Right, because, obviously, America's children are so influenced by everything they see or hear that it must be the game's fault. Sure, the kids say they were trying to recreate scenes from GTA, but come on... this shows a serious lack of the consequences of their actions, not any sort of thing that GTA will help or hinder.
If console and computer games can so easily influence kids, then how come we don't see hoards of them acting out Everquest or Soulcalibur scenes? Where are all the kids running around collecting rings after playing Sonic for five hours in a row? Huh? Answer me that...
This is nothing more then an attempt to shift the blame. Parents don't want to think that their kids could ever do this on their own, someone or something must have "made them do it". Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Buckner... your kid is fucked up. He deserves to go to jail and learn the consequences of his actions.
As for the lawsuit, I hope it summarily thrown out.
I don't know about you, but if every book I buy, every movie I watch, every phone call I make, every e-mail I send is being watched, catalogued, and analyzed, it infringes on my liberties, and doesn't make me very damned happy.
The government does not have the right or the duty to effectively stalk its' citizens because it's "afraid".
Ben Franklin still said it best: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Most of the comic strips I read this days are net-comics or the internet-accessible versions of newspaper comics... I don't think I've bought a newspaper in years. Sure, I've read the odd one or two left lying around work, but that's it.
I remember when I was in high school, I'd read the comics first, then go back and check the headlines. Now, I can get all my news from other sources, and my comic strip fix online. If I can get an LJ feed of this new strip, that would make my day...
Sent home after drinking a Coke? You must be kidding me...
Okay, we had a soda machine at my high school. I think it was a Pepsi machine, but I honestly can't recall. But it was just one machine, and it was not in the cafeteria, so it was not "tempting" people to buy ye olde nasty carbonated sludge.
Would someone at my high school have been sent home for drinking a Coke? Shit no. They could have brought it from home. Now, we did have people expelled for drinking JD when they should have been in class....
Frankly, if a corp wants to buy a shitload of computers or educational material for a school, fine by me. As long as it meets or exceeds the standards set by the local school board, I have no problem with it whatsoever, especially if it's helping a poorer school district.
Is this automatically going to give rise to a bunch of pro-MS kids? Doubtful. If anything, it will most likely lead to those kids learning computers a bit better, as they try and bypass whatever firewalls or censor-ware are on the computer to get to the pr0n. (Also, I see a lot of firesharing in this school's future. They can go ahead and combine student ID's with the RIAA's crap-tastic idea for "amnesty".)
"Damnit! This is the 7842nd George W. Bush ID we've gotten!"
Heh... better yet, don't use the un-Prez... use your local congress-critters. Should be a simple effort to dig up their addresses as well. And I'll bet if enough of them get "turned in", we might see some interesting reponses...
I see the major problems being with jackasses who set it to not be printable by anyone else but them, and then getting upset when they drop off the floppy/zip disk/CD at a Kinko's and they can't do jack with it.
Of course, then it's the clueless user's fault, but they never want to believe that.....
My point exactly (although I didn't know about MSN, I had read numerous articles about the whole WMP thing)... the EU has already said "Fix this, or face huge fines." and this newest incarnation of the BSOD (oooo, will it be a fluffy pastel blue now?) seems to just go back to the same old thing.
It's a sure sign of impending doom when you hope that the lawyers think of reminding the code monkeys "Don't do this, and take this stuff out."
Tell me about it. Hell, the default XP interface is too damn "cute and fluffy" as it is. Give me something where I don't have a paper-clip, dog, cat, little Einstein, or whatever trying to help me or randomly appearing on my screen and let me get on with my work. I had to spend some time changing the base appearance and disabling "features", just so I could get to something I could work with.
Hey, with this higher media integration, isn't this basically going to hork off the EU again, as they're already irked about the bundling of such things by the Lord of Redmond?
Or is this just going to lead to Longhorn - U.S. version, and Longhorn - Europe version?
And 50 years ago, people thought the same thing about electronic goods that came from Japan. Dr. W. Edwards Deming did a large part in changing all that. Now, Japan is a leader in a lot of industries.
Okay, so 50 years from now, will China be where Japan is now? Maybe, maybe not. And, no, I won't be buying a laptop from anyone, much less China this year. Next year, who knows?
Well, I don't see China becoming the biggest market for laptops any time soon. With a 2002 per capita income of $4600, I can't see most Chinese spending what would probably be food money for a couple of months on a laptop.
The U.S., as a comparison had a 2001 per capita income of $36,300. We can afford laptops and have money to spare.
