If my kids were caught proxying around a filter to get access to porn I would not be calling my lawyer. My kid would be in trouble big time and wouldn't see the light of day for quite some time. If my kid is looking over some other kids shoulder and viewing porn at a school that had absolutely no filters on then yes, someones going to get an earful.
So what are the rules? Don't visit "bad" sites? What is a "bad" site? Do you have a list? Do you not remember that until a couple years ago, whitehouse.com was a porn site? I tried to go there without thinking when I was in college to research the government. Do you not think there are sites out there now that may not seem like what they are until you go there? How is it even acceptable that porn could be viewable from a grade school? I'm not even just talking about porn. Is it ok that a 10 year old could be researching the middle east and could stumble upon the video or pictures of Nick Berg being beheaded?
I see your point that firewalls are not a completely effective solution. I think they should be a part of the solution but not relied on to be the entire solution. There is no "magic pill" that can filter the trash out and let in the good stuff. But firewalls will keep the large majority of the kids honest. At the grade school, middle and high school level, I am willing for my kids to have access to a few good sites denied for the sake of blocking most bad sites. I would prefer no internet access to unrestricted access, but then my kids will get plenty of supervised internet access at home to learn how to get the usefull information.
I see it like this. I wouldn't tell my kids to go find out about something and tell them to look through this big box of my old books with some Hustler magazines buried in the bottom and hope they wouldn't run across them. To me that is what unfiltered internet access is like. Really, by the time you have figured out a link is no good, it's usually too late.
So how is it my bad parenting that would lead to my kids doing what they want on the internet at school? At home they will be monitored. I am not some nazi that thinks my kids need to be protected and sheltered from everything, but a 10 year old has no business learning how to make bombs or viewing hardcore porn. When my kids go to school and the school is responsible for them, they are there to learn and not "do what they want". Schools have a responsibility to do their best to filter internet access and monitor what is going on. It's either that or don't allow the internet. Bad parenting has nothing whatsoever to do with this and on the contrary, most bad parents probably don't care what their kids are exposed to.
While I wholeheartedly agree with your first paragraph, I do not with your second.
Yes, the kids should recieve some kind of punishment. They broke the rules. 3 months suspension for circumventing a firewall, probably a little extreme. I agree with you that detentions would be more appropriate, but I don't know the facts of that particular case. If a kid were showing others some of the most hardcore filth on the internet than a suspension would probably be warranted, but 3 months? I can't think of anything that would warrant a 3 month suspension and not expulsion.
The schools have a responsibility morally, ethically and legally to put up firewalls and do their best at blocking questionable sites. I understand and fully realize that everything is defeatable and everything can be accessed from somewhere else, but I don't think kids should have unfettered access at school. My child is going to be monitored on what they are or are not doing on the web when its time for that and I would appreciate that the schools would take the same kind of care.
Not to be condescending, but you sound like someone who doesn't have kids. When you do you will realize that your priorities change.
I've never once seen porn on the net that I wasn't looking for, not even when I was a wee nipper clicking on everything that I got randomly sent to me without considering what it might be
So that time you were tricked into clicking on the goatse link, that's really what you were looking for??
We like our business the size it is, we are not out to conquer the globe. Not everyone wants to be Bill Gates and rule the world. We make a fair bit of money and don't have the headaches of a huge corporation. Is that wrong?
That's the game I thought they were missing. It may not have been the first to do much of what it did, but it was by far the biggest. It pushed the big box video games into pizza shops and carry outs.
So the business I work in, creating and supporting credit union software for smaller credit unions in Ohio, is now going to have to adjust our hours to be available 24/7 for international clients that don't exist? Not every business works globally nor wants to work globally.
Looks like intel is buying ad space from thegamefeed. $50.00 for a double list mention, $100.00 for a triple and $1000.00 to have only you listed, but it looks funny when it reads "showing off ads from Intel, Intel, Intel, Intel, Intel, Intel and even Intel among others".
In my experience this has always been the case. Some people are blessed with the ability to take what is on paper and visualize how it will function in reality but I don't work with anyone like that. No matter how much I drill down specs on paper and work things out, once development starts there are always changes. The best you can do is roll with it and develop the product they ultimately want. From the start write software that is easy to modify. Lucky for us, the client that usually has the most changes for me also pays us by the hour so it works to our benefit.
