Sean has a few friends who are into computers and gaming, and who generally feel isolated and excluded at school. Sean finds many of his classes boring, although he has met academic requirements, and spends most of his time in his creative other life, building computers, programming, networking, writing games, especially RPG's.
I think if you asked most kids today what they though about their public school, they would say they hate their classes and they don't have many friends. I was lucky enough to be sent to a very good private school growing up, and I can tell you that of all the people I know, I actually enjoyed high school more than college. College was a great time, but my best friends are still the ones I made in high school. Today's public education flat out sucks, and I don't blame Sean for being unhappy with where he was at. I offer up a 'good job!' and a 'good luck!' to his parents for deciding to home school him now as that is probably the best alternative. I have many cousins who are or were home-schooled, stayed active in extra-curricular activities, and are some of the more popular 'kids' now that they're away from home. Remember that public schools don't usually breed the 'cream of the crop' intelligence wise, so if Sean can find extra-curricular activities outside of the public school/sports arena, I'm sure he'll be much better off.
Well, that's fine for you, but I'm going to download the ISO's. Why not send the $49.95 straight to Madrake, instead of letting some department store skim $3 off that price? AND, the group at Mandrake will get your money right away, they'll know who you are, and their appreciation towards you for willingly giving money for that which they offer for free will go through the roof. I guess I'm trying to put more emphasis on the human factor here, than the monetary factor. Besides, your broadband can be put to use downloading, and thereby encouraging the use of, another Linux distro. For all the other poor souls without broadband, the department store alternative is there too.
But notice that the second half of the email plugs their new 'service', even though the customer requested to not be updated about this type of thing originally. So it is spam.
I whole-heartedly agree with you on this, but remember:
Now if our government did this, people would be up in arms.
They do, it's called Echelon and it spies on almost every spoken word around the world through telephones, wireless, etc. 'Tis a sad state of affairs that we live in today.
True, but I just stated that I wouldn't have the means to buy any of their stuff anyways. Ever heard of the corporate term: 'networking'? It's where you get your name out there, and eventually, you get a really good job, contract, etc. because people already know who you are. Isn't that how the band 'Linkin Park' was discovered. On MP3.com? I would argue that they are paying the rent and eating well these days.
It all comes back to the money question. They can extort money from an ISP, or at least throttle their self proclaimed 'loss of profits' by strangling the less powerful and monetarily weaker ISP's. Going after individuals is not going to net them any major profits or power over 'file-sharing', therefore they will most likely never resort to that. If however, they can create an atmosphere of ISP's and individuals accusing each other so that they can make themselves more 'powerful' in the eyes of the MPAA and RIAA, then that is the most beneficial thing to do. Study some history on Nazi Germany. You will find that this is the same type of fear and paranoia that Hitler fed the masses to advance his regime.
The situation on Gnutella is analogous to me setting a streetcorner stand with CD-writers and a large collection of CDs, then strangers can come by and make a copy of any CD they want, provided they bring a blank CD-R along.
You could say the same thing about street vendors giving out newspapers for free, when you can get them for free online, but then again, that would be ridiculous wouldn't it because of the cost to do so? What I completely do not understand is why people try to compare this to an existing method. The profits of record companies last year (while Napster was still going strong) actually rose! Oh my gosh, if we don't kill Napster, then we won't have profits! Yeah, right.
The fact remains, you would have to supply all the CD-R burners, buy all of the hundreds (thousands even) of records, then give up your entire day to give it all away for free. The Internet allows this to happen, but that's because it is a new medium. If the artists don't want there music to be copied, why not just do shows only? Oh yeah, they can't reach as many people. I hope this whole debate blows up in the RIAA's and MPAA's faces.
So you're calling me a theif of music because I might download a couple of your friend's songs in mp3 format, even though I would never go out and buy their album because it is not carried in any store here in Ohio, USA? C'mon! That's silly. If nothing else, your friends just got more exposure than they could have ever hoped for because now I know they exist, whereas before Napster, I didn't.
