off, I say go for it. But I don't want to ever be aware of it. (unless I'm a part of said group) It would be the most intriguing experiment of all time, to clone a sample of neanderthals and let them live normal lives, aside from occasional tests perhaps done under the guise of routine checkups. Not only would it be completely ethical from a good number of peoples' point of view, it would tell us so much about them. First of all, would they look enough like us to fit in? Would they turn out being superior? Leaders perhaps? Or would they live relatively mundane lives? Can they understand spoken and/or written language?
I can understand why people would have objections to this, but I think it could work well if executed properly.
Don't know why the templates stop at 1860s, but:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=1850s+source%3Alife
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=1840s+source%3Alife
Etc. Interesting stuff.