But when information is publicly available -- especially when it's made publicly available by the very company that's being researched and reported on -- it's incredibly childish to expect journalists to ignore available information that's relevant to a subject.
...how did actually publishing the information advance the reporting of the news, though? Was there any reason to rattle off specific bits of personal information instead of simply saying "We were able to find his SSN, address and personal cell number"?
What if the reporter had discovered, through public sources and adding 2+2 together, that the CEO of Google has been battling a severely debilitating case of hydrophobia for years? Is that "fair game" for a front-page news article? Is there any standard we should hold Cnet to other than "it's legal, so go for it"?
Yes, CNet was completely within their legal rights to publish this information. What so many people fail or refuse to acknowledge, though, is that there's a gulf of difference between "legal" and "proper". Google isn't miffed because CNet broke the law; if they were, they'd have sued. Google is miffed because CNet published readily available but personal information about one of their employees for no good reason.
Mission Controller 1: What about the R.R.G.O.U.S.'s?
Mission Controller 2: Redundant Rate Gyros Of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist.
R.R.G.O.U.S: GRAAAAAAAAAAARRGGGHHHH!
Maybe you should pay more attention to the lecture instead of what your fellow students are doing?
I'll bet you're one of those guys who can't understand why people get so upset when you shine your laser pointer at the movie screen.
If thirty people are gathered in a room for the express purpose of taking a class, why should they put up with somebody engaging in distracting behavior? Or do you sincerely believe that a student playing a videogame in the front row is not a distraction? Do you think it'd be OK if he played a game of Solitare with real cards during class? How about if he were playing WoW instead of Solitare--sound off, of course?
The bigger the population, the more sociopaths it'll have, and the more damage any one sociopath will be able to do. You either have to take steps to fight it or let the sociopaths pare the population down to the point where they're not a problem anymore.
Personally, I prefer the former solution. Good luck, Wikipedia!
Oh, don't get your undies in a bunch. It's basically just Stallman and ESR "talking nerdy" to each other. There's hardly any physical contact, and what little there is is better described as "awkward" than "hot man-on-man action". Finally, and most importantly, it's important to note that they're both fully clothed.
...but that's exactly the point I'm making--the tools have progressed to the point where indie developers can focus on making the games fun instead of hacking their way through all the old technological thickets of old. Better tools means lifting one of the most prohibitive and useless barriers into game making--technological expertise.
Ten years ago, a well-designed game concept + decent coding skills = nothing. Today, a well-designed game concept + decent coding skills = game.
For me, it's that the tools and technology have become sufficiently advanced that one can make a good, complex two-dimensional game with higher-level languages and far less bit twiddling than used to be necessary. Today's typical entry-level desktop machine is way more than powerful enough to run a reasonably well-designed 2D game. Today's tools distill complex blitting, transformation, and collision routines into single function calls. Today's operating systems virtually eliminate the need to futz around at the hardware level for all but the most demanding games. Thus, an indie developer doesn't need to devote his or her time to learning and executing all the arcane bits of optimization that the cutting-edge studios need. You don't, for example, need to worry about floating-point operations slowing down your system the way you did just ten years ago. You don't, for example, need to worry about rotating sprites, or writing pixel-perfect collision routines--that's all taken care of nowadays.
Gamemaking tools are simply getting better. Computers are able to do more in less time. Today's gamemaker gets to spend a lot less time slogging through proprietary hardware APIs, interrupts and assembly code and a lot more time actually building the game. That's what counts the most.
No, no, set The Constitution aside. I'm talking about government here, plain and simple, not just one particular implementation of government.
You stated that "[g]overnment should only get funding from it's citizens for military, fire, police, and transportation."
What is it about those four categories that makes them special? Or, if you prefer, should we consider funding for military, fire, police and transportation and nothing else as being a key component of the ideal government, and why?
Government should only get funding from it's citizens for military, fire, police, and transportation.
What makes these four categories special, in your mind?
Why should I be forced to subsidize a military apparatus which enforces a foreign policy I may or may not agree with?
Why should I pay taxes for a fire department that'll just waste money through endless rings of bureaucracy when I could hire a faster, more efficient and better private firefighting service for a fraction of the cost?
Why am I expected to chip in for a security force for the slums five miles from where I live, when I can easily afford my own bodyguards and home security service?
Why should I be required to throw my money away on highways I will never use running through wasteland over a thousand miles away?
While we're at it, and in all seriousness, explain why we should subsidize anything. Why draw that line at all?
"In fact, when host Wolf Blitzer specifically asked Wilson if his wife 'hadn't been a clandestine officer for some time before' Novak's column was published, Wilson responded that he could not comment on her past status as an undercover officer"
So he's not saying one way or the other whether she was a NOC on that day...gotta watch them bureaucrats...always mincing words.
