As someone else pointed out, hearing the school or district's (or other classmates') side of the story would be great. I think this needs to happen before we automatically assume there's an injustice here. I've done some quick searches for news in that area, but they didn't turn up anything. Can anyone share a link?
Here are some media releases from that school district (18 months ago)... a bomb threat and, on a separate occasion, two students were arrested for pulling the fire alarm.
Interestingly, in the case of the fire alarm arrests, the school superintendent said:
Even though this situation turned out
to be a hoax, we took the threat very seriously and initiated the proper precautions.
Instructional time was not interrupted anywhere in MISD
No word if those students were allowed to continue at the school.
I think it's been time for a while now to throw out MP3s...it was already old technology when it hit big.
You said it yourself: "it hit big". And it's still hitting big. Has your computer-illiterate parent or cousin heard of OGG or WMA? Way less likely than MP3. RealAudio gets pretty good exposure. And MS is trying to set up WMA to be the next big thing, and they'll probably make a good go of it. But in the mean time, what does old MP3 have going for it?
1) More tools than any other (compressed) format.
2) More content than any other format.
3) It still sounds good enough to make most people smile, tap their toe, and dance. So if it ain't broke...
From the article... Amazon.com Inc. stocks some adult video titles, but shoppers can locate them only by searching for specific titles, officials said.
"Specific titles"? Whatever, Amazon! I just went there and naively typed in "adult vhs" (not a specific title) from their homepage. I got some featured hits, like "Penthouse Pet of The Year Playoff", "Asian Babes 1 & 2" and "Nude Bowling Party", and a nice fat hyperlink to "See all 179 results".
Yeah, I really had to know specific titles to browse your entire stock of adult titles!
I don't disagree with their approach, but why lie about making it difficult to access pr0n (soft as it may be) when it's really quite easy and intuitive?
Firstly, rightholders have complete control
over the manufacture, distribution etc. of devices designed to circumvent anti-copying devices. A more flexible solution in this regard would have
carried a greater risk of abuse and piracy.
Two feeble attempts at finding loopholes...
1) Does the word "device", and later "manufacture", imply physical devices only? What about a pure software solution? Probably not, but worth a shot.
2) What's with the word "etc." in that?! How vague is that!? If I code up and run a DECSS equivalent myself, have I "manufactured" or "distributed" or "etc."'d anything?
You know how much a billion is? Well, maybe not. It's 10^12 in the Commonwealth countries and 10^9 in the US. (They call 10^9 a milliard).
Interesting, but please cite your source for this. I live in a Commonwealth country (Canada), and while our gallon is different than a US gallon, a billion is most definitely 10^9 here. I knows that cuz I learnt it in skool.
I really only see one specific reference to a Windows NT problem in the logs...
At about 2200, we were reconfiguring some
mail files which, with a lot of help from Windows NT, got put in the wrong
place during the backup procedure.
Beyond that, they seem to be complaining about a lot of hardware-relating things.
When we finished restoring the files,
the network was down and would not come back up. We worked this for several
hours. Finally, jiggling some cables brings just a part of the net back. (that really instills confidence in the stability of your network). And when they're not jiggling cables, they're bitching about the wireless nodes on the LAN.
They also run Unix, so where can we find more evidence of Wired's claim that "Most of the problems appear to be related to Microsoft's Windows NT"?
Okay, there is the Jan 21st entry: "We are continuing to see some strange things on our e-mail". But I see strange things on my e-mail every morning. They should just run a Inbox Rule to filter out references to "credit rating", "get out of debt" and "hot teens". That would eliminates much of the strange stuff.
Sigma is a game being developed by Relic, the studio that created Homeworld (Game of the Year by some accounts, etc, etc.)
Anyway if you dig B&W, you might also dig Sigma (when it's out, late this year?) It involves crazy creatures, a B-movie plot, genetic wackiness, a pretty impressive rendering engine, etc. I'm sure the dev team of Sigma has watched B&W closely (it's been in development for about as long), though the gameplay and objectives seem to be different enough. Homeworld cameras and gameplay were great, so I have high hopes for Sigma!
