Microsoft has the most secure operating system amongst its commercial competitors.
Hello Captain Obvious - Microsoft has no (viable) commercial competitors.
OS/2 died long ago. Macs don't actually compete with Microsoft (their user base not only
doesn't overlap much, but largely counts as antagonistic toward one another). Linux
and BSD don't count as "commercial" OSes, however much Novell and RedHat might want to pretend.
What exactly does that leave?
I believe that if people don't have a right to make money
off of media they create they'll just stop creating it,
You can believe anything you want, but all of human history up
to the past few centuries has proven that idea false. People
create because we use it as a form of expression. The fact that
we can get paid, for doing something we'd do anyway, just adds
frosting to the cake.
If you don't like the historical argument, though, you have
counterexamples even in the present. Go to any local club on
a Friday or Saturday night. See those guys up on stage? They'll
probably make enough to cover their bar tab. They play because
they love doing it, not because they plan to make a killing off it.
Some minor-celebrity local groups might scrounge a
living out of it playing full-time. But again, frosting, not the
cake itself.
for trying to protect their abilities to pay their mortgages
and feed their children.
You mean the same artists that need to repeatedly SUE their labels
to get even the meagre compensation guaranteed them by contract?
Yeah, can you hear the violins?
but I don't think what Google/YouTube is doing is right.
Slapping users on the wrists and deletinginfringing videos
obviously isn't enough to deter infringement.
In a FEW situations (full pre-release TV episodes,) GooTube
has some grossly infringing content. That represents a problem they
need to address.
For the vast majority of the rest, calling it "infringement" amounts
to saying we don't have the right to our own culture.
The crappy low-quality content on YouTube won't deprive anyone of
sales. If anything, it will increase sales by reminding
people of little bits of their past which they want to recapture
(eg, cheesy 80's videos and saturday morning cartoons); It gives
the best possible advertising for shows like The Colbert Report;
It lets us all make fun of the latest absurdity uttered by the
president (or Pelosi, Boxer, or [insert your least favorite politician
here], they all count as pretty much equally worthless). Unfortunately,
copyright law doesn't care about that - It cares only that
the copyright holder (rarely the "artist", so don't even go there)
didn't give permission. That must change if copyright will
survive the next few years with any meaning at all.
And if we don't see a massive copyright reform in the near
future? Well... Ask any 16YO whether or not they consider it "wrong"
to copy a CD. Copyright has fallen to the level of speeding as a socially-acceptible crime; we all know we might get caught, we all
do it anyway, and we don't care. Except, rather than a $150 fine,
you can get a $150,000 fine. Ouch.
would case-law still be deemed to have been made? The only reason for dropping cases
that aren't going favourably could be to avoid case-law being made.
IANAL, of course. But as I understand it, this wouldn't do much to create an
anti-RIAA "case law" anyway, even if she flat-out wins.
Simply put, the RIAA has squat while she has an overwhelming abundance of evidence
in her favor. While we may suspect the same conditions apply in at least a few of
the other RIAA suits, I really have little doubt that the vast majority of people
the RIAA has sued really did share music.
At best, this might set a precedent for the RIAA paying when proven wrong. That
might tighten up the set of cases they actually take beyond the fire-and-forget
extortion request stage, but they'll still have no shortage of "guilty" targets
to keep going after.
The core problem here comes from copyright law that treats a nearly ubiquitous,
noncommercial act as a rather severe (usually civil) offense. As much as we
may object to the RIAA's tactics, they unfortunately have the luxury of picking
the fattest fish from a barrel, and have the law (basically) on their side. In
this particular suit, they went too far, but that won't generalize well.
You missed the point. I'm that responsible parent. If Sony can't provide a way for
parents to lock their kids out of unacceptable content, then many people will never
purchase the device.
Wrong.
You count as a tech-saavy parent. Most parents have absolutely no frickin'
clue that the current gen of gaming consoles can let little Billy get porn easier
than sneaking a peak at Dad's "Hustler" collection.
You not buying a PS3 for that reason amounts to a piddling little drop in a great
big bucket. Can you hear Sony crying? Neither can they, as the 947 other people
for every one of you, buy it for that reason.
Shameless plug: I sell domains and hosting services and offer a appraisal service
Not looking for insider secrets or anything, but in general, on what basis do you
appraise a domain?
Obviously a popular word (like the infamous "sex.com" domain) might fetch a good penny,
but for most of them, the value would seem to depend entirely on having a buyer
before-the-fact. Unlike jewelry, domains don't count as fungible.
My guess is that he was saying 75,000 MILES, 120,000 MILES and
90,000 MILES, not kilometers.
Now who's the one that's pretty damn stupid?
Even given those corrections, his final point still stands - Would you
buy another car that lasted only 75,000 miles?
I've owned a pretty random collection of cars in my life, and have yet to
have one last less than 100,000 miles (except the one I utterly obliterated
around a tree - And it had recently passed 80,000). And even then, they
hadn't properly "died", just started taking more effort to keep running
than I wanted to waste money on. I have little doubt that some kid kept
them running well past 200,000 miles.
