The dictionary disagrees with you. (Not just dictionary.com, but OED.com as well--I can't link to it, though.) Effete can most decidedly mean effeminate, and given the fairly obvious history of Mac=gay "jokes", you'd have to be deliberately obtuse to use effete in this sense and not expect it to be interpreted in this light.
And in any case, my main beef is that it's the editor-in-chief doing this. If you're editor-in-chief for a major tech publication, it's generally good form to rise above this sort of thing--even if it means you don't get to pen snark pieces.
My point is that big corporations are going to put a great deal more faith in their market research than they will put in any given geek with his endless stream of anecdotes. In short, your tastes (and mine) really, really don't matter one whit. A multinational has tried and true methods for determining how to name their products, and while they don't always work well, these methods are a far cry more reliable than having Nintendo execs dig through Slashdot posts and stroke their collective chins to the wisdom of nameless posters.
Because of this, I'm willing to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt over Anonymous Coward, pontificator extraordinaire. I'm not saying they've got a sure winner on their hands--rather, I trust that they know what they're doing better than you, me, or any of the other geeks here on Slashdot.
At least every other console has more than one syllable, sounds like an acutal product name instead of a squeal, and has some 'character' to it. "Wii" doesn't even sound like a name, it sounds like part of a name that got chopped off.
I differ with you on this point. "PlayStation" and "Xbox", to my mind, are utterly devoid of personality. One sounds like a purely utilitarian description of the device; it's about as personality-laden as "RoadCar" or "FoodCutter". The other just takes "box"--a dreadfully exciting word--and tags the ubiqitous "'X' for extreme" bit to the front. At least "Wii" is evocative; whether you think "fun", "small", or "ha ha pee pee!", it engages your imagination more than either of its competitors.
And what makes a longer, multi-syllabic name better than a shorter, monosyllabic name? In marketing, short is sweet. It's why the "Macintosh" is now simply the "Mac", why the "High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle" is called a "Humvee", and why "fluoxetine hydrochloride" is known as "Prozac".
In any case, we have yet to feel the brunt of Nintendo's marketing. Once you plaster the airwaves with "Wii", it's likely going to be about as silly sounding as "iPod"; you won't even remember when you first shook your head and said, "what the hell kind of name is that?" Familiarity comes from repeated exposure, and in another few months, the name "Wii" will probably seem no more stupid than the name "Nintendo" to most people out there.
Sales Representatives React To 'Rational Trigonometry'
We get it. By and large, people who eat, sleep, and breathe video games think that "Wii" is stupid. Fortunately for Nintendo, we're not their target demographic. Even more fortunately for Nintendo, the bulk of gamers who think that "Wii" is stupid follow the sentiment up with "but it isn't going to influence whether or not I actually buy the thing."
We, The Hardcore, need to come to grips with the fact that we are now, in Nintendo's eyes, a seecondary market. The sooner we do that, the sooner we'll be able to get past all this bloviating about what sorts of fools are heading the ship at Nintendo.
It's about not allowing the company the right to set its own wages, hiring and promotion policies. Clearly the company has an interest in unionization because it affects the job, and the other weird examples you give are not what the company stands accused of.
Sure, it's related to work, but I'm not trying to assert that it isn't. Rather, I'm saying that union activity, when done on an employees' own time and dime, is something that a company should have no right to prohibit. So long as a worker does his job well, his employer should have no say in what he does in his free time--even if he chooses to start or join a union.
Unions don't strip a company of any rights. If a company doesn't like a union's demands, it has every right to tell that union to go piss up a rope. If the unionized workers strike, then the company has every right to fire their sorry asses and hire new folks to do the job.
Now, unions can make it financially risky for companies to disregard the will of unionized workers, but just as there's no such thing as the right to a raise or even the right to not get fired, there's no such thing as the right to a profit, nor even a right to stay in business. I'm not saying that unions are some shining beacon of good; rather, I'm saying that workers should have every right to unionize, and companies should have every right to completely ignore said unions. The artificial imbalance comes into play when employees aren't allowed to band together for their own common good, in my opinion.
Preventing the formation of control of a union is not always illegal. Let's not forget that Wal-Mart owns the jobs and gets to set the terms by which the employees get them... if the owner decides that they are being taken advantage of or abused it is their right to take action to prevent it... like preventing unionization... just as it is the right of the employees to leave if they don't like the way the company does business.
