The only way I can see this test being "valid" is if the children were taught using this exact same language and diagrams all year. For example, if they had a workbook that was filled with these kinds of questions and they spent much of the year going through it.
Even so, the coins to cup question has me baffled. If the "whole" number is the number in the box (like it is in questions 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8) then why do they put it in a tea cup in question 1?
I appreciate your rational look at this issue, Deuce. As you mentioned, it's such a hot-button topic that it's often hard for folk to discuss it without anger and hysterics.
I have a friend who hunts and so am pretty sure he owns at least one gun. But he's the nicest guy I've ever met, and very responsible and respectful of others. As a result, I'm not worried about him owning a gun at all.
I think requiring training before sanctioning someone to carry a firearm is a good thing, but I wish there were some way to regulate this based on attitude as well as aptitude. But I don't know how that would be possible without going down that slippery slope to "thought police", which would be awful.
One thing I'd like to see more is for rational and responsible gun owners to publicly/openly denounce irrational and irresponsible ones. Irresponsible gun owners may ignore what gun-control advocates think because they're on the other side of the issue. But maybe they'll listen to other gun owners and, through peer pressure, become more responsible themselves.
I don't know if it is the MSNBC write up or the "experiment" itself
It's the write up, I think. The article later mentions
Brembs did not think flies had free will, per se. He also stressed their results did not suggest free will existed in humans or elsewhere. "We only showed that brains might possess a faculty which free will could potentially be based on," Brembs said.
I take that to mean that the scientists haven't drawn any kind of conclusions yet.
I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was, and now what I'm with isn't it. And what's "it" seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to YOU! -- Abe Simpson
FWIW, I don't think we have enough information about this case, the judge or the circumstances to pass judgment. We don't know if the judge really was clueless, or (as other people have suggested) was asking a dumb question for the benefit of the jury (or others), or if he was trying to get a more nuanced definition, or if he was just "fishing", and/or if the news story was sensationalized precisely to cause this kind of stir.
That's a good question and the thing that makes this story interesting to me.
On Rebekka's original page (Yahoo cache), she mentions having an Icelanding lawyer send letters to OnlyDreemin. The response, it seems, was less than satisfying:
The letters did nothing other than make them take the images down from their site. Further letters got no response from them.
She then says:
My icelandic lawyer could do nothing else
Presumably this is because an Icelandic lawyer is only certified to practice law in Iceland and OnlyDreemin is based in the UK. So, Rebekka's only other option is to hire a UK attorney. But, as she mentions in her comments, she doesn't feel that she can risk all of her money (literally) to hire a lawyer for a case that might drag on for a long time and which she might not even win (or might not win enough to make it worth it).
So I'm curious if anyone on/. has had similar experiences (where an individual pursues legal action against a company in another country).
So are you saying people "serialize" failed failed movies to get trademarks?
I don't think that's the only reason or the main reason sequels are made, but it's another reason to do so.
As far as serialization, a lot of low-budget movies have spawned sequels. There are a number of Puppet Master sequels, for example. I don't know if those would be considered as having achieved distinction.
Individual titles of books and movies are difficult to protect as trademarks unless the title has achieved distinction in sales or advertising or is used in a series -- for example, the Austin Powers movie series or the Harry Potter books.
If I understand it correctly, Bungle not only described acts that were being performed on other characters in the MOO, he/she/they devised a way to spoof other characters using
a subprogram that served the not-exactly kosher purpose of attributing actions to other characters that their users did not actually write.
Could/would/should that be considered identity theft?
Heh, well that website is a joke site -- you can create any graph you want so I made one up using the number you chose. I made up the numbers for Lies and Damned Lies, as well.
So basically you got taxed on income you could have made, but in fact didn't?
Yup, that's the gist of it. And, yeah, it's crazy (which is why I didn't believe it either until it happened to me).
It's a little more complicated (of course). If you pay the AMT, you get to claim it as a credit against future returns (a little each year). So, in theory, you eventually get your money back. But, in my case, the tax I owed was so great that I had no way to pay it in time. In fact, the amount I could afford to pay each month was less than the penalties and interest on the tax I owed. Plus, since the market plummetted, even if I sold the stock, I wouldn't have made enough money to pay the tax on the stock itself.
