Is it daily now that we get a story about how - the games industry is dying - there's no creativity in games any more - nobody's buying games - nobody likes games
?Huh?
Yet WoW has passed 6 million users, an utterly-unheard-of number in the MMOG world. The computer/electronic games industry (which didn't EXIST prior to what, 1975?) is now bigger than Hollywood. More people than ever play games, to the point that we're generationally reaching the point where the 'mainstream' of society are electronic gamers.
If this is failure, what's success?
Like any industry, in it's fledgling decade there was a great deal of innovation (much of it sucked), success (and failure), and a non-zero-sum universe of customers. There used to be companies like Studebaker, Packard, Nash, and Hudson, too. Like every industry, there are periods of innovation and expansion, and periods of consolidation and centralization. It's the capitalist equivalent of breathing.
If we're exhaling now (and I'm not convinced we are), relax. The industry will inhale soon enough.
Startups happen in clusters. There are a lot of them in Silicon Valley and Boston, and few in Chicago or Miami. A country that wants startups will probably also have to reproduce whatever makes these clusters form.
While I agree with the overall tenor of his presentation, starting with a number of begged questions weakens his argument.
1) Startups happen ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. He maybe right about 'clustering' when you're talking about certain industries, but in a country where The above paragraph makes a LOT more sense (and is factually more supportable) if instead of "Startups", you read "The cool trendy startups that we like to talk about". In fact, Raleigh-Durham and Austin are (like SFO) in the top quartile of VC investment but he doesn't seem to think they are "cool" enough to discuss.
2) "The US allows immigration, it is a rich country, it is not (yet) a police state..." Please. I'm sure the horse is dead, so you can stop beating it with your non sequitur stick. Anyone who connects the "US" and "police state" in a sentence merely illustrates how little they know about an actual police state. I understand it's very important to continue the shtick so PERHAPS your side has a chance to win an election sometime in the next half-dozen years, but you'd be much more persuasive if you left your political baggage at home with your pom-poms.
3) (Paraphrasing) "German Universities suck because there are no Jews there." That's just plain stupid. Aside from the overt racism of the statement, then why aren't we all heading pell-mell for the universities in Israel? Perhaps there's only a certain 'dose' of Jewishness that we need, and too much is somehow poisonous (hands waving dramatically)?
4) "You can fire people in America" - I think he's absolutely right, but isn't using our academic system a particularly BAD example? If he's willing to venture into the speculative fiction of the US becoming a police state, his omission here is the deletorious effect of Affirmative Action, and a litigious society where where a woman or minority is fired, their first thought is "hm, I wonder if it was my race/sex/preference/etc." and not "What did I do wrong?".
5) "In the US it's ok to be overtly ambitious, and in most of Europe it's not. But this can't be an intrinsically European quality; previous generations of Europeans were as ambitious as Americans. What happened?" They left Europe and came to America?
5) "Silicon Valley is too far from San Francisco....The best thing would be if the silicon valley were not merely closer to the interesting city, but interesting itself.... (The suburbs are) the worst sort of strip development...The kind of people you want to attract to your silicon valley like to get around by train, bicycle, and on foot." No projection there, no sir. Funny, I'd think that the people you'd want to attract people that are interesting, intuitive, hard working, conscientious people...not just smarmy, self-important, elitist black-clad coastal urbanites. I didn't realize Greenpeace membership is required for this job sir, would donating to the Nature Conservancy be enough? Pssst, Paul: there are a lot of interesting startups in what you'd call boring, flyover country. Telecommuting means that you can have outstanding information-based companies in Granite Falls, MN, Paragould, AR, or even Nampa, ID. In fact, a lot of people may even PREFER rural or small-town life, but they probably drive pickups or something (shudder).
6) Immigration - this is just utopian and thus nearly valueless. The US already has the most open immigration system (even in these days of leather-clad jackbooted thugs summarily executing everyone trying to enter the country). He spent the previous ten paragraphs talking about how the US system is unique, particularly because of its poor educational system compared to other countries, and then when discussing the US's requirement of a college degree for entry he uses examples of....Americans. Circularity anyone?
First character, Tauren Hunter essentially solo to 60. Second character, Gnome Warrior essentially solo to 52 (so far) Third char, Tauren Druid, ONLY play this character with my wife, so we've paired together every minute of this char's existence - to 29 so far. Fourth char, Undead Warlock to 19
Absolutely you're right, 60 content mostly sucks. I've done all the soloable quests (and a hunter is admirably capable of soloing things), and frankly now that accomplishing anything requires either hours upon hours of mindless grinding or a group of 39 other people, my hunter is 90% retired until the Outlands come out. I hope that the outlands will allow me to once again enjoy this character.
But one of the values of WoW is that you really get significantly different play experiences between different classes and races. At least below level 30. (And that's entirely disregarding the non-gameplay variations, like: - Barrens chat. There is no experience particularly like Barrens Chat anywhere else in the game. Maybe in AOL Chatrooms, but not in WoW. - The Ironforge waiting room - what's up with everyone leaving their 60s logged in standing around doing nothing? There is absolutely no parallel for this on the horde side on my server. Just wierd. - Alliance general lameness: sorry, but there's just no way around it. Part of it is the goody-two-shoes factor, I'm sure. I love playing my Gnome, but I'd defect to the Horde in a second if I could.
