Pretty much. The quality of articles seems to have gone down significantly, with a very strong bias towards pushing "synergy" with the rest of Dice. They weren't even subtle about it, either. Add to that the whole clusterfuck debacle with them trying to push Beta...
Partly the dynamics of this sort of thing, at least as it comes to social (especially romantic) relationships, play a big role. Using romantic as an example, traditionally, men are more expected to be direct, taking a proactive role - they're supposed to be the one who asks the woman out. Again, from a traditional standpoint, the woman isn't supposed to take direct action - instead, she's expected to drop subtle hints. (Again, this is speaking in the old/traditional sense)
The problem comes when, for whatever reason, the other party doesn't pick up on those signals (either of interest or lack thereof). It makes things a lot harder, for what should be obvious reasons. Autism can very easily lead to this sort of problem, but is hardly the only one.
Well, with investments that promise cash returns, it's very easy to categorize the return. I can't speak for others, but when I've kickstarted a game or other project, I expect that what I'm getting is going to exceed the value of the money I'm putting in, even if that value is in the form of largely intangible enjoyment. Sometimes I'm wrong about that, and in at least one case spectacularly so (I played the beta for about ten minutes, and concluded that it was utter crap that I had zero further interest in), but that was my poor estimate.
And part of why it works is that there are people who (at least for some projects) who value the proposed project enough that they put forward the money ahead of time. Maybe some of them are foolishly overestimating the value, but that's how it goes sometimes. Sure, you can wait until it's actually produced, but then you're not one of those people who wants it enough to do so - and I certainly wouldn't argue that you should do anything but wait and see, in that case, because there is indeed risk that the project could fail and you'd be out that money with nothing to show for it.
I'd say it's more of an investment than anything, given all that - it's not a donation if you're expecting/hoping for something tangible in return that is at least commensurate in value, with a degree of risk that you might wind up with nothing at all. You're just investing in the possibility of getting a copy of a particular proposed game/console/etc, rather than getting a certain amount of monetary profit back.
Except that it is. People treating it as something else doesn't change the fact that you are not purchasing a finished product. You are making a small-scale investment with the promise of specific rewards once the project completes.
Sometimes that works out. Other times it doesn't, and it behooves anyone who's contributing to a Kickstarter project to do a bit of research about the company or individuals behind it, how feasible their plan is, and overall how risky it is.
In fairness, you have to understand the event in context. The Tet Offensive ended in a decisive military victory for the American and South Vietnamese forces, but this came AFTER people had been told by the U.S. Government/Military that the war was almost won, the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong ability to fight was being destroyed, etc. Everyone had been primed to believe that a massive, country wide offensive/uprising like this wasn't even possible to begin with. That's why it came as such a shock, not because we were defeated military, but because it caused people to lose faith in what they were being told by the government.
Some of this was an intelligence failure on the part of the military leadership, including Gen. Westmoreland, who believed that the NVA was intent on trying to repeat their defeat of the French, by pulling a repeat of Dien Bien Phu. They thought that the siege of Khe Sanh was intended to be that battle, and this is why we fought so damn hard for the place, airlifting in supplies even when it was cut off by land. We did not see the Tet Offensive coming, were taken by surprise, and it cost us significantly in terms of the public's trust and willingness to support the war.
I can distill it even further. There are two primary reasons things don't get secured:
1) Cost
2) Convenience
People want Cheap and Easy. They want those far more than they want Secure, so when it comes to the "pick any two" moment, that's the way they go, and come up with ways to justify it. People, and companies, tend to do this up until the point that they are forced to compromise because the lack of Security has bit them hard enough in the ass.
McCain was the son of a high ranking Admiral, and a potentially valuable political pawn for the North Vietnamese. They offered him all sorts of inducements, nice treatment, etc, if he'd make statements for them. He refused, and they tortured him instead, to the point that he can't even raise his arms above his shoulders today.
They offered to release him early, ahead of his fellow prisoners, and he refused, insisting that all previous prisoners be released first (according to military rules), even though that meant he'd be enduring more of that hellhole.
Heroism isn't just about standing up with a machine gun on each arm and shooting up the enemy single-handedly.