RTFA, the oxygen content in the air would be the same as living at
around 2000-3000m which people certainly do without ill effects.
Of course, those people who live at 2000-3000m use fire for
staying warm at night and for cooking. Kinda makes the entire
premise seem a tad like... Oh, I dunno, complete and utter BS?
That said, I've often wondered why we don't do/keep almost all dangerously
flammable tasks/equipment in near-zero-oxygen environments. Seems like
a bit of a no-brainer for situations requiring minimal human presence.
But I can't count the number of people who have
asked me for help with their home networks, who have
a cable/DSL modem, a WiFi router (often built into the
modem these days), and a single PC - All sitting on the
same desk (or at least within the same smallish area
such as one wall of a room).
And to elaborate on the FP's example, I dealt with a
situation two days ago where a friend kept having
trouble with his WAP (one client and one laptop
connected to it). Turns out he didn't even connect
to his own AP! The laptop could see something like
15 APs, half of which had just "linksys" as the name,
and only one used WEP. And on the flip side of that,
he had about a dozen people randomly using his AP,
over time. Really makes you feel confident in the
RIAA's John Doe SLAPP suits based on IP address, eh?
The real "problem" here comes from the perception that
we all need wireless (a perception not helped by
the fact that most broadband providers try to convince
their users to buy crappy low-end modem/WAP combos).
Well, we don't! Personally, I run a 4-7 machine LAN
at home, and have it totally wired for both security
and reliability reasons. And for the rare occasions
when I want to use my laptop outside, I do actually
have a WAP, which I only turn on about four time a
year.
Simple heuristic for everyone - Regardless of the number
of machines on your home network, do they move?
If not - Run a damned wire! Even if you mostly use
a laptop while sitting on the couch, it actually takes
less time to plug a 6' cable into a nearby
wall than it does to connect to a WAP (though the latter
you usually don't notice because it just looks like
yet another part of the obscenely long Windows boot
process).
I actually meant the core mechanic of killing monsters to level up, rather than a
purely skill-point-based game with no experience (like UO was).
I hate to sound like a pretentious asshole "old-schooler", but every single "advancement"
you mention existed, in a multiplayer online form, LONG before WoW, EQ, or UO.
The modern MMORPGs added one and only one feature to the classic MUD - Isometric pseudo-3d
graphics.
Really, that about covers it. EVERYTHING you describe predates the modern commercial
era of MMORPGs. Well, okay, one more - People used to host the servers for free,
just for the fun of it. But aside from that, "Been there, done that".
Now, if you don't count multi-(simultaneous,interactive)-player, it absolutely floors me
that this list left out Hack/NetHack (or for the purists, Rogue, but Hack went so far
beyond Rogue that the distinction seems worthwhile). WoW owes its very existence to Hack,
like it or not.
"Since the invention of the telescope four centuries ago"
I didn't know telecopes were that old. Is this a typo, and didn't
they mean decades instead? If not, what did ancient telescopes do?
FooBarWidget, meet Galileo: Widely credited as the inventor of the modern
telescope, in 1609.
Though, as with all major developments in human history, some accounts have him
as merely improving on preexisting tech, whether copying the work of Lippershey
from 40 years before, or even the possibly MUCH older designs of the
ancient Persians.
If some subset of your users (e.g. designers, or possibly management) were
likely to be more productive with Macs on their desktop
Do Macs make some people more productive, though? If true, I would
agree on that point. I took the original argument as more a matter of
choice than actual productivity. I find it hard to believe that it makes
a measureable difference (adjusting for user familiarity with the platform,
of course). Even in Apples traditional forte, multimedia creation and editing,
you have comparable tools on both sides of the fence.
but if you wanted things to work smoothly in a real multi-platform environment, you
probably wouldn't be using exclusively Microsoft on your servers anyway.
Fair enough - But given a preexisting primarily-Microsoft shop, changing over the
back end servers really doesn't count as an option, considering that they represent
70-90% of the overall corporate IT assets.
As for Active Directory, I actually didn't know OS X supports it. But for all those
other specific AD-using programs I mentioned, they don't really count as optional in
most Microsoft-using corporate environments. Even a small-scale SBS setup
would use all that I mentioned (with the possible exception of centralized backups).
Um, which of these do you actually mean?
Having more saavy users doesn't mean the same thing as having users know the software
better than I do.
Users will know things you don't. After all, they actually use the software you support
every single day.
A very few users will know parts of some of the more obscure software we use
better than I do. I have no problem with that, for exactly the reason you mention. But you
just can't generalize that.
As much as I hate saying this (because it sounds massively egotistical), I do
know the software we use quite a bit better than most users. They may use it in their
day-to-day jobs, but at the end of each of those days, they get paid for doing their work,
not knowing the tools they use inside and out. I, however, get paid to know the tools
inside and out. So I do.
IT department "professionals" resisted efforts to bring a Mac in for various bullshit techhnical reasons
As part of a corporate IT department, I would fight against bringing Macs in tooth-and-nail, for one
simple reason - I'd then have to support them. No "bullshit technical reasons" needed.