The only way that could be informative if he really was trapped inside a laptop factory. Come to think of it, that's not a bad idea... snack on the worker's lunches, play with the new laptops.... hrm....
Tell me about it. I don't think there's anyone in the city who understands "Bring in the fonts with you." much less the concept that there are different versions of programs, and bringing in an Illustrator 10 file when we only had version 9 was not the best idea in the world. (Now that we have Illustrator 10, they bring in Quark 5.0 files. Ask me if we have Quark 5.0. Please. Ask.)
At least if I actually was in Tech Support, I could accept that I've supposed be dealing with end users who are befuddled by a ziploc bag...
Let's face it. Technology lets us be freer with our communication. Nothing lets us lie so much as a chat-room. Nothing lets us say what we feel to people across the country or around the world with as little fear of recrimination as IRC. The anti-social behavior could be creeping in when these same people realize that have to cover what has become their "normal" conversation with the pureed bullshit that passes for civil conversation these days.
No, I'm not saying that we all need to speak and act like ever l337 haX0r on IRC, but we need to realize that not everyone is a nice person and that some people would prefer blunt honesty to lying with a smiling face.
How very true... unfortunately, I usually spend an hour a night doing tech support even though that's not my job. Someone about us being open 24 hours and having computers here (Kinko's) means to most clueless jackholes that we must know everything about every single program in the world, whether we actually have it on our computers or not.
Actual exchanges:
Them: My computer won't let me save a file to disk. Me: Ma'am, you are aware that this is a Kinko's and not a computer help service? Them: But it's something I need to print out there! Me: (thinking: Oh, so that makes it _our_ problem?) Okay... what size is the file? (and after dealing with telling them how to find _that_ out...) Okay, ma'am... your file is 4 Mb. Are you trying to save it to a floppy disk? Them: Yes. It keeps saying that there is not enough memory, but there's nothing else on the disk. Me: Ma'am, eject the disk and look at it. Them: Why? Me: Because then you'll notice that the disk only holds 1.44 Mb of files. It won't fit because the file is too large. Them: Well, what do I do? Me: Save it to a ZIP disk or to a CD. Them: We don't have those on this computer. Me: Then you're out of luck unless you can e-mail it to us. Them: This computer can't e-mail. Me: Then you're out of luck. There is no way to get that file here. Them: What if I brought the entire computer in? Me: You mean, the case, the monitor... everything? Them: Yes. Me: *sigh* Yes, that could work. Does the computer have a USB port, so I can hook up an external ZIP drive? Them: What's that? Me: Look, does anyone who works there know computers really well? Them: Yes, Frank does. He'll be here in an hour. Me: Then I suggest you want until Frank gets there and have him deal with it. It will take one tenth the time I've already spent explaining things to you on the phone. Them: Um... okay.
Not all people who call are this bad, but enough of them are that I want the ability to strangle people over the phone lines. Frankly, I'm surprised there aren't more reports of tech support people going postal, or for that matter, just a much higher incidence of ulcers.
Hell, with a couple of the unqualified ones, they might have a better system....
Although, truth be said, I'd love to see a system where they allow unlimited voting, but only a microscopic percentage of the voting public knows about it. You know, the wrong people. The kind who would "write-in" Johnny Depp as governor....
Yes, but then the British government had the "wonderful" idea of sending the taxable goods over anyway and saying "You must pay the taxes on these. The amount owed is such-and-such"... which, of course, led to Boston Harbor looking and smelly manky even before modern petrochemicals were added.
Unfortunately, most courts will look and see if they acted in a manner that was deliberately deceptive. When you testify in court, if you tell the truth, as you know it, and it turns out later that something you said was incorrect, but you had no way to know that, it's not perjury.
Civil law requires that there is a "preponderence of evidence", while criminal law requires "behind reasonable doubt".
Basically, it works like this for preponderence of evidence... If it is more likely then not that a punishable action occured, then the burden of evidence has been met. This is why, even though OJ was found not guilty in a criminal trial, the exact same evidence was enough to sink him in a civil trial.
Now, it various from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but in South Carolina, a civil jury is anywhere from 6 to 12 people. No idea how they determine the number. Perhaps it's based on the monetary or compensatory judgement sought. Other states have their own requirements on the size of the civil jury, and a larger jury can work for or against you.
Enron employeed quite a few people too. So did Arthur Anderson. However, the guv'mint is probably coming to the realization that it's bad to burn the entire corporation for the misdeeds of a few of it's officers/employees, as it has a far more drastic effect on the economy then, say, just going after the officers.