In the words of Relic's CEO, Alex Garden, (who has brushed shoulders with Peter Molyneaux)... "We prefer to think of Sigma as what happens when a geneticist smokes far too much crack."
How does Relic afford to fund a game that has also been something like 3 years in the making? Microsoft dollars. Sierra funded Homeworld. Not sure why MS is backing this one, and say what you want about the evil empire... but they've got money to risk on crazy games like Sigma. And I think that's pretty goddamn cool...
An anti-rainbow? That would be an interesting experiment in art class.
It would interesting, except to be an "experiment", you'd have to get an art class to follow the Scientific Method, including formulating a hypothesis, falsifiability, etc.
You're dead wrong. Mobile phones put you in charge. They generally have CLI so you can see who's calling and you get the option to reject the call
Holy! Which telco gave you the phone with a CLI?! I've been dreaming of doing some batch scripting and 'make's from my Motorola, but all I've got to work with is their freaking GUI. Will it do filename completion? Command history? More details, please!!!
I'm really happy with the quality of graphics in Windows games. Can Linux developers beat it, reinventing the rendering technologies themselves? Possibly, but what a waste of time when they could be improving gameplay.
What I'm not (always) happy with on Windows is the quality of gameplay. It commonly takes a backseat to graphics technology, and I predict with this Linux API and rendering race, Linux developers will be focussing a lot on better looking, faster, smoother games. Which is great, all else equal. But...
But wouldn't it be a bigger feather in the cap of the Linux camp if, in a couple of years, people generally agreed, "Yeah, these Linux games don't have very good vertex shading compared to Windows games, but holy crap are they more fun!!! I spend all my time playing Linux games." That's the ultimate complement, in my opinion. You don't have to look farther than the 12-year-old Game Boy platform to realize that fun games sell damn well and create a loyal base of consumers. And you don't have to look farther than PC graphic$ hardware and CPU $peeds to realize that when you chase after (making or buying) technically-impressive games, you are going to spend a lot of time and money.
I say Fun First, tech later. That requires a lot of inspiration and design and playtesting and playbalancing (things it would seem Linux has the community for!)
I can't tell you how many people I've talked with, technical people mind you, who don't know that there's any browser besides IE.
You've talked to lots of technical people that aren't aware of Netscape?! Are these the "technical people" who clean the fry vats at McDonalds?
Now, I'm not saying that Netscape is a good browser, mind you... (I just can't believe a technical person hasn't heard of it)
I really really dig Opera, and you're right -- way more people need to give it a try. The bug reporting on their site is fine, but they would really be top-notch in my books if they'd let us browse their bug database.
What happens is the plant expresses a gene that creates a protein on the surface that has the same function as the pesticide that would have been sprayed on.
If it's a protein that has the pesticide function, that's a lot different than something sprayed onto the plant. Even if the poisonous protein is designed to grow only on the surface, I have to believe I'll have more luck washing poison away if it's applied externally with a spray rather than generated internally by the plant itself.
With an attitude like "don't take things apart" and "don't tweak things" and questioning curiousity as a motivator, you're clearly not much of a nerd. You're just a content user. That's great. So maybe you should read MSN and CNET instead of Slashdot!
TV is bad. It is mind numbing entertainment and in this house it is on for about 1 hour a day. Both of my kids have been taught that tv is not good for them.
I wonder about people who teach their children that a medium is inherently bad. TV is not just about entertainment. I live in Canada and for < CAN$20/mo on satellite, I'm able to watch the Discovery Channel, The Knowledge Network, two PBS stations, the CBC, etc. This goes beyond entertainment -- it's educational and interesting and thought-provoking. As an example, I recently got to relive Carl Sagan's Cosmos Series (on PBS, I think) -- back in its day, that TV show was so awe-inspiring to me and helped drive me to study science. (I'm in my 30s now.) There was great TV way back then and there's great TV now. World history, war documentaries, Bill Moyers, Scientific American, Nova, BBC News -- all those shows were on tonight. None of those are particularly entertaining or mind-numbing in my opinion.
