I had heard of this case before - him spamming free republic and harassing individuals (he apparently was posting their addresses, phone #s, etc.
He acted like a complete script kiddie and got what was coming!
Yet another non-geek review Katz
on
Review: Blow
·
· Score: 1
You really are getting paid per article you write aren't you?
There are so many things you could be writing about, but no you have to waste/.'s space with non-geek stuff.
Maybe salon.com isn't in as good of a shape as/. but maybe, just maybe you could go there and post your non-geek, trendy type reviews there (that are about 2 weeks to late, lol).
Oh, and goto http://us.imdb.com and read Maltin's reviews there, maybe you'd learn something.
The democrats are the ones that scare me. they don't ask for stuff to be censored because of moral obligations, they ask for stuff to be censored to 'protect people'. The republicans will back off when the big money/companies tell them "if it's censored it'll affect our bottom line". The democrats on the other hand think they are sticking up for minorities, children, women, etc.
Lieberman is a Dem (and we know how much he loves violence - he is the most outspoken critic of it in congress)
Tipper Gore (remember the record/cd labels and wanting to outright ban explicit albums) is a Dem.
Sen Jim Exon (D-Nebraska) sponsored/got the ball rolling on the CDA http://www.prognet.com/contentp/rabest/thebill.htm l
That's one thing that bothers me, people look at the republicans and totally ignore the democrats. When censorship starts, it's going to be from a direction we don't expect.
You tried to work in a review of a Seagal movie, that is totally lame. In retrospect, rugrats in paris or say it ain't so or heartbreakers would have been better oriented towards this crowd.
You need to just move to salon.com or msnbc.com, at least there when they do movie reviews of lame movies, they don't try and justify it talking about technology.
According to several people over on boards.uo.com, There was not going to be (when originally released)
any housing
any boating
any guilds
any mounts
in other words, a NeverQuest/Assh*les Call clone.
Once again, Slashdot plays salon.com or movies.com
on
15 Minutes
·
· Score: 1
Once again Slashdot tries to emulate salon.com, which probably isn't wise considering salon's stock value;-)
News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. How movie reviews of non-geek movies fit into that I dunno. I can see reviews of Planet of the Apes, StarWars, Lord of the Rings. But the last half dozen movie reviews of katz's makes me think he'd be better writing for a movie site.
I'm not saying his reviews are bad, just they don't belong here. He could probably make more money at msnbc or movies.go.com or another such place. If he was good enough he could make it on cnn.
Christ Katz, review TLC or PBS or DISCOVERY shows
on
C.S.I.
·
· Score: 1
It's quite clear none of us care about what comes on after survivor/friends.
It is clear that we'd love Katz to review new shows on TLC or DISC or PBS or Sci-Fi.
None of us care about the drivel that mainstream networks are throwing out at the masses.
Ultima Online has been doing this for 3-4 years (as do other online games now I'm sure). Granted it may not be exactly like Symantec does it, but they are incremental updates, and very common (in the beta of UO:Third Dawn, there have been 40+ patches in the past few months).
Their fail safe systems were pretty simple, mostly consisting of duct tape.
Seriously, their systems were simple enough, and targeted towards specific tasks, that they probably just had duplicates/triplicates of the systems themselves. If one goes wrong, the astronaut pulls it out and puts another one in.
As simple as it was, you couldn't have tons of spare equipment laying around. They tested that equipment a lot as best they could.
The big problems they had were external events/unpredictable events, such as the Apollo 13 explosion, etc. and you really can't design against that.
Where's the Rugrats review???? What about Rent?
on
The Pledge
·
· Score: 1
Once more,/. is attempting to mirror salon or msnbc.
C'mon katz boy, where's the Rugrats review? A lot of your reviews lately belong on salon or msnbc or [insert non-geek site here] so why don't you just break down and admit you've run out of tech stuff to talk about (unless you want to do what, a 20th story on hell-orifice).
The only non-geek thing you haven't talked about in the entertainment world is musicals.
What's next, your analysis of the state of current broadway musicals?
Unfortunatly, the Challenger hurt Mars exploration
on
The Challenger
·
· Score: 1
Just my opinion, but right around the Challenger accident, things were picking up, we were proud to be Americans, people were starting to look past earth's orbit, and even past the moon.
When the Challenger exploded, it just seemed to take the wind out of our sails when it came to space and big projects and all.