So, instead, I now have what's called an Offer in Compromise, where I agree to pay the IRS a certain amount each month for 10 years and then we call it even. In the meantime, the IRS has a lien against everything I own (which isn't much). Also I don't believe I get to claim the amount I pay as a tax credit because I'm not paying the AMT, I'm just paying penalties and interest. I suspect that I might be able to change that if I were willing to hire an attorney and fight it in court. But there's no guarantee that I'd win (in which case I'd owe attorney fees on top of everything) and so it's a battle I'm not willing to fight.
The only way out of this trap is to sell the stock in the same calendar year as you exercised them. If you do that, then it's taxed as income based on the amount you sold it for. Once the calendar year ends, though, you're stuck. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this in time. But this is one reason, I believe, that the market crashed: because everyone had to dump their stock to avoid paying the AMT.
So, getting back to the issue of taxing unrealized gains in World of Warcraft, I'd like to think that it'd never happen, but I don't think we can assume it won't. So, it's worth paying attention to the issue. If a legislator starts making noises about doing so, we really need to speak out against it.
The only time that a tax would be applicable would be if real-world money changes hands.
That's how it should be (if they tax it at all, that is), but that's not necessarily how it could be, or will be.
In RL, when you exercise incentive stock options, for example, you typically purchase stock worth X dollars for some amount less than X. In the US, due to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) rules, you owe tax on the difference between what you paid and what it's worth at the time you bought them, even though you haven't sold the stock yet. I know this because I'm one of the idiots who didn't dump my stock during the dot-com crash and now have a huge tax debt.
So, if they (gov, IRS, whoever) do the same to WoW, if you buy 1000 gold from someone for $10 and it's market value is $100, you will owe tax (based on AMT) on $90. Alternatively, if your friend mails your character 1000 gold (with a street value of $100) for free, under the same rules, you could owe tax on all of the $100 value.
In addition, when you die in RL, if your estate is worth more than 2 million dollars, your inheritors will owe a federal estate tax (and some states have a state tax to go along with it). If you've farmed/hoarded 1 million gold in your WoW account and it has a market value (say $10,000), that amount could be included in the total value of your estate and contribute to how much tax is owed, if anything.
Now, hopefully, legislators will see the silliness in trying to tax something that has no legal market value (as I understand it, you are not supposed to purchase stuff in WoW for real money) and is at the whim of a single corporation (Blizzard could arbitrarily affect the market value of gold, for example, by making it more or less available in the game).
Why do you (and many others) blame Bush for this? Do you have any facts? Or is this just generic outrage?
From what I understand, the RNC, Rove, 'White House Staffers' and Gonzalez have been tied into this. AFAIK, nothing has been reported that ties the 43rd President into all these shenanigans.
Which is worse? That he knew this was going on or that he didn't know?
Okay, that was a little tongue-in-cheek. But seriously, nothing proves that Bush actually knew what was happening, but that doesn't make it better and doesn't absolve him of any responsibility. If it's true that he didn't know, it just supports the notion that Bush lives in an isolated bubble.
Even so, it doesn't matter to me whether Bush knew or not. It just continues to illustrate that Bush makes bad decisions (both Bad in terms of quality and Bad in terms of ethics). Karl Rove is his senior advisor. So even if Rove is one of the people who was ignoring or ignorant of White House policies, Bush shares the blame for appointing him.
If you are a CEO of a company and continuously hire, support and defend incompetent and/or immoral people, you should still be held responsible when they do incompetent and/or immoral things.
Being an ethical leader requires focusing an organization's attention on ethical issues and standards. Your employees will look to you as a role model for public integrity. In addition, as a leader in your agency, you are responsible for the ethical compliance of your employees.
Many people I know my age and younger are becoming well versed in this stuff and are bringing others
Other than its tone, grammar and punctuation, I'm not sure why the parent was modded down.
Assuming the parent poster is not lying, then it's interesting to hear that Linux (etc.) is becoming part of the general mindset in the younger generations. Surely the more exposure kids get to Open Source alternatives, the better. Get them while they're young, you know.