I thought the whole idea of copyright, and the right to make your own copies revolved around getting something for free (or a reduced price) that you would have bought otherwise? I thought deeply about this the other day:
It is perfectly legal for me to view a website that has news everyday, like Slashdot. Hell, I can even archive every one of their stories and commentary on my computer (my browser even does it for me by caching webpages autmatically!). I can share that webpage with my friends, let them read it, copy it, whatever, I just cannot claim it as my own work, and neither can my friends. So why is file sharing of mp3's any different? You hear a song on the radio, internet, CD - you make a copy - you share it with your friends of Gnutella, Napster, etc. How is that different as long as you're not passing it off as your own work? I think what we should fight is those people who download mp3's, make CD's, and sell them as if they're a distributor of such works. Then the MPAA should have full legal recourse to go after those offenders. But to say that free file sharing is breaking copyright/fair use laws is utterly ridiculous.
I tend to use keyboard actions to navigate web pages and browser menus - alt(backarrow), PGDN, PGUP etc. Saves on moving the mouse around, especially when your mouse sensitivity is set as high as mine (for gaming) and it's hard to keep the pointer on those darn menu items...
This is precisely the reason why I would prefer gesture based commands using the mouse. So that I do not have to take my hand off the mouse to do keystroke commands. This would be especially useful for people with carpal tunnel I would think, as there would be more arm movement (waving the mouse around), and less finger movement (typing alt-backarrow as you suggest).
I have found the Black and White interface of waving the mouse around quite useful for a couple reasons.
1) Full-screen graphics - no Menu bars anywhere on the screen to clutter up you viewing area.
2) Less switching back and forth from mouse to keyboard. - I wish a similar gesture based system existed for CounterStrike!:)
The typical brain-dead AOL'er usually accepts what they've been given, ala - AOL IM. That's why I use it, because everyone else does. It's definitely not the nicest one out there, but it is the most pervasive, just like the equally annoying M$ Windows. So I think there is a good reason to have people developing more powerful clients for the AOL IM network than accepting the default standard.
I guess I did not fully develop the 'working hard' explanation of fixing the ills of society. What I meant by that was not physical work, rather work on their involvement in people's lives. Many people in America look out only for number one. Some are even so bold as to have only fair weather friends that will bolster their status in society, but do not really care about their 'friends' well-being in the long run if it's going to cost them something without getting anything in return.
I think it has gotten much worse over the last 20 years or so, and I admit that I am at times quite guilty of not caring about others. I'm used to doing that because that's the culture I grew up in. In other countries, the family unit is held sacred and not to be broken. In America, we have divorce rates of 65% (my best guesstimate, but it's not far off). Ask any foriegner, and they'll tell you that Americans are generally rude and rather selfish. (That's why the Europeans don't like American tourists, cause we're generally moronic jerks).
When we realize that being involved in politics (at least voting - which 50% of Americans do not do), being involved in our own children's lives (which again, I would say we are woefully not doing enough of), and caring for our neighbors will change our society, I would say that we will change society. And yes, that will take some hard work.
You're most likely correct about Americans being more overworked than the rest of the world, but why is that? It's because both parents have to have jobs to pay off the cars, boats, vacations, and other things that they've overspent money on. So really, the overwork comes from trying to keep up with the Jones', not from trying to help out the Jones' when they fall upon hard times.
Since I do not want to show myself as a complete hipocryte, here's a quick story of my own life:
A certain guy my age that I met at my church had fallen on hard times. He was in grad school, just married 8 months ago, was in the process of dealing with his wife's recent infidelity, had diagnosed mental issues, and had very little money. To make a long story short, I let him stay at my apartment (we split rent, but it was definitely cheaper than his alternatives), and I generally offered advice from time to time on his situation with the divorce. He now is finishing grad school, divorced, and just got a city planning job in Indiana. Although this was the most difficult thing I have ever done, and a lot of emotional WORK, it was better for both of us! I learned a lot about myself, and he got back on his feet and will be a successful member of society.
This is great! Reverse engineered Borg built with animal brains! hehe.
Sure, PETA will undoubtedly swing into full action as the previous guy who has FP on this discussion mentioned, but it looks as if scientists have already been doing this for a while now. I doubt that PETA could do much more than be annoying on this issue.