I don't have all the fancy numbers and all, but after NASA went into a slump after the moon (even if you do count SkyLab), the space shuttle, especially the Challenger and her crew, got a lot of people thinking about the moon/mars again. A lot of things seemed possible. A lot of us had been jaded up until the Challenger since the shuttle had become commonplace and all. The Challenger generated a lot of interest that has been sorely lacking.
I just feel that the accident set NASA back/made them paranoid enough, that Mars was pushed to the back burner.
Just my opinion.
What does Mel Brooks have to do with this?
on
The Challenger
·
· Score: 1
Why would we need to include, in a moment of silence day, a musical number by Mel Brooks in 'History of the World'????
Sony just sees things different than OSI. OSI sees the fact that in-game objects sell for real life money as proof of how popular/spiffy/etc. UO is. It clearly states that the account and everythig in the game is the property of OSI/EA, however they have no problems with anybody selling.
Ask a GM in game if it's alright to use something not available in the game/to other players to gain an advantage in the game, and they'll say no.
Substitute the word 'money' for 'something' and you have ebay.
The real life money situation in UO caused many many many MANY problems for players (and many left) when housing was opened up in Trammel, as many players were beat to housing spots by people who's sole goal was to place a house to sell on ebay.
You are killing Slashdot with Jon Katz articles that most of us do not come to Slashdot to read and that belong on salon or inside or nytimes, but for sure do not belong here.
Not a troll, just a comment on how things have changed over the past year.
May not be the most politically incorrect, but it's got both a military and economy aspect that are strong, it's kind of like a 'Civilization Lite' so to speak.
I see this happening a lot more in the future, for better or for worse. We are seeing businesses act in ways 5 or 10 years ago would have been laughed at/met with derision, but are now met with lawyers.
It's amusing sometimes as well, maybe I'm alone in this, but some of these companies act like little kids on the playground running for the lone, empty swing, all the while screaming "I SAW IT FIRST, IT'S MINE, NO YOU DIDN'T I USED IT YESTERDAY", etc.
It's almost irrelevant nowadays, if an employer here said "You have to work 12 hour days, 6 days a week". You can bet they'll have problems filling the position if they aren't putting up the money (and a lot of it) for something like that.
The problem with tech support, is every company does it differently, using different platforms, different applications, etc. It would be very hard to have some kind of "guild system" when you have such a large variance in that job. Tech support isn't something that you can train 5,000 people the same way and then send them off to 100 different companies and everybody's happy.
And different companies do it different ways. Some companies have large databases of tech info, and if a customer calls in, they ask a question, the operator (for lack of a better word) types it in the database, the database spits out an answer, and they give that to a customer. Others, smaller places usually, the tech support personal who answer the phones are expected to know a lot.
Every company does their own thing, and a guild system would not work in that situation.
As far as unions in tech industry as a whole, the biggest obstacle, is the fact that we, the workers, are the ones who control our lives, so to speak. If I don't like a company, I'm not going to go bitch at some union rep who makes more than me about it, and expect the union to strike, thereby causing a lot more tension, and in some cases, problems for both the company and myself.
If I don't like a company, I switch jobs. I have had half a dozen friends in the past year here in Austin do it, and they have all gotten much better jobs with little effort. Maybe most other places are not like that, and jobs might be scarce, but hey, you go where the work is.
Consider this, if unions were forced upon tech companies, you'd see a lot of farming out to countries (take your pick out of India or any of a half dozen countries in that area) where they don't have the kinds of standards that we in the US have. They are doing that enough as it is, and forcing unions upon the industry would cause this to happen anymore.
The end result would be less jobs here, and companies farming out to countries whose standards, etc., are far below the US.
Unions are the reason we pay so much for cars out of detroit.
If the computer industry unionized, the price of computers, parts, software, etc., would skyrocket.
As somebody said, people get paid $35 an hour to perform menial tasks. What do you think the biggest expense is in building a car??
Could the computer industry survive a rise in prices due to unionship? Would we want that?
I don't know about you guys, but I like paying $130 for 40G Hard drives. I can remember paying $300 for a 100M Hard drive. I have no desire to go back to those kinds of prices.
(just a reference, I work for one of the computer biggies down in Austin)
I am well compensated for the work I do.
I am quite happy with my environment.
I know that if I am not happy with my conditions, whether it's pay or environment or management, I can go elsewhere and do just as well if not better.
