I agree that programs like The Daily Show and publications like The Onion are put together by intelligent and well-read people. Hell, they are damn right clever. It takes someone pretty sharp to come up with this (as one example; let's not forget things such as the September 11th issue or the 2000 election issue, to say nothing of The Daily Show's body of work). And I really do think that a lot of comedians out there are some of the smartest people we've got.
But this notion of people getting the majority of their news from places like this has got to stop. I know it sounds pretty cool and progressive to dismiss traditional media and show a preference for alternative sources, but it's gotten out of hand. TDS, The Onion, etc... They're jokes first and foremost. I'd bet that the people involved with them would be the first to tell you that. Again, this isn't to detract from their intelligence or the poignance of what they have to say -- but still, the joke comes first. Announcing to the world that this is how we keep ourselves informed is not gonna get us any street cred, and that alone is enough for everyone else to hate us.
Yeah, the "real" news outlets are far from stellar. But if you follow them you can have just as good of an idea as to what's going on in the world. If you so desire, you can even think about it, check multiple sources, and wade through the bullshit.
I could not have said it better myself. I had a good experience in high school, but as far as I can tell, that is by far the exception. Public schools are a mess. Parents have no leverage.
I can see the points being made but I can't give up on public education just yet The fact that you had a good experience, I had a good experience, and undoubtedly many more have good experiences show that the system can work. Now, granted, my views are tainted by the fact that I did come out of a good public school system and I admittedly have a narrow field of view based on that. But still, just because it's fucked up doesn't mean it's irreparable. Maybe it is, but at this point I can't get on the "let's destroy public schools and dump the kids into private schools" bandwagon.
I would really like to see public education continue as an option. Of course, it needs to be a viable option -- so let's work on getting to that point instead of just punting. The discourse in this country over the last several years makes it seem as if we are more intent on feeding money to private schools (vouchers, vouchers, vouchers...) than actually getting serious about fixing public education.
Abolish public schools, quit taxing property to pay for schools and let the parents be responsible for their children's educations.
Think about a lot of parents out there... Are you really sure you wanna give them this responsibility?:)
Although McFarlane Toys may not have been the first to use this style of packaging, they're the ones whose products I first remember buying with the clamshell packaging. To this day, whenever I try to open something in that type of packaging -- regardless of manufacturer -- one of the first things out of my mouth is "Fucking Todd!"
You've got to be fucking kidding me. I know a lot of you are really anxious to pile as much shit on Sony as possible, but this has gotten totally ridiculous. Is Sony really responsible for everything that happens as a result of its consoles?
Too much attention paid to a silly little thing like accuracy? Give me a fucking break. If Wikipedia wants to be taken seriously as a true encyclopedia, then accuracy is paramount. No, of course it is not going to be perfect, but the cavalier attitude taken towards accuracy by many is nauseating. All of this other stuff about it being a reflection of "how humanity understands itself" has interest, but that doesn't negate or even make less important the accuracy issue.
I know a lot of people want to get really excited because "information wants to be free" and whatnot, but settle down. Like anything, Wikipedia has its good points and its bad points. Just because it's a great idea doesn't mean that it can't, and doesn't, have some serious flaws in execution.
And before anyone chimes in with "regular encyclopedias have inaccuracies too!", save it. While that is certainly the case, that doesn't let Wikipedia off the hook. Bringing that up is just an attempt to change the subject.
Personally, I can't stand rumble. In a game that utilizes it, the first thing I do is shut it off. I find myself wondering if people really care that much about rumble, or if they're just looking for every excuse they can find to bash Sony so they make a bigger deal out of it than they normally would. Like with most things, it's probably a bit of both.
Well, a few years back a Slashdot poll showed that IE usage here was approaching the 30% level. Of course, that isn't exactly a truly reliable, scientific poll, but it still shows that you can't simply dismiss IE usage just because it's Slashdot, or even not the majority. It'd be interesting to see where these numbers are at today.
In most cases, I'd guess it's less a matter of "we need just one more week to get it done!" and more a matter of strategy. Maybe some games don't want to go up against "must have" titles that will be available right away. Waiting a week or so on a less-anticipated title might actually help that title stand out in the pack a little better instead of getting lost or ignored amongst the other bigger names.
Everyone who has worked on Star Trek previously, from the top executives at the studio to the guy who sweeps the floor on-set, is gone.
