Despite all the Microsoft apologists who will wring their hands and point out that certain things were not done in order to safety the Microsoft honeypot, the genuine service this article demonstrated is that people who turn on their new computer with its Microsoft operating system connected to the Internet are vulnerable to exploits which are automated and exist in abundance, ready to pounce upon current Microsoft operating systems.
Even if you're a master of Microsoft "anti-ware" solutions and tweaks, what happens when someone who isn't takes a few wrong turns with their OS? It's toast, or worse, enslaved and used as a resource the end-user is paying for.
I stopped using Microsoft operating systems to directly connect to the Internet nearly 10 years ago, when the sophistication of the exploits had developed to the point where it was no longer safe to use any Microsoft OS online. Since then it really hasn't gotten much better, has it?
I think it's a shame that the company with the fattest pockets can't be bothered to get it right yet still demands to be on every PC made.
FRPG table-top gameplay endures because something like "Never Winter Nights", is prohibitively expensive to develop a good adventure for. There's an intrinsic worth to all the maps, the (often quite bad) art, the stories and the histories. And at the very core of things, interaction and story-telling take skill and it takes a human.
Perhaps as a father I'll start being the "sacrificial nerd" and running games for my kids. I am an accomplished GM, voice-actor, story-writer, and story-teller, and good enough illustrator. I have run games that lasted for months, even spanned years. In the time it takes a small army of people to craft a video game, I can create the beginnings of a world and populate it by incident and by design. I can't think of a better thing to do, in lieu of reading, than to teach through table-top role-playing games.
I've nearly finished reading "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" to them and once that's done I think it's time to start telling my own stories and having my kids play characters instead of having their brains poached by the dreck on Cartoon Network and Nickolodeon before they fall asleep.
They'll benefit immensely from having to think before turning in, and there's nothing like having something which will detour them from TV. And maybe it'll justify a few trips to the local gameshop. I haven't been there in years.
And it sucks that some knee-jerk Canadian fool marked your post as a troll because in a nutshell, "more laws == less justice" meets "kill the slavemasters & Don't tread on me", at least in the mind of anybody who values their liberty.
Laws that actually seek to control access to freely available information in what would seem to be a free country across a world-wide network should raise flags and people should shout them down.
Of course we're talking about a country which captiulated to media barons and the fawning toadies who saw the instruments of that surrender to fruition.
Perhaps this is a pre-emptive move to assauge the concerns of vocal ethnic and religious groups? Canada has a couple of large immigrant populations, at least two which predate the United States Constitution.
Mind and movement control is a ratchet, we're just hearing things get tighter in Canada. Wait till something like this passes the House just before midnight sometime soon.
Remember when smart people created truly wonderous things that have changed our world forever, like Nuclear weapons, and the polio vaccine? They didn't have laptops.
I remember when the only phone in school was in the principal's office. K12 kids with phones in the classroom undermines teachers/administrators.
The money which would be wasted on laptops should be invested in a company that makes genuinely useful textbooks that don't need to be reinvented to suit ethnic/ideological/religious goals every year. Update it for empirical things, like new elements or better sorting algorithms. Not because some group finds the truth alarming and decides to rewrite history by omission or bowlderizing.
Paper still kicks butt!! I love paper. Paper is one of the greatest inventions we've ever had. It's gorgeous stuff that as a medium enables us to do so many great things. Paper cannot be replaced by a laptop.
Kids are capable of so much provided we don't waste their time. In our schools there should one goal, to educate with the least number of filters to the greatest depth and clarity. As much as or as little they can stand, warts and all. So when things start getting fractal and there's unpleasant history, it's not obviated or omitted. A teacher should be there to provide an answer, the kind of answer that allowed them to pass their essays and formulate a thesis. Maybe if educators were honest with kids there wouldn't be such a penchant for mendacity and complacency in academia.
Laptops and TV's in schools are a complete waste of time. They're crutches for weak teachers who go on to make weak students who prepetuate the whole cycle.
I think it was more along the lines of "Grand Theft Bicycle", at least on the Dutch. Older folks have a common joke when they meet Germans, "Hey where's my bicycle!" because during WWII the Germans took all their bicycles.
You're spot on. Microsoft plays nice like a python. When mice are introduced to the snake the snake doesn't do anything to them. It's later, when the snake becomes hungry and the mice complacent, that one-by-one the mice are ingested. Humans might be smarter than mice, but groups of humans and their tasty ideas/artful works are corporately edible.
How in the world is that flamebait?! It's the truth.
OSWEEKLY blows a fierce Microsoft wind up readers asses.
They are a mewling new eyeball lamprey.
Their assumed impartiality is that they review operating systems, hopefully without bias.
The article I pointed out is a clarion call to their true charter, and it's worthy of mentioning to others who, like me, browse technical sites and have started seeing OSWEEKLY showing up.
So just to be clear here, any website which outright dismisses the attention and the work and the excellence of so many people that's gone into Linux in favor of Windows IS A WINDOWS FLUFFER/TURFING SITE.
Are we supposed to forgive them for wanting to accept the bread and wine of Microsoft?
HELL NO. And I wouldn't be browsing slashdot if I had to look at it dripping with Microsoft ads.
Can we empathise with them for wanting to kick the Strawman Penguin and make fierce in order to impress Microsoft?
NO. Because they're clearly not interested in being a technical site for the long-term, I think they're in it for the money. They're punking their own creditbility. Sucks to the turfmasters and sucks to Microsoft for enabling them.
Once upon a time I would have been forgiving...back in 1997 or something, however, this far along in the game synergistic hand-job crap is contemptible.
Kids should try having a real job before they act like they're authorities and save their bullshitting for when they're walking around in parking lots asking people if they know Jesus loves them.
