It's clearly not your company's core business to make their own patch cables. It may be fun for you to wittle down your own toothpics from lincoln logs but if it's not in your job description it ain't going to fly. Seriously, just buy the damn stuff and do what your boss has asked.
Exactly.
We buy all our patch cables in bulk. There's no reason for me to assemble a new cable every time we want to patch in another machine. It may not take long to throw together a 6' cable, but why waste any time at all? Break open a package and plug it in. Done.
We do keep a couple spools on hand, and some wiring tools. If we absolutely need a 15' cable and we don't have any on hand we'll throw one together...
Or if we really need a new wall jack somewhere... It's good to have the capability to do some of your own wiring if necessary... But for anything substantial we'll contract someone else to do that, too.
A lifetime is generally unfair to a lot of authors - if the old dude wrote his greatest work only days, months, or two or three years before croaking, he and his estate make very little.
Copyright was never intended to help or protect authors - it was intended to enrich the rest of society. The idea was to give artists an incentive to turn out more stuff. Stuff that would, ultimately, become public domain - it would belong to the world as a whole. That was the whole reason it existed - to enrich everyone, not just one person.
Which means fairly short limits are necessary. Sure, it's nice for the artist to make some money... But the main goal is to get the art into the public domain as soon as possible.
And why would we want to pay the artist's estate? Is the estate somehow going to turn out more artistic works?
Current copyright law turns all that upside-down. Current copyright law is all about making the artist (or the corporation that owns the artis's IP) money. To hell with society... To hell with the world... We want our cash!
And fairness? Who cares whether it is fair? Is it fair that I have to pay hundreds of dollars every month for medical insurance just to make sure I remain healthy, so I can keep earning a paycheck? Is it fair for someone to lose their job because a banker thousands of miles away got greedy? Is it fair for these mega-corporations to keep buying up their competitors and put all the local shops out of business?
Since when is our government/economy worried about fairness?
I have some bad news for you--kids in school give up a lot of their constitutional rights. This has been upheld in the supreme court--go ahead and try to sue because the teacher disciplined you for cursing, see how quickly that gets shut down.
Additionally, Im not exactly sure if youre trying to present a chilling situation in which censorship was applied--dont you think that schools are one of the few places that that kind of censorship makes sense? Kids are there to learn, not browse the damn internet.
Nope. Actually I'm not terribly upset about the lack of constitutional rights in school, nor the filtering.
They're kids. Before you turn 18 you don't have a whole lot of rights, regardless of whether you're in class or not. I've been surprised by some of the ridiculous news stories... Kids getting in trouble for putting things on their MyFaceSpaceBook... But I don't really expect them to have a whole lot of rights until they turn 18.
And I doubt if many kids rely on their school's Internet to get their porn fix. Most folks have disinterested parents at home and a computer in their bedroom - plenty of opportunities to get inappropriate material there.
I wasn't trying to present a chilling situation at all, just listing a few places where filtering exists.
Although I really don't think censorship makes a whole lot of sense... Especially in schools.
Censorship, in general, doesn't work so well. You wind up chopping out a lot of the good along with the bad. Especially with the kind of crappy automated filters that get put on computers. Seems to me that schools would be an almost ideal place of unfiltered Internet access... Plenty of teachers around to keep kids in line and/or explain some of the more unusual sites.
You can either teach them about the stuff - why it is or isn't appropriate, what it means to society, how to avoid getting hurt, whatever... Or you can pretend it doesn't exist and hope they don't find out from someone else. I'm not a big fan of the second option. Usually they find out anyway, from someone else, and get far less helpful information in the process.
"As filtering becomes ever more common in democratic countries such as the US, perhaps Tor (and similar tools such as I2P), will become even more valuable.""
Ok, where and when in the US did filtering become 'common'??
I'm hearing about it becoming common in other western countries...and am afraid it will happen here, but, I'm not aware of it being common here?
Well, nobody claimed that it actually was common in the US, only that it was becoming ever more common. And it is.
Most schools filter web access. Many libraries do as well. Some employers filter web access. Some ISPs are filtering/interfering with BitTorrent.
And it seems like every other week there's a story on here about how somebody wants to pass a new law to protect the children by filtering something.
Business guy: We want all people in our target group. This is too hard on them. Make it simpler.
This is the big problem. They always want to appeal to the widest market, to sell the most copies, rather than produce a high-quality product.
Imagine baking the most kickass chocolate cake. Everyone raves about what a great chocolate cake it is. You get tons of chocoholics declaring that it's a must-have cake. They go out of their way to buy your cake. You get a few folks who whine that they don't like chocolate.
So you go to make a new cake, and the business guy points out that not everyone likes chocolate. He insists that you bake a plain yellow cake instead and just put some brown frosting on it so it still looks like a chocolate cake.
And then you've got all your chocoholics complaining that the cake isn't chocolate. And you've got the chocolate-haters complaining because the frosting looks like chocolate, even though it isn't. And you've got some other people asking who the hell makes brown frosting in the first place.
You might get a good number of sales because your first cake was so good... But after the second cake, very few people are going to be coming back for more.
Quake was also a multi-player game, that's why I brought it up.
It was, but not terribly team-oriented.
I've never played the single player version of any FPS games for more than 5 minutes at a friend's house. Too boring. "I gotta shoot 100 of these bots before they shoot me!"
And that's the problem with ignoring the stories in games.
With a multi-player game you don't have much of a plot. There's still a setting, a backstory of sorts. But there isn't a whole lot of plot. You don't typically have huge twists or betrayals scripted into the game. It's you (and maybe your team) against them. The game doesn't have to generate any conflict to create interest - you do that yourself.
A single-player game doesn't have a 'them' - it only has the plot. And if you're ignoring the plot, then you're just killing AI bots. What makes a single-player game interesting isn't the challenge of killing a bot, it's progressing the plot along. Discovering the world you're in, uncovering answers, whatever. The enemies are just there to bar your progress, slow you down, create conflict. They're no different than a locked door that you have to find a key to.
They touted the element of "choice" as being central and relevant to the outcome. I can't even call that an exaggeration. It was an outright lie.
The only choice you actually had, at any point in the game, was whether you'd kill the little sisters or not. And that choice was completely irrelevant. You got rewards either way. It did not significantly impact the gameplay or storyline. All it did is change the ending. Nothing more.