You might call that unreasonable, at first glance, but I can assure you I can justify
that stance (thus the difference between "discrimination" and "prejudice").
First of all, I simply don't know Macs as well as Linux or Windows. You may call that silly, and
indeed, I'd gladly lead the charge to remedy that shortcoming in my skill set. But doing so takes
both time and money. Which would you suggest - That I volunteer my own time and money for
the company's good; or that the company waste time and money training me to do a job at which I already
excel on several other perfectly viable platforms?
Second, for at least some time, that would leave my users more skilled than me. If you don't see
the problem with that (by which I don't mean anything to do with my own job security), we can
end this conversation here. I consider that not just unacceptible, but outright dangerous to
the company.
Third, software compatibility (not even getting into "availability")... If I have 50 users, with 10
needing Photoshop, I can recycle those licenses as needed, with no concern whatsoever about who gets a copy.
If suddenly some might need the Mac version, I find myself in the position, over time, of needing twice
as many copies - I might have 10 PC users who need it, or I might have 10 Mac users who need it.
Interchangeability vanishes for all software.
Fourth, user management. Microsoft has its flaws, but Active Directory truly rocks for making
user management almost trivial. Does Apple support AD? For that matter, can I (transparently)
connect to an Exchange server using domain-level authentication from an OS X client? How about
Live Communication server? Sharepoint? MS SQL? centralized backups kicked off by a 2k3 NAS?
And don't tell me that users can manually authenticate against all of those, because that most
certainly does not address the question.
Many times, these folks can't stand the thought of empowered users
Absolute rubbish. If I had more "empowered" users, my job would get far, far
easier. I don't want Macs because it would make my job significantly harder.
Sorry if that sounds too honest for you, but there you have it. I get paid to
do a particular job, and part of that job includes designing the
network to remain manageable with a given level of resources.
Can Outing an Anonymous Blogger be Justified?
Absolutely, depending on the circumstances
No editorial slant on this FP, no-sir-ee!
Many of our fundamental "rights" in the modern world
very much depend on not only having anonymity before
doing something, but after as well.
In particular, and I expect the FP author had this exact situation
in mind, when the exercise of speech/publishing relates to the
commission of a crime. But in all but a few situations (defamation
or lying to a grand jury come to mind), the crime and the speech
exist as entirely separate concepts, with the latter protected.
Even when the speech does break the law directly (defamation),
you need to consider how much credibility an anonymous source really
has. If I say "The PS3 sucks", I may have defamed Sony, but no one
will care. If US VP of marketing for SCEA says the same thing,
it would make headlines (at least in the geek news community).
If I cheat on my taxes, that breaks the law. If I brag
about it anonymously - The bragging doesn't break the
law, and I have every right to maintain my anonymity in the
bragging. If the IRS catches me for the crime itself, no
foul; If they hunt me down like a dog and then find out
I just bragged but have filed accurately, they have wasted
time and money and potentially injured me financially or
reputation-wise in the process, despite no actual crime occuring.
Anonymity has a dark side, but without an absolute right to it,
we may as well let the government install "The Eye" in our
living rooms right now.
Peripherals such as the EyeToy were mentioned as 'making the PS3 disappear from the equation'
Ummm... How does an overpriced and underutilized webcam accessory accomplish that? And
what does that have to do with the price of the base system?
The system's cost won't be changing for some time now
Then neither will the sales figures.
They eventually hope to have 100% of online-connected users on the service
Sony, Microsoft, and even Nintendo need to understand something...
A lot, probably even the majority, of casual gamers, don't want the whole
live/home/online "experience". We want to pop in a game and waste a few hours to
unwind between getting home from work/school and having dinner.
I don't care if the world knows how much I rock (or suck) at the newest games.
I don't want trinkets and scenery and furniture for a virtual apartment. I don't
want to spend time doing anything beyond slaying dragons, drag-racing through
densely populated urban areas, slappin' hos, and getting the little colored blocks
lines up just right so they go "bleep" and vanish.
My style of gaming doesn't fit Sony's ideal revenue model. Too bad - Give
me what I want, or you don't get any revenue from me.
arrogance is not the feeling I get from them in person. These people are,
instead, supremely confident in their products and services.
Trying to tell people what they want to buy doesn't count as confident. It
counts as arrogance.
People generally have some sense of shame and humility, and in live meeting,
few people will come off as truly arrogant. That doesn't make the company
itself any less so.
I'll repeat myself - Give me what I want, or you don't get any revenue
from me. If Sony responds to that by trying to explain to me why I really
want what they have, you have arrogance, not confidence.
My attorney told them to suck eggs, because it is unenforceable here in Cali -- you have the
right to work. So they took it out of the contract. They still want an anti-poaching clause though
(can't poach their employees after you leave to work elsewhere).
IANAL, but I can spot a bum deal. Your attourney advised you poorly.
Anticompete agreements, whether enforceable or not (usually not), amount to a two-way exchange
of services - You get a job, and they get your signature.