Because the moment you read this little gem, Should I Really Care About Linux? from their editor it's pretty blatant that OSWeekly is the kind of Windows-fanboy fluffer-site that would feature something like PC_BSD as "Easy" to crush the Linux-curious back into line. Such things are intented to play out like, "I read that it was easy but then it completely pwned me (waaaaaaah!), screw Linux!" (yeah, I know it's not Linux but most Windows users assume anything like PC_BSD==LINUX)
I've added the OSWEEKLY site to my hosts file, that most wonderful of resources. Mmmmmm...schweet schweet 0.0.0.0 ness, because they're insignificant and if I didn't already have all their add-servers in there I'd have probably seen through them immediately.
And before people start pointing out that Slashdot runs M$ ads, Slashdot is about much more than Operating Systems, right? Excellent. Cheers.
Everyone here has their "personal" information ponied out, bought and sold so many ways that even people who work in the business have no clue how much they're just cattle. Everyone who has bought a home in many parts of the country has their information freely available to anyone on the Internet, often through their local Chamber of Commerce, the same people who enjoy sharing your information with water purifier companies, carpet cleaning companies, local window-installers and the local sham boiler-room fundraising people who like to make you feel guilty that you're not giving money to them, ahem, I mean to the police or the firemen. It's kind of sad that some chap browsing for fun was walking down a dark alley and got ambushed while using a crepe-paper OS, but I think the message here is that government shouldn't use a computer operating system with so many fundamental weaknesses that you can't even browse the Internet without being victimized. If people still want security why did they shitcan all the closed-loop VT102 minicomputer systems in favor of Uncle Bill's special sauce? (No solitare on a VT102 system?) Just like we can't stop someone from blowing themselves up it's foolish to chastise people for being human. We can't fix humanity but we can do something about idiot IT policy and asshat billionaire software moguls who EULA themseleves out of any kind of responsiblity when their software is so weak? Why do people buy the right to be exploited? Screw putting the dumbass "commandments" on display! P.T. Barnum's truisms should be hung on courthouse walls and in classrooms! Microsoft never takes any responsibility, there's no safety net. Everyone who uses it simply ignores the fact that the software license clearly states that there's no promises of fitness or usability. It's one thing to accept that policy for software in general when it's free and another to have to pay for the privledge of being criminalized and exploited by the vendor/developer and anyone smart enough to modify a vbscript. It's also one thing for an individual to make this choice, and a cockup of an entirely different scope when government offices choose to exploit citizens with such poor decisions. The dismissed fellow should have been followed by at least two other people, the person who made the purchase decision and the person in IT who supported it.
You may mischaracterize anybody based on the implied or assumed character of the organization they work for but for many people in the Intelligence community the job they do is often apolitical--much like someone who works for a porn website who does nothing but stare at SQL/PHP/PERL for 18 hrs a day being mis-characterized as a porn-addict.
Hiring in the Intelligence community is based on aptitude and character. Most of the people who work for the NSA have passed through many screenings and evaluations in order to even be considered--and they are re-subjected to them periodically. What many intelligence-community workers share is a desire to protect and maintain the security of the country and an understanding of the role of dissasociative and indirection analysis. Although nobody is perfect the kind of person who is hired by the NSA typtifies the sort of professionalism and determinism found in fighter-pilots and the kind of military professionals who operate well within a closed social system.
The "pallets" for creating tools which will aggregate and permit data-mining a social network will be tested against publicly accessible sites because they are rich in information. Of course there's a gigo-factor to it because everyone from k12 to the grave who has the inclination and disposable income is becoming proficient enough to use the social sites. This isn't about turning the ratchet tighter on social freedoms yet. It's about toolsmithing because programmers are toolsmiths. What any goverment does with the tools rarely bothers the toolsmiths...just look at how many Universities in the US accept NSF/MIL funding and research programs and then the defense contractors have a great selection of scientists and engineers. It's a system which has worked well.
Now if there's anybody who should be having trouble sleeping at night it's the current iteration of the USGOV which in turns, taking poorly thought dance steps with the Military-industrial complex and the rise of Global Corporatism showing embarrasingly well because of the way the USGOV has gotten way to big for it's pants, has rolled back social reforms, killed off alternate transportation initiatives, plucked the bowels of the commoner with a decisive change to the emminent domain laws, and basically told the world, "The United States can and will hurt you if you don't play OUR game, and our game is Pre-emptive resource exploitation unless you monetize and trade with us and our G7 circle of friends."
Personally, I'm waiting for the Chinese to slap the USGOV in the balls some more so we can enjoy ultra-inexpensive Linux boxen and import more petro-chemical products for our children and homes (toys, clothing, housewares, furniture...you name it!).
And it should be noted that yes, members of our USGOV have excessive anxiety and depression, but unlike the vast majority of citizens they have excellent health plans which see them properly medicated as necessary. Better living through chemistry and Geo-Political CBT--For great Victory, Citizen!
What rankles the most about SONY is their lack of follow-through on their console products. It's not always SONY's fault though. The United States market is one of the most prohibitive for products offering features which really make them useful. In the United States we have limited video options, good to great audio on everything but legally any company that wants to make their game system genuinely useful faces laws and regulations which amount to a crowd of "grease me please" palms; and that's just for what kind of display can be used. Consider device interoperability...can/won't work with Firewire/USB/DVD/CDR/BLU-RAY/HD-DVD...there's a frustrating matrix of can and can't do which isn't always up to the hardware developer.
Given the well-lawyered environment of the United States market place we shouldn't piss and moan because of what technology companies do. If they cared to SONY could publicly give reasons for every shortcoming and price point experienced by consumers with the game hardware. That they don't just means that consumers are an afterthought and better-off-stupid because Asian hardware manufacturers are a closely linked community who can make life painful for giants. The RIAA and MPAA can also tie up product deployment indefinitely.
If there's one thing that the Christians in the United States should be asking themselves it's how they can make their dipshit women sexually interesting--there are books being offered to "married" people in church-circles in order to help couples overcome the ennui or a good Christian relationship. Christian women are stupid and lazy in the sack, and they seem bred to just "sweat and moan" and finally just fake a 'gasm to get their partner to go away. After all, sex is just for making more kids, right? Riiiight. Or it's good for shiny-things and reconciling that shopping binge at Walmart.
