I played EverQuest for 4 years, and have played WoW for just under a year. They've both had their problems, but in both I see a pattern: as the game progresses, and they transition from release to long-term expansion cycles, content progression becomes so deep and so complex that new or casual players must spend 4-6 months to join their friends who have been playing for months or years. Worse, the new or casual player represents a drag on the resources of any player that wants to help them level. There's no effective way to (relatively) quickly make a new player useful (say, in the period of time it would take to learn to use their abilities).
I worry about this, and wonder: do you have a way of solving this problem in the longer term for LOTRO, or are you (like EQ and WoW before you) pushing off those choices until you're already in the expansion release cycle?
More info, please? He finally said exactly what he felt, which is that a small percentage of posters to the forums were subverting the morale of the majority. He said it rather pointedly, and in a very insulting and condescending tone. He was right, of course, but that's not how you interact with the public. He didn't really melt down. The people on those forums, for the most part, don't know what melting down in public is. He just lost his cool, and said what I'm sure every other CM thinks.
As it is, when you tell someone that they're an idiot, and in the same breath prove that you have no fucking idea what you're talking about, it will slaughter the community's opinion of you. That's why the forums ate him alive. The need to be constructive goes both ways. Sadly, you can never get a large audience of random posters to be completely constructive. I think WoW would do much better if it had a moderation system like Slash does. The first-pass moderation should be done by the community. After that, the majority will no longer be drowned out by the screaming minority.
Thanks, you beat me to the obvious anti-fud post. I hope people actually read it. That said, Dell is not above exploiting a captive audience, so even though one guy cried wolf here, that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep a close eye on what their machines ship with.
I have seen similar things happen to what you say, yes all nerfs are taken in badly, even when it is -CLEAR- they are for a reason. Nerfs?! Hell, buffs are taken badly. The problem is usually that people who deal with the public in any company get focused on the BAD customers, and forget that a huge fraction of their customers are silent, and those most motivated to speak are not even remotely a representative sample of the prevailing temperament.
I'd agree with you all except for one thing: the wireless access can be closed off with the simple application of low-grade encryption. I can absolutely see a law going through that says that subverting WEP in order to gain access to someone else's network is unlawful, but to say that something many computers do automatically (connect to the strongest unsecured WiFi) is unlawful puts a burden on the potential "criminal" to determine who owns the connection and what their provisioning scheme is. The burden should be on the owner to either provide a polite "do not disturb" (WEP) or a redirection scheme like many use to restrict access until the user has visited the owner's Web site and signed up / accepted the terms of use. Anything else is highly unreasonable, as it requires me to know who the owners of all of my local WiFi hotspots are and what their terms of use might be.
I think it's broadly assumed that when we talk about in-memory cache, we're talking about the post-rendering gecko datastructures that represent the page (the DOM and associated gecko-specific data). Yes, of course most CSS and JavaScript sources are a small dent when compared with their post-processing representations.
I don't think there's any way around that, though, if you're looking to exploit the speed advantage of actually using that memory.
My bloat concerns with Firefox have nothing to do with cache. That's an optimization that's quite reasonable. It's all of the other stuff... I can't say I don't love having a spell-checker. I can't say that I don't love having incremental search. I can't say that I don't love having built-in SVG (though I wish it were better)... it's just that all of these things are large. Page cache can lead to eye-grabbing numbers, but it's these new features that get added over the years that slowly bloat the browser beyond all recognition.
I'm doubtful that there's a substantial revision to the browser that would be useful. Firefox is really not that "large". When rendering small, lightweight Web pages, Firefox is actually not the largest application I run regularly... of course, small, lightweight Web pages are a dying breed.
That's not really Firefox's fault. Eight Web pages worth of cache is nothing... when you're not visiting a site that has 6 CSS stylesheets, 8 JavaScript sources and 20 images eight pages is a breeze. But visit most Web sites today, and you'll find that that's a dying dream.
