I did say that they are *not permitted* to exist. That doesn't mean that people will try to form them anyway. Blizz does make rounds every so often to enforce it, if that's what you would call half-enforcement. I personally have never encountered a religious guild in my WoW experience, and I've been playing on and off for over a year now, so I can personally say that that is fairly good enforcement. As a statement of opinion, I am satisfied with Blizzard's enforcement of this portion of their TOS.
Can you back this up? If I'm not mistaken, the Little Ice Age peaked around 600 years ago and it seems unlikely that huge grapes were being grown in England 500 years ago. To boot, I wonder if the LIA in Western Europe had anything to do with the aftermath of the Roman Empire's collapse.
Now I forget exactly, but I think it's possible those huge grape vineyards you speak of occurred during Roman times, about 1500 years ago, and there are other reasons for their success. You can grow grapes in the Catskills of NY, if you wanted to. You can fertilize the soil and make them grow real big if you wanted to. That doesn't necessarily mean the wine will be good. All that said, I think the Romans did have some success, making wine in Britain, when their empire was still doing well. The fact that the Roman governors still imported their wine from Italy is telling though.
They're working in Austrailia, and bringing *up* the median salary for tech then. What's wrong with that? Would you rather that they be working in their home countries and bringing *down* the median salary for tech?
I cannot agree more with the parent. Now, arguing from a standpoint of pure selfishness, we really ought to attract as many of these foreign workers as we can to the west. Why? It prevents those countries from *Ever* developing a technological edge against us.
Think about it. No skilled workers == no tech industry. This isn't bad for the people who are migrating. They will work for us, boosting our economy, and in return they get nice houses, 2.3 kids, a picket fence and a California-built Toyota. So what's the problem? The only concern I are our own kids, who might get the idea that they have to compete with foreign kids who are smarter than they are (which is complete BS btw).
Yea. It's pretty ruthless (and maybe I'm just really cynical =P). But those people wanted to come here anyway right?
..."the second best fighter jet is like the second best hand at poker. No damn good!"
Wouldn't you agree it applies to software as well?
DISCLAIMER Take this as a rallying call, and maybe you'll derive something good from it. Take this with your typical flame-happy slashdot troll attitude and maybe you'll piss off your neighbors with your ranting.
Mind I note that foreign countries have it harder than we do? I have friends from malaysia, so I can tell you right now that the exchange rate from USD to Malaysian Ringgits is about 1:4. That and their per capita income is lower. Maybe paying $100 for Software X is fine with you, but they simply can't afford it.
My other point is that, if they're poorer, why should they be subject to less decent education than we are? Isn't that why we have PUBLIC EDUCATION here in the United States? So that the children of the poor (particularly immigrants) actually have a shot at rising through the ranks? Why should only the rich have these opportunities? Tell me otherwise, and frankly, you have simply made an enemy of the poor. Why the hell should they respect your "ethical standards" then? Now if instead, you give me some crock answer involving "they're not Americans," well frankly, then why should they respect us either? Oh yea, and what happened to all this bullshit about the US being a compassionate Christian country? Last time I checked, Christ was just a tad bit more generous than this.
All in all, I think what they're doing is such a good idea that we ought to do it here.
This hardly just ties into the DMCA, and the music and movies industry. It ties into a far larger picture, that of the decaying public trust in the gov't, and worse yet, the courts.
As Americans, we've liked to think of the courts as a neutral element in our politics, one that cannot be so easily swayed by money grubbers and the bands of lawyers and lobbyists they employ. I still remember how commentators noted that perhaps the most serious damage done in the Bush/Gore election was that a large segment of the population quietly lost faith in the judiciary's ability to stay apolitical--that they too can, and will, play political football.
Here, in light of the DMCA, we have seen how campaign contributions have been used to push a bill thru Congress, ultimately affecting a ruling in court, with the aid of their own high-priced lawyers.
So why should you give a damn? Because perfectly legitimate actions are being illegalized! When this happens, people simple don't give a shit about the law. And when people start with that attitude, the law loses authority, and the government's claim to righteousness is eroded.
In the end, everyday hackers like you and me will simply not shit about what's "right." Because we feel that we've been wronged, everything is now fair game. And believe me, vigilante rule, all of this every-man-for-himself mentality that might spew forth--it scares the shit out of me, cuz we might not win.
Insightful comment, but can you leave out the regional patriotism, or shall i say, hatriotism?