It's sort of interesting that 15 new devices made it in the building without anyone talking about it. "Hey, look what I found" "Mine is a gig!" "Me too!". They all put it in to see what's on it probably knowing it's against the rules and did it anyway.
Thus the the counterintuitively high 'value' to a social engineer (read: con-man) of and administration PROHIBITING something that's human nature.
Everyone will do it. Everyone knows they are not supposed to. Because it's 'wrong', nobody will tell anyone else. Thus even IF something is obviously wrong the inclination of the victim is to HIDE their own culpability for as long as possible, making the problem last much longer (until someone else notices) and the solution THAT much harder to implement.
(Rube: Hm. I put in that USB drive I found on the ground outside, now my computer is beeping and the hard drive is grinding away and my email is now running REALLY slowly...yikes, I'm going to get in trouble, I'll just 'disappear' the drive, call IT, and tell them something's funny with my computer." (IT guy shows up) "Hi, what's up?" Rube: I dunno, it just started doing that...)
[I'm against legalization, but there are strong parallels here to our Anti Drug laws, IMO.]
Logically in the case of the USB drives, a more tolerant, understanding policy that accepts human nature would be more secure. Something like - we don't mind if you install stuff from home, just get it cleared with the IS dept first.
You're still going to have rulebreakers, but if people don't think they're going to get in trouble for ANY violation, you have better conformance universally.
Perhaps all you'll need pretty soon to be productive is a machine with Linux installed & merely a good web browser?
You're omitting something: broadband.
There are a lot of people out there with computers and only crappy/no connections.
However, it's worth pointing out (as I'm sure Google has recognized), the VALUE of the non-connected market, in terms of productivity software, is not so great. Maybe Google simply concedes this to MS?
Really oddly written interview, which 'synopsizes' the answers for the first page, and then presents the interview in toto below. Just skip the summary and jump to the meat of the article at "Part II, the Complete Interview".
For the bulk of people familiar with MS Office but unhappy about the idea of paying $132 (for Office 2003) for a set of features the most of which they'll never even KNOW about much less use - OpenOffice is an outstanding choice.
Systems now have so much horsepower that the slight performance hit for OO vs. MSOffice is nearly imperceptible (although I would still think hard about whether I'd suggest it for a lower-end machine).
Frankly, the BSA and MicroSoft's antipiracy campaigns (as well as online validation) have been successful in this vein: where it would have been a no-brainer just to install the same copy of MS Office for grandma, cousin, brother, or friends,* now people seem to take licensing somewhat more seriously...and once they've already been ganked for $100+ for XP Home, they are more than willing to consider OO for FREE. Everyone I've installed it for has been very satisfied with it. So much so, in fact, that that "unspent" $100 in their pocket is usually (partly) spent on buying me a pizza for my work on their computer. That's better than I used to get.
* one wonders if MS ever asks themselves how they GOT to be the standard OS in the first place?
..more like "hysterically overblown science with little basis for their hyperbole but it sounds pretty cool..." ie the Weekly World News of Science.
When you consider that JUST in ONE LAKE (Yellowstone Lake) in a heavily-studied US national park: "...One park biodiversity expert believes that 99% of the park's microbes and 75% of its invertebrates remain undiscovered.", I guess I'd assume that these strange little structures are Earth-generated, before I'd start reaching to outer space for explanations of their origin.
...is that the 'public judgements' are being delivered by people so woefully ignorant about games. (Generally, having come from a full generation before games came out - say age 50+.)
The criticism of the 'lack of art value' in games is telling; in terms of human context, yes, there are morally bankrupt games (GTA-anything), as well as morally empty games (Bejeweled, Card games, etc.), but there are also a lot of deeply interesting and challenging games with interesting, engaging stories to tell. There are educationally valuable games that teach a LOT while entertaining: Europa Universalis 2 springs to mind.
Generally, critics seem to look only at the CRAP, without being willing to invest the time to find the good ones. Look, I could say the same thing about the movie industry: there are a LOT of people that like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, does that show by itself that movies as a medium are worthless? Does that invalidate Citizen Kane? Does Coven erase any value in To Kill a Mockingbird?
Anyone who enjoys games has no trouble coming up with games that are equally engaging (or even more than engaging - they are involving) as great films - naturally the most involving are RPGs such as Planescape Torment, System Shock 2, and Fallout.
But likewise, measuring computer games with the tools meant to measure a one-way medium such as movies is inherently flawed. Likewise, the genre-spread of video games is (I would argue) beyond that of films. Civilization? Dance Dance Revolution? Yes, maybe one or both don't particularly appeal to a single person. But would that person be a fair judge of movies if she loved Westerns but only saw French Lesbian Bondage films? Perhaps not all computer games offer deep ethical conflicts, but there is no WAY that people could fault either of these (for example) as entertainment. Not rationally, anyway.