(Is anyone really in such a state that having the fridge track the RFID chips in your food packaging will improve things? Well, handicapped people and shut-ins, maybe, but for the vast majority of people it's overkill at best.)
Right now? Absolutely not, but your kid's kids will probably press a 'restock' button on their fridge and have an order sent to them and not have to waste an hour or two of their lives every week in a grocery store buying the same milk, eggs, and bread they bought last week. This is one step closer to that. Lots of tech out there now are just baby steps to a greater goal.
Why buy anti-virus software at all? I understand if you are in a business setting. I usually recommend it to people who aren't computer savvy. For myself, I haven't run a full-time anti-virus package on my laptop for several years. I run the windows firewall, I update when I need to and I run in user mode, not admin. I do run the microsoft defender for spyware just because it seems to have a small footprint and not use too many resources. I do run IIS on it for development.
Norton has done way more damage to systems than they have fixed on systems I have worked on. McAfee is on my work pc and I don't have too many problems with it, but they do occur. I usually run a free online virus scan on my laptop about once every other month or sometimes less frequently then that. Usually amounts to a bunch of cookies and a couple of java apps in my browser cache. Delete and move on. Compared to the problems with running a virus scanner it's much easier for me. Anyone else feel the same way?
And windows is just as difficult to hack when the proper security is in place. If roles were reversed right now and linux were the king, are all the computer users in the world out there suddenly going to become linux gurus? Everyone who runs as administrator in windows right now would be running as root in linux and then you would see the exact same problems on linux that you do with windows.
I disagree as well. I loved Pool of Radiance and probably played it all the way through 6 or 7 times or more on my old C64. I liked the fact that the gold box games all pretty much used the same system, I could go from one to another and gameplay was almost the same. I would liken it to the expansion packs of todays mmorpg games, the later gold box games added to the earlier ones, you could even import your party from the previous games with all stats intact.
I never really tried Ultima games until 7 or 8 so I know I missed out with them, but I did try Wasteland and never really got that far into it. I loved the premise of the game, but the gameplay was just not my style.
I was not a D&D paper gamer, just someone that liked computers and those were the games that had an impact on me. From Pool of Radiance, I played the entire Gold Box series. I even got the PC versions when I finally got a PC.
And then there is the regular TV watching (Lil'Timmy watchign Sat mornign cartoons, Pop watching the 10 o'clock news, Maw with her cooking show etc etc etc), most of wich is not goign to be done on the DLP.
So exactly how many TV's am I supposed to have in the family room? Isn't the point of getting one of the newer flatscreen TV's supposed to be getting some space back in the room? How is that going to happen if I have to keep an old TV around for "regular" watching?
When objects are created there are flags available that let you set limits on your creation. You can make it copy or no-copy. You can make it so the person you sell it to cannot give it away, you can make it so they can give it away one time only if it's a reseller, or you can make it so it can be given away endlessly. You can also make it not able to be modified so people have to use what you sell them and they can't tailor it do whatever they want.
Say you make a 1969 Chevy Camaro convertable. It's an incredibly detailed object and probably took weeks if not months to create. You are more than likely going to mark it up as no-copy, non-modifyable, and no trade. Anyone who wants one has to buy it from you and they can't ever give it or sell it to anyone else. If someone else were to make one, that's out of your control, but considering the time and effort involved it is highly unlikely. Most people skilled and dedicated enough to make an object that complex would be working on something not already in the game.
There are lots and lots of free, copyable objects on Second Life, but most of the really complex items are not sold that way.
Not really. He makes virtual goods and sells them. What he can make is only limited by his creativity. There is no "skilling up" in this game, it is a glorified 3d chat room. The skills he gets are learning a scripting language and probably some photoshop skills, most definetly things he can take with him. Someone with little creativity buys the items because they want their avatar to look cool or do something it can't normally do. He cashes out. When second life goes under he still has his cash. The person that bought it is out, but probably no more than in any other online game that they buy stuff in. Not everybody is going to make money playing this game, but most people aren't looking to make money. They only want to have a nice game/chat room to spend their time in. They are paying for entertainment.
