Security theater is most definitely not for show, and it is just as certainly not to make people feel safer.
Think about it: What does a politician or government agency benefit by people feeling more secure? Nothing. Scared people are more easily manipulated.
No, it's not for show or for perceived safety.
There's only one reason for security theater: CYA. It's so that the next time - and there will be a next time - some terrorist action takes place, the people in positions of power (who would clearly like to remain in positions of power) have ample opportunity for saying "We did everything we possibly could. We simply did not have the money/resources to protect against this. But with more funding...."
I'm guessing that a high percentage of the folks here condemning the school don't own homes.
Why? Because homeowners go through this sort of painful deliberation regularly.
I live in a cul-de-sac and my yard happens to be the recipient of all the snow for the entire street. For a kid, it presents awesome potential for king-of-the-hill, snowball fights, digging tunnels, etc. It's truly a massive amount of snow.
But can I really let the neighborhood kids play in it? No way. The second one of them got hurt, it's MY homeowner's policy on the line. It's MY insurance that's going to not get renewed, forcing me to double my cost for homeowner's insurance when I have to resort to the state 'pool'. In other words, if I want to be a nice guy I have to accept an unreasonable risk.
The school is in the same position. You can bet that administrator and the school officials really thought what the kids were doing was cool. You can also bet that they sat back and said: "When we get sued, it's going to require resources in time and money that we *really* can't afford, given ever-tightening school budges."
So they came to the only reasonable conclusion.
To all these folks screaming about the state of our country, I pose this question: Are you really, honestly ready to stand up and say "I won't sue my neighbor, even if he's technically culpable"? Because until you are, people are going to be more concerned about protecting themselves than in freeing up their resources to share.
I think that most people are missing the point in their furor over cheating.
The real issue is one of a level playing field, right? That's the basic problem with cheating: it unbalances the game in favor of one player.
That in itself isn't a big deal. Lots of things unbalance a game: hardware (if my bigger badder machine draws frames four times as fast as yours, I'm probably gonna kick yer butt more often than not), network latency, skill,... and cheating.
Obviously it's easy to deal with hardware, latency, and skill: use some sort of game-matching system to pair people up appropriately. That leaves cheating.
It seems to me that the most effective way to combat cheating is in your game design. For instance, a game that gradually tilts things in favor of the loser (say, by giving them advantageous starting positions or any of a million other things) helps bring balance back to the playing field.
Someone with true skill is still going to be able to rock: they'll just overcome a disadvantage. Someone cheating is going to find their cheats less and less effective as the game goes on.
Flying a PC with a cheap plastic joystick in your hands is nothing like flying a noisy, vibrating, machine where you have a huge view all around you....
Bah. I've flown a C210 all over the U.S., Canada, and the Bahamas, and you know as well as I do that the view from a Centurion just plain sucks. MSFS probably simulates that just fine.:):):)
I'm a private pilot who flies in the upper Midwest (read: oftentimes challenging instrument flying).
The problem with MSFS is that it doesn't really teach the judgment necessary to be a good pilot. Being a good pilot is more about judgment than about the actual 'flying' part: practically anyone can be taught be manipulate a plane; not everyone can learn the judgment necessary to do it safely.
MSFS is best left out of primary flight training, where the most important goal is teaching judgment and an outside-the-cockpit focus.
Once the student becomes more advanced and starts instrument training, however, MSFS can be invaluable. Much of instrument training is simply repetition: forcing yourself to adopt an appropriate instrument scan as habit and learning how to prioritize tasks. Neither of these critical abilities require that you actually be burning tons of money flying around the sky; thus, MSFS excels as a cost-effective way to learn them.
Of the 65 hours or so it will take for most people (that's the national average in the U.S., even though the requirements are much lower) to obtain a PP-ASEL rating, I suspect you can really only knock 3-4 off by intelligent use of MSFS. It's worth noting that 3-4 hours still makes it cost-effective.
On the other hand, I think you could cut your -IA (instrument) addition by 25 percent or more with an instructor who is confident and intelligent in his use of MSFS as a teaching tool.
.... vocal fx have been used for years. Playing outdoors? Crank up the reverb? Playing indoors in a room that sucks? Ditto. Want to fatten up the vocals or guitar? Time for a little chorus effect.
Effects are nothing new, and tuners are just another way to modify the sound coming from the originating source (in this case a voice) before it gets to the speakers.
Fans are increasingly educated and technically demanding; its hard for musicians to meet those expectations without enhancements.
Further, who cares how it's done? If it produces good music that's a rush to listen to -- all the better!
I find it amusing that the same people that call tuners cheating don't seem to have any problem with the idea of tracking. Explain to me how it isn't "cheating" to lay down 10 tracks for the same part so that the sound engineer can pick and choose from all those tracks in order to build one piece of a song.
Good grief. The last song our band recorded had 82 final tracks recorded for a group with 3 vocalists and 4 instruments.
Wait. "You don't see people being held accountable when their gun is stolen"?
Are you really implying that if a thief enters my house and steals a weapon and commits a crime that *I'm* responsible for his crime? That's.. ludicrous.
If someone steals your car and runs somebody down, do you believe you are responsible for the hit-n-run?
Slashdot Mirror
Security theater is most definitely not for show, and it is just as certainly not to make people feel safer.