If women were raised to understand their bodies better and not feel ashamed about having sex porn would be properly put in it's place, however imaginative women are supposed to be they seldom use that imagination actively--if women feel disenfranchised by their partner's interest in porn they need to fix the blame firmly on their own lazy butts.
And it's not only Christian women. Women in general are passive-aggressive and deferrential about their wants and needs...it's almost as if most girls in our culture never quite graduate from that special place where Unicorns and rainbows decorate their room and all the stuffed toys are arranged in that special way so they're always looking at you, and somehow their Prince is just going to know exactly what they like or want to help fulfill their DP and cunninglus fantasies while making them still feel as fresh and clean as a meadow after a cloudburst (queue ethereal happy music).
For the women who do graduate from that special place, who are mature enough to talk to their partners and actually set aside a time and place and change things up and have a rich reality and fantasy life porn is a non-issue. They're free to enjoy themselves, their partners, and any damn thing they feel adventurous enough to try. Women are the enablers. Men are up to just about anything but if the women involved are apathetic then they're no better than a handjob.
Of course it's also important to note that we're living through a culture change which is turning back the clock to the early 50's, when good boys and girls didn't have sex until they were married. In doing so our government and civic leaders are helping create a new gulf of ignorance and intolerance which will see new sex laws being passed that make more people criminals. It's important to criminalize adults because until a society can label something it's hard to perpetrate a popular action against it.
There's nothing like "RealDoll" technology to help spark your child's interest in many different fields. If you've got the dough, get the doll. It's technology your kids will come back to time and time again, and when they're not looking, you can tag it too. Oh yeah!
Keeping records on citizens is something governments are supposed to do. With regards to keeping records on citizens, the government hates competition with the private sector and reserves the right to investigate and access those records. How many of us who own homes/cars/banking accounts are "off the radar"? We're not, nobody who owns anything in the United States is really invisible. For companies out there who farm consumer information much of what we do is either an aggregate or a drill down away from a report. By keeping a record of association and activity the FBI/USGOV just rounds out the picture.
There are moments when I think Ted Kazcynski (Unibomber) is/was spot on.
I think it's important that we remember there are only two kinds of citizens, the kind who are convicted and the kind who are guilty. Everyone else is in charge of them and thus excused from prosectuion unless they break ranks.
I spent vast amount of my K-12 time playing/running dice-n-paper RPG games. I cannot rationalize paying to play something that I have no ownership and no control in--and despite the tremendous uptake these games have had they are nothing more than a glorified money-vaccum, or maybe a heart-soul vaccum once someone has invested themselves financially AND emotionally in a character.
I have always viewed my time and my artwork (maps, character drawings, backgrounds, stories) and anything I feel about a character/story as an investment. When I ran/played games I used RPG's as a vehicle to tell stories, inspire artwork, obviate my adolescent idiocy and to survive the crushing boredom of being poor.
Now I have a collection of books, dice, drawings, stories and great memories of all the fun. In many ways I use the same philosophy when I play computer RPG's. If I can't play without an Internet connection, if I EVER have to worry about a license issue, and if a GM can punk me for anything/everything I've done because of a technicality...I don't touch it. Ever. It's like a peverse Tic-Tac-Toe where I exploit myself at the whim of someone who can pick up the change-jar and the board and walk away without any kind of responsibility.
Which is why Evercrack, WoW, or any of them will never see me or my kids.
A coward dies a thousand deaths. A company can rot from within because of them. In my experience, IT managers exemplify the kind of craven cowards which prepetuate untenable solutions because they are weak ineffective slime promoted to their greatest level of inefficiency.
Hi, I'm an incredibly arrogant despicable individual who thinks Windwalker is about a ghey as the francise has ever been. I don't care if the gameplay causes cowpers-gland cramps and worried parents/spouses, grows my manhood, or allows me to generate an areola stimulation field in a quarter-mile radius. It was the "ghey" style that kept me away.
I choose to be ignorant of the finer points of Windwalker because I'd rather look at Lara Croft's shapely ass, or Rayne's sexy wireframe for three months of game play rather than futz around with some stylistically ghey next-stage take on a classic video game (I played Zelda, Zelda2 on the NES and beat them). I enjoy realistic and explorable environments much more than simplified ones when I'm looking for something between a game and a movie--even if we're lacking the tech to make it more than a couple of steps removed from the lab. The next Zelda game is at the very top of my list--and unlike 90% of the games I buy, I'll be buying it new instead of used two years from now.
When a game pings the gheydar like windwalker did I just don't go there. Even my 11 year old said, "Damn that looks ghey Papa".
You can bet someone figured it out a couple of years ao and knew what to do--make Link a heroes hero. It's about frickin time. Next step after that is a movie. Hell yeah, if Steve Jackson could make hobbits Hollywood can damn well give us Link and Hyrule.
For those who enjoy playing with a Link that would be just as cute and cuddly as a stuffy please go right ahead, I'm not dissin you--just pointing out that some of us have an inability to identify ourselves as either a super-deformed carricature or as wanting to be identified as being able to identify ourselves as a super-deformed carricature .
I think the kind of apparatus you're talking about exists already in one-man extreme depth suits (the kind of things which are machined from a block of aluminum). The "hands" of the suit are one-thumb/two fingers waldos (essentially a mechanical translation rig inside the suit). It gives an approximation of the movement and dexterity of the users hands. And like other deep-sea dexterity instruments it uses a sound with a variable pitch and volume to represent the amount of pressure the user is applying. An experienced operator can handle eggs using these kinds of systems.
NASA needs to start using hardsuits which would be able to feature different manipulation technologies. The astronauts would be much better protected, and there wouldn't need to be any intermediate steps between suit-up and exposure to hard vacuum. Hardsuits make EVA's much safer, permit the augumentation of physical strength, and physical capabilities.