Re:Slightly offtopic but re: XP, Vista and Linux U
on
The End is Nigh for XP
·
· Score: 1
I don't have a single authoritative explanation for you, but this page has some good tips.
Historically, the old FindFast service (now called Indexing Service) was horribly buggy and made Windows PCs run very slow. As a result, standard practice was to disable it (as noted here). I can't say for certain if the same problem exists in Win2K or WinXP, but I still tend to disable the Indexing Service out of habit/superstition.
Re:the real issue isn't when the stop selling OEM
on
The End is Nigh for XP
·
· Score: 1
For us (medical center), the end of support will mean that we can no longer use XP, even if it still "works". Once a vulnerability is found in XP (after it's end-of-life) for which there is no patch, our workstations would no longer be in compliance with various mandated regulations (and, yeah, whether or not XP itself violates those regulations is debatable). So, we'll have to plan on being switched over to something else by then.
Similarly, if our site license ever changes so that we can no longer install XP on new PCs, we'll have to make the switch.
How can you be a healthcare provider AND be using Windows XP?
That's a good question and I haven't found a satisfying answer yet. Groklaw has a good summary of the issue.
I also work in a health care facility and we also use Windows XP Pro. Our CIO has approved the use of Windows XP Pro so, as an IT professional, that's what I have to go on. I suspect that a real answer will have to be decided by the lawyers if/when someone discovers that their personal/confidential info was accessed by Microsoft OR if/when enough citizens who fear that happening raise a big enough stink about it to the government.
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? Not Linux
on
The End is Nigh for XP
·
· Score: 1
They are not going to switch out their entire infrastructure to Linux due to some OEM issues.
They will if their IT officers actually took the time to see what the rest of the market offered
Where I work (large hospital/research center), the IT officers are not the ones making the decisions, I think -- it's the doctors. If the doctors say "we need Windows to run this software which is required for patient care", then that is what they'll get.
IT cannot try to find alternatives on their own, in these cases. Since IT folk are not trained in medicine, how can they accurately judge which radiology software is better for treating patients, for example?
And, of course, there's the fear factor. If the hospital moves to another platform and something goes wrong and patient care suffers (or someone dies) because of computer problems, everyone is going to second guess that decision. On the other hand, if the hospital upgrades to Vista and something goes wrong because of computer problems, the hospital can blame Microsoft.
I read the abstract of his paper, read the beginning of TFA and skimmed as much of the rest as I could stand and I have to say this guy is so wrong it feels like my head and heart are going to explode. There's no way I can do justice to how wrong he is, and this is going to devolve into flamebait, so I'll just pick a few points:
For example, law enforcement officials talk about the spread of zombie "botnets" to support broader computer crime laws.
Yes, governments and law enforcement agencies use fear tactics to support broader crime laws and curtail civil liberties. Guess what, that's not the doing of IT professionals and computer security experts. Governments and law enforcement agencies have been doing that long before there were computers.
We know that the Superuser's power is often exaggerated for three reasons: First, some statements of Superuser harm are so hyperbolic as to be self-disproving
So, because some people exaggerate the problem, there is no problem?
Second, experience suggests that some online crimes are committed by ordinary users much more often than by Superusers.
Emphasis mine. So, again, does that mean we shouldn't be concerned about people who DO have the skills to do serious damage? What was that about the ASUSTek website being hacked? Was that done by an "ordinary user"? And you're saying that Bob from Accounting is responsible for all of those 0-day exploits? Great, I'll go bash him right now.
The third way to dispel the Myth is through studies and statistics. As one very recent example, Phil Howard and Kris Erickson of the University of Washington released a study which found that sixty percent of reported incidents of the loss of personal records involved organizational mismanagement, while only thirty-one percent involved hackers.
Ah, so 31% is negligible. By that reasoning, I don't have to pay any taxes this year. Plus, that's only one study about reported incidents. How many people reported when their PCs were infested with a virus or trojan? Who would you even report that to?
