I don't think that either of us are in a position to say "violent games are good/bad".
If exposure to things via TV or computer doesn't affect the human thought process, then why are billions of dollars spent on advertising each year?
Repetitive advertisments help induce people to enlist in the military, pay too much for cars and sign up for the new AOL 9.0.
When you think of it in that context, is it completely unreasonable for someone prone to violence to be affected by repeated exposures to depictions of violent or aberrant behavior?
I don't know -- but if a scientifically sound study made that determination I wouldn't be suprised.
<reality> When they threaten to cut your access and turn your $700 equipment investment into scrap, you will roll over and play dead. If you have the resources to sue them (or take them into arbitration, most likely), they'll layoff.</reality>
They keep a moving average of your bandwidth utilization. Exceeding the unspecified caps results in your downstream bandwidth being halved, (ie 100%->50%->25%->12.5%) and eventually cut off.
My parents used this with the previous generation hardware, downloading a Java SDK & Eclipse runtime (say 100MB) resulted in a noticeable decrease in bandwidth.
It is also way to slow for me to use ssh interactively.
Here's some snippets of the AUP, from http://legal.direcway.com/index.html#agree:
6.1 Prohibited Conduct
(g) to post information on newsgroups which is not in the topic area of the newsgroup; (j) to damage the name or reputation of DIRECWAY, DIRECTV, Hughes Network Systems, Hughes Electronics Corporation or any of their respective parents, affiliates and subsidiaries, or any third parties; (k) to transmit confidential or proprietary information, except solely at your own risk; (l) to violate our or any third party's copyright, trademark, proprietary or other intellectual property rights, including trade secret rights; (m) to generate excessive amounts (as determined in our sole discretion) of Internet traffic
6.2 DIRECWAY FAIR ACCESS POLICY
To ensure equal Internet access for all subscribers, we maintain a running average fair access policy. Fair access establishes an equitable balance in Internet access across the DIRECWAY Services by service plan for all DIRECWAY customers regardless of their frequency of use or volume of traffic. To ensure this equity, you may experience some temporary throughput limitations. DIRECWAY Internet access is not guaranteed. This policy applies to all service plans including "Unlimited" plans where customers' use of the service is not limited to a specific number of hours per month.
The classic example is that screaming "fire" in a crowded theatre and inciting a panic is not protected speech. Everyone agrees with that.
Asking videogame producers to use due judgement and produce products that are socially responsible is not censorship and is not wrong. The videogame industry is moving towards the same inane and worthless content that network television and cable is moving towards -- taking Liberman's advice may be helpful in the long run.
The president has little to do with your job situation, it more like thirty years of government policy.
You need to lower your salary expectations or seek a job that matches your skills.
The economy is a highly cyclical thing. The late 90's were an extreme example of a boom, and basing your expectations for jobs & salary on the late 90's is dumb.
Exchange rates have little to do with US companies exporting jobs overseas. In fact, China is going to be facing a huge crisis, particularly in real estate as they maintain articifially low exchange rates with the falling dollar.
India has a massive number of people with great educations who don't need to make $70k/yr to raise a family. Here in the US, huge numbers of college freshmen enter school without the reading or mathematical background to survive a CS, Biology or Engineering program.
US government policy is centered around handing out pensions to seniors, medical care and building armies to keep our outrageously inefficent society functioning. Blame a generation of american leaders for your plight.
In case anyone hasn't realized it yet, this article proves that OSNews is the most retarded website on the planet.
The typical story is titled like "A comprehensive review of the Atari ST". The contents are typically something like... "I found an old Atari ST, but my cdrom wouldn't fit in the 5.25" disk drive and mozilla wouldn't compile. So the Atari sucks"
I benchmarked a skilled Chinese abacus user against a C-programmer implementing an accounting system. The chinese dude figured out that 1+1=2 before the C-programmer loaded his editor, so the abacus is faster.
If the kid in question had waited until he was 18 to pull this off, he would have been facing 10 years of federal time and a $25,000 fine, per offense. Passing 10 $5 bills means up to 100 years in prison.
The school prinical called him in... and the local US Attorney has a "get tough on white collar crime" thing going on.
We live in an age of zero-tolerance. One of my brother's female classmates was suspended for violating the "zero-tolerance drug policy" by having a box of Sudafed in her locker.
A 14 year old kid at my little brother's high school is going to be in a youth camp until he's 21 because he made one sided photocopies of a $5 bill in the library and tried to buy a snack with it.
Health costs have little to do with computers and everything to do with economics.
The spiralling costs of healthcare in the US are caused by price ceilings (which have an inflationary effect), 1993-1995 "Reform" and deregulation of the pharmacutical industry and companies and patients jumping from insurer to insurer.