I don't know if this is exactly what people have been clamoring for. Quite a few people, yeah, they needed to go to get some fresh blood in there. But to mix in some new people and still have have some people around who have a history with Trek and who understand what the franchise is about wouldn't be so bad. Hopefully.
I guess it could go either way, though. You could bring in all new people who also have an understanding as to what it's all about and have them really rejuvenate things. Or they could get people like that guy who directed Nemesis (Stuart Baird) who was so clueless about the franchise that he thought Geordi was an alien for awhile.
Sure, but at least you can understand beating a hooker to death with a baseball bat. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but at least it's a plausible scenario. On the other hand, running around dressed in that outfit and force-feeding unsuspecting people... Yeah, that'd happen.
The actions of a few "outcast individuals" do not erase great accomplishments that we achieve. At the same time, great accomplishments don't erase all of the truly vile shit that's going on out there. I'm not just talking about one single shooting, or even our destruction of the environment, or global violence. Those are all just microcosms of the bigger picture. It's fun and easy to always look at and celebrate the good stuff, but some of us don't want to do that at the expense of ignoring things that need to be fixed. And also, all it takes is a few of "the worst we have to offer" to fuck things up for the rest of us.
How very democratic of you. At least you were only modded "funny" and not "insightful." Ever stop to think that so-called "pessimists" might actually be motivated to seek change in things that they feel are fucked up? Viewing things in a negative light is not equivalent to giving up.
Honestly not trying to troll, but no, sorry, this does not restore my faith in humanity at all. Unfortunately, there are far too many things happening every day (take the recent school shooting in Colorado, for instance) to continually keep my faith in humanity pretty much nonexistant.
And while our exploration of space at this point does have practical applications for current-day life, a lot of it is also just a "cool, let's see what we can learn" sort of thing. Which, again, is of use both today as well as in the future. But with the way things are going here on Earth right now (The environment, anyone? Wars? Etc.), who knows if we'll ever really be able to put a lot of our knowledge from space exploration to full use and truly reach the final frontier.
Can someone explain to me why parent has been modded "informative"? Both parent and modder seem to be missing something as well. A dog is not "in tact" if it has Neuticles. It just looks in tact, and damn if that doesn't sound "cosmetic" to me. Dog show people aren't going to go through the trouble of cutting their dog's nuts off just to put some fake ones in.
An intact dog is also required for breeding.
Riiiiiight, but, uh... You do realize that the testicles (I mean the OEM stuff, not Neuticles) perform certain biological functions that I'm guessing Neuticles can't perform. And if they can, wow, those are some impressive fake balls. But if they could (which they can't), what's the point of going through all this in the first place?
First, Xanga does have users enter a birthday when signing up, and if the birthdate shows a person is not 13, they cannot sign up.
If that truly is the case, then what would the FTC be basing this on? Can you change your birthdate after you sign up? It sounds like, at some point, it was pretty clear that kids under 13 were signed up, and Xanga just sat on that.
It would be incredibly difficult (if even possible) for Xanga to monitor all sites.
Would it? Surely there must be a way that they could automatically scan through user profiles on a regular basis to find ones where the birthday indicates an underage user.
As far as kids lying, that is again a valid point. From TFA:
"COPPA requires all commercial Web sites, including operators of social networking sites like Xanga, to give parents notice and obtain their consent before collecting personal information from kids they know are under 13."
So it's not as simple as the FTC saying that kids should just be able to lie in two different places. Now, how exactly parental consent is supposed to be given is another issue. And of course, there are ways to lie about that as well. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to jump on the "But what about the children!" bandwagon. But at the same time, not every piece of legislation about protecting children is automatically going to be bullshit just because people here on Slashdot think so. Yeah, things like COPPA could very well be unworkable solutions to the problem. Just in this thread, as well as other comments on this article, plenty of flaws in executing laws such as this are being highlighted. The issue can't just be ignored, though.
Oh, and finally, Xanga should have known full well what their obligations were by law (whether or not the law is crap), and they could have easily covered their asses. So I have no sympathy for them in this matter.
You make a valid point -- performing age verification online is difficult, and when age verification is in place, some kids will just circumvent it. But that's not the issue. From the sounds of it, Xanga wasn't even trying to stop kids under 13 from signing up without permission. Xanga knew full well that the kids were under 13 (by the birthdays that they entered when signing up), and as yet, did nothing.