I've seen new Windows XP computers plugged into a network get pwned before you could finish going through the Windows setup wizard. The reason stuff like this doesn't result in "loss of personal records" is because IT professionals and security experts put in a s**tload of effort to make sure it doesn't. But IT professionals and security experts can't prevent a PHB from putting sensitive info onto a laptop and then taking it home only to have it stolen.
There has never been a death reported from an attack on a computer network or system.
Yeah, well, I work in a hospital. Every time there's a large-scale problem with the network or enterprise system, it seriously affects the staff's ability to perform their duties. That translates to worse care for the patients. So, do you want your hospital to be running smoothly or not? Do we have to wait until someone IS killed to take security seriously?
In stark contrast, experts in the field of computer crime and computer security are seemingly uninterested in probabilities. The problem is that so-called computer experts tend to have neither the training nor inclination to approach problems statistically and empirically
Buddy, I'll take Bruce Shneier's assessment of security over yours any day.
If a game only offers you interesting and sensible content after 2-3 months of mindless grinding, I wonder if it's worth playing.
For what it's worth, I like grinding.
Granted, I'm a complete, utter, total n00b, having only started playing about a month ago. So, I might change my mind in a year or so, after I've been there and done that with everything. But for now, everything is new and novel enough that I don't mind a lot of the things that other people seem to find tedious (with one exception being having to run around from place to place repeatedly).
In fact, as odd as it sounds, if it weren't for (what I think people are referring to as) the grind, I'd probably stop playing. The thing is, I generally suck at video games -- my reflexes are slow and I haven't mastered the keystroke combinations. That's probably because I don't play many games and don't own any consoles. Nevertheless, that means that it takes me awhile to figure out the controls and power combinations. This is what I use the grind for. Quest to kill 30+ quillboars? Great, I can try out some new tactics or that spell I just learned. If I was expected to know how to use every skill or spell immediately, I'd get my a$$ handed to me more often than I already do. And that wouldn't be any fun.
As it is, I've gotten one character to level 35; another to level 22, a third to level 12 and a fourth (just starting) to level 9. All in a little over one month, and I haven't found that boring at all.
If the problem is that this gets really tedious after having done it X number of times with Y number of characters, then one solution is for Blizzard to create new content so that the lower levels are just as new and novel to you as they are to me.
Along those lines, was Burning Crusade fun for long-time WoWers?
Slashdot Mirror
No mod points to give, so here's a reply instead.
The only way I can see this test being "valid" is if the children were taught using this exact same language and diagrams all year. For example, if they had a workbook that was filled with these kinds of questions and they spent much of the year going through it.
Even so, the coins to cup question has me baffled. If the "whole" number is the number in the box (like it is in questions 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8) then why do they put it in a tea cup in question 1?
I appreciate your rational look at this issue, Deuce. As you mentioned, it's such a hot-button topic that it's often hard for folk to discuss it without anger and hysterics.
I have a friend who hunts and so am pretty sure he owns at least one gun. But he's the nicest guy I've ever met, and very responsible and respectful of others. As a result, I'm not worried about him owning a gun at all.
I think requiring training before sanctioning someone to carry a firearm is a good thing, but I wish there were some way to regulate this based on attitude as well as aptitude. But I don't know how that would be possible without going down that slippery slope to "thought police", which would be awful.
One thing I'd like to see more is for rational and responsible gun owners to publicly/openly denounce irrational and irresponsible ones. Irresponsible gun owners may ignore what gun-control advocates think because they're on the other side of the issue. But maybe they'll listen to other gun owners and, through peer pressure, become more responsible themselves.
I, for one, welcome our high fructose overlords.
I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was, and now what I'm with isn't it. And what's "it" seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to YOU! -- Abe Simpson
FWIW, I don't think we have enough information about this case, the judge or the circumstances to pass judgment. We don't know if the judge really was clueless, or (as other people have suggested) was asking a dumb question for the benefit of the jury (or others), or if he was trying to get a more nuanced definition, or if he was just "fishing", and/or if the news story was sensationalized precisely to cause this kind of stir.
