Young children are under constant tracking by adults - this is a simple fact of life. This is simply a more efficient method that doesn't have the gaps that human monitoring does. I really don't see it as being that revolutionary.
Yes, kids are under adult attention a lot of the time. Still, I cannot dismiss this as just a "more efficient method" as you do. Is torture just a more efficient method of interrogation? Efficiency is not a justifying dictum, just a bonus.
I carry around my cell phone all day, every day, always within about 20' of me and on. I know, as do many others, that most cell providers have radio triangulation down to a highly precise distance (Bell Canada allows you to use a service to find out where one of your family plan phones are...or at least they beta'd it). I personal don't give a sh*t.
That's your choice. Me, I do care. I'm not a totally paranoid tinfoil-hatter, but I have purposely avoided owning a cellphone and intend to continue doing so until it becomes an absolute necessity (if it does). And even then, I doubt I'll keep it with me all the time, much less on. I don't want to be reachable or trackable 24/7, that's not human nature, or at least not my nature.
Aand it was actually relatively skillfully done, in my opinion at least. You refute an argument by showing how its logic leads to absurdity. The argument isn't meant to provide a serious assertion, but rather an obviously silly assertion that reflects badly on the argument it is replying to.
And more importantly, it conditions them to be tracked more in the future. That may not *physically* harm them, but it's still damn creepy and arguably quite harmful. I sure wouldn't want it done to me.
Seriously. I mean, I could provide the famous "give up liberty for security" quote, but rather than use rhetoric I encourage you to just think about it: life is short. Life is damned short and uncertain. Hell, that's what makes it's *precious* in the first place.
But in any case, yes, kids die on occasion. They die in accidents. They die due to malice or misfortune or whatever else. It sucks. But that doesn't mean that it's worth it to adopt some truly creepy tactics.
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure about this specific example, though it does creep me out. But your general rule ("if it saves one kid") is horribly flawed. By that logic, it would eventually be worth maintaining a full police state, just in order to save a few lives.
Older people die, too, people of all ages, until eventually everyone seems to succumb. Again, it sucks. But saving a few lives is not worth lowering the quality of life for everyone, not in every situation at least. Think of it almost in terms of game theory, if you will: the total utility of saving a life or two versus screwing up many many more lives just isn't worth it. Granted, using math and statistics to talk about life and death is often seen as inensitive, but it's still an interesting way to ponder the issue.
See, it's your kind of logic that has been used to justify some of the more egregious steps in the "war on terror." Some people think that it's worth having a police state (or a police world) in order to guarantee as much security as humanly possible. Me? I'd rather have a freer life, with a side of danger. We all die someday anyway.
Nexus of universe collapsing...
on
Meet Joe Blog
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· Score: 5, Funny
Slashdot just Slashdotted Cmdr Taco's website. I'm not sure how to react...
Reminds me of this hilarious Daily Show sketch (Realplayer, which sucks but oh well). The fact that they have almost every sketch from the past four years up on comedycentral.com has almost entirely destroyed my work ethic over the past few weeks...
...but first thing I stick on a Windows machine is Geoshell, presuming it's a personal machine (e.g. I don't have to share it or use it at a job or something). If you've not heard of it, Geoshell is a fantastic shell replacement. Stabler, takes less memory, and much more configurable (custom hotkeys galore) than Explorer. Besides that, your list looks pretty good, though personally I'd replace SmartFTP with WinSCP (SFTP client), throw in Putty (SSH client), Irfanview, DC++, and AVG Antivirus. Oh, and probably Adaware for good measure, even though you can avoid spyware if you just have a brain about what you install.
Besides that, I still run Ultimatezip instead of WinRAR, frankly I'm going with it because it's the status quo and it works fine. And I run Zonealarm, even though it's become a bit bloated. Oh, here's one thing you forgot: a good codec package. And BSPlayer to play videos... oh and Quicktime and an old version of RealPlayer (preferably RP8 or something). And then Cygwin for a nice *nix command line, and Nero to burn cds. There, I think that's about it.
I must say boo to the "brain damaged" conclusion, as it seems to assume that everybody just listens to pop. I usually listen to my music on a random playlist, but the mean track length of my random playlist is probably at least 6 minutes (that's averaging out 30 minute tracks and 3 minute tracks, as it were). I have many full albums as single mp3s on my playlist. I have full symphonies and full live sets and so forth.
To me, shuffle is mostly just to make it so I don't have to take too much time to pick what I want to listen to. I know I like most everything on my playlist, and if I don't like the song that comes up I have the "next" button hotkeyed. And yes, there is an element of that "magic" of the random playlist as the article discussed, but I'm not so melodramatic about it: it's just random, and sometime funny coincidences happen when things are random.
