Look to see if one of the students may have been the thief, first. Doubly so for a student that works for the University. It's not too far fetched that a student caught wind of such a change and was given the idea to commit this crime.
No, that's not how it would work. They'd just log all the data, and if there's a crime, they'll cross-reference the coordinates and time of the crime with the location of vehicles of known criminals at that given time. Bingo, you've blown someone's alibi!
Yeah, there's no way a metropolitan police precinct could afford several hundred $300 monitoring devices and the minimal cost of associated infrastructure. I mean, they don't spend money on hardly anything. It's not like they throw money around on $1k firearms routinely, or purchase $30k cars for their officers to sit in and drive.
$100,000 is trivial, considering it'll likely "make" the community that much in a matter of months in money saved due to investigator time for investigation, reduction of crime, and increased criminal paranoia. In drug prevention in particular.
Still, I can imagine criminals getting wise to these devices. I wonder how long it'll be until GPS-blocking or detecting devices are available on the (black) market.
Not only that, but several hundred GPS tracking devices won't really generate all that much data - maybe as much as a high-load log server, but nothing too incredibly pricey.
That, and it'll be (relatively) trivial to write a frontend to parse, display, and query such data. Especially if it's being deployed across the country, as I'm sure it soon will be.
I suspect we can expect to see vice,drug, and murder investigating cops will soon start 'tagging' suspects in an attempt to gain more info, or simply profile people and query it later to "connect the dots". It's hard to believe that this kind of thing would be admissible in court; very hard indeed. It seems to me as if this is along the lines of something which is illegally ceased. Almost exactly the same principle.
I don't know. I've spent a good deal of time on my resume, and I think it is pretty well written. Granted, I'm not all that experienced in the field, but I've had a hard time finding anything at all, let alone a 'fun' job.
So have I been parading around with my underwear showing, or is my resume pretty decent?:P
one feature I want would be "advanced bookmarking". it would essentially be a more complex tracking method for bookmarked pages. In addition, it would allow me to journal the pages in bookmarks routinely.
Another one I'd like would be the ability to have a "notebook" built into moz - I could make notes on pages and highlight interesting sections, while having those markups saved for me when I return to the site. There'd also be a "notebook" where all the pages that have been marked up would be saved. Goodness knows we've got the space for that kind of thing now.
And finally, I'd like to have SessionSaver (which is no longer compatible with FF past 0.8) built in by default. That was one handy little tool.
Is it a "security problem" in your software if it's a bug which could lead to fisionable material detonating a trillion-dollar warship and incite a world war?
I like to watch a certain set of films. It's a fantastical escape, just as games are, but with more of a story; for me, this makes them more "life-like" and enables me to pretend more easily.
I like films such as Braveheart, Die Hard, and The Boondock Saints. I suspect these films have drastically altered my outlook on existence, as I've watched them quite a bit. Identifying with them leads to subtle emotional and opinionistic changes in one's mind...
"penis" is one I've seen a lot of here in Sioux Falls.
Then there appears to be several others done by the same group with a similar theme - "MobilePenis", "HandheldPenis", "LaptopPenis" and the like. Of course, these are all open networks...
I've also seen "hacked" on a network with and 256 bit WEP and MAC filtering, as well as several other measures which are in the protocol layer.
Your nervous system is not like your average computer, where you can swap out one component (say, a 2-bus RAID card) and put another one in (a 4-bus card).
Your nervous system is intricately linked to every other part of your body: bones, muscles, balance, brain, immune system, skin - you name it. It has also grown with you for your entire life, adapting to the minute changes that take place throughout your body's growing and aging process. It subtly adapts to these changes. When a person grows too quickly, their nervous system often suffers. I know of a man that grew a full foot in a single year of his adolescence, and as a result his nervous system has given him a permanent "tick", resulting in him never being able to hold his hands steady (as someone shooting a gun, operating sensitive machinery, or performing an operation would require). Many people have varrying degrees of this 'unsteadyness' due to their rate of growth, as well.
I imagine that if you were to actually be able to graft an artificial limb in place, it would still function much like a phantom limb - and that's if it's a proper replacement limb, not an 'extra' limb. I'd think an extra limb(s) would completely throw off a person's internal ballance ("chi", or whatever you want to call it), resulting in the limb being - at best - a clumsy, yet strong, piece of baggage.
No, replacement or additional limbs probably aren't the fields of intended use of this technology - not for a good long time. The more immediate application of this technology is to use it for military purposes: mechanized infantry, at its finest. Forget tanks - a single 6', 240lb man, fully encased in a body suit would completely dominate against our modern "mechanized infantry". Aside from having immense lifting and movement advantages, they'd also probably have reactive armor and a full compliment (think: weapons locker) of weapons. Reactive armor, rocket launchers, built-in navigation systems, several thousand rounds of ammunition for an automatic rifle, half a dozen different supplimentary round types (grenade launcher, explosive rounds, armor-penetrating rounds, etc.), and God knows what else.