My point is this... sure, those shows will probably pass thru the V-Chip, but what's the message you're sending to your children then? Reliance/trust in technology and government ratings over developing their own critical viewing skills? Will the V-Chip or ingrained TV-prejudice protect them when they catch a glimpse of forbidden programs on the TV at the mall or a friend's house or in their college dorm? Better hope so...
Gamers don't always make the decisions
on
XBox Tidbits
·
· Score: 2
Gamers are smart... putting a poster in a store is not going to sway them. They will make the choice based on what they feel to be the best after they evaluate the competition.
Many gamers are young. Young enough to not posess or be allowed to spend $300 without parental input. And unfortunately, parents are going to be swayed easier than informed gamers... If an uninformed parent sees a poster that says wait for the X-Box and they don't see one for the Game Cube (and they don't read the hot gaming sites on the web and spend time speculating like hard-core gamers do), then I think some will be swayed by the MS posters.
So maybe gamers won't be swayed, but the ones holding the cash will be.
I love it. It's a great story and shows how simple and naive approaches can discover new things right under our noses. But in the end, Josh's own words sum things up... (quote from the article)
As for his contribution to mathematical science:
Does his theorem have any interesting practical applications to everyday life?
if i were a record company exec with millions of dollars at risk then i would consider sending Matt CAD110,000 one day before the end of the financial year.
sending this information to the RevCan would ensure that Matt has to declare income or deal with tax evasion charges.
That's an interesting idea, but if the record company throws cash or a cheque for $110,000 at Matt, he's not obliged to accept it, receive it, or cash it. It's not income if he doesn't accept it. The record company can lie and tell Revenue Canada that "Matt accepted it", but unless he really did and there is a cashed cheque or bank transaction to prove it, then their claim is going to be shot down. No transaction took place.
Another step that might be taken would be to move the money collection mechanism offshore -- say, to a Swiss bank account. This wouldn't work, as one must still declare one's offshore holdings to RevCan (Matt's equivalent of the USA's IRS). Declaring this income would be evidence of doing business. Simply not declaring it would be problematic as well, as one would then be subject to tax evasion charges.
IAAC (I am a Canadian.) Yes, offshore holdings must be declared in Canada. But only if those holdings exceed CAN$100,000. Here is a recent clarification from Revenue Canada, and the original policy is here. Canadians must still declare all foreign income, just not all foreign holdings (such as a USD$65,000 off-shore bank account). So Matt can transfer the contents of that account over to HavenCo when it hits the USD$15,000 level each year to cover his bill. Such a bank account would not need to be declared to Revenue Canada. This may help him stay under the radar and keep evidence against him to a minimum. But the question remains... can he get money into that account via some clever foreign transfer that doesn't constitue income and therefore does not need to be declared? IANATL (I am not a tax lawyer).
Slashdot Mirror
As someone else pointed out, hearing the school or district's (or other classmates') side of the story would be great. I think this needs to happen before we automatically assume there's an injustice here. I've done some quick searches for news in that area, but they didn't turn up anything. Can anyone share a link?
I'll pass along these semi-relevant links...
McKinney Independent School District home page.
Here are some media releases from that school district (18 months ago)... a bomb threat and, on a separate occasion, two students were arrested for pulling the fire alarm.
Interestingly, in the case of the fire alarm arrests, the school superintendent said:
Even though this situation turned out to be a hoax, we took the threat very seriously and initiated the proper precautions. Instructional time was not interrupted anywhere in MISD
No word if those students were allowed to continue at the school.
I think it's been time for a while now to throw out MP3s...it was already old technology when it hit big.
You said it yourself: "it hit big". And it's still hitting big. Has your computer-illiterate parent or cousin heard of OGG or WMA? Way less likely than MP3. RealAudio gets pretty good exposure. And MS is trying to set up WMA to be the next big thing, and they'll probably make a good go of it. But in the mean time, what does old MP3 have going for it?