If the feds had been less zealous in their approach to Enron, and not tac-nuked the entire company in their effort to show that the Shrub was "not completely bought and owned by corporations", well... Enron probably still wouldn't be around today. Those kind of finanical misdeeds were pretty much dooming it anyway. But it could have been handled much better. Same with Arthur Anderson.
Are you reading the same Dilbert? The one where Wally is a lazy good-for-no-work coffee drinker? Where Alice is frequently violent to fellow co-workers? The one where Dilbert causes most of his own misfortune when the PHB isn't involved?
The entire company is disfunctional. If they were godlike in skills, they wouldn't be working there. A recent comic even had Dilbert noticing that he wasn't even qualified for his own job any more.
Incompetence has _never_ been limited just to the PHB, nor just to the people who read those damned management books.
No, entrapment would be telling a co-worker "Hey, you should check out those records. There's one for a guy named after JFK in there." and then getting them fired for doing so.
Second, what if there is a guy actually in the hospital named after JFK? Not the name I'd choose to make a honeypot file... I'd choose something incrediblly outrageous like Throckmorton Q. Security or something like that.
Third, I wonder what options exist for saying "Hey, I just clicked on the wrong file."? I've been to a couple of hospitals for various injuries or visiting friends, and it's pretty damn easy to mis-key the name and pull up the wrong file (as many systems assume that if there is only one entry for a given last name, you _must_ be seeking that one), or click on the wrong file name if more then one is retrieved for a given last name.
Now, if they are checking and finding out that J. Random Employee looked at dozens of case files in the space of an hour, but was only supposed to be looking at maybe 10 or so, that's a problem. But one file? Eh....
Slashdot Mirror
Right, because, obviously, America's children are so influenced by everything they see or hear that it must be the game's fault. Sure, the kids say they were trying to recreate scenes from GTA, but come on... this shows a serious lack of the consequences of their actions, not any sort of thing that GTA will help or hinder.
If console and computer games can so easily influence kids, then how come we don't see hoards of them acting out Everquest or Soulcalibur scenes? Where are all the kids running around collecting rings after playing Sonic for five hours in a row? Huh? Answer me that...
This is nothing more then an attempt to shift the blame. Parents don't want to think that their kids could ever do this on their own, someone or something must have "made them do it". Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Buckner... your kid is fucked up. He deserves to go to jail and learn the consequences of his actions.
As for the lawsuit, I hope it summarily thrown out.
Kierthos
"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"
I don't know about you, but if every book I buy, every movie I watch, every phone call I make, every e-mail I send is being watched, catalogued, and analyzed, it infringes on my liberties, and doesn't make me very damned happy.
The government does not have the right or the duty to effectively stalk its' citizens because it's "afraid".
Ben Franklin still said it best: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Kierthos
Most of the comic strips I read this days are net-comics or the internet-accessible versions of newspaper comics... I don't think I've bought a newspaper in years. Sure, I've read the odd one or two left lying around work, but that's it.
I remember when I was in high school, I'd read the comics first, then go back and check the headlines. Now, I can get all my news from other sources, and my comic strip fix online. If I can get an LJ feed of this new strip, that would make my day...
Kierthos
Sent home after drinking a Coke? You must be kidding me...
Okay, we had a soda machine at my high school. I think it was a Pepsi machine, but I honestly can't recall. But it was just one machine, and it was not in the cafeteria, so it was not "tempting" people to buy ye olde nasty carbonated sludge.
Would someone at my high school have been sent home for drinking a Coke? Shit no. They could have brought it from home. Now, we did have people expelled for drinking JD when they should have been in class....
Frankly, if a corp wants to buy a shitload of computers or educational material for a school, fine by me. As long as it meets or exceeds the standards set by the local school board, I have no problem with it whatsoever, especially if it's helping a poorer school district.
Is this automatically going to give rise to a bunch of pro-MS kids? Doubtful. If anything, it will most likely lead to those kids learning computers a bit better, as they try and bypass whatever firewalls or censor-ware are on the computer to get to the pr0n. (Also, I see a lot of firesharing in this school's future. They can go ahead and combine student ID's with the RIAA's crap-tastic idea for "amnesty".)
Kierthos
They can't offer amnesty.
Amnesty, as defined by Webster's is:
A governmental pardon, granted to a number of offenders, esp. for politcal offenses.