In most businesses, not using IE is essentially the same as "don't do business". There are way too many web applications out there - the vast majority - for a slew of different things which won't work on anything but IE, let alone work and simply not be supported.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm a huge history buff, and this MMORPG appeals to me a lot more than any of the others, with the exception of SW:Galaxies, and that interest quickly waned after the release of the game (I didn't get it right off, and don't regret it). The appeal of having a pre-Civil War US or world in which I could essentially "live the life" of someone of that era is quite appealing if it's historically accurate on the broader sense.
All the more so for a Revolutionary War-era setting.
This is partially caused by the american education system's "group" instructional mentality. "Let's break into groups and solve this problem!" the teacher says. The kids break up and then commence sitting around doing nothing for half an hour. They'll then panic near the end, and pick a completely asinine solution which probably won't even work. Since everybody does the same thing, they all get an A for a good group effort! - despite the fact that their output is barely distinguishable from a re-digested lump of dog shit. This happens in college, too. My experience has taught me that most of these types are business and HR majors, while anyone with half a wit of leadership has either formed a cult, taken a degree of solitude (science, literature, art, etc.) or dropped out.
The problem is, nobody is taught how to be a leader. Kids are taught how to be 'team players'. Team players are not able to get anything done without being told what to do. They need a coach. It doesn't work to have an organization made completely out of team players, because none of them know how to make an intelligent, informed decision. Thank God for intelligent immigrants. They're taught to excel.
Re:I hate college
on
Defining Google
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
While I agree with you - that the requirement for a college degree does indeed inhale with great force - I can at least see the reason why these companies require a diplomic pedigree.
In essence, it's to make things easier for those that are interviewing.
Take, for example, the parable of the Bayesian rule-based spam filtering package. A good filter (ie, the degree requirement) will filter out/mark the majority of the spam (ie, the unqualified/unintelligent people) as such, and promptly heed it no longer. A smaller percentage of the spam (ie, the ass-licking incompetents who end up getting positions in spite of their qualifications or real merit as a human being) will get through this filter (the degree requirement) than would get through without the requirement, and the signal:noise ratio is healthily improved. However, the use of such filters (degree requirements) is not without loss. Every once in a while, there might be a scenario where an important message that looks like spam (ie, someone without a degree of definate human qualities) but is not will get caught by the filter, as the message (person) does not fit the typical mold for legit mail (employees). The message might even be better in some way than normal mail. But none the less, it gets caught by the filter.
Now, I ask you: did that make any sense? If so, let me also ask you: would you be half-sane still if you had to manually filter through tens/hundreds/thousands of spam messages a day to get to the small percentage of legit stuff? Do you really care all that much if you're losing 0.05% or so of your legit mail, at the benefit of hours/tens of hours saved per week?
If you treat a child as anything less than sheer terrifying genius, they will grow up behind your back with you fully in the dark as to their actual behaviors and personality.
Furthermore, if you treat them in such a way, they will grow up to be simple, small-minded people, having never been chalenged to be an adult.
Children become adults by seeing the challenge of being an addult intentionally set before them, and then striving to meet it. This is why small children will constantly do 'cute' things that immitate the behavior of adults: talking on "phones" which are really just blocks or toy cars, getting into their parents' closets and try on their clothing, and various other things. All of these things are in the aspiration of becoming a complete person.
My son is just now 1 year old this past week. He can climb both up and down stairs, say "mom" and "dad", loves to cuddle with people, will give you a hug when asked, and is fully able to communicate which solid foods he wants and which he does not (by shaking his head, pointing, frowning, smiling, etc.). He's 1 year old and is already developing a sense of humor, understands subtle things like "dad hid the cell phone under the couch pillows, and I'm not being fooled by that 'it looks like he put it in his pocket' bullshit".
I say all this not because I think my son is anything particularly stellar, but because he's a child. Yes, I love my son to death, but he's not all that great simply because he's my son. He's great because we've taken the time to challenge him, to give him attention, and most importantly heeded his needs at a very young age.
Now, I'm not saying that you're a bad parent, or that your child is stupid. I just got off on a tangent (long day, little sleep, shouldn't be slashotting, yadda). I am saying that, even at an incredibly young age, kids demonstrate the potential for incredible intelligence. My son started walking at 9 months. Part of that is due to the fact that we encouraged him, let him roam, and didn't keep him in a play pen. My son hardly ever cries and is commonly refered to as a "perfect child" by friends and family, with constant statements of "I can't believe he's not fussing" - and it's because we never let him "cry things out" or cry to sleep, but heeded his needs when crying was the only way he knew how to communicate that he was unhappy.
Anyway AGAIN, I guess I'm just trying to say that kids are more than able to appreciate a good epic which is enjoyable for 'all ages' (ie, the original SW), just as well as they are a bad one which caters to children.
In addition, some of the other comments under your post about the Pixar guys are also along my line of thought - or would be, were I not so bone tired that sequential thoughts with meaning are painful.:P
Valve used the source code leak as an excuse for their prolonged development process instead of fessing up to the fact that they did, infact, not plan properly. They released a massively profitable and popular game which has put them, once again, at the forefront of the gaming industry.