1) More tools than any other (compressed) format.
2) More content than any other format.
3) It still sounds good enough to make most people smile, tap their toe, and dance. So if it ain't broke...
From the article...
Amazon.com Inc. stocks some adult video titles, but shoppers can locate them only by searching for specific titles, officials said.
"Specific titles"? Whatever, Amazon! I just went there and naively typed in "adult vhs" (not a specific title) from their homepage. I got some featured hits, like "Penthouse Pet of The Year Playoff", "Asian Babes 1 & 2" and "Nude Bowling Party", and a nice fat hyperlink to "See all 179 results".
Yeah, I really had to know specific titles to browse your entire stock of adult titles!
I don't disagree with their approach, but why lie about making it difficult to access pr0n (soft as it may be) when it's really quite easy and intuitive?
Firstly, rightholders have complete control over the manufacture, distribution etc. of devices designed to circumvent anti-copying devices. A more flexible solution in this regard would have carried a greater risk of abuse and piracy.
Two feeble attempts at finding loopholes...
1) Does the word "device", and later "manufacture", imply physical devices only? What about a pure software solution? Probably not, but worth a shot.
2) What's with the word "etc." in that?! How vague is that!? If I code up and run a DECSS equivalent myself, have I "manufactured" or "distributed" or "etc."'d anything?
I seem to remember that Weird Al has to get permission to do things like the star wars version of American Pie, but does not to do things like Fat.
c /mu1208.php k .html m ent/weirdal.html
You're wrong about Wierd Al... It's not hard to find these facts on the web with a google search...
Al not only had permission from Michael Jackson to do "Fat", but Michael -gave- him the "Bad" set to film the "Fat" video! Very cool.
http://www.yesterdayland.com/popopedia/shows/musi
http://www.dailyegyptian.com/fall00/09-29-00/frea
http://www.unb.ca/web/bruns/9900/issue9/entertain
And a quote from the Al man on Michael Jackson: "He is really a nice guy, very sweet and he let me do two parodies "Eat It" and "Fat.""
You know how much a billion is? Well, maybe not. It's 10^12 in the Commonwealth countries and 10^9 in the US. (They call 10^9 a milliard).
Interesting, but please cite your source for this. I live in a Commonwealth country (Canada), and while our gallon is different than a US gallon, a billion is most definitely 10^9 here. I knows that cuz I learnt it in skool.
As a sport biker, I love the irony. Harley riders enjoy deriding (Japanese) sport bikes, calling them "rice burners", among other things...
Now, really, how much better is a "soy burner"?!
But Yogi, the RIAA won't like that.
/.'er.
Hey Booboo! Whatcha got in that pic-a-nic server?!
I'm smarter than the average 1337
I really only see one specific reference to a Windows NT problem in the logs...
At about 2200, we were reconfiguring some mail files which, with a lot of help from Windows NT, got put in the wrong place during the backup procedure.
Beyond that, they seem to be complaining about a lot of hardware-relating things.
When we finished restoring the files, the network was down and would not come back up. We worked this for several hours. Finally, jiggling some cables brings just a part of the net back. (that really instills confidence in the stability of your network). And when they're not jiggling cables, they're bitching about the wireless nodes on the LAN.
They also run Unix, so where can we find more evidence of Wired's claim that "Most of the problems appear to be related to Microsoft's Windows NT"?
Okay, there is the Jan 21st entry: "We are continuing to see some strange things on our e-mail". But I see strange things on my e-mail every morning. They should just run a Inbox Rule to filter out references to "credit rating", "get out of debt" and "hot teens". That would eliminates much of the strange stuff.
Sigma is a game being developed by Relic, the studio that created Homeworld (Game of the Year by some accounts, etc, etc.) Anyway if you dig B&W, you might also dig Sigma (when it's out, late this year?) It involves crazy creatures, a B-movie plot, genetic wackiness, a pretty impressive rendering engine, etc. I'm sure the dev team of Sigma has watched B&W closely (it's been in development for about as long), though the gameplay and objectives seem to be different enough. Homeworld cameras and gameplay were great, so I have high hopes for Sigma!
