A bunch of people here have complained that certs mean nothing, that they don't guarantee knowledge, and a few of you have even say listing a cert on a resume makes you LESS inclined to consider someone.
Look at it as a college degree is looked at. It doesn't guarantee knowledge necessarily. What it does is demonstrate some sort of commitment to taking a class and passing an exam, at that takes at least some work, time and money.
A cert does not make you an expert, and the experts have no need of the certifications anyway, so what they really are, are baseline tools. If you pass the RHCE exams, you know the person has a certain set of knowledge at a minimum. It may not be expert level, but you know to some extent what they have proven (in a test at least) what they know.
Also, look at the cert as a tool to the early professional. A training course and a few exams is a good way to quickly spin up into an area of IT you may not be well-versed in. Especially when it's an area dominated by older professionals who are well established. These guys tend to take up all the work and often don't want to delegate any to some know-nothing kid. The result is it's difficult for a new guy to build up his experience.
Over time, the certs do mean less and less as their work experience section grows larger. The cert is not for the guy in the mid/late phase of their careers unless they're trying to shift to a new IT area. Certs are like college degrees... they're of the most value to someone trying to get their foot in the door and build up some basic skills quickly.
Silicon Valley is a lot like a University campus. A lot of really smart people with a ton of brilliant ideas on how to make the world better, but often lacking in the common sense or business saavy to translate the idea into something real.
Companies in Silicon Valley are a dime a dozen anymore. There's always some kid sitting in an apartment dreaming up The Next Big Thing. Some of them do come up with great stuff, but for whatever reason they just never get to the point where they're selling or distributing what they dreamed up. Those that do often do it on a limited basis because they lack the resources to go bigger. Those who really are onto something neat get bought out.
Google is hated by these guys now for the same reason academics look down their noses at their equivalents in the professional world. Because Google successful in ways others could only dream of. It's jealousy really. They claim it's because Google has lost its small-company spirit, that it's no longer doing what they do for the pure reasons of doing "cool" stuff or whatever. Google has taken the spirit and the drive of so many startups and they actually went somewhere with it.
We tend to hate, or at least target, those who do better than us.
Just so they can claim to have a sub-200 price point, they're shipping a unit that won't even properly function! The hard drive is key to the XBox if you want to, you know, SAVE your progress (unless they plan on selling memory sticks, which I haven't heard anything on yet). It even lacks Live capability since it lacks Ethernet.
The starter package for the 360 is just a complete joke.
It's solid for how high I had the settings cranked.
Remember, performance is always relative when it comes to new graphics engines. They always require more power to get the same framerate or resolution than the previous generation did.
You can't compare Doom 3 to the Unreal 2 engine or to the Quake 3 engine in terms of performance. It's apples and oranges.
Dude, have you played ANY iD game since Quake 1? They're all tech demos for new engines, that's all they ever have been. Carmack has admitted on serveral occassions that he thinks story and such don't belong in games, that they're a waste of time and effort. iD does NOT make games, they make the next level of graphics engines.
You spent over a thousand pounds for a system that would only run the game at 800x600? What did you do, crank AA and AF to max and set the detail level to "Ultra"? I played on Ultra with AA and AF set to a middle setting and I got a solid 25-30FPS on a machine that was a year old. Either you got ripped off by a retailer, or you don't know jack shit about what parts to buy.
Your problem is you have your OWN head so far up your ass you aren't able to read/hear what Carmack himself is saying. If you did, you'd know they're about the engines and they let OTHER companies take the engines to make good games. Quake 4 is being done by Raven. Raven did amazing things with the Quake 3 engine in the Jedi Knight games, they're going to be the ones to take the new engine and turn it into an actual game.
The problem is though that ultimately you can't draw any significant information from such a weak piece of data like download numbers. There's no way to account for what those downloads actually mean. There are too many other factors that are just unknown.
The only way to truely measure use is by website logs and statistics. 80 million downloads, while an impressive number, can be quite misleading, and a lot of people here want to use that number as the "proof" that Firefox is going to topple IE. It sounds more impressive than an 8% market share.
I'm not bashing the progress of Firefox, I think it's a great program that I use over IE on every machine I come across, but I'm diluded into thinking that it's somehow sweeping the marketplace like an unstoppable force.
You can only get an accurate picture through ACTUAL statistics regarding use by polling websites for data. Saying it was downloaded a billion times doesn't mean it's used by a billion customers. It's like saying 80 million paper plates were sold, so therefore there are 80 million people using a paper plate, you're missing data to make that statement.
I'm not a stat genius, but I do know that you can't reasonably make any claims about a program based purely on download counts.