Lets try another analogy and see if this one holds up. When you buy a dvd player from Sony you get something that you can use for entertainment. When you buy land (to build a house on, I'm not talking about huge amounts that cost lots of real life dollars) or clothes or whatever on second life you are getting something that you can use for entertainment. In x number of years when your dvd player croaks you have nothing left. You have to buy another one. In x number of years when second life shuts down you have nothing left. You have to buy another game.
Holding land as an investment is an incredibly risky thing to do. Making stuff if you are creative and good at it is not nearly as risky since you don't have cash tied up in it only time. Really no more risky than making any software product. Thinking of this game as an investment opportunity is poor judgement.
I sure hope that you in your first life are not dependent on one single company!
What do you think happens when Enron goes bankrupt? There are lots of people that depend on one company for income. When that company goes kaput, they find a new job.
Consider the analogous situation in print media. It is not analogous. My library has DVD's and music cd's available for checkout as well as books. There is no problem taking them and viewing them or listening to them. It is just as morally wrong to copy a book and make it available for download as it is to copy a cd.
While I have not stayed current with all the politicians, I spent a couple hours yesterday reviewing a couple of websites (a local newspaper and a local political website) to brush up. I made a cheat sheet to take with me since I won't be memorizing 25 names. When I did my research, I tried to filter out as much propaganda as I could and look at direct quotes and their stands on the bigger issues without getting weighted down in negative language. Relying on a few quotes in a newspaper is not the best way to judge someone's character, but you can read what others opinions of them are and what kind of jobs they have done in their current positions.
The issues are pretty cut and dried. One was to raise taxes for the local bus system. Two dealt with banning smoking in public areas. One was an increase in the local minimum wage and the other dealt with allowing slot machines in a few businesses in the state.
The most difficult to choose is the judges. The Governor, Senators and Members of the House are pretty high profile and have lots of information about them, the judges do not. I pretty much tried to pick people that would just enforce the law and not try to legislate from the bench, but it's really a crap shoot with the amount of information really available.
To answer your question, I had about 30 choices to make on my ballot. 5 Ohio constitutional ammendment issues and roughly 25 or so people to vote for from Governor of Ohio to several judges. We used an electronic machine that printed your results in a spool of paper behind a small window, so you could see but not change the paper trail. It went quickly and it was 7 or 8 minutes from the time I walked in the door till the time I walked out.
Because by the time they budgeted X-Men 3, it was pretty well established it would be a success. The budget for X-Men 1 was $75 million. They are comparing Halo to Doom and Mortal Kombat. Following are worldwide gross amounts for a sample of comic and video game movies. Video game movies can be made to be profitable, but $200 million for a budget is very risky.
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If my kids were caught proxying around a filter to get access to porn I would not be calling my lawyer. My kid would be in trouble big time and wouldn't see the light of day for quite some time. If my kid is looking over some other kids shoulder and viewing porn at a school that had absolutely no filters on then yes, someones going to get an earful.
So what are the rules? Don't visit "bad" sites? What is a "bad" site? Do you have a list? Do you not remember that until a couple years ago, whitehouse.com was a porn site? I tried to go there without thinking when I was in college to research the government. Do you not think there are sites out there now that may not seem like what they are until you go there? How is it even acceptable that porn could be viewable from a grade school? I'm not even just talking about porn. Is it ok that a 10 year old could be researching the middle east and could stumble upon the video or pictures of Nick Berg being beheaded?
I see your point that firewalls are not a completely effective solution. I think they should be a part of the solution but not relied on to be the entire solution. There is no "magic pill" that can filter the trash out and let in the good stuff. But firewalls will keep the large majority of the kids honest. At the grade school, middle and high school level, I am willing for my kids to have access to a few good sites denied for the sake of blocking most bad sites. I would prefer no internet access to unrestricted access, but then my kids will get plenty of supervised internet access at home to learn how to get the usefull information.
I see it like this. I wouldn't tell my kids to go find out about something and tell them to look through this big box of my old books with some Hustler magazines buried in the bottom and hope they wouldn't run across them. To me that is what unfiltered internet access is like. Really, by the time you have figured out a link is no good, it's usually too late.