1 /page2.asp n dex3.shtml d =92&pageid=5 e ws1.asp
In the words of Relic's CEO, Alex Garden, (who has brushed shoulders with Peter Molyneaux)... "We prefer to think of Sigma as what happens when a geneticist smokes far too much crack."
Some links for more info...
http://forums.relicnews.com
http://pc.ign.com/previews/14840.html
http://firingsquad.gamers.com/features/gamestock0
http://www.gameweek.com/features/gamestock01/pc/i
http://gamepen.ugo.com/gamepen/Features.asp?itemi
http://www.gamesmania.com/articles/PC/sigma/previ
How does Relic afford to fund a game that has also been something like 3 years in the making? Microsoft dollars. Sierra funded Homeworld. Not sure why MS is backing this one, and say what you want about the evil empire... but they've got money to risk on crazy games like Sigma. And I think that's pretty goddamn cool...
An anti-rainbow? That would be an interesting experiment in art class.
It would interesting, except to be an "experiment", you'd have to get an art class to follow the Scientific Method, including formulating a hypothesis, falsifiability, etc.
Ummm. Yeah. Cough.
You're dead wrong. Mobile phones put you in charge. They generally have CLI so you can see who's calling and you get the option to reject the call
Holy! Which telco gave you the phone with a CLI?! I've been dreaming of doing some batch scripting and 'make's from my Motorola, but all I've got to work with is their freaking GUI. Will it do filename completion? Command history? More details, please!!!
In the Beginning was the Command Line
I'm really happy with the quality of graphics in Windows games. Can Linux developers beat it, reinventing the rendering technologies themselves? Possibly, but what a waste of time when they could be improving gameplay.
What I'm not (always) happy with on Windows is the quality of gameplay. It commonly takes a backseat to graphics technology, and I predict with this Linux API and rendering race, Linux developers will be focussing a lot on better looking, faster, smoother games. Which is great, all else equal. But...
But wouldn't it be a bigger feather in the cap of the Linux camp if, in a couple of years, people generally agreed, "Yeah, these Linux games don't have very good vertex shading compared to Windows games, but holy crap are they more fun!!! I spend all my time playing Linux games." That's the ultimate complement, in my opinion. You don't have to look farther than the 12-year-old Game Boy platform to realize that fun games sell damn well and create a loyal base of consumers. And you don't have to look farther than PC graphic$ hardware and CPU $peeds to realize that when you chase after (making or buying) technically-impressive games, you are going to spend a lot of time and money.
I say Fun First, tech later. That requires a lot of inspiration and design and playtesting and playbalancing (things it would seem Linux has the community for!)
Last time I got pumped full of grease, I put on 25 pounds. Then the doctor told me I was pregnant.
Ummm... I don't think it was grease you got pumped full of!
I can't tell you how many people I've talked with, technical people mind you, who don't know that there's any browser besides IE.
You've talked to lots of technical people that aren't aware of Netscape?! Are these the "technical people" who clean the fry vats at McDonalds?
Now, I'm not saying that Netscape is a good browser, mind you... (I just can't believe a technical person hasn't heard of it)
I really really dig Opera, and you're right -- way more people need to give it a try. The bug reporting on their site is fine, but they would really be top-notch in my books if they'd let us browse their bug database.
What happens is the plant expresses a gene that creates a protein on the surface that has the same function as the pesticide that would have been sprayed on.
If it's a protein that has the pesticide function, that's a lot different than something sprayed onto the plant. Even if the poisonous protein is designed to grow only on the surface, I have to believe I'll have more luck washing poison away if it's applied externally with a spray rather than generated internally by the plant itself.
With an attitude like "don't take things apart" and "don't tweak things" and questioning curiousity as a motivator, you're clearly not much of a nerd. You're just a content user. That's great. So maybe you should read MSN and CNET instead of Slashdot!