What will be interesting and exciting is having dirty rats going out in hords in front of our soldiers sweeping minefields and checking for booby traps. I would think it would be a lot cheaper to breed a bunch of vermin to be used as cannon fodder than build big minesweeping equipment.
While it is true that the US population wants democracy and freedom (for the most part), the country was built as a republic, not a pure democracy. Therefore, in its early days, it worked well because the democratically elected officials represented a much smaller portion of people than today, and were therefore more accountable for their actions. However, due to population explosion over the past 200+ years, the republican officials of this country now have less accountability to any one person. Add to that the fact that 50% or more of our population could care less about politicians, as long as it doesn't directly affect their lives.
This is why corporations can now have so much pull in government. They can throw lots more money towards causes and lobby groups which in turn become the major accountability factors for any one elected official. It therefore benefits elected officials to pay more attention to corporate interests than to the individuals in their constituency. That's why laws like the DMCA get passed.
We are at a critical juncture in our nation's history, and I fear that if we as individuals do not stand up to 'unfair', ambiguous, and generally stupid rules (like the DMCA) that benefit big money (corps.) while hurting individuals, we will become a nation (possibly a world) governed by corporations who have their profits in mind more than the well-being of society. And sitting idly by while we let government 'take care of us' with all kinds of social programs, not only will we allow corps and big money to take control, we will actually encourage others grabbing for more power to control our individual lives. Hitler grabbed power because the people wanted a 'savior' to fix all their problems for them. He turned out to be nothing more than a power hungry, lazy, murderous dictator living off the people's hard work. He did nothing to improve their situation in life. In fact, Germany lay in ruins by the end of WWII. Do we really want someone to fix all of our problems for us, or should we take a stand and work hard to improve our own life? The school violence, the gun control debate, the drugs everywhere, and all the other ills of society could greatly be reduced when we realize that most of those ills come about because everyone wants to be lazy and 'let others take care of it' instead of us taking our individual lives into our own hands and working hard to improve whatever situation we have been given.
Today's attitude: Life handed me lemons, so I'm gonna sue to get back the oranges I so rightly deserve!
Some sites are actually TOO good at blocking. DSM.org notes on the front page of their site that their mailing list (which you have to request to have sent to you) gets bounced by AOL for being 'spam'. Apparently AOL doesn't follow normal email conventions and rules in an attempt to 'help' the average retard Joe Schmoe that just got on the 'net.
I've modified my Eagle Talon (not street illegal yet) and I am still allowed to drive on city streets. What's the difference between that and overclocking my computer? There's no regulations that say it's illegal to run software with a computer that is overclocked to twice it's rated speed is there?
Oh yeah, forgot to put this in my above post. I highly doubt the car manufacturers condone modifying your stock engine because *gasp* it might explode killing you and countless others!
HAHAHAHA! Sure, tell that to the NASCAR folks. Their multi-billion dollar sport evolved from taking stock cars and attaching all sorts of parts that I'm sure the manufacturers didn't want on their cars at the time. Change your login id to atrowllllll!
Re:So, basically what you're saying is
on
Pentium IV study
·
· Score: 1
My lack of overclockability is due to a crappy BIOS and Dell mobo, not the chip itself. (and actually, the chip has an aluminum heatsink attached which does not look easy to remove without the possibility of damaging the chip or Slot A socket board.) I guess the mobo makes a large difference in overclockability in the end, but the Intel chips are still twice as expensive as an equivalent AMD chip right now.
Re:So, basically what you're saying is
on
Pentium IV study
·
· Score: 1
But still not nearly as good as an AMD Duron overclocked. I've seen AMD Duron 600's overclocked to 800+ stably, and over 1Ghz (although I'm sure this really cuts into the life of the chip at this insane speed). Although I cannot overclock my P3, I doubt it could nudge past 650Mhz, even with extreme cooling.
If you don't particularly care for it, you can stop filling in the information you provide to get free goodies, don't sign up for givaways, never slide your visa card, etc.
Good luck building credit for buying a house, a car, student loans for your kids, etc. You can't do so just paying cash up front all the time.