So how is it my bad parenting that would lead to my kids doing what they want on the internet at school? At home they will be monitored. I am not some nazi that thinks my kids need to be protected and sheltered from everything, but a 10 year old has no business learning how to make bombs or viewing hardcore porn. When my kids go to school and the school is responsible for them, they are there to learn and not "do what they want". Schools have a responsibility to do their best to filter internet access and monitor what is going on. It's either that or don't allow the internet. Bad parenting has nothing whatsoever to do with this and on the contrary, most bad parents probably don't care what their kids are exposed to.
While I wholeheartedly agree with your first paragraph, I do not with your second.
Yes, the kids should recieve some kind of punishment. They broke the rules. 3 months suspension for circumventing a firewall, probably a little extreme. I agree with you that detentions would be more appropriate, but I don't know the facts of that particular case. If a kid were showing others some of the most hardcore filth on the internet than a suspension would probably be warranted, but 3 months? I can't think of anything that would warrant a 3 month suspension and not expulsion.
The schools have a responsibility morally, ethically and legally to put up firewalls and do their best at blocking questionable sites. I understand and fully realize that everything is defeatable and everything can be accessed from somewhere else, but I don't think kids should have unfettered access at school. My child is going to be monitored on what they are or are not doing on the web when its time for that and I would appreciate that the schools would take the same kind of care.
Not to be condescending, but you sound like someone who doesn't have kids. When you do you will realize that your priorities change.
So that time you were tricked into clicking on the goatse link, that's really what you were looking for??
We like our business the size it is, we are not out to conquer the globe. Not everyone wants to be Bill Gates and rule the world. We make a fair bit of money and don't have the headaches of a huge corporation. Is that wrong?
That's the game I thought they were missing. It may not have been the first to do much of what it did, but it was by far the biggest. It pushed the big box video games into pizza shops and carry outs.
Forbes fastest growing jobs According to this article, Computer software engineers, applications is number 5 on the fastest growing jobs list.
How about if the kid makes a torrent file and shares it with umpteen thousand people? Does that put him on the same level as the chinese duplicators?
So the business I work in, creating and supporting credit union software for smaller credit unions in Ohio, is now going to have to adjust our hours to be available 24/7 for international clients that don't exist? Not every business works globally nor wants to work globally.
Looks like intel is buying ad space from thegamefeed. $50.00 for a double list mention, $100.00 for a triple and $1000.00 to have only you listed, but it looks funny when it reads "showing off ads from Intel, Intel, Intel, Intel, Intel, Intel and even Intel among others".
In my experience this has always been the case. Some people are blessed with the ability to take what is on paper and visualize how it will function in reality but I don't work with anyone like that. No matter how much I drill down specs on paper and work things out, once development starts there are always changes. The best you can do is roll with it and develop the product they ultimately want. From the start write software that is easy to modify. Lucky for us, the client that usually has the most changes for me also pays us by the hour so it works to our benefit.
Right now? Absolutely not, but your kid's kids will probably press a 'restock' button on their fridge and have an order sent to them and not have to waste an hour or two of their lives every week in a grocery store buying the same milk, eggs, and bread they bought last week. This is one step closer to that. Lots of tech out there now are just baby steps to a greater goal.
It's part of the Patriot Act, didn't you read it all?
Why buy anti-virus software at all? I understand if you are in a business setting. I usually recommend it to people who aren't computer savvy. For myself, I haven't run a full-time anti-virus package on my laptop for several years. I run the windows firewall, I update when I need to and I run in user mode, not admin. I do run the microsoft defender for spyware just because it seems to have a small footprint and not use too many resources. I do run IIS on it for development.
Norton has done way more damage to systems than they have fixed on systems I have worked on. McAfee is on my work pc and I don't have too many problems with it, but they do occur. I usually run a free online virus scan on my laptop about once every other month or sometimes less frequently then that. Usually amounts to a bunch of cookies and a couple of java apps in my browser cache. Delete and move on. Compared to the problems with running a virus scanner it's much easier for me. Anyone else feel the same way?
And windows is just as difficult to hack when the proper security is in place. If roles were reversed right now and linux were the king, are all the computer users in the world out there suddenly going to become linux gurus? Everyone who runs as administrator in windows right now would be running as root in linux and then you would see the exact same problems on linux that you do with windows.
I disagree as well. I loved Pool of Radiance and probably played it all the way through 6 or 7 times or more on my old C64. I liked the fact that the gold box games all pretty much used the same system, I could go from one to another and gameplay was almost the same. I would liken it to the expansion packs of todays mmorpg games, the later gold box games added to the earlier ones, you could even import your party from the previous games with all stats intact.