I'm a casual player by all counts. I loaded up the game on release day, and only in the past few weeks finally got my paladin to level 60. I play at my own pace, spending a lot of time seeing the sights and not necessarily grinding or farming loot. I'm in it for the experience and the rich world around me.
I've played a lot of MMOs in the past and usually lose interest quickly because there's nothing obvious to do at the start. WoW breaks that pattern by having a very well crafted early game experience where I'm led around to a ton of great and varied locales, given a variety of quests to do and am told a rich and involved story. That takes me up to about level 30. Then, as an alliance member, I enter Stranglethorn Vale and the game goes rapidly downhill from there.
It feels as if the game had a lot of care and attention given to those first 30 or so levels, packing the areas with great content and wonderful gameplay, then suddenly I'm playing a different game completely. One that involves killing tons of mobs to grind out levels between quests, and then we're suddenly dumped into a game that requires 5-man groups for a large portion of the content.
Was this intentional? Was the first half of the game designed to be a solo, story-driven experience whereas the second half was meant to take what you learned at the start and now apply it to help other players? Why does the game change so drastically at this mid point?
My comment was more pointed at the reference to the 80millionth download bit and the attitude that Firefox is the great toppler of IE. People don't like to look at that 8% marketshare statistic, it makes them feel small. Instead they look at the big numbers, and try to point to them as the "real" indicator of success, when it isn't.
I understand the issue of net surveys and how to really generate accurate marketshare data, and I think the article at the start of the post does a lot to set things straight on the whole Firefox Will Destroy IE concept. It's a bit of reality that even the article submitter is quick to cast into doubt with the reference to download volume.
I have to admit, it's an amusing bit of misrepresentation the community uses when citing download figures for Firefox as if they really truely mean something. One user may account for dozens of downloads alone if they have multiple PCs, or upgrade versions, or if they reinstall their OS and have to reget their apps. Then there's the user who gets Firefox but for whatever reason goes back to IE. I'm tired of the download number being heralded as some great victory when it means very little in terms of real market penetration.
Should we start counting every copy of windows sold or bundled with a PC as a "new IE user"? I bought a cheap dell recently to use as a quick and dirty Linux box. It came with WinXP Home and IE, but I don't use it. But by the reasoning usually given for Firefox, because I have it, I should be counted as a user, as a part of the marketshare.
Please stop using download counts to prove your argument that Firefox is toppling IE. It's not yet... While it's doing better than any competitor since Netscape, it's not the killing blow to IE just yet.
In short, while publishers and developers are ultimately responsible for turning out rehashed games year after year after year, they only do it because WE want them to. We buy them. We DEMAND THEM (Starcraft 2 is a prime example of this demand).
I was lucky to have access to computers from a relatively early age (5ish) because my dad worked for a University that gave him a Mac SE when he became a professor. Since then we had a series of Macs and then PCs in the house over the years (Mac SE -> Powerbook 160 -> Mac LC3 -> HP Pavillion 200MHz -> eMachine 500MHz) until I went off to college, at which point I built my own machine.
The way it always worked was it was the FAMILY computer, not mine (though I was the only one really using it). This meant it had to be in an accessable room (i.e. not my bedroom) and I couldn't lock away any files on it or bar anyone else from any part of the PC for any reason. I also had to turn over the computer whenever anyone had a real need for it. This was basically a zero-privacy deal where what I was doing on the computer could be checked at a moment's notice.
I was caught surfing porn once. I was told that if I was caught again, it would be the end of computer and net access for a LONG time to come. The rule basically was if they caught me doing something bad, that was my first and only warning. The PC was not mine, the connection was not mine, I had to share it and be open to inspection whenever they felt like it.
I was still able to strip the thing down, rebuild it and learn all the ins and outs of it. But I knew I there were risks and concequences to doing "bad" stuff. My parents were able to keep an eye on my activities without keeping me from learning. THey were also aware of all the violent video games I played, they knew because they had to take me out to buy it, and they'd come up and watch me play every now and then.
It was the correct balance (IMO) of parental responsibility and child freedom. I don't think it's a good idea to give a young kid their own laptop and send them off to their rooms. It's too easy for them to get lost in the bad stuff, and too hard for the average parent to monitor. If I someday have kids, there will be a family PC setup in the same room as my equipment. The kids will have largely free reign over it, but it won't be hidden from sight, they'll know what is and isn't allowed and the consequences will be clearly outlined.
Also, I know I took much better care of my computer equipment once I had to earn the money to buy and maintain it. When it was given to me by my parents, I just sort of took it for granted.
