In a move equally stunning to neglegent parents everywhere, Captain Obvious has advised that people stop paying attention to the ESRB and take a more proactive stance in monitoring the content that they're buying for their kids.
Does Captain Obvious also advocate watching every movie to determine whether its content is appropriate (in spite of the rating)? Tasting every household chemical to determine whether or not it is truly non-toxic (in spite of the label)? Subjecting household appliances to abuse to see if they are child-friendly (in spite of certifications)?
The ESRB exists to help parents. If I hypothetically choose to ban sexually explicit games from my home (but allow violent ones), that is my choice on how to raise my children. I should be able to rely on their assessment, and not have to play the game myself and scour the internet for cheat codes to determine if the game is truly safe.
The issue here is that Rockstar misled the ESRB. Not that parents are lazy.
What he has done is ultimately a favor to microsoft.
Spare me. What arguments like this neglect is that this kid's actions had a cost, and that he should be held liable for that cost, not congratulated. For example, admins could not take the risk that the virus was harmless, and had to spend a great deal of time and effort tracking it down and stamping it out.
The cost goes beyond the financial, too. If the virus got loose in a safety-critical environment (hospital, air traffic control, power plant, take your pick -- it shouldn't happen, but it does), the consequences could have been very serious. Even if the only effect was to divert the attention of the admin away from other problems.
At first I thought it was ridiculous to openly espouse a hokey religion invented by a science fiction hack. But then I realized, it sure helped this guy...
Re:Promotion of science/arts
on
P2P and TV
·
· Score: 1
If the oil companies hired somebody to create for them a vehicle that would get obscene gas mileage, leak near-zero emissions, and cost only a few hundred dollars, and they prevented it from seeing the light of day, would the argument be the same?
My approach would be to buy a share and sue the directors for malfeasance, since they would be effectively debilitating their own business for no good reason. No need to bring IP into it...
Style is not irrelevant. Portable MP3 players have been around for years. Yet what really popularized them? The stylish iPod.
Fashion has more to do with the future than most geeks are prepared to admit. And, as a recent NYT article pointed out (can't find the link), tech jobs are fleeing the country like rats from a sinking ship, but most of the major artistic design firms -- the ones who put the pretty boxes around the circuits -- are still in NY, LA, Chicago, etc.
I don't understand... you're saying that you are not influenced at all by advertising, but when you decided to name two brands of vehicle "at random", you chose two that (by your own admission) get most of the advertising coverage in the USA?
The point that you are missing is that the advertising model is not as simple as a person hearing "Buy Acme Widgets" and then buying an acme widget. Why do you think companies spend millions just to get their logos in sporting events where people can see them? Almost all of advertising is awareness, not sales.
Putting aside truly harmful types of bigotry, such as racism etc., I find "OS bigotry" pretty entertaining. I am a centrist, who sees merit in almost every viewpoint, so it's pretty funny to me to watch people get at each others' throats over ludicrous low-level minutiae from the inner bowels of arcane computing concepts. I mean, who gives a rat's ass? And yet people are using comparisons to the Nazis, and worse.
Truthfully, it's what keeps me coming back to Slashdot.
I don't belong to the FSF, and I won't give money to them, because I see them as a largely philosophical organization, whose philosophy I don't completely agree with. By the same token I would not give money to a political party that I disagree with.
It is possible to donate money directly to particular projects, and I would consider doing that. However, GCC is not on the list of projects that you can support by direct donation...
Re:the code of conduct for free software distribut
on
Drafting GPL3
·
· Score: 1
The BSD license, both original and modified, are also Free. (source)
the code of conduct for free software distributors
on
Drafting GPL3
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
the code of conduct for free software distributors
*THE* code of conduct? Not *A* code of conduct? I bet the BSD folks would have something to say about that.
Hopefully this venture will fare better than the Summer Of George.
I think it will. I mean, the summer is normally when I want to spend a lot of quality time indoors, in front of my computer, writing code, breathing recirculated air.
Question for Chris: Are you guys supplying the vitamin D supplements, or do I have to pay for that myself?
Re:How does this relate to the America's Space Pri
on
White Knight Testing X-37
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Are you trolling?
Burt Rutan may be a superhero, but he needs to eat, just like everybody else. He is not a charity. It doesn't seem like White Knight or its pilots were doing much anyway. I can't imagine that renting out a plane to NASA is a huge distraction.