"All of us know that we violated our NDA and ethics policy. Therefore, because we had the character to tell the truth and to face the consequences of our actions, we were terminated," said one of the fired employees, who spoke with Think Secret on condition of anonymity.
If you are full well aware that you violated the Non-Disclosure agreement -- in addition to the ethics policy -- you signed when you came on board, then, well, you should be full well aware of the fact that all you can expect is to be fired over it. NDAs are sort of a big deal for companies. Ethics, on the other hand, are a big deal unless if you have enough power.
Coming from someone in the semiconductor industry, hardware (at least, when we're talking chips), is quite often MUCH more expensive than software. Chip designers make a decent buck, and manufacturing is expensive. Not only is fabbing chips expensive, it is frequently time consuming (we're talking weeks of turnaround time in many cases for a new spin of a chip). And of course, time is money. If something can be fixed in software, that has the potential to be done much quicker than hardware changes. This can even be said for non-silicon issues (boards, etc.).
Obviously, things depend on the scale of the project, and the quality of those involved. But from my experience software is cheaper and faster to fix. If Corel found a way to reverse things, it's their fault for hiring shitty code monkeys:)
Wouldn't it be great if his daughter could find a clip of her favorite program as easily as searching for web pages?
And furthermore, wouldn't it be great if I could then Google for his daughter?* We could even turn it into a new naughty word, a la: "Dude, I totally googled this chick last night..." Okay, maybe not.
But if Google could help me on that front, then I probably wouldn't care whether or not they're doing any evil. We all have our price. And I might even be able to tolerate all the fanboys out there who already kiss ass with Google regardless of what they do.
*Provided she's cute, and I guess I should stipulate, of legal age
Seriously, with as piss-poor of a job as Sony has done on Blu-Ray, one might start thinking they want it to fail. As far as this particular drive goes I'm sure it will be a huge hit, as oh-so-many consumers are willing to drop a ton of jack so that they can have something that is "useful as a "storage device.""
Not only that, but there are a lot of harsh chemicals that are used in manufacturing semiconductors, and this is a concern on many levels (exposure by humans, contamination of things such as water supplies, etc.). When I saw "greener" chip manufacturing process, I was initially thinking and hoping that this was what they were referring to, but lower power usage is obviously a nice benefit as well.
Yes, precisely. They're most likely referring to a process known as "annealing," and its purpose is to repair damage to the silicon lattice that's caused as a normal course of semiconductor manufacturing. As you helped point out, it wouldn't be done if it wasn't essential.
No, you're allowed to talk about it, but that doesn't mean that the crook you're working for can't punish you for doing the right thing. I know, that doesn't exactly fix your mind.
Slashdot Mirror
But this notion of people getting the majority of their news from places like this has got to stop. I know it sounds pretty cool and progressive to dismiss traditional media and show a preference for alternative sources, but it's gotten out of hand. TDS, The Onion, etc... They're jokes first and foremost. I'd bet that the people involved with them would be the first to tell you that. Again, this isn't to detract from their intelligence or the poignance of what they have to say -- but still, the joke comes first. Announcing to the world that this is how we keep ourselves informed is not gonna get us any street cred, and that alone is enough for everyone else to hate us.
Yeah, the "real" news outlets are far from stellar. But if you follow them you can have just as good of an idea as to what's going on in the world. If you so desire, you can even think about it, check multiple sources, and wade through the bullshit.
American public education must be stopped.
:)
I could not have said it better myself. I had a good experience in high school, but as far as I can tell, that is by far the exception. Public schools are a mess. Parents have no leverage.
I can see the points being made but I can't give up on public education just yet The fact that you had a good experience, I had a good experience, and undoubtedly many more have good experiences show that the system can work. Now, granted, my views are tainted by the fact that I did come out of a good public school system and I admittedly have a narrow field of view based on that. But still, just because it's fucked up doesn't mean it's irreparable. Maybe it is, but at this point I can't get on the "let's destroy public schools and dump the kids into private schools" bandwagon.
I would really like to see public education continue as an option. Of course, it needs to be a viable option -- so let's work on getting to that point instead of just punting. The discourse in this country over the last several years makes it seem as if we are more intent on feeding money to private schools (vouchers, vouchers, vouchers...) than actually getting serious about fixing public education.
Abolish public schools, quit taxing property to pay for schools and let the parents be responsible for their children's educations.
Think about a lot of parents out there... Are you really sure you wanna give them this responsibility?
