Wow, slow down guy.. It's amazing how people like you see some big corporate conspiracy in every little detail.
The magic of this automation occurs in two ways, both very exciting.
First: It guarantees that you will always have the staples that you want. Never again will I run out of milk because I was to stupid to go buy more. That's very important to me.
Second: It provides a sane place to order food... I really like fresh foods, but I don't have time to shop. This sort of integration should allow me to order the ingredients I need for dinner.. on the same day I'm going to cook it. It's not automated, but it sure as hell is convienent.
I can't remember the name of the appliance company (it's an offshoot of sunbeam), but they've been demonstrating the possibilities of smart appliances.. and it's vERY cool.
Obviously you have never pulled your head out of your ass.
The issue is NOT that it's shipping late, it's that the president of Nintendo bashed the competition when they set the November release date. Effectively he said "we will ship on time, they will not." It appears that they will, and Nintendo will not. This is a classic case of opening ones mouth and planting a big fat Nike in it.
I'm the author of the PalmOS game programming book (same series). We are definitely writing these books with beginning programmers in mind. It turns out that they buy the most books...
This is business, not "strip mining." These books serve an important purpose, namely educating novice to intermediate programmers about specific types of game programming.
I can not provide comment on the other authors in the series, but I have made every effort to make my book timely, informative, and easy to read. Just because a book does not meet your level of programming needs does not make it evil, or worthless, or the publisher simply greedy. We are trying to sell a product and it is these types of summary works that makes the most sense. It is best to whet the appetite of a new programmer, than teach an old one stuff he/she already knows.
From personal experience I can tell you that the free version of Blackjack for "Casino On Net" is MUCH easier than the actual paying version. I can consistently win with the free version. I can consistently lose when actual money is on the line. While I have no scientific backing, this has been far to frequent to be anything other than true.
Rememgber, the registration policy will primarily affect only home consumers. If you work at a business, then alternative versions of XP can be bought (at volume pricing) which bypass the need for this sort of activation. That's the long and short of it, M$ is out to screw the consumer.. not the big business that feeds it.
The point is, Open Source would not have helped this problem much. The sofwtare is not being run on the individual school districts machines, but is run at a central location. The schools send the completed tests to CBT, which would then actually score them.
The centralization of scoring is a very neccesary component to insure that the scoring is done on 'even ground' throughout the country. Thus, the school districts would likely have never even SEEN the source if it was there, as they had no need to install the program itself.
You can make the argument that the availability of the source would have given the districts the chance to locate the problem, after it had been discovered. This was not a trivial program, however, so i'm not sure how realistic it was.
These arguments certainly apply to some instances,but I think the CBT case is not one that is best solved by open source.
Slashdot is notorious for the 'freedom of technology' mindset. Yet what people REALLY mean is 'free technology for my benefit.' Technology comes at a price. You made the assertion that it will do nothing (at first) to benefit the average privacy-conscious citizen.
By the same token it DOES benefit corporations and government, and for this reason it should be heavily controlled. If I was a large business leader making the assertion that 'we should control Napster because it benefits only private users and not business,' I would face the biggest flame fest of my life. How is your argument any different?
I believe in the freedom of technology. I recognize that sometimes technology will not benefit me, but actually work against me. I also recognize that sometimes technology will benefit me, at the expense of someone else. This is the nature of things, and until you are ready to accept that I can not see how we can at once argue for freedom, while condeming freedom for someone else.
Blaming the woes of the world on marketing is one of the most backwards things in the world. Marketing plays a very important role in just about any society. To say that someone kills someone else because of a marketing campaign is just ignorant.
The fact is, marketers are not all powerful. Their job is to present the idea that their product presents more value to people than anyone elses. This, by itself, doesn't create value any more than me standing in the middle of the road and shouting "I'm better than everone else does." People know that because I say that (no matter how crafty I am in saying it), that I can't make it true.
The problem you describe lies in the audience. It lies in a culture not ready to truly handle the marketplace of ideas it has built. Commercials and advertisements are really just one way of transmitting information. The REAL problem is that people have become quite bad at sifting through information, and have developed a habit of beleiving whatever information reaches their ears first.
This, to me, has been the thorn in the side of the so called revolution. I still beleive that the real revolution is coming. In our zeal to run at "internet time", we've lost site of the fact that revolutions take a long time to develop. In the case of the Internet, only when the consumer is able to parse and understand ALL of the information presented to them, will the revolution occur. I think that the so called generation D, growing up in an information economy, will develop many of these skills on their own. I also beleive that technology, the same technology that has become so good at distributing information, will also become quite adept at helping people to understand it all.
I'm reminded of some personal experiences I had during High School in Arkansas. I noticed that many people took on the religious preferences of whatever church they attended last. It was bizarre. People would be touting the Baptist message one day, until their friend drug them to a methodist church...which of course changed everything. I came to realize that these people took the man behind the pulpit as the authority on how the information within the Bible was to be understood. This is exactly the problem we face now, and until we can fix that the revolution will always be just out of reach.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, slow down guy.. It's amazing how people like you see some big corporate conspiracy in every little detail.