But this article and these critics saying it's the "future of music", well... like most critics and most article writers perhaps, they need to just shut up for a second and consider things from a variety of perspectives. Not everyone who uses "random shuffle" is a 15 year old MTV-watching pop-music-listening airhead. And I'd be willing to bet that old farts stay away from features like shuffle, not because they truly appreciate the aesthetic values of the full album any more (as I said you can easily get around that by just having full albums as single files), but simply because they're used to what they've done their whole life. It's human nature to avoid unnecessary change. Old habits die hard. Yada yada.
The problem is lack of attention. Censorship is a problem too, but there certainly are sources out there, albeit obscure ones, that cover all sorts of stuff that "mainstream" sources don't touch.
The problem is lack of attention and publicity. Mainstream sources cover mainstream things because that's what the mainstream wants: it's what sells. While stories are sometimes neglected due to their being taboo, I'd say the main obstacle is lack of interest. The stories may be taboo at CNN, but they're probably being covered elsewhere. It's just the elsewhere (Indymedia, foreign sources, what-have-you) is unpopular: people aren't interested.
A P2P news network might ironically solve that problem, though, as it would likely get a fair amount of press in and of itself.
But Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store has been charging $16.99 for "Fly or Die," while Roxio Inc.'s Napster service sells the 12-song collection for $13.99. Both prices are higher than the $13.49 that Amazon.com charges for the CD itself. The same pricing shifts are showing up on albums by a growing slate of artists, from Shakira to Bob Dylan.
Yes, you read that right - online stores just selling downloads are charging *more* than Amazon does for the CD itself (and Amazon typically has free shipping if you get at least $25 worth of stuff). That's seriously ridiculous: while I'm looking at this new "revolution" of pay-for-download music optimistically, I must admit that having the hard copy is still just better. Much better audio quality if you're an audiophile, ability to rip it and do what you want with it, and while the jewel cases suck the little inserted booklets are often pretty handy. Stick the CD and the booklet into your 288 CD binder and you're good to go. Unless they start packaging downloads with nicely designed info files with picures and lyrics and such, I'm not interested.
"What's for dinner?": you tell it what ingredients you have, what ingredients to exclude, and it'll tell you what you can make. Handy if you're trying to cook something with what you have and don't have time to go to the store or somesuch.
UR, despite the public-sounding name, is a private institution. In fact, as a student here I can tell you that the school really has a quite severe wish-we-were-ivy complex. Well, really only the administration is anal about prestige, the students could generally care less.
FYI, Eastman is a pretty fine bastion of classical music performance as far as such things go (although you may have been saying that, your post wasn't terribly clear though so I wasn't sure). But that said, as a student at UR I can say the only reason the administration is doing this is to preemptively cover their collective legal asses. Eastman is just gravy, the river campus (e.g. the main school, University of Rochester) is the driving force behind this deal.
And as for use, I doubt anyone will use it. I sure as hell don't intend to. We have a thriving DC++ hub, people will use Kazaa, there are other networks out there, and hell I don't really download music anymore anyway (downloading is so sloppy, I just rip cds these days).
The transition may happen eventually, but it'll be slow, and it won't really happen until somebody actually offers a service worth using. Streaming? DRM? Hell no. That and the selection is pretty crappy to my understanding, for somebody with even vaguely eclectic tastes at least.
But those that either appeal to specific hard-to-find genres (like places that have a lot of used stuff and let you trade in and so forth) and those that have diversified beyond recordings (like Borders) will still be around for awhile, I think. Even with the internet, I still like going to Borders and hanging out, browsing some books and previewing some cds and generally shopping around. And the used places are nice too, as you can often encounter things that you probably wouldn't find anywhere else.
It was a draw by repetition. The human grandmaster had a position advantage and was able to force a draw that way despite being down a significant amount of material.
Or in case it gets Slashdotted or something, I may as well note who actually won the game (although I do think that is something that should have been noted in the submission itself but oh well).
Our World Record attempt is now complete. We had serious technical difficulties early in the game, but managed to resolve them!
The result of the game was a draw.
I'm not denying that it's a workout: as I said, I'm sadly good at the game (e.g. I can beat almost all songs at max difficulty, the Maxx songs are still a bit much and a few of the other 10 footers throw me off occasionally but other than that). But to say that it's "exercise" is different: an actual exercise routine requires organization and dedication and so forth, as well as dietary changes and such pretty often. Now, DDR could be *part* of an exercise routine, and could be used to lose weight, but if you just play DDR every once in awhile and say it's "exercise", well, you're fooling yourself.