I also agree that the enemies were not very threatening. When I first read about the game, I got the impression that there would be battles with normals, which would be easy, battles with "splicers," which would have the same calibre and variety of genetic powers that you have, and battles with Big Daddies, which would make you weep for mercy. Nothing of the sort.
For the most part, there was no challenge to any of the enemies. Enemies are supposed to be an obstacle to be overcome. They're supposed to create conflict of some kind. They were too easy. Even the big daddies could easily be avoided or manipulated.
The gameplay was sufficiently fun
It was. The mechanics were decent enough... And the setting was terrific... It certainly wasn't a bad game.
but I was really expecting a more cerebral combat experience. Not necessarily a more difficult combat experience. That can be achieved with faster, stronger, tougher enemies. I just wanted smarter, more interesting enemies.
In a shooter, the enemies are your primary source of conflict. And conflict is what makes a game interesting. If the enemies are too easy, there's no conflict, and you lose interest.
Without a story there isn't much difference between shooters.
Strongly disagree. I hated Quake but loved BF1942. It had nothing to do with the story lines in either. The teamwork and gameplay of BF1942 was just so much more fun.
You'll notice I was comparing single-player shooters to single-player shooters.
You bring up a team-oriented shooter. Whole different bag of cats.
However, I'd suggest that the primary differences between team-oriented shooters are also motivated largely by the story.
Team Fortress 2, Battlfield 1942, Tribes... They all have various unique roles to play and objectives to capture. But the reason you're zipping around with a jetpack and a spinfusor in Tribes is because it's set in the future... And the reason you're driving a Panzer and calling down artillery fire in BF1942 is because it is set during WWII.
The story behind a game is more than the actual plot elements that unfold during gameplay... It's also the setting that the game is placed in - which affects the game mechanics.
The story of BF1942, for example, revolves around human beings fighting in WWII. You'll be playing a human. You'll be using human weapons and vehicles. You'll move at more-or-less human speeds.
The Mechwarrior games, however, revolved around giant robots. You didn't play a human, you played a human driving a giant robot. You had huge racks of missile launchers and lasers that would level a building.
Both games had, depending on what type of match you joined, similar team-oriented gameplay and objectives. Different strategic objectives to capture, or hold, or destroy. Sure, there are plenty of mechanical differences between the two games... Different features that one had and the other didn't.
But the key difference between the two, the difference that makes them entirely different games, is the story behind the game. The reason BF1942 doesn't have giant stompy robots is because it's a story about WWII - not because the developers were somehow unable to code up giant robots, or because it's impossible to make a good game with robots.
I played through Bioshock, it didn't impress me at all. I was surprised it even got good reviews. I'm a long time PC gamer though, all these multiplatform reviews seem to skew things a bit. Beyond nice looking water I can't really think of anything that made me interested in the game. Maybe it's the steampunk novelty that everyone digs.
The big deal, I think, was the atmosphere/setting/storyline/whatever.
The game mechanics were fairly unimpressive. Run around, shoot guys, maybe do the occasional 'hacking' mini-game... Nothing special.
The atmosphere though, was pretty impressive.
Very nice, very novel visuals. Impressive architecture slowly giving way to the sea... Constant presence of water... The sensation that tons of pressure were bearing down on you... Constant dripping, groaning, creaking...
There were a few good characters, too. Andrew Ryan was one of the more interesting villains in recent history.
I have a sinking feeling this is the game that everyone will point to in the future to show what exactly is wrong with sequels. No matter how technically competent the game is, exploring the same environment, same philisophical questions, and (from what i've seen) fighting the same splicer enemies is not a sequel. It's an expansion pack. Ctrl-X "Big Daddy" Ctrl-V "Big Sister".
These days it seems like the only difference between a sequel and an expansion pack is whether you need to buy the first one or not.
Personally, I would have loved to have seen a real prequel, where you see an Ayn Randian utopia slowly fall apart, where you help businessmen reach their highest potential, which eventually leads to the collapse of rapture. That's an interesting story to tell, and leads right into Bioshock.
Personally, I don't think that would be a terribly interesting game.
To start with, it sounds more like some kind of SIM-business game than the FPS-y thing that BioShock was. And I'm not a big fan of SIM-business games.
There'd really not be a whole lot of plot tension either, since you know how it is going to turn out. And not in vague terms either... You know exactly what happens to specific characters. You even know exactly when it all goes to hell.
But, that's just me...
But no, the game will start with the first crazy splicer you have to kill, and it will be a splicer run and gun.
I hope I'm wrong about this, but from what i've seen, I doubt I am.
Unfortunately, I think you'll be proven correct. BioShock was little more than an FPS. Hardly any character development or exploration or anything else. Just a straight-up run-and-gun. And I can't see the sequel being terribly different.
Oh god how I wished Bioshock was more like systemshock 2.
Agreed.
SystemShock 2 was a superior game in just about every way. I still play through it at least once a year. Very good stuff.
When they were first talking about BioShock it was supposed to be SystemShock 3 - but in some kind of WWII bunker with genetic manipulation instead of cybernetics. Sounded great to me.
Then they tweaked it a bit... SystemShock 3 in a flooding underwater city with genetic manipulation. Still sounded great.
But the end result really isn't terribly SystemShock-y. There's very little character development... There's very little threat from most of the enemies... There's almost no backtracking or exploration... There's no inventory management... Basically a FPS with only the slightest hints of character development.
Personally, I would have loved to have seen a real prequel, where you see an Ayn Randian utopia slowly fall apart, where you help businessmen reach their highest potential, which eventually leads to the collapse of rapture.
I never played Bioshock, and you just made me happy with that decision. Randian utopia? *Gag* Help businessmen reach their highest potential? *Bangs head against wall* "Collapse of Rapture"??? WTF is that?
No wonder I always try ignore the stories in video games.
Obviously, had you played the original game, you'd have some idea what we're all talking about...
Suffice to say, the story/setting is what made BioShock so much fun. In fact, I would suggest that the story is the primary distinguishing feature in pretty much any game.
Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Half-Life, and BioShock are all essentially shooters... You run around with a gun, point it at bad guys, and kill them. There are bigger guns to be picked up. There may be armor or upgrades to be picked up as well. But they're all basically shooters. The key differences are all based on the story. The reason you're fighting Nazis in Wolfenstein is because of the story... The reason you're in Black Mesa in Half-Life is because of the story...
Without a story there isn't much difference between shooters. You're just putting the mouse over something and clicking your buttons. Hell, if you care so little about the storyline you may as well be clicking on desktop icons.
Linux might be "free" but if you include the support contract
Are you telling me that none of your Windows software has a support contract of any kind?
We support a number of clients... Just what they call 'critical' varies from one place to the next... Some of them are very concerned about their accounting software, some of them are more worried about their inventory software, some of them have electronic medical records... But all of them have support contracts of some kind on the software that they consider critical. And most of them are running on Windows.
[re-]training
Training is going to be necessary on pretty much any new piece of software - Windows or otherwise. And if an update to an existing piece of software is significant enough you might need to re-train people.
Training has less to do with the OS things are running on top of than the software itself. Look at all the complaining over Office 2007... These were folks running a new version of Office on the same OS.
To get ever closer you have to look at how efficient it is for people to get their work done on that platform when compared to the competition.
Again, generally that's more a function of the software than the platform it is running on. Most people don't spend a whole ton of time at work playing around with their operating system. Most people spend the day working with various pieces of software - web browsers, email clients, development environments, accounting packages, office suites.
I personally find getting almost anything done on Linux much more time consuming than either OS X or Windows...
That will largely depend on what you're trying to accomplish and your familiarity with not only the operating system but that specific machine.
If I'm sat down at a random machine and asked to locate a file or burn a disc or something it will take me a few moments just to familiarize myself with the system. See what software they've got installed, how the files are organized, etc. If you're more familiar with a Windows environment it'll obviously take you longer to find your way around a Linux machine.
Windows and OS X both generally offer a nice GUI experience, which can be great for some users. Linux offers tons of command-line tools, which can be great for some users. OS X and Linux both offer tons of automation tools, which can be great from an administration standpoint. But, again, most people don't spend a whole lot of time in the day dealing with the OS itself. Most people spend their time dealing with the software that sits on top of the OS.
Not always. Especially if you factor in support contracts or the average salary of someone who actually knows how to administer the software in an effective manner.
But that's also true of closed-source solutions. It isn't like a Windows server miraculously runs itself. You still need someone who knows how run the thing.
Obviously there's tons of wiggle room here... It may very well be that the average salary of a Windows admin is lower than that of a *nix admin... But *nix gives you better automation tools, security, and stability - so that one admin might be able to do more real work on a *nix box than a Windows box.
You can't just look at the sticker price when determining which piece of software is going to cost more or get you more bang for your buck... But you can't ignore the sticker price either.
The 3D I've seen is more distraction than enhancement. I don't want to have to wear stupid 3D glasses every time I watch a movie. I saw Beowulf in 3D and the effect was sometimes neat, sometimes disorienting.
Have they made any improvements or is this just more of the same?
The 3D technology itself has been much improved. It works a lot better. The effects themselves don't induce as many headaches as the old stuff. And they're better able to create real depth...instead of just having things either on the screen or floating several feet in front of it.
However, it is still up to the director/effects guys/writers/whoever to do a good job with it. Just like any special effects in any movie... It can be done well, or not.
It can still be disorienting. It can still be pointless and gratuitous. We'll just have to wait and see how well it is handled...
So, IT Departments aren't meant to be proactive and show initiative, and make the company more profitable?
No, not really. Not where I work.
We're here to support the business. To make sure that all the operations that actually make the business money (sales, marketing, manufacturing, shipping, whatever) can happen. It isn't our job (unless your company is a web retailer, maybe) to do much more than keep things working correctly.
If someone asks for some new way to organize internal information I might very well recommend some kind of internal wiki or something... But if I just wander off on a tangent researching wiki software on my own folks don't really appreciate me wasting company time. Nor would they be too thrilled if I just suddenly suggested, out of the blue, that we ought to go spend time and money building an internal wiki server for no reason.
Worse still, you have to be careful just how proactive you are in keeping things working correctly. Decide that you want to run a nightly defrag or virus scan or something, and suddenly you're interrupting some poor guy who decided to work late. Decide to stay on top of all the updates to keep everything running safe and secure, and suddenly you uncover an obscure bug and everything goes from "working fine" to "completely broken."
Powering everything down at night sounds like a great plan. And now with Server 2008 and Vista there are actually some fairly easy ways to do that. But then I'd have to worry about folks who have to work late for some reason... And folks working remotely at night... And people who left some kind of big download going overnight... And scans or updates that were scheduled to run overnight...
Sure, if my boss decided he wants to save some power by shutting everything off at night I'll make sure it happens. But without some kind of mandate I'm sure as hell not going to do something as potentially disruptive as shut everyone's machine off at night.
I've suggested plenty of improvements over the years... Upgrades to hardware and software, power-saving measures, new ways to organize our information... Frankly, unless it directly and immediately supports the money-making activities of the business nobody is interested. Doesn't matter how much money it would make/save in the long run.
What about for a new player? Someone that would probably get a lot of use out of this. I know that it was hard for me when I joined WoW just as the 2nd expansion was released. Starting as a Priest at level 1 when there is hardly anyone around your level forcing you to solo most of the time and making it almost impossible to find a group for low level raids is not easy.
Starting out new at level 1, right after an expansion is released, is difficult no matter what. Everyone's playing in the new content, nobody wants to go do any of the old stuff.
Having this dual-spec system would make it a lot easier for a low level first time player to solo, especially for the low damage classes. It would mean they could easily switch between for example a healer priest for the rare chances they did get in a group/raid and shadow priest for solo.
No it wouldn't.
The first several re-specs are dirt cheap compared to this. There's absolutely no reason you'd want to save up the 1,000 gold for dual-specs on a character before you got to the endgame content. And even then I'd argue that it doesn't make sense unless you are actually re-specing fairly often.
I quit WoW when I got to level 65, I started getting bored of having to go days waiting for a decent group for an instance. It very much felt like to me, that Blizzard didn't care about new players, they already have enough regular subscribers to keep them going.