Although McFarlane Toys may not have been the first to use this style of packaging, they're the ones whose products I first remember buying with the clamshell packaging. To this day, whenever I try to open something in that type of packaging -- regardless of manufacturer -- one of the first things out of my mouth is "Fucking Todd!"
You've got to be fucking kidding me. I know a lot of you are really anxious to pile as much shit on Sony as possible, but this has gotten totally ridiculous. Is Sony really responsible for everything that happens as a result of its consoles?
Too much attention paid to a silly little thing like accuracy? Give me a fucking break. If Wikipedia wants to be taken seriously as a true encyclopedia, then accuracy is paramount. No, of course it is not going to be perfect, but the cavalier attitude taken towards accuracy by many is nauseating. All of this other stuff about it being a reflection of "how humanity understands itself" has interest, but that doesn't negate or even make less important the accuracy issue.
I know a lot of people want to get really excited because "information wants to be free" and whatnot, but settle down. Like anything, Wikipedia has its good points and its bad points. Just because it's a great idea doesn't mean that it can't, and doesn't, have some serious flaws in execution.
And before anyone chimes in with "regular encyclopedias have inaccuracies too!", save it. While that is certainly the case, that doesn't let Wikipedia off the hook. Bringing that up is just an attempt to change the subject.
Personally, I can't stand rumble. In a game that utilizes it, the first thing I do is shut it off. I find myself wondering if people really care that much about rumble, or if they're just looking for every excuse they can find to bash Sony so they make a bigger deal out of it than they normally would. Like with most things, it's probably a bit of both.
Well, a few years back a Slashdot poll showed that IE usage here was approaching the 30% level. Of course, that isn't exactly a truly reliable, scientific poll, but it still shows that you can't simply dismiss IE usage just because it's Slashdot, or even not the majority. It'd be interesting to see where these numbers are at today.
In most cases, I'd guess it's less a matter of "we need just one more week to get it done!" and more a matter of strategy. Maybe some games don't want to go up against "must have" titles that will be available right away. Waiting a week or so on a less-anticipated title might actually help that title stand out in the pack a little better instead of getting lost or ignored amongst the other bigger names.
I don't know if this is exactly what people have been clamoring for. Quite a few people, yeah, they needed to go to get some fresh blood in there. But to mix in some new people and still have have some people around who have a history with Trek and who understand what the franchise is about wouldn't be so bad. Hopefully.
I guess it could go either way, though. You could bring in all new people who also have an understanding as to what it's all about and have them really rejuvenate things. Or they could get people like that guy who directed Nemesis (Stuart Baird) who was so clueless about the franchise that he thought Geordi was an alien for awhile.
Sure, but at least you can understand beating a hooker to death with a baseball bat. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but at least it's a plausible scenario. On the other hand, running around dressed in that outfit and force-feeding unsuspecting people... Yeah, that'd happen.
The actions of a few "outcast individuals" do not erase great accomplishments that we achieve. At the same time, great accomplishments don't erase all of the truly vile shit that's going on out there. I'm not just talking about one single shooting, or even our destruction of the environment, or global violence. Those are all just microcosms of the bigger picture. It's fun and easy to always look at and celebrate the good stuff, but some of us don't want to do that at the expense of ignoring things that need to be fixed. And also, all it takes is a few of "the worst we have to offer" to fuck things up for the rest of us.
How very democratic of you. At least you were only modded "funny" and not "insightful." Ever stop to think that so-called "pessimists" might actually be motivated to seek change in things that they feel are fucked up? Viewing things in a negative light is not equivalent to giving up.
Honestly not trying to troll, but no, sorry, this does not restore my faith in humanity at all. Unfortunately, there are far too many things happening every day (take the recent school shooting in Colorado, for instance) to continually keep my faith in humanity pretty much nonexistant.
And while our exploration of space at this point does have practical applications for current-day life, a lot of it is also just a "cool, let's see what we can learn" sort of thing. Which, again, is of use both today as well as in the future. But with the way things are going here on Earth right now (The environment, anyone? Wars? Etc.), who knows if we'll ever really be able to put a lot of our knowledge from space exploration to full use and truly reach the final frontier.
An intact dog is also required for breeding.
Riiiiiight, but, uh... You do realize that the testicles (I mean the OEM stuff, not Neuticles) perform certain biological functions that I'm guessing Neuticles can't perform. And if they can, wow, those are some impressive fake balls. But if they could (which they can't), what's the point of going through all this in the first place?