For a 50+ (or 60+ *cough* ROGER EBERT *cough*) who has NEVER spent any time actually, seriously, playing games to offer his 'educated opinion' about computer games as a medium would be as stupid as someone reviewing the value of movies after being forced to watch "From Justin to Kelly". His opinion should be valued similarly.
Talk about begging the question. Or staggering disingenuity.
"We've got to make this transition, which our industry is making, from software as a product to software as a service... If you want to be a leading software company, you've got to be a leading software-as-a-service company."
Software-as-service (ie charge me every time I use it) instead of Software-as-product (ie I buy it and OWN it forever). Sound vaguely familiar?
Mr Ballmer, see, it's not that the industry is making this mystical transition. YOU'RE DRIVING IT, DUMBASS.
How ridiculous is it to be desperately trying to catch up to your own policy?
That would be like the RIAA complaining that it's trying to keep up with "...all this complicated DRM technology..."
I see everything in the comments ranging from "Americans are just getting too stupid" to (classic for/.) "it's teh Debbil George Bush and the demon Rove making this happen".
Sure, lately it's wrapped in a 'fear of terrorism' cloak, but is this anything but the logically extrapolated point of where we've BEEN going for the last 50 years?
Ever LOOK at a current chemistry set for say a young high-schooler? THEY SUCK. It's got these impenetrably child-proof capped chemical bottles, micro-amounts of anything, and very little in there more dangerous than sodium chloride.
No, while I understand the propensity of shallow people (ala Wired) to turn this into a subject with which they can make conveniently trendy political attacks on an unpopular administration, the fact is that we've been turning into a litigiously-driven culture of fear for decades.
(Tangentially but not irrelevant to the discussion is the world of our children. I don't know about you, but most of my model rocketry and early.... ahem... pyrotechnic experiments were done by my friends and I with no adults around. Usually we flew our planes and rockets in a nearby meadow, while spending hours and hours unsupervised, roaming the neighborhood in summer. Having heard just this morning on the local news of a 13 year old boy being abducted and tortured for 7 hours by 2 men (and knowing our seive-like judicial system) - who's going to leave their kids unsupervised and unwatched for hours anymore?)
You want people to go into the sciences? Fine: somehow make it so that if a stupid kid jabs himself with a pipette in the eye, he somehow doesn't get to sue the pipette manufacturer. Make it so that if Jenny wants to build a model rocket or airplane, she can fly it without fear of a multi-bajillion dollar suit if the rocket breaks cranky Mrs. Finster's bay window.
Sometimes to learn, you have to have the freedom to experiment. Sometimes, the experiments can be mildly dangerous. In a society whose lawyers have designed it so that they can wring maximum financial gain, er, "justice" from every little risk, does it surprise ANYONE that this is having a stultifying effect on the sciences in the US?
All well and good for him to say that, but at least here in the US, part of the very typical group dynamic is an exclusive sense of elitism even if the group is relatively 'low' on the social dominance scale.
Thus rather than saying "OK, we need to broaden our appeal, let's try to get lots of people gaming!" (a message that would of course appeal to a BUSINESS selling good to the identified market segment), the members of the group behave rudely, and reject any broadening of the franchise to "outsiders".
Look, for example, at the level of scorn directed at casual players of World of Warcraft by 'hardcore' players in-game. Or (for a broader, but similar example) the sneers of derision by/.ers at people who find Windows XP perfectly adequate. The 'geek hierarchy' writ large.
Sure, it's a defensive reaction based entirely on protecting the ego. The lame geek KNOWS he lives in his parents' basement, KNOWS that while spending 12 hours a day playing a video game he's missing out on other social activities that are widely considered to be more constructive, KNOWS that virtual wish-fulfillment might be very satisfying, but really doesn't compare to actually accomplishing anything.
But to welcome in the unwashed masses into his 'world'? That would be to at least partially accept their 'yardstick' of normalcy, against which his self-image would measure smaller. Who would welcome that?
TIVO is already making a hash of the 'free television' model.
What happens when someone can have locally an mp3 playlist that rivals that of a local radio station? At least with TV, there is a constant flow of new content - good radio stations too. But most radio is just replaying over and over a list of probably well under 300 songs, with a weekly turnover of what, 5% or less?
Hollywood has (almost) no new ideas. Aside from remaking '50s and '60s sitcoms as feature-length films, and making the umpteenth sequel of a previously successful franchise, the only possibility left that uses even LESS imagination would be the wholesale re-release of films.
Look, I loved Blade Runner. It's still one of my very favorite movies. BUT ENOUGH ALREADY.
We need a "Death with Dignity" movement for plot lines.
You were expelled, but you haven't really learned anything, have you? You're too busy being a victim to think clearly.
Your post reeks of the peculiar combination of egoism and sophomoric condescension found generally in the young. Particularly the young that are still living with their parents, so they aren't exposed to simple realities like rent, paying for food/car/utilities, or that - in for the rest of your life, in MOST CASES, other people* have a great deal of control over one's life. It's called "society". * people that don't care about you, your feelings, your 'rights', or your opinions
Schools ARE an element of social control...what you call "control", most of the rest of us would call socialization. Yes, you HAVE to learn how to get along with others - most of life isn't posting anonymously on a web page, and in most of REAL LIFE (academia excepted, apparently) you will suffer consequences for your actions. Write in your blog about what a jerk your boss is? Then don't play the drama queen when he fires your ass. Tell everyone what a loser your coworker is? Don't be shocked when you find out in a couple years that he's screwed you royally behind your back.
