Before you all start pissing on Oz, saying we're all children, can't think for ourselves, etc.. oh, too late, fancy that. All I can say is, coming from 10 years of having your (US) gov't lie to your face and take you to war, those comments are a bit rich. This is just a computer game. When was your last "armed revolution", huh? Now shut the hell up about my country. Trot over to your precious WalMart, buy a broom and go sweep.
Now that's out of the way, here's some of the debate going on right now about this very issue. Yes, we're not happy having things banned for us, and it won't last. The problem is there's *no* "R" rating for games. None. As soon as we get an R rating into the system, there will be no need for a ban.
The problem is not with "Australians", or our culture, so get out of our face with that. It's idiots in high places thinking they know what's best for everyone and try to make their personal little mark on history. Every country has them.
Your typical Lab software for example might not have a straightforward way to cross-check isolates for emerging resistance trends, run critical screens or automatically report to a global EPI database
That's interesting, as I'm currently helping maintain a small EPI reporting system at a Perth hospital, aimed at checking isolates for emerging trends across different hospitals. This is directly used by the Microbiology lab technicians. It's in Access 97, believe it or not, running on last-decade PCs. Goes to show how much you can do by simply focussing on immediate goals with existing tech, instead of spending $millions on grand schemes concocted by grand consultants.
I've also written an online system used by many hospital labs in Oz to share information about Staph infections and outcomes. Sounds grand perhaps, but it's not - again, a small, focussed web app addressing specific needs.
For me, this is the work that satisfies. Focussed projects, working with the end users, helping them do what they want to do. But then I'm a freelancer, not an IT Solutions Consultancy with a big office and staff to pay.
They'll "go public", the owners (founders and other investors) will make out like bandits
Perhaps not - they need to pay off their incredible debts first. Personally, I think this IPO will happen because investors want their money back ASAP. FB has only recently started making as much money as it spends. That's incredible. So it's a long way off providing a return to their investors who, considering the following points, probably don't like how it looks:
- Overall, users see FB as "made for them", and free besides. Certainly not equated with spending money. It's so good at doing what it does, it can't (at least for the end-users) be changed into anything else. Efforts at creative marketing, if they work at all, fall far short of expectations. Yet it staggers me why FB doesn't charge for business and group accounts, like Meetup does. So many users - surely businesses would gladly pay to have a presence in the mix.
- Sites which run more on popularity than application won't always be popular, and massive social networking sites aren't so rare. Although FB (at least in the West) has almost become as ubiquitous as Google, the latter meets an absolute need and has eggs in many baskets. FB is just a social networking site; it hasn't diversified and its user base is mainly small social groups who could very easily migrate elsewhere.
- FB users, and those of other social sites, think they own the damn thing. They collectively protest at advertising schemes and even changes to the UI. This is all great and democratic, but advertising doesn't operate well in that environment. It might be feeling like "too much hard work" to FB's investors as they try to monetise the process. Imagine, in the real world, mass protests against billboards or ads during TV programs. A bad environment for advertising.
So I think investors have made an assessment and decided to "make the best of" the situation as it is, because it might not get any better. They want to see a return, not a status quo. How much Zuckerberg et al will make out of an IPO, if anything, is completely unknowable. A Facebook IPO will happen because investors are becoming restless - they want a return and don't want to keep carrying the can.
More than a decade later, a generation has come of age having played these games for most of their lives and -surprise, surprise!- they are not any more messed up than any previous generation.
I read this article just after reading the one about all 3 major search engines filtering results at China's request. Some companies attempt to be responsible for their actions and associations (be it with climate change, animal testing, what-have-you) while others clearly do immoral things over and over again, often at the expense of real people.
Individuals tend to have a moral compass built in, which is encouraged by direct consequences for immoral action. If I steal from someone I know, there will be pain all around. Companies are often divorced from direct consequences of their behaviour - either the consumer doesn't know/care, or there's no choice of other products. In that sense, the consumer is also divorced from consequences of their buying habits, which is of course good for those companies.
