[Disclamier: I'm a developer born in 70-something who doesn't think children need the internet in their pockets] My kids are 5th, 7th, and 9th grade. We've felt that 2 hours of screen time (Netflix, computer/console gaming, tablet usage) was a healthy upper limit per day. This idea was based on how my wife and I were raised during the 80's and 90's where most of our childhood was spent outdoors with friends. I know it's quaint these days, but it seemed to work for us; our kids can hold a real conversation with adults while maintaining eye contact, and despite fighting amongst themselves like cats and dogs, we are always complimented on how engaging and polite they are. Not a brag, just context. Maybe they're just good kids and us limiting screen time has nothing to do with it. ...but... Now that the school has them on Chromebooks 3-5 hours per day during instruction time, then an additional 30-minutes of them just watching Youtube during Resource/Study Hall, then doing "homework" on the Chromebook for an hour at night...screen time has exploded from 2 hours per day to 6.5 hours per day.
They don't have smartphones (yet), but they are literally in the 1% of kids in their schools that don't have smartphones. I think beyond a reasonable amount like 2 hours, time that children spend looking at a screen is time they are not learning how to interact with the world with their senses. Some of their peers can't string 3 sentences together in a single conversation without drifting into looking at their phone or talking about what they saw on their phone.
I may be a minority even here, but I think the school (and these organizations) are doing a huge disservice to these kids...and for what, automated learning with built-in KPIs and a fatter bottom line?
Everything is art. But the human determination of such is a matter of physics and economics.
I disagree. What about a nuclear blast? Not a photo or video of the event, but the blast itself? Lots of physics and economics involved in that, but were either Hiroshima's or Nagasaki's blasts art?
Nature can be art, as perceived by one observing. A tree is art. The leaves on the ground are art (wind is the painter). A human didn't necessarily intervene (what if you planted the tree?), but it's our perception of beauty and emotion.
A photograph of a tree or vista can be art (Ansel Adams anyone?)...
Nature can be beautiful, but not art. Nearly anyone with the gift of sight has seen beauty in a sunset, but did the sun, earth, and atmosphere intend to create the view? Is it art or natural beauty? We would all agree that a photo or painting of the same vista is art; the artist took action to create a representation of what they experienced. But is the sunset itself art? Can it be caused? Can it be sold?
...whether taken by a human or a Google car autonomously (the driver isn't the artist, is the person who programmed the timing of the photos?).
Art implies an artist and an intent. For something to be art, it must not have "been" and then must "be" by the artist's conception and action. Ultimately, an item must be observed by a second party and experienced before it is art, or is it art without being
Anything can be art.
So a computer making art isn't a surprise, it should be expected. It might not be born of human emotion, but that isn't necessary.
Art doesn't require a specific act to create it. Accidents can be art. Mistakes can be art.
Regarding economics, is it worth money? Then it's art...
In nearly all debatable cases (e.g. "Artist's Shit", pornography, graffiti, etc.), the debate centers on what beauty or meaning (i.e. value) could the viewer ascribe to the item in question. Questionable performance pieces may not fit the classic definition of beauty, but do evoke reaction and experience and memory in the viewer thereby satisfying the artist's intent. There's usually some understanding that a consensus or plurality of observers who individually find beauty/meaning in a piece would agree "yes, this is art".
In this case, the debate is more on the definition of art itself as opposed to the substance or interpretation thereof. Can something created without intent be called "art"? The AI didn't choose to make the piece -- it was instructed to make something according to a set of rules made by a programmer. Sure, there may have been a fair amount of learning, training or genetic pruning to get the result...and someone may be willing to pay for the beauty/meaning/novelty they see in a copy of the product...but the AI did not intend for a viewer to derive anything from viewing/experiencing the product.
"If they take the ship, they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing. And, if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order."
-Zoe, Firefly (2002)
Funny how things change. I recall when KDE went from 3.x to 4.0 and the exact opposite rationale was common. I stuck with KDE through the painful early 4 days and still use it today -- was an apologist during the rough years, but now I agree that it is the easiest transition for Windows users.