If your benchmark for what constitutes a 'sport' and what isn't is the amount of time spent training, then Pro Gaming is absolutely a sport. Actual "pro" gamers on various teams spend ridiculous amounts of time living together and training.
Pro Gamers don't just screw off and do whatever all day. They do have to train and compete at an insane level. Sure, you or I can hop on and play games of Starcraft II, just like we can go play baseball at the park or in a company league, but it's absolutely nothing like even the guys who play on the MLB farm teams, nevermind the Major Leagues themselves. They face the possibility of injury too, even if less so than a full contact sport, but since when has that been a requirement? I'm pretty sure that pro golfers don't face the same risk of injury as NFL players, but golf is still considered a sport.
Unfortunately, I have a feeling that no matter how blatantly bad and stupid these companies get with takedown abuse, it won't be until some senator or congressperson's page gets sent a spurious takedown notice. Anyone with any awareness or interest in the issue already knows how bad the situation is.
Maybe this incident will get more press, but I'm not holding my breath.
In short, despite what they tell you, the money is fungible. Not because they actually take the money from the lottery and use it for something else, but because it doesn't stop them from cutting OTHER funding for the schools. So say they previously spent $500 million on the schools each year. The lottery brings in $150 million, so that should mean the schools get $650m, right? Nope, because they just cut the school budget by $300 million, meaning the schools are now only getting $350 million, of which $150 million is from the lottery.
Because there's almost nothing under the sun that will keep out the most determined attacker by itself. Even gigantic safes, vault doors, etc, have a rating based on the number of man hours it's expected to take to breach them. The idea is that you want one that's long enough for the Police/SWAT/QRF to have arrived before the bad guys can breach it.
The locks on your car doors, alarms, etc are meant to deter and delay the casual intruder, and also to an extent, to establish evidence of a break-in later.
I'm going to strongly speculate that it's about cost. Why? Because almost everything in business is about cost. Why duplicate things when you can reuse? Why put the wires and routing for two or three networks into a vehicle when you can put in one and run all the devices over them?
And you'll see it elsewhere too. Those people with an IP routed, internet connected home security system - do you think that's on a separate network from their computer, their internet connected TV, etc? It probably isn't, either. I don't know that I'd call it hubris, so much as underestimating the lengths that some people can and will go to in order to attack the network and the devices on it.
And more importantly, not only do the designers have to accurately estimate the level of protections necessary for the network, but they also have to be able to sell that to the management, who approves the additional cost.
Ritual suicide (or just suicide in general) is no longer a common response, though it's not completely unheard of.
That said, Japanese business culture still tends to have a sense of shame that's long ago been surgically removed from most executives in the U.S. (I think it occurs as part of the MBA program).
Licenses (regulations) alone aren't enough. Neither is competition. You really need both, and in the right amount, because both too much and too little are bad (admittedly, 'too much competition' is a difficult problem to reach).
We see this in the ISP field, just to name one. Even with net neutrality enshrined as a rule, we still have large swathes of the country with second or third rate service, even in major metropolitan areas with dense population. You can see the difference when Google comes to a city - instantly the incumbent players have to up their game and start offering competitive service and prices, while the rest of us are lucky to get overcharged for something like 5mb up/30mb down (nevermind the utterly horrific 'customer service').
Regulation is certainly needed, to prevent a lot of the shady stuff that would otherwise be possible (things like $ISP degrading traffic to extract payments from popular providers that occur unseen to the consumers - if Netflix starts getting spotty downloads, is most peoples' reaction to blame their ISP when everything else works fine, or do they blame Netflix, not knowing any better, etc). But you need competition too.
I've never been married, and never cheated on a girlfriend, nor would I (married or not) - so this doesn't really impact me directly at all. I have no stake in the fight.
That said, if someone cheats on their spouse, that's a matter for them, their spouse, their kids, and their therapist/divorce attorneys/etc. It's no business of mine, as a complete stranger, to judge their lives, or to think that I know what's best for them.
And no, part of the deal with privacy is that "bad things" WILL happen. People WILL get away with stuff that they shouldn't be doing, in a moral, ethical, or legal sense, and that's part of the tradeoff. We shouldn't kid ourselves about it, or backtrack the moment someone starts spouting off about cheating spouses, scary terrorists, or some other "but think of the children!" bit. It is a conscious choice we make, because if privacy is to have any real meaning, it has to have absolutes - there's no "reasonable expectation of privacy unless you were doing something Big Brother thinks could be bad."