Rutan's current project, Virgin Galactic, has nothing to do with orbital flight. It is merely a souped-up version of Spaceship One. Rutan has himself said that scaling up to an orbital spacecraft would be many orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive, and it doesn't seem to be a priority for him right now.
And in what sense is this selling out? If taking Richard Branson's and Paul Allen's money was not selling out, then how does it follow that he is tainting his principles by helping NASA out with a test platform for reusable space technology?
I opposed the war and still think it's the greatest US foreign policy blunder in decades, but I'm not so doctrinaire that I can't see good things coming out of a tragedy.
I'm not speaking of you, exactly, but I find it alarming that parts of the anti-war movement on the left seem to hope that it becomes as much of a bloody quagmire as possible, so that it furthers their own domestic political objectives. Such an opinion is in the same league as the opinions that started the war in the first place.
Try asking the Iraqi and Afghani people what they think about the US.
Polls consistently show that a (thin) majority of Iraqis feel better off now than before the war. It's just that the ones who are unhappy are REALLY unhappy.
I don't watch Fox news. Maybe you should stop reading Daily Kos?
I really need that new address space. I mean, there are only 16842752 addresses in the 10.x.x.x and 192.168.x.x address spaces. With the 15 million wireless devices I keep in my home, I was starting to get worried!
National prohibition of file swapping... was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America...
Although consumption of file swapping fell at the beginning of Prohibition, it subsequently increased. Swapped files became more dangerous to consume;... the court and prison systems were stretched to the breaking point; and corruption of public officials was rampant. Prohibition removed a significant source of tax revenue and greatly increased government spending. It led many file swappers to switch to opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine, and other dangerous substances that they would have been unlikely to encounter in the absence of Prohibition....
I'm really not seeing how you can see the analogy as anything other than ridiculous, unless you think that a ban on file swapping is leading today's teens to hard drugs.
Furthermore, Prohibition was a grassroots movement, complete with its own political parties, while the enforcement of copyright is driven by media companies, with very little public support. You really can't compare the two, except superficially, in that they both tried to ban something that was popular.
I guess you could argue that having creationism taught in schools leads to swordfights with burning gas-filled glass tubes. But that's not happening in the USA. So what's your excuse?
Until computers can smoke joints and get a buzz, drink beer and get a buzz, and have orgasms, I won't consider it "living".
Maybe they will restrict the operation to those who do things to their brain other than try to deaden it and give way to instinct.
As Aldous Huxley said, "An intellectual is someone who has found one thing that's more interesting than sex."
And EMP wipes electronics, but doesn't destroy the contents of hard drives. You would be safe as long as you weren't stupid enough to download your brain to flash memory.
I'm always suspicious when somebody calls attention to the "real" reason. Is it too hard to understand that simple events have complex motivations?
Why did the attacks happen?
- Was it because US troops are on Muslim soil? The US has more foreign bases than any other nation, sometimes on seriously unfreindly territory (e.g., Cuba), almost all of which have provoked no suicide attacks.
- Was it because of cultural dominance? Then why aren't Canadians and Europeans bombing the hell out of the United States? They bear the worst of it.
- Was it because of the poverty of the Arab world? But most of the attackers were middle-class and well educated. This is also true of many Palestinian bombers. Furthermore, many Arab countries are well off.
- Was it for reasons that takes more than five seconds to describe? Most likely.
As much as some people might want to see Steve Ballmer eat his words, and as much as his statement is self-serving, I think he might be correct.
There's a high attrition rate among hot search engines. Altavista was the Google of 1999, and where are they now? They even had their own free e-mail and other services. And who uses Yahoo for search anymore? Does Webcrawler still even exist?
I'm not saying Microsoft will replace Google. But unless they are intensely shrewd businessmen, they might disappear all by themselves when the next hot thing comes along.
For fuck's sake. Copyrighting a journal is not the same as keeping knowledge from anybody. If you want to read any article in any journal, proceed to the local university library and go look it up for yourself. In my country, it is perfectly legal to make a copy for yourself and take it home, as long as it is for personal study purposes. Even if it's not, I doubt anybody is going to care.
Did Brother Lal have anything to say about laziness?
Slashdot Mirror
In a move equally stunning to neglegent parents everywhere, Captain Obvious has advised that people stop paying attention to the ESRB and take a more proactive stance in monitoring the content that they're buying for their kids.