...by that logic, why would any employer ever allow their employees to join a union?
Also, by that logic, should Wal-Mart be allowed to enforce a strict anti-miscegenation policy? After all, the jobs are Wal-Mart's; they should get to set the terms of employment, and their employees are free to up and leave if they don't like it, right? How about a no-atheists policy? Or a no-Democrats policy?
What right does Wal-Mart have to dictate employees' off-duty behavior? Should you be able lose your job based on the where, who and why of your own private fraternization--regardless of how well you do your job? Should your employer be allowed to dictate the terms of your own private life?
Re:I can't wait for Spore!
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EA's E3 Lineup
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I bet it will be super awesome just like Black and White was!
Wil Wright is not Peter Molyneux. A more appropriate sentence would have been, "I bet it will be super awesome just like The Sims was!".
Spore is going to promise the world and then deliver a rough facsimile of a tiny sliver of the world it promised.
Even simply watching his old presentation on the game makes me want to play it--and we're talking about rough-cut tech demos here, not four-color glossies, demos-on-rails, or pre-rendered FMV. Unless he's deviated -significantly- from what has already been shown or there are serious bugs in the final release, odds are it'll at least live up to the early tech demos--which, in my humble opinion, were seriously cool.
I am just saying that the bullshit hype they are spewing right now is nothing but that, bullshit hype.
We've already seen live, interactive demonstrations of much of the hype--I'm thinking particularly about the procedure-oriented behavior of your creatures and the building editor. (Consider, too, how much of the hype has been generated by community response to these previews as opposed to a concerted ad campaign.)
All of that said, I really do hope that some fresh ideas come out.
Agreed. As far as Spore is concerned, I see two big opportunities for this game to either soar or crash: powerful, easy-to-use editors and continuity of experience. I'm more concerned about the second issue: if the various stages of the game don't transition well, it could seriously detract from the gameplay.
I'm expecting Spore to shine as an example of what a really good dev team can do with funding, math, talent, and pre-existing titles. Wright doesn't hide the fact that each stage of the game is firmly rooted in some pre-existing title or genre. What makes Spore so exciting is that we've never really had all these different genres wrapped up into one neat, sprawling, procedurally-run, community-driven video game.
Think about "The Godfather" (the movie, not the book or game.) It didn't pioneer any significantly new ground in cinema. At root, it was an organized crime drama, which had been done before. It didn't introduce any substantial new technical milestone. Instead, it was brilliantly written, directed, acted, shot, and edited--they didn't do anything all that new, but they did everything amazingly well. That's what I'm hoping Spore will be--nothing we haven't seen before, but something that does it all very, very well.
So yes, "wait and see", but I've got high hopes, and I think they're pretty well-founded...
I'd be a lot less surprised to see good, solid virtualization. Give users a high-speed sandbox where they can run Windows and Windows apps and they won't care whether or not the apps are integrated into the OS. Most users don't do much direct application-to-application integration in Windows, anyhow--generally, you're saving files to the disk, then importing or converting them in another app. Virtualization works quite well with this sort of thing.
Frankly, it's probably better not to go down Cringley's road, since Microsoft's flavor of application design and integration is so very, very different from the OS X model; running Windows Word "native" in OS X would be a constant headache for users used to the drag-and-drop-just-works world of Apple's flagship apps...
New neighbor moves in across the street from Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith immediately detests this family, and wants them gone. He puts up a large sign in his yard that reads "To the Jones family: You are not welcome here. Get the fuck out of our neighborhood and go back to whatever cesspool you crawled out of." When their children are outside, he stands (on his own property, mind you,) and calls across the street to them, telling them that their parents are horrible, horrible people and that they're all going to have their fleshed burned off them in the sulfrous pits of hell. From his own land, he waggles his junk at Mrs. Jones when she comes home from shopping and invites her to perform oral sex on him while he tears her hair out. Mr Smith owns the land that Mr. Jones' employer has been leasing for the past twenty years; as a result, Mr. Smith refuses to let Mr. Jones set foot on his land, and Mr. Jones loses his job.
Should the Jones family have any recourse against Mr. Smith, other than to sell their home and move or go on living under the conditions he creates from his own property? Should Mr. Smith not be allowed to act the way he acts on his own property?
You volunteered for service, with at least some understanding of the fact that there would be hardship involved. You were in an environment which, while clearly very demanding, was also one wherein you knew that the people in charge were "on your side" and would treat you in a manner that would be ultimately beneficial to both you and your superiors.
