I can't bring myself to cry too much for dial-up companies - they're the VHS of the internet: fantastic in their day, but completely overshadowed by current tech.
Plus, they'll have more than enough warning to transition to whatever else they're going to do. (For starters, people will still need email addresses, webspace, and all the other whizbangs that go along with the 'net)
Please feel free to point out what in my description depicted religious ceremony. And please - are you really implying that Santa Claus is a god?
To the average kid Christmas morning, all those presents appearing from "Santa" probably counts as a miracle. *g*
I celebrate Christmas with my family. No church, no mass. And I know just enough about Christianity to know that *they* can't keep their stories straight between sects anyway, so they can come bother me when they convince each other what the "proper" way to do things are.
Christmas is when you're stuck with that big aunt that won't stop pinching your cheeks, while Xmas is the part where you get to start thrashing down hills on your new sports equipment.
(Alternatively, Xmas is when Santa starts rappelling down the chimney, chugging Mountain Dew as he delivers presents)
Not directly related to your point, but do you really think that largest use of this device is going to be downloading public-domain books with this thing? Be honest.
Not the point - just because I can use a shovel to kill you and bury your body, doesn't mean it doesn't have a legitimate use.
There is already a wonderful site that already has these books available for download. If a greasemonkey user script was written that would pull the book from gutenberg.org, I don't think anyone would be complaining, and you can get all those books that I'm sure you've never read (I mean, seriously. Frankenstein? Mary Shelley took a bad-ass idea and totally ruined it).
Downloading from gutenberg pretty much guarantees that you aren't downloading a virus. That might not matter to the population on this site, but maybe to users in general it would help.
If they'd linked it to Gutenberg, I wouldn't matter from Amazon's perspective - you're still drawing business away. Also, it would lose some of it's "honeypot" factor. TPB is a nice easy target, who has shown a remarkable ability to fight the law. Gutenberg would be far more likely to cave.
Now, I haven't seen this plugin. If all it does is a PirateBay search, I don't see how it saves you all that much time, particularly if PB isn't your torrent aggregator/tracker of choice. It may also give the impression that there is no torrent available for a particular item, when in fact there is, it just isn't indexed by PB. If it goes to PB and loads the first link, then it has the problem where the first link might not be the one you want. So if you are looking for Great Expectations by Dickens, and wind up with "Great Expectations," then your innocuous search for something in the public domain has turn you into a pirate.
I would wager that most people on this board engage in piracy. But at least I admit it (anonymously).
I think "piracy" has the wrong connotations (well, the right ones if you're a media creator). I wager most people on this board haven't boarded a ship and ransacked a village lately. But "IP embezzlement" doesn't have the same sexiness.
Here's a counter-argument: due to budget cuts, he is paying $300 out of his own pocket for test materials. It's much likely cheaper to pay him the $300 (removing the need for advertising) than to pursue disciplinary action.
Ob.political: Or are you supporting laxer testing in your schools?
Here's the question to ask your schools - if they're paying $15,000 per student, and the average class size is 30 students, that means your child's classroom should have a budget of $450,000.
Where is all the money going? And why is it going to things that don't help my kid?
(My kid's not school age yet, but she will attend public school. And I will be there being an annoying parent.)
That money should go to: 1) good books. 2) good teachers. Period.
Reverse the order, and you've got it in one - a good teacher doesn't even necessarily need the books.
But let's not forget the core point here - the teacher is selling ads to make $300 - the cost of properly testing his class. They're not selling out to Pepsi for a scoreboard or some such nonsense - it's almost literally pocketchange
Re:You do realize the other hobbies are the same?
on
How Do Games Grow Up?
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· Score: 1
Unless her goal in life is an underpaid job in an orchestra that skill is useful for exactly one thing: more playing the piano. Usefulness for any other RL activity: zero.
You also learn music theory and music appreciation. Your world grows a little. Piano lessons as a kid might translate into guitar playing as a teen or becoming a professional musician. Honestly, I hate the attitude of "if it isnt making money then its stupid to do." Why go to college when you can just go to trade school? There's an argument that its worth educating people even if it doesnt translate into dollars.