Oh, and your landlord won't give a shit about your 'rights' or what's 'fair'. If you don't pay him, you're out on your ass.
Abandoning compulsory education - brilliant idea! Libraries can be used for reading... why didn't anyone ELSE think of that? Oh wait: because it's stupid. Do you have any idea how much work it takes to educate a child? Do you think that if you plunk a 2 year old on the floor of a library, come back in 4-5 years they'll somehow automagically know how to read?
I'll direct you to do some research on the German Kinderschule experiments in the 70's. Essentially, they let kindergarten or pre-school age kids 'learn at their own speed' (i.e. play) for up to 3 years (most were only 1 year, IIRC) - at the end, they found (predictably, in my view) that none of them had learned anything at all. [sorry no link, I'd read about this in my college days 20 years ago]
I like your ideas of getting business and other resources involved in education, that's great and already is happening in more enlightened, opportunistic districts.
But please, don't go through life depending on your own rationalizations: you weren't kicked out of school 'because you're capable of independent thought'. As necessary as that may be to your fragile self-image, the truth is simpler, even according to your own account: you acted like a classic, self-centered teen. You downloaded the SSH client - a violation, as you admit. Then you made an agreement, but you broke it (you neatly skip past that part). Who cares if they have a webfilter? Did you buy the computers? Your parents' tax dollars probably paid for them, yes, but then again their votes put in the schoolboard... that wrote the policy that got you expelled.
Last time I checked, you should be spending your time at school doing other, better things than thinking about how to circumvent a web filter. I may even AGREE with you that people should be allowed to read Noam Chomsky (if only to realize what an idiotic, hypocritical prima-donna he is). I'm going to take a wild guess and suggest that if you'd researched your case, and made a PERSUASIVE (as opposed to 'petulant') argument, they'd have let you present your views to the school board, and you'd probably be HERALDED as a fine example of what an intelligent, clever kid could achieve. You might have even changed their minds. And ultimately, you have to look inside yourself and decide which is more important: making the change you CLAIM is your goal, or some pointless public ego-masturbation? Because your actions sure sound like the latter, not the former.
You were impatient and impetuous. Those are the same two motivations that get raccoons killed on the highway - nobody calls them heroes, either.
Yup. Someone once explained the heliopause neatly by pointing to the splash-disk of water in a sink, with the tap turned on full. The water coming from the tap pushes out, while the water already in the sink is trying to return to the middle to go down the drain.
Hence, you get a 'circle' where the energy of the tap water (coming out from the center) = the energy of the material trying to fall back into the center. The circle isn't perfect; it moves as the tap outpouring is not uniform and varies quite a bit.
It's actually a pretty good analogy, since the topagraphy of the sink (as a parallel to the gravity environment) also affects that 'circle' significantly.
Much like that, I suspect that the heliopause is hardly static; it probably bulges and deflates dynamically with solar activity (once that reaches the periphery, of course).
Only in/. (or democraticunderground) would this load of bollocks be listed as "insightful".
1) Judges and laws restrict what you can say ALL THE TIME. Libel, slander, and defamation are all forms of speech control. Perfectly ok then for me to go around to your neighbors, boss, spouse, and tell them whatever I want about you?
2) You want to be able to freely reveal information about others? I hope this means you will NEVER have a job in any position which can see my data, ala a bank, a hospital, or any human resources position. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you'd object to someone handing your list of library books, or your last drug test, or perhaps your list of political affiliations/donations to the FBI? Priviledged private information? You feel entitled to exercise your moral choice and freely reveal secret information, why couldn't someone else with different politics do the same with YOUR information?
3) "the worst terrorists are those with the worst weapons" What absolute nonsense. It's this sort of non-sequitur crap that people posting anonymously into an internet forum think that they can get away with, because it floats so well with their like-minded friends. It's an absurd statement, logically. So the elected leaders of France, with thermonuclear weapons, are worse terrorists than the thugs of Beslan that deliberately shot and blew up CHILDREN? You're either being disingenuous to sound clever, or have such a skewed sense of priorities as to be certifiable.
I understand that it's delightful fun riding one's moral high-horse, but one should also think first, to make sure there's only one ass on the horse he's riding.
Also worth noting, our ancestors have lived through a number of polar reversals, and we're still here, so no need to fret!
We've also lived through much warmer temperatures (& much colder, for that matter) - that doesn't make Greenpeace/Al Gore/EnviroChickens STFU, does it?
Slashdot Mirror
Is it daily now that we get a story about how
- the games industry is dying
- there's no creativity in games any more
- nobody's buying games
- nobody likes games
?Huh?
Yet WoW has passed 6 million users, an utterly-unheard-of number in the MMOG world. The computer/electronic games industry (which didn't EXIST prior to what, 1975?) is now bigger than Hollywood. More people than ever play games, to the point that we're generationally reaching the point where the 'mainstream' of society are electronic gamers.