They've dramatically decreased the time and effort it takes to get to the endgame content these days. It is amazingly quick and easy to get to 70 and start playing around out in Northrend. Especially with the whole "recruit a friend" thing. I've seen folks in guildchat get 10 levels in a matter of minutes.
Also, I didn't have 1000g available at the time I quit, so even now, I wouldn't be able to use this.
1000g is nothing. I made that and more without even trying on the way from 60-70. And I again made that and more without even trying on the way from 70-80. Throw in some heroic dungeons, a raid or two, some daily quests... You could have 1000g in less than a week.
Why would I feel "just as much emotional impact" for tragedy stricken upon strangers? Nothing I said implies this, and you're pushing an extreme view upon me to apologize for a perceived callousness.
I'm not apologizing for anything.
I'm trying to figure out what other people think I should be feeling.
When it comes down to it, you are responsible for your own morals, so you only have yourself to blame if you find yourself offended that others see your lack of empathy as disturbing.
The implicit assumption behind all of your defense is that people can only really care about those that have a "connection" with them. While you can convince yourself of this, I don't need to have a series of information exchanging encounters with a person to sympathize with them as a fellow human.
If the world really operated this way, we'd certainly be a lot more fucked than we are right now. I would imagine most of us rational self-interested egoists are too busy burying those rogue emotions under paychecks and cheap rhetoric, however.
Are you telling me that you honestly feel just as much emotional impact when you hear about some random person dying as you do when your mother/father/spouse/child/friend dies? That you weep just as hard for every single person who died in NY last week as you do when your own family suffers tragedy? That you mourn just as long for each murder victim you see on the evening news as you do for someone you've known your whole life?
Because I don't.
Sure, I can empathize in a general way... I've lost friends and family... I know how it hurts... I can say "I'm sorry for your loss"...
But I can't feel that kind of pain personally for someone I've never known. It isn't a choice, it just doesn't happen.
And if his work impacted you directly (as I'm sure it did for most Slashdotters), then the fact that you *didn't* know his name is, quite frankly, irrelevant to the fact that you do now, and you had a chance to at least express some gratitude, but instead created a rationale for why you can't be arsed.
My post had nothing to do with expressing gratitude or not. It was a response to the folks who thought it was insensitive or trollish to ask if there would be updates to the filter list.
Sure, I'm grateful for the list Rick built. I'm glad it made my life a little bit easier. But, like it or not, his death has very little emotional impact on me. I didn't know the guy. And I'm not going to weep and cry and rend my shirt.
If Linus died, I would say that sucks, who is going to be the face of the Linux kernel now? I don't know him, a handful of people on here have probably interacted with him on a professional level, but I doubt there are any that would really be effected on a personal level. I'm sure there would be tons eager to proclaim "how dare you talk about the kernel at a time like this" etc. ad nasuem. Fuck that. They don't actually give a crap about the guy who died, in fact they are probably thinking the same question. They have just seized an opportunity to be the high and mighty self-appointed moral police, and to that I say Fuck you. I'd take a troll over you anyday.
Agreed.
Yeah, it sucks that Rick died... I'm sure he was loved and his friends and family are in mourning... And I guess I'd rather he hadn't died... But, really, I don't know the guy. Didn't even know his name until this story showed up. I'm supposed to act heartbroken and sympathetic and stuff? Over some guy I never even knew?
People die literally every second of every day. Turn on CNN and you'll see dozens of stories about shootings and disasters and accidents... Am I supposed to just sit around in a permanent state of mourning for all the people who are dying?
A week or two back when Natasha Richardson died in that ski accident they had people calling in, weeping over their loss... Except that they didn't know Natasha. They weren't her friends or family. They were just random people who happened to see her in a movie, or hear her give an interview, or see her at a gathering... They had no real emotional connection to her. Whatever relationship they had, whatever person they thought she was - that was a creation of their own mind, not reality. And they were weeping as if their best friend had just died.
Yes, it sucks that this person is gone. It sucks when most people die. But I didn't know them. I didn't know their friends or their family. I've got absolutely no ties to them at all. The only connection I have to this Rick guy is the fact that I use his filter... So, yeah, I'm concerned about the filter living on.
Seriously.... Who cares if OpenOffice opens a.xls document 4 seconds faster, since it takes me a good 25 minutes to reconfigure all the graphs formating that it lost from MS Office??
Is that 25 minutes taken into factor?... That's right, I didn't think so.
That's just silly.
If you need Excel, why would you be running OO? If you've got all kinds of graphs and formatting and whatever else that's going to take 25 minutes to fix in OO, why wouldn't you be running Excel? That time adds up pretty quickly and before long it becomes very easy to justify the cost of a license for Excel.
That's like the folks who switch to Linux or OS X and then load up their machine with some kind of VM and run everything in Windows anyway. If you need Windows, why not just run Windows?
Of course the best solution would be to get everyone working from some kind of open format, so it didn't matter what software you were using. So there was absolutely no vendor lock-in. But that won't be happening any time soon.
A lot of our home user and student clients use OO instead of Microsoft Office.
Microsoft Office isn't cheap. It's several hundred dollars depending on what kind of discounts you get and what version you need. It used to come preloaded on a lot of systems, but these days they frequently give you some kind of 30-day trial of Microsoft Office, instead of the full version.
Business folks don't generally care. Most of our business clients have some kind of volume license anyway, so they throw it on whatever new computer they get.
A lot of our home users have a hard time justifying spending $100 or more just so their kid can type up a paper at home.
So we point them at OO, and it generally does what they need it to. We've made a lot of people very happy by giving them a free alternative to Microsoft Office.
If you told me that my business needed to take 4 months to do something, I'd tell you it had better be revenue-generating.
That's the big problem with the IPv6 transition.
Regardless of how easy or necessary it may (or may not) be, it isn't going to generate a whole lot of revenue right now. Maybe for a web-based company like Google it might actually get them some revenue... But for your average business that just uses their network to email, browse the web, transfer some files, etc... It'll take some money and some labor, but won't really get you anything in return.
It's hard to pitch something like that to management.
Slashdot Mirror
It's clearly not your company's core business to make their own patch cables. It may be fun for you to wittle down your own toothpics from lincoln logs but if it's not in your job description it ain't going to fly. Seriously, just buy the damn stuff and do what your boss has asked.