I think it's even more insidious than outright abridging the free speech of the people. If it were an explicit or indirect ban on what words an *individual* could say or write, that would surely be litigated by someone up to the Supreme Court and ultimately struck down as unconstitutional. However, consider a hypothetical law gets passed defining what constitutes hate speech (or indecent speech), or maybe bestowing a group like the SPLC that can define those words and phrases. See Canada's Human Rights Council and Bill C16. Perhaps another section (or even another bill) states the damages that apply to broadcasters/publishers who don't remove/censor/abridge hateful and indecent words and phrases. This hypothetical law wouldn't technically abridge an individual's right to speak freely, but merely punish the platforms of rapid, easy, prolific free speech we enjoy on the internet's social media platforms. It would be a perfect storm of practically censoring the "little guys'" voice and vindicating the companies who are already doing essentially the same censorship.
Ah, excellent! Thank you for that. I was aware of omitting part of the title, but I spent more time worrying about my analogy instead of getting the full title out there. I wasn't even aware of a non-3D Wolfenstein.
I would think of it like this:
2D FPS games (original Wolfenstein) would be like driving a car in a simple grid of streets lined with buildings.
2.5D FPS games (Doom/DN) would be less like operating a car and more like operating a helicoptor - you have to maneuver in 3 dimensions with your vertical axis generally constant, and gravity is still a thing.
3D FPS (Descent) would be operating a starship in deep space with true vector-based navigation and 0 fixed axes...plus the ability to roll like an airplane. Descent was devoid of gravity, so orientation was truly a challenge. To date it is the only game I've ever had to fight motion sickness.
Yeah, you can definitely save money buying in bulk. During the span when I bought pre-mixed bottles (about 3 years ago), I wanted to try a variety, so smaller bottles made sense. My favorite flavors only seemed to come in the 30mL quantities at the time. Then I was gifted 4 or 5 larger bottles (50 or 60 mL) by someone who was giving it up. The flavors were good and the nicotine content was the right percentage for me at the time (9 mg/mL), but they all made me cough constantly. That was what convinced me to start mixing my own -- to know exactly what the ingredients were and what ratios were used. I settled on mixing my own before I ever got to see an economic benefit of bulk-buying a pre-mix liquid that I liked and didn't make me cough.
At $28 for 120mL (1-month supply), that'd be around $336 per year for me...difference of $226. Add up the time I spend ordering, mixing, and securing the raw materials and I technically would come out ahead buying bulk pre-mix like your shop sells.
Vaping costs around $140 per year for me. I mix my own liquid from the raw components (Propylene Glycol, Vegetable Glycerine, Flavor concentrate, Nicotine). I'll buy 1 liter of PG , 0.5 liter VG, and 0.5 liter of nicotine-VG suspension. The annual cost of the liquid components is $110 per year. Those materials will yield around 52 bottles (30 mL) of liquid, each of which lasts me about a week. Add in the cost of the flavor and heating coils for another $25 - $30 per year.
In a vape shop, those 30mL bottles would cost between $9 and $15, so we'll say $12 on average, or $625 per year. That's about 1/4 of what a smoker would spend buying 1 pack per day at $7/pack ($2555 per year). My cost is about 5% of what I used to spend on smoking, and 22% of what I would spend buying the pre-mixed liquid.
To take your point a little further: they're completely okay with the data being readily available to any hypothetical pervert with internal system access, but feign indignation when the content originators or shareholders become aware of it. This is almost certainly not an isolated incident.
I'm no Schneider expert, but I've worked with guys who are. While I agree with you on the explicit principle that externally-accessible systems should be read-only (or even better, receive data via internal system pushes instead of pulling data through whitelisted IP:port), I think there are two nuances here:
-The middleware itself can't be read-only since it is used to monitor/automate tens of thousands of individual sensors/valves/breakers per site, each of which has multiple registers involved in the monitoring/adjusting communication. If they were read-only, technicians would have to go through hundreds or thousands of steps just to test if one class of device is nominal.