To be constantly told that your girlfriend is a fat whore and that so-and-so had so much fun riding your mother last night is very, very different from being told by an enemy officer that your mother and girlfriend are currently incarcerated by their government, and that very, very bad things could happen to them if you don't start telling us what you know (regardless of whether or not you actually have told them what you know...)
You have comrades with whom you can commiserate--or at least look to for support. You have an understanding that whatever hardship you are being put through has an end. You understand that the powers-that-be putting you through that hardship are doing so to make you a stronger, better man and soldier, and that while they may insult, belittle and punish you, they hold no genuine ill will against you and would readily stand at your side in a time of crisis.
You know what it's like to be put through physical and mental hardship. Your training has hardened you to this sort of thing. You also know perfectly well that if you were to fall into the hands of the enemy and that enemy so chose, they could make your very existence a living hell of madness without ever breaking bone or skin.
So, what was your point, apart from the fact that you've had way too much of the kool-aid?
My point, simply, is that this is now a part of what the United States of America stands for, and I'm ashamed that we're doing this kind of thing. I'm proud of my nation on the whole, but I simply can't condone this--it isn't right to treat another human being in this fashion, even if they are criminals or terrorists, and from a pragmatic point of view, it isn't in the best interest of the American people to so willfully and imperiously discard lessons we've learned from centuries of being the world's standard-bearer when it came to human rights and justice. I would much prefer our nation stand firmly on just ground and face the associated risks with our heads high and our conscience clear--far better that than to constantly flirt with the detestible and twist in the wind to justify actions that are reprehensible to any reasonable person. I am but speaking my mind on this point.
Not only is the type of thing we're doing at Guantanamo something we'd never want our own troops exposed to, it's something we should never call on our own men and women to perform on other human beings. If we're not willing to set the right example--even if it means we're exposed to greater risk of attack--we cannot expect goodwill in return, and it will be by the superior grace of others that our troops receive humane treatment when they are captured. I want my nation to be the best nation it can be, and the prison at Guantanamo Bay simply does not fall in line with my values. I live in a major east coast city, so I'm acutely aware of the fact that my life could be less safe as a result of treating detainees in a humane manner--but it's a risk I'm willing to face in the name of making America the greatest nation it can be.
I am a firm believer in the power of magnanimity, and I'm genuinely saddened that our nation has so eagerly cast it aside in favor of arrogance, brutality and force. I want desperately to restore America's image as an unwavering beacon of goodness and justice for all the world to follow.
...why, I stand corrected. I thank you, Mr. Coward, for your clear, concise, and evidentiary debunking of my fallacious librul hippie delusions.
It's true that no one--at least, no one of consequence--cares what I think. Trust me when I say that your opinion, in its current form, carries even less weight than my own.
Now, off to do my pennance--a month's worth of Chinese water tor--er, treatment.
I'm sorry, but psychological "torture" does not qualify as torture in my book. Until someone is physically abused, I don't call it torture.
Then you're a fool, plain and simple. If you truly cannot comprehend the degree of pain and injury one human being can inflict on another human being without ever so much as laying a finger on them, you're either being willfully obtuse or simply have no real understanding of the human condition.
In either case, here's an experiment for you. You can perform it in the comfort of your own home, and you won't need to cancel any appointments or stay home from work. Your family can participate with you. It's really easy to do, and it won't cost you a cent.
First, hand-write a one-page diary entry. It doesn't need to be anything earth-shattering, just what you did that day, what you ate, what you're feeling. If you have a camcorder, you should do a video diary, either in addition to or in place of the handwritten diary.
Then, spend the next week sleep-deprived. Only sleep fully clothed, on the floor. Keep the lights on, and bring in a few extras to make things very--but not painfully--bright. Pick out one CD that you really don't care for and play it on continuous loop at a high--but not painful--volume. Set the thermostat to either 55 degrees or 85 degrees. Do not allow yourself more than three hours per day during which you may attempt to sleep, and only under the above conditions.During the day, go about your daily business as you normally would--go to work, get groceries, eat good, healthy meals. Enjoy the extra few hours you get from not having to sleep so much.
Every day, make another diary entry, just like the one you started the week with.
On the last day of the experiment, whether or not you made it through the entire week, do an extended diary entry describing, in detail, how you feel and what you think of the experiment.