Exactly.
We buy all our patch cables in bulk. There's no reason for me to assemble a new cable every time we want to patch in another machine. It may not take long to throw together a 6' cable, but why waste any time at all? Break open a package and plug it in. Done.
We do keep a couple spools on hand, and some wiring tools. If we absolutely need a 15' cable and we don't have any on hand we'll throw one together...
Or if we really need a new wall jack somewhere... It's good to have the capability to do some of your own wiring if necessary... But for anything substantial we'll contract someone else to do that, too.
But, really, that isn't what I'm paid to do.
A lifetime is generally unfair to a lot of authors - if the old dude wrote his greatest work only days, months, or two or three years before croaking, he and his estate make very little.
Copyright was never intended to help or protect authors - it was intended to enrich the rest of society. The idea was to give artists an incentive to turn out more stuff. Stuff that would, ultimately, become public domain - it would belong to the world as a whole. That was the whole reason it existed - to enrich everyone, not just one person.
Which means fairly short limits are necessary. Sure, it's nice for the artist to make some money... But the main goal is to get the art into the public domain as soon as possible.
And why would we want to pay the artist's estate? Is the estate somehow going to turn out more artistic works?
Current copyright law turns all that upside-down. Current copyright law is all about making the artist (or the corporation that owns the artis's IP) money. To hell with society... To hell with the world... We want our cash!
And fairness? Who cares whether it is fair? Is it fair that I have to pay hundreds of dollars every month for medical insurance just to make sure I remain healthy, so I can keep earning a paycheck? Is it fair for someone to lose their job because a banker thousands of miles away got greedy? Is it fair for these mega-corporations to keep buying up their competitors and put all the local shops out of business?
Since when is our government/economy worried about fairness?
Most schools filter web access.
I have some bad news for you--kids in school give up a lot of their constitutional rights. This has been upheld in the supreme court--go ahead and try to sue because the teacher disciplined you for cursing, see how quickly that gets shut down.
Additionally, Im not exactly sure if youre trying to present a chilling situation in which censorship was applied--dont you think that schools are one of the few places that that kind of censorship makes sense? Kids are there to learn, not browse the damn internet.
Nope. Actually I'm not terribly upset about the lack of constitutional rights in school, nor the filtering.
They're kids. Before you turn 18 you don't have a whole lot of rights, regardless of whether you're in class or not. I've been surprised by some of the ridiculous news stories... Kids getting in trouble for putting things on their MyFaceSpaceBook... But I don't really expect them to have a whole lot of rights until they turn 18.
And I doubt if many kids rely on their school's Internet to get their porn fix. Most folks have disinterested parents at home and a computer in their bedroom - plenty of opportunities to get inappropriate material there.
I wasn't trying to present a chilling situation at all, just listing a few places where filtering exists.
Although I really don't think censorship makes a whole lot of sense... Especially in schools.
Censorship, in general, doesn't work so well. You wind up chopping out a lot of the good along with the bad. Especially with the kind of crappy automated filters that get put on computers. Seems to me that schools would be an almost ideal place of unfiltered Internet access... Plenty of teachers around to keep kids in line and/or explain some of the more unusual sites.
You can either teach them about the stuff - why it is or isn't appropriate, what it means to society, how to avoid getting hurt, whatever... Or you can pretend it doesn't exist and hope they don't find out from someone else. I'm not a big fan of the second option. Usually they find out anyway, from someone else, and get far less helpful information in the process.
"As filtering becomes ever more common in democratic countries such as the US, perhaps Tor (and similar tools such as I2P), will become even more valuable.""
Ok, where and when in the US did filtering become 'common'??
I'm hearing about it becoming common in other western countries...and am afraid it will happen here, but, I'm not aware of it being common here?
Well, nobody claimed that it actually was common in the US, only that it was becoming ever more common. And it is.
Most schools filter web access. Many libraries do as well. Some employers filter web access. Some ISPs are filtering/interfering with BitTorrent.
And it seems like every other week there's a story on here about how somebody wants to pass a new law to protect the children by filtering something.
Business guy: We want all people in our target group. This is too hard on them. Make it simpler.
This is the big problem. They always want to appeal to the widest market, to sell the most copies, rather than produce a high-quality product.
Imagine baking the most kickass chocolate cake. Everyone raves about what a great chocolate cake it is. You get tons of chocoholics declaring that it's a must-have cake. They go out of their way to buy your cake. You get a few folks who whine that they don't like chocolate.
So you go to make a new cake, and the business guy points out that not everyone likes chocolate. He insists that you bake a plain yellow cake instead and just put some brown frosting on it so it still looks like a chocolate cake.
And then you've got all your chocoholics complaining that the cake isn't chocolate. And you've got the chocolate-haters complaining because the frosting looks like chocolate, even though it isn't. And you've got some other people asking who the hell makes brown frosting in the first place.
You might get a good number of sales because your first cake was so good... But after the second cake, very few people are going to be coming back for more.
Quake was also a multi-player game, that's why I brought it up.
It was, but not terribly team-oriented.
I've never played the single player version of any FPS games for more than 5 minutes at a friend's house. Too boring. "I gotta shoot 100 of these bots before they shoot me!"
And that's the problem with ignoring the stories in games.
With a multi-player game you don't have much of a plot. There's still a setting, a backstory of sorts. But there isn't a whole lot of plot. You don't typically have huge twists or betrayals scripted into the game. It's you (and maybe your team) against them. The game doesn't have to generate any conflict to create interest - you do that yourself.
A single-player game doesn't have a 'them' - it only has the plot. And if you're ignoring the plot, then you're just killing AI bots. What makes a single-player game interesting isn't the challenge of killing a bot, it's progressing the plot along. Discovering the world you're in, uncovering answers, whatever. The enemies are just there to bar your progress, slow you down, create conflict. They're no different than a locked door that you have to find a key to.
They touted the element of "choice" as being central and relevant to the outcome. I can't even call that an exaggeration. It was an outright lie.
The only choice you actually had, at any point in the game, was whether you'd kill the little sisters or not. And that choice was completely irrelevant. You got rewards either way. It did not significantly impact the gameplay or storyline. All it did is change the ending. Nothing more.