That's a bit of a different argument, though.
The point I see people making is that music is no more inherently useful than gaming (or reading, or insert-your-favorite-pasttime-here). Any hobby can become a career, any hobby will gain you skills, and any hobby that isn't fun shouldn't be persued. Parents, catch that last part - making your kid play piano so they grow up "well-rounded" is the surest way to make sure they hate and avoid music later in life.
Re:You do realize the other hobbies are the same?
on
How Do Games Grow Up?
·
· Score: 1
I play, and recently played at a close friends wedding. Not only did I get to give a unique, personal and priceless present whilst receive the adoration of hundreds of guests. I later carried an impromptu post-reception party with a smaller number of the guests at the hotel for several hours after the reception finished.
I didn't make any money, but I made a lot of people happy. If you think that's useless in real life then accountancy is the profession for you.
Meh - a friend of mine proposed to his wife with a Scrabble board. (They own a gaming store now.)
There's always a way to use a skill, if you're creative enough. Do what you like to do, whether it's PC gaming, piano playing, or politics
Well, it's all well and good to have an ultra-religious, right-wing woman as a running mate. But there were plenty of *smart* Republicans who fit the bill just as well, and wouldn't have looked quite so... calculated?
I always preferred the Stars! method of multiplayer enforcement: players with the same serial number were screwed with by the game (meteors took out their planet, the game stats were skewed against them, etc..). But it *only* applied to the players with identical keys - everyone else was treated normally (I'm not even sure if the game told them what was going on - I know the "pirate players" were informed, though).
OK, I know Slashdot is collectively in holier-than-thou rage over this poor, "innocent" kid, but why was the kid trying to access the site in the first place?
Couple possibilities:
Was doing something unrelated, and noticed a fileshare, clicked out of curiosity. (if all students had access to the data, it was probably somewhere visible.)
Kid was bored looking for trouble (a popular passtime with teenagers, as I recall).
Something more nefarious (which I doubt for the reason of "why call attention to it?")
We're obviously only getting the "crimebuster" version of the story here, but until they show that he actually *did* something with the data, all he's guilty of is making the school look bad (which is punishable by ruinage of life and job possibilities, apparently).
Even if he was looking for something to hack, he didn't do any damage.
Not true - Any unauthorized access is "damage" because it requires expending time (read: money) to assess the situation and determine whether any "real" damage was done.
Look at it from the admin's perspective. Someone broke into your system. He claims that he didn't do anything bad while he was there. You can't just take his word on that - it has to be investigated.
Of course, if the admin did spend time/money, he might have found the security hole prior. Kid should charge a consulting fee. Personally, I'd be worried about how many people have been in there before this kid spoke up.
Short version: the school and police have to ask themselves a simple question - the next time Bob Student finds himself somewhere he's not supposed to be, do you want him to tell you so you can fix it, or keep quiet to cover his ass, and let the issue continue until a black hat really fscks you up?
From this chair, it seems obvious the school is desperately trying to deflect attention from the fact that they left personal information easily accessable, and likely have no idea how many people have walked off with it to date. This kid's gonna take the fall because they need to blame someone. With any luck he'll get a slap on the wrist and a job offer at a security firm.
No, I'm just pointing out that "parallel use" is a horrible way to define these things. While I'm at it, I'll point out that trying to carve an exemption for digital media is a losing proposition as well, since it only encourages people to make new rules to handle these "exceptions"
The only difference between a painting, a book, and a CD is the cost of duplication. People don't worry about painting piracy for the same reason people didn't worry about pirating LPs - the cost of duplication made it unwieldy.
PDFs have already started books down this path - the first scanned copy takes work, but once you've converted a physical book into a PDF, the cost of duplication is bandwidth and hard drive space.
Here's the message that needs to be going out - people want to support the creators of the artists. Distribution channels need to make this as easy as possible. If you make it difficult for me to give you my money (whether DRM, or just charging a stupid rate), I won't buy it. (Maybe I'll pirate it, maybe I won't. Either way you didn't get my money.)