Ever think that maybe, just maybe, Linux didn't meet their current needs? Maybe it didn't fit well into their existing infrastructure or whatever? Linux is not always the absolute best solution to every IT problem that exists. Sometimes, a Microsoft product is the right choice based on what you're trying to do, who you have employed and what other systems you want it to work with.
History being how every generation has some form of media that will destroy it/turn everyone into sexual deviants/cause everyone to become mass murders.
Every advance in entertainment is labeled as being the reason society will fall.
Rock and Roll Elvis Comic Books Radio Television Movies D&D Rap Music Skateboarding Long hair
All of these things were at one point the thing to blame for all ills in society. They all supposedly caused/encouraged immoral behavior.
This is a proposal to attack specifically the act of INTENTIONALLY infringing or contributing to infringement. Grokster or Napster would get nailed under this because it is clear that ths software was meant to redistribute music files, they built their companies and communities on the idea of music piracy (ok... those of you who are going to say "But you could distribute your own music too!" can leave the room now. Both Napster and Grokster KNEW what was going on, they built the system to make it as easy as possible to pirate music).
When you come to technologies like BitTorrent or Freenet, you have technology platforms that are completely independent of what is being distributed. Going after BT because it allows infringement would be like going after E-Mail technology because you can send files, or FTP etc...
The wired article is a piece of FUD trying to scare up some controversy when what this proposal is calling for is to explicityly make criminal IP infringement through P2P. People love to argue that the law is fuzzy on whether or not it's criminal, so now they're clarifying it.
Congress made no such law. Doesn't violate constitutional freedoms in any way. Private organizations may set more or less whatever draconian rules they want to regarding employment or use of equipment (i.e. you can't claim 1st ammendment violations if a moderator deletes a forum post), these protections only apply to federal laws.
The NRLB simply didn't PROHIBIT private companies from setting such rules. That's a hell of a long way from passing a law enforcing it.
Just wanted to say you probably articulated the relationship between the two better than anyone else I've read on this site. The game example is a perfect illustration.
Your assumptions fall flat and your comparison simply out-right fails here.
In the case of a child emulating a violent video game and killing or seriously harming other people, there are two primary items we need to look at to understand what happened...
1. What was wrong with the kid? Normal, sane, reasonable kids don't go around killing people, even if they see something violent on TV or in a video game. That a child would emulate video game violence in real life indicates that there is something mentally off about them. If a kid is going to kill because they played GTA, chances are they would have done the same after watching a Terminator or Rambo flick. Maybe a news cast showing violence in Iraq could trigger it.
2. Where were the parents? Yes, parents play a huge role in these events. Parents control what their kids see and play at home, and have some control even over what they see and play outside the home. If a child is about to go on a shooting rampage, chances are good that there are some warning signs that an active and involved parent should be able to pick up on. Parents are the key control in these situations, and except in the cases of a kid just suddenly snapping for no reason, they should be able to intervene before things go too far.
Games like Grand Theft Auto are targeted at a mature audience. It's rated M, it portrays the same sort of actions you see in R-rated movies. GTA panders to children as much as the latest Friday The 13th. The fact that kids are getting their hands on games that are clearly marked and advertised as adult titles shows that there are failings in the system beyond the game makers themselves.
If you are under 17, you can walk into a store and buy a game with your own cash. You can't order online since you probably don't have a credit card (giving kids credit cards is another rant of its own). In that case, it is the duty of a store clerk to make sure you're old enough. Little Johnny got ahold of Alien Cheerleader Bloodbath XVI at GameStop? Go after the store that sold it.
If Mom bought it for Johnny, then it's absolutely 100% the fault of the parent. I'm tired of parents buying games for their kids and then being outraged to discover how violent it is. If you are a parent it is YOUR responsibility to do due dilligance on what you buy your kids.
In the end, games are clearly rated and marked. What else can the ESRB do? It's up to the retail chains to implement policies on carding. And if we legislate this, we have to make movie ratings legally enforced too.
I'm a gamer, been a gamer since the days of the Atari 2600. I've played everything from Pac Man to Manhunt. I have captured millions of flags, defended millions of bases. I've racked up monster-kill headshots in UT like no tomorrow (w00t Facing Worlds!). I have killed dragons and pixies and humans of all sorts thousands upon thousands of times over. I've fragged my friends, I've fragged their spouses sometimes too. I played Quake, at the time one of the most violent games out there, during my dark brooding High School years and I never went on a rampage at school. I never even got into a fight. I'm now a productive member of society who still plays games. I get a kick out of running over swarms of pedestrians in GTA. I would never do it in real life.
Guess what... same goes for most of the people I grew up with. Some of us are married, some have kids now too. We all somehow managed to avoid the siren call of violence and came out sane people.