-These critical systems should never be accessed by the outside world. I doubt that anyone who wanted to keep their job would knowingly expose these system interfaces publicly. However, with so many layers of software separating the outside attacker from the critical system, one of them will get the needle threaded at some point to hit the critical system. So now you've got an attacker facing a read/write industrial control system with the vulnerability to bypass authentication. The comm protocol specifications I've seen for these type of systems are well-documented, but they are extensive just due to the variety of devices they need to control. This won't be the last vulnerability in these industrial control systems. They should never be exposed by design.
I don't suspect that presently, but it has definitely occurred to me as possible. In order for that to become reality, I predict a preliminary step would be for Microsoft to release their own Linux distribution, then to do what they can to increase its adoption (give it preferential treatment in the Store over other WSL-based distro packages, perhaps begin installing it by default with a convenient "WSL" installation screen that downplays options, etc.). Once people become familiar or accustomed to this "MSLD" and its unique (extended?) features or hypothetically closer interoperability with the windows host system itself, then you start to see where those tactics can lead. I am unaware if MS is working on (or has already released) its own Linux distribution, but it wouldn't surprise me.
I am in my late 30's with 3 kids between 9 and 14. I honestly can't tell if I'm doing the right thing anymore on this front, but I have outright refused to let my kids have smartphones. I'm not looking to this crowd for affirmation or vindication, but I hope to share my experience for those who find themselves in similar circumstance. Maybe you can give me some perspective.
I know the nonsense I got up to when I was a teen...and I was a "good" kid who barely had a healthy dose of trouble. The mistakes that accompanied learning were unavoidable...but the repercussions were likely temporary and surviveable. And you had to kinda seek out the truly permanent or mortally dangerous risks.
I'm not a prude. I stopped forcing my kids to wear helmets once they had ridden their bikes for a year. The only hovering I do around my kids is making sure the boys don't bloody each other.
The one thing I am adamant about is them not having the internet in their pockets. The thought of them plowing through 4chan or sending/receiving nude texts...or unwittimgly talking to paedophiles...nightmares.
Kids are supposed to disobey and get into trouble. But for Pete'ssake make them work for it! Don't hand them all the gory details on an iPlatter in never-ending full motion HD! There's no effort to type in a search term or click a link compared to procuring and hiding a skin mag. Even in the early internet days on a desktop, you still had a fair risk of getting caught since you were in the living room in plain view!
The whole sexting thing is pretty much a given...if the first MMS ever wasn't someone's ass, then the 2nd or 3rd probably was. It was inevitable from there. And then to blindly whitelist all senders by default...terribly risky to give to a child.
And don't get me started on addiction. I don't do Facebook, and my wife gave it up 8 years ago. She doesn't want a smartphone after breaking 3 of them in a year back in 2014. I have 1, but pretty much use it for email and news feeds only.
I love my kids, and they tell me I'm the best Dad ever. They still ask every few months about iPhones, even though I've largely explained my reasoning to them. They're pretty much the only ones in their public schools without the latest iPhone. I bought all 3 of them simple durable flip phones and disabled all MMS.
For context, I've been a programmer since '97 and started tooling around on BBS's in the early 90s. It gets harder and harder every time they ask to say "no", but I think they are truly better individuals without smartphones...at least not this young. And honestly, even if the parental controls are improved to a point where I could limit everything I wanted to limit, I'd spend so much time administering the controls, I'd burn out and get lazy.
I kept one of these guys on the phone for 20 minutes trying all kinds of stuff. He was clearly getting frustrated trying to do remote-hands on my Linux box. I never got the chance to tell him my OS though because at some point, I couldn't contain myself and asked "OH, you wanted the computer ON the whole time!". He hung up on me. RUDE.
I just finished "Time Enough for Love" by Robert Heinlein three days ago, and have begun reading "Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven. Both had sat on my shelf unread for years. I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to read some classic-ish sci-fi. Time Enough for Love was highly amusing.