Oh crap, that just made too much sense. Unless there's some seriously rich "pork" in there for some influential hardliner politician so their state gets a juicy contract on developing these technologies it's just not going to happen. Damn.
I think there are artists who have great merit and commercial success.
I am not a social person. I'll never plug-in to the local indie music/film/media artists. Ever. I'm this way because I don't like having to deal with stupid people. It's a luxury, I know, and one I'm willing to pay at least a second-hand media-market price to enjoy.
Soulless culture doesn't exist. The people who support an artist transcend the medium and provide a their rather innocuous spin to anything; fanfiction, art, music, and get-togethers all exist without commercial support.
Nobody can point at some guy with a digital camera and say, "That man has a vision and he's going to spend 350 million dollars and 10 man-years of effort to see it come to fruition in a way which will fill your socks with man-jam! Oh yeah! Because he's got HEART! He's a REAL, LIVE, dancing, singing, sack of monkey meat and he represents all that's real, dig?!". Well, they could but they'd be full of crap.
The entertainment industry evolved in step with technology. It's not something that just pushed it's way to the surface and was held to the bosom where it could whisper to the soul of humanity itself. The commercial entertainment industry is as apple-pie as War. They support each other. It's the most polished and most highly exported product the United States has.
There is a shade of consumerism which should serve as a compromise to the hard-line "just don't buy anything" vibe.
I buy my entertainment "used" whenever possible.
The MPAA doesn't see any additional licensing fees from me. The RIAA doesn't count me, and I pay considerably less by being patient. This works really well for video games and computer hardware too. I don't need to show anyone how cool I am by having the latest and the greatest because I'm patient. The entertainment industry is all about shiny things and intensity, and immediacy. They market shiny things to people who crave them. I don't crave any "manufactured" entertainment so much that I can't wait...but then I don't feel the need to buy an H2/H3 to prove my penis is large either.:-)
I have my eye on this absoultely wonderful young woman at work who would make an aweseome girlfriend. She would be an incredible balm for my mid-life crisis; all I need to do is somehow reconcile such an indulgence against my 23 year relationship with my wife and two children.
You know, I think married guys suffer more from lack of sex than single guys. I say this being married much longer than I was ever a virgin and having first-hand (wink-wink) experience at sexual frustration in monogomy. If you do some research you'll find that it's the way things are supposed to be. Of course that doesn't fit into society well but the success of the species has always been in how subtle cheating creates advantages.
And I'm not talking about having bulky machinery; I'd like to have something that fits over the ear like a current bluetooth hands-free kit which uses neural induction to the places that matter. This isn't as far off as you think. It would be much harder to create a realistic mouth/sleeve than to just talk to the wiring.
As much as I respect Mr. Bushnell for having been in the zone back in the 70's he's nowhere near the mark right now and much like he's been "one off" in the past he's wrong this time too. It doesn't take much to see that the niche is very busy already. Even if he opens up a resturaunt with a 30' tall rotating mechanical "Tux" the penguin smiling and waving at people passing by on the freeway it's not going to interest people the way it would have even 20 years ago.
It would be much better to see Mr. Bushnell spend his energies working on something truly novel instead of this sad one-trick pony-ism he seems so invested in...resturants and computer games...bah.
Now if he was working on a virtual glory-hole, complete with crash-test dilos and glip (glory-hole over IP) protocols in conjuction with RealDoll? Well damnit that could see us to the next level in interaction, regardless of the venue.:-) Or how about cell phones with a "clit-cup" sending device or tele-dick-tooth-pick sending device?
We need our technology more organic, orgasmic, and less watering-hole dynamic. We should have been flitting about as avatars on the net by now, enties created for interaction without the burdens of the meat while retaining all the joys. Compare that to having to brave busy California traffic and enough taxation and political-correctness that operating anything is almost prohibitive.
It may take money to make money, but P.T. Barnum still rules.
No, it just goes to show that all governments hate competition, at every level. You can't just point at the USGOV and wrap it in a razorwire blanket and say
"HA! That proves it!".
Every government on the planet is rotten. They all act the same. Think of businesses with no accountability except that which they're willing to suffer. Unlike businessess, where if they're all wrong they're all right, governments just say,
"We're right. Disagree and you might limp away marginalized. Piss us off and we'll shoot you/imprison you."
Humanity, like all life and existence, is built upon recursive suffering. Death is the exit condition. It's all a game. The 10% control the 90% and short of re-engineering humanity and really most mamillian life, it's not going to change.
Go get a hug. Depending on how well you take care of yourself it's about the closest thing to an equivalent exchange of suffering our existence offers.
Just how does the military end up with such uninspired, soul withering, marginalized and obfuscated acronyms?
My understanding is that officers are usually tasked with creating acronyms for the projects they are responsible for. This would be in keeping with the fact that they have to do all the documentation and write ups on it. Now, we're living in a politically correct world where you don't want someone twisting your acronym up and side-banding your project with potty humor. And you sure as hell don't want to offend some female (women wield a startling amount of power in the military when it comes to decorum) officer who might have to say it.
So something as intellectually neutered as JFCCNW is actually the kind of acronym that a smart person would like to see in their dossier. Over time, as an officers dossier is reviewed, part of the whole "reading the entrails" to see if an officer is suitable comes down to how well they work within the bureaucracy, and to this end I've known officers who have been promoted for such things. It's a whacked planet.
Slashdot Mirror
Despite all the Microsoft apologists who will wring their hands and point out that certain things were not done in order to safety the Microsoft honeypot, the genuine service this article demonstrated is that people who turn on their new computer with its Microsoft operating system connected to the Internet are vulnerable to exploits which are automated and exist in abundance, ready to pounce upon current Microsoft operating systems.