The difference between loaning a book and "loaning" an MP3 is that once you'd "loaned" your buddy a song, he has complete access to it whenever he wants. More importantly, he has complete parallel access to it with you. Only one instance of the song was paid for, yet two people are able to enjoy its use at any time, perhaps simultaneously.
So what about paintings? I bought it (or a copy/print of it, anyway), but I can have multiple people with parallel enjoyment of it (my friends and I can all look at it at the same time). Am I violating the painter's copyright?
When you can turns the tables and start dictating the terms?
China will no more "cut off all exports" than the U.S. did, and for the same reason - as China owns more and more of the U.S. business interests and government debt, they will call more and more of the shots. (See IMF for precedent).
It will be a great irony to watch America suffer the same fate they've inflicted on other countries - an economy that runs to the dictates of outsiders for outsider's benefit.
The best teachers love and teach no matter what the system. This is a tiny minority of all teachers and will ever remain so. Sorting for quality among and improving the performance of the teachers who do not do it as a vocation is the road to improvement. Happiness != union membership.
I always love this argument - let's try rephrasing:
the best athletes love and play no matter what the system.
the best engineers love and workno matter what the system
The reasons teachers need a union is because everyone expects them to work no matter the conditions, for "the love of the work". And the sadness is that too many teachers fall for it.
The happiest *and* most successful teachers I know either (a) don't work in education, or (b) have significant off-school sources of income.
Want more kids caring about math? Easy:
Stop glorifying the sports teams over the other extracurricular activities
Stop coddling kids who can't cut it in academics - people who are good at math or science should feel like they've accomplished something.
Treat teachers like the resource they're supposed to be, rather than cut-rate babysitters.
I know it's not something easy to imagine, but there are humans out there that happen to be familiar with the concept of a "girlfriend". And that "girlfriend" thingie might be photographed in ways that only the boyfriend alone prefers to see. You may argue that nobody cares about some random officials, but in my opinion this is extremely horrible, and I can't stand the thought of it.
And to add insult to injury, remember this:
10 years ago, when they found naughty pictures of your girlfriend, they ogled for a minute, and then had to give them back.
Today, they're allowed to make a complete copy of your hard drive - you sure you want those pictures circulating around the customs office?
That's what folks are missing - I don't care if customs sees I took pictures in Vegas. I do care that they intend to make a copy for themselves. And I will be completely unsurprised when full-drive copying becomes SOP, for "security reasons"
Put them on your iPod. I've got a 80GB Classic, and there's more than enough room there to store whatever you need, and who's going to search your music player for stuff?
Unless, of course, you're doing something naughty and arouse suspicion, in which case you're pretty boned - encrypting/obfuscating the file on the 'Pod would probably help, but if you're getting the full treatment...
What the world really needs is secure storage with a self-destruct feature - when they ask you for the password, you give them X, which wipes the drive as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. (Preferably with a "decrypting, please wait" message)
The whole "Baby Einstein" con is pretty much a way that busy parents assuage their guilt for using the television as a babysitter by letting themselves be convinced that it's helping them developmentally. Before age 2, it isn't.
Agreed on the Baby Einstein con - my daughter won't watch it. (At five months she just cried and wandered away, at 21 months she points at it and says "no"). As parents, we thought it was the most pointless thing out there.
I find we go for DVDs of the classics - Sesame Street, Mr. Dressup, Fraggle Rock. No commercials, and it doesn't melt our brains either. Some of the new stuff is good too - Pocoyo, Four Square. I suffer Dora and Diego in small doses only.
Really, that's the solution to boob-tube kids. Sit and watch what they're watching. Trust me, you won't last too long with In the Night Garden before you dive for the off switch.
Heck, have Dad stay home instead, no reason why it has to be "women's work".
I stayed home for four months with our newborn while my wife went on her summer work season. You want to appreciate parenthood? Be the on-call parent 24/7 for a few months.
Are you seriously calling someone who lets their child watch age appropriate television while they accomplish household chores a bad parent?
Well, depends - can they tell me, right now, exactly what their kids are watching? Not just "Treehouse" or "Disney" - what show is on the tube?