I know plenty of people who play DDR who are overweight and, well, don't lose weight by playing DDR because they still eat the same junkfood and still live the same general lifestyle. So I maintain that while DDR is a bit of a workout (especially at a high difficulty level), it still isn't quite "exercise". I realize it might seem like I'm mincing words here but it is a shade of meaning distinction that I feel is important. For example, if I wake up late and run to my class, that's not exercise. It can be a bit of a workout, I could be panting and exhausted by the time I get there, but that doesn't make it exercise. Same goes for DDR: just because I beat a tough song on heavy difficulty and am exhausted doesn't mean I have "exercised". It means I've jumped around and gotten tired.
DDR can hardly be qualified as dancing, and this is said by somebody who is unfortunately good at the game. That and while it can be a bit of a workout at high difficulty levels, I would hardly qualify it as "decent exercise": if you want exercise then exercise. DDR is a game, and in my experience a game swamped by rather geeky males (like most games). You'll find the occasional female playing, but it's hardly a gender balanced pursuit...
"So I was thinking - I like games, she likes to talk, why not combine the two?"
The question is does *she* like games. I'm not going to try to give relationship advice here, but you'd probably be better off asking *her* what game she'd like to play (if any) rather than asking Slashdot.
THis Unit has 2 Floppy Drives i dont know whether it has a Hard Drive . It comes with the Power Supply . it POwers on to This MS DOS Type Mode. No Windows install. THis is a Very Old System. THis is great for a Project. You can type Commands in the MS DOS ENtry . It does include the Power COrd.
On the plus side, it is five bucks and no reserve, and the username of the seller is a reassuring "legit17" (who also has 17 positive feedback, oddly enough)...
Fair enough (veiled insult and all), but if you're a guitarist then you should probably be spending most of your time playing guitar. Even if you want a midi keyboard, you'd be much better off with a $50 midi keyboard that doesn't have any of the stuff this thing has. If you don't want weighted action, velocity, aftertouch, or more than 4 octaves, well, then obviously you don't really play piano. And that's okay, if you still want a simple keyboard to do simple midi-in work then you'd be fine with, well, a simple keyboard.
But this behemoth has no market that I can discern. Actual pianists will definitely stay away from it, preferring something that is much more playable, and folks like you should stay away from it too, opting for something much cheaper and easier to use.
Maybe if by "music geek" you mean "guy who knows more about computers than music". Any *actual* music geek would prefer a good, straight up keyboard: 88 keys, hammer action, weighted (at least partially, preferably fully), and minimal other crap. Maybe a pitch bend wheel or a few programmable hotkeys, but not a gigantor LCD screen and a full qwerty keyboard: that's just going to get in the god damn way.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, kids are under adult attention a lot of the time. Still, I cannot dismiss this as just a "more efficient method" as you do. Is torture just a more efficient method of interrogation? Efficiency is not a justifying dictum, just a bonus.
That's your choice. Me, I do care. I'm not a totally paranoid tinfoil-hatter, but I have purposely avoided owning a cellphone and intend to continue doing so until it becomes an absolute necessity (if it does). And even then, I doubt I'll keep it with me all the time, much less on. I don't want to be reachable or trackable 24/7, that's not human nature, or at least not my nature.
Aand it was actually relatively skillfully done, in my opinion at least. You refute an argument by showing how its logic leads to absurdity. The argument isn't meant to provide a serious assertion, but rather an obviously silly assertion that reflects badly on the argument it is replying to.
And more importantly, it conditions them to be tracked more in the future. That may not *physically* harm them, but it's still damn creepy and arguably quite harmful. I sure wouldn't want it done to me.
Seriously. I mean, I could provide the famous "give up liberty for security" quote, but rather than use rhetoric I encourage you to just think about it: life is short. Life is damned short and uncertain. Hell, that's what makes it's *precious* in the first place.
But in any case, yes, kids die on occasion. They die in accidents. They die due to malice or misfortune or whatever else. It sucks. But that doesn't mean that it's worth it to adopt some truly creepy tactics.
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure about this specific example, though it does creep me out. But your general rule ("if it saves one kid") is horribly flawed. By that logic, it would eventually be worth maintaining a full police state, just in order to save a few lives.
Older people die, too, people of all ages, until eventually everyone seems to succumb. Again, it sucks. But saving a few lives is not worth lowering the quality of life for everyone, not in every situation at least. Think of it almost in terms of game theory, if you will: the total utility of saving a life or two versus screwing up many many more lives just isn't worth it. Granted, using math and statistics to talk about life and death is often seen as inensitive, but it's still an interesting way to ponder the issue.