You provide the information willingly, what's wrong with someone else collecting it, and making a nice profit?
So if I give my info to my mortgage company, who then sends it to their credit card division, who then sells that to a bunch of telemarketers, who then call me non-stop; is that justified? Because that's how it works my friend.
Just because something is already happening and not illegal, doesn't mean that it's ok, or the right thing to do. That also means that current laws may be outdated, not applicable, or need improvement.
That's why I oppose the DMCA (copyright law as it is written now benefits big corp's, not the little guy as it was intended to do originally), and am for more restrictions on data collection of my own private info (because I have no control over it anymore, just the big all-powerful corps are).
I've heard they're wildly innacurrate, or at least impossible to deal with. That's why I joined a Credit Union, and I'm not going back to a bank again.
Slashdot Mirror
I think if you asked most kids today what they though about their public school, they would say they hate their classes and they don't have many friends. I was lucky enough to be sent to a very good private school growing up, and I can tell you that of all the people I know, I actually enjoyed high school more than college. College was a great time, but my best friends are still the ones I made in high school. Today's public education flat out sucks, and I don't blame Sean for being unhappy with where he was at. I offer up a 'good job!' and a 'good luck!' to his parents for deciding to home school him now as that is probably the best alternative. I have many cousins who are or were home-schooled, stayed active in extra-curricular activities, and are some of the more popular 'kids' now that they're away from home. Remember that public schools don't usually breed the 'cream of the crop' intelligence wise, so if Sean can find extra-curricular activities outside of the public school/sports arena, I'm sure he'll be much better off.
Well, that's fine for you, but I'm going to download the ISO's. Why not send the $49.95 straight to Madrake, instead of letting some department store skim $3 off that price? AND, the group at Mandrake will get your money right away, they'll know who you are, and their appreciation towards you for willingly giving money for that which they offer for free will go through the roof. I guess I'm trying to put more emphasis on the human factor here, than the monetary factor. Besides, your broadband can be put to use downloading, and thereby encouraging the use of, another Linux distro. For all the other poor souls without broadband, the department store alternative is there too.
Talk about a conductive electrical hazard dujour!
But notice that the second half of the email plugs their new 'service', even though the customer requested to not be updated about this type of thing originally. So it is spam.
Now if our government did this, people would be up in arms.
They do, it's called Echelon and it spies on almost every spoken word around the world through telephones, wireless, etc. 'Tis a sad state of affairs that we live in today.
True, but I just stated that I wouldn't have the means to buy any of their stuff anyways. Ever heard of the corporate term: 'networking'? It's where you get your name out there, and eventually, you get a really good job, contract, etc. because people already know who you are. Isn't that how the band 'Linkin Park' was discovered. On MP3.com? I would argue that they are paying the rent and eating well these days.
It all comes back to the money question. They can extort money from an ISP, or at least throttle their self proclaimed 'loss of profits' by strangling the less powerful and monetarily weaker ISP's. Going after individuals is not going to net them any major profits or power over 'file-sharing', therefore they will most likely never resort to that. If however, they can create an atmosphere of ISP's and individuals accusing each other so that they can make themselves more 'powerful' in the eyes of the MPAA and RIAA, then that is the most beneficial thing to do. Study some history on Nazi Germany. You will find that this is the same type of fear and paranoia that Hitler fed the masses to advance his regime.
You could say the same thing about street vendors giving out newspapers for free, when you can get them for free online, but then again, that would be ridiculous wouldn't it because of the cost to do so? What I completely do not understand is why people try to compare this to an existing method. The profits of record companies last year (while Napster was still going strong) actually rose! Oh my gosh, if we don't kill Napster, then we won't have profits! Yeah, right.
The fact remains, you would have to supply all the CD-R burners, buy all of the hundreds (thousands even) of records, then give up your entire day to give it all away for free. The Internet allows this to happen, but that's because it is a new medium. If the artists don't want there music to be copied, why not just do shows only? Oh yeah, they can't reach as many people. I hope this whole debate blows up in the RIAA's and MPAA's faces.
I gotta troll here! This is the funniest thing I've ever seen on my brief time on slashdot! Kudo's for the rhyme dude!