PS, both novels start off rather boring, but improve in tone and pacing around the 50-page mark.
Slashdot Mirror
[Disclamier: I'm a developer born in 70-something who doesn't think children need the internet in their pockets]
My kids are 5th, 7th, and 9th grade. We've felt that 2 hours of screen time (Netflix, computer/console gaming, tablet usage) was a healthy upper limit per day. This idea was based on how my wife and I were raised during the 80's and 90's where most of our childhood was spent outdoors with friends. I know it's quaint these days, but it seemed to work for us; our kids can hold a real conversation with adults while maintaining eye contact, and despite fighting amongst themselves like cats and dogs, we are always complimented on how engaging and polite they are. Not a brag, just context. Maybe they're just good kids and us limiting screen time has nothing to do with it.
...but...
Now that the school has them on Chromebooks 3-5 hours per day during instruction time, then an additional 30-minutes of them just watching Youtube during Resource/Study Hall, then doing "homework" on the Chromebook for an hour at night...screen time has exploded from 2 hours per day to 6.5 hours per day.
They don't have smartphones (yet), but they are literally in the 1% of kids in their schools that don't have smartphones. I think beyond a reasonable amount like 2 hours, time that children spend looking at a screen is time they are not learning how to interact with the world with their senses. Some of their peers can't string 3 sentences together in a single conversation without drifting into looking at their phone or talking about what they saw on their phone.
I may be a minority even here, but I think the school (and these organizations) are doing a huge disservice to these kids...and for what, automated learning with built-in KPIs and a fatter bottom line?
https://wiki.teamfortress.com/...
This has been a thing since 2016.
Thanks for this. Stories like this make me want to give up on Slashdot. Comments like yours make me want to stay.
s/art without being/art without being seen\?/i
sorry about...
Everything is art. But the human determination of such is a matter of physics and economics.
I disagree. What about a nuclear blast? Not a photo or video of the event, but the blast itself? Lots of physics and economics involved in that, but were either Hiroshima's or Nagasaki's blasts art?
Nature can be art, as perceived by one observing. A tree is art. The leaves on the ground are art (wind is the painter). A human didn't necessarily intervene (what if you planted the tree?), but it's our perception of beauty and emotion.
A photograph of a tree or vista can be art (Ansel Adams anyone?)...
Nature can be beautiful, but not art. Nearly anyone with the gift of sight has seen beauty in a sunset, but did the sun, earth, and atmosphere intend to create the view? Is it art or natural beauty? We would all agree that a photo or painting of the same vista is art; the artist took action to create a representation of what they experienced. But is the sunset itself art? Can it be caused? Can it be sold?
...whether taken by a human or a Google car autonomously (the driver isn't the artist, is the person who programmed the timing of the photos?).
Art implies an artist and an intent. For something to be art, it must not have "been" and then must "be" by the artist's conception and action. Ultimately, an item must be observed by a second party and experienced before it is art, or is it art without being
Anything can be art.
So a computer making art isn't a surprise, it should be expected. It might not be born of human emotion, but that isn't necessary.
Art doesn't require a specific act to create it. Accidents can be art. Mistakes can be art.
Regarding economics, is it worth money? Then it's art...
In nearly all debatable cases (e.g. "Artist's Shit", pornography, graffiti, etc.), the debate centers on what beauty or meaning (i.e. value) could the viewer ascribe to the item in question. Questionable performance pieces may not fit the classic definition of beauty, but do evoke reaction and experience and memory in the viewer thereby satisfying the artist's intent. There's usually some understanding that a consensus or plurality of observers who individually find beauty/meaning in a piece would agree "yes, this is art".
In this case, the debate is more on the definition of art itself as opposed to the substance or interpretation thereof. Can something created without intent be called "art"? The AI didn't choose to make the piece -- it was instructed to make something according to a set of rules made by a programmer. Sure, there may have been a fair amount of learning, training or genetic pruning to get the result...and someone may be willing to pay for the beauty/meaning/novelty they see in a copy of the product...but the AI did not intend for a viewer to derive anything from viewing/experiencing the product.