Given this serious separation of action and consequence, how do we ensure companies start to behave better into the future, or are we doomed to this continued good-news/bad-news ping pong, with no clear idea if things are generally getting better or worse?
Rapidshare's been hosting this stuff for years and years.
I've felt almost as quietly self-satisfied as the newsgroupies all this time. True, they have noticed and RS links get canned pretty quickly these days, but at least it wasn't *news* until now. I don't feel special anymore.
The summary is completely wide of the mark, agreed.
I tend not to read the summaries, I read TFA. That's what they're there for./. is just an aggregator after all.:) Occasionally I read the comments, when I specifically want to see what other people's approaches are to the subject matter. The only reason I stick around here is the quality of the discussion (and jokes).
It seems to me, as long as traditional P2P remains the scapegoat and focus of attention for these kinds of regulations, governments can appear to be doing something (cue Yes Minister music), however people will still be able to use any other method of file sharing; newsgroups, file hosting services, etc. till they go blue in the face. New methodologies may already be in the works which further muddy the waters and keep our friendly legislators guessing (ie. posturing and looking busy).
Hopefully, voters won't allow universal censoring of the web. But some protocol or other needs to take the heat. Or perhaps "draw the heat" would be a better way of putting it.
It does the search server-side and all you see are 3 columns of results. You get to "vote" which suits you more, at which time the sources of the results are shown to you. Give it a try a few times, it's a very interesting exercise.
I've always thought that it seemed quite narrow-minded to place such value on our own concept of intelligence, that we assume such species as ourselves have a guaranteed future on their own planet, nevermind in space. It's a natural bias to have, of course, but probably misleading.
So why should space travel and extra-solar colonisation be an imperative? Just because the space is out there? We're not going to colonise the oceans or underground or any other non-native space around here, so why outer space? Many people like to think there's a God, a reason why we're here. The natural human predilection for that kind of thinking seems to inform a lot of our assumptions, down to our very self-image as a species.
There's nothing wrong with extinction, it happens all the time. It's a given for every species, eventually. So, to think there are aliens out there who have somehow beaten extinction and populated the galaxy, and that we can too, is rather fanciful in my opinion.
Sure it's lovely to think we can find a mirror out there somewhere, that's simply the human impulse to seek identity and definition. We imagine gods and aliens. But I doubt either are out there, at least in enough numbers to be within cooee of each other.
Wait a minute - here's a hypothetical. Nature sequesters all this carbon, methane, etc. over millions of years. But we think our climate, the one we have right now, is a "good" one. But it's *artificial* in a way, maintained by all this sequestering going on. By releasing all the stored carbons, as we have been doing, we're actually reverting the climate back to how it *should* be!
That is to say, if you remove the "buffers" (stored carbon) from the equation, the climate would be in its "natural" state. Climate "change" (ie to how it is now) happened because of these buffers, and humans have simply been resetting the system back to it's "natural" state.
Which implies that the current climate is being artificially maintained by plants' ability to store carbon when they die. If that wasn't the case - or once no more carbon can stored - the climate will revert to its default state, before plant life came along and altered it.
The whole climate change issue has been around since the 70's, which is very interesting... so much data, so little time. Do we really need any more data to begin taking it seriously? Even if it turns out to be a false alarm, the behaviour of our so-called leaders has been atrocious, no matter where in the world you happen to live. A couple of EU countries seem to be sincerely interested in the issue.
It's sad that, even in a Democracy, it practically takes civil unrest to make a government do the right thing by their people or, in terms of our collective future, even themsevles.
"This is probably a result of poor programming by the folks that ported the game, but in any case you need a beefy CPU to enjoy GTA4."
Depends what you mean by enjoy. My first PC being a Sol in the 1970's, it irks me when graphics is always the focus. I loved GTA IV, playing on my HP8510 laptop (Centrino dual core, 3GB RAM, mobile ATI 2600) where it ran very smooth indeed. Although this was in a resolution around 800x500 (ICR exactly), it was heaps of fun and looked great. Not being able to see the aglets on my shoelaces was not a problem.:)
First our Australian government wants a nation-wide internet filter, now the Chinese are doing the same, and soon MS will be the gatekeeper for most of the online world. Is this some kind of competition?