Does Captain Obvious also advocate watching every movie to determine whether its content is appropriate (in spite of the rating)? Tasting every household chemical to determine whether or not it is truly non-toxic (in spite of the label)? Subjecting household appliances to abuse to see if they are child-friendly (in spite of certifications)?
The ESRB exists to help parents. If I hypothetically choose to ban sexually explicit games from my home (but allow violent ones), that is my choice on how to raise my children. I should be able to rely on their assessment, and not have to play the game myself and scour the internet for cheat codes to determine if the game is truly safe.
The issue here is that Rockstar misled the ESRB. Not that parents are lazy.
What he has done is ultimately a favor to microsoft.
Spare me. What arguments like this neglect is that this kid's actions had a cost, and that he should be held liable for that cost, not congratulated. For example, admins could not take the risk that the virus was harmless, and had to spend a great deal of time and effort tracking it down and stamping it out.
The cost goes beyond the financial, too. If the virus got loose in a safety-critical environment (hospital, air traffic control, power plant, take your pick -- it shouldn't happen, but it does), the consequences could have been very serious. Even if the only effect was to divert the attention of the admin away from other problems.
I think a criminal penalty is quite appropriate.
At first I thought it was ridiculous to openly espouse a hokey religion invented by a science fiction hack. But then I realized, it sure helped this guy ...
If the oil companies hired somebody to create for them a vehicle that would get obscene gas mileage, leak near-zero emissions, and cost only a few hundred dollars, and they prevented it from seeing the light of day, would the argument be the same?
...
My approach would be to buy a share and sue the directors for malfeasance, since they would be effectively debilitating their own business for no good reason. No need to bring IP into it
Style is not irrelevant. Portable MP3 players have been around for years. Yet what really popularized them? The stylish iPod.
Fashion has more to do with the future than most geeks are prepared to admit. And, as a recent NYT article pointed out (can't find the link), tech jobs are fleeing the country like rats from a sinking ship, but most of the major artistic design firms -- the ones who put the pretty boxes around the circuits -- are still in NY, LA, Chicago, etc.
How about "The risk is not unusually large for a situation in which you strap yourself to several hundred tons of explosives and light them."
I don't understand ... you're saying that you are not influenced at all by advertising, but when you decided to name two brands of vehicle "at random", you chose two that (by your own admission) get most of the advertising coverage in the USA?
The point that you are missing is that the advertising model is not as simple as a person hearing "Buy Acme Widgets" and then buying an acme widget. Why do you think companies spend millions just to get their logos in sporting events where people can see them? Almost all of advertising is awareness, not sales.
Dear Mr. Gates,
I have just released a new product to surf the "World Wide Web". I call it "Netscape".
I think something as important as this should not be kept under wraps. I would appreciate any feedback you may have!
Yours,
Marc Andressen
Putting aside truly harmful types of bigotry, such as racism etc., I find "OS bigotry" pretty entertaining. I am a centrist, who sees merit in almost every viewpoint, so it's pretty funny to me to watch people get at each others' throats over ludicrous low-level minutiae from the inner bowels of arcane computing concepts. I mean, who gives a rat's ass? And yet people are using comparisons to the Nazis, and worse.
Truthfully, it's what keeps me coming back to Slashdot.
I don't belong to the FSF, and I won't give money to them, because I see them as a largely philosophical organization, whose philosophy I don't completely agree with. By the same token I would not give money to a political party that I disagree with.
...
It is possible to donate money directly to particular projects, and I would consider doing that. However, GCC is not on the list of projects that you can support by direct donation
The BSD license, both original and modified, are also Free. (source)
the code of conduct for free software distributors
*THE* code of conduct? Not *A* code of conduct? I bet the BSD folks would have something to say about that.
The Solar Maximum Mission satellite was repaired in 1984, long before Hubble was even launched. The repair mission was STS 41C.
Hopefully this venture will fare better than the Summer Of George.
I think it will. I mean, the summer is normally when I want to spend a lot of quality time indoors, in front of my computer, writing code, breathing recirculated air.
Question for Chris: Are you guys supplying the vitamin D supplements, or do I have to pay for that myself?
Are you trolling?
Burt Rutan may be a superhero, but he needs to eat, just like everybody else. He is not a charity. It doesn't seem like White Knight or its pilots were doing much anyway. I can't imagine that renting out a plane to NASA is a huge distraction.