Now, if enforceable, you might want to seriously consider that exchange, and negotiate
them down... The "signature" part of the exchange has quite a lot of value, possibly a
year's unemployment for you when you leave the company in question; you damned well
better get something worth it for their part of the deal. It sounds like your
lawyer chose this path even though deeming it unenforceable.
If unenforceable, though... Negotiate them UP. Get as much as you can for
that worthless signature, and laugh, laugh, laugh as you sign it. "Yup, even my
descendants to the seventh generation can't work for the competition, in exchange for
which I get two extra weeks of vacation". Congrats, you got two extra weeks of
vacation for literally the cost of your time to sign a worthless document.
By pointing out their error, you've given them the opportunity to try to bind you to
a lesser obligation instead, one that might actually hold up in court. How
has that advice benefitted you???
Skipping all the crap and presuming you have an older distro that
doesn't to automatic updates, I'll summarize the steps needed
(Do this at your own risk, but it should work on any even remotely
standard distro, even very old ones):
but is anyone else even remotely disturbed at the subtext
of this sort of game?
No, not really. Most of us can separate fantasy from reality...
perpetrated by a Caucasian protagonist (the player, natch)
against your stereotypical Latino gangbangers.
...And some of us will even still call a spade "a spade",
no matter how un-PC.
In a mafia-oriented game, you have Italian characters. In a
terrorism-oriented game, you have Attractive and Successful Gentlemen
of Middle-Eastern Descent. And in a wannabe-urban-thug oriented game,
you have...? Go ahead, complete that sentence with anything other than
your above-quoted phrase. Just doesn't fit.
That doesn't make all Italians mafioso, all Arabs terrorists, or all
Hispanics gangbangers, any more than all red mushrooms make you double
in size so you can jump higher and break blocks with your head.
Sternheimer suggests that gaming is simply the latest in a long series of media influences to take the blame.
Translation: "We dislike accepting responsibility for behaving like our primate
relatives, so we blame it on anything and everything (except ourselves) we can".
Welcome to Darwinian evolution, Reverend. We made it to the top of the food chain by
violence and aggression, quite literally killing off the competition. Only cats have us
beat for pure love of cruelty, but VERY fortunately (for us) we developed prefrontal cortices
first, giving us the edge over them of "strategy".
She terms the targets of such efforts folk devils, items branded dangerous and
immoral that serve to focus blame and fear.
Sprenger and Kramer understood that in the late 1400s, and the "War on Terror"
almost looks like a modern day adaptation of their playbook, the Malleus Maleficarum.
Calling the target of our fears "devils" seems far too apropos for comfort.
I can see why he did it, I think you can't blame him entirely.
Everyone can "see why he did it", and you make a few good points
about our cultural reverence for (potentially) meaningless degrees (I
believe I personally got quite a lot out of my own time in college,
though I know all too well that the majority of my fellow students
in CS "earned" the same degree as I did but couldn't code to save their
lives).
A few people have commented that they attribute this to the
steady death of brick-n'-mortar stores due to internet vendors
undercutting them. Let me tell you a story that should illustrate
the (lack of) truth of that idea...
10-15 years ago, back before our favorite set of tubes made
online shopping easier than physical shopping, my friends and
I used to have a game we'd play (when very, very bored).
Back then, geeks had a huge thick magazine full of nothing
but mail-order ads (I think it might have had some
content, but no one read it for anything but the ads) called
"Computer Shopper". Need a computer? Check the CS. Need a
video card? Check the CS. Need a printer? You get the picture.
Anyway, CompUSA carried this magazine. So, my friends and I would
go to CompUSA, grab a Computer Shopper, and start playing as
follows:
We would walk around, comparing in-store to mail-order prices,
looking for the worst deal in the store (and of course, correspondingly,
the best deal in the magazine). The person who found the best worst
deal (ie, the highest markup over the lowest mail order price) after
an hour (or when we got thrown out) won.
CompUSA's average prices usually came out to roughly double
what you could get the same thing for in Computer Shopper. The
"winner" of the above game usually managed to find something in
the 10-20 times more expensive range.
CompUSA won't die because the internet undercut them. It should
have died years ago from simple competitive market forces,
and having held on so long says a lot for the saavy of the average
tech consumer.
Every soundcard worth its name nowadays (think audigy, etc.. )
is capable of outputting better sound sampling than done for the
last 25 years.
Which doesn't matter one bit, since mastering engineers so
badly
abuse compression that CDs don't get used to even close
to their full potential. Instead, we get pull-offs so loud
you can hear them clearly against strong percussion, which
peaks with a sad little "squish" amidst a background sea
of clipping artifacts.
Any engineer should need to write a paragraph justifying each and
every clip they introduce. Or perhaps just dock their pay a dollar
for each.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft has the most secure operating system amongst its commercial competitors.
Hello Captain Obvious - Microsoft has no (viable) commercial competitors.
OS/2 died long ago. Macs don't actually compete with Microsoft (their user base not only doesn't overlap much, but largely counts as antagonistic toward one another). Linux and BSD don't count as "commercial" OSes, however much Novell and RedHat might want to pretend. What exactly does that leave?