So you're calling me a theif of music because I might download a couple of your friend's songs in mp3 format, even though I would never go out and buy their album because it is not carried in any store here in Ohio, USA? C'mon! That's silly. If nothing else, your friends just got more exposure than they could have ever hoped for because now I know they exist, whereas before Napster, I didn't.
I thought the whole idea of copyright, and the right to make your own copies revolved around getting something for free (or a reduced price) that you would have bought otherwise? I thought deeply about this the other day:
It is perfectly legal for me to view a website that has news everyday, like Slashdot. Hell, I can even archive every one of their stories and commentary on my computer (my browser even does it for me by caching webpages autmatically!). I can share that webpage with my friends, let them read it, copy it, whatever, I just cannot claim it as my own work, and neither can my friends. So why is file sharing of mp3's any different? You hear a song on the radio, internet, CD - you make a copy - you share it with your friends of Gnutella, Napster, etc. How is that different as long as you're not passing it off as your own work? I think what we should fight is those people who download mp3's, make CD's, and sell them as if they're a distributor of such works. Then the MPAA should have full legal recourse to go after those offenders. But to say that free file sharing is breaking copyright/fair use laws is utterly ridiculous.
This is precisely the reason why I would prefer gesture based commands using the mouse. So that I do not have to take my hand off the mouse to do keystroke commands. This would be especially useful for people with carpal tunnel I would think, as there would be more arm movement (waving the mouse around), and less finger movement (typing alt-backarrow as you suggest).
I have found the Black and White interface of waving the mouse around quite useful for a couple reasons.
1) Full-screen graphics - no Menu bars anywhere on the screen to clutter up you viewing area. :)
2) Less switching back and forth from mouse to keyboard. - I wish a similar gesture based system existed for CounterStrike!
The typical brain-dead AOL'er usually accepts what they've been given, ala - AOL IM. That's why I use it, because everyone else does. It's definitely not the nicest one out there, but it is the most pervasive, just like the equally annoying M$ Windows. So I think there is a good reason to have people developing more powerful clients for the AOL IM network than accepting the default standard.
I think it has gotten much worse over the last 20 years or so, and I admit that I am at times quite guilty of not caring about others. I'm used to doing that because that's the culture I grew up in. In other countries, the family unit is held sacred and not to be broken. In America, we have divorce rates of 65% (my best guesstimate, but it's not far off). Ask any foriegner, and they'll tell you that Americans are generally rude and rather selfish. (That's why the Europeans don't like American tourists, cause we're generally moronic jerks).
When we realize that being involved in politics (at least voting - which 50% of Americans do not do), being involved in our own children's lives (which again, I would say we are woefully not doing enough of), and caring for our neighbors will change our society, I would say that we will change society. And yes, that will take some hard work.
You're most likely correct about Americans being more overworked than the rest of the world, but why is that? It's because both parents have to have jobs to pay off the cars, boats, vacations, and other things that they've overspent money on. So really, the overwork comes from trying to keep up with the Jones', not from trying to help out the Jones' when they fall upon hard times.
Since I do not want to show myself as a complete hipocryte, here's a quick story of my own life:
A certain guy my age that I met at my church had fallen on hard times. He was in grad school, just married 8 months ago, was in the process of dealing with his wife's recent infidelity, had diagnosed mental issues, and had very little money. To make a long story short, I let him stay at my apartment (we split rent, but it was definitely cheaper than his alternatives), and I generally offered advice from time to time on his situation with the divorce. He now is finishing grad school, divorced, and just got a city planning job in Indiana. Although this was the most difficult thing I have ever done, and a lot of emotional WORK, it was better for both of us! I learned a lot about myself, and he got back on his feet and will be a successful member of society.
Pirates with wooden legs come to mind!
Sure, PETA will undoubtedly swing into full action as the previous guy who has FP on this discussion mentioned, but it looks as if scientists have already been doing this for a while now. I doubt that PETA could do much more than be annoying on this issue.