I don't buy for a second the crap that video games cause violence in kids. I think mental instability causes violence in kids and video games are just the popular scapegoat of the moment. Used to be rap, before that rock and roll. Comic books used to be the reason society would crumble. They've finally abandoned porn on the 'Net as the driving reason for the death of civilization. Now it's all about video games. Because violence just didn't exist until games came along.
The ESRB is doing all that it can. Games are rated. Parents and retailers just need to freaking pay attention to the rating and use a bit of common sense and judgement regarding their kids.
Ah, the indignation of the Free Software Zealot. Note how he misses the entire point of the post and takes it as an opportunity to throw out the old tired line of "If you don't like it, code it yourself!"
His points were very accurate. All of the features shown in the screenshot that was DESCRIBED IN THE ORIGINAL POSTING as "innovative" can be found in existing Operating Systems and desktop utilities. Innovative implies new and exciting. The features on display were not innovative.
Your attitude here is exactly the reason many of us don't bother submitting suggestions or critiques anymore. I spent some time a while back going over the Gentoo install documentation, making notes where clarification could be used and how it could perhaps be structured in an easier-to-follow format. My suggestion/report was just discarded with "It works for us"
Usability is the "un-fun" portion of building a desktop. It's just not cool to go through and code and edit to make it all flow together. It's fun to build the fancy widgets, or the pretty themes, or some system tool or whatever. That's the fun stuff. Going through the entire damn thing and editing it to make it mesh together is tedious and boring. Most people, when working on a project for free, are less inclined to do the boring stuff.
Then there's the whole attitude that "Well, lets see YOU do it better!" which is just a load of crap. This is why Linux is lightyears away from being a user-oriented system. The average user would take one look at GNOME or KDE and go "Yuck!" And you can't really expect them to come in and code a new UI for you. And don't start with "Well, then maybe they're not smart enough to use it..." If you want Linux to succeed on the desktop in a meaningful way, you have to make the thing end-user-friendly.
So get off your high horse and come taste a bit of reality. You know, that place the rest of us live. I know it may seem harsh and may conflict with your unrealistic expectations, but a brief stay might be good for you.
First it was direct copied lines of code Then it was JFS and other products that were integrated into Linux Then it was something about IBM filtering ideas into Linux.... Now it's about someone else doing the same thing but in a completely different way?
I'm sorry, I've tried my very best to follow this, but I just can't for the life of me figure out what SCO is claiming now that IBM or Novel or RedHat or AutoZone did. They've changed their tune so many times I can't reven remember where it all started.
Is it just boiling down to SCO suing IBM because they contributed to a successful competitor?
Crew refers to a group, more than one person. You have individual Crewmembers as part of a Crew. I think it's one of those words that works either way.
Here's how I see it... A website is like an advertising pamphlet or booklet, you use it to spread the good word about your products and services.
If you give me a pamphlet in 1998, it would stand to reason that I could use that same piece of paper in a case in 2005 against you if it proves a point I'm trying to make.
IA could be considered an infringer of IP and copyright if the pages they hosted were functionally complete and funneled traffic to them instead of to the original company, but they aren't, and they represent out of date versions of the website anyway. And google doesn't index IA instances of sites so the only way you could come across an archived version of a page is if you went to the IA specifically looking for it... so they also can't claim that it dilutes the value of their brand or confuses potential customers.
The problem of fragmentation is minimal for those of us who know how to work the system, but it would be disasterous for the average user, who has their settings fed via DHCP from a provider and have no clue what an IP Address is or a DNS server.
If some seamless, properly synchronized set of decentralized servers were setup, and the transition was seamless, then it might work. The change has to happen with 0 interruption to Ma Kettle trying to access Amazon or eBay, regardless of what country she lives in. There can be NO inconsistencies between systems operated by different people beyond what you normally encounter when changing DNS information.
The biggest potential problem I think exists for people in countries that do now have such strict protections of free speach. France and Germany for example have outright bans on anything referencing the Nazis.
The issue when it comes to key infrastructure ends up being "Does it work?" If it works, then there is no reason to mess with it. The TLD registrar issue does not impact performance, which is the major concern.
Also, if every country can sell TLD space, what's to prevent 30 different Amazon.coms? The French, in their drive to do everything THEIR OWN WAY would probably register all the popular domains and point them to French alternatives. This is one of the big places inconsistencies arise.
Slashdot Mirror
A bunch of people here have complained that certs mean nothing, that they don't guarantee knowledge, and a few of you have even say listing a cert on a resume makes you LESS inclined to consider someone.