Fortunately, well-designed Web sites can take advantage of this. For example, MediaWiki has tons of CSS and JavaScript associated with each page, but it's shared in common across almost all of those pages, so keeping 8 pages in cache isn't all that much more expensive than keeping one.
It has nothing to do with what the firm would like or dislike.
This is not a choice that they made.
The SEC requires that every single person involved in the management of your money (and that is everyone right down to the people who write the code or empty the portfolio manager's trash baskets), must be bonded. Now, if you follow up on her hiring process, you will find that the people demanding the fingerprinting are not the financial firm, but their insurance company. It's the insurance company that provides the bond, and not shockingly they want to make the decision on how much money to put up against your doing something wrong based on useful data like, "do you have a criminal record."
I'm strongly against screening people in non-fiduciary roles in this way, but for a world where subtle clues about the behavior of a firm could be worth millions... I can see the point, and since the investors that do business with these firms are so vulnerable, requiring that the firm have insurance is a no-brainer.
Yes, indeed! Please, do not feed the trolls. Do not click on the C|Net link, and if this really bothers, you just file it away in the back of your mind as another in the long list of reasons to never visit C|Net's site.
Here's what the article says, for those who didn't RTFA:
Mr Schader was asked to pay to attend meetings where virtual and real child pornography was being shown.
Members of this group also offered to put him in touch with traders of real child pornography.
The investigation also uncovered so called "age play" groups that revolve around the abuse of virtual children. So, it looks like there were three issues:
Distribution of virtual child porn (images within the game of cartoon characters having underage sex)
Distribution of real, online child porn (images within and outside of the game being traded within the game, of real children)
"age play" (people dressing up as children within the game and having sex).
That last one is nonsense, and the first is shaky but maybe defensible as a crime (only because you have no way of even trying to confirm the age of the participants in the first case). I can't imagine any court in the developed world saying that that's any more illegal than an adult putting on a sailor moon costume before jumping in the sack with another adult. As long as the people involved are aware that the other people involved are not REALLY children, there's no harm being done. Harmless kink is harmless kink.
I am sorry to say that corporations[1] are people... Not only that, but their only duty as "legal persons" is to profit, no matter what. No, not really. First off, you're confusing corporations with for-profit, publicly-traded corporations (I'll say FPC for short) which, surprisingly, are in the minority in most developed nations. That said, they're also the majority employers, and the longest lived on average, so it's not unfair to generalize about them... however, I think you should be explicit about such generalizations. They're also not "persons", strictly speaking, though the enjoy some of the rights of persons in the U.S.
The duty of an FPC is to deliver to its shareholders, what their S1 (and any other relevant filings) have promised. In most cases, this includes increasing profits. In some cases it does not. In all cases, it also includes many other things. For example, people often cite Google's famous "don't be evil," but few know its significance. That phrase is in Google's S1, which means that Google's agreement with their shareholders includes an explicit "out" with respect to ethical concerns. It's essentially 100% contractual between three parties: the corporation; the shareholder; and the SEC. You're making assertions about the typical form of that contractual relationship, and pretending that it's law. It's not, though the law (both explicit and common law) enforces that contractual relationship once it's established.
And because they are so powerful (unlike real, individual persons) Persons or corporations derive almost all of their power from their assets and their political and social affiliations. There are most certainly individuals and non-corporate organizations which wield significantly more individual power than the largest FPC, but typically such power is constrained by its nature. For example, the Fed wields more power than any public corporation in the U.S., but is heavily constrained in how they wield that power. Deviations would almost certainly result in large power-structure shifts.
There are also privately held corporations which rank amongst some of the most powerful entities in the U.S. Fidelity Investments, for example, accounts for a large percentage of the trading that occurs on Wall St. and is privately held. Ned Johnson (who, along with his daughter, are the primary owners of the Fidelity companies), is thus a nearly unimaginably powerful individual who does not answer to the sorts of control structures that exist in pubic corporations.
You are living in Corporate America: America ruled by corporations... You are living in a capitalist society in which capitalist power-structures exist. Money is one obvious source of power. Deal.
mysql 5 has some of that stuff now, but they're still a decade behind. I guess it was unavoidable that any question asked about PostgreSQL usage had to involve MySQL bashing... sigh.