I was surprised when people began using their real names online, now this.
Or, a little more analogously, making a mobile carrier responsible for phone calls and SMSs used to organise illegal activities. Shove that one into the courts.
What I want to know is, *how* was the malware installed?
Do those ATMs have Autorun turned on for keycard slots? Did they type the code in binary using the 0 and 1 keys? How did it get there in the first place? TFA doesn't mention it, and surely that's the most important thing?
That's interesting... I listen to health updates on a science network, but never heard about milk causing hyperactivity. Glad you found the source, that can be very tricky!
".. deplores the use of the print, audio-visual and electronic media, including the Internet, and any other means to incite acts of violence, xenophobia or related intolerance and discrimination against any religion, as well as the targeting of religious symbols and venerated persons;.."
That's great and all, but what about the religions and venerated persons who themselves incite acts of violence, xenophobia or related intolerance and discrimination?
Seems to me the argument should be the other way around. You don't see many irreligious citizens cutting explosive swathes through non-combatant commuters or silencing writers, artists and intellectuals by way of proving their point.
Are they more concerned with delicate sensibilities than lives?
Slashdot Mirror
Before you all start pissing on Oz, saying we're all children, can't think for ourselves, etc.. oh, too late, fancy that. All I can say is, coming from 10 years of having your (US) gov't lie to your face and take you to war, those comments are a bit rich. This is just a computer game. When was your last "armed revolution", huh? Now shut the hell up about my country. Trot over to your precious WalMart, buy a broom and go sweep.
Now that's out of the way, here's some of the debate going on right now about this very issue. Yes, we're not happy having things banned for us, and it won't last. The problem is there's *no* "R" rating for games. None. As soon as we get an R rating into the system, there will be no need for a ban.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/13/2742345.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/nationalinterest/stories/2009/2749224.htm
A petition was handed to Mr Atkinson months ago.. so much for petitions I guess.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/25/2526244.htm
The problem is not with "Australians", or our culture, so get out of our face with that. It's idiots in high places thinking they know what's best for everyone and try to make their personal little mark on history. Every country has them.
Your typical Lab software for example might not have a straightforward way to cross-check isolates for emerging resistance trends, run critical screens or automatically report to a global EPI database
That's interesting, as I'm currently helping maintain a small EPI reporting system at a Perth hospital, aimed at checking isolates for emerging trends across different hospitals. This is directly used by the Microbiology lab technicians. It's in Access 97, believe it or not, running on last-decade PCs. Goes to show how much you can do by simply focussing on immediate goals with existing tech, instead of spending $millions on grand schemes concocted by grand consultants.
I've also written an online system used by many hospital labs in Oz to share information about Staph infections and outcomes. Sounds grand perhaps, but it's not - again, a small, focussed web app addressing specific needs.
For me, this is the work that satisfies. Focussed projects, working with the end users, helping them do what they want to do. But then I'm a freelancer, not an IT Solutions Consultancy with a big office and staff to pay.
Keeping in mind there are many good reasons to restructure the global economy besides that one.
They'll "go public", the owners (founders and other investors) will make out like bandits
Perhaps not - they need to pay off their incredible debts first. Personally, I think this IPO will happen because investors want their money back ASAP. FB has only recently started making as much money as it spends. That's incredible. So it's a long way off providing a return to their investors who, considering the following points, probably don't like how it looks:
- Overall, users see FB as "made for them", and free besides. Certainly not equated with spending money. It's so good at doing what it does, it can't (at least for the end-users) be changed into anything else. Efforts at creative marketing, if they work at all, fall far short of expectations. Yet it staggers me why FB doesn't charge for business and group accounts, like Meetup does. So many users - surely businesses would gladly pay to have a presence in the mix.