Last I checked, the RIAA wasn't (yet) a government.
Kierthos
From the RIAA office:
"Damnit! This is the 7842nd George W. Bush ID we've gotten!"
Heh... better yet, don't use the un-Prez... use your local congress-critters. Should be a simple effort to dig up their addresses as well. And I'll bet if enough of them get "turned in", we might see some interesting reponses...
Kierthos
I see the major problems being with jackasses who set it to not be printable by anyone else but them, and then getting upset when they drop off the floppy/zip disk/CD at a Kinko's and they can't do jack with it.
Of course, then it's the clueless user's fault, but they never want to believe that.....
Kierthos
My point exactly (although I didn't know about MSN, I had read numerous articles about the whole WMP thing)... the EU has already said "Fix this, or face huge fines." and this newest incarnation of the BSOD (oooo, will it be a fluffy pastel blue now?) seems to just go back to the same old thing.
It's a sure sign of impending doom when you hope that the lawyers think of reminding the code monkeys "Don't do this, and take this stuff out."
Kierthos
Tell me about it. Hell, the default XP interface is too damn "cute and fluffy" as it is. Give me something where I don't have a paper-clip, dog, cat, little Einstein, or whatever trying to help me or randomly appearing on my screen and let me get on with my work. I had to spend some time changing the base appearance and disabling "features", just so I could get to something I could work with.
Kierthos
Hey, with this higher media integration, isn't this basically going to hork off the EU again, as they're already irked about the bundling of such things by the Lord of Redmond?
Or is this just going to lead to Longhorn - U.S. version, and Longhorn - Europe version?
Kierthos
And 50 years ago, people thought the same thing about electronic goods that came from Japan. Dr. W. Edwards Deming did a large part in changing all that. Now, Japan is a leader in a lot of industries.
Okay, so 50 years from now, will China be where Japan is now? Maybe, maybe not. And, no, I won't be buying a laptop from anyone, much less China this year. Next year, who knows?
Kierthos
Well, I don't see China becoming the biggest market for laptops any time soon. With a 2002 per capita income of $4600, I can't see most Chinese spending what would probably be food money for a couple of months on a laptop.
The U.S., as a comparison had a 2001 per capita income of $36,300. We can afford laptops and have money to spare.
Kierthos
The only way that could be informative if he really was trapped inside a laptop factory. Come to think of it, that's not a bad idea... snack on the worker's lunches, play with the new laptops.... hrm....
Kierthos
Tell me about it. I don't think there's anyone in the city who understands "Bring in the fonts with you." much less the concept that there are different versions of programs, and bringing in an Illustrator 10 file when we only had version 9 was not the best idea in the world. (Now that we have Illustrator 10, they bring in Quark 5.0 files. Ask me if we have Quark 5.0. Please. Ask.)
At least if I actually was in Tech Support, I could accept that I've supposed be dealing with end users who are befuddled by a ziploc bag...
Kierthos
Oh, you've worked in tech support?
Let's face it. Technology lets us be freer with our communication. Nothing lets us lie so much as a chat-room. Nothing lets us say what we feel to people across the country or around the world with as little fear of recrimination as IRC. The anti-social behavior could be creeping in when these same people realize that have to cover what has become their "normal" conversation with the pureed bullshit that passes for civil conversation these days.
No, I'm not saying that we all need to speak and act like ever l337 haX0r on IRC, but we need to realize that not everyone is a nice person and that some people would prefer blunt honesty to lying with a smiling face.
Kierthos
Hey, the reason marketing people are happy all the time is that it doesn't take much to keep fools amused.
Kierthos
How very true... unfortunately, I usually spend an hour a night doing tech support even though that's not my job. Someone about us being open 24 hours and having computers here (Kinko's) means to most clueless jackholes that we must know everything about every single program in the world, whether we actually have it on our computers or not.
Actual exchanges:
Them: My computer won't let me save a file to disk.
Me: Ma'am, you are aware that this is a Kinko's and not a computer help service?
Them: But it's something I need to print out there!
Me: (thinking: Oh, so that makes it _our_ problem?) Okay... what size is the file? (and after dealing with telling them how to find _that_ out...) Okay, ma'am... your file is 4 Mb. Are you trying to save it to a floppy disk?
Them: Yes. It keeps saying that there is not enough memory, but there's nothing else on the disk.
Me: Ma'am, eject the disk and look at it.
Them: Why?
Me: Because then you'll notice that the disk only holds 1.44 Mb of files. It won't fit because the file is too large.