See, it's your kind of logic that has been used to justify some of the more egregious steps in the "war on terror." Some people think that it's worth having a police state (or a police world) in order to guarantee as much security as humanly possible. Me? I'd rather have a freer life, with a side of danger. We all die someday anyway.
Slashdot just Slashdotted Cmdr Taco's website. I'm not sure how to react...
There's no way he still uses that email address. It recently got some rather high profile and hilarious coverage (Daily Show clip, requires Realplayer).
Reminds me of this hilarious Daily Show sketch (Realplayer, which sucks but oh well). The fact that they have almost every sketch from the past four years up on comedycentral.com has almost entirely destroyed my work ethic over the past few weeks...
...but first thing I stick on a Windows machine is Geoshell, presuming it's a personal machine (e.g. I don't have to share it or use it at a job or something). If you've not heard of it, Geoshell is a fantastic shell replacement. Stabler, takes less memory, and much more configurable (custom hotkeys galore) than Explorer. Besides that, your list looks pretty good, though personally I'd replace SmartFTP with WinSCP (SFTP client), throw in Putty (SSH client), Irfanview, DC++, and AVG Antivirus. Oh, and probably Adaware for good measure, even though you can avoid spyware if you just have a brain about what you install.
Besides that, I still run Ultimatezip instead of WinRAR, frankly I'm going with it because it's the status quo and it works fine. And I run Zonealarm, even though it's become a bit bloated. Oh, here's one thing you forgot: a good codec package. And BSPlayer to play videos... oh and Quicktime and an old version of RealPlayer (preferably RP8 or something). And then Cygwin for a nice *nix command line, and Nero to burn cds. There, I think that's about it.
I must say boo to the "brain damaged" conclusion, as it seems to assume that everybody just listens to pop. I usually listen to my music on a random playlist, but the mean track length of my random playlist is probably at least 6 minutes (that's averaging out 30 minute tracks and 3 minute tracks, as it were). I have many full albums as single mp3s on my playlist. I have full symphonies and full live sets and so forth.
To me, shuffle is mostly just to make it so I don't have to take too much time to pick what I want to listen to. I know I like most everything on my playlist, and if I don't like the song that comes up I have the "next" button hotkeyed. And yes, there is an element of that "magic" of the random playlist as the article discussed, but I'm not so melodramatic about it: it's just random, and sometime funny coincidences happen when things are random.
But this article and these critics saying it's the "future of music", well... like most critics and most article writers perhaps, they need to just shut up for a second and consider things from a variety of perspectives. Not everyone who uses "random shuffle" is a 15 year old MTV-watching pop-music-listening airhead. And I'd be willing to bet that old farts stay away from features like shuffle, not because they truly appreciate the aesthetic values of the full album any more (as I said you can easily get around that by just having full albums as single files), but simply because they're used to what they've done their whole life. It's human nature to avoid unnecessary change. Old habits die hard. Yada yada.
The problem is lack of attention. Censorship is a problem too, but there certainly are sources out there, albeit obscure ones, that cover all sorts of stuff that "mainstream" sources don't touch.
The problem is lack of attention and publicity. Mainstream sources cover mainstream things because that's what the mainstream wants: it's what sells. While stories are sometimes neglected due to their being taboo, I'd say the main obstacle is lack of interest. The stories may be taboo at CNN, but they're probably being covered elsewhere. It's just the elsewhere (Indymedia, foreign sources, what-have-you) is unpopular: people aren't interested.
A P2P news network might ironically solve that problem, though, as it would likely get a fair amount of press in and of itself.
Yes, you read that right - online stores just selling downloads are charging *more* than Amazon does for the CD itself (and Amazon typically has free shipping if you get at least $25 worth of stuff). That's seriously ridiculous: while I'm looking at this new "revolution" of pay-for-download music optimistically, I must admit that having the hard copy is still just better. Much better audio quality if you're an audiophile, ability to rip it and do what you want with it, and while the jewel cases suck the little inserted booklets are often pretty handy. Stick the CD and the booklet into your 288 CD binder and you're good to go. Unless they start packaging downloads with nicely designed info files with picures and lyrics and such, I'm not interested.
"What's for dinner?": you tell it what ingredients you have, what ingredients to exclude, and it'll tell you what you can make. Handy if you're trying to cook something with what you have and don't have time to go to the store or somesuch.