- Sites which run more on popularity than application won't always be popular, and massive social networking sites aren't so rare. Although FB (at least in the West) has almost become as ubiquitous as Google, the latter meets an absolute need and has eggs in many baskets. FB is just a social networking site; it hasn't diversified and its user base is mainly small social groups who could very easily migrate elsewhere.
- FB users, and those of other social sites, think they own the damn thing. They collectively protest at advertising schemes and even changes to the UI. This is all great and democratic, but advertising doesn't operate well in that environment. It might be feeling like "too much hard work" to FB's investors as they try to monetise the process. Imagine, in the real world, mass protests against billboards or ads during TV programs. A bad environment for advertising.
So I think investors have made an assessment and decided to "make the best of" the situation as it is, because it might not get any better. They want to see a return, not a status quo. How much Zuckerberg et al will make out of an IPO, if anything, is completely unknowable. A Facebook IPO will happen because investors are becoming restless - they want a return and don't want to keep carrying the can.
More than a decade later, a generation has come of age having played these games for most of their lives and -surprise, surprise!- they are not any more messed up than any previous generation.
Two words: [citation needed]
WHO says?
sorry, someone had to..
I read this article just after reading the one about all 3 major search engines filtering results at China's request. Some companies attempt to be responsible for their actions and associations (be it with climate change, animal testing, what-have-you) while others clearly do immoral things over and over again, often at the expense of real people.
Individuals tend to have a moral compass built in, which is encouraged by direct consequences for immoral action. If I steal from someone I know, there will be pain all around. Companies are often divorced from direct consequences of their behaviour - either the consumer doesn't know/care, or there's no choice of other products. In that sense, the consumer is also divorced from consequences of their buying habits, which is of course good for those companies.
Given this serious separation of action and consequence, how do we ensure companies start to behave better into the future, or are we doomed to this continued good-news/bad-news ping pong, with no clear idea if things are generally getting better or worse?
Based on his $21 million bonus in 2008
With those sorts of rewards on offer for "performance", the results are hardly surprising.
Yet we continue to be surprised.
Rapidshare's been hosting this stuff for years and years.
I've felt almost as quietly self-satisfied as the newsgroupies all this time. True, they have noticed and RS links get canned pretty quickly these days, but at least it wasn't *news* until now. I don't feel special anymore.
The summary is completely wide of the mark, agreed.
I tend not to read the summaries, I read TFA. That's what they're there for. /. is just an aggregator after all. :) Occasionally I read the comments, when I specifically want to see what other people's approaches are to the subject matter. The only reason I stick around here is the quality of the discussion (and jokes).
It seems to me, as long as traditional P2P remains the scapegoat and focus of attention for these kinds of regulations, governments can appear to be doing something (cue Yes Minister music), however people will still be able to use any other method of file sharing; newsgroups, file hosting services, etc. till they go blue in the face. New methodologies may already be in the works which further muddy the waters and keep our friendly legislators guessing (ie. posturing and looking busy).
Hopefully, voters won't allow universal censoring of the web. But some protocol or other needs to take the heat. Or perhaps "draw the heat" would be a better way of putting it.
This site makes it easy to assess results from Google, Bing and Yahoo.
http://blindsearch.fejus.com/
It does the search server-side and all you see are 3 columns of results. You get to "vote" which suits you more, at which time the sources of the results are shown to you. Give it a try a few times, it's a very interesting exercise.
At least I can say I did some exercise this week.
I clicked your search link to test that observation.
This time there was nothing about OSS or Mac, but the 5th result was http://forums.pcworld.com/message/249692 "Bing Search Reveals Pro-Microsoft Results"
Swings and roundabouts in the world of search.
I've always thought that it seemed quite narrow-minded to place such value on our own concept of intelligence, that we assume such species as ourselves have a guaranteed future on their own planet, nevermind in space. It's a natural bias to have, of course, but probably misleading.