Even if you're a master of Microsoft "anti-ware" solutions and tweaks, what happens when someone who isn't takes a few wrong turns with their OS? It's toast, or worse, enslaved and used as a resource the end-user is paying for.
I stopped using Microsoft operating systems to directly connect to the Internet nearly 10 years ago, when the sophistication of the exploits had developed to the point where it was no longer safe to use any Microsoft OS online. Since then it really hasn't gotten much better, has it?
I think it's a shame that the company with the fattest pockets can't be bothered to get it right yet still demands to be on every PC made.
FRPG table-top gameplay endures because something like "Never Winter Nights", is prohibitively expensive to develop a good adventure for.
There's an intrinsic worth to all the maps, the (often quite bad) art, the stories and the histories. And at the very core of things, interaction and story-telling take skill and it takes a human.
Perhaps as a father I'll start being the "sacrificial nerd" and running games for my kids. I am an accomplished GM, voice-actor, story-writer, and story-teller, and good enough illustrator. I have run games that lasted for months, even spanned years. In the time it takes a small army of people to craft a video game, I can create the beginnings of a world and populate it by incident and by design. I can't think of a better thing to do, in lieu of reading, than to teach through table-top role-playing games.
I've nearly finished reading "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" to them and once that's done I think it's time to start telling my own stories and having my kids play characters instead of having their brains poached by the dreck on Cartoon Network and Nickolodeon before they fall asleep.
They'll benefit immensely from having to think before turning in, and there's nothing like having something which will detour them from TV.
And maybe it'll justify a few trips to the local gameshop. I haven't been there in years.
Cheers.
Hear! Hear!
And it sucks that some knee-jerk Canadian fool marked your post as a troll because in a nutshell,
"more laws == less justice" meets "kill the slavemasters & Don't tread on me", at least in the mind of anybody who values their liberty.
Laws that actually seek to control access to freely available information in what would seem to be a free country across a world-wide network should raise flags and people should shout them down.
Of course we're talking about a country which captiulated to media barons and the fawning toadies who saw the instruments of that surrender to fruition.
Perhaps this is a pre-emptive move to assauge the concerns of vocal ethnic and religious groups?
Canada has a couple of large immigrant populations, at least two which predate the United States Constitution.
Mind and movement control is a ratchet, we're just hearing things get tighter in Canada. Wait till something like this passes the House just before midnight sometime soon.
Thank you. You're completely correct.
Remember when smart people created truly wonderous things that have changed our world forever, like Nuclear weapons, and the polio vaccine? They didn't have laptops.
I remember when the only phone in school was in the principal's office.
K12 kids with phones in the classroom undermines teachers/administrators.
The money which would be wasted on laptops should be invested in a company that makes genuinely useful textbooks that don't need to be reinvented to suit ethnic/ideological/religious goals every year. Update it for empirical things, like new elements or better sorting algorithms. Not because some group finds the truth alarming and decides to rewrite history by omission or bowlderizing.
Paper still kicks butt!!
I love paper.
Paper is one of the greatest inventions we've ever had.
It's gorgeous stuff that as a medium enables us to do so many great things.
Paper cannot be replaced by a laptop.
Kids are capable of so much provided we don't waste their time.
In our schools there should one goal, to educate with the least number of filters to the greatest depth and clarity.
As much as or as little they can stand, warts and all. So when things start getting fractal and there's unpleasant history, it's not obviated or omitted. A teacher should be there to provide an answer, the kind of answer that allowed them to pass their essays and formulate a thesis.
Maybe if educators were honest with kids there wouldn't be such a penchant for mendacity and complacency in academia.
Laptops and TV's in schools are a complete waste of time. They're crutches for weak teachers who go on to make weak students who prepetuate the whole cycle.
I think it was more along the lines of
"Grand Theft Bicycle", at least on the Dutch.
Older folks have a common joke when they meet Germans,
"Hey where's my bicycle!" because during WWII the Germans took all their bicycles.
Cheers.
s u 1 c 1 d e
(the police-assisted option has never been easier--they're very appreciative of any citizens who volunteer--good training )
Nobody has to suffer a job interview as a felon posthumously unless you're living in Tim Burton's afterlife.
Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas have already written about this kind of institutional violence.
These things happen all the time, have always happened in some form since bread existed.
We're all criminals because the state has no power over us unless we are.
Indulgences are not just for the righteous as long as you can pay.
Every form of media now contains it's own Requirimento.
The more things change...
You're spot on.
Microsoft plays nice like a python.
When mice are introduced to the snake the snake doesn't do anything to them.
It's later, when the snake becomes hungry and the mice complacent, that one-by-one the mice are ingested.
Humans might be smarter than mice, but groups of humans and their tasty ideas/artful works are corporately edible.
How in the world is that flamebait?!
It's the truth.
OSWEEKLY blows a fierce Microsoft wind up readers asses.
They are a mewling new eyeball lamprey.
Their assumed impartiality is that they review operating systems, hopefully without bias.
The article I pointed out is a clarion call to their true charter, and it's worthy of mentioning to others who, like me, browse technical sites and have started seeing OSWEEKLY showing up.
So just to be clear here, any website which outright dismisses the attention and the work and the excellence of so many people that's gone into Linux in favor of Windows IS A WINDOWS FLUFFER/TURFING SITE.
Are we supposed to forgive them for wanting to accept the bread and wine of Microsoft?
HELL NO. And I wouldn't be browsing slashdot if I had to look at it dripping with Microsoft ads.
Can we empathise with them for wanting to kick the Strawman Penguin and make fierce in order to impress Microsoft?
NO. Because they're clearly not interested in being a technical site for the long-term, I think they're in it for the money.
They're punking their own creditbility. Sucks to the turfmasters and sucks to Microsoft for enabling them.
Once upon a time I would have been forgiving...back in 1997 or something, however, this far along in the game synergistic hand-job crap is contemptible.
Kids should try having a real job before they act like they're authorities and save their bullshitting for when they're walking around in parking lots asking people if they know Jesus loves them.