If this is failure, what's success?
Like any industry, in it's fledgling decade there was a great deal of innovation (much of it sucked), success (and failure), and a non-zero-sum universe of customers. There used to be companies like Studebaker, Packard, Nash, and Hudson, too. Like every industry, there are periods of innovation and expansion, and periods of consolidation and centralization. It's the capitalist equivalent of breathing.
If we're exhaling now (and I'm not convinced we are), relax. The industry will inhale soon enough.
I just got a wave of mails in my gmail box that are from random senders, with multiple small 1-4k attachements.
Anyone have any idea if this works on/through gmail too?
Startups happen in clusters. There are a lot of them in Silicon Valley and Boston, and few in Chicago or Miami. A country that wants startups will probably also have to reproduce whatever makes these clusters form.
While I agree with the overall tenor of his presentation, starting with a number of begged questions weakens his argument.
1) Startups happen ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. He maybe right about 'clustering' when you're talking about certain industries, but in a country where The above paragraph makes a LOT more sense (and is factually more supportable) if instead of "Startups", you read "The cool trendy startups that we like to talk about". In fact, Raleigh-Durham and Austin are (like SFO) in the top quartile of VC investment but he doesn't seem to think they are "cool" enough to discuss.
2) "The US allows immigration, it is a rich country, it is not (yet) a police state..."
Please. I'm sure the horse is dead, so you can stop beating it with your non sequitur stick. Anyone who connects the "US" and "police state" in a sentence merely illustrates how little they know about an actual police state. I understand it's very important to continue the shtick so PERHAPS your side has a chance to win an election sometime in the next half-dozen years, but you'd be much more persuasive if you left your political baggage at home with your pom-poms.
3) (Paraphrasing) "German Universities suck because there are no Jews there." That's just plain stupid. Aside from the overt racism of the statement, then why aren't we all heading pell-mell for the universities in Israel? Perhaps there's only a certain 'dose' of Jewishness that we need, and too much is somehow poisonous (hands waving dramatically)?
4) "You can fire people in America" - I think he's absolutely right, but isn't using our academic system a particularly BAD example? If he's willing to venture into the speculative fiction of the US becoming a police state, his omission here is the deletorious effect of Affirmative Action, and a litigious society where where a woman or minority is fired, their first thought is "hm, I wonder if it was my race/sex/preference/etc." and not "What did I do wrong?".
5) "In the US it's ok to be overtly ambitious, and in most of Europe it's not. But this can't be an intrinsically European quality; previous generations of Europeans were as ambitious as Americans. What happened?" They left Europe and came to America?
5) "Silicon Valley is too far from San Francisco....The best thing would be if the silicon valley were not merely closer to the interesting city, but interesting itself.... (The suburbs are) the worst sort of strip development...The kind of people you want to attract to your silicon valley like to get around by train, bicycle, and on foot." No projection there, no sir. Funny, I'd think that the people you'd want to attract people that are interesting, intuitive, hard working, conscientious people...not just smarmy, self-important, elitist black-clad coastal urbanites. I didn't realize Greenpeace membership is required for this job sir, would donating to the Nature Conservancy be enough?
Pssst, Paul: there are a lot of interesting startups in what you'd call boring, flyover country. Telecommuting means that you can have outstanding information-based companies in Granite Falls, MN, Paragould, AR, or even Nampa, ID. In fact, a lot of people may even PREFER rural or small-town life, but they probably drive pickups or something (shudder).
6) Immigration - this is just utopian and thus nearly valueless. The US already has the most open immigration system (even in these days of leather-clad jackbooted thugs summarily executing everyone trying to enter the country). He spent the previous ten paragraphs talking about how the US system is unique, particularly because of its poor educational system compared to other countries, and then when discussing the US's requirement of a college degree for entry he uses examples of....Americans. Circularity anyone?
We (the undersigned) endorse and approve of this message.
- J. V. Stalin
- Chairman Mao Tse-Tung
- Pol Pot
- Kim Jong-il
- Robert Mugabe
FWIW that IS WoW, until you hit 60.
First character, Tauren Hunter essentially solo to 60.
Second character, Gnome Warrior essentially solo to 52 (so far)
Third char, Tauren Druid, ONLY play this character with my wife, so we've paired together every minute of this char's existence - to 29 so far.
Fourth char, Undead Warlock to 19
Absolutely you're right, 60 content mostly sucks. I've done all the soloable quests (and a hunter is admirably capable of soloing things), and frankly now that accomplishing anything requires either hours upon hours of mindless grinding or a group of 39 other people, my hunter is 90% retired until the Outlands come out. I hope that the outlands will allow me to once again enjoy this character.
But one of the values of WoW is that you really get significantly different play experiences between different classes and races. At least below level 30. (And that's entirely disregarding the non-gameplay variations, like:
- Barrens chat. There is no experience particularly like Barrens Chat anywhere else in the game. Maybe in AOL Chatrooms, but not in WoW.
- The Ironforge waiting room - what's up with everyone leaving their 60s logged in standing around doing nothing? There is absolutely no parallel for this on the horde side on my server. Just wierd.