After a few weeks, go back and read/watch all the diary entries in sequence. See if you can identify any changes you can attribute to sleep deprivation.
Now, imagine you had no choice but to do this for as long as the man in the uniform wanted to make you do it. Ask yourself if this is the sort of thing that one human being should be allowed to inflict on another human being.
I'm dead serious. Try this experiment, and then ask yourself whether or not psychological torture qualifies as "torture" in your book. If, as you assert, it doesn't, then the above experiment may be annoying and challenging, but it certainly won't be painful or cause you extreme distress, and won't have any serious or lasting effect on you as a human being.
Seriously. Try this at home, and see how it works. (I take no responsibility for your actions or any harm that may come to you or your family as a result of this experiment. I assure you that you will suffer serious and potentially hazardous effects from this experiment, but that's my word against yours.)
Unless you call three squares a day and 5 prayer breaks torture.
How, exactly, does that preclude torture? If somebody gave his kid three squares a day, let him pray whenever he wanted, and kicked him in the head with steel-toed boots every time the kid talked back to him, would you hold the guy up as a paragon of good parenting?
OK, there has been some sleep depravation and one prisoner there did flush a Koran.
There's more. One detainee had his head and mouth duct-taped. Another was "short-shackled" to the eye-bolt in the floor of the interrogation room. Detainees were subject to 16-20 hour interrogations plus sleep deprivation and isolation for up to 54 consecutive days. Strip searches were used as an interrogation technique. Detainees would be locked in a refrigerated room known as the "freezer" for extended periods of time. In the course of interrogation, a detainee was told that his family had been captured by the United States and that they were "in danger". Barking, growling, teeth-baring military dogs were used in interrogations.
Go read the declassified FBI report. Note how many things were authorized by SECDEF after the fact; note, too, how the report finds that nothing they found rises to the level of "torture or inhumane treatment".
This is but one investigation, and it turns my stomach to read about some of the behavior in which my country is engaged. This is simply not how a nation built on the rule of law and respect for fundamental human rights should act. Three squares and five prayers is an empty defense of this truly reprehensible behavior.
Pitch your idea to Wal-Mart/get approached by Wal-Mart.
Get a good deal--if you can supply enough product for Wal-Mart.
Grow your company in leaps and bounds to meet the demand of your newest and most important sales outlet: Wal-Mart.
Have it good for a year or two.
Cringe when Wal-Mart tells you just how much less you're going to start getting per unit next year.
Quail when Wal-Mart tells you just how much less you're going to be getting per unit the year after that.
Whimper when Wal-Mart tells you just how much less you're going to be getting per unit the year after that.
Cower when Wal-Mart tells you exactly what's wrong with your product how it is, and how very beneficial it would be to your continued business arrangement if you'd just make the following changes.
Wake up one morning and realize that your company is barely scraping by--and can't afford to ditch Wal-Mart without massive layoffs and restructuring, which you can't afford to do anyhow.
That's the circle of life with Wal-Mart. You'll get a huge boost at first, but Wal-Mart always gets the last laugh. Always.
Hey, a D- is a passing grade--what's wrong with that?
I mean, wouldn't you much rather have a national government that was more like you, instead of some kind of intellectual-elite government scoring all "A"s? Better to have a government that understands people like you than a government that is out of touch with mainstream American values, I say!
(Break out the hookers and blow! Party at Treasury!)
Institute To Blow Smoke Into Uncomfortable Places
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Hacker Boot Camp
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· Score: 5, Informative
While "Institute of Certified E-Commerce Consultants" has a nice ring to it, it's a little ambiguous.
I recommend they switch to "Important-Sounding Portal Site of Certified E-Clipart and Buzzwords". Gah. That site isn't just an eyesore; it's a brainsore. Basically, you send them money, they send you off to a third-party training course, throw you in a database and give you some logos and certificates with important-sounding words. Oh, and you'll be certified. It'll take your resume to the next level (where, presumably, we can find our princess.)
Ah, but now to the meat of the matter--the legal disclaimer!
l) Educational Licenses, Accreditation, and State Sanction.