I never really tried Ultima games until 7 or 8 so I know I missed out with them, but I did try Wasteland and never really got that far into it. I loved the premise of the game, but the gameplay was just not my style.
I was not a D&D paper gamer, just someone that liked computers and those were the games that had an impact on me. From Pool of Radiance, I played the entire Gold Box series. I even got the PC versions when I finally got a PC.
When objects are created there are flags available that let you set limits on your creation. You can make it copy or no-copy. You can make it so the person you sell it to cannot give it away, you can make it so they can give it away one time only if it's a reseller, or you can make it so it can be given away endlessly. You can also make it not able to be modified so people have to use what you sell them and they can't tailor it do whatever they want.
Say you make a 1969 Chevy Camaro convertable. It's an incredibly detailed object and probably took weeks if not months to create. You are more than likely going to mark it up as no-copy, non-modifyable, and no trade. Anyone who wants one has to buy it from you and they can't ever give it or sell it to anyone else. If someone else were to make one, that's out of your control, but considering the time and effort involved it is highly unlikely. Most people skilled and dedicated enough to make an object that complex would be working on something not already in the game.
There are lots and lots of free, copyable objects on Second Life, but most of the really complex items are not sold that way.
Lets try another analogy and see if this one holds up. When you buy a dvd player from Sony you get something that you can use for entertainment. When you buy land (to build a house on, I'm not talking about huge amounts that cost lots of real life dollars) or clothes or whatever on second life you are getting something that you can use for entertainment. In x number of years when your dvd player croaks you have nothing left. You have to buy another one. In x number of years when second life shuts down you have nothing left. You have to buy another game.
Holding land as an investment is an incredibly risky thing to do. Making stuff if you are creative and good at it is not nearly as risky since you don't have cash tied up in it only time. Really no more risky than making any software product. Thinking of this game as an investment opportunity is poor judgement.
What do you think happens when Enron goes bankrupt? There are lots of people that depend on one company for income. When that company goes kaput, they find a new job.
Sounds to me like they don't answer their phone so it might not be so bad after all. Probably professional caliber solitaire players.
While I have not stayed current with all the politicians, I spent a couple hours yesterday reviewing a couple of websites (a local newspaper and a local political website) to brush up. I made a cheat sheet to take with me since I won't be memorizing 25 names. When I did my research, I tried to filter out as much propaganda as I could and look at direct quotes and their stands on the bigger issues without getting weighted down in negative language. Relying on a few quotes in a newspaper is not the best way to judge someone's character, but you can read what others opinions of them are and what kind of jobs they have done in their current positions.
The issues are pretty cut and dried. One was to raise taxes for the local bus system. Two dealt with banning smoking in public areas. One was an increase in the local minimum wage and the other dealt with allowing slot machines in a few businesses in the state.
The most difficult to choose is the judges. The Governor, Senators and Members of the House are pretty high profile and have lots of information about them, the judges do not. I pretty much tried to pick people that would just enforce the law and not try to legislate from the bench, but it's really a crap shoot with the amount of information really available.
To answer your question, I had about 30 choices to make on my ballot. 5 Ohio constitutional ammendment issues and roughly 25 or so people to vote for from Governor of Ohio to several judges. We used an electronic machine that printed your results in a spool of paper behind a small window, so you could see but not change the paper trail. It went quickly and it was 7 or 8 minutes from the time I walked in the door till the time I walked out.
Because by the time they budgeted X-Men 3, it was pretty well established it would be a success. The budget for X-Men 1 was $75 million. They are comparing Halo to Doom and Mortal Kombat. Following are worldwide gross amounts for a sample of comic and video game movies. Video game movies can be made to be profitable, but $200 million for a budget is very risky.
Spiderman gross: $821,706,375
Spiderman 2 gross: $783,924,485
X-Men gross: $295,999,717
X-Men 2 gross: $406,400,513
X-Men 3 gross: $455,360,014
Hulk gross: $225,600,000
Daredevil: $179,143,518
Doom gross: $54,612,337
Mortal Kombat: $122,133,227
Tomb Raider: $274,644,183
Tomb Raider 2: $156,453,758