I suppose this is a bit offtopic, but I can't help but notice some of the anti-NY rhetoric on/.
There IS a world in New York apart from your vanilla-flavored corporate idiocy. In fact, you've just slandered an entire hacker community. And did libertarian Greenwich Village just disappear off the map?
I suppose some of you guys would regard this as a funny lil queer invention, but this is actually quite something remarkable. In fact, the entire world of ancient blacksmithing in something in and of itself. I did a research project last summer on corrosion and one of the most interesting tidbits I came across was an iron monument in India.
I forget the details exactly but the import ant thing is that this monument has been standing for hundreds of year, and it has NOT RUSTED a bit! -- this is in India's tropical climate! Corrosion problems cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars each year and I know of more than one civil engineer who would kill to find the secrets of those ancient blacksmiths.
Well, to the rest of the world, America represents unrestrained, arrogant capitalism and power, and yknow what? We do deserve the label, with the largest economy, harboring the biggest corporations (and I believe we all agree that these inc. are getting a lil out of hand judging from the DMCA, DeCSS...), including the ones that run sweatshops in Asia.
So before we all get so defensive about this, maybe you should also realize that U.S. has become the pariah in everything international, from the Kyoto protocol to land mines and anti-proliferation. We drive the dirtiest cars (pollution-wise) and we are more materialistic than most of the societies in the industrialized world. Perhaps now is a good time to really take a good look at ourselves and ask if we really HAVE become decadent.
the top notch hydrogen bombs are NOT one megaton (i think the most powerful one detonated was 100 megatons, though they probably don't mount anything bigger than 10 megatons on missiles), and asteroids are NOT rare. They're floating all around our solar system. It's just that they're small and black and tough to locate so we only know maybe 2-5% of the sizeable ones, at most.
the most important aspect of it, however, is anonymity. not bad... i can take out redmond and no one will know i did it. =[) PARTY TIME!!!
Outward looking? Less insular? The Chinese have been one of the most insular cultures in all of history. True, hundreds of years ago, the Chinese did have one of the largest navies in the world and did establish trade. However, they decided that there was nothing to be learned from the outside world and they became introverted. Even if you look at the etymology of the word "China" in chinese, it means middle kingdom. For thousands of years, they thought themselves to be at the center of the world. This is not unlike other cultures, but the difference is that they were not forced to open themselves up until the 1800s. The chinese were literally shitted on by the rest of the world at that point because they had grown weak. Remember the opium wars? The spheres of influence and finally world war II and the rape of nanking? If they remember their history, they might just start looking for some blood. It's their turn to do the whipping now.
Probably the thing we should watch out for the most are a few notable points about chinese culture itself. The Chinese have an insufferable sense of pride. I think you will find a higher proportion of Chinese men who would rather die than beg, than you would in western countries. In that sense, it was almost predictable that they would react this way. When something happens, they do not typically apologize, partly because doing so would mean a loss of face--a big taboo in Chinese culture. They tend to find "justification" as you westerners would call it. in the future of politics, other nations better watch out before they slight china, because they are probably much more likely to be provocative and volatile should another accident of any given type were to occur.
What makes the situation a more troubling impasse than others is the fact that both nations are at fault, in some degree or another. They probably find the fact that the U.S. is flying spy planes near their airspace to be rather offensive. How do you think the U.S. would respond if China were to fly spy planes near our airspace? Hell, the U.S. went berserk when the Russians put missiles on Cuba, despite the fact that we had hundreds of missiles aimed at them right out of Europe. All politics aside, don't you think that's a bit arrogant. Sure the missiles were ok, but spy planes? If the U.S. wants to justify itself for these actions, they'll have to acknowledge that they are intervening at the behest of the taiwanese. That would start a war. However, until then, China does have a bit of a moral upper hand.