- Alliance general lameness: sorry, but there's just no way around it. Part of it is the goody-two-shoes factor, I'm sure. I love playing my Gnome, but I'd defect to the Horde in a second if I could.
It's sort of interesting that 15 new devices made it in the building without anyone talking about it. "Hey, look what I found" "Mine is a gig!" "Me too!". They all put it in to see what's on it probably knowing it's against the rules and did it anyway.
Thus the the counterintuitively high 'value' to a social engineer (read: con-man) of and administration PROHIBITING something that's human nature.
Everyone will do it.
Everyone knows they are not supposed to.
Because it's 'wrong', nobody will tell anyone else.
Thus even IF something is obviously wrong the inclination of the victim is to HIDE their own culpability for as long as possible, making the problem last much longer (until someone else notices) and the solution THAT much harder to implement.
(Rube: Hm. I put in that USB drive I found on the ground outside, now my computer is beeping and the hard drive is grinding away and my email is now running REALLY slowly...yikes, I'm going to get in trouble, I'll just 'disappear' the drive, call IT, and tell them something's funny with my computer."
(IT guy shows up) "Hi, what's up?"
Rube: I dunno, it just started doing that...)
[I'm against legalization, but there are strong parallels here to our Anti Drug laws, IMO.]
Logically in the case of the USB drives, a more tolerant, understanding policy that accepts human nature would be more secure. Something like - we don't mind if you install stuff from home, just get it cleared with the IS dept first.
You're still going to have rulebreakers, but if people don't think they're going to get in trouble for ANY violation, you have better conformance universally.
from TFA: "The kids also have a common play area--with a real tree"
I'm not sure whether this makes me laugh or cry.
Perhaps all you'll need pretty soon to be productive is a machine with Linux installed & merely a good web browser?
You're omitting something: broadband.
There are a lot of people out there with computers and only crappy/no connections.
However, it's worth pointing out (as I'm sure Google has recognized), the VALUE of the non-connected market, in terms of productivity software, is not so great. Maybe Google simply concedes this to MS?
(FWIW I agree with your extrapolation.)
Really oddly written interview, which 'synopsizes' the answers for the first page, and then presents the interview in toto below. Just skip the summary and jump to the meat of the article at "Part II, the Complete Interview".
For the bulk of people familiar with MS Office but unhappy about the idea of paying $132 (for Office 2003) for a set of features the most of which they'll never even KNOW about much less use - OpenOffice is an outstanding choice.
Systems now have so much horsepower that the slight performance hit for OO vs. MSOffice is nearly imperceptible (although I would still think hard about whether I'd suggest it for a lower-end machine).
Frankly, the BSA and MicroSoft's antipiracy campaigns (as well as online validation) have been successful in this vein: where it would have been a no-brainer just to install the same copy of MS Office for grandma, cousin, brother, or friends,* now people seem to take licensing somewhat more seriously...and once they've already been ganked for $100+ for XP Home, they are more than willing to consider OO for FREE. Everyone I've installed it for has been very satisfied with it. So much so, in fact, that that "unspent" $100 in their pocket is usually (partly) spent on buying me a pizza for my work on their computer. That's better than I used to get.
* one wonders if MS ever asks themselves how they GOT to be the standard OS in the first place?
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..more like "hysterically overblown science with little basis for their hyperbole but it sounds pretty cool..." ie the Weekly World News of Science.
When you consider that JUST in ONE LAKE (Yellowstone Lake) in a heavily-studied US national park: "...One park biodiversity expert believes that 99% of the park's microbes and 75% of its invertebrates remain undiscovered.", I guess I'd assume that these strange little structures are Earth-generated, before I'd start reaching to outer space for explanations of their origin.
...is that the 'public judgements' are being delivered by people so woefully ignorant about games. (Generally, having come from a full generation before games came out - say age 50+.)
The criticism of the 'lack of art value' in games is telling; in terms of human context, yes, there are morally bankrupt games (GTA-anything), as well as morally empty games (Bejeweled, Card games, etc.), but there are also a lot of deeply interesting and challenging games with interesting, engaging stories to tell. There are educationally valuable games that teach a LOT while entertaining: Europa Universalis 2 springs to mind.
Generally, critics seem to look only at the CRAP, without being willing to invest the time to find the good ones. Look, I could say the same thing about the movie industry: there are a LOT of people that like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, does that show by itself that movies as a medium are worthless? Does that invalidate Citizen Kane? Does Coven erase any value in To Kill a Mockingbird?
Anyone who enjoys games has no trouble coming up with games that are equally engaging (or even more than engaging - they are involving) as great films - naturally the most involving are RPGs such as Planescape Torment, System Shock 2, and Fallout.
But likewise, measuring computer games with the tools meant to measure a one-way medium such as movies is inherently flawed. Likewise, the genre-spread of video games is (I would argue) beyond that of films. Civilization? Dance Dance Revolution? Yes, maybe one or both don't particularly appeal to a single person. But would that person be a fair judge of movies if she loved Westerns but only saw French Lesbian Bondage films? Perhaps not all computer games offer deep ethical conflicts, but there is no WAY that people could fault either of these (for example) as entertainment. Not rationally, anyway.