Because the moment you read this little gem,
Should I Really Care About Linux?
from their editor it's pretty blatant that OSWeekly is the kind of Windows-fanboy fluffer-site that would feature something like PC_BSD as "Easy" to crush the Linux-curious back into line.
Such things are intented to play out like,
"I read that it was easy but then it completely pwned me (waaaaaaah!), screw Linux!"
(yeah, I know it's not Linux but most Windows users assume anything like PC_BSD==LINUX)
I've added the OSWEEKLY site to my hosts file, that most wonderful of resources.
Mmmmmm...schweet schweet 0.0.0.0 ness, because they're insignificant and if I didn't already have all their add-servers in there I'd have probably seen through them immediately.
And before people start pointing out that Slashdot runs M$ ads, Slashdot is about much more than Operating Systems, right?
Excellent.
Cheers.
Everyone here has their "personal" information ponied out, bought and sold so many ways that even people who work in the business have no clue how much they're just cattle.
Everyone who has bought a home in many parts of the country has their information freely available to anyone on the Internet, often through their local Chamber of Commerce, the same people who enjoy sharing your information with water purifier companies, carpet cleaning companies, local window-installers and the local sham boiler-room fundraising people who like to make you feel guilty that you're not giving money to them, ahem, I mean to the police or the firemen.
It's kind of sad that some chap browsing for fun was walking down a dark alley and got ambushed while using a crepe-paper OS, but I think the message here is that government shouldn't use a computer operating system with so many fundamental weaknesses that you can't even browse the Internet without being victimized.
If people still want security why did they shitcan all the closed-loop VT102 minicomputer systems in favor of Uncle Bill's special sauce? (No solitare on a VT102 system?)
Just like we can't stop someone from blowing themselves up it's foolish to chastise people for being human. We can't fix humanity but we can do something about idiot IT policy and asshat billionaire software moguls who EULA themseleves out of any kind of responsiblity when their software is so weak?
Why do people buy the right to be exploited? Screw putting the dumbass "commandments" on display!
P.T. Barnum's truisms should be hung on courthouse walls and in classrooms!
Microsoft never takes any responsibility, there's no safety net. Everyone who uses it simply ignores the fact that the software license clearly states that there's no promises of fitness or usability. It's one thing to accept that policy for software in general when it's free and another to have to pay for the privledge of being criminalized and exploited by the vendor/developer and anyone smart enough to modify a vbscript.
It's also one thing for an individual to make this choice, and a cockup of an entirely different scope when government offices choose to exploit citizens with such poor decisions.
The dismissed fellow should have been followed by at least two other people, the person who made the purchase decision and the person in IT who supported it.
You may mischaracterize anybody based on the implied or assumed character of the organization they work for but for many people in the Intelligence community the job they do is often apolitical--much like someone who works for a porn website who does nothing but stare at SQL/PHP/PERL for 18 hrs a day being mis-characterized as a porn-addict.
Hiring in the Intelligence community is based on aptitude and character. Most of the people who work for the NSA have passed through many screenings and evaluations in order to even be considered--and they are re-subjected to them periodically. What many intelligence-community workers share is a desire to protect and maintain the security of the country and an understanding of the role of dissasociative and indirection analysis. Although nobody is perfect the kind of person who is hired by the NSA typtifies the sort of professionalism and determinism found in fighter-pilots and the kind of military professionals who operate well within a closed social system.
The "pallets" for creating tools which will aggregate and permit data-mining a social network will be tested against publicly accessible sites because they are rich in information. Of course there's a gigo-factor to it because everyone from k12 to the grave who has the inclination and disposable income is becoming proficient enough to use the social sites. This isn't about turning the ratchet tighter on social freedoms yet. It's about toolsmithing because programmers are toolsmiths. What any goverment does with the tools rarely bothers the toolsmiths...just look at how many Universities in the US accept NSF/MIL funding and research programs and then the defense contractors have a great selection of scientists and engineers. It's a system which has worked well.
Now if there's anybody who should be having trouble sleeping at night it's the current iteration of the USGOV which in turns, taking poorly thought dance steps with the Military-industrial complex and the rise of Global Corporatism showing embarrasingly well because of the way the USGOV has gotten way to big for it's pants, has rolled back social reforms, killed off alternate transportation initiatives, plucked the bowels of the commoner with a decisive change to the emminent domain laws, and basically told the world, "The United States can and will hurt you if you don't play OUR game, and our game is Pre-emptive resource exploitation unless you monetize and trade with us and our G7 circle of friends."
Personally, I'm waiting for the Chinese to slap the USGOV in the balls some more so we can enjoy ultra-inexpensive Linux boxen and import more petro-chemical products for our children and homes (toys, clothing, housewares, furniture...you name it!).
And it should be noted that yes, members of our USGOV have excessive anxiety and depression, but unlike the vast majority of citizens they have excellent health plans which see them properly medicated as necessary. Better living through chemistry and Geo-Political CBT--For great Victory, Citizen!
Cheers!
What rankles the most about SONY is their lack of follow-through on their console products. It's not always SONY's fault though. The United States market is one of the most prohibitive for products offering features which really make them useful. In the United States we have limited video options, good to great audio on everything but legally any company that wants to make their game system genuinely useful faces laws and regulations which amount to a crowd of "grease me please" palms; and that's just for what kind of display can be used. Consider device interoperability...can/won't work with Firewire/USB/DVD/CDR/BLU-RAY/HD-DVD...there's a frustrating matrix of can and can't do which isn't always up to the hardware developer.
Given the well-lawyered environment of the United States market place we shouldn't piss and moan because of what technology companies do. If they cared to SONY could publicly give reasons for every shortcoming and price point experienced by consumers with the game hardware. That they don't just means that consumers are an afterthought and better-off-stupid because Asian hardware manufacturers are a closely linked community who can make life painful for giants. The RIAA and MPAA can also tie up product deployment indefinitely.