The ICECC does not claim to be a college or university nor does it claim accreditation from any 501 bodies, state, or federal government agency or body. The ICECC is not a 501c3 organization and never has claimed to be a tax free or charitable entity. The ICECC may engage in business with charitable organizations or form alliances with charities that operate under 501 but the ICECC operates as a responsible, growing, proprietary, growth oriented, and profit oriented association and company. The ICECC is an independent authority similar to other American Associations. The ICECC grants certificates, certifications, marks, designations, and charters much like hundreds of other legal educational and recognition institutes or associations in the United States. The ICECC strictly follows the criteria of the Ibanez decision in the United States. We encourage all members and certified members to meet all requirements for education, experience, testing, ethics, and continuing education. The ICECC licenses its marks and logos to others. The marks are generally licensed to individuals. The ICECC will license the CEC and other marks and logos to companies, universities, or other uses upon the consent of its board. The ICECC outsourses to other companies for training and education that is provided online. The ICECC does not collect money for the courses, provide the service, teach the class, enter into a contract with the student. THe company providing the education and training is simply using our site as a distribution point. THe ICECC may receive a referral fee, rebate, revenue share, or other payments for providing the website that afforded the sale of the service to the customer. In sum, you accept that we are not responsible for the performance of any education or training contract. We do not hold any of your private information that you submitted to the training, course, or education provider although directory infomation may be exchanged. This information is limited to email address, phone number, name, employer, educational degrees and background. [emphasis mine]
Makes ya feel all edjumicated already, dunnit?
Of course, all the above is moot; it fails the sniff test (twice, no less!) on its home page:
Don't forget to bookmark us! (CTRL-D)
Trust me, I didn't forget.
...as for the course itself, it seems to be little more than a rote lesson in exploiting commonly known weaknesses, such as default passwords and poorly-configured servers. From the BusinessWeek article:
ALARMING LAPSES. And here's what may be the scariest part: to be a hacker, you don't even have to be a hardcore techie or particularly good at writing code. Take me, for instance. I'm an English major who hasn't written a line of code since third grade when I wrote a BASIC program that quizzed you on state capitals. Camp got started at 9 a.m., and within an hour, I was hacking into fictional banks' Microsoft databases and retrieving credit card numbers.
It's a matter of knowing tricks and what to look for. For instance, the default Microsoft database user name is "SA" and there's no default password. An alarming number of administrators never change these settings, so once hackers get into a system, they often try this first -- successful
I Think This Can Be Summed Up In Five Words
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Life or Death for Tivo
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Slashdot Mirror
So it's a joke. It's still tasteless and crass. Would you print, say, a Polak joke in PC Magazine?
And in any case, my main beef is that it's the editor-in-chief doing this. If you're editor-in-chief for a major tech publication, it's generally good form to rise above this sort of thing--even if it means you don't get to pen snark pieces.
The more effete among us have embraced BC because now they can run all their favorite Windows apps on a saucy, sexy Mac.
Wow. Nothing says "class" like a thinly-veiled "Macs are for fags" joke.
You'd exect this sort of thing from a random blogger or Slashdotter, not the freakin' editor-in-chief of PC Magazine.
Because of this, I'm willing to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt over Anonymous Coward, pontificator extraordinaire. I'm not saying they've got a sure winner on their hands--rather, I trust that they know what they're doing better than you, me, or any of the other geeks here on Slashdot.
I differ with you on this point. "PlayStation" and "Xbox", to my mind, are utterly devoid of personality. One sounds like a purely utilitarian description of the device; it's about as personality-laden as "RoadCar" or "FoodCutter". The other just takes "box"--a dreadfully exciting word--and tags the ubiqitous "'X' for extreme" bit to the front. At least "Wii" is evocative; whether you think "fun", "small", or "ha ha pee pee!", it engages your imagination more than either of its competitors.
And what makes a longer, multi-syllabic name better than a shorter, monosyllabic name? In marketing, short is sweet. It's why the "Macintosh" is now simply the "Mac", why the "High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle" is called a "Humvee", and why "fluoxetine hydrochloride" is known as "Prozac".
In any case, we have yet to feel the brunt of Nintendo's marketing. Once you plaster the airwaves with "Wii", it's likely going to be about as silly sounding as "iPod"; you won't even remember when you first shook your head and said, "what the hell kind of name is that?" Familiarity comes from repeated exposure, and in another few months, the name "Wii" will probably seem no more stupid than the name "Nintendo" to most people out there.
We get it. By and large, people who eat, sleep, and breathe video games think that "Wii" is stupid. Fortunately for Nintendo, we're not their target demographic. Even more fortunately for Nintendo, the bulk of gamers who think that "Wii" is stupid follow the sentiment up with "but it isn't going to influence whether or not I actually buy the thing."