TV is bad. It is mind numbing entertainment and in this house it is on for about 1 hour a day. Both of my kids have been taught that tv is not good for them.
I wonder about people who teach their children that a medium is inherently bad. TV is not just about entertainment. I live in Canada and for < CAN$20/mo on satellite, I'm able to watch the Discovery Channel, The Knowledge Network, two PBS stations, the CBC, etc. This goes beyond entertainment -- it's educational and interesting and thought-provoking. As an example, I recently got to relive Carl Sagan's Cosmos Series (on PBS, I think) -- back in its day, that TV show was so awe-inspiring to me and helped drive me to study science. (I'm in my 30s now.) There was great TV way back then and there's great TV now. World history, war documentaries, Bill Moyers, Scientific American, Nova, BBC News -- all those shows were on tonight. None of those are particularly entertaining or mind-numbing in my opinion.
My point is this... sure, those shows will probably pass thru the V-Chip, but what's the message you're sending to your children then? Reliance/trust in technology and government ratings over developing their own critical viewing skills? Will the V-Chip or ingrained TV-prejudice protect them when they catch a glimpse of forbidden programs on the TV at the mall or a friend's house or in their college dorm? Better hope so...
You mean they all can't play tennis worth a damn?
She plays tennis?
Gamers are smart... putting a poster in a store is not going to sway them. They will make the choice based on what they feel to be the best after they evaluate the competition.
Many gamers are young. Young enough to not posess or be allowed to spend $300 without parental input. And unfortunately, parents are going to be swayed easier than informed gamers... If an uninformed parent sees a poster that says wait for the X-Box and they don't see one for the Game Cube (and they don't read the hot gaming sites on the web and spend time speculating like hard-core gamers do), then I think some will be swayed by the MS posters.
So maybe gamers won't be swayed, but the ones holding the cash will be.
Are there provisions for dealing with Open Source "vandals"?
I believe the primary provision is to not use their code.
Breaking the law is a good way to make a change happen in a civilized society...
Indeed. "Good men should not follow the law too closely."
(Was it Emerson who said this? I think it was am American philosopher/author, at any rate
I love it. It's a great story and shows how simple and naive approaches can discover new things right under our noses. But in the end, Josh's own words sum things up... (quote from the article)
As for his contribution to mathematical science:
Does his theorem have any interesting practical applications to everyday life?
"Uh, no. Not really."
if i were a record company exec with millions of dollars at risk then i would consider sending Matt CAD110,000 one day before the end of the financial year. sending this information to the RevCan would ensure that Matt has to declare income or deal with tax evasion charges.
That's an interesting idea, but if the record company throws cash or a cheque for $110,000 at Matt, he's not obliged to accept it, receive it, or cash it. It's not income if he doesn't accept it. The record company can lie and tell Revenue Canada that "Matt accepted it", but unless he really did and there is a cashed cheque or bank transaction to prove it, then their claim is going to be shot down. No transaction took place.
Another step that might be taken would be to move the money collection mechanism offshore -- say, to a Swiss bank account. This wouldn't work, as one must still declare one's offshore holdings to RevCan (Matt's equivalent of the USA's IRS). Declaring this income would be evidence of doing business. Simply not declaring it would be problematic as well, as one would then be subject to tax evasion charges.
IAAC (I am a Canadian.) Yes, offshore holdings must be declared in Canada. But only if those holdings exceed CAN$100,000. Here is a recent clarification from Revenue Canada, and the original policy is here. Canadians must still declare all foreign income, just not all foreign holdings (such as a USD$65,000 off-shore bank account). So Matt can transfer the contents of that account over to HavenCo when it hits the USD$15,000 level each year to cover his bill. Such a bank account would not need to be declared to Revenue Canada. This may help him stay under the radar and keep evidence against him to a minimum. But the question remains... can he get money into that account via some clever foreign transfer that doesn't constitue income and therefore does not need to be declared? IANATL (I am not a tax lawyer).