If there's one thing that the Christians in the United States should be asking themselves it's how they can make their dipshit women sexually interesting--there are books being offered to "married" people in church-circles in order to help couples overcome the ennui or a good Christian relationship. Christian women are stupid and lazy in the sack, and they seem bred to just "sweat and moan" and finally just fake a 'gasm to get their partner to go away. After all, sex is just for making more kids, right? Riiiight. Or it's good for shiny-things and reconciling that shopping binge at Walmart.
If women were raised to understand their bodies better and not feel ashamed about having sex porn would be properly put in it's place, however imaginative women are supposed to be they seldom use that imagination actively--if women feel disenfranchised by their partner's interest in porn they need to fix the blame firmly on their own lazy butts.
And it's not only Christian women. Women in general are passive-aggressive and deferrential about their wants and needs...it's almost as if most girls in our culture never quite graduate from that special place where Unicorns and rainbows decorate their room and all the stuffed toys are arranged in that special way so they're always looking at you, and somehow their Prince is just going to know exactly what they like or want to help fulfill their DP and cunninglus fantasies while making them still feel as fresh and clean as a meadow after a cloudburst (queue ethereal happy music).
For the women who do graduate from that special place, who are mature enough to talk to their partners and actually set aside a time and place and change things up and have a rich reality and fantasy life porn is a non-issue. They're free to enjoy themselves, their partners, and any damn thing they feel adventurous enough to try. Women are the enablers. Men are up to just about anything but if the women involved are apathetic then they're no better than a handjob.
Of course it's also important to note that we're living through a culture change which is turning back the clock to the early 50's, when good boys and girls didn't have sex until they were married. In doing so our government and civic leaders are helping create a new gulf of ignorance and intolerance which will see new sex laws being passed that make more people criminals. It's important to criminalize adults because until a society can label something it's hard to perpetrate a popular action against it.
http://www.realdoll.com/
There's nothing like "RealDoll" technology to help spark your child's interest in many different fields.
If you've got the dough, get the doll. It's technology your kids will come back to time and time again, and when they're not looking, you can tag it too. Oh yeah!
Keeping records on citizens is something governments are supposed to do. With regards to keeping records on citizens, the government hates competition with the private sector and reserves the right to investigate and access those records. How many of us who own homes/cars/banking accounts are "off the radar"? We're not, nobody who owns anything in the United States is really invisible. For companies out there who farm consumer information much of what we do is either an aggregate or a drill down away from a report. By keeping a record of association and activity the FBI/USGOV just rounds out the picture.
There are moments when I think Ted Kazcynski (Unibomber) is/was spot on.
I think it's important that we remember there are only two kinds of citizens, the kind who are convicted and the kind who are guilty. Everyone else is in charge of them and thus excused from prosectuion unless they break ranks.
I spent vast amount of my K-12 time playing/running dice-n-paper RPG games.
I cannot rationalize paying to play something that I have no ownership and no control in--and despite the tremendous uptake these games have had they are nothing more than a glorified money-vaccum, or maybe a heart-soul vaccum once someone has invested themselves financially AND emotionally in a character.
I have always viewed my time and my artwork (maps, character drawings, backgrounds, stories) and anything I feel about a character/story as an investment. When I ran/played games I used RPG's as a vehicle to tell stories, inspire artwork, obviate my adolescent idiocy and to survive the crushing boredom of being poor.
Now I have a collection of books, dice, drawings, stories and great memories of all the fun.
In many ways I use the same philosophy when I play computer RPG's. If I can't play without an Internet connection, if I EVER have to worry about a license issue, and if a GM can punk me for anything/everything I've done because of a technicality...I don't touch it. Ever. It's like a peverse Tic-Tac-Toe where I exploit myself at the whim of someone who can pick up the change-jar and the board and walk away without any kind of responsibility.
Which is why Evercrack, WoW, or any of them will never see me or my kids.
A coward dies a thousand deaths. A company can rot from within because of them.
In my experience, IT managers exemplify the kind of craven cowards which prepetuate untenable solutions because they are weak ineffective slime promoted to their greatest level of inefficiency.
Hi, I'm an incredibly arrogant despicable individual who thinks Windwalker is about a ghey as the francise has ever been. I don't care if the gameplay causes cowpers-gland cramps and worried parents/spouses, grows my manhood, or allows me to generate an areola stimulation field in a quarter-mile radius. It was the "ghey" style that kept me away.
I choose to be ignorant of the finer points of Windwalker because I'd rather look at Lara Croft's shapely ass, or Rayne's sexy wireframe for three months of game play rather than futz around with some stylistically ghey next-stage take on a classic video game (I played Zelda, Zelda2 on the NES and beat them). I enjoy realistic and explorable environments much more than simplified ones when I'm looking for something between a game and a movie--even if we're lacking the tech to make it more than a couple of steps removed from the lab. The next Zelda game is at the very top of my list--and unlike 90% of the games I buy, I'll be buying it new instead of used two years from now.
When a game pings the gheydar like windwalker did I just don't go there. Even my 11 year old said,
"Damn that looks ghey Papa".
You can bet someone figured it out a couple of years ao and knew what to do--make Link a heroes hero. It's about frickin time. Next step after that is a movie. Hell yeah, if Steve Jackson could make hobbits Hollywood can damn well give us Link and Hyrule.
For those who enjoy playing with a Link that would be just as cute and cuddly as a stuffy please go right ahead, I'm not dissin you--just pointing out that some of us have an inability to identify ourselves as either a super-deformed carricature or as wanting to be identified as being able to identify ourselves as a super-deformed carricature .
Flame away, where I'm from we enjoy the heat.
Cheers.
I think the kind of apparatus you're talking about exists already in one-man extreme depth suits (the kind of things which are machined from a block of aluminum). The "hands" of the suit are one-thumb/two fingers waldos (essentially a mechanical translation rig inside the suit). It gives an approximation of the movement and dexterity of the users hands. And like other deep-sea dexterity instruments it uses a sound with a variable pitch and volume to represent the amount of pressure the user is applying. An experienced operator can handle eggs using these kinds of systems.