I have a 21-month old, and there is no way I would let her watch any channel unsupervised. And that's because there is such a thing as bad children's television
Slashdot Mirror
I can't bring myself to cry too much for dial-up companies - they're the VHS of the internet: fantastic in their day, but completely overshadowed by current tech.
Plus, they'll have more than enough warning to transition to whatever else they're going to do. (For starters, people will still need email addresses, webspace, and all the other whizbangs that go along with the 'net)
Please feel free to point out what in my description depicted religious ceremony. And please - are you really implying that Santa Claus is a god?
To the average kid Christmas morning, all those presents appearing from "Santa" probably counts as a miracle. *g*
I celebrate Christmas with my family. No church, no mass. And I know just enough about Christianity to know that *they* can't keep their stories straight between sects anyway, so they can come bother me when they convince each other what the "proper" way to do things are.
You've got it backwards.
Christmas is when you're stuck with that big aunt that won't stop pinching your cheeks, while Xmas is the part where you get to start thrashing down hills on your new sports equipment.
(Alternatively, Xmas is when Santa starts rappelling down the chimney, chugging Mountain Dew as he delivers presents)
Not directly related to your point, but do you really think that largest use of this device is going to be downloading public-domain books with this thing? Be honest.
Not the point - just because I can use a shovel to kill you and bury your body, doesn't mean it doesn't have a legitimate use.
There is already a wonderful site that already has these books available for download. If a greasemonkey user script was written that would pull the book from gutenberg.org, I don't think anyone would be complaining, and you can get all those books that I'm sure you've never read (I mean, seriously. Frankenstein? Mary Shelley took a bad-ass idea and totally ruined it).
Downloading from gutenberg pretty much guarantees that you aren't downloading a virus. That might not matter to the population on this site, but maybe to users in general it would help.
If they'd linked it to Gutenberg, I wouldn't matter from Amazon's perspective - you're still drawing business away. Also, it would lose some of it's "honeypot" factor. TPB is a nice easy target, who has shown a remarkable ability to fight the law. Gutenberg would be far more likely to cave.
Now, I haven't seen this plugin. If all it does is a PirateBay search, I don't see how it saves you all that much time, particularly if PB isn't your torrent aggregator/tracker of choice. It may also give the impression that there is no torrent available for a particular item, when in fact there is, it just isn't indexed by PB. If it goes to PB and loads the first link, then it has the problem where the first link might not be the one you want. So if you are looking for Great Expectations by Dickens, and wind up with "Great Expectations," then your innocuous search for something in the public domain has turn you into a pirate.
I would wager that most people on this board engage in piracy. But at least I admit it (anonymously).
I think "piracy" has the wrong connotations (well, the right ones if you're a media creator). I wager most people on this board haven't boarded a ship and ransacked a village lately. But "IP embezzlement" doesn't have the same sexiness.
He's not keeping it - he's paying for the paper.
Education seems to be the only profession where it's acceptable to expect the employees to bring their own office supplies.
Here's a counter-argument: due to budget cuts, he is paying $300 out of his own pocket for test materials. It's much likely cheaper to pay him the $300 (removing the need for advertising) than to pursue disciplinary action.
Ob.political: Or are you supporting laxer testing in your schools?
Here's the question to ask your schools - if they're paying $15,000 per student, and the average class size is 30 students, that means your child's classroom should have a budget of $450,000.
Where is all the money going? And why is it going to things that don't help my kid?
(My kid's not school age yet, but she will attend public school. And I will be there being an annoying parent.)
That money should go to: 1) good books. 2) good teachers. Period.
Reverse the order, and you've got it in one - a good teacher doesn't even necessarily need the books.
But let's not forget the core point here - the teacher is selling ads to make $300 - the cost of properly testing his class. They're not selling out to Pepsi for a scoreboard or some such nonsense - it's almost literally pocketchange
Unless her goal in life is an underpaid job in an orchestra that skill is useful for exactly one thing: more playing the piano. Usefulness for any other RL activity: zero.