On Rebekka's original page (Yahoo cache), she mentions having an Icelanding lawyer send letters to OnlyDreemin. The response, it seems, was less than satisfying:She then says:Presumably this is because an Icelandic lawyer is only certified to practice law in Iceland and OnlyDreemin is based in the UK. So, Rebekka's only other option is to hire a UK attorney. But, as she mentions in her comments, she doesn't feel that she can risk all of her money (literally) to hire a lawyer for a case that might drag on for a long time and which she might not even win (or might not win enough to make it worth it).
So I'm curious if anyone on
Me too!
As far as serialization, a lot of low-budget movies have spawned sequels. There are a number of Puppet Master sequels, for example. I don't know if those would be considered as having achieved distinction.
From Yahoo FAQ: (emphasis mine).
and don't forget: Hammers don't bonk people -- people bonk people!
Heh, well that website is a joke site -- you can create any graph you want so I made one up using the number you chose. I made up the numbers for Lies and Damned Lies, as well.
Wow, you are right!
It's a little more complicated (of course). If you pay the AMT, you get to claim it as a credit against future returns (a little each year). So, in theory, you eventually get your money back. But, in my case, the tax I owed was so great that I had no way to pay it in time. In fact, the amount I could afford to pay each month was less than the penalties and interest on the tax I owed. Plus, since the market plummetted, even if I sold the stock, I wouldn't have made enough money to pay the tax on the stock itself.
So, instead, I now have what's called an Offer in Compromise, where I agree to pay the IRS a certain amount each month for 10 years and then we call it even. In the meantime, the IRS has a lien against everything I own (which isn't much). Also I don't believe I get to claim the amount I pay as a tax credit because I'm not paying the AMT, I'm just paying penalties and interest. I suspect that I might be able to change that if I were willing to hire an attorney and fight it in court. But there's no guarantee that I'd win (in which case I'd owe attorney fees on top of everything) and so it's a battle I'm not willing to fight.
The only way out of this trap is to sell the stock in the same calendar year as you exercised them. If you do that, then it's taxed as income based on the amount you sold it for. Once the calendar year ends, though, you're stuck. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this in time. But this is one reason, I believe, that the market crashed: because everyone had to dump their stock to avoid paying the AMT.
So, getting back to the issue of taxing unrealized gains in World of Warcraft, I'd like to think that it'd never happen, but I don't think we can assume it won't. So, it's worth paying attention to the issue. If a legislator starts making noises about doing so, we really need to speak out against it.
In RL, when you exercise incentive stock options, for example, you typically purchase stock worth X dollars for some amount less than X. In the US, due to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) rules, you owe tax on the difference between what you paid and what it's worth at the time you bought them, even though you haven't sold the stock yet. I know this because I'm one of the idiots who didn't dump my stock during the dot-com crash and now have a huge tax debt.
So, if they (gov, IRS, whoever) do the same to WoW, if you buy 1000 gold from someone for $10 and it's market value is $100, you will owe tax (based on AMT) on $90. Alternatively, if your friend mails your character 1000 gold (with a street value of $100) for free, under the same rules, you could owe tax on all of the $100 value.
In addition, when you die in RL, if your estate is worth more than 2 million dollars, your inheritors will owe a federal estate tax (and some states have a state tax to go along with it). If you've farmed/hoarded 1 million gold in your WoW account and it has a market value (say $10,000), that amount could be included in the total value of your estate and contribute to how much tax is owed, if anything.
Now, hopefully, legislators will see the silliness in trying to tax something that has no legal market value (as I understand it, you are not supposed to purchase stuff in WoW for real money) and is at the whim of a single corporation (Blizzard could arbitrarily affect the market value of gold, for example, by making it more or less available in the game).
Okay, that was a little tongue-in-cheek. But seriously, nothing proves that Bush actually knew what was happening, but that doesn't make it better and doesn't absolve him of any responsibility. If it's true that he didn't know, it just supports the notion that Bush lives in an isolated bubble.
Even so, it doesn't matter to me whether Bush knew or not. It just continues to illustrate that Bush makes bad decisions (both Bad in terms of quality and Bad in terms of ethics). Karl Rove is his senior advisor. So even if Rove is one of the people who was ignoring or ignorant of White House policies, Bush shares the blame for appointing him.