I find the idea of having to pay a part of my salary to somebody to represent me, in a word repugnant. I can go in and talk to management anytime I want to and they will listen to me.
I find it scary that if I were in a union and they decided go on strike/work stoppage, even if I didn't agree with the rest of the union, it would affect me directly. This is the flip-side of the coin, if their interests did not represent mine, my voice would be silenced.
Unions cannot stop me from getting laid off, so what's the point of wasting money on dues?
Maybe it's the Texan in me, but I just don't cotton to other people "representing" me. I like to do my own negotiations:-)
Sorry for the yelling, i'm just getting disturbed that so much non-slashdot material is getting thrown up while so many stories are getting ignored/buried.
I would love to have a job where everything I write, no matter what it is, will get published and I get paid for it:-)
Seriously.
I get a creepy feeling reading katz's articles that just don't fit into Slashdot, and I begin to wonder, if this is what Slashdot has come down to today, what about 6 months from now, or a year from now. Is it going to be salon.com or inside.com or (insert "hip" "happening" site here) with the occasional linux blurb or tech blurb thrown in every few days?
They need to split off Slashdot into two parts, the techie part (like it used to be, geek movies, info, software, hardware, cult type stuff) and the non-geek movie review/katz "reach deep inside your soul and tell me how you feel" site.
How many people have went out and killed themselves after seeing Katz repeat himself over and over, whether it be discussions of angst-ridden teens who can't get a date to the prom or his reviews of the latest Tom Hanks movie?
People! I think we are missing the real tragedy here! The real tragedy is Katz is not offering anything of substance to Slashdot. The real tragedy appears to be Katz is getting paid per article he writes, no matter whether it has anything to do with Slashdot or not.
"Given the penchant Bush has shown for campaigning (Back in Texas he spent the majority of his day out pressing the flesh rather than working) and his conservative bent I predict more CDA (Communications Decency Act) style legislation"
Actually, as I just found out, the CDA was pushed through/created by a Democrat Senator.
I think it'll be hands off, a CDA type proposal hurts business, and do you think that Bush/Republicans will allow what they believe is moraly right to interfer with business?;-) Thought so. They have an election in 4 years and want those corporate dollars to flow. That means no CDA/regulations/change from now.
Slashdot Mirror
The American plane was in international airspace.
One of the jets got too close/up under the American plane, which attempted to get away, and in the process clipped the Chinese jet.
The surviving Chinese pilot admitted that he asked for permission to fire upon the plane.
He also stated that the American plane tried to leave the area and he forced it to land in China.
I am sick of people commenting on matters they don't read up on.
I had heard of this case before - him spamming free republic and harassing individuals (he apparently was posting their addresses, phone #s, etc. He acted like a complete script kiddie and got what was coming!
You really are getting paid per article you write aren't you?
There are so many things you could be writing about, but no you have to waste
Maybe salon.com isn't in as good of a shape as
Oh, and goto http://us.imdb.com and read Maltin's reviews there, maybe you'd learn something.
The democrats are the ones that scare me. they don't ask for stuff to be censored because of moral obligations, they ask for stuff to be censored to 'protect people'. The republicans will back off when the big money/companies tell them "if it's censored it'll affect our bottom line". The democrats on the other hand think they are sticking up for minorities, children, women, etc.
m l
Lieberman is a Dem (and we know how much he loves violence - he is the most outspoken critic of it in congress)
Tipper Gore (remember the record/cd labels and wanting to outright ban explicit albums) is a Dem.
Sen Jim Exon (D-Nebraska) sponsored/got the ball rolling on the CDA http://www.prognet.com/contentp/rabest/thebill.ht
That's one thing that bothers me, people look at the republicans and totally ignore the democrats. When censorship starts, it's going to be from a direction we don't expect.
You tried to work in a review of a Seagal movie, that is totally lame. In retrospect, rugrats in paris or say it ain't so or heartbreakers would have been better oriented towards this crowd.
You need to just move to salon.com or msnbc.com, at least there when they do movie reviews of lame movies, they don't try and justify it talking about technology.
According to several people over on boards.uo.com, There was not going to be (when originally released) any housing any boating any guilds any mounts in other words, a NeverQuest/Assh*les Call clone.