UR, despite the public-sounding name, is a private institution. In fact, as a student here I can tell you that the school really has a quite severe wish-we-were-ivy complex. Well, really only the administration is anal about prestige, the students could generally care less.
FYI, Eastman is a pretty fine bastion of classical music performance as far as such things go (although you may have been saying that, your post wasn't terribly clear though so I wasn't sure). But that said, as a student at UR I can say the only reason the administration is doing this is to preemptively cover their collective legal asses. Eastman is just gravy, the river campus (e.g. the main school, University of Rochester) is the driving force behind this deal.
And as for use, I doubt anyone will use it. I sure as hell don't intend to. We have a thriving DC++ hub, people will use Kazaa, there are other networks out there, and hell I don't really download music anymore anyway (downloading is so sloppy, I just rip cds these days).
The transition may happen eventually, but it'll be slow, and it won't really happen until somebody actually offers a service worth using. Streaming? DRM? Hell no. That and the selection is pretty crappy to my understanding, for somebody with even vaguely eclectic tastes at least.
But those that either appeal to specific hard-to-find genres (like places that have a lot of used stuff and let you trade in and so forth) and those that have diversified beyond recordings (like Borders) will still be around for awhile, I think. Even with the internet, I still like going to Borders and hanging out, browsing some books and previewing some cds and generally shopping around. And the used places are nice too, as you can often encounter things that you probably wouldn't find anywhere else.
Heh fair enough. Technically what I said is accurate, just omits that point about his sacrificing the material. Thanks for the clarification, though.
It was a draw by repetition. The human grandmaster had a position advantage and was able to force a draw that way despite being down a significant amount of material.
I'm not denying that it's a workout: as I said, I'm sadly good at the game (e.g. I can beat almost all songs at max difficulty, the Maxx songs are still a bit much and a few of the other 10 footers throw me off occasionally but other than that). But to say that it's "exercise" is different: an actual exercise routine requires organization and dedication and so forth, as well as dietary changes and such pretty often. Now, DDR could be *part* of an exercise routine, and could be used to lose weight, but if you just play DDR every once in awhile and say it's "exercise", well, you're fooling yourself.
I know plenty of people who play DDR who are overweight and, well, don't lose weight by playing DDR because they still eat the same junkfood and still live the same general lifestyle. So I maintain that while DDR is a bit of a workout (especially at a high difficulty level), it still isn't quite "exercise". I realize it might seem like I'm mincing words here but it is a shade of meaning distinction that I feel is important. For example, if I wake up late and run to my class, that's not exercise. It can be a bit of a workout, I could be panting and exhausted by the time I get there, but that doesn't make it exercise. Same goes for DDR: just because I beat a tough song on heavy difficulty and am exhausted doesn't mean I have "exercised". It means I've jumped around and gotten tired.
DDR can hardly be qualified as dancing, and this is said by somebody who is unfortunately good at the game. That and while it can be a bit of a workout at high difficulty levels, I would hardly qualify it as "decent exercise": if you want exercise then exercise. DDR is a game, and in my experience a game swamped by rather geeky males (like most games). You'll find the occasional female playing, but it's hardly a gender balanced pursuit...
"So I was thinking - I like games, she likes to talk, why not combine the two?"
The question is does *she* like games. I'm not going to try to give relationship advice here, but you'd probably be better off asking *her* what game she'd like to play (if any) rather than asking Slashdot.
On the plus side, it is five bucks and no reserve, and the username of the seller is a reassuring "legit17" (who also has 17 positive feedback, oddly enough)...
"Porn, the foundation of the internet. It will never go away or die. It has more uses then we can even imagine."
Agreed. It is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.
Hrmm...
Fair enough (veiled insult and all), but if you're a guitarist then you should probably be spending most of your time playing guitar. Even if you want a midi keyboard, you'd be much better off with a $50 midi keyboard that doesn't have any of the stuff this thing has. If you don't want weighted action, velocity, aftertouch, or more than 4 octaves, well, then obviously you don't really play piano. And that's okay, if you still want a simple keyboard to do simple midi-in work then you'd be fine with, well, a simple keyboard.
But this behemoth has no market that I can discern. Actual pianists will definitely stay away from it, preferring something that is much more playable, and folks like you should stay away from it too, opting for something much cheaper and easier to use.
Maybe if by "music geek" you mean "guy who knows more about computers than music". Any *actual* music geek would prefer a good, straight up keyboard: 88 keys, hammer action, weighted (at least partially, preferably fully), and minimal other crap. Maybe a pitch bend wheel or a few programmable hotkeys, but not a gigantor LCD screen and a full qwerty keyboard: that's just going to get in the god damn way.