Look at it as a college degree is looked at. It doesn't guarantee knowledge necessarily. What it does is demonstrate some sort of commitment to taking a class and passing an exam, at that takes at least some work, time and money.
A cert does not make you an expert, and the experts have no need of the certifications anyway, so what they really are, are baseline tools. If you pass the RHCE exams, you know the person has a certain set of knowledge at a minimum. It may not be expert level, but you know to some extent what they have proven (in a test at least) what they know.
Also, look at the cert as a tool to the early professional. A training course and a few exams is a good way to quickly spin up into an area of IT you may not be well-versed in. Especially when it's an area dominated by older professionals who are well established. These guys tend to take up all the work and often don't want to delegate any to some know-nothing kid. The result is it's difficult for a new guy to build up his experience.
Over time, the certs do mean less and less as their work experience section grows larger. The cert is not for the guy in the mid/late phase of their careers unless they're trying to shift to a new IT area. Certs are like college degrees... they're of the most value to someone trying to get their foot in the door and build up some basic skills quickly.
Silicon Valley is a lot like a University campus. A lot of really smart people with a ton of brilliant ideas on how to make the world better, but often lacking in the common sense or business saavy to translate the idea into something real.
Companies in Silicon Valley are a dime a dozen anymore. There's always some kid sitting in an apartment dreaming up The Next Big Thing. Some of them do come up with great stuff, but for whatever reason they just never get to the point where they're selling or distributing what they dreamed up. Those that do often do it on a limited basis because they lack the resources to go bigger. Those who really are onto something neat get bought out.
Google is hated by these guys now for the same reason academics look down their noses at their equivalents in the professional world. Because Google successful in ways others could only dream of. It's jealousy really. They claim it's because Google has lost its small-company spirit, that it's no longer doing what they do for the pure reasons of doing "cool" stuff or whatever. Google has taken the spirit and the drive of so many startups and they actually went somewhere with it.
We tend to hate, or at least target, those who do better than us.
Bah, go ahead and mod my original down... My reading comprehension skills are at an all-time low today :P
Just so they can claim to have a sub-200 price point, they're shipping a unit that won't even properly function! The hard drive is key to the XBox if you want to, you know, SAVE your progress (unless they plan on selling memory sticks, which I haven't heard anything on yet). It even lacks Live capability since it lacks Ethernet.
The starter package for the 360 is just a complete joke.
It's solid for how high I had the settings cranked.
Remember, performance is always relative when it comes to new graphics engines. They always require more power to get the same framerate or resolution than the previous generation did.
You can't compare Doom 3 to the Unreal 2 engine or to the Quake 3 engine in terms of performance. It's apples and oranges.
Dude, have you played ANY iD game since Quake 1? They're all tech demos for new engines, that's all they ever have been. Carmack has admitted on serveral occassions that he thinks story and such don't belong in games, that they're a waste of time and effort. iD does NOT make games, they make the next level of graphics engines.
You spent over a thousand pounds for a system that would only run the game at 800x600? What did you do, crank AA and AF to max and set the detail level to "Ultra"? I played on Ultra with AA and AF set to a middle setting and I got a solid 25-30FPS on a machine that was a year old. Either you got ripped off by a retailer, or you don't know jack shit about what parts to buy.
Your problem is you have your OWN head so far up your ass you aren't able to read/hear what Carmack himself is saying. If you did, you'd know they're about the engines and they let OTHER companies take the engines to make good games. Quake 4 is being done by Raven. Raven did amazing things with the Quake 3 engine in the Jedi Knight games, they're going to be the ones to take the new engine and turn it into an actual game.
Thanks for trolling.
The problem is though that ultimately you can't draw any significant information from such a weak piece of data like download numbers. There's no way to account for what those downloads actually mean. There are too many other factors that are just unknown.
The only way to truely measure use is by website logs and statistics. 80 million downloads, while an impressive number, can be quite misleading, and a lot of people here want to use that number as the "proof" that Firefox is going to topple IE. It sounds more impressive than an 8% market share.
I'm not bashing the progress of Firefox, I think it's a great program that I use over IE on every machine I come across, but I'm diluded into thinking that it's somehow sweeping the marketplace like an unstoppable force.
You can only get an accurate picture through ACTUAL statistics regarding use by polling websites for data. Saying it was downloaded a billion times doesn't mean it's used by a billion customers. It's like saying 80 million paper plates were sold, so therefore there are 80 million people using a paper plate, you're missing data to make that statement.
I'm not a stat genius, but I do know that you can't reasonably make any claims about a program based purely on download counts.