Think about it: What does a politician or government agency benefit by people feeling more secure? Nothing. Scared people are more easily manipulated.
No, it's not for show or for perceived safety.
There's only one reason for security theater: CYA. It's so that the next time - and there will be a next time - some terrorist action takes place, the people in positions of power (who would clearly like to remain in positions of power) have ample opportunity for saying "We did everything we possibly could. We simply did not have the money/resources to protect against this. But with more funding...."
Pure CYA. Nothing more.
What the heck is a "rising" junior?
I'm guessing that a high percentage of the folks here condemning the school don't own homes.
Why? Because homeowners go through this sort of painful deliberation regularly.
I live in a cul-de-sac and my yard happens to be the recipient of all the snow for the entire street. For a kid, it presents awesome potential for king-of-the-hill, snowball fights, digging tunnels, etc. It's truly a massive amount of snow.
But can I really let the neighborhood kids play in it? No way. The second one of them got hurt, it's MY homeowner's policy on the line. It's MY insurance that's going to not get renewed, forcing me to double my cost for homeowner's insurance when I have to resort to the state 'pool'. In other words, if I want to be a nice guy I have to accept an unreasonable risk.
The school is in the same position. You can bet that administrator and the school officials really thought what the kids were doing was cool. You can also bet that they sat back and said: "When we get sued, it's going to require resources in time and money that we *really* can't afford, given ever-tightening school budges."
So they came to the only reasonable conclusion.
To all these folks screaming about the state of our country, I pose this question: Are you really, honestly ready to stand up and say "I won't sue my neighbor, even if he's technically culpable"? Because until you are, people are going to be more concerned about protecting themselves than in freeing up their resources to share.
I think that most people are missing the point in their furor over cheating.
The real issue is one of a level playing field, right? That's the basic problem with cheating: it unbalances the game in favor of one player.
That in itself isn't a big deal. Lots of things unbalance a game: hardware (if my bigger badder machine draws frames four times as fast as yours, I'm probably gonna kick yer butt more often than not), network latency, skill,
Obviously it's easy to deal with hardware, latency, and skill: use some sort of game-matching system to pair people up appropriately. That leaves cheating.
It seems to me that the most effective way to combat cheating is in your game design. For instance, a game that gradually tilts things in favor of the loser (say, by giving them advantageous starting positions or any of a million other things) helps bring balance back to the playing field.
Someone with true skill is still going to be able to rock: they'll just overcome a disadvantage. Someone cheating is going to find their cheats less and less effective as the game goes on.
Just some thoughts....
Pooks
It's voice-over-IP, not voice-over-Internet. There isn't a guarantee that a VOIP call will be entirely, or even partially, routed over "the Net".
Pooks
I'm a private pilot who flies in the upper Midwest (read: oftentimes challenging instrument flying).
The problem with MSFS is that it doesn't really teach the judgment necessary to be a good pilot. Being a good pilot is more about judgment than about the actual 'flying' part: practically anyone can be taught be manipulate a plane; not everyone can learn the judgment necessary to do it safely.
MSFS is best left out of primary flight training, where the most important goal is teaching judgment and an outside-the-cockpit focus.
Once the student becomes more advanced and starts instrument training, however, MSFS can be invaluable. Much of instrument training is simply repetition: forcing yourself to adopt an appropriate instrument scan as habit and learning how to prioritize tasks. Neither of these critical abilities require that you actually be burning tons of money flying around the sky; thus, MSFS excels as a cost-effective way to learn them.
Of the 65 hours or so it will take for most people (that's the national average in the U.S., even though the requirements are much lower) to obtain a PP-ASEL rating, I suspect you can really only knock 3-4 off by intelligent use of MSFS. It's worth noting that 3-4 hours still makes it cost-effective.
On the other hand, I think you could cut your -IA (instrument) addition by 25 percent or more with an instructor who is confident and intelligent in his use of MSFS as a teaching tool.
Pooks
... called MuLMO is available at
n g/ mulmo.php
http://www.jiffyscript.com/information/networki
It's perl based, and known to run under Windows
variants, Linux, and Perl. I presume it would run
under just about anything with a Perl interpreter.
.... vocal fx have been used for years. Playing
outdoors? Crank up the reverb? Playing indoors
in a room that sucks? Ditto. Want to fatten up
the vocals or guitar? Time for a little chorus
effect.
Effects are nothing new, and tuners are just
another way to modify the sound coming from the
originating source (in this case a voice) before
it gets to the speakers.
Fans are increasingly educated and technically
demanding; its hard for musicians to meet those
expectations without enhancements.
Further, who cares how it's done? If it produces
good music that's a rush to listen to -- all the
better!
I find it amusing that the same people that call
tuners cheating don't seem to have any problem
with the idea of tracking. Explain to me how
it isn't "cheating" to lay down 10 tracks for
the same part so that the sound engineer can
pick and choose from all those tracks in order to
build one piece of a song.
Good grief. The last song our band recorded had
82 final tracks recorded for a group with 3
vocalists and 4 instruments.
Pooks
Wait. "You don't see people being held accountable
.. ludicrous.
when their gun is stolen"?
Are you really implying that if a thief enters my
house and steals a weapon and commits a crime that
*I'm* responsible for his crime? That's
If someone steals your car and runs somebody down,
do you believe you are responsible for the hit-n-run?