Drug companies spend about $2 billion (2002 dollars) on direct to consumer advertising and about US$35 billion (2002 dollars) on R&D. Yet 20 years ago, drug companies spent $5 billion (2002 dollars) and released 150% more new drugs.
Do some googling, you'll find that the US medical system is amoung the most corrupt institutions on the planet -- and nobody really cares.
Government IT, particularly local government IT is dominated by politically connected VARs with hokey software and high profit margins.
Vendors in vertical markets like medicine and government applications do not benefit from open source... the more their customers perceive that their systems are proprietary and special, the more willing they are to pay exorbitant licence and support fees. Well placed friendships or political relationships don't hurt either.
Plenty of desktop computers today are more powerful and have more storage available than a midrange server of 5 years ago.
As long as that growth pattern persists, nobody is going to buy the $5 million city supercomputer, because it is cheaper and more effective to buy faster workstations as needed.
If and when the computer market matures and stabilizes, utility computing will be a real thing... and computer companies will behave like utilitiy companies.
Sorry, but the charging for OS updates horse is a dead one. While Sun is obnoxious in their versioning scheme, you can get patch sets as far back as Solaris 2.6 for free.
When was the last time that you paid for a Windows Service Pack or Hotfix? Anyone can download windows service packs for free. Service packs often introduce signifigant new features.
The whole point is that plenty of people do not want iDVD or GarageBand. If just want iTunes and iPhoto, have have to buy other crap that I do not want or need.
You paid a premium for an inferior product that looks good from a company with a long history of screwing its customers over with abandoned produts and charging for os updates.
Are you honestly suprised that "free" apps are no longer "free"?
"Generalist" IT dorks are most affected by the current malaise.
I know of several people who specialize in various areas who are getting 7-8 calls from recruiters a week, mostly for 6 month contracts.
If you are a "computer guy" or webmonkey, Apu in Bangalore has rendered you irrelevant. Database, network and "enterprise" software experts will always be in high demand, at least until the Indians get more experience.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think that either of us are in a position to say "violent games are good/bad".
If exposure to things via TV or computer doesn't affect the human thought process, then why are billions of dollars spent on advertising each year?
Repetitive advertisments help induce people to enlist in the military, pay too much for cars and sign up for the new AOL 9.0.
When you think of it in that context, is it completely unreasonable for someone prone to violence to be affected by repeated exposures to depictions of violent or aberrant behavior?
I don't know -- but if a scientifically sound study made that determination I wouldn't be suprised.
Sure. You are absolutely correct.
<reality> When they threaten to cut your access and turn your $700 equipment investment into scrap, you will roll over and play dead. If you have the resources to sue them (or take them into arbitration, most likely), they'll layoff.</reality>
The only time I had Direct TV go out was during an ice storm that literally encased the dish in ice & snow and during a really heavy thunderstorm.
Any "fact" that Time Warner repeatably points out via cable advertising should be taken in context. (ie Direct TV costs like 40% less than TWC)
They keep a moving average of your bandwidth utilization. Exceeding the unspecified caps results in your downstream bandwidth being halved, (ie 100%->50%->25%->12.5%) and eventually cut off.
My parents used this with the previous generation hardware, downloading a Java SDK & Eclipse runtime (say 100MB) resulted in a noticeable decrease in bandwidth.
It is also way to slow for me to use ssh interactively.
Here's some snippets of the AUP, from http://legal.direcway.com/index.html#agree:
With rights come responsibility.
The classic example is that screaming "fire" in a crowded theatre and inciting a panic is not protected speech. Everyone agrees with that.
Asking videogame producers to use due judgement and produce products that are socially responsible is not censorship and is not wrong. The videogame industry is moving towards the same inane and worthless content that network television and cable is moving towards -- taking Liberman's advice may be helpful in the long run.
The president has little to do with your job situation, it more like thirty years of government policy.
You need to lower your salary expectations or seek a job that matches your skills.
The economy is a highly cyclical thing. The late 90's were an extreme example of a boom, and basing your expectations for jobs & salary on the late 90's is dumb.
Exchange rates have little to do with US companies exporting jobs overseas. In fact, China is going to be facing a huge crisis, particularly in real estate as they maintain articifially low exchange rates with the falling dollar.
India has a massive number of people with great educations who don't need to make $70k/yr to raise a family. Here in the US, huge numbers of college freshmen enter school without the reading or mathematical background to survive a CS, Biology or Engineering program.
US government policy is centered around handing out pensions to seniors, medical care and building armies to keep our outrageously inefficent society functioning. Blame a generation of american leaders for your plight.