To finish up, I'd just like to remind all of you of that ages-old adage, "power corrupts." When China was dominant many centuries ago, they develop a nice racist attitude. When Britain was in power, they romped all over the world and extorted taxes from everyone between africa and indonesia. When the U.S. came to power, we had panama, guatemala, grenada, and loads of other fun. There's a hell of a lot more that the textbooks don't tell you, but the U.S. has done a bit more of it's share of big-brother than a lot of you think. Now it looks like China may be coming back to power, and if that happens, everyone else better watch their ass, especially the U.S. When it happens, I'd like to add that this is the first time in history that a nation has fallen from the pedestal of power, and risen to reclaim it's former glory. (we've had the british empire, the roman empire, etc. but they never did regain their former glory after their empires collapsed. mussolini was almost on his way to forming another italian empire, but we all know what happened then)
I don't necessarily think that would be the best idea. What are you really doing here? Arming one bunch of kids so that they can be on par with the other group of kids? Often times, these kids are ready to lash out (even though it may not seem so), and this sounds like a recipe for starting a war in America's schools. Personally, I was bullied a lot before i came to a magnet school, for the usual reasons, and that's how i came to know so much about building bombs and such. The difficulty of putting one together in an urban environment was probably the most significant reason why i didn't go postal. So u want to give me the tools i need to really GO POSTAL?
Why Stuy? Yknow what? I'll be honest with you. It DOESN'T mean anything. It's what you make of it. Same goes for every school. Personally, I think what makes stuy special is the fact that the students want to be there, and the fact we commute to the school each day. It takes me 1.75 hours to get to school, but I know when I get there that I won't be made fun of for being a nerd. Yes, you can inflate your grade and take comparatively easy APs like chemistry. In fact you can buy into all of that crap, and you can do that in every school. Grade inflation is a problem all across the nation, not just at stuy, and if you think stuy's classes are pathetic, perhaps you haven't known people who've gone to other NYC schools. One english class? Did you really go to stuy? You can't graduate out of here without having taken 8 terms of english. Where in the hell is Grinnel College?
It's not as easy as you think. College admissions officers literally have to figure out whether or not they want some kid on campus or not, without ever meeting the kid to begin with. All they have to work with are a bunch of numbers, essays, recommendations and stats on the student with which they must judge the student as a PERSON, not just a GPA/SAT-production machine. Long applications are one way of filtering out the students who don't have the patience to sit down and do an application.
You can be sure as hell that they don't want a perfectly uniform student body- that would be dull. That's the argument for diversity, not only with race, but with interests, academic and otherwise, as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I did say that they are *not permitted* to exist. That doesn't mean that people will try to form them anyway. Blizz does make rounds every so often to enforce it, if that's what you would call half-enforcement. I personally have never encountered a religious guild in my WoW experience, and I've been playing on and off for over a year now, so I can personally say that that is fairly good enforcement. As a statement of opinion, I am satisfied with Blizzard's enforcement of this portion of their TOS.
If I understand correctly, these sort of guilds are not permitted to exist either. No "RL" political divisions, remember?
Good job. You guys just slashdotted Santorum. Now why didn't I think of that earlier?..
Can you back this up? If I'm not mistaken, the Little Ice Age peaked around 600 years ago and it seems unlikely that huge grapes were being grown in England 500 years ago. To boot, I wonder if the LIA in Western Europe had anything to do with the aftermath of the Roman Empire's collapse.
Now I forget exactly, but I think it's possible those huge grape vineyards you speak of occurred during Roman times, about 1500 years ago, and there are other reasons for their success. You can grow grapes in the Catskills of NY, if you wanted to. You can fertilize the soil and make them grow real big if you wanted to. That doesn't necessarily mean the wine will be good. All that said, I think the Romans did have some success, making wine in Britain, when their empire was still doing well. The fact that the Roman governors still imported their wine from Italy is telling though.
They're working in Austrailia, and bringing *up* the median salary for tech then. What's wrong with that? Would you rather that they be working in their home countries and bringing *down* the median salary for tech?
I cannot agree more with the parent. Now, arguing from a standpoint of pure selfishness, we really ought to attract as many of these foreign workers as we can to the west. Why? It prevents those countries from *Ever* developing a technological edge against us.
Think about it. No skilled workers == no tech industry. This isn't bad for the people who are migrating. They will work for us, boosting our economy, and in return they get nice houses, 2.3 kids, a picket fence and a California-built Toyota. So what's the problem? The only concern I are our own kids, who might get the idea that they have to compete with foreign kids who are smarter than they are (which is complete BS btw).
Yea. It's pretty ruthless (and maybe I'm just really cynical =P). But those people wanted to come here anyway right?
Wouldn't you agree it applies to software as well?
DISCLAIMER
Take this as a rallying call, and maybe you'll derive something good from it.
Take this with your typical flame-happy slashdot troll attitude and maybe you'll piss off your neighbors with your ranting.