If you are a CEO of a company and continuously hire, support and defend incompetent and/or immoral people, you should still be held responsible when they do incompetent and/or immoral things.
From the George W. Bush Resources for the President's Team:Emphasis mine.
Assuming the parent poster is not lying, then it's interesting to hear that Linux (etc.) is becoming part of the general mindset in the younger generations. Surely the more exposure kids get to Open Source alternatives, the better. Get them while they're young, you know.
I don't have a single authoritative explanation for you, but this page has some good tips.
Historically, the old FindFast service (now called Indexing Service) was horribly buggy and made Windows PCs run very slow. As a result, standard practice was to disable it (as noted here). I can't say for certain if the same problem exists in Win2K or WinXP, but I still tend to disable the Indexing Service out of habit/superstition.
For us (medical center), the end of support will mean that we can no longer use XP, even if it still "works". Once a vulnerability is found in XP (after it's end-of-life) for which there is no patch, our workstations would no longer be in compliance with various mandated regulations (and, yeah, whether or not XP itself violates those regulations is debatable). So, we'll have to plan on being switched over to something else by then.
Similarly, if our site license ever changes so that we can no longer install XP on new PCs, we'll have to make the switch.
I also work in a health care facility and we also use Windows XP Pro. Our CIO has approved the use of Windows XP Pro so, as an IT professional, that's what I have to go on. I suspect that a real answer will have to be decided by the lawyers if/when someone discovers that their personal/confidential info was accessed by Microsoft OR if/when enough citizens who fear that happening raise a big enough stink about it to the government.
IT cannot try to find alternatives on their own, in these cases. Since IT folk are not trained in medicine, how can they accurately judge which radiology software is better for treating patients, for example?
And, of course, there's the fear factor. If the hospital moves to another platform and something goes wrong and patient care suffers (or someone dies) because of computer problems, everyone is going to second guess that decision. On the other hand, if the hospital upgrades to Vista and something goes wrong because of computer problems, the hospital can blame Microsoft.
I've seen new Windows XP computers plugged into a network get pwned before you could finish going through the Windows setup wizard. The reason stuff like this doesn't result in "loss of personal records" is because IT professionals and security experts put in a s**tload of effort to make sure it doesn't. But IT professionals and security experts can't prevent a PHB from putting sensitive info onto a laptop and then taking it home only to have it stolen.Yeah, well, I work in a hospital. Every time there's a large-scale problem with the network or enterprise system, it seriously affects the staff's ability to perform their duties. That translates to worse care for the patients. So, do you want your hospital to be running smoothly or not? Do we have to wait until someone IS killed to take security seriously?Buddy, I'll take Bruce Shneier's assessment of security over yours any day.
Two words: Dig Dug!
Granted, I'm a complete, utter, total n00b, having only started playing about a month ago. So, I might change my mind in a year or so, after I've been there and done that with everything. But for now, everything is new and novel enough that I don't mind a lot of the things that other people seem to find tedious (with one exception being having to run around from place to place repeatedly).
In fact, as odd as it sounds, if it weren't for (what I think people are referring to as) the grind, I'd probably stop playing. The thing is, I generally suck at video games -- my reflexes are slow and I haven't mastered the keystroke combinations. That's probably because I don't play many games and don't own any consoles. Nevertheless, that means that it takes me awhile to figure out the controls and power combinations. This is what I use the grind for. Quest to kill 30+ quillboars? Great, I can try out some new tactics or that spell I just learned. If I was expected to know how to use every skill or spell immediately, I'd get my a$$ handed to me more often than I already do. And that wouldn't be any fun.
As it is, I've gotten one character to level 35; another to level 22, a third to level 12 and a fourth (just starting) to level 9. All in a little over one month, and I haven't found that boring at all.
If the problem is that this gets really tedious after having done it X number of times with Y number of characters, then one solution is for Blizzard to create new content so that the lower levels are just as new and novel to you as they are to me.
Along those lines, was Burning Crusade fun for long-time WoWers?