Even more reason to build a MythTV box.. If you continue to insist on stealing our content, and engaging in piracy, we're left with no choice but to replace your computer with a DRM-enabled appliance. Please, let us know if our customer service department can be of further assistance;-)
/g "Hey guys, I'm stuck on a desert island in RL. Could someone please send a rescue party?" What you want is to contact customer service:
Taphonomy: Good evening, I'm a customer service representative. Do you have a minute to discuss your concern? Mycharacter: Hi! Oh good! I'm stuck on a desert island. Can yo alert the authorities? Taphonomy: You can use the/unstick command to escape from world geometry problems. Mycharacter: No, I'm actually stuck on a real desert island. I need someone to get me out of here! Taphonomy: I can't provide in-game hints at this time. Mycharacter: What?! Oh, no it's not a quest. I am somewhere in the south seas. Taphonomy: That's working as intended. Mycharacter: What?! Taphonomy: Thank you for contacting customer service. Is there anything else I can do for you today? Mycharacter: Look you @!%&er, I just need a rescue plane! Taphonomy: The use of such language is not allowed. Your account will be banned until such time as you contact our account dispute resolution team. Mycharacter: Nooo! This is my only acce....
I have a serious question to ask, but I'm sure it's going to sound like an invitation to a flame war. Please refrain.
Does anyone actually use PostgreSQL? I mean, I know it's the defacto database that we wave around when we want to bash MySQL, but that doesn't mean anyone uses it. I've yet to run into anyone who used PostgreSQL except as a rapid-prototype for an Oracle environment. Anyone have data points here? Does anyone know the rough sizes of the user bases? Are we really just waving PostgreSQL like a flag, or is it a widely used database in its own-right?
I know what Haliburton does. It's very dull and repetitive and not especially evil. My former father-in-law was an extremely high ranking executive there, and the man is about as evil as a room full of sleeping puppies. I'm sorry to hear that good people work for such an organization... or perhaps I'm not. Perhaps the fact that he works there is a good thing for the company, and keeps them from abusing the system even more so. But, if they were not a fundamentally evil company, they would have long ago stood up and said, "we're being used to abuse the system by which the Federal government employs external contractors, and that needs to stop." This, they have not done, because the money is too good. Money over ethics. I'm willing to call that evil.
However, I did get a big laugh out of your closing statement about "find the evil hidden in this picture" which is an excellent description of the way people like you view the business world in general. You don't know anything about the way I view the business world in general. I'm quite certain you'd be shocked to learn how I do feel. It's odd though that as soon as you mention a company like Haliburton, there are at least two posters who claim to know exactly where I stand politically, and how I feel about industry. Huh. Oddly, they're wrong in both cases.
In fact, should one be inclined to do evil, it would appear that the best way to avoid that sort of scrutiny is to simply declare that you're not evil (e.g. "Don't be evil,") and you'll swallow it hook, line and sinker. No, I'll continue to judge you as I do any other company: by your actions. I applaud Google's use of that phrase as a way to allow ethics to be a point of consideration. I'm not convinced it will help, but the fact that they put it in their S1 means that they CAN consider ethics and not be sued for doing so... that's a luxury no other public company that I know has. It's a good start, but how they use it will speak volumes.
Note: I've signed Google's NDA in the past (I won't disclose why, sorry, but I do respect the confidentiality that the document was designed to protect). I'm entirely aware of its contents and I'm entirely OK with it.
I'll readily grant that many other companies are more evil that Google. This is praise? Why does it have to be praise? Why do we have to talk about "evil?" Why is it that we put Google under a microscope every time someone thinks they're rude, but we ignore the transgressions of companies that dump mercury into our skies and oceans? Why is it evil to have a poorly worded NDA? Stupid? Sure. Rude? Maybe. Evil? Slashdotters wouldn't know evil if it smacked them.