So why should space travel and extra-solar colonisation be an imperative? Just because the space is out there? We're not going to colonise the oceans or underground or any other non-native space around here, so why outer space? Many people like to think there's a God, a reason why we're here. The natural human predilection for that kind of thinking seems to inform a lot of our assumptions, down to our very self-image as a species.
There's nothing wrong with extinction, it happens all the time. It's a given for every species, eventually. So, to think there are aliens out there who have somehow beaten extinction and populated the galaxy, and that we can too, is rather fanciful in my opinion.
Sure it's lovely to think we can find a mirror out there somewhere, that's simply the human impulse to seek identity and definition. We imagine gods and aliens. But I doubt either are out there, at least in enough numbers to be within cooee of each other.
Wait a minute - here's a hypothetical. Nature sequesters all this carbon, methane, etc. over millions of years. But we think our climate, the one we have right now, is a "good" one. But it's *artificial* in a way, maintained by all this sequestering going on. By releasing all the stored carbons, as we have been doing, we're actually reverting the climate back to how it *should* be!
That is to say, if you remove the "buffers" (stored carbon) from the equation, the climate would be in its "natural" state. Climate "change" (ie to how it is now) happened because of these buffers, and humans have simply been resetting the system back to it's "natural" state.
Which implies that the current climate is being artificially maintained by plants' ability to store carbon when they die. If that wasn't the case - or once no more carbon can stored - the climate will revert to its default state, before plant life came along and altered it.
For those of you of a more recent vintage, an interesting old doco to watch is "After the Warming" by James Burke: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6514270139930450081
The whole climate change issue has been around since the 70's, which is very interesting... so much data, so little time. Do we really need any more data to begin taking it seriously? Even if it turns out to be a false alarm, the behaviour of our so-called leaders has been atrocious, no matter where in the world you happen to live. A couple of EU countries seem to be sincerely interested in the issue.
It's sad that, even in a Democracy, it practically takes civil unrest to make a government do the right thing by their people or, in terms of our collective future, even themsevles.
"This is probably a result of poor programming by the folks that ported the game, but in any case you need a beefy CPU to enjoy GTA4."
Depends what you mean by enjoy. My first PC being a Sol in the 1970's, it irks me when graphics is always the focus. I loved GTA IV, playing on my HP8510 laptop (Centrino dual core, 3GB RAM, mobile ATI 2600) where it ran very smooth indeed. Although this was in a resolution around 800x500 (ICR exactly), it was heaps of fun and looked great. Not being able to see the aglets on my shoelaces was not a problem. :)
First our Australian government wants a nation-wide internet filter, now the Chinese are doing the same, and soon MS will be the gatekeeper for most of the online world. Is this some kind of competition?
I was surprised when people began using their real names online, now this.
Our lives are going open source.
reading this post just after one about media corporations complaining about lost income through piracy.
Why don't we have a global "Talk Like a Mogul Day"?
Or, a little more analogously, making a mobile carrier responsible for phone calls and SMSs used to organise illegal activities. Shove that one into the courts.
What I want to know is, *how* was the malware installed?
Do those ATMs have Autorun turned on for keycard slots? Did they type the code in binary using the 0 and 1 keys? How did it get there in the first place? TFA doesn't mention it, and surely that's the most important thing?
That's interesting... I listen to health updates on a science network, but never heard about milk causing hyperactivity. Glad you found the source, that can be very tricky!
There's a reason why they're hyper, which is what you call a Catch-22.
".. deplores the use of the print, audio-visual and electronic media, including the Internet, and any other means to incite acts of violence, xenophobia or related intolerance and discrimination against any religion, as well as the targeting of religious symbols and venerated persons; .."
That's great and all, but what about the religions and venerated persons who themselves incite acts of violence, xenophobia or related intolerance and discrimination?
Seems to me the argument should be the other way around. You don't see many irreligious citizens cutting explosive swathes through non-combatant commuters or silencing writers, artists and intellectuals by way of proving their point.
Are they more concerned with delicate sensibilities than lives?
"Both issues are rated 'critical,' Mozilla's highest severity rating."
So that's above "ludicrous" then?