What will be interesting and exciting is having dirty rats going out in hords in front of our soldiers sweeping minefields and checking for booby traps. I would think it would be a lot cheaper to breed a bunch of vermin to be used as cannon fodder than build big minesweeping equipment.
Reminds me of BattleCats from SNL. ;)
This is why corporations can now have so much pull in government. They can throw lots more money towards causes and lobby groups which in turn become the major accountability factors for any one elected official. It therefore benefits elected officials to pay more attention to corporate interests than to the individuals in their constituency. That's why laws like the DMCA get passed.
We are at a critical juncture in our nation's history, and I fear that if we as individuals do not stand up to 'unfair', ambiguous, and generally stupid rules (like the DMCA) that benefit big money (corps.) while hurting individuals, we will become a nation (possibly a world) governed by corporations who have their profits in mind more than the well-being of society. And sitting idly by while we let government 'take care of us' with all kinds of social programs, not only will we allow corps and big money to take control, we will actually encourage others grabbing for more power to control our individual lives. Hitler grabbed power because the people wanted a 'savior' to fix all their problems for them. He turned out to be nothing more than a power hungry, lazy, murderous dictator living off the people's hard work. He did nothing to improve their situation in life. In fact, Germany lay in ruins by the end of WWII. Do we really want someone to fix all of our problems for us, or should we take a stand and work hard to improve our own life? The school violence, the gun control debate, the drugs everywhere, and all the other ills of society could greatly be reduced when we realize that most of those ills come about because everyone wants to be lazy and 'let others take care of it' instead of us taking our individual lives into our own hands and working hard to improve whatever situation we have been given.
Today's attitude: Life handed me lemons, so I'm gonna sue to get back the oranges I so rightly deserve!
My question is: What makes you deserve oranges?
Some sites are actually TOO good at blocking. DSM.org notes on the front page of their site that their mailing list (which you have to request to have sent to you) gets bounced by AOL for being 'spam'. Apparently AOL doesn't follow normal email conventions and rules in an attempt to 'help' the average retard Joe Schmoe that just got on the 'net.
I've modified my Eagle Talon (not street illegal yet) and I am still allowed to drive on city streets. What's the difference between that and overclocking my computer? There's no regulations that say it's illegal to run software with a computer that is overclocked to twice it's rated speed is there?
Oh yeah, forgot to put this in my above post. I highly doubt the car manufacturers condone modifying your stock engine because *gasp* it might explode killing you and countless others!
HAHAHAHA! Sure, tell that to the NASCAR folks. Their multi-billion dollar sport evolved from taking stock cars and attaching all sorts of parts that I'm sure the manufacturers didn't want on their cars at the time. Change your login id to atrowllllll!
My lack of overclockability is due to a crappy BIOS and Dell mobo, not the chip itself. (and actually, the chip has an aluminum heatsink attached which does not look easy to remove without the possibility of damaging the chip or Slot A socket board.) I guess the mobo makes a large difference in overclockability in the end, but the Intel chips are still twice as expensive as an equivalent AMD chip right now.
But still not nearly as good as an AMD Duron overclocked. I've seen AMD Duron 600's overclocked to 800+ stably, and over 1Ghz (although I'm sure this really cuts into the life of the chip at this insane speed). Although I cannot overclock my P3, I doubt it could nudge past 650Mhz, even with extreme cooling.
Good luck building credit for buying a house, a car, student loans for your kids, etc. You can't do so just paying cash up front all the time.
You provide the information willingly, what's wrong with someone else collecting it, and making a nice profit?
So if I give my info to my mortgage company, who then sends it to their credit card division, who then sells that to a bunch of telemarketers, who then call me non-stop; is that justified? Because that's how it works my friend.
Just because something is already happening and not illegal, doesn't mean that it's ok, or the right thing to do. That also means that current laws may be outdated, not applicable, or need improvement.
That's why I oppose the DMCA (copyright law as it is written now benefits big corp's, not the little guy as it was intended to do originally), and am for more restrictions on data collection of my own private info (because I have no control over it anymore, just the big all-powerful corps are).
I've heard they're wildly innacurrate, or at least impossible to deal with. That's why I joined a Credit Union, and I'm not going back to a bank again.