NASA needs to start using hardsuits which would be able to feature different manipulation technologies. The astronauts would be much better protected, and there wouldn't need to be any intermediate steps between suit-up and exposure to hard vacuum. Hardsuits make EVA's much safer, permit the augumentation of physical strength, and physical capabilities.
Oh crap, that just made too much sense. Unless there's some seriously rich "pork" in there for some influential hardliner politician so their state gets a juicy contract on developing these technologies it's just not going to happen. Damn.
I think there are artists who have great merit and commercial success.
I am not a social person. I'll never plug-in to the local indie music/film/media artists. Ever. I'm this way because I don't like having to deal with stupid people. It's a luxury, I know, and one I'm willing to pay at least a second-hand media-market price to enjoy.
Soulless culture doesn't exist. The people who support an artist transcend the medium and provide a their rather innocuous spin to anything; fanfiction, art, music, and get-togethers all exist without commercial support.
Nobody can point at some guy with a digital camera and say, "That man has a vision and he's going to spend 350 million dollars and 10 man-years of effort to see it come to fruition in a way which will fill your socks with man-jam! Oh yeah! Because he's got HEART! He's a REAL, LIVE, dancing, singing, sack of monkey meat and he represents all that's real, dig?!". Well, they could but they'd be full of crap.
The entertainment industry evolved in step with technology. It's not something that just pushed it's way to the surface and was held to the bosom where it could whisper to the soul of humanity itself. The commercial entertainment industry is as apple-pie as War. They support each other. It's the most polished and most highly exported product the United States has.
There is a shade of consumerism which should serve as a compromise to the hard-line "just don't buy anything" vibe.
:-)
I buy my entertainment "used" whenever possible.
The MPAA doesn't see any additional licensing fees from me.
The RIAA doesn't count me, and I pay considerably less by being patient.
This works really well for video games and computer hardware too. I don't need to show anyone how cool I am by having the latest and the greatest because I'm patient.
The entertainment industry is all about shiny things and intensity, and immediacy. They market shiny things to people who crave them.
I don't crave any "manufactured" entertainment so much that I can't wait...but then I don't feel the need to buy an H2/H3 to prove my penis is large either.
I have my eye on this absoultely wonderful young woman at work who would make an aweseome girlfriend. She would be an incredible balm for my mid-life crisis; all I need to do is somehow reconcile such an indulgence against my 23 year relationship with my wife and two children.
You know, I think married guys suffer more from lack of sex than single guys.
I say this being married much longer than I was ever a virgin and having first-hand (wink-wink) experience at sexual frustration in monogomy. If you do some research you'll find that it's the way things are supposed to be. Of course that doesn't fit into society well but the success of the species has always been in how subtle cheating creates advantages.
And I'm not talking about having bulky machinery; I'd like to have something that fits over the ear like a current bluetooth hands-free kit which uses neural induction to the places that matter. This isn't as far off as you think. It would be much harder to create a realistic mouth/sleeve than to just talk to the wiring.
Gotta go, my wifette calls.
As much as I respect Mr. Bushnell for having been in the zone back in the 70's he's nowhere near the mark right now and much like he's been "one off" in the past he's wrong this time too. It doesn't take much to see that the niche is very busy already. Even if he opens up a resturaunt with a 30' tall rotating mechanical "Tux" the penguin smiling and waving at people passing by on the freeway it's not going to interest people the way it would have even 20 years ago.
:-)
It would be much better to see Mr. Bushnell spend his energies working on something truly novel instead of this sad one-trick pony-ism he seems so invested in...resturants and computer games...bah.
Now if he was working on a virtual glory-hole, complete with crash-test dilos and glip (glory-hole over IP) protocols in conjuction with RealDoll? Well damnit that could see us to the next level in interaction, regardless of the venue.
Or how about cell phones with a "clit-cup" sending device or tele-dick-tooth-pick sending device?
We need our technology more organic, orgasmic, and less watering-hole dynamic. We should have been flitting about as avatars on the net by now, enties created for interaction without the burdens of the meat while retaining all the joys. Compare that to having to brave busy California traffic and enough taxation and political-correctness that operating anything is almost prohibitive.
It may take money to make money, but P.T. Barnum still rules.
No, it just goes to show that all governments hate competition, at every level. You can't just point at the USGOV and wrap it in a razorwire blanket and say
"HA! That proves it!".
Every government on the planet is rotten. They all act the same. Think of businesses with no accountability except that which they're willing to suffer. Unlike businessess, where if they're all wrong they're all right, governments just say,
"We're right. Disagree and you might limp away marginalized. Piss us off and we'll shoot you/imprison you."
Humanity, like all life and existence, is built upon recursive suffering. Death is the exit condition. It's all a game. The 10% control the 90% and short of re-engineering humanity and really most mamillian life, it's not going to change.
Go get a hug. Depending on how well you take care of yourself it's about the closest thing to an equivalent exchange of suffering our existence offers.
Cheers.
Just how does the military end up with such uninspired, soul withering, marginalized and obfuscated acronyms?
My understanding is that officers are usually tasked with creating acronyms for the projects they are responsible for. This would be in keeping with the fact that they have to do all the documentation and write ups on it. Now, we're living in a politically correct world where you don't want someone twisting your acronym up and side-banding your project with potty humor. And you sure as hell don't want to offend some female (women wield a startling amount of power in the military when it comes to decorum) officer who might have to say it.
So something as intellectually neutered as JFCCNW is actually the kind of acronym that a smart person would like to see in their dossier. Over time, as an officers dossier is reviewed, part of the whole "reading the entrails" to see if an officer is suitable comes down to how well they work within the bureaucracy, and to this end I've known officers who have been promoted for such things. It's a whacked planet.