You also learn music theory and music appreciation. Your world grows a little. Piano lessons as a kid might translate into guitar playing as a teen or becoming a professional musician. Honestly, I hate the attitude of "if it isnt making money then its stupid to do." Why go to college when you can just go to trade school? There's an argument that its worth educating people even if it doesnt translate into dollars.
That's a bit of a different argument, though.
The point I see people making is that music is no more inherently useful than gaming (or reading, or insert-your-favorite-pasttime-here). Any hobby can become a career, any hobby will gain you skills, and any hobby that isn't fun shouldn't be persued. Parents, catch that last part - making your kid play piano so they grow up "well-rounded" is the surest way to make sure they hate and avoid music later in life.
I play, and recently played at a close friends wedding. Not only did I get to give a unique, personal and priceless present whilst receive the adoration of hundreds of guests. I later carried an impromptu post-reception party with a smaller number of the guests at the hotel for several hours after the reception finished.
I didn't make any money, but I made a lot of people happy. If you think that's useless in real life then accountancy is the profession for you.
Meh - a friend of mine proposed to his wife with a Scrabble board. (They own a gaming store now.)
There's always a way to use a skill, if you're creative enough. Do what you like to do, whether it's PC gaming, piano playing, or politics
Well, it's all well and good to have an ultra-religious, right-wing woman as a running mate. But there were plenty of *smart* Republicans who fit the bill just as well, and wouldn't have looked quite so... calculated?
I'd say the BBC has more of a "World" slant than a "British" one. (Speaking as a Canadian, who gets exposed to American, Canadian, and BBC)
If CBC, BBC, and ABC tell me different things, I'd believe the BBC before the other two.
I always preferred the Stars! method of multiplayer enforcement: players with the same serial number were screwed with by the game (meteors took out their planet, the game stats were skewed against them, etc..). But it *only* applied to the players with identical keys - everyone else was treated normally (I'm not even sure if the game told them what was going on - I know the "pirate players" were informed, though).
OK, I know Slashdot is collectively in holier-than-thou rage over this poor, "innocent" kid, but why was the kid trying to access the site in the first place?
Couple possibilities:
We're obviously only getting the "crimebuster" version of the story here, but until they show that he actually *did* something with the data, all he's guilty of is making the school look bad (which is punishable by ruinage of life and job possibilities, apparently).
Better yet: I'm rescuing *your* kid from the backyard, your house is on fire, and you want to charge me with kidnapping, trespass and arson.
Not true - Any unauthorized access is "damage" because it requires expending time (read: money) to assess the situation and determine whether any "real" damage was done.
Look at it from the admin's perspective. Someone broke into your system. He claims that he didn't do anything bad while he was there. You can't just take his word on that - it has to be investigated.
Of course, if the admin did spend time/money, he might have found the security hole prior. Kid should charge a consulting fee. Personally, I'd be worried about how many people have been in there before this kid spoke up.
Short version: the school and police have to ask themselves a simple question - the next time Bob Student finds himself somewhere he's not supposed to be, do you want him to tell you so you can fix it, or keep quiet to cover his ass, and let the issue continue until a black hat really fscks you up?
From this chair, it seems obvious the school is desperately trying to deflect attention from the fact that they left personal information easily accessable, and likely have no idea how many people have walked off with it to date. This kid's gonna take the fall because they need to blame someone. With any luck he'll get a slap on the wrist and a job offer at a security firm.
No, I'm just pointing out that "parallel use" is a horrible way to define these things. While I'm at it, I'll point out that trying to carve an exemption for digital media is a losing proposition as well, since it only encourages people to make new rules to handle these "exceptions"
The only difference between a painting, a book, and a CD is the cost of duplication. People don't worry about painting piracy for the same reason people didn't worry about pirating LPs - the cost of duplication made it unwieldy.
PDFs have already started books down this path - the first scanned copy takes work, but once you've converted a physical book into a PDF, the cost of duplication is bandwidth and hard drive space.