In case anyone hasn't realized it yet, this article proves that OSNews is the most retarded website on the planet.
The typical story is titled like "A comprehensive review of the Atari ST". The contents are typically something like... "I found an old Atari ST, but my cdrom wouldn't fit in the 5.25" disk drive and mozilla wouldn't compile. So the Atari sucks"
I benchmarked a skilled Chinese abacus user against a C-programmer implementing an accounting system. The chinese dude figured out that 1+1=2 before the C-programmer loaded his editor, so the abacus is faster.
Good point. One can become an "IBM Partner" by filling out a short questionaire.
hAVe YOu eveR tRiED TO reAd a MIxeD cAsE DoCUMenT?
iT IS ReAL pAIN iN THe aSS.
cODE is dIFfiCUlT eNOugH tO rEAd wIThouT coMPLIcatINg tHiNGs fURthEr.
That is the justice system.
If the kid in question had waited until he was 18 to pull this off, he would have been facing 10 years of federal time and a $25,000 fine, per offense. Passing 10 $5 bills means up to 100 years in prison.
I wish that I was lying.
The school prinical called him in... and the local US Attorney has a "get tough on white collar crime" thing going on.
We live in an age of zero-tolerance. One of my brother's female classmates was suspended for violating the "zero-tolerance drug policy" by having a box of Sudafed in her locker.
Maps aren't laid out for useful sniping. In the "real" world, snipers don't use scoped rifles to hit man-sized targets at 50 yards.
Absolutely.
A 14 year old kid at my little brother's high school is going to be in a youth camp until he's 21 because he made one sided photocopies of a $5 bill in the library and tried to buy a snack with it.
A life destroyed over $5.
Free advice, especially from salesmen, is worth every penny you paid for it.
Enron and Webvan were once carried man "strong buy" rating.
The i730 is a Java & GPS enabled phone that should fit the bill.
The classic Electronic Arts "album cover" packaging and their attempts to make game developers into rockstar-like characters.
Health costs have little to do with computers and everything to do with economics.
The spiralling costs of healthcare in the US are caused by price ceilings (which have an inflationary effect), 1993-1995 "Reform" and deregulation of the pharmacutical industry and companies and patients jumping from insurer to insurer.
Drug companies spend about $2 billion (2002 dollars) on direct to consumer advertising and about US$35 billion (2002 dollars) on R&D. Yet 20 years ago, drug companies spent $5 billion (2002 dollars) and released 150% more new drugs.
Do some googling, you'll find that the US medical system is amoung the most corrupt institutions on the planet -- and nobody really cares.
Government IT, particularly local government IT is dominated by politically connected VARs with hokey software and high profit margins.
Vendors in vertical markets like medicine and government applications do not benefit from open source... the more their customers perceive that their systems are proprietary and special, the more willing they are to pay exorbitant licence and support fees. Well placed friendships or political relationships don't hurt either.
Hence the problem with utility computing.
Plenty of desktop computers today are more powerful and have more storage available than a midrange server of 5 years ago.
As long as that growth pattern persists, nobody is going to buy the $5 million city supercomputer, because it is cheaper and more effective to buy faster workstations as needed.
If and when the computer market matures and stabilizes, utility computing will be a real thing... and computer companies will behave like utilitiy companies.
Why not strictly control the propagation of networks?
Keep the the number of publicly routable networks down and grow with time as performance improvements all technology to catch up.
Sorry, but the charging for OS updates horse is a dead one. While Sun is obnoxious in their versioning scheme, you can get patch sets as far back as Solaris 2.6 for free.
When was the last time that you paid for a Windows Service Pack or Hotfix? Anyone can download windows service packs for free. Service packs often introduce signifigant new features.
The whole point is that plenty of people do not want iDVD or GarageBand. If just want iTunes and iPhoto, have have to buy other crap that I do not want or need.
But how do you answer the question:
"What about the children?"
You paid a premium for an inferior product that looks good from a company with a long history of screwing its customers over with abandoned produts and charging for os updates.
Are you honestly suprised that "free" apps are no longer "free"?
IT people need to be able to read and write coherently.
I don't care if you're the best Java/.NET/C/whatever programmer on earth. If you cannot effectively communicate, you are not a very useful employee.
"Generalist" IT dorks are most affected by the current malaise.
I know of several people who specialize in various areas who are getting 7-8 calls from recruiters a week, mostly for 6 month contracts.
If you are a "computer guy" or webmonkey, Apu in Bangalore has rendered you irrelevant. Database, network and "enterprise" software experts will always be in high demand, at least until the Indians get more experience.