"If they take the ship, they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing. And, if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order."
-Zoe, Firefly (2002)
Funny how things change. I recall when KDE went from 3.x to 4.0 and the exact opposite rationale was common. I stuck with KDE through the painful early 4 days and still use it today -- was an apologist during the rough years, but now I agree that it is the easiest transition for Windows users.
YES! And if you didn't care about the life of the drive or seek/write times, you could use DoubleStack to get it to 40MB! Live and learn.
...you mean TOAST "it"?
I think it's even more insidious than outright abridging the free speech of the people. If it were an explicit or indirect ban on what words an *individual* could say or write, that would surely be litigated by someone up to the Supreme Court and ultimately struck down as unconstitutional. However, consider a hypothetical law gets passed defining what constitutes hate speech (or indecent speech), or maybe bestowing a group like the SPLC that can define those words and phrases. See Canada's Human Rights Council and Bill C16. Perhaps another section (or even another bill) states the damages that apply to broadcasters/publishers who don't remove/censor/abridge hateful and indecent words and phrases. This hypothetical law wouldn't technically abridge an individual's right to speak freely, but merely punish the platforms of rapid, easy, prolific free speech we enjoy on the internet's social media platforms. It would be a perfect storm of practically censoring the "little guys'" voice and vindicating the companies who are already doing essentially the same censorship.
Look at those dogs go. GO DOGS GO!
...look what you made me do.
-Microsoft.
Yeah, Feedly app on the phone is a must. I typically avoid it on the desktop, otherwise I'll lose all productivity.
...than any of the following:
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
1 x 10^34
1e+34
10 decillion
Come on. This is still Slashdot.
Ah, excellent! Thank you for that. I was aware of omitting part of the title, but I spent more time worrying about my analogy instead of getting the full title out there. I wasn't even aware of a non-3D Wolfenstein.
I would think of it like this:
2D FPS games (original Wolfenstein) would be like driving a car in a simple grid of streets lined with buildings.
2.5D FPS games (Doom/DN) would be less like operating a car and more like operating a helicoptor - you have to maneuver in 3 dimensions with your vertical axis generally constant, and gravity is still a thing.
3D FPS (Descent) would be operating a starship in deep space with true vector-based navigation and 0 fixed axes...plus the ability to roll like an airplane.
Descent was devoid of gravity, so orientation was truly a challenge. To date it is the only game I've ever had to fight motion sickness.
Da! Is Mister Judgement to you, Yankee!
-Soviet Russia
Yeah, you can definitely save money buying in bulk. During the span when I bought pre-mixed bottles (about 3 years ago), I wanted to try a variety, so smaller bottles made sense. My favorite flavors only seemed to come in the 30mL quantities at the time. Then I was gifted 4 or 5 larger bottles (50 or 60 mL) by someone who was giving it up. The flavors were good and the nicotine content was the right percentage for me at the time (9 mg/mL), but they all made me cough constantly. That was what convinced me to start mixing my own -- to know exactly what the ingredients were and what ratios were used. I settled on mixing my own before I ever got to see an economic benefit of bulk-buying a pre-mix liquid that I liked and didn't make me cough.
At $28 for 120mL (1-month supply), that'd be around $336 per year for me...difference of $226. Add up the time I spend ordering, mixing, and securing the raw materials and I technically would come out ahead buying bulk pre-mix like your shop sells.
Vaping costs around $140 per year for me. I mix my own liquid from the raw components (Propylene Glycol, Vegetable Glycerine, Flavor concentrate, Nicotine). I'll buy 1 liter of PG , 0.5 liter VG, and 0.5 liter of nicotine-VG suspension. The annual cost of the liquid components is $110 per year. Those materials will yield around 52 bottles (30 mL) of liquid, each of which lasts me about a week. Add in the cost of the flavor and heating coils for another $25 - $30 per year.