For a 50+ (or 60+ *cough* ROGER EBERT *cough*) who has NEVER spent any time actually, seriously, playing games to offer his 'educated opinion' about computer games as a medium would be as stupid as someone reviewing the value of movies after being forced to watch "From Justin to Kelly". His opinion should be valued similarly.
Firefox 1.5.0.3 to 1.5.0.4 = 511kb on my Win98 box.
Talk about begging the question. Or staggering disingenuity.
... If you want to be a leading software company, you've got to be a leading software-as-a-service company."
"We've got to make this transition, which our industry is making, from software as a product to software as a service
Software-as-service (ie charge me every time I use it) instead of Software-as-product (ie I buy it and OWN it forever). Sound vaguely familiar?
Mr Ballmer, see, it's not that the industry is making this mystical transition. YOU'RE DRIVING IT, DUMBASS.
How ridiculous is it to be desperately trying to catch up to your own policy?
That would be like the RIAA complaining that it's trying to keep up with "...all this complicated DRM technology..."
I see everything in the comments ranging from "Americans are just getting too stupid" to (classic for /.) "it's teh Debbil George Bush and the demon Rove making this happen".
.... ahem ... pyrotechnic experiments were done by my friends and I with no adults around. Usually we flew our planes and rockets in a nearby meadow, while spending hours and hours unsupervised, roaming the neighborhood in summer. Having heard just this morning on the local news of a 13 year old boy being abducted and tortured for 7 hours by 2 men (and knowing our seive-like judicial system) - who's going to leave their kids unsupervised and unwatched for hours anymore?)
Sure, lately it's wrapped in a 'fear of terrorism' cloak, but is this anything but the logically extrapolated point of where we've BEEN going for the last 50 years?
Ever LOOK at a current chemistry set for say a young high-schooler? THEY SUCK. It's got these impenetrably child-proof capped chemical bottles, micro-amounts of anything, and very little in there more dangerous than sodium chloride.
No, while I understand the propensity of shallow people (ala Wired) to turn this into a subject with which they can make conveniently trendy political attacks on an unpopular administration, the fact is that we've been turning into a litigiously-driven culture of fear for decades.
(Tangentially but not irrelevant to the discussion is the world of our children. I don't know about you, but most of my model rocketry and early
You want people to go into the sciences? Fine: somehow make it so that if a stupid kid jabs himself with a pipette in the eye, he somehow doesn't get to sue the pipette manufacturer. Make it so that if Jenny wants to build a model rocket or airplane, she can fly it without fear of a multi-bajillion dollar suit if the rocket breaks cranky Mrs. Finster's bay window.
Sometimes to learn, you have to have the freedom to experiment. Sometimes, the experiments can be mildly dangerous. In a society whose lawyers have designed it so that they can wring maximum financial gain, er, "justice" from every little risk, does it surprise ANYONE that this is having a stultifying effect on the sciences in the US?
All well and good for him to say that, but at least here in the US, part of the very typical group dynamic is an exclusive sense of elitism even if the group is relatively 'low' on the social dominance scale.
/.ers at people who find Windows XP perfectly adequate. The 'geek hierarchy' writ large.
Thus rather than saying "OK, we need to broaden our appeal, let's try to get lots of people gaming!" (a message that would of course appeal to a BUSINESS selling good to the identified market segment), the members of the group behave rudely, and reject any broadening of the franchise to "outsiders".
Look, for example, at the level of scorn directed at casual players of World of Warcraft by 'hardcore' players in-game. Or (for a broader, but similar example) the sneers of derision by
Sure, it's a defensive reaction based entirely on protecting the ego. The lame geek KNOWS he lives in his parents' basement, KNOWS that while spending 12 hours a day playing a video game he's missing out on other social activities that are widely considered to be more constructive, KNOWS that virtual wish-fulfillment might be very satisfying, but really doesn't compare to actually accomplishing anything.
But to welcome in the unwashed masses into his 'world'? That would be to at least partially accept their 'yardstick' of normalcy, against which his self-image would measure smaller. Who would welcome that?
Dead or Alive Extra Booby Breast Physics
So...has this been announced yet?
I'm sorry, did you say something else too?
TIVO is already making a hash of the 'free television' model.
What happens when someone can have locally an mp3 playlist that rivals that of a local radio station? At least with TV, there is a constant flow of new content - good radio stations too. But most radio is just replaying over and over a list of probably well under 300 songs, with a weekly turnover of what, 5% or less?
Hollywood has (almost) no new ideas.
Aside from remaking '50s and '60s sitcoms as feature-length films, and making the umpteenth sequel of a previously successful franchise, the only possibility left that uses even LESS imagination would be the wholesale re-release of films.
Look, I loved Blade Runner. It's still one of my very favorite movies. BUT ENOUGH ALREADY.
We need a "Death with Dignity" movement for plot lines.
You were expelled, but you haven't really learned anything, have you? You're too busy being a victim to think clearly.
... why didn't anyone ELSE think of that? Oh wait: because it's stupid. Do you have any idea how much work it takes to educate a child? Do you think that if you plunk a 2 year old on the floor of a library, come back in 4-5 years they'll somehow automagically know how to read?