Here's the message that needs to be going out - people want to support the creators of the artists. Distribution channels need to make this as easy as possible. If you make it difficult for me to give you my money (whether DRM, or just charging a stupid rate), I won't buy it. (Maybe I'll pirate it, maybe I won't. Either way you didn't get my money.)
The difference between loaning a book and "loaning" an MP3 is that once you'd "loaned" your buddy a song, he has complete access to it whenever he wants. More importantly, he has complete parallel access to it with you. Only one instance of the song was paid for, yet two people are able to enjoy its use at any time, perhaps simultaneously.
So what about paintings? I bought it (or a copy/print of it, anyway), but I can have multiple people with parallel enjoyment of it (my friends and I can all look at it at the same time). Am I violating the painter's copyright?
When you can turns the tables and start dictating the terms?
China will no more "cut off all exports" than the U.S. did, and for the same reason - as China owns more and more of the U.S. business interests and government debt, they will call more and more of the shots. (See IMF for precedent).
It will be a great irony to watch America suffer the same fate they've inflicted on other countries - an economy that runs to the dictates of outsiders for outsider's benefit.
The best teachers love and teach no matter what the system. This is a tiny minority of all teachers and will ever remain so. Sorting for quality among and improving the performance of the teachers who do not do it as a vocation is the road to improvement. Happiness != union membership.
I always love this argument - let's try rephrasing:
The reasons teachers need a union is because everyone expects them to work no matter the conditions, for "the love of the work". And the sadness is that too many teachers fall for it.
The happiest *and* most successful teachers I know either (a) don't work in education, or (b) have significant off-school sources of income.
Want more kids caring about math? Easy:
I know it's not something easy to imagine, but there are humans out there that happen to be familiar with the concept of a "girlfriend". And that "girlfriend" thingie might be photographed in ways that only the boyfriend alone prefers to see. You may argue that nobody cares about some random officials, but in my opinion this is extremely horrible, and I can't stand the thought of it.
And to add insult to injury, remember this:
10 years ago, when they found naughty pictures of your girlfriend, they ogled for a minute, and then had to give them back.
Today, they're allowed to make a complete copy of your hard drive - you sure you want those pictures circulating around the customs office?
That's what folks are missing - I don't care if customs sees I took pictures in Vegas. I do care that they intend to make a copy for themselves. And I will be completely unsurprised when full-drive copying becomes SOP, for "security reasons"
Put them on your iPod. I've got a 80GB Classic, and there's more than enough room there to store whatever you need, and who's going to search your music player for stuff?
Unless, of course, you're doing something naughty and arouse suspicion, in which case you're pretty boned - encrypting/obfuscating the file on the 'Pod would probably help, but if you're getting the full treatment...
What the world really needs is secure storage with a self-destruct feature - when they ask you for the password, you give them X, which wipes the drive as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. (Preferably with a "decrypting, please wait" message)
The whole "Baby Einstein" con is pretty much a way that busy parents assuage their guilt for using the television as a babysitter by letting themselves be convinced that it's helping them developmentally. Before age 2, it isn't.
Agreed on the Baby Einstein con - my daughter won't watch it. (At five months she just cried and wandered away, at 21 months she points at it and says "no"). As parents, we thought it was the most pointless thing out there.
I find we go for DVDs of the classics - Sesame Street, Mr. Dressup, Fraggle Rock. No commercials, and it doesn't melt our brains either. Some of the new stuff is good too - Pocoyo, Four Square. I suffer Dora and Diego in small doses only.
Really, that's the solution to boob-tube kids. Sit and watch what they're watching. Trust me, you won't last too long with In the Night Garden before you dive for the off switch.
Heck, have Dad stay home instead, no reason why it has to be "women's work".
I stayed home for four months with our newborn while my wife went on her summer work season. You want to appreciate parenthood? Be the on-call parent 24/7 for a few months.
Are you seriously calling someone who lets their child watch age appropriate television while they accomplish household chores a bad parent?
Well, depends - can they tell me, right now, exactly what their kids are watching? Not just "Treehouse" or "Disney" - what show is on the tube?
I have a 21-month old, and there is no way I would let her watch any channel unsupervised. And that's because there is such a thing as bad children's television