In a vape shop, those 30mL bottles would cost between $9 and $15, so we'll say $12 on average, or $625 per year. That's about 1/4 of what a smoker would spend buying 1 pack per day at $7/pack ($2555 per year). My cost is about 5% of what I used to spend on smoking, and 22% of what I would spend buying the pre-mixed liquid.
To take your point a little further: they're completely okay with the data being readily available to any hypothetical pervert with internal system access, but feign indignation when the content originators or shareholders become aware of it. This is almost certainly not an isolated incident.
I don't suspect that presently, but it has definitely occurred to me as possible. In order for that to become reality, I predict a preliminary step would be for Microsoft to release their own Linux distribution, then to do what they can to increase its adoption (give it preferential treatment in the Store over other WSL-based distro packages, perhaps begin installing it by default with a convenient "WSL" installation screen that downplays options, etc.). Once people become familiar or accustomed to this "MSLD" and its unique (extended?) features or hypothetically closer interoperability with the windows host system itself, then you start to see where those tactics can lead. I am unaware if MS is working on (or has already released) its own Linux distribution, but it wouldn't surprise me.
I am in my late 30's with 3 kids between 9 and 14. I honestly can't tell if I'm doing the right thing anymore on this front, but I have outright refused to let my kids have smartphones. I'm not looking to this crowd for affirmation or vindication, but I hope to share my experience for those who find themselves in similar circumstance. Maybe you can give me some perspective.
I know the nonsense I got up to when I was a teen...and I was a "good" kid who barely had a healthy dose of trouble. The mistakes that accompanied learning were unavoidable...but the repercussions were likely temporary and surviveable. And you had to kinda seek out the truly permanent or mortally dangerous risks.
I'm not a prude. I stopped forcing my kids to wear helmets once they had ridden their bikes for a year. The only hovering I do around my kids is making sure the boys don't bloody each other.
The one thing I am adamant about is them not having the internet in their pockets. The thought of them plowing through 4chan or sending/receiving nude texts...or unwittimgly talking to paedophiles...nightmares.
Kids are supposed to disobey and get into trouble. But for Pete'ssake make them work for it! Don't hand them all the gory details on an iPlatter in never-ending full motion HD! There's no effort to type in a search term or click a link compared to procuring and hiding a skin mag. Even in the early internet days on a desktop, you still had a fair risk of getting caught since you were in the living room in plain view!
The whole sexting thing is pretty much a given...if the first MMS ever wasn't someone's ass, then the 2nd or 3rd probably was. It was inevitable from there. And then to blindly whitelist all senders by default...terribly risky to give to a child.
And don't get me started on addiction. I don't do Facebook, and my wife gave it up 8 years ago. She doesn't want a smartphone after breaking 3 of them in a year back in 2014. I have 1, but pretty much use it for email and news feeds only.
I love my kids, and they tell me I'm the best Dad ever. They still ask every few months about iPhones, even though I've largely explained my reasoning to them. They're pretty much the only ones in their public schools without the latest iPhone. I bought all 3 of them simple durable flip phones and disabled all MMS.
For context, I've been a programmer since '97 and started tooling around on BBS's in the early 90s. It gets harder and harder every time they ask to say "no", but I think they are truly better individuals without smartphones...at least not this young. And honestly, even if the parental controls are improved to a point where I could limit everything I wanted to limit, I'd spend so much time administering the controls, I'd burn out and get lazy.
I kept one of these guys on the phone for 20 minutes trying all kinds of stuff. He was clearly getting frustrated trying to do remote-hands on my Linux box. I never got the chance to tell him my OS though because at some point, I couldn't contain myself and asked "OH, you wanted the computer ON the whole time!". He hung up on me. RUDE.
I just finished "Time Enough for Love" by Robert Heinlein three days ago, and have begun reading "Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven. Both had sat on my shelf unread for years. I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to read some classic-ish sci-fi. Time Enough for Love was highly amusing.
PS, both novels start off rather boring, but improve in tone and pacing around the 50-page mark.