I believe that if people don't have a right to make money off of media they create they'll just stop creating it,
You can believe anything you want, but all of human history up to the past few centuries has proven that idea false. People create because we use it as a form of expression. The fact that we can get paid, for doing something we'd do anyway, just adds frosting to the cake.
If you don't like the historical argument, though, you have counterexamples even in the present. Go to any local club on a Friday or Saturday night. See those guys up on stage? They'll probably make enough to cover their bar tab. They play because they love doing it, not because they plan to make a killing off it. Some minor-celebrity local groups might scrounge a living out of it playing full-time. But again, frosting, not the cake itself.
for trying to protect their abilities to pay their mortgages and feed their children.
You mean the same artists that need to repeatedly SUE their labels to get even the meagre compensation guaranteed them by contract? Yeah, can you hear the violins?
but I don't think what Google/YouTube is doing is right. Slapping users on the wrists and deletinginfringing videos obviously isn't enough to deter infringement.
In a FEW situations (full pre-release TV episodes,) GooTube has some grossly infringing content. That represents a problem they need to address.
For the vast majority of the rest, calling it "infringement" amounts to saying we don't have the right to our own culture.
The crappy low-quality content on YouTube won't deprive anyone of sales. If anything, it will increase sales by reminding people of little bits of their past which they want to recapture (eg, cheesy 80's videos and saturday morning cartoons); It gives the best possible advertising for shows like The Colbert Report; It lets us all make fun of the latest absurdity uttered by the president (or Pelosi, Boxer, or [insert your least favorite politician here], they all count as pretty much equally worthless). Unfortunately, copyright law doesn't care about that - It cares only that the copyright holder (rarely the "artist", so don't even go there) didn't give permission. That must change if copyright will survive the next few years with any meaning at all.
And if we don't see a massive copyright reform in the near future? Well... Ask any 16YO whether or not they consider it "wrong" to copy a CD. Copyright has fallen to the level of speeding as a socially-acceptible crime; we all know we might get caught, we all do it anyway, and we don't care. Except, rather than a $150 fine, you can get a $150,000 fine. Ouch.
would case-law still be deemed to have been made? The only reason for dropping cases that aren't going favourably could be to avoid case-law being made.
IANAL, of course. But as I understand it, this wouldn't do much to create an anti-RIAA "case law" anyway, even if she flat-out wins.
Simply put, the RIAA has squat while she has an overwhelming abundance of evidence in her favor. While we may suspect the same conditions apply in at least a few of the other RIAA suits, I really have little doubt that the vast majority of people the RIAA has sued really did share music.
At best, this might set a precedent for the RIAA paying when proven wrong. That might tighten up the set of cases they actually take beyond the fire-and-forget extortion request stage, but they'll still have no shortage of "guilty" targets to keep going after.
The core problem here comes from copyright law that treats a nearly ubiquitous, noncommercial act as a rather severe (usually civil) offense. As much as we may object to the RIAA's tactics, they unfortunately have the luxury of picking the fattest fish from a barrel, and have the law (basically) on their side. In this particular suit, they went too far, but that won't generalize well.
You missed the point. I'm that responsible parent. If Sony can't provide a way for parents to lock their kids out of unacceptable content, then many people will never purchase the device.
Wrong.
You count as a tech-saavy parent. Most parents have absolutely no frickin' clue that the current gen of gaming consoles can let little Billy get porn easier than sneaking a peak at Dad's "Hustler" collection.
You not buying a PS3 for that reason amounts to a piddling little drop in a great big bucket. Can you hear Sony crying? Neither can they, as the 947 other people for every one of you, buy it for that reason.
Porn sells, simple as that.
Shameless plug: I sell domains and hosting services and offer a appraisal service
Not looking for insider secrets or anything, but in general, on what basis do you appraise a domain?
Obviously a popular word (like the infamous "sex.com" domain) might fetch a good penny, but for most of them, the value would seem to depend entirely on having a buyer before-the-fact. Unlike jewelry, domains don't count as fungible.
My guess is that he was saying 75,000 MILES, 120,000 MILES and 90,000 MILES, not kilometers.
Now who's the one that's pretty damn stupid?
Even given those corrections, his final point still stands - Would you buy another car that lasted only 75,000 miles?
I've owned a pretty random collection of cars in my life, and have yet to have one last less than 100,000 miles (except the one I utterly obliterated around a tree - And it had recently passed 80,000). And even then, they hadn't properly "died", just started taking more effort to keep running than I wanted to waste money on. I have little doubt that some kid kept them running well past 200,000 miles.
RTFA, the oxygen content in the air would be the same as living at around 2000-3000m which people certainly do without ill effects.
Of course, those people who live at 2000-3000m use fire for staying warm at night and for cooking. Kinda makes the entire premise seem a tad like... Oh, I dunno, complete and utter BS?
That said, I've often wondered why we don't do/keep almost all dangerously flammable tasks/equipment in near-zero-oxygen environments. Seems like a bit of a no-brainer for situations requiring minimal human presence.
Wireless has its uses. I will not deny that.