We, The Hardcore, need to come to grips with the fact that we are now, in Nintendo's eyes, a seecondary market. The sooner we do that, the sooner we'll be able to get past all this bloviating about what sorts of fools are heading the ship at Nintendo.
s/we/wii, if you're so inclined...
I didn't know that.
Sure, it's related to work, but I'm not trying to assert that it isn't. Rather, I'm saying that union activity, when done on an employees' own time and dime, is something that a company should have no right to prohibit. So long as a worker does his job well, his employer should have no say in what he does in his free time--even if he chooses to start or join a union.
Unions don't strip a company of any rights. If a company doesn't like a union's demands, it has every right to tell that union to go piss up a rope. If the unionized workers strike, then the company has every right to fire their sorry asses and hire new folks to do the job.
Now, unions can make it financially risky for companies to disregard the will of unionized workers, but just as there's no such thing as the right to a raise or even the right to not get fired, there's no such thing as the right to a profit, nor even a right to stay in business. I'm not saying that unions are some shining beacon of good; rather, I'm saying that workers should have every right to unionize, and companies should have every right to completely ignore said unions. The artificial imbalance comes into play when employees aren't allowed to band together for their own common good, in my opinion.
That is what seems fair to me.
I mean, c'mon--prehensile bullwhip!
Also, by that logic, should Wal-Mart be allowed to enforce a strict anti-miscegenation policy? After all, the jobs are Wal-Mart's; they should get to set the terms of employment, and their employees are free to up and leave if they don't like it, right? How about a no-atheists policy? Or a no-Democrats policy?
What right does Wal-Mart have to dictate employees' off-duty behavior? Should you be able lose your job based on the where, who and why of your own private fraternization--regardless of how well you do your job? Should your employer be allowed to dictate the terms of your own private life?
Wil Wright is not Peter Molyneux. A more appropriate sentence would have been, "I bet it will be super awesome just like The Sims was!".
Spore is going to promise the world and then deliver a rough facsimile of a tiny sliver of the world it promised.
Even simply watching his old presentation on the game makes me want to play it--and we're talking about rough-cut tech demos here, not four-color glossies, demos-on-rails, or pre-rendered FMV. Unless he's deviated -significantly- from what has already been shown or there are serious bugs in the final release, odds are it'll at least live up to the early tech demos--which, in my humble opinion, were seriously cool.
I am just saying that the bullshit hype they are spewing right now is nothing but that, bullshit hype.
We've already seen live, interactive demonstrations of much of the hype--I'm thinking particularly about the procedure-oriented behavior of your creatures and the building editor. (Consider, too, how much of the hype has been generated by community response to these previews as opposed to a concerted ad campaign.)
All of that said, I really do hope that some fresh ideas come out.
Agreed. As far as Spore is concerned, I see two big opportunities for this game to either soar or crash: powerful, easy-to-use editors and continuity of experience. I'm more concerned about the second issue: if the various stages of the game don't transition well, it could seriously detract from the gameplay.
I'm expecting Spore to shine as an example of what a really good dev team can do with funding, math, talent, and pre-existing titles. Wright doesn't hide the fact that each stage of the game is firmly rooted in some pre-existing title or genre. What makes Spore so exciting is that we've never really had all these different genres wrapped up into one neat, sprawling, procedurally-run, community-driven video game.
Think about "The Godfather" (the movie, not the book or game.) It didn't pioneer any significantly new ground in cinema. At root, it was an organized crime drama, which had been done before. It didn't introduce any substantial new technical milestone. Instead, it was brilliantly written, directed, acted, shot, and edited--they didn't do anything all that new, but they did everything amazingly well. That's what I'm hoping Spore will be--nothing we haven't seen before, but something that does it all very, very well.
So yes, "wait and see", but I've got high hopes, and I think they're pretty well-founded...
Frankly, it's probably better not to go down Cringley's road, since Microsoft's flavor of application design and integration is so very, very different from the OS X model; running Windows Word "native" in OS X would be a constant headache for users used to the drag-and-drop-just-works world of Apple's flagship apps...
Given Infinium's track record, I'm sure this is just a small bump in the otherwise smooth road to an exceptional and decidedly existent product.