Moreover, I think of this in terms of the panopticon/total awareness paradigm. We are in no way used to living in a society where our every action is not only recorded, but monitored, to the point that we not only have no secrets, but that we can be punished for transgressions we might have otherwise gotten away from.
Think about in the office. In times past your boss couldn't monitor you 100% of the day, and unless you really abused things, it was safe to spend a few extra minutes chatting at the water cooler about last night's TV. Now your computer can flag you the instant you step away for more than your allotted two minute bathroom break, and alert your boss.
Or take speeding, for instance. While it's illegal, something like 99%+ of drivers are going to exceed the speed limit by 1 to 5 mph on any given day. Our speed limits are to a certain degree calculated with that in mind. Do we want to have our locations monitored 24/7 to calculate if we violated them?
Personally, I don't think people should be cheating, but it's not my place to judge them, nor do I want to see it exposed like this.
I'd hazard a guess that this is a disgruntled insider, based in part on the fact that they claimed knowledge of internal practices (charging for profile deletion, but then retaining the information anyway). It's certainly possible someone could find that out through other means (having paid to have it deleted, then having it found anyway), but insider access explains a lot of things.
I've always thought it was odd that physical fitness requirements, in the US Army at least, are based solely on gender and age, and not on job/duties. Certainly everyone should be expected to reach a minimum level, but on the whole I'd expect someone in Infantry to be at a higher level of physical ability than a supply clerk, or a dental hygenist, or the IT guy.
I say if a woman is physically capable of meeting the requirements to do the job, more power to her. I'd rather have her on my team than some male that can barely meet the army-wide minimum.
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty much. The quality of articles seems to have gone down significantly, with a very strong bias towards pushing "synergy" with the rest of Dice. They weren't even subtle about it, either. Add to that the whole clusterfuck debacle with them trying to push Beta...
Partly the dynamics of this sort of thing, at least as it comes to social (especially romantic) relationships, play a big role. Using romantic as an example, traditionally, men are more expected to be direct, taking a proactive role - they're supposed to be the one who asks the woman out. Again, from a traditional standpoint, the woman isn't supposed to take direct action - instead, she's expected to drop subtle hints. (Again, this is speaking in the old/traditional sense)
The problem comes when, for whatever reason, the other party doesn't pick up on those signals (either of interest or lack thereof). It makes things a lot harder, for what should be obvious reasons. Autism can very easily lead to this sort of problem, but is hardly the only one.
Well, with investments that promise cash returns, it's very easy to categorize the return. I can't speak for others, but when I've kickstarted a game or other project, I expect that what I'm getting is going to exceed the value of the money I'm putting in, even if that value is in the form of largely intangible enjoyment. Sometimes I'm wrong about that, and in at least one case spectacularly so (I played the beta for about ten minutes, and concluded that it was utter crap that I had zero further interest in), but that was my poor estimate.
And part of why it works is that there are people who (at least for some projects) who value the proposed project enough that they put forward the money ahead of time. Maybe some of them are foolishly overestimating the value, but that's how it goes sometimes. Sure, you can wait until it's actually produced, but then you're not one of those people who wants it enough to do so - and I certainly wouldn't argue that you should do anything but wait and see, in that case, because there is indeed risk that the project could fail and you'd be out that money with nothing to show for it.
I'd say it's more of an investment than anything, given all that - it's not a donation if you're expecting/hoping for something tangible in return that is at least commensurate in value, with a degree of risk that you might wind up with nothing at all. You're just investing in the possibility of getting a copy of a particular proposed game/console/etc, rather than getting a certain amount of monetary profit back.
Except that it is. People treating it as something else doesn't change the fact that you are not purchasing a finished product. You are making a small-scale investment with the promise of specific rewards once the project completes.
Sometimes that works out. Other times it doesn't, and it behooves anyone who's contributing to a Kickstarter project to do a bit of research about the company or individuals behind it, how feasible their plan is, and overall how risky it is.