I'm a casual player by all counts. I loaded up the game on release day, and only in the past few weeks finally got my paladin to level 60. I play at my own pace, spending a lot of time seeing the sights and not necessarily grinding or farming loot. I'm in it for the experience and the rich world around me.
I've played a lot of MMOs in the past and usually lose interest quickly because there's nothing obvious to do at the start. WoW breaks that pattern by having a very well crafted early game experience where I'm led around to a ton of great and varied locales, given a variety of quests to do and am told a rich and involved story. That takes me up to about level 30. Then, as an alliance member, I enter Stranglethorn Vale and the game goes rapidly downhill from there.
It feels as if the game had a lot of care and attention given to those first 30 or so levels, packing the areas with great content and wonderful gameplay, then suddenly I'm playing a different game completely. One that involves killing tons of mobs to grind out levels between quests, and then we're suddenly dumped into a game that requires 5-man groups for a large portion of the content.
Was this intentional? Was the first half of the game designed to be a solo, story-driven experience whereas the second half was meant to take what you learned at the start and now apply it to help other players? Why does the game change so drastically at this mid point?
My comment was more pointed at the reference to the 80millionth download bit and the attitude that Firefox is the great toppler of IE. People don't like to look at that 8% marketshare statistic, it makes them feel small. Instead they look at the big numbers, and try to point to them as the "real" indicator of success, when it isn't.
I understand the issue of net surveys and how to really generate accurate marketshare data, and I think the article at the start of the post does a lot to set things straight on the whole Firefox Will Destroy IE concept. It's a bit of reality that even the article submitter is quick to cast into doubt with the reference to download volume.
I have to admit, it's an amusing bit of misrepresentation the community uses when citing download figures for Firefox as if they really truely mean something. One user may account for dozens of downloads alone if they have multiple PCs, or upgrade versions, or if they reinstall their OS and have to reget their apps. Then there's the user who gets Firefox but for whatever reason goes back to IE. I'm tired of the download number being heralded as some great victory when it means very little in terms of real market penetration.
Should we start counting every copy of windows sold or bundled with a PC as a "new IE user"? I bought a cheap dell recently to use as a quick and dirty Linux box. It came with WinXP Home and IE, but I don't use it. But by the reasoning usually given for Firefox, because I have it, I should be counted as a user, as a part of the marketshare.
Please stop using download counts to prove your argument that Firefox is toppling IE. It's not yet... While it's doing better than any competitor since Netscape, it's not the killing blow to IE just yet.
I read this bit in the NYT a few days ago and composed my own response.
http://zoomba.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=83176
In short, while publishers and developers are ultimately responsible for turning out rehashed games year after year after year, they only do it because WE want them to. We buy them. We DEMAND THEM (Starcraft 2 is a prime example of this demand).
I was lucky to have access to computers from a relatively early age (5ish) because my dad worked for a University that gave him a Mac SE when he became a professor. Since then we had a series of Macs and then PCs in the house over the years (Mac SE -> Powerbook 160 -> Mac LC3 -> HP Pavillion 200MHz -> eMachine 500MHz) until I went off to college, at which point I built my own machine.
The way it always worked was it was the FAMILY computer, not mine (though I was the only one really using it). This meant it had to be in an accessable room (i.e. not my bedroom) and I couldn't lock away any files on it or bar anyone else from any part of the PC for any reason. I also had to turn over the computer whenever anyone had a real need for it. This was basically a zero-privacy deal where what I was doing on the computer could be checked at a moment's notice.
I was caught surfing porn once. I was told that if I was caught again, it would be the end of computer and net access for a LONG time to come. The rule basically was if they caught me doing something bad, that was my first and only warning. The PC was not mine, the connection was not mine, I had to share it and be open to inspection whenever they felt like it.
I was still able to strip the thing down, rebuild it and learn all the ins and outs of it. But I knew I there were risks and concequences to doing "bad" stuff. My parents were able to keep an eye on my activities without keeping me from learning. THey were also aware of all the violent video games I played, they knew because they had to take me out to buy it, and they'd come up and watch me play every now and then.
It was the correct balance (IMO) of parental responsibility and child freedom. I don't think it's a good idea to give a young kid their own laptop and send them off to their rooms. It's too easy for them to get lost in the bad stuff, and too hard for the average parent to monitor. If I someday have kids, there will be a family PC setup in the same room as my equipment. The kids will have largely free reign over it, but it won't be hidden from sight, they'll know what is and isn't allowed and the consequences will be clearly outlined.
Also, I know I took much better care of my computer equipment once I had to earn the money to buy and maintain it. When it was given to me by my parents, I just sort of took it for granted.