He could not comment on that because that information is quite probably still classified. Just because a covert operative's cover gets blown doesn't mean it's automatically OK to go around talking about that covert operative's activities; doing so could result in the exposure of even more classified information.
As for the parsing of Wilson's statements, sure, it could be read in a number of ways. One could divine, for example, that Joe Wilson is stupid enough to actually think that Robert Novak physically blew a big puff of air onto his wife's identity. One could also conclude that Wilson is claiming that Novak had oral sex with Plame's identity. One could even surmise that Wilson is suggesting that Plame was on a little 24-hour vacation from the whole clandestine agent thing, and that day just happened to be the same day that Novak outed her.
Of course, you'd need to be a mendacious ass bent on discrediting Joe Wilson by any means possible to even begin to think the sort of linguistic acrobatics detailed above are accurate representations of the point Joe Wilson was trying to get across.
Then again, if you want to play the quotes game, I'll give you a few to chew on, courtesy of the Associated Press:
Sept. 29, 2003 [White House Briefing]
Q: You said this morning, quote, "The president knows that Karl Rove wasn't involved." How does he know that?
A [Scott McClellan]: Well, I've made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place.... I've said that it's not true.... And I have spoken with Karl Rove.
Q: It doesn't take much for the president to ask a senior official working for him, to just lay the question out for a few people and end this controversy today.
A: Do you have specific information to bring to our attention?... Are we supposed to chase down every anonymous report in the newspaper? We'd spend all our time doing that."
Q: When you talked to Mr. Rove, did you discuss, "Did you ever have this information?"
A: I've made it very clear, he was not involved, that there's no truth to the suggestion that he was.
...care to parse this one out? Was Rove lying to the President and his spokesman, or was the President's spokesman lying to the press?
...I, too, used to have trouble remembering how to spell "champagne". Then, I started pronouncing it as "cham-pag-nee" and I haven't had a single problem spelling it since.
Of course, the folks at the wine store give me funny looks now, but they're just a bunch of snooty cheese-eaters.
Despite it being nearly eight years old, TA is still easily my favorite RTS game out there. In my humble opinion, no other RTS game before or since has managed to balance simplicity, depth, and strategy quite like TA did.
I'm looking forward to Supreme Commander with bated breath.
who wants to swim in dirty old bills? I take new $100 bills and ship them off to the third world to be crumpled by underpaid laborers. Then I fill the pool, etc.
Pssssh. Why not save yourself the trouble and simply have the money laundered?
I'm sure the head of the iPod department will really give two shits about ergonomics when he goes for his daily swim in his pool filled with crisp $100 bills...
Exactly.
He'll probably be thinking something more along the lines of "Oh dear GOD! It's like TEN THOUSAND TINY LITTLE RAZOR BLADES! OH, GOD, IT BURNS! AAAAAAAGH!!!"
In closing, always use old, crumpled $100 bills in a swimming pool.
Simply because you, or even most of Slashdot, don't like the war, doesn't mean that's the way most of the country feels....Don't apply your opinion to the rest of America.
I'm not applying my opinion to the rest of America. I'm deferring to The Gallup Organization.
I'll readily grant that polls aren't perfect--I used to work for a pollster, and I'm well aware of the pitfalls involved in this kind of thing--but I invite you to direct me towards a better metric of American popular opinion. I also invite you to refute the notion that the war in Iraq is losing, not gaining, support.
1) while I feel that some of the details of the original plan have become confused, the overall effort is good
"Some of the details"? We went to Iraq because we were told that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that an attack on the United States was imminent. Which part of that reason turned out to be right?
The overall effort, while rooted in good intentions, has been abysmal. Can you point to a single pre-invasion document or plan for what we would do once we had deposed Hussein and defeated the Iraqi armed forces? What about the disbanding of the Iraqi army--was that a good move? What of the aggressive de-Baathification of Iraq--was that a good move? What of the fact that Iraqis still do not have reliable electricity--is that a good sign? What of the fact that our policy on detainees and interrogation became so muddled and laissez-faire that we ended up with hundreds of documented cases of prisoner abuse and torture at US detention facilities around the world--is that a good thing?
The overall effort is without direction. The overall effort is based on a nebulous concept of how the current administration would like to see American power exercised around the globe. The current plan is, as it has always been,
rooted in the basic hope that things will magically right themselves with just a little more perseverance and muscle. While the overall effort is decidedly good--our troops are performing incredibly well under extremely difficult conditions--the actual planning and execution is utterly abysmal. That is what has my hackles up--our leaders sent our finest into a situation that they didn't have any real plan for, beyond "make it all better". That is what disgusts me.