Mind I note that foreign countries have it harder than we do? I have friends from malaysia, so I can tell you right now that the exchange rate from USD to Malaysian Ringgits is about 1:4. That and their per capita income is lower. Maybe paying $100 for Software X is fine with you, but they simply can't afford it.
My other point is that, if they're poorer, why should they be subject to less decent education than we are? Isn't that why we have PUBLIC EDUCATION here in the United States? So that the children of the poor (particularly immigrants) actually have a shot at rising through the ranks? Why should only the rich have these opportunities? Tell me otherwise, and frankly, you have simply made an enemy of the poor. Why the hell should they respect your "ethical standards" then? Now if instead, you give me some crock answer involving "they're not Americans," well frankly, then why should they respect us either? Oh yea, and what happened to all this bullshit about the US being a compassionate Christian country? Last time I checked, Christ was just a tad bit more generous than this.
All in all, I think what they're doing is such a good idea that we ought to do it here.
You mean the same laws and protections that have been weakened by the current Bush administration? Surely, you've been around to hear that news right?
This hardly just ties into the DMCA, and the music and movies industry. It ties into a far larger picture, that of the decaying public trust in the gov't, and worse yet, the courts.
As Americans, we've liked to think of the courts as a neutral element in our politics, one that cannot be so easily swayed by money grubbers and the bands of lawyers and lobbyists they employ. I still remember how commentators noted that perhaps the most serious damage done in the Bush/Gore election was that a large segment of the population quietly lost faith in the judiciary's ability to stay apolitical--that they too can, and will, play political football.
Here, in light of the DMCA, we have seen how campaign contributions have been used to push a bill thru Congress, ultimately affecting a ruling in court, with the aid of their own high-priced lawyers.
So why should you give a damn? Because perfectly legitimate actions are being illegalized! When this happens, people simple don't give a shit about the law. And when people start with that attitude, the law loses authority, and the government's claim to righteousness is eroded.
In the end, everyday hackers like you and me will simply not shit about what's "right." Because we feel that we've been wronged, everything is now fair game. And believe me, vigilante rule, all of this every-man-for-himself mentality that might spew forth--it scares the shit out of me, cuz we might not win.
The bill was a ban on SOFT money. I'm sure we can still band together to donate to SenatorX's opponent.
I suppose then, that GeekPAC will be more of an organizing body. In other words, a hitlist forum. heh heh...
I suppose this is a bit offtopic, but I can't help but notice some of the anti-NY rhetoric on /.
There IS a world in New York apart from your vanilla-flavored corporate idiocy. In fact, you've just slandered an entire hacker community. And did libertarian Greenwich Village just disappear off the map?
I suppose some of you guys would regard this as a funny lil queer invention, but this is actually quite something remarkable. In fact, the entire world of ancient blacksmithing in something in and of itself. I did a research project last summer on corrosion and one of the most interesting tidbits I came across was an iron monument in India.
I forget the details exactly but the import ant thing is that this monument has been standing for hundreds of year, and it has NOT RUSTED a bit! -- this is in India's tropical climate! Corrosion problems cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars each year and I know of more than one civil engineer who would kill to find the secrets of those ancient blacksmiths.
Now that's a good question.
Well, to the rest of the world, America represents unrestrained, arrogant capitalism and power, and yknow what? We do deserve the label, with the largest economy, harboring the biggest corporations (and I believe we all agree that these inc. are getting a lil out of hand judging from the DMCA, DeCSS...), including the ones that run sweatshops in Asia.
So before we all get so defensive about this, maybe you should also realize that U.S. has become the pariah in everything international, from the Kyoto protocol to land mines and anti-proliferation. We drive the dirtiest cars (pollution-wise) and we are more materialistic than most of the societies in the industrialized world. Perhaps now is a good time to really take a good look at ourselves and ask if we really HAVE become decadent.
the top notch hydrogen bombs are NOT one megaton (i think the most powerful one detonated was 100 megatons, though they probably don't mount anything bigger than 10 megatons on missiles), and asteroids are NOT rare. They're floating all around our solar system. It's just that they're small and black and tough to locate so we only know maybe 2-5% of the sizeable ones, at most.
the most important aspect of it, however, is anonymity. not bad... i can take out redmond and no one will know i did it. =[) PARTY TIME!!!