Them: Well, what do I do?
Me: Save it to a ZIP disk or to a CD.
Them: We don't have those on this computer.
Me: Then you're out of luck unless you can e-mail it to us.
Them: This computer can't e-mail.
Me: Then you're out of luck. There is no way to get that file here.
Them: What if I brought the entire computer in?
Me: You mean, the case, the monitor... everything?
Them: Yes.
Me: *sigh* Yes, that could work. Does the computer have a USB port, so I can hook up an external ZIP drive?
Them: What's that?
Me: Look, does anyone who works there know computers really well?
Them: Yes, Frank does. He'll be here in an hour.
Me: Then I suggest you want until Frank gets there and have him deal with it. It will take one tenth the time I've already spent explaining things to you on the phone.
Them: Um... okay.
Not all people who call are this bad, but enough of them are that I want the ability to strangle people over the phone lines. Frankly, I'm surprised there aren't more reports of tech support people going postal, or for that matter, just a much higher incidence of ulcers.
Kierthos
Hell, with a couple of the unqualified ones, they might have a better system....
Although, truth be said, I'd love to see a system where they allow unlimited voting, but only a microscopic percentage of the voting public knows about it. You know, the wrong people. The kind who would "write-in" Johnny Depp as governor....
Kierthos
Yes, but then the British government had the "wonderful" idea of sending the taxable goods over anyway and saying "You must pay the taxes on these. The amount owed is such-and-such"... which, of course, led to Boston Harbor looking and smelly manky even before modern petrochemicals were added.
And the rest... is history...
Kierthos
Unfortunately, most courts will look and see if they acted in a manner that was deliberately deceptive. When you testify in court, if you tell the truth, as you know it, and it turns out later that something you said was incorrect, but you had no way to know that, it's not perjury.
Kierthos
That should be "beyond reasonable doubt" in the first line. And I even previewed the silly thing.
Kierthos
Civil law requires that there is a "preponderence of evidence", while criminal law requires "behind reasonable doubt".
Basically, it works like this for preponderence of evidence... If it is more likely then not that a punishable action occured, then the burden of evidence has been met. This is why, even though OJ was found not guilty in a criminal trial, the exact same evidence was enough to sink him in a civil trial.
Now, it various from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but in South Carolina, a civil jury is anywhere from 6 to 12 people. No idea how they determine the number. Perhaps it's based on the monetary or compensatory judgement sought. Other states have their own requirements on the size of the civil jury, and a larger jury can work for or against you.
Best advice, as always... don't get caught.
Kierthos
Enron employeed quite a few people too. So did Arthur Anderson. However, the guv'mint is probably coming to the realization that it's bad to burn the entire corporation for the misdeeds of a few of it's officers/employees, as it has a far more drastic effect on the economy then, say, just going after the officers.
If the feds had been less zealous in their approach to Enron, and not tac-nuked the entire company in their effort to show that the Shrub was "not completely bought and owned by corporations", well... Enron probably still wouldn't be around today. Those kind of finanical misdeeds were pretty much dooming it anyway. But it could have been handled much better. Same with Arthur Anderson.
Kierthos
Are you reading the same Dilbert? The one where Wally is a lazy good-for-no-work coffee drinker? Where Alice is frequently violent to fellow co-workers? The one where Dilbert causes most of his own misfortune when the PHB isn't involved?
The entire company is disfunctional. If they were godlike in skills, they wouldn't be working there. A recent comic even had Dilbert noticing that he wasn't even qualified for his own job any more.
Incompetence has _never_ been limited just to the PHB, nor just to the people who read those damned management books.
Kierthos
No, entrapment would be telling a co-worker "Hey, you should check out those records. There's one for a guy named after JFK in there." and then getting them fired for doing so.
Second, what if there is a guy actually in the hospital named after JFK? Not the name I'd choose to make a honeypot file... I'd choose something incrediblly outrageous like Throckmorton Q. Security or something like that.
Third, I wonder what options exist for saying "Hey, I just clicked on the wrong file."? I've been to a couple of hospitals for various injuries or visiting friends, and it's pretty damn easy to mis-key the name and pull up the wrong file (as many systems assume that if there is only one entry for a given last name, you _must_ be seeking that one), or click on the wrong file name if more then one is retrieved for a given last name.
Now, if they are checking and finding out that J. Random Employee looked at dozens of case files in the space of an hour, but was only supposed to be looking at maybe 10 or so, that's a problem. But one file? Eh....
Kierthos