2) I have friends in Iraq that are glad to be there, because they have a sense of national pride, and a commitment to something other more than themselves.
As well they should be proud--they're fighting a noble cause! Ask your friends, though, if they feel like the powers that be know what they're doing. Ask your friends if they know what the road to victory is. Ask your friends how one distinguises friend from foe. You may find that, while they are justifiably proud of what they're doing, they feel some very real trepidation as to where the war is going, and what needs to be done to actually win the war.
The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. The simple and infuriating fact is that we're in Iraq with a wonderful, noble goal in mind--but without a plan as to how to get there, because our leaders assumed that the wonderful, noble goal would simply achieve itself once we removed Saddam. It could have worked, if only our leaders had planned for the day after. Now, we'll be genuinely lucky if Iraq doesn't sink into a protracted civil war and the rest of the region doesn't sink further into instability.
Slashdot Mirror
What if the reporter had discovered, through public sources and adding 2+2 together, that the CEO of Google has been battling a severely debilitating case of hydrophobia for years? Is that "fair game" for a front-page news article? Is there any standard we should hold Cnet to other than "it's legal, so go for it"?
Yes, CNet was completely within their legal rights to publish this information. What so many people fail or refuse to acknowledge, though, is that there's a gulf of difference between "legal" and "proper". Google isn't miffed because CNet broke the law; if they were, they'd have sued. Google is miffed because CNet published readily available but personal information about one of their employees for no good reason.
Mission Controller 1: What about the R.R.G.O.U.S.'s?
Mission Controller 2: Redundant Rate Gyros Of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist.
R.R.G.O.U.S: GRAAAAAAAAAAARRGGGHHHH!
I'll bet you're one of those guys who can't understand why people get so upset when you shine your laser pointer at the movie screen.
If thirty people are gathered in a room for the express purpose of taking a class, why should they put up with somebody engaging in distracting behavior? Or do you sincerely believe that a student playing a videogame in the front row is not a distraction? Do you think it'd be OK if he played a game of Solitare with real cards during class? How about if he were playing WoW instead of Solitare--sound off, of course?
Personally, I prefer the former solution. Good luck, Wikipedia!
That's quite an improvement, seeing as we all already have a roughly 1 in 7 chance of dying of cancer!
*shudder*
(I kid! I kid!)
1.3 million Rand? That's nearly 390,000 Pa'anga!
Yes.
Tune in next week, when Ask Slashdot tackles the following mind-boggling topic:
Quick and Dirty Ways To Drum Up Banner Ad Revenue
Ten years ago, a well-designed game concept + decent coding skills = nothing. Today, a well-designed game concept + decent coding skills = game.
Gamemaking tools are simply getting better. Computers are able to do more in less time. Today's gamemaker gets to spend a lot less time slogging through proprietary hardware APIs, interrupts and assembly code and a lot more time actually building the game. That's what counts the most.
You stated that "[g]overnment should only get funding from it's citizens for military, fire, police, and transportation."
What is it about those four categories that makes them special? Or, if you prefer, should we consider funding for military, fire, police and transportation and nothing else as being a key component of the ideal government, and why?
I'll bet the teams from Harverd, Berkely and NIT are quaking in their boots.
What makes these four categories special, in your mind?
Why should I be forced to subsidize a military apparatus which enforces a foreign policy I may or may not agree with?
Why should I pay taxes for a fire department that'll just waste money through endless rings of bureaucracy when I could hire a faster, more efficient and better private firefighting service for a fraction of the cost?
Why am I expected to chip in for a security force for the slums five miles from where I live, when I can easily afford my own bodyguards and home security service?
Why should I be required to throw my money away on highways I will never use running through wasteland over a thousand miles away?
While we're at it, and in all seriousness, explain why we should subsidize anything. Why draw that line at all?
So he's not saying one way or the other whether she was a NOC on that day...gotta watch them bureaucrats...always mincing words.
He could not comment on that because that information is quite probably still classified. Just because a covert operative's cover gets blown doesn't mean it's automatically OK to go around talking about that covert operative's activities; doing so could result in the exposure of even more classified information.
As for the parsing of Wilson's statements, sure, it could be read in a number of ways. One could divine, for example, that Joe Wilson is stupid enough to actually think that Robert Novak physically blew a big puff of air onto his wife's identity. One could also conclude that Wilson is claiming that Novak had oral sex with Plame's identity. One could even surmise that Wilson is suggesting that Plame was on a little 24-hour vacation from the whole clandestine agent thing, and that day just happened to be the same day that Novak outed her.