Once again Slashdot tries to emulate salon.com, which probably isn't wise considering salon's stock value
News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. How movie reviews of non-geek movies fit into that I dunno. I can see reviews of Planet of the Apes, StarWars, Lord of the Rings. But the last half dozen movie reviews of katz's makes me think he'd be better writing for a movie site.
I'm not saying his reviews are bad, just they don't belong here. He could probably make more money at msnbc or movies.go.com or another such place. If he was good enough he could make it on cnn.
It's quite clear none of us care about what comes on after survivor/friends.
It is clear that we'd love Katz to review new shows on TLC or DISC or PBS or Sci-Fi.
None of us care about the drivel that mainstream networks are throwing out at the masses.
We do care about new high-tech oriented shows.
I submitted a story mentioning the banners/ads that IBM was starting to put on their web pages a few weeks ago.
Ultima Online has been doing this for 3-4 years (as do other online games now I'm sure). Granted it may not be exactly like Symantec does it, but they are incremental updates, and very common (in the beta of UO:Third Dawn, there have been 40+ patches in the past few months).
Their fail safe systems were pretty simple, mostly consisting of duct tape.
Seriously, their systems were simple enough, and targeted towards specific tasks, that they probably just had duplicates/triplicates of the systems themselves. If one goes wrong, the astronaut pulls it out and puts another one in.
As simple as it was, you couldn't have tons of spare equipment laying around. They tested that equipment a lot as best they could.
The big problems they had were external events/unpredictable events, such as the Apollo 13 explosion, etc. and you really can't design against that.
Once more, /. is attempting to mirror salon or msnbc.
C'mon katz boy, where's the Rugrats review? A lot of your reviews lately belong on salon or msnbc or [insert non-geek site here] so why don't you just break down and admit you've run out of tech stuff to talk about (unless you want to do what, a 20th story on hell-orifice).
The only non-geek thing you haven't talked about in the entertainment world is musicals.
What's next, your analysis of the state of current broadway musicals?
Just my opinion, but right around the Challenger accident, things were picking up, we were proud to be Americans, people were starting to look past earth's orbit, and even past the moon.
When the Challenger exploded, it just seemed to take the wind out of our sails when it came to space and big projects and all.
I don't have all the fancy numbers and all, but after NASA went into a slump after the moon (even if you do count SkyLab), the space shuttle, especially the Challenger and her crew, got a lot of people thinking about the moon/mars again. A lot of things seemed possible. A lot of us had been jaded up until the Challenger since the shuttle had become commonplace and all. The Challenger generated a lot of interest that has been sorely lacking.
I just feel that the accident set NASA back/made them paranoid enough, that Mars was pushed to the back burner.
Just my opinion.
Why would we need to include, in a moment of silence day, a musical number by Mel Brooks in 'History of the World'????
Sony just sees things different than OSI. OSI sees the fact that in-game objects sell for real life money as proof of how popular/spiffy/etc. UO is. It clearly states that the account and everythig in the game is the property of OSI/EA, however they have no problems with anybody selling.
Ask a GM in game if it's alright to use something not available in the game/to other players to gain an advantage in the game, and they'll say no.
Substitute the word 'money' for 'something' and you have ebay.
The real life money situation in UO caused many many many MANY problems for players (and many left) when housing was opened up in Trammel, as many players were beat to housing spots by people who's sole goal was to place a house to sell on ebay.
You are killing Slashdot with Jon Katz articles that most of us do not come to Slashdot to read and that belong on salon or inside or nytimes, but for sure do not belong here.
Not a troll, just a comment on how things have changed over the past year.
May not be the most politically incorrect, but it's got both a military and economy aspect that are strong, it's kind of like a 'Civilization Lite' so to speak.
Where will it all end though?
I see this happening a lot more in the future, for better or for worse. We are seeing businesses act in ways 5 or 10 years ago would have been laughed at/met with derision, but are now met with lawyers.
It's amusing sometimes as well, maybe I'm alone in this, but some of these companies act like little kids on the playground running for the lone, empty swing, all the while screaming "I SAW IT FIRST, IT'S MINE, NO YOU DIDN'T I USED IT YESTERDAY", etc.
It's almost irrelevant nowadays, if an employer here said "You have to work 12 hour days, 6 days a week". You can bet they'll have problems filling the position if they aren't putting up the money (and a lot of it) for something like that.