But I can't count the number of people who have asked me for help with their home networks, who have a cable/DSL modem, a WiFi router (often built into the modem these days), and a single PC - All sitting on the same desk (or at least within the same smallish area such as one wall of a room).
And to elaborate on the FP's example, I dealt with a situation two days ago where a friend kept having trouble with his WAP (one client and one laptop connected to it). Turns out he didn't even connect to his own AP! The laptop could see something like 15 APs, half of which had just "linksys" as the name, and only one used WEP. And on the flip side of that, he had about a dozen people randomly using his AP, over time. Really makes you feel confident in the RIAA's John Doe SLAPP suits based on IP address, eh?
The real "problem" here comes from the perception that we all need wireless (a perception not helped by the fact that most broadband providers try to convince their users to buy crappy low-end modem/WAP combos). Well, we don't! Personally, I run a 4-7 machine LAN at home, and have it totally wired for both security and reliability reasons. And for the rare occasions when I want to use my laptop outside, I do actually have a WAP, which I only turn on about four time a year.
Simple heuristic for everyone - Regardless of the number of machines on your home network, do they move? If not - Run a damned wire! Even if you mostly use a laptop while sitting on the couch, it actually takes less time to plug a 6' cable into a nearby wall than it does to connect to a WAP (though the latter you usually don't notice because it just looks like yet another part of the obscenely long Windows boot process).
I actually meant the core mechanic of killing monsters to level up, rather than a purely skill-point-based game with no experience (like UO was).
I hate to sound like a pretentious asshole "old-schooler", but every single "advancement" you mention existed, in a multiplayer online form, LONG before WoW, EQ, or UO.
The modern MMORPGs added one and only one feature to the classic MUD - Isometric pseudo-3d graphics.
Really, that about covers it. EVERYTHING you describe predates the modern commercial era of MMORPGs. Well, okay, one more - People used to host the servers for free, just for the fun of it. But aside from that, "Been there, done that".
Now, if you don't count multi-(simultaneous,interactive)-player, it absolutely floors me that this list left out Hack/NetHack (or for the purists, Rogue, but Hack went so far beyond Rogue that the distinction seems worthwhile). WoW owes its very existence to Hack, like it or not.
"Since the invention of the telescope four centuries ago"
I didn't know telecopes were that old. Is this a typo, and didn't they mean decades instead? If not, what did ancient telescopes do?
FooBarWidget, meet Galileo: Widely credited as the inventor of the modern telescope, in 1609.
Though, as with all major developments in human history, some accounts have him as merely improving on preexisting tech, whether copying the work of Lippershey from 40 years before, or even the possibly MUCH older designs of the ancient Persians.
So no, not a typo.
As the site has been Slashdotted already, have a Coralised, Printer-friendly version.
;-)
Oh, for shame! Such an easy chance to plug something on-topic, yet another FF extension...
Resurrect Pages lets you check all the major internet cache sites for dead content.
If some subset of your users (e.g. designers, or possibly management) were likely to be more productive with Macs on their desktop
Do Macs make some people more productive, though? If true, I would agree on that point. I took the original argument as more a matter of choice than actual productivity. I find it hard to believe that it makes a measureable difference (adjusting for user familiarity with the platform, of course). Even in Apples traditional forte, multimedia creation and editing, you have comparable tools on both sides of the fence.
but if you wanted things to work smoothly in a real multi-platform environment, you probably wouldn't be using exclusively Microsoft on your servers anyway.
Fair enough - But given a preexisting primarily-Microsoft shop, changing over the back end servers really doesn't count as an option, considering that they represent 70-90% of the overall corporate IT assets.
As for Active Directory, I actually didn't know OS X supports it. But for all those other specific AD-using programs I mentioned, they don't really count as optional in most Microsoft-using corporate environments. Even a small-scale SBS setup would use all that I mentioned (with the possible exception of centralized backups).
Um, which of these do you actually mean?
Having more saavy users doesn't mean the same thing as having users know the software better than I do.
Users will know things you don't. After all, they actually use the software you support every single day.
A very few users will know parts of some of the more obscure software we use better than I do. I have no problem with that, for exactly the reason you mention. But you just can't generalize that.
As much as I hate saying this (because it sounds massively egotistical), I do know the software we use quite a bit better than most users. They may use it in their day-to-day jobs, but at the end of each of those days, they get paid for doing their work, not knowing the tools they use inside and out. I, however, get paid to know the tools inside and out. So I do.
It's a prejudice.
"Discrimination" does not equal "prejudice".
IT department "professionals" resisted efforts to bring a Mac in for various bullshit techhnical reasons
As part of a corporate IT department, I would fight against bringing Macs in tooth-and-nail, for one simple reason - I'd then have to support them. No "bullshit technical reasons" needed.
You might call that unreasonable, at first glance, but I can assure you I can justify that stance (thus the difference between "discrimination" and "prejudice").
First of all, I simply don't know Macs as well as Linux or Windows. You may call that silly, and indeed, I'd gladly lead the charge to remedy that shortcoming in my skill set. But doing so takes both time and money. Which would you suggest - That I volunteer my own time and money for the company's good; or that the company waste time and money training me to do a job at which I already excel on several other perfectly viable platforms?