This clearly counts as evil. It's not on the same level as smashing babies heads in front of their mothers (see the Bible), but it's still evil. If you're saying that the idea of an NDA is evil, I'll grant that you are allowed to have that opinion. If you're saying that there's anything quantifiable about Google's NDA that's "more evil" than the norm, then I'm not buying it.
Fundamentally, this is a conversation about NDAs, but we've made it about Google because they used a phrase once that a bunch of obsessive geeks took as a challenge.
Translation: "No matter what the nominal topic, I'm incapable of discussing it. All I can do is attempt to drag the thread off on to dullwitted, repetitive, anti-Bush screeching." You don't know my politics, so don't assume. Haliburton is a vile company. That doesn't have anything to do with my politics.
Hint: not everything is about you and your OCD, my friend. I have no such disorder. Try again.
Hint #2: Bush isn't running for reelection next year. Better think up a new screech before then. Get off the Bush thing. He's not that interesting, really.
From what the summary says, they were given incorrect information. This sounds reasonable on the face of it, but in the context of the larger scope of the RIAA's attacks against their customers, it becomes obvious that these are fire-and-forget lawsuits. They are literally trying to bag as many people as possible so that everyone "knows someone who got sued." It's a campaign of fear, and the facts really have not mattered to them. They sued a woman who doesn't know what a cable modem is, and tried to cooperate with them in every way. Still, they went after her, saying to her over the phone that if they didn't continue to persue her, even if she was innocent, then everyone would try to claim that they were innocent by using the same "trick."
What's sad is that it's not even really about piracy. It's about control over distribution. The RIAA could make gobs of money for their members if they built a model around open Internet distribution (frankly that's what they have now, but they don't want to admit that), but they're too afraid of the competition that would ensue, and the business models that would arise. They can't control that the way they control "traditional" distribution channels, so they fight it.
Jebus frakkin who-ha! What are you people on?! Yes, it's a poorly worded (in parts) agreement. Yes, it has all of the usual boilerplate "you can't talk about anything we talk about," which can be generalized to mean that you can't go take a leek without Google's permission. Yes, yes, yes.
But you're calling this evil?! WTF?! Do you know what Haliburton does? Do you have any idea what Unilever does?! Have you looked at what EVIL really means?!
Please, put down the coffee and grab yourself some soothing music. You need to relax if an NDA strikes you as evil. It's a mutual agreement that you won't disclose their secrets or the nature of your agreements with them. Yes, they need to fix the stupid "don't mention or imply Google's name" thing (that hurts them just as much as you), but how's that evil?
Look, they put "don't be evil" in their S1 because it's the only way to defend themselves against lawsuits later on when they refuse to do something on the basis of it being stupidly unethical. It's a good thing, and a move other companies should adopt, but idiots who insist on treating it as a challenge to "find the evil hidden in this picture," will scare away anyone who might have considered that in future businesses. Sigh.
Generally a gun banner is someone who doesn't know anything about firearms, doesn't WANT to know and most especially wants to wallow in the fear their ignorance produces.
Why is it that a certain segment of the gun-owning populace immediately jumps to the conclusion that there's some grand-scale movement to try to completely ban guns every time limitations on gun ownership are brought up? Because those who feel most strongly that that should be done are (not surprisingly) those who began the gun-ban efforts would very much like to see all guns of all types go away. They're willing to settle for removing certain types first, but there's always more down the line. Frankly, I'm a bit of a fence-sitter. I'd like to see dangerous neighborhoods not have guns dumped onto their streets. On the other hand, I fully support anyone who wants to own a gun of any type, as long as they can demonstrate that they're of sound mind and capable of using it correctly.
Overall, it seems to be a cultural thing. The people who want to see weapons banned live in areas where they aren't needed in everyday life, and thus they're never exposed to them when they're growing up. On the other hand, anyone who had a gun mounted on the wall of their home because they lived in the mountains when growing up (like I did), doesn't think twice about them because they know their limitations, dangers and uses.
I agree with Mr. Morris, though I think he was overly harsh on the point. Once you move past ignorance on this topic, it's not the "killing bad, living good," black-and-white issue it seemed to be.