The problem with tech support, is every company does it differently, using different platforms, different applications, etc. It would be very hard to have some kind of "guild system" when you have such a large variance in that job. Tech support isn't something that you can train 5,000 people the same way and then send them off to 100 different companies and everybody's happy.
And different companies do it different ways. Some companies have large databases of tech info, and if a customer calls in, they ask a question, the operator (for lack of a better word) types it in the database, the database spits out an answer, and they give that to a customer. Others, smaller places usually, the tech support personal who answer the phones are expected to know a lot.
Every company does their own thing, and a guild system would not work in that situation.
As far as unions in tech industry as a whole, the biggest obstacle, is the fact that we, the workers, are the ones who control our lives, so to speak. If I don't like a company, I'm not going to go bitch at some union rep who makes more than me about it, and expect the union to strike, thereby causing a lot more tension, and in some cases, problems for both the company and myself.
If I don't like a company, I switch jobs. I have had half a dozen friends in the past year here in Austin do it, and they have all gotten much better jobs with little effort. Maybe most other places are not like that, and jobs might be scarce, but hey, you go where the work is.
You mentioned foreign workers here in the US.
Consider this, if unions were forced upon tech companies, you'd see a lot of farming out to countries (take your pick out of India or any of a half dozen countries in that area) where they don't have the kinds of standards that we in the US have. They are doing that enough as it is, and forcing unions upon the industry would cause this to happen anymore.
The end result would be less jobs here, and companies farming out to countries whose standards, etc., are far below the US.
Unions are the reason we pay so much for cars out of detroit.
If the computer industry unionized, the price of computers, parts, software, etc., would skyrocket.
As somebody said, people get paid $35 an hour to perform menial tasks. What do you think the biggest expense is in building a car??
Could the computer industry survive a rise in prices due to unionship? Would we want that?
I don't know about you guys, but I like paying $130 for 40G Hard drives. I can remember paying $300 for a 100M Hard drive. I have no desire to go back to those kinds of prices.
(just a reference, I work for one of the computer biggies down in Austin)
:-)
I am well compensated for the work I do.
I am quite happy with my environment.
I know that if I am not happy with my conditions, whether it's pay or environment or management, I can go elsewhere and do just as well if not better.
I find the idea of having to pay a part of my salary to somebody to represent me, in a word repugnant. I can go in and talk to management anytime I want to and they will listen to me.
I find it scary that if I were in a union and they decided go on strike/work stoppage, even if I didn't agree with the rest of the union, it would affect me directly. This is the flip-side of the coin, if their interests did not represent mine, my voice would be silenced.
Unions cannot stop me from getting laid off, so what's the point of wasting money on dues?
Maybe it's the Texan in me, but I just don't cotton to other people "representing" me. I like to do my own negotiations
Sorry for the yelling, i'm just getting disturbed that so much non-slashdot material is getting thrown up while so many stories are getting ignored/buried.
:-)
I would love to have a job where everything I write, no matter what it is, will get published and I get paid for it
Seriously.
I get a creepy feeling reading katz's articles that just don't fit into Slashdot, and I begin to wonder, if this is what Slashdot has come down to today, what about 6 months from now, or a year from now. Is it going to be salon.com or inside.com or (insert "hip" "happening" site here) with the occasional linux blurb or tech blurb thrown in every few days?
They need to split off Slashdot into two parts, the techie part (like it used to be, geek movies, info, software, hardware, cult type stuff) and the non-geek movie review/katz "reach deep inside your soul and tell me how you feel" site.
How many people have went out and killed themselves after seeing Katz repeat himself over and over, whether it be discussions of angst-ridden teens who can't get a date to the prom or his reviews of the latest Tom Hanks movie?
People! I think we are missing the real tragedy here! The real tragedy is Katz is not offering anything of substance to Slashdot. The real tragedy appears to be Katz is getting paid per article he writes, no matter whether it has anything to do with Slashdot or not.
"Given the penchant Bush has shown for campaigning (Back in Texas he spent the majority of his day out pressing the flesh rather than working) and his conservative bent I predict more CDA (Communications Decency Act) style legislation"
;-) Thought so. They have an election in 4 years and want those corporate dollars to flow. That means no CDA/regulations/change from now.
Actually, as I just found out, the CDA was pushed through/created by a Democrat Senator.
I think it'll be hands off, a CDA type proposal hurts business, and do you think that Bush/Republicans will allow what they believe is moraly right to interfer with business?