Second, for at least some time, that would leave my users more skilled than me. If you don't see the problem with that (by which I don't mean anything to do with my own job security), we can end this conversation here. I consider that not just unacceptible, but outright dangerous to the company.
Third, software compatibility (not even getting into "availability")... If I have 50 users, with 10 needing Photoshop, I can recycle those licenses as needed, with no concern whatsoever about who gets a copy. If suddenly some might need the Mac version, I find myself in the position, over time, of needing twice as many copies - I might have 10 PC users who need it, or I might have 10 Mac users who need it. Interchangeability vanishes for all software.
Fourth, user management. Microsoft has its flaws, but Active Directory truly rocks for making user management almost trivial. Does Apple support AD? For that matter, can I (transparently) connect to an Exchange server using domain-level authentication from an OS X client? How about Live Communication server? Sharepoint? MS SQL? centralized backups kicked off by a 2k3 NAS? And don't tell me that users can manually authenticate against all of those, because that most certainly does not address the question.
Many times, these folks can't stand the thought of empowered users
Absolute rubbish. If I had more "empowered" users, my job would get far, far easier. I don't want Macs because it would make my job significantly harder. Sorry if that sounds too honest for you, but there you have it. I get paid to do a particular job, and part of that job includes designing the network to remain manageable with a given level of resources.
Can Outing an Anonymous Blogger be Justified?
Absolutely, depending on the circumstances
No editorial slant on this FP, no-sir-ee!
Many of our fundamental "rights" in the modern world very much depend on not only having anonymity before doing something, but after as well.
In particular, and I expect the FP author had this exact situation in mind, when the exercise of speech/publishing relates to the commission of a crime. But in all but a few situations (defamation or lying to a grand jury come to mind), the crime and the speech exist as entirely separate concepts, with the latter protected.
Even when the speech does break the law directly (defamation), you need to consider how much credibility an anonymous source really has. If I say "The PS3 sucks", I may have defamed Sony, but no one will care. If US VP of marketing for SCEA says the same thing, it would make headlines (at least in the geek news community).
If I cheat on my taxes, that breaks the law. If I brag about it anonymously - The bragging doesn't break the law, and I have every right to maintain my anonymity in the bragging. If the IRS catches me for the crime itself, no foul; If they hunt me down like a dog and then find out I just bragged but have filed accurately, they have wasted time and money and potentially injured me financially or reputation-wise in the process, despite no actual crime occuring.
Anonymity has a dark side, but without an absolute right to it, we may as well let the government install "The Eye" in our living rooms right now.
Peripherals such as the EyeToy were mentioned as 'making the PS3 disappear from the equation'
Ummm... How does an overpriced and underutilized webcam accessory accomplish that? And what does that have to do with the price of the base system?
The system's cost won't be changing for some time now
Then neither will the sales figures.
They eventually hope to have 100% of online-connected users on the service
Sony, Microsoft, and even Nintendo need to understand something...
A lot, probably even the majority, of casual gamers, don't want the whole live/home/online "experience". We want to pop in a game and waste a few hours to unwind between getting home from work/school and having dinner.
I don't care if the world knows how much I rock (or suck) at the newest games. I don't want trinkets and scenery and furniture for a virtual apartment. I don't want to spend time doing anything beyond slaying dragons, drag-racing through densely populated urban areas, slappin' hos, and getting the little colored blocks lines up just right so they go "bleep" and vanish.
My style of gaming doesn't fit Sony's ideal revenue model. Too bad - Give me what I want, or you don't get any revenue from me.
arrogance is not the feeling I get from them in person. These people are, instead, supremely confident in their products and services.
Trying to tell people what they want to buy doesn't count as confident. It counts as arrogance.
People generally have some sense of shame and humility, and in live meeting, few people will come off as truly arrogant. That doesn't make the company itself any less so.
I'll repeat myself - Give me what I want, or you don't get any revenue from me. If Sony responds to that by trying to explain to me why I really want what they have, you have arrogance, not confidence.
My attorney told them to suck eggs, because it is unenforceable here in Cali -- you have the right to work. So they took it out of the contract. They still want an anti-poaching clause though (can't poach their employees after you leave to work elsewhere).
IANAL, but I can spot a bum deal. Your attourney advised you poorly.
Anticompete agreements, whether enforceable or not (usually not), amount to a two-way exchange of services - You get a job, and they get your signature.
Now, if enforceable, you might want to seriously consider that exchange, and negotiate them down... The "signature" part of the exchange has quite a lot of value, possibly a year's unemployment for you when you leave the company in question; you damned well better get something worth it for their part of the deal. It sounds like your lawyer chose this path even though deeming it unenforceable.
If unenforceable, though... Negotiate them UP. Get as much as you can for that worthless signature, and laugh, laugh, laugh as you sign it. "Yup, even my descendants to the seventh generation can't work for the competition, in exchange for which I get two extra weeks of vacation". Congrats, you got two extra weeks of vacation for literally the cost of your time to sign a worthless document.