In fairness, you have to understand the event in context. The Tet Offensive ended in a decisive military victory for the American and South Vietnamese forces, but this came AFTER people had been told by the U.S. Government/Military that the war was almost won, the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong ability to fight was being destroyed, etc. Everyone had been primed to believe that a massive, country wide offensive/uprising like this wasn't even possible to begin with. That's why it came as such a shock, not because we were defeated military, but because it caused people to lose faith in what they were being told by the government.
Some of this was an intelligence failure on the part of the military leadership, including Gen. Westmoreland, who believed that the NVA was intent on trying to repeat their defeat of the French, by pulling a repeat of Dien Bien Phu. They thought that the siege of Khe Sanh was intended to be that battle, and this is why we fought so damn hard for the place, airlifting in supplies even when it was cut off by land. We did not see the Tet Offensive coming, were taken by surprise, and it cost us significantly in terms of the public's trust and willingness to support the war.
I can distill it even further. There are two primary reasons things don't get secured:
1) Cost
2) Convenience
People want Cheap and Easy. They want those far more than they want Secure, so when it comes to the "pick any two" moment, that's the way they go, and come up with ways to justify it. People, and companies, tend to do this up until the point that they are forced to compromise because the lack of Security has bit them hard enough in the ass.
Of course. He's a lizard, after all. And this is why people vote for a lizard - because if they don't, the wrong lizard might get elected.
Heroism takes many forms.
McCain was the son of a high ranking Admiral, and a potentially valuable political pawn for the North Vietnamese. They offered him all sorts of inducements, nice treatment, etc, if he'd make statements for them. He refused, and they tortured him instead, to the point that he can't even raise his arms above his shoulders today.
They offered to release him early, ahead of his fellow prisoners, and he refused, insisting that all previous prisoners be released first (according to military rules), even though that meant he'd be enduring more of that hellhole.
Heroism isn't just about standing up with a machine gun on each arm and shooting up the enemy single-handedly.
If your benchmark for what constitutes a 'sport' and what isn't is the amount of time spent training, then Pro Gaming is absolutely a sport. Actual "pro" gamers on various teams spend ridiculous amounts of time living together and training.
Just a few samples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Pro Gamers don't just screw off and do whatever all day. They do have to train and compete at an insane level. Sure, you or I can hop on and play games of Starcraft II, just like we can go play baseball at the park or in a company league, but it's absolutely nothing like even the guys who play on the MLB farm teams, nevermind the Major Leagues themselves. They face the possibility of injury too, even if less so than a full contact sport, but since when has that been a requirement? I'm pretty sure that pro golfers don't face the same risk of injury as NFL players, but golf is still considered a sport.
Unfortunately, I have a feeling that no matter how blatantly bad and stupid these companies get with takedown abuse, it won't be until some senator or congressperson's page gets sent a spurious takedown notice. Anyone with any awareness or interest in the issue already knows how bad the situation is.
Maybe this incident will get more press, but I'm not holding my breath.
After all, according to the universal laws of Star Trek movies and Windows releases, this one is guaranteed to be good.
If they were confirming it on Twitter, then it's not exactly much of a secret, is it?
John Olivier did a wonderful piece explaining this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
In short, despite what they tell you, the money is fungible. Not because they actually take the money from the lottery and use it for something else, but because it doesn't stop them from cutting OTHER funding for the schools. So say they previously spent $500 million on the schools each year. The lottery brings in $150 million, so that should mean the schools get $650m, right? Nope, because they just cut the school budget by $300 million, meaning the schools are now only getting $350 million, of which $150 million is from the lottery.
Depends on the kind of jam they use.
I hear raspberry works great, but only the Lone Star state would dare use raspberry jam, so it's pretty much out for California.
What do you consider "actual security" then?
Because there's almost nothing under the sun that will keep out the most determined attacker by itself. Even gigantic safes, vault doors, etc, have a rating based on the number of man hours it's expected to take to breach them. The idea is that you want one that's long enough for the Police/SWAT/QRF to have arrived before the bad guys can breach it.
The locks on your car doors, alarms, etc are meant to deter and delay the casual intruder, and also to an extent, to establish evidence of a break-in later.
I'm going to strongly speculate that it's about cost. Why? Because almost everything in business is about cost. Why duplicate things when you can reuse? Why put the wires and routing for two or three networks into a vehicle when you can put in one and run all the devices over them?