Like abortion, global warming, terrorism or any of the other hot-button issues in modern U.S. politics, gun control is all too often compressed into a highly polarized sound bite for TV, and that's the story most people hear.
Slashdot Mirror
I played EverQuest for 4 years, and have played WoW for just under a year. They've both had their problems, but in both I see a pattern: as the game progresses, and they transition from release to long-term expansion cycles, content progression becomes so deep and so complex that new or casual players must spend 4-6 months to join their friends who have been playing for months or years. Worse, the new or casual player represents a drag on the resources of any player that wants to help them level. There's no effective way to (relatively) quickly make a new player useful (say, in the period of time it would take to learn to use their abilities).
I worry about this, and wonder: do you have a way of solving this problem in the longer term for LOTRO, or are you (like EQ and WoW before you) pushing off those choices until you're already in the expansion release cycle?
Thanks, you beat me to the obvious anti-fud post. I hope people actually read it. That said, Dell is not above exploiting a captive audience, so even though one guy cried wolf here, that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep a close eye on what their machines ship with.
An apostrophe is usually a marker of possessiveness. It is NEVER used for plurality.
This is basic English. Please learn it. There are a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market that taste just as good as the real thing....
I'd agree with you all except for one thing: the wireless access can be closed off with the simple application of low-grade encryption. I can absolutely see a law going through that says that subverting WEP in order to gain access to someone else's network is unlawful, but to say that something many computers do automatically (connect to the strongest unsecured WiFi) is unlawful puts a burden on the potential "criminal" to determine who owns the connection and what their provisioning scheme is. The burden should be on the owner to either provide a polite "do not disturb" (WEP) or a redirection scheme like many use to restrict access until the user has visited the owner's Web site and signed up / accepted the terms of use. Anything else is highly unreasonable, as it requires me to know who the owners of all of my local WiFi hotspots are and what their terms of use might be.
I think it's broadly assumed that when we talk about in-memory cache, we're talking about the post-rendering gecko datastructures that represent the page (the DOM and associated gecko-specific data). Yes, of course most CSS and JavaScript sources are a small dent when compared with their post-processing representations.
I don't think there's any way around that, though, if you're looking to exploit the speed advantage of actually using that memory.
My bloat concerns with Firefox have nothing to do with cache. That's an optimization that's quite reasonable. It's all of the other stuff... I can't say I don't love having a spell-checker. I can't say that I don't love having incremental search. I can't say that I don't love having built-in SVG (though I wish it were better)... it's just that all of these things are large. Page cache can lead to eye-grabbing numbers, but it's these new features that get added over the years that slowly bloat the browser beyond all recognition.
I'm doubtful that there's a substantial revision to the browser that would be useful. Firefox is really not that "large". When rendering small, lightweight Web pages, Firefox is actually not the largest application I run regularly... of course, small, lightweight Web pages are a dying breed.
That's not really Firefox's fault. Eight Web pages worth of cache is nothing... when you're not visiting a site that has 6 CSS stylesheets, 8 JavaScript sources and 20 images eight pages is a breeze. But visit most Web sites today, and you'll find that that's a dying dream.
Fortunately, well-designed Web sites can take advantage of this. For example, MediaWiki has tons of CSS and JavaScript associated with each page, but it's shared in common across almost all of those pages, so keeping 8 pages in cache isn't all that much more expensive than keeping one.
It has nothing to do with what the firm would like or dislike.
This is not a choice that they made.
The SEC requires that every single person involved in the management of your money (and that is everyone right down to the people who write the code or empty the portfolio manager's trash baskets), must be bonded. Now, if you follow up on her hiring process, you will find that the people demanding the fingerprinting are not the financial firm, but their insurance company. It's the insurance company that provides the bond, and not shockingly they want to make the decision on how much money to put up against your doing something wrong based on useful data like, "do you have a criminal record."