New neighbor moves in across the street from Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith immediately detests this family, and wants them gone. He puts up a large sign in his yard that reads "To the Jones family: You are not welcome here. Get the fuck out of our neighborhood and go back to whatever cesspool you crawled out of." When their children are outside, he stands (on his own property, mind you,) and calls across the street to them, telling them that their parents are horrible, horrible people and that they're all going to have their fleshed burned off them in the sulfrous pits of hell. From his own land, he waggles his junk at Mrs. Jones when she comes home from shopping and invites her to perform oral sex on him while he tears her hair out. Mr Smith owns the land that Mr. Jones' employer has been leasing for the past twenty years; as a result, Mr. Smith refuses to let Mr. Jones set foot on his land, and Mr. Jones loses his job.
Should the Jones family have any recourse against Mr. Smith, other than to sell their home and move or go on living under the conditions he creates from his own property? Should Mr. Smith not be allowed to act the way he acts on his own property?
To be constantly told that your girlfriend is a fat whore and that so-and-so had so much fun riding your mother last night is very, very different from being told by an enemy officer that your mother and girlfriend are currently incarcerated by their government, and that very, very bad things could happen to them if you don't start telling us what you know (regardless of whether or not you actually have told them what you know...)
You have comrades with whom you can commiserate--or at least look to for support. You have an understanding that whatever hardship you are being put through has an end. You understand that the powers-that-be putting you through that hardship are doing so to make you a stronger, better man and soldier, and that while they may insult, belittle and punish you, they hold no genuine ill will against you and would readily stand at your side in a time of crisis.
You know what it's like to be put through physical and mental hardship. Your training has hardened you to this sort of thing. You also know perfectly well that if you were to fall into the hands of the enemy and that enemy so chose, they could make your very existence a living hell of madness without ever breaking bone or skin.
My point, simply, is that this is now a part of what the United States of America stands for, and I'm ashamed that we're doing this kind of thing. I'm proud of my nation on the whole, but I simply can't condone this--it isn't right to treat another human being in this fashion, even if they are criminals or terrorists, and from a pragmatic point of view, it isn't in the best interest of the American people to so willfully and imperiously discard lessons we've learned from centuries of being the world's standard-bearer when it came to human rights and justice. I would much prefer our nation stand firmly on just ground and face the associated risks with our heads high and our conscience clear--far better that than to constantly flirt with the detestible and twist in the wind to justify actions that are reprehensible to any reasonable person. I am but speaking my mind on this point.
Not only is the type of thing we're doing at Guantanamo something we'd never want our own troops exposed to, it's something we should never call on our own men and women to perform on other human beings. If we're not willing to set the right example--even if it means we're exposed to greater risk of attack--we cannot expect goodwill in return, and it will be by the superior grace of others that our troops receive humane treatment when they are captured. I want my nation to be the best nation it can be, and the prison at Guantanamo Bay simply does not fall in line with my values. I live in a major east coast city, so I'm acutely aware of the fact that my life could be less safe as a result of treating detainees in a humane manner--but it's a risk I'm willing to face in the name of making America the greatest nation it can be.
I am a firm believer in the power of magnanimity, and I'm genuinely saddened that our nation has so eagerly cast it aside in favor of arrogance, brutality and force. I want desperately to restore America's image as an unwavering beacon of goodness and justice for all the world to follow.
It's true that no one--at least, no one of consequence--cares what I think. Trust me when I say that your opinion, in its current form, carries even less weight than my own.
Now, off to do my pennance--a month's worth of Chinese water tor--er, treatment.
Then you're a fool, plain and simple. If you truly cannot comprehend the degree of pain and injury one human being can inflict on another human being without ever so much as laying a finger on them, you're either being willfully obtuse or simply have no real understanding of the human condition.
In either case, here's an experiment for you. You can perform it in the comfort of your own home, and you won't need to cancel any appointments or stay home from work. Your family can participate with you. It's really easy to do, and it won't cost you a cent.
I'm dead serious. Try this experiment, and then ask yourself whether or not psychological torture qualifies as "torture" in your book. If, as you assert, it doesn't, then the above experiment may be annoying and challenging, but it certainly won't be painful or cause you extreme distress, and won't have any serious or lasting effect on you as a human being.
Seriously. Try this at home, and see how it works. (I take no responsibility for your actions or any harm that may come to you or your family as a result of this experiment. I assure you that you will suffer serious and potentially hazardous effects from this experiment, but that's my word against yours.)
How, exactly, does that preclude torture? If somebody gave his kid three squares a day, let him pray whenever he wanted, and kicked him in the head with steel-toed boots every time the kid talked back to him, would you hold the guy up as a paragon of good parenting?