Rutan's current project, Virgin Galactic, has nothing to do with orbital flight. It is merely a souped-up version of Spaceship One. Rutan has himself said that scaling up to an orbital spacecraft would be many orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive, and it doesn't seem to be a priority for him right now.
And in what sense is this selling out? If taking Richard Branson's and Paul Allen's money was not selling out, then how does it follow that he is tainting his principles by helping NASA out with a test platform for reusable space technology?
I opposed the war and still think it's the greatest US foreign policy blunder in decades, but I'm not so doctrinaire that I can't see good things coming out of a tragedy.
I'm not speaking of you, exactly, but I find it alarming that parts of the anti-war movement on the left seem to hope that it becomes as much of a bloody quagmire as possible, so that it furthers their own domestic political objectives. Such an opinion is in the same league as the opinions that started the war in the first place.
Try asking the Iraqi and Afghani people what they think about the US.
Polls consistently show that a (thin) majority of Iraqis feel better off now than before the war. It's just that the ones who are unhappy are REALLY unhappy.
I don't watch Fox news. Maybe you should stop reading Daily Kos?
I really need that new address space. I mean, there are only 16842752 addresses in the 10.x.x.x and 192.168.x.x address spaces. With the 15 million wireless devices I keep in my home, I was starting to get worried!
Okay ...
... was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America ...
... the court and prison systems were stretched to the breaking point; and corruption of public officials was rampant. Prohibition removed a significant source of tax revenue and greatly increased government spending. It led many file swappers to switch to opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine, and other dangerous substances that they would have been unlikely to encounter in the absence of Prohibition. ...
National prohibition of file swapping
Although consumption of file swapping fell at the beginning of Prohibition, it subsequently increased. Swapped files became more dangerous to consume;
I'm really not seeing how you can see the analogy as anything other than ridiculous, unless you think that a ban on file swapping is leading today's teens to hard drugs.
Furthermore, Prohibition was a grassroots movement, complete with its own political parties, while the enforcement of copyright is driven by media companies, with very little public support. You really can't compare the two, except superficially, in that they both tried to ban something that was popular.
It's not arrogance when you actually are a brilliant and skilled creator in your field.
Brilliance and arrogance are not mutually exclusive. For example.
I guess you could argue that having creationism taught in schools leads to swordfights with burning gas-filled glass tubes. But that's not happening in the USA. So what's your excuse?
Until computers can smoke joints and get a buzz, drink beer and get a buzz, and have orgasms, I won't consider it "living".
Maybe they will restrict the operation to those who do things to their brain other than try to deaden it and give way to instinct.
As Aldous Huxley said, "An intellectual is someone who has found one thing that's more interesting than sex."
And EMP wipes electronics, but doesn't destroy the contents of hard drives. You would be safe as long as you weren't stupid enough to download your brain to flash memory.
I'm always suspicious when somebody calls attention to the "real" reason. Is it too hard to understand that simple events have complex motivations?
Why did the attacks happen?
- Was it because US troops are on Muslim soil? The US has more foreign bases than any other nation, sometimes on seriously unfreindly territory (e.g., Cuba), almost all of which have provoked no suicide attacks.
- Was it because of cultural dominance? Then why aren't Canadians and Europeans bombing the hell out of the United States? They bear the worst of it.
- Was it because of the poverty of the Arab world? But most of the attackers were middle-class and well educated. This is also true of many Palestinian bombers. Furthermore, many Arab countries are well off.
- Was it for reasons that takes more than five seconds to describe? Most likely.
As much as some people might want to see Steve Ballmer eat his words, and as much as his statement is self-serving, I think he might be correct.
There's a high attrition rate among hot search engines. Altavista was the Google of 1999, and where are they now? They even had their own free e-mail and other services. And who uses Yahoo for search anymore? Does Webcrawler still even exist?
I'm not saying Microsoft will replace Google. But unless they are intensely shrewd businessmen, they might disappear all by themselves when the next hot thing comes along.
For fuck's sake. Copyrighting a journal is not the same as keeping knowledge from anybody. If you want to read any article in any journal, proceed to the local university library and go look it up for yourself. In my country, it is perfectly legal to make a copy for yourself and take it home, as long as it is for personal study purposes. Even if it's not, I doubt anybody is going to care.
Did Brother Lal have anything to say about laziness?