I also agree that the enemies were not very threatening. When I first read about the game, I got the impression that there would be battles with normals, which would be easy, battles with "splicers," which would have the same calibre and variety of genetic powers that you have, and battles with Big Daddies, which would make you weep for mercy. Nothing of the sort.
For the most part, there was no challenge to any of the enemies. Enemies are supposed to be an obstacle to be overcome. They're supposed to create conflict of some kind. They were too easy. Even the big daddies could easily be avoided or manipulated.
The gameplay was sufficiently fun
It was. The mechanics were decent enough... And the setting was terrific... It certainly wasn't a bad game.
but I was really expecting a more cerebral combat experience. Not necessarily a more difficult combat experience. That can be achieved with faster, stronger, tougher enemies. I just wanted smarter, more interesting enemies.
In a shooter, the enemies are your primary source of conflict. And conflict is what makes a game interesting. If the enemies are too easy, there's no conflict, and you lose interest.
Without a story there isn't much difference between shooters.
Strongly disagree. I hated Quake but loved BF1942. It had nothing to do with the story lines in either. The teamwork and gameplay of BF1942 was just so much more fun.
You'll notice I was comparing single-player shooters to single-player shooters.
You bring up a team-oriented shooter. Whole different bag of cats.
However, I'd suggest that the primary differences between team-oriented shooters are also motivated largely by the story.
Team Fortress 2, Battlfield 1942, Tribes... They all have various unique roles to play and objectives to capture. But the reason you're zipping around with a jetpack and a spinfusor in Tribes is because it's set in the future... And the reason you're driving a Panzer and calling down artillery fire in BF1942 is because it is set during WWII.
The story behind a game is more than the actual plot elements that unfold during gameplay... It's also the setting that the game is placed in - which affects the game mechanics.
The story of BF1942, for example, revolves around human beings fighting in WWII. You'll be playing a human. You'll be using human weapons and vehicles. You'll move at more-or-less human speeds.
The Mechwarrior games, however, revolved around giant robots. You didn't play a human, you played a human driving a giant robot. You had huge racks of missile launchers and lasers that would level a building.
Both games had, depending on what type of match you joined, similar team-oriented gameplay and objectives. Different strategic objectives to capture, or hold, or destroy. Sure, there are plenty of mechanical differences between the two games... Different features that one had and the other didn't.
But the key difference between the two, the difference that makes them entirely different games, is the story behind the game. The reason BF1942 doesn't have giant stompy robots is because it's a story about WWII - not because the developers were somehow unable to code up giant robots, or because it's impossible to make a good game with robots.
I played through Bioshock, it didn't impress me at all. I was surprised it even got good reviews. I'm a long time PC gamer though, all these multiplatform reviews seem to skew things a bit. Beyond nice looking water I can't really think of anything that made me interested in the game. Maybe it's the steampunk novelty that everyone digs.
The big deal, I think, was the atmosphere/setting/storyline/whatever.
The game mechanics were fairly unimpressive. Run around, shoot guys, maybe do the occasional 'hacking' mini-game... Nothing special.
The atmosphere though, was pretty impressive.
Very nice, very novel visuals. Impressive architecture slowly giving way to the sea... Constant presence of water... The sensation that tons of pressure were bearing down on you... Constant dripping, groaning, creaking...
There were a few good characters, too. Andrew Ryan was one of the more interesting villains in recent history.
I have a sinking feeling this is the game that everyone will point to in the future to show what exactly is wrong with sequels. No matter how technically competent the game is, exploring the same environment, same philisophical questions, and (from what i've seen) fighting the same splicer enemies is not a sequel. It's an expansion pack. Ctrl-X "Big Daddy" Ctrl-V "Big Sister".
These days it seems like the only difference between a sequel and an expansion pack is whether you need to buy the first one or not.
Personally, I would have loved to have seen a real prequel, where you see an Ayn Randian utopia slowly fall apart, where you help businessmen reach their highest potential, which eventually leads to the collapse of rapture. That's an interesting story to tell, and leads right into Bioshock.
Personally, I don't think that would be a terribly interesting game.
To start with, it sounds more like some kind of SIM-business game than the FPS-y thing that BioShock was. And I'm not a big fan of SIM-business games.
There'd really not be a whole lot of plot tension either, since you know how it is going to turn out. And not in vague terms either... You know exactly what happens to specific characters. You even know exactly when it all goes to hell.
But, that's just me...
But no, the game will start with the first crazy splicer you have to kill, and it will be a splicer run and gun.
I hope I'm wrong about this, but from what i've seen, I doubt I am.
Unfortunately, I think you'll be proven correct. BioShock was little more than an FPS. Hardly any character development or exploration or anything else. Just a straight-up run-and-gun. And I can't see the sequel being terribly different.
Oh god how I wished Bioshock was more like systemshock 2.
Agreed.
SystemShock 2 was a superior game in just about every way. I still play through it at least once a year. Very good stuff.
When they were first talking about BioShock it was supposed to be SystemShock 3 - but in some kind of WWII bunker with genetic manipulation instead of cybernetics. Sounded great to me.
Then they tweaked it a bit... SystemShock 3 in a flooding underwater city with genetic manipulation. Still sounded great.
But the end result really isn't terribly SystemShock-y. There's very little character development... There's very little threat from most of the enemies... There's almost no backtracking or exploration... There's no inventory management... Basically a FPS with only the slightest hints of character development.
Personally, I would have loved to have seen a real prequel, where you see an Ayn Randian utopia slowly fall apart, where you help businessmen reach their highest potential, which eventually leads to the collapse of rapture.
I never played Bioshock, and you just made me happy with that decision. Randian utopia? *Gag* Help businessmen reach their highest potential? *Bangs head against wall* "Collapse of Rapture"??? WTF is that?
No wonder I always try ignore the stories in video games.
Obviously, had you played the original game, you'd have some idea what we're all talking about...
Suffice to say, the story/setting is what made BioShock so much fun. In fact, I would suggest that the story is the primary distinguishing feature in pretty much any game.
Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Half-Life, and BioShock are all essentially shooters... You run around with a gun, point it at bad guys, and kill them. There are bigger guns to be picked up. There may be armor or upgrades to be picked up as well. But they're all basically shooters. The key differences are all based on the story. The reason you're fighting Nazis in Wolfenstein is because of the story... The reason you're in Black Mesa in Half-Life is because of the story...