I'm strongly against screening people in non-fiduciary roles in this way, but for a world where subtle clues about the behavior of a firm could be worth millions... I can see the point, and since the investors that do business with these firms are so vulnerable, requiring that the firm have insurance is a no-brainer.
Slashdot had a related story a while back on increases to engine efficiency. Not sure if it's related.
Yes, indeed! Please, do not feed the trolls. Do not click on the C|Net link, and if this really bothers, you just file it away in the back of your mind as another in the long list of reasons to never visit C|Net's site.
Members of this group also offered to put him in touch with traders of real child pornography.
The investigation also uncovered so called "age play" groups that revolve around the abuse of virtual children. So, it looks like there were three issues:
That last one is nonsense, and the first is shaky but maybe defensible as a crime (only because you have no way of even trying to confirm the age of the participants in the first case). I can't imagine any court in the developed world saying that that's any more illegal than an adult putting on a sailor moon costume before jumping in the sack with another adult. As long as the people involved are aware that the other people involved are not REALLY children, there's no harm being done. Harmless kink is harmless kink.
I am sorry to say that corporations [1] are people... Not only that, but their only duty as "legal persons" is to profit, no matter what. No, not really. First off, you're confusing corporations with for-profit, publicly-traded corporations (I'll say FPC for short) which, surprisingly, are in the minority in most developed nations. That said, they're also the majority employers, and the longest lived on average, so it's not unfair to generalize about them... however, I think you should be explicit about such generalizations. They're also not "persons", strictly speaking, though the enjoy some of the rights of persons in the U.S.
The duty of an FPC is to deliver to its shareholders, what their S1 (and any other relevant filings) have promised. In most cases, this includes increasing profits. In some cases it does not. In all cases, it also includes many other things. For example, people often cite Google's famous "don't be evil," but few know its significance. That phrase is in Google's S1, which means that Google's agreement with their shareholders includes an explicit "out" with respect to ethical concerns. It's essentially 100% contractual between three parties: the corporation; the shareholder; and the SEC. You're making assertions about the typical form of that contractual relationship, and pretending that it's law. It's not, though the law (both explicit and common law) enforces that contractual relationship once it's established. And because they are so powerful (unlike real, individual persons) Persons or corporations derive almost all of their power from their assets and their political and social affiliations. There are most certainly individuals and non-corporate organizations which wield significantly more individual power than the largest FPC, but typically such power is constrained by its nature. For example, the Fed wields more power than any public corporation in the U.S., but is heavily constrained in how they wield that power. Deviations would almost certainly result in large power-structure shifts.
There are also privately held corporations which rank amongst some of the most powerful entities in the U.S. Fidelity Investments, for example, accounts for a large percentage of the trading that occurs on Wall St. and is privately held. Ned Johnson (who, along with his daughter, are the primary owners of the Fidelity companies), is thus a nearly unimaginably powerful individual who does not answer to the sorts of control structures that exist in pubic corporations. You are living in Corporate America: America ruled by corporations... You are living in a capitalist society in which capitalist power-structures exist. Money is one obvious source of power. Deal.
/g "Hey guys, I'm stuck on a desert island in RL. Could someone please send a rescue party?" What you want is to contact customer service: Then again, maybe I'd bring tetris"Shadow" has been around since very early implementations of the game. "Hard drop" is an original game feature.
Seeing the next 6 blocks is just expanding on the original game's one-block lookahead. Nothing shocking there.
Other than that, the other features are just multi-player play. Nothing too different from the original other than multi-player.
I have a serious question to ask, but I'm sure it's going to sound like an invitation to a flame war. Please refrain.
Does anyone actually use PostgreSQL? I mean, I know it's the defacto database that we wave around when we want to bash MySQL, but that doesn't mean anyone uses it. I've yet to run into anyone who used PostgreSQL except as a rapid-prototype for an Oracle environment. Anyone have data points here? Does anyone know the rough sizes of the user bases? Are we really just waving PostgreSQL like a flag, or is it a widely used database in its own-right?
Note: I've signed Google's NDA in the past (I won't disclose why, sorry, but I do respect the confidentiality that the document was designed to protect). I'm entirely aware of its contents and I'm entirely OK with it.