Ever think that maybe, just maybe, Linux didn't meet their current needs? Maybe it didn't fit well into their existing infrastructure or whatever? Linux is not always the absolute best solution to every IT problem that exists. Sometimes, a Microsoft product is the right choice based on what you're trying to do, who you have employed and what other systems you want it to work with.
History being how every generation has some form of media that will destroy it/turn everyone into sexual deviants/cause everyone to become mass murders.
Every advance in entertainment is labeled as being the reason society will fall.
Rock and Roll
Elvis
Comic Books
Radio
Television
Movies
D&D
Rap Music
Skateboarding
Long hair
All of these things were at one point the thing to blame for all ills in society. They all supposedly caused/encouraged immoral behavior.
THAT is the history we're dealing with.
This is a proposal to attack specifically the act of INTENTIONALLY infringing or contributing to infringement. Grokster or Napster would get nailed under this because it is clear that ths software was meant to redistribute music files, they built their companies and communities on the idea of music piracy (ok... those of you who are going to say "But you could distribute your own music too!" can leave the room now. Both Napster and Grokster KNEW what was going on, they built the system to make it as easy as possible to pirate music).
When you come to technologies like BitTorrent or Freenet, you have technology platforms that are completely independent of what is being distributed. Going after BT because it allows infringement would be like going after E-Mail technology because you can send files, or FTP etc...
The wired article is a piece of FUD trying to scare up some controversy when what this proposal is calling for is to explicityly make criminal IP infringement through P2P. People love to argue that the law is fuzzy on whether or not it's criminal, so now they're clarifying it.
Congress made no such law. Doesn't violate constitutional freedoms in any way. Private organizations may set more or less whatever draconian rules they want to regarding employment or use of equipment (i.e. you can't claim 1st ammendment violations if a moderator deletes a forum post), these protections only apply to federal laws.
The NRLB simply didn't PROHIBIT private companies from setting such rules. That's a hell of a long way from passing a law enforcing it.
Wow, someone woke up cranky and forgot to bring their sense of humor with them when they left the house today.
Is it time for num-nums and a nap for someone already?
That one will be fixed pronto in a "critical" security fix.
Just wanted to say you probably articulated the relationship between the two better than anyone else I've read on this site. The game example is a perfect illustration.
Your assumptions fall flat and your comparison simply out-right fails here.
In the case of a child emulating a violent video game and killing or seriously harming other people, there are two primary items we need to look at to understand what happened...
1. What was wrong with the kid? Normal, sane, reasonable kids don't go around killing people, even if they see something violent on TV or in a video game. That a child would emulate video game violence in real life indicates that there is something mentally off about them. If a kid is going to kill because they played GTA, chances are they would have done the same after watching a Terminator or Rambo flick. Maybe a news cast showing violence in Iraq could trigger it.
2. Where were the parents? Yes, parents play a huge role in these events. Parents control what their kids see and play at home, and have some control even over what they see and play outside the home. If a child is about to go on a shooting rampage, chances are good that there are some warning signs that an active and involved parent should be able to pick up on. Parents are the key control in these situations, and except in the cases of a kid just suddenly snapping for no reason, they should be able to intervene before things go too far.
Games like Grand Theft Auto are targeted at a mature audience. It's rated M, it portrays the same sort of actions you see in R-rated movies. GTA panders to children as much as the latest Friday The 13th. The fact that kids are getting their hands on games that are clearly marked and advertised as adult titles shows that there are failings in the system beyond the game makers themselves.
If you are under 17, you can walk into a store and buy a game with your own cash. You can't order online since you probably don't have a credit card (giving kids credit cards is another rant of its own). In that case, it is the duty of a store clerk to make sure you're old enough. Little Johnny got ahold of Alien Cheerleader Bloodbath XVI at GameStop? Go after the store that sold it.
If Mom bought it for Johnny, then it's absolutely 100% the fault of the parent. I'm tired of parents buying games for their kids and then being outraged to discover how violent it is. If you are a parent it is YOUR responsibility to do due dilligance on what you buy your kids.
In the end, games are clearly rated and marked. What else can the ESRB do? It's up to the retail chains to implement policies on carding. And if we legislate this, we have to make movie ratings legally enforced too.
I'm a gamer, been a gamer since the days of the Atari 2600. I've played everything from Pac Man to Manhunt. I have captured millions of flags, defended millions of bases. I've racked up monster-kill headshots in UT like no tomorrow (w00t Facing Worlds!). I have killed dragons and pixies and humans of all sorts thousands upon thousands of times over. I've fragged my friends, I've fragged their spouses sometimes too. I played Quake, at the time one of the most violent games out there, during my dark brooding High School years and I never went on a rampage at school. I never even got into a fight. I'm now a productive member of society who still plays games. I get a kick out of running over swarms of pedestrians in GTA. I would never do it in real life.