Of course, you'd need to be a mendacious ass bent on discrediting Joe Wilson by any means possible to even begin to think the sort of linguistic acrobatics detailed above are accurate representations of the point Joe Wilson was trying to get across.
Then again, if you want to play the quotes game, I'll give you a few to chew on, courtesy of the Associated Press:
Sept. 29, 2003 [White House Briefing]
Q: You said this morning, quote, "The president knows that Karl Rove wasn't involved." How does he know that?
A [Scott McClellan]: Well, I've made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place. ... I've said that it's not true. ... And I have spoken with Karl Rove.
Q: It doesn't take much for the president to ask a senior official working for him, to just lay the question out for a few people and end this controversy today.
A: Do you have specific information to bring to our attention? ... Are we supposed to chase down every anonymous report in the newspaper? We'd spend all our time doing that."
Q: When you talked to Mr. Rove, did you discuss, "Did you ever have this information?"
A: I've made it very clear, he was not involved, that there's no truth to the suggestion that he was.
A prime idea, that.
Of course, the folks at the wine store give me funny looks now, but they're just a bunch of snooty cheese-eaters.
Despite it being nearly eight years old, TA is still easily my favorite RTS game out there. In my humble opinion, no other RTS game before or since has managed to balance simplicity, depth, and strategy quite like TA did.
I'm looking forward to Supreme Commander with bated breath.
I know a number of people who posted lies as Anonymous Cowards and had their testicles explode. Absolute, unimpeachable fact, my friend.
I wouldn't be playing so fast and loose with the boys if I were you, AC.
Point taken--though it's a rough job of satire...
Just how much will I need to spend in order to keep watching TV once they ram this through?
(To Darryl Wilkinson, the author of TFA: At what point in your youth did you decide you wanted to grow up to be a condescending prick?)
Pssssh. Why not save yourself the trouble and simply have the money laundered?
Exactly.
He'll probably be thinking something more along the lines of "Oh dear GOD! It's like TEN THOUSAND TINY LITTLE RAZOR BLADES! OH, GOD, IT BURNS! AAAAAAAGH!!!"
In closing, always use old, crumpled $100 bills in a swimming pool.
I'm not applying my opinion to the rest of America. I'm deferring to The Gallup Organization.
I'll readily grant that polls aren't perfect--I used to work for a pollster, and I'm well aware of the pitfalls involved in this kind of thing--but I invite you to direct me towards a better metric of American popular opinion. I also invite you to refute the notion that the war in Iraq is losing, not gaining, support.
1) while I feel that some of the details of the original plan have become confused, the overall effort is good
"Some of the details"? We went to Iraq because we were told that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that an attack on the United States was imminent. Which part of that reason turned out to be right?
The overall effort, while rooted in good intentions, has been abysmal. Can you point to a single pre-invasion document or plan for what we would do once we had deposed Hussein and defeated the Iraqi armed forces? What about the disbanding of the Iraqi army--was that a good move? What of the aggressive de-Baathification of Iraq--was that a good move? What of the fact that Iraqis still do not have reliable electricity--is that a good sign? What of the fact that our policy on detainees and interrogation became so muddled and laissez-faire that we ended up with hundreds of documented cases of prisoner abuse and torture at US detention facilities around the world--is that a good thing?
The overall effort is without direction. The overall effort is based on a nebulous concept of how the current administration would like to see American power exercised around the globe. The current plan is, as it has always been, rooted in the basic hope that things will magically right themselves with just a little more perseverance and muscle. While the overall effort is decidedly good--our troops are performing incredibly well under extremely difficult conditions--the actual planning and execution is utterly abysmal. That is what has my hackles up--our leaders sent our finest into a situation that they didn't have any real plan for, beyond "make it all better". That is what disgusts me.
2) I have friends in Iraq that are glad to be there, because they have a sense of national pride, and a commitment to something other more than themselves.
As well they should be proud--they're fighting a noble cause! Ask your friends, though, if they feel like the powers that be know what they're doing. Ask your friends if they know what the road to victory is. Ask your friends how one distinguises friend from foe. You may find that, while they are justifiably proud of what they're doing, they feel some very real trepidation as to where the war is going, and what needs to be done to actually win the war.
The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. The simple and infuriating fact is that we're in Iraq with a wonderful, noble goal in mind--but without a plan as to how to get there, because our leaders assumed that the wonderful, noble goal would simply achieve itself once we removed Saddam. It could have worked, if only our leaders had planned for the day after. Now, we'll be genuinely lucky if Iraq doesn't sink into a protracted civil war and the rest of the region doesn't sink further into instability.
How does this not infuriate you?