Fundamentally, this is a conversation about NDAs, but we've made it about Google because they used a phrase once that a bunch of obsessive geeks took as a challenge.
Translation: "No matter what the nominal topic, I'm incapable of discussing it. All I can do is attempt to drag the thread off on to dullwitted, repetitive, anti-Bush screeching." You don't know my politics, so don't assume. Haliburton is a vile company. That doesn't have anything to do with my politics. Hint: not everything is about you and your OCD, my friend. I have no such disorder. Try again. Hint #2: Bush isn't running for reelection next year. Better think up a new screech before then. Get off the Bush thing. He's not that interesting, really.
From what the summary says, they were given incorrect information. This sounds reasonable on the face of it, but in the context of the larger scope of the RIAA's attacks against their customers, it becomes obvious that these are fire-and-forget lawsuits. They are literally trying to bag as many people as possible so that everyone "knows someone who got sued." It's a campaign of fear, and the facts really have not mattered to them. They sued a woman who doesn't know what a cable modem is, and tried to cooperate with them in every way. Still, they went after her, saying to her over the phone that if they didn't continue to persue her, even if she was innocent, then everyone would try to claim that they were innocent by using the same "trick."
What's sad is that it's not even really about piracy. It's about control over distribution. The RIAA could make gobs of money for their members if they built a model around open Internet distribution (frankly that's what they have now, but they don't want to admit that), but they're too afraid of the competition that would ensue, and the business models that would arise. They can't control that the way they control "traditional" distribution channels, so they fight it.
Jebus frakkin who-ha! What are you people on?! Yes, it's a poorly worded (in parts) agreement. Yes, it has all of the usual boilerplate "you can't talk about anything we talk about," which can be generalized to mean that you can't go take a leek without Google's permission. Yes, yes, yes.
But you're calling this evil?! WTF?! Do you know what Haliburton does? Do you have any idea what Unilever does?! Have you looked at what EVIL really means?!
Please, put down the coffee and grab yourself some soothing music. You need to relax if an NDA strikes you as evil. It's a mutual agreement that you won't disclose their secrets or the nature of your agreements with them. Yes, they need to fix the stupid "don't mention or imply Google's name" thing (that hurts them just as much as you), but how's that evil?
Look, they put "don't be evil" in their S1 because it's the only way to defend themselves against lawsuits later on when they refuse to do something on the basis of it being stupidly unethical. It's a good thing, and a move other companies should adopt, but idiots who insist on treating it as a challenge to "find the evil hidden in this picture," will scare away anyone who might have considered that in future businesses. Sigh.
Why is it that a certain segment of the gun-owning populace immediately jumps to the conclusion that there's some grand-scale movement to try to completely ban guns every time limitations on gun ownership are brought up? Because those who feel most strongly that that should be done are (not surprisingly) those who began the gun-ban efforts would very much like to see all guns of all types go away. They're willing to settle for removing certain types first, but there's always more down the line. Frankly, I'm a bit of a fence-sitter. I'd like to see dangerous neighborhoods not have guns dumped onto their streets. On the other hand, I fully support anyone who wants to own a gun of any type, as long as they can demonstrate that they're of sound mind and capable of using it correctly.
Overall, it seems to be a cultural thing. The people who want to see weapons banned live in areas where they aren't needed in everyday life, and thus they're never exposed to them when they're growing up. On the other hand, anyone who had a gun mounted on the wall of their home because they lived in the mountains when growing up (like I did), doesn't think twice about them because they know their limitations, dangers and uses.
I agree with Mr. Morris, though I think he was overly harsh on the point. Once you move past ignorance on this topic, it's not the "killing bad, living good," black-and-white issue it seemed to be.
Like abortion, global warming, terrorism or any of the other hot-button issues in modern U.S. politics, gun control is all too often compressed into a highly polarized sound bite for TV, and that's the story most people hear.
Happy 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 day! Please, mark this day on your calendar for next year!