Guess what... same goes for most of the people I grew up with. Some of us are married, some have kids now too. We all somehow managed to avoid the siren call of violence and came out sane people.
I don't buy for a second the crap that video games cause violence in kids. I think mental instability causes violence in kids and video games are just the popular scapegoat of the moment. Used to be rap, before that rock and roll. Comic books used to be the reason society would crumble. They've finally abandoned porn on the 'Net as the driving reason for the death of civilization. Now it's all about video games. Because violence just didn't exist until games came along.
The ESRB is doing all that it can. Games are rated. Parents and retailers just need to freaking pay attention to the rating and use a bit of common sense and judgement regarding their kids.
Ah, the indignation of the Free Software Zealot. Note how he misses the entire point of the post and takes it as an opportunity to throw out the old tired line of "If you don't like it, code it yourself!"
His points were very accurate. All of the features shown in the screenshot that was DESCRIBED IN THE ORIGINAL POSTING as "innovative" can be found in existing Operating Systems and desktop utilities. Innovative implies new and exciting. The features on display were not innovative.
Your attitude here is exactly the reason many of us don't bother submitting suggestions or critiques anymore. I spent some time a while back going over the Gentoo install documentation, making notes where clarification could be used and how it could perhaps be structured in an easier-to-follow format. My suggestion/report was just discarded with "It works for us"
Usability is the "un-fun" portion of building a desktop. It's just not cool to go through and code and edit to make it all flow together. It's fun to build the fancy widgets, or the pretty themes, or some system tool or whatever. That's the fun stuff. Going through the entire damn thing and editing it to make it mesh together is tedious and boring. Most people, when working on a project for free, are less inclined to do the boring stuff.
Then there's the whole attitude that "Well, lets see YOU do it better!" which is just a load of crap. This is why Linux is lightyears away from being a user-oriented system. The average user would take one look at GNOME or KDE and go "Yuck!" And you can't really expect them to come in and code a new UI for you. And don't start with "Well, then maybe they're not smart enough to use it..." If you want Linux to succeed on the desktop in a meaningful way, you have to make the thing end-user-friendly.
So get off your high horse and come taste a bit of reality. You know, that place the rest of us live. I know it may seem harsh and may conflict with your unrealistic expectations, but a brief stay might be good for you.
First it was direct copied lines of code
Then it was JFS and other products that were integrated into Linux
Then it was something about IBM filtering ideas into Linux....
Now it's about someone else doing the same thing but in a completely different way?
I'm sorry, I've tried my very best to follow this, but I just can't for the life of me figure out what SCO is claiming now that IBM or Novel or RedHat or AutoZone did. They've changed their tune so many times I can't reven remember where it all started.
Is it just boiling down to SCO suing IBM because they contributed to a successful competitor?
Crew refers to a group, more than one person. You have individual Crewmembers as part of a Crew. I think it's one of those words that works either way.
Here's how I see it...
A website is like an advertising pamphlet or booklet, you use it to spread the good word about your products and services.
If you give me a pamphlet in 1998, it would stand to reason that I could use that same piece of paper in a case in 2005 against you if it proves a point I'm trying to make.
IA could be considered an infringer of IP and copyright if the pages they hosted were functionally complete and funneled traffic to them instead of to the original company, but they aren't, and they represent out of date versions of the website anyway. And google doesn't index IA instances of sites so the only way you could come across an archived version of a page is if you went to the IA specifically looking for it... so they also can't claim that it dilutes the value of their brand or confuses potential customers.
The problem of fragmentation is minimal for those of us who know how to work the system, but it would be disasterous for the average user, who has their settings fed via DHCP from a provider and have no clue what an IP Address is or a DNS server.
If some seamless, properly synchronized set of decentralized servers were setup, and the transition was seamless, then it might work. The change has to happen with 0 interruption to Ma Kettle trying to access Amazon or eBay, regardless of what country she lives in. There can be NO inconsistencies between systems operated by different people beyond what you normally encounter when changing DNS information.
The biggest potential problem I think exists for people in countries that do now have such strict protections of free speach. France and Germany for example have outright bans on anything referencing the Nazis.
The issue when it comes to key infrastructure ends up being "Does it work?" If it works, then there is no reason to mess with it. The TLD registrar issue does not impact performance, which is the major concern.
Also, if every country can sell TLD space, what's to prevent 30 different Amazon.coms? The French, in their drive to do everything THEIR OWN WAY would probably register all the popular domains and point them to French alternatives. This is one of the big places inconsistencies arise.