If that truly is the case, then what would the FTC be basing this on? Can you change your birthdate after you sign up? It sounds like, at some point, it was pretty clear that kids under 13 were signed up, and Xanga just sat on that.
It would be incredibly difficult (if even possible) for Xanga to monitor all sites.
Would it? Surely there must be a way that they could automatically scan through user profiles on a regular basis to find ones where the birthday indicates an underage user.
"COPPA requires all commercial Web sites, including operators of social networking sites like Xanga, to give parents notice and obtain their consent before collecting personal information from kids they know are under 13."
So it's not as simple as the FTC saying that kids should just be able to lie in two different places. Now, how exactly parental consent is supposed to be given is another issue. And of course, there are ways to lie about that as well. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to jump on the "But what about the children!" bandwagon. But at the same time, not every piece of legislation about protecting children is automatically going to be bullshit just because people here on Slashdot think so. Yeah, things like COPPA could very well be unworkable solutions to the problem. Just in this thread, as well as other comments on this article, plenty of flaws in executing laws such as this are being highlighted. The issue can't just be ignored, though.
Oh, and finally, Xanga should have known full well what their obligations were by law (whether or not the law is crap), and they could have easily covered their asses. So I have no sympathy for them in this matter.
You make a valid point -- performing age verification online is difficult, and when age verification is in place, some kids will just circumvent it. But that's not the issue. From the sounds of it, Xanga wasn't even trying to stop kids under 13 from signing up without permission. Xanga knew full well that the kids were under 13 (by the birthdays that they entered when signing up), and as yet, did nothing.
"All of us know that we violated our NDA and ethics policy. Therefore, because we had the character to tell the truth and to face the consequences of our actions, we were terminated," said one of the fired employees, who spoke with Think Secret on condition of anonymity.
If you are full well aware that you violated the Non-Disclosure agreement -- in addition to the ethics policy -- you signed when you came on board, then, well, you should be full well aware of the fact that all you can expect is to be fired over it. NDAs are sort of a big deal for companies. Ethics, on the other hand, are a big deal unless if you have enough power.
Coming from someone in the semiconductor industry, hardware (at least, when we're talking chips), is quite often MUCH more expensive than software. Chip designers make a decent buck, and manufacturing is expensive. Not only is fabbing chips expensive, it is frequently time consuming (we're talking weeks of turnaround time in many cases for a new spin of a chip). And of course, time is money. If something can be fixed in software, that has the potential to be done much quicker than hardware changes. This can even be said for non-silicon issues (boards, etc.).
:)
Obviously, things depend on the scale of the project, and the quality of those involved. But from my experience software is cheaper and faster to fix. If Corel found a way to reverse things, it's their fault for hiring shitty code monkeys
Wouldn't it be great if his daughter could find a clip of her favorite program as easily as searching for web pages? And furthermore, wouldn't it be great if I could then Google for his daughter?* We could even turn it into a new naughty word, a la: "Dude, I totally googled this chick last night..." Okay, maybe not. But if Google could help me on that front, then I probably wouldn't care whether or not they're doing any evil. We all have our price. And I might even be able to tolerate all the fanboys out there who already kiss ass with Google regardless of what they do. *Provided she's cute, and I guess I should stipulate, of legal age
Seriously, with as piss-poor of a job as Sony has done on Blu-Ray, one might start thinking they want it to fail. As far as this particular drive goes I'm sure it will be a huge hit, as oh-so-many consumers are willing to drop a ton of jack so that they can have something that is "useful as a "storage device.""
If all of the people who are found to be "telepathic" are hot girls, I'm gonna have to call bullshit on this one.
Wait, gaming? Okay, what I said above probably won't be an issue.
Not only that, but there are a lot of harsh chemicals that are used in manufacturing semiconductors, and this is a concern on many levels (exposure by humans, contamination of things such as water supplies, etc.). When I saw "greener" chip manufacturing process, I was initially thinking and hoping that this was what they were referring to, but lower power usage is obviously a nice benefit as well.
Yes, precisely. They're most likely referring to a process known as "annealing," and its purpose is to repair damage to the silicon lattice that's caused as a normal course of semiconductor manufacturing. As you helped point out, it wouldn't be done if it wasn't essential.
No, you're allowed to talk about it, but that doesn't mean that the crook you're working for can't punish you for doing the right thing. I know, that doesn't exactly fix your mind.