OK, there has been some sleep depravation and one prisoner there did flush a Koran.
There's more. One detainee had his head and mouth duct-taped. Another was "short-shackled" to the eye-bolt in the floor of the interrogation room. Detainees were subject to 16-20 hour interrogations plus sleep deprivation and isolation for up to 54 consecutive days. Strip searches were used as an interrogation technique. Detainees would be locked in a refrigerated room known as the "freezer" for extended periods of time. In the course of interrogation, a detainee was told that his family had been captured by the United States and that they were "in danger". Barking, growling, teeth-baring military dogs were used in interrogations.
Go read the declassified FBI report. Note how many things were authorized by SECDEF after the fact; note, too, how the report finds that nothing they found rises to the level of "torture or inhumane treatment".
This is but one investigation, and it turns my stomach to read about some of the behavior in which my country is engaged. This is simply not how a nation built on the rule of law and respect for fundamental human rights should act. Three squares and five prayers is an empty defense of this truly reprehensible behavior.
That's the circle of life with Wal-Mart. You'll get a huge boost at first, but Wal-Mart always gets the last laugh. Always.
I mean, wouldn't you much rather have a national government that was more like you, instead of some kind of intellectual-elite government scoring all "A"s? Better to have a government that understands people like you than a government that is out of touch with mainstream American values, I say!
(Break out the hookers and blow! Party at Treasury!)
I recommend they switch to "Important-Sounding Portal Site of Certified E-Clipart and Buzzwords". Gah. That site isn't just an eyesore; it's a brainsore. Basically, you send them money, they send you off to a third-party training course, throw you in a database and give you some logos and certificates with important-sounding words. Oh, and you'll be certified. It'll take your resume to the next level (where, presumably, we can find our princess.)
Ah, but now to the meat of the matter--the legal disclaimer!
l) Educational Licenses, Accreditation, and State Sanction. The ICECC does not claim to be a college or university nor does it claim accreditation from any 501 bodies, state, or federal government agency or body. The ICECC is not a 501c3 organization and never has claimed to be a tax free or charitable entity. The ICECC may engage in business with charitable organizations or form alliances with charities that operate under 501 but the ICECC operates as a responsible, growing, proprietary, growth oriented, and profit oriented association and company. The ICECC is an independent authority similar to other American Associations. The ICECC grants certificates, certifications, marks, designations, and charters much like hundreds of other legal educational and recognition institutes or associations in the United States. The ICECC strictly follows the criteria of the Ibanez decision in the United States. We encourage all members and certified members to meet all requirements for education, experience, testing, ethics, and continuing education. The ICECC licenses its marks and logos to others. The marks are generally licensed to individuals. The ICECC will license the CEC and other marks and logos to companies, universities, or other uses upon the consent of its board. The ICECC outsourses to other companies for training and education that is provided online. The ICECC does not collect money for the courses, provide the service, teach the class, enter into a contract with the student. THe company providing the education and training is simply using our site as a distribution point. THe ICECC may receive a referral fee, rebate, revenue share, or other payments for providing the website that afforded the sale of the service to the customer. In sum, you accept that we are not responsible for the performance of any education or training contract. We do not hold any of your private information that you submitted to the training, course, or education provider although directory infomation may be exchanged. This information is limited to email address, phone number, name, employer, educational degrees and background. [emphasis mine]
Makes ya feel all edjumicated already, dunnit?
Of course, all the above is moot; it fails the sniff test (twice, no less!) on its home page:
Don't forget to bookmark us! (CTRL-D)
Trust me, I didn't forget.
ALARMING LAPSES. And here's what may be the scariest part: to be a hacker, you don't even have to be a hardcore techie or particularly good at writing code. Take me, for instance. I'm an English major who hasn't written a line of code since third grade when I wrote a BASIC program that quizzed you on state capitals. Camp got started at 9 a.m., and within an hour, I was hacking into fictional banks' Microsoft databases and retrieving credit card numbers.
It's a matter of knowing tricks and what to look for. For instance, the default Microsoft database user name is "SA" and there's no default password. An alarming number of administrators never change these settings, so once hackers get into a system, they often try this first -- successful
Fuck.
With.
My.
TiVo.
Thanks--I'd botched my CSS. It's fixed now.
Apparently, scientific progress goes "Ew."