The magic of this automation occurs in two ways, both very exciting.
First: It guarantees that you will always have the staples that you want. Never again will I run out of milk because I was to stupid to go buy more. That's very important to me.
Second: It provides a sane place to order food... I really like fresh foods, but I don't have time to shop. This sort of integration should allow me to order the ingredients I need for dinner.. on the same day I'm going to cook it. It's not automated, but it sure as hell is convienent.
I can't remember the name of the appliance company (it's an offshoot of sunbeam), but they've been demonstrating the possibilities of smart appliances.. and it's vERY cool.
Obviously you have never pulled your head out of your ass.
The issue is NOT that it's shipping late, it's that the president of Nintendo bashed the competition when they set the November release date. Effectively he said "we will ship on time, they will not." It appears that they will, and Nintendo will not. This is a classic case of opening ones mouth and planting a big fat Nike in it.
I'm the author of the PalmOS game programming book (same series). We are definitely writing these books with beginning programmers in mind. It turns out that they buy the most books... This is business, not "strip mining." These books serve an important purpose, namely educating novice to intermediate programmers about specific types of game programming. I can not provide comment on the other authors in the series, but I have made every effort to make my book timely, informative, and easy to read. Just because a book does not meet your level of programming needs does not make it evil, or worthless, or the publisher simply greedy. We are trying to sell a product and it is these types of summary works that makes the most sense. It is best to whet the appetite of a new programmer, than teach an old one stuff he/she already knows.
DMCA
From personal experience I can tell you that the free version of Blackjack for "Casino On Net" is MUCH easier than the actual paying version. I can consistently win with the free version. I can consistently lose when actual money is on the line. While I have no scientific backing, this has been far to frequent to be anything other than true.
Rememgber, the registration policy will primarily affect only home consumers. If you work at a business, then alternative versions of XP can be bought (at volume pricing) which bypass the need for this sort of activation. That's the long and short of it, M$ is out to screw the consumer.. not the big business that feeds it.
The point is, Open Source would not have helped this problem much. The sofwtare is not being run on the individual school districts machines, but is run at a central location. The schools send the completed tests to CBT, which would then actually score them.
The centralization of scoring is a very neccesary component to insure that the scoring is done on 'even ground' throughout the country. Thus, the school districts would likely have never even SEEN the source if it was there, as they had no need to install the program itself.
You can make the argument that the availability of the source would have given the districts the chance to locate the problem, after it had been discovered. This was not a trivial program, however, so i'm not sure how realistic it was.
These arguments certainly apply to some instances,but I think the CBT case is not one that is best solved by open source.
Slashdot is notorious for the 'freedom of technology' mindset. Yet what people REALLY mean is 'free technology for my benefit.' Technology comes at a price. You made the assertion that it will do nothing (at first) to benefit the average privacy-conscious citizen.
By the same token it DOES benefit corporations and government, and for this reason it should be heavily controlled. If I was a large business leader making the assertion that 'we should control Napster because it benefits only private users and not business,' I would face the biggest flame fest of my life. How is your argument any different?
I believe in the freedom of technology. I recognize that sometimes technology will not benefit me, but actually work against me. I also recognize that sometimes technology will benefit me, at the expense of someone else. This is the nature of things, and until you are ready to accept that I can not see how we can at once argue for freedom, while condeming freedom for someone else.
Blaming the woes of the world on marketing is one of the most backwards things in the world. Marketing plays a very important role in just about any society. To say that someone kills someone else because of a marketing campaign is just ignorant. The fact is, marketers are not all powerful. Their job is to present the idea that their product presents more value to people than anyone elses. This, by itself, doesn't create value any more than me standing in the middle of the road and shouting "I'm better than everone else does." People know that because I say that (no matter how crafty I am in saying it), that I can't make it true. The problem you describe lies in the audience. It lies in a culture not ready to truly handle the marketplace of ideas it has built. Commercials and advertisements are really just one way of transmitting information. The REAL problem is that people have become quite bad at sifting through information, and have developed a habit of beleiving whatever information reaches their ears first. This, to me, has been the thorn in the side of the so called revolution. I still beleive that the real revolution is coming. In our zeal to run at "internet time", we've lost site of the fact that revolutions take a long time to develop. In the case of the Internet, only when the consumer is able to parse and understand ALL of the information presented to them, will the revolution occur. I think that the so called generation D, growing up in an information economy, will develop many of these skills on their own. I also beleive that technology, the same technology that has become so good at distributing information, will also become quite adept at helping people to understand it all. I'm reminded of some personal experiences I had during High School in Arkansas. I noticed that many people took on the religious preferences of whatever church they attended last. It was bizarre. People would be touting the Baptist message one day, until their friend drug them to a methodist church...which of course changed everything. I came to realize that these people took the man behind the pulpit as the authority on how the information within the Bible was to be understood. This is exactly the problem we face now, and until we can fix that the revolution will always be just out of reach.