Without a story there isn't much difference between shooters. You're just putting the mouse over something and clicking your buttons. Hell, if you care so little about the storyline you may as well be clicking on desktop icons.
Linux might be "free" but if you include the support contract
Are you telling me that none of your Windows software has a support contract of any kind?
We support a number of clients... Just what they call 'critical' varies from one place to the next... Some of them are very concerned about their accounting software, some of them are more worried about their inventory software, some of them have electronic medical records... But all of them have support contracts of some kind on the software that they consider critical. And most of them are running on Windows.
[re-]training
Training is going to be necessary on pretty much any new piece of software - Windows or otherwise. And if an update to an existing piece of software is significant enough you might need to re-train people.
Training has less to do with the OS things are running on top of than the software itself. Look at all the complaining over Office 2007... These were folks running a new version of Office on the same OS.
To get ever closer you have to look at how efficient it is for people to get their work done on that platform when compared to the competition.
Again, generally that's more a function of the software than the platform it is running on. Most people don't spend a whole ton of time at work playing around with their operating system. Most people spend the day working with various pieces of software - web browsers, email clients, development environments, accounting packages, office suites.
I personally find getting almost anything done on Linux much more time consuming than either OS X or Windows...
That will largely depend on what you're trying to accomplish and your familiarity with not only the operating system but that specific machine.
If I'm sat down at a random machine and asked to locate a file or burn a disc or something it will take me a few moments just to familiarize myself with the system. See what software they've got installed, how the files are organized, etc. If you're more familiar with a Windows environment it'll obviously take you longer to find your way around a Linux machine.
Windows and OS X both generally offer a nice GUI experience, which can be great for some users. Linux offers tons of command-line tools, which can be great for some users. OS X and Linux both offer tons of automation tools, which can be great from an administration standpoint. But, again, most people don't spend a whole lot of time in the day dealing with the OS itself. Most people spend their time dealing with the software that sits on top of the OS.
and for open source, the price point is zero.
Not always. Especially if you factor in support contracts or the average salary of someone who actually knows how to administer the software in an effective manner.
But that's also true of closed-source solutions. It isn't like a Windows server miraculously runs itself. You still need someone who knows how run the thing.
Obviously there's tons of wiggle room here... It may very well be that the average salary of a Windows admin is lower than that of a *nix admin... But *nix gives you better automation tools, security, and stability - so that one admin might be able to do more real work on a *nix box than a Windows box.
You can't just look at the sticker price when determining which piece of software is going to cost more or get you more bang for your buck... But you can't ignore the sticker price either.
The 3D I've seen is more distraction than enhancement. I don't want to have to wear stupid 3D glasses every time I watch a movie. I saw Beowulf in 3D and the effect was sometimes neat, sometimes disorienting.
Have they made any improvements or is this just more of the same?
The 3D technology itself has been much improved. It works a lot better. The effects themselves don't induce as many headaches as the old stuff. And they're better able to create real depth...instead of just having things either on the screen or floating several feet in front of it.
However, it is still up to the director/effects guys/writers/whoever to do a good job with it. Just like any special effects in any movie... It can be done well, or not.
It can still be disorienting. It can still be pointless and gratuitous. We'll just have to wait and see how well it is handled...
So, IT Departments aren't meant to be proactive and show initiative, and make the company more profitable?
No, not really. Not where I work.
We're here to support the business. To make sure that all the operations that actually make the business money (sales, marketing, manufacturing, shipping, whatever) can happen. It isn't our job (unless your company is a web retailer, maybe) to do much more than keep things working correctly.
If someone asks for some new way to organize internal information I might very well recommend some kind of internal wiki or something... But if I just wander off on a tangent researching wiki software on my own folks don't really appreciate me wasting company time. Nor would they be too thrilled if I just suddenly suggested, out of the blue, that we ought to go spend time and money building an internal wiki server for no reason.
Worse still, you have to be careful just how proactive you are in keeping things working correctly. Decide that you want to run a nightly defrag or virus scan or something, and suddenly you're interrupting some poor guy who decided to work late. Decide to stay on top of all the updates to keep everything running safe and secure, and suddenly you uncover an obscure bug and everything goes from "working fine" to "completely broken."
Powering everything down at night sounds like a great plan. And now with Server 2008 and Vista there are actually some fairly easy ways to do that. But then I'd have to worry about folks who have to work late for some reason... And folks working remotely at night... And people who left some kind of big download going overnight... And scans or updates that were scheduled to run overnight...
Sure, if my boss decided he wants to save some power by shutting everything off at night I'll make sure it happens. But without some kind of mandate I'm sure as hell not going to do something as potentially disruptive as shut everyone's machine off at night.
I've suggested plenty of improvements over the years... Upgrades to hardware and software, power-saving measures, new ways to organize our information... Frankly, unless it directly and immediately supports the money-making activities of the business nobody is interested. Doesn't matter how much money it would make/save in the long run.
What about for a new player? Someone that would probably get a lot of use out of this. I know that it was hard for me when I joined WoW just as the 2nd expansion was released. Starting as a Priest at level 1 when there is hardly anyone around your level forcing you to solo most of the time and making it almost impossible to find a group for low level raids is not easy.
Starting out new at level 1, right after an expansion is released, is difficult no matter what. Everyone's playing in the new content, nobody wants to go do any of the old stuff.
Having this dual-spec system would make it a lot easier for a low level first time player to solo, especially for the low damage classes. It would mean they could easily switch between for example a healer priest for the rare chances they did get in a group/raid and shadow priest for solo.
No it wouldn't.
The first several re-specs are dirt cheap compared to this. There's absolutely no reason you'd want to save up the 1,000 gold for dual-specs on a character before you got to the endgame content. And even then I'd argue that it doesn't make sense unless you are actually re-specing fairly often.
I quit WoW when I got to level 65, I started getting bored of having to go days waiting for a decent group for an instance. It very much felt like to me, that Blizzard didn't care about new players, they already have enough regular subscribers to keep them going.
They've dramatically decreased the time and effort it takes to get to the endgame content these days. It is amazingly quick and easy to get to 70 and start playing around out in Northrend. Especially with the whole "recruit a friend" thing. I've seen folks in guildchat get 10 levels in a matter of minutes.