And you'll see it elsewhere too. Those people with an IP routed, internet connected home security system - do you think that's on a separate network from their computer, their internet connected TV, etc? It probably isn't, either. I don't know that I'd call it hubris, so much as underestimating the lengths that some people can and will go to in order to attack the network and the devices on it.
And more importantly, not only do the designers have to accurately estimate the level of protections necessary for the network, but they also have to be able to sell that to the management, who approves the additional cost.
Ritual suicide (or just suicide in general) is no longer a common response, though it's not completely unheard of.
That said, Japanese business culture still tends to have a sense of shame that's long ago been surgically removed from most executives in the U.S. (I think it occurs as part of the MBA program).
Licenses (regulations) alone aren't enough. Neither is competition. You really need both, and in the right amount, because both too much and too little are bad (admittedly, 'too much competition' is a difficult problem to reach).
We see this in the ISP field, just to name one. Even with net neutrality enshrined as a rule, we still have large swathes of the country with second or third rate service, even in major metropolitan areas with dense population. You can see the difference when Google comes to a city - instantly the incumbent players have to up their game and start offering competitive service and prices, while the rest of us are lucky to get overcharged for something like 5mb up/30mb down (nevermind the utterly horrific 'customer service').
Regulation is certainly needed, to prevent a lot of the shady stuff that would otherwise be possible (things like $ISP degrading traffic to extract payments from popular providers that occur unseen to the consumers - if Netflix starts getting spotty downloads, is most peoples' reaction to blame their ISP when everything else works fine, or do they blame Netflix, not knowing any better, etc). But you need competition too.
I've never been married, and never cheated on a girlfriend, nor would I (married or not) - so this doesn't really impact me directly at all. I have no stake in the fight.
That said, if someone cheats on their spouse, that's a matter for them, their spouse, their kids, and their therapist/divorce attorneys/etc. It's no business of mine, as a complete stranger, to judge their lives, or to think that I know what's best for them.
And no, part of the deal with privacy is that "bad things" WILL happen. People WILL get away with stuff that they shouldn't be doing, in a moral, ethical, or legal sense, and that's part of the tradeoff. We shouldn't kid ourselves about it, or backtrack the moment someone starts spouting off about cheating spouses, scary terrorists, or some other "but think of the children!" bit. It is a conscious choice we make, because if privacy is to have any real meaning, it has to have absolutes - there's no "reasonable expectation of privacy unless you were doing something Big Brother thinks could be bad."
Inconceivable!
Moreover, I think of this in terms of the panopticon/total awareness paradigm. We are in no way used to living in a society where our every action is not only recorded, but monitored, to the point that we not only have no secrets, but that we can be punished for transgressions we might have otherwise gotten away from.
Think about in the office. In times past your boss couldn't monitor you 100% of the day, and unless you really abused things, it was safe to spend a few extra minutes chatting at the water cooler about last night's TV. Now your computer can flag you the instant you step away for more than your allotted two minute bathroom break, and alert your boss.
Or take speeding, for instance. While it's illegal, something like 99%+ of drivers are going to exceed the speed limit by 1 to 5 mph on any given day. Our speed limits are to a certain degree calculated with that in mind. Do we want to have our locations monitored 24/7 to calculate if we violated them?
Personally, I don't think people should be cheating, but it's not my place to judge them, nor do I want to see it exposed like this.
I'd hazard a guess that this is a disgruntled insider, based in part on the fact that they claimed knowledge of internal practices (charging for profile deletion, but then retaining the information anyway). It's certainly possible someone could find that out through other means (having paid to have it deleted, then having it found anyway), but insider access explains a lot of things.
I've always thought it was odd that physical fitness requirements, in the US Army at least, are based solely on gender and age, and not on job/duties. Certainly everyone should be expected to reach a minimum level, but on the whole I'd expect someone in Infantry to be at a higher level of physical ability than a supply clerk, or a dental hygenist, or the IT guy.
I say if a woman is physically capable of meeting the requirements to do the job, more power to her. I'd rather have her on my team than some male that can barely meet the army-wide minimum.
Constitutions, and Laws, are only as good as society commonly interprets and enforces them.
The companies that have been doing this are getting investigated for it:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a719...
It's long overdue, but better late than never.