... that wrote the policy that got you expelled.
Your post reeks of the peculiar combination of egoism and sophomoric condescension found generally in the young. Particularly the young that are still living with their parents, so they aren't exposed to simple realities like rent, paying for food/car/utilities, or that - in for the rest of your life, in MOST CASES, other people* have a great deal of control over one's life. It's called "society".
* people that don't care about you, your feelings, your 'rights', or your opinions
Schools ARE an element of social control...what you call "control", most of the rest of us would call socialization. Yes, you HAVE to learn how to get along with others - most of life isn't posting anonymously on a web page, and in most of REAL LIFE (academia excepted, apparently) you will suffer consequences for your actions. Write in your blog about what a jerk your boss is? Then don't play the drama queen when he fires your ass. Tell everyone what a loser your coworker is? Don't be shocked when you find out in a couple years that he's screwed you royally behind your back.
Oh, and your landlord won't give a shit about your 'rights' or what's 'fair'. If you don't pay him, you're out on your ass.
Abandoning compulsory education - brilliant idea! Libraries can be used for reading
I'll direct you to do some research on the German Kinderschule experiments in the 70's. Essentially, they let kindergarten or pre-school age kids 'learn at their own speed' (i.e. play) for up to 3 years (most were only 1 year, IIRC) - at the end, they found (predictably, in my view) that none of them had learned anything at all. [sorry no link, I'd read about this in my college days 20 years ago]
I like your ideas of getting business and other resources involved in education, that's great and already is happening in more enlightened, opportunistic districts.
But please, don't go through life depending on your own rationalizations: you weren't kicked out of school 'because you're capable of independent thought'. As necessary as that may be to your fragile self-image, the truth is simpler, even according to your own account: you acted like a classic, self-centered teen. You downloaded the SSH client - a violation, as you admit. Then you made an agreement, but you broke it (you neatly skip past that part). Who cares if they have a webfilter? Did you buy the computers? Your parents' tax dollars probably paid for them, yes, but then again their votes put in the schoolboard
Last time I checked, you should be spending your time at school doing other, better things than thinking about how to circumvent a web filter. I may even AGREE with you that people should be allowed to read Noam Chomsky (if only to realize what an idiotic, hypocritical prima-donna he is). I'm going to take a wild guess and suggest that if you'd researched your case, and made a PERSUASIVE (as opposed to 'petulant') argument, they'd have let you present your views to the school board, and you'd probably be HERALDED as a fine example of what an intelligent, clever kid could achieve. You might have even changed their minds. And ultimately, you have to look inside yourself and decide which is more important: making the change you CLAIM is your goal, or some pointless public ego-masturbation? Because your actions sure sound like the latter, not the former.
You were impatient and impetuous. Those are the same two motivations that get raccoons killed on the highway - nobody calls them heroes, either.
You're not a 'free thinker'. You're
It's probably only worth 50-60 silver.
Yup.
Someone once explained the heliopause neatly by pointing to the splash-disk of water in a sink, with the tap turned on full. The water coming from the tap pushes out, while the water already in the sink is trying to return to the middle to go down the drain.
Hence, you get a 'circle' where the energy of the tap water (coming out from the center) = the energy of the material trying to fall back into the center. The circle isn't perfect; it moves as the tap outpouring is not uniform and varies quite a bit.
It's actually a pretty good analogy, since the topagraphy of the sink (as a parallel to the gravity environment) also affects that 'circle' significantly.
Much like that, I suspect that the heliopause is hardly static; it probably bulges and deflates dynamically with solar activity (once that reaches the periphery, of course).
Only in /. (or democraticunderground) would this load of bollocks be listed as "insightful".
1) Judges and laws restrict what you can say ALL THE TIME. Libel, slander, and defamation are all forms of speech control. Perfectly ok then for me to go around to your neighbors, boss, spouse, and tell them whatever I want about you?
2) You want to be able to freely reveal information about others? I hope this means you will NEVER have a job in any position which can see my data, ala a bank, a hospital, or any human resources position. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you'd object to someone handing your list of library books, or your last drug test, or perhaps your list of political affiliations/donations to the FBI? Priviledged private information? You feel entitled to exercise your moral choice and freely reveal secret information, why couldn't someone else with different politics do the same with YOUR information?
3) "the worst terrorists are those with the worst weapons" What absolute nonsense. It's this sort of non-sequitur crap that people posting anonymously into an internet forum think that they can get away with, because it floats so well with their like-minded friends. It's an absurd statement, logically. So the elected leaders of France, with thermonuclear weapons, are worse terrorists than the thugs of Beslan that deliberately shot and blew up CHILDREN? You're either being disingenuous to sound clever, or have such a skewed sense of priorities as to be certifiable.
I understand that it's delightful fun riding one's moral high-horse, but one should also think first, to make sure there's only one ass on the horse he's riding.
Also worth noting, our ancestors have lived through a number of polar reversals, and we're still here, so no need to fret!
We've also lived through much warmer temperatures (& much colder, for that matter) - that doesn't make Greenpeace/Al Gore/EnviroChickens STFU, does it?