By pointing out their error, you've given them the opportunity to try to bind you to a lesser obligation instead, one that might actually hold up in court. How has that advice benefitted you???
Skipping all the crap and presuming you have an older distro that doesn't to automatic updates, I'll summarize the steps needed (Do this at your own risk, but it should work on any even remotely standard distro, even very old ones):
/tmp /usr/share/zoneinfo/EST5EDT /etc/localtime
;-)
/etc/localtime | grep 2007
cd
wget --passive-ftp ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2007c.tar.gz
tar -xzvf tzdata2007c.tar.gz
zic northamerica
ln -sf
If you live outside the civilized world, insert the appropriate time zone in place of EST5EDT.
And finally, verify it with:
zdump -v
Which should say "Mar 11" and "Nov 4"
Should Microsoft be _forced_ to sell a product that doesn't benefit them?
Yes, damnit!
And unless I can have Clippy offering helpful advice as I slave away at my Timex Sinclair 1000, I plan to sue Microsoft for anticompetitive behavior.
Damn that Bill Gates and his 640KB of RAM... Just because I only have 2KB, he thinks he can just ignore 0.00026% of the home market?
but is anyone else even remotely disturbed at the subtext of this sort of game?
...And some of us will even still call a spade "a spade",
no matter how un-PC.
No, not really. Most of us can separate fantasy from reality...
perpetrated by a Caucasian protagonist (the player, natch) against your stereotypical Latino gangbangers.
In a mafia-oriented game, you have Italian characters. In a terrorism-oriented game, you have Attractive and Successful Gentlemen of Middle-Eastern Descent. And in a wannabe-urban-thug oriented game, you have...? Go ahead, complete that sentence with anything other than your above-quoted phrase. Just doesn't fit.
That doesn't make all Italians mafioso, all Arabs terrorists, or all Hispanics gangbangers, any more than all red mushrooms make you double in size so you can jump higher and break blocks with your head.
Better close that hole up before the legions of nasty aquatic underworld ghoulies come pouring out into the world
Nonono, you have it all wrong - this will let scientists discover the LifeStream, so we can finally start building Mako reactors.
Sternheimer suggests that gaming is simply the latest in a long series of media influences to take the blame.
Translation: "We dislike accepting responsibility for behaving like our primate relatives, so we blame it on anything and everything (except ourselves) we can".
Welcome to Darwinian evolution, Reverend. We made it to the top of the food chain by violence and aggression, quite literally killing off the competition. Only cats have us beat for pure love of cruelty, but VERY fortunately (for us) we developed prefrontal cortices first, giving us the edge over them of "strategy".
She terms the targets of such efforts folk devils, items branded dangerous and immoral that serve to focus blame and fear.
Sprenger and Kramer understood that in the late 1400s, and the "War on Terror" almost looks like a modern day adaptation of their playbook, the Malleus Maleficarum. Calling the target of our fears "devils" seems far too apropos for comfort.
I can see why he did it, I think you can't blame him entirely.
Everyone can "see why he did it", and you make a few good points about our cultural reverence for (potentially) meaningless degrees (I believe I personally got quite a lot out of my own time in college, though I know all too well that the majority of my fellow students in CS "earned" the same degree as I did but couldn't code to save their lives).
But you most certainly can blame him for lying.
A few people have commented that they attribute this to the steady death of brick-n'-mortar stores due to internet vendors undercutting them. Let me tell you a story that should illustrate the (lack of) truth of that idea...
10-15 years ago, back before our favorite set of tubes made online shopping easier than physical shopping, my friends and I used to have a game we'd play (when very, very bored).
Back then, geeks had a huge thick magazine full of nothing but mail-order ads (I think it might have had some content, but no one read it for anything but the ads) called "Computer Shopper". Need a computer? Check the CS. Need a video card? Check the CS. Need a printer? You get the picture.
Anyway, CompUSA carried this magazine. So, my friends and I would go to CompUSA, grab a Computer Shopper, and start playing as follows:
We would walk around, comparing in-store to mail-order prices, looking for the worst deal in the store (and of course, correspondingly, the best deal in the magazine). The person who found the best worst deal (ie, the highest markup over the lowest mail order price) after an hour (or when we got thrown out) won.
CompUSA's average prices usually came out to roughly double what you could get the same thing for in Computer Shopper. The "winner" of the above game usually managed to find something in the 10-20 times more expensive range.
CompUSA won't die because the internet undercut them. It should have died years ago from simple competitive market forces, and having held on so long says a lot for the saavy of the average tech consumer.
Every soundcard worth its name nowadays (think audigy, etc .. )
is capable of outputting better sound sampling than done for the
last 25 years.
Which doesn't matter one bit, since mastering engineers so badly abuse compression that CDs don't get used to even close to their full potential. Instead, we get pull-offs so loud you can hear them clearly against strong percussion, which peaks with a sad little "squish" amidst a background sea of clipping artifacts.
Any engineer should need to write a paragraph justifying each and every clip they introduce. Or perhaps just dock their pay a dollar for each.