Outward looking? Less insular? The Chinese have been one of the most insular cultures in all of history. True, hundreds of years ago, the Chinese did have one of the largest navies in the world and did establish trade. However, they decided that there was nothing to be learned from the outside world and they became introverted. Even if you look at the etymology of the word "China" in chinese, it means middle kingdom. For thousands of years, they thought themselves to be at the center of the world. This is not unlike other cultures, but the difference is that they were not forced to open themselves up until the 1800s. The chinese were literally shitted on by the rest of the world at that point because they had grown weak. Remember the opium wars? The spheres of influence and finally world war II and the rape of nanking? If they remember their history, they might just start looking for some blood. It's their turn to do the whipping now. Probably the thing we should watch out for the most are a few notable points about chinese culture itself. The Chinese have an insufferable sense of pride. I think you will find a higher proportion of Chinese men who would rather die than beg, than you would in western countries. In that sense, it was almost predictable that they would react this way. When something happens, they do not typically apologize, partly because doing so would mean a loss of face--a big taboo in Chinese culture. They tend to find "justification" as you westerners would call it. in the future of politics, other nations better watch out before they slight china, because they are probably much more likely to be provocative and volatile should another accident of any given type were to occur. What makes the situation a more troubling impasse than others is the fact that both nations are at fault, in some degree or another. They probably find the fact that the U.S. is flying spy planes near their airspace to be rather offensive. How do you think the U.S. would respond if China were to fly spy planes near our airspace? Hell, the U.S. went berserk when the Russians put missiles on Cuba, despite the fact that we had hundreds of missiles aimed at them right out of Europe. All politics aside, don't you think that's a bit arrogant. Sure the missiles were ok, but spy planes? If the U.S. wants to justify itself for these actions, they'll have to acknowledge that they are intervening at the behest of the taiwanese. That would start a war. However, until then, China does have a bit of a moral upper hand. To finish up, I'd just like to remind all of you of that ages-old adage, "power corrupts." When China was dominant many centuries ago, they develop a nice racist attitude. When Britain was in power, they romped all over the world and extorted taxes from everyone between africa and indonesia. When the U.S. came to power, we had panama, guatemala, grenada, and loads of other fun. There's a hell of a lot more that the textbooks don't tell you, but the U.S. has done a bit more of it's share of big-brother than a lot of you think. Now it looks like China may be coming back to power, and if that happens, everyone else better watch their ass, especially the U.S. When it happens, I'd like to add that this is the first time in history that a nation has fallen from the pedestal of power, and risen to reclaim it's former glory. (we've had the british empire, the roman empire, etc. but they never did regain their former glory after their empires collapsed. mussolini was almost on his way to forming another italian empire, but we all know what happened then)
I don't necessarily think that would be the best idea. What are you really doing here? Arming one bunch of kids so that they can be on par with the other group of kids? Often times, these kids are ready to lash out (even though it may not seem so), and this sounds like a recipe for starting a war in America's schools. Personally, I was bullied a lot before i came to a magnet school, for the usual reasons, and that's how i came to know so much about building bombs and such. The difficulty of putting one together in an urban environment was probably the most significant reason why i didn't go postal. So u want to give me the tools i need to really GO POSTAL?
Why Stuy? Yknow what? I'll be honest with you. It DOESN'T mean anything. It's what you make of it. Same goes for every school. Personally, I think what makes stuy special is the fact that the students want to be there, and the fact we commute to the school each day. It takes me 1.75 hours to get to school, but I know when I get there that I won't be made fun of for being a nerd. Yes, you can inflate your grade and take comparatively easy APs like chemistry. In fact you can buy into all of that crap, and you can do that in every school. Grade inflation is a problem all across the nation, not just at stuy, and if you think stuy's classes are pathetic, perhaps you haven't known people who've gone to other NYC schools. One english class? Did you really go to stuy? You can't graduate out of here without having taken 8 terms of english. Where in the hell is Grinnel College?
It's not as easy as you think. College admissions officers literally have to figure out whether or not they want some kid on campus or not, without ever meeting the kid to begin with. All they have to work with are a bunch of numbers, essays, recommendations and stats on the student with which they must judge the student as a PERSON, not just a GPA/SAT-production machine. Long applications are one way of filtering out the students who don't have the patience to sit down and do an application. You can be sure as hell that they don't want a perfectly uniform student body- that would be dull. That's the argument for diversity, not only with race, but with interests, academic and otherwise, as well.