Also, I didn't have 1000g available at the time I quit, so even now, I wouldn't be able to use this.
1000g is nothing. I made that and more without even trying on the way from 60-70. And I again made that and more without even trying on the way from 70-80. Throw in some heroic dungeons, a raid or two, some daily quests... You could have 1000g in less than a week.
Why would I feel "just as much emotional impact" for tragedy stricken upon strangers? Nothing I said implies this, and you're pushing an extreme view upon me to apologize for a perceived callousness.
I'm not apologizing for anything.
I'm trying to figure out what other people think I should be feeling.
When it comes down to it, you are responsible for your own morals, so you only have yourself to blame if you find yourself offended that others see your lack of empathy as disturbing.
Offended? No.
Curious? Yes.
The implicit assumption behind all of your defense is that people can only really care about those that have a "connection" with them. While you can convince yourself of this, I don't need to have a series of information exchanging encounters with a person to sympathize with them as a fellow human.
If the world really operated this way, we'd certainly be a lot more fucked than we are right now. I would imagine most of us rational self-interested egoists are too busy burying those rogue emotions under paychecks and cheap rhetoric, however.
Are you telling me that you honestly feel just as much emotional impact when you hear about some random person dying as you do when your mother/father/spouse/child/friend dies? That you weep just as hard for every single person who died in NY last week as you do when your own family suffers tragedy? That you mourn just as long for each murder victim you see on the evening news as you do for someone you've known your whole life?
Because I don't.
Sure, I can empathize in a general way... I've lost friends and family... I know how it hurts... I can say "I'm sorry for your loss"...
But I can't feel that kind of pain personally for someone I've never known. It isn't a choice, it just doesn't happen.
And if his work impacted you directly (as I'm sure it did for most Slashdotters), then the fact that you *didn't* know his name is, quite frankly, irrelevant to the fact that you do now, and you had a chance to at least express some gratitude, but instead created a rationale for why you can't be arsed.
My post had nothing to do with expressing gratitude or not. It was a response to the folks who thought it was insensitive or trollish to ask if there would be updates to the filter list.
Sure, I'm grateful for the list Rick built. I'm glad it made my life a little bit easier. But, like it or not, his death has very little emotional impact on me. I didn't know the guy. And I'm not going to weep and cry and rend my shirt.
If Linus died, I would say that sucks, who is going to be the face of the Linux kernel now? I don't know him, a handful of people on here have probably interacted with him on a professional level, but I doubt there are any that would really be effected on a personal level. I'm sure there would be tons eager to proclaim "how dare you talk about the kernel at a time like this" etc. ad nasuem. Fuck that. They don't actually give a crap about the guy who died, in fact they are probably thinking the same question. They have just seized an opportunity to be the high and mighty self-appointed moral police, and to that I say Fuck you. I'd take a troll over you anyday.
Agreed.
Yeah, it sucks that Rick died... I'm sure he was loved and his friends and family are in mourning... And I guess I'd rather he hadn't died... But, really, I don't know the guy. Didn't even know his name until this story showed up. I'm supposed to act heartbroken and sympathetic and stuff? Over some guy I never even knew?
People die literally every second of every day. Turn on CNN and you'll see dozens of stories about shootings and disasters and accidents... Am I supposed to just sit around in a permanent state of mourning for all the people who are dying?
A week or two back when Natasha Richardson died in that ski accident they had people calling in, weeping over their loss... Except that they didn't know Natasha. They weren't her friends or family. They were just random people who happened to see her in a movie, or hear her give an interview, or see her at a gathering... They had no real emotional connection to her. Whatever relationship they had, whatever person they thought she was - that was a creation of their own mind, not reality. And they were weeping as if their best friend had just died.
Yes, it sucks that this person is gone. It sucks when most people die. But I didn't know them. I didn't know their friends or their family. I've got absolutely no ties to them at all. The only connection I have to this Rick guy is the fact that I use his filter... So, yeah, I'm concerned about the filter living on.
Seriously. ... Who cares if OpenOffice opens a .xls document 4 seconds faster, since it takes me a good 25 minutes to reconfigure all the graphs formating that it lost from MS Office??
Is that 25 minutes taken into factor? ... That's right, I didn't think so.
That's just silly.
If you need Excel, why would you be running OO? If you've got all kinds of graphs and formatting and whatever else that's going to take 25 minutes to fix in OO, why wouldn't you be running Excel? That time adds up pretty quickly and before long it becomes very easy to justify the cost of a license for Excel.
That's like the folks who switch to Linux or OS X and then load up their machine with some kind of VM and run everything in Windows anyway. If you need Windows, why not just run Windows?
Of course the best solution would be to get everyone working from some kind of open format, so it didn't matter what software you were using. So there was absolutely no vendor lock-in. But that won't be happening any time soon.
Who runs OO on Windows?
A lot of our home user and student clients use OO instead of Microsoft Office.
Microsoft Office isn't cheap. It's several hundred dollars depending on what kind of discounts you get and what version you need. It used to come preloaded on a lot of systems, but these days they frequently give you some kind of 30-day trial of Microsoft Office, instead of the full version.
Business folks don't generally care. Most of our business clients have some kind of volume license anyway, so they throw it on whatever new computer they get.
A lot of our home users have a hard time justifying spending $100 or more just so their kid can type up a paper at home.
So we point them at OO, and it generally does what they need it to. We've made a lot of people very happy by giving them a free alternative to Microsoft Office.
If you told me that my business needed to take 4 months to do something, I'd tell you it had better be revenue-generating.
That's the big problem with the IPv6 transition.
Regardless of how easy or necessary it may (or may not) be, it isn't going to generate a whole lot of revenue right now. Maybe for a web-based company like Google it might actually get them some revenue... But for your average business that just uses their network to email, browse the web, transfer some files, etc... It'll take some money and some labor, but won't really get you anything in return.
It's hard to pitch something like that to management.
haha, oh the Irony. Can you actually pull a thought out of your head that isn't a lame ass movie rip off?
If you want to blame the lameness of my thoughts on something, it'll have to be books or video games. I watch very few movies.
People are smart.
Evidence suggests otherwise.