The music and movie industry is doing better now than ever before. It's been shown that the pirating of software, music, and movies all leads to further increased sale of tickets, DVDs, CDs, and software (through correlation, none the less, but still). On the other hand, there is absolutely no evidence that piracy is hurting anyone. Hell, the article (did you read it?) even mentions that such groups are now using their networks for commercial gain - both for themselves and their clients - by pirating their clients' artistic works.
No media monopolies have been 'broken' by their efforts, in the least. Get over it. If anything, their efforts increase the profitability of the effected companies.
It has nothing to do with the fact that they don't care. So what? The problems they're creating are imaginary and fictional, merely being produced to get more publicity and profit.
It's not just that EA has made poor judgements that negatively impact the game industry.
It's that EA is allowed to exist at all in its current form, really. It's a monopoly which regularly behaves in a predatory manner - fully exercising the business model set forth by Bill Gates and company.
Small game companies get bought out, or simply can't compete against the megolithic monster that is EA. When a small game company has the option of make a good game, or advertise, and they decide to make a good game - nobody buys it, because a) it doesn't get shelf or advertising space, and b) EA markets the hell out of even their mediocre games.
Finally, EA is the largest game producer, bar none. They've got more money, more production studios, etc. This "monoculture" is bad, as it stifles the creative process - it would be the same as having all the film studios belonging to a single parent studio, and all the producers answering directly to the top. It wouldn't work, creatively. Even less creative, original films would get through the cracks than do now.
While I'm not entirely sure what is meant by "language school", I'm going to guess it means either a computer language school (ie, a technical school), or a spoken language school (ie, teach english to japanese children, or vice versa). Either way, it really doesn't make a whole lot of difference in what I'm going to say...
I thought most technically savy people were aware of the shitty nature of all the schools which claim to be "high tech" schools, such as DeVry, ITT Tech, etc.? Maybe you aren't. Let me inform you.
Adding all these "complications" such as high-tech instruction simply detract from the overall education experience. Computer labs are fine, a network is fine, and various other IT infrastructure is fine, but don't let yourself get distracted. If you focus on making the campus (and off-campus access) as high-tech as possible, try to integrate as much cool technology into the courses as possible, and make certain tools prevailant (such as web-cam learning) you will degrade from the quality of the base skills which the students will acquire - simply because these 'tools' will consume time that would be better put towards the more base conceptual skills you're trying to teach.
I've seen this first-hand in many places, and not only in tech schools. Public primary schools in the US (I don't know where you're based, as you don't explicitly mention it) spend copious amounts of money on labs full of computers which never get used. Teachers are required to try and find a use for the labs, and end up bringing their classes to the labs with no goal (resulting in solitaire expert 7th graders). The same occurs in colleges - all the "high tech" goes mostly unused, and when it is used, it's for chat, porn, and various other things that are fairly contrary to the education process.
Not only that, but high-tech stuff adds to the cost of the education, putting a fairly high barrier in place for those who might want to attend. I'm currently in the situation where I'm seriously considering a transfer to another school, as we now have a $400 quarterly (as we're on a quarter system here, not semester) technology fee for all the "high tech" things the school has recently added: a mandatory school-provided laptop for every student, cisco 802.11g APs, Radius (which is used to restrict people from using their own hardware on the network), Altiris (monitoring software for the laptops, as they're still owned by the school), Blackboard corporate edition (courseware, which costs nearly 1M$ for licensing), and a slew of new MS software which is on every laptop but not used. In addition to that, they've got labs full of brand new Dells with the latest geforce fx cards which never get used for classes (due to the laptops) and can't be used for other things such as games (as the students only get a User account on them and fairly strict useage guidelines). Meanwhile, the actual education suffers because they've forced web integration into damned near every course, (resulting in half-assed applications of the technology) and the newly hired professors make less and are of lower quality.
Let me make the following suggestions: 1) Above all else, make course registration simple, your advisors knowledgeable and helpful, and your course requirements logical and not needlessly repetitive (ie, don't require "CS100 Intro to Programming Logic" and "CS150 Intro to C++" both requirements for another course when the content in both CS150 and CS100 is largely the same. Better yet, don't have courses with painfully similar content - you'll only piss off your students). 2) if you are going to sink more money into technology for the school, sink it into infrastructure: Linux servers which the users can have shell accounts on, Samba servers with large amounts of user share space, and various other things which can be broadly applied as a tool for learning. 3) Make the school network accessable from the outside via VPN. 4) Spend more time and money finding the right people to teach and planning
maybe it's just me, but encrypting a filesystem that is used (relatively) frequently for fairly large reads and writes - and is already fairly processor bound in performance - doesn't seem like an idea which will make the system respond too snappy. If you need to use swap, chances are you're already taking a performance hit. If you need to encrypt your swap, chances are it should be important enough to spend a little extra money for more RAM instead of taking the performance hit.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Look to see if one of the students may have been the thief, first. Doubly so for a student that works for the University. It's not too far fetched that a student caught wind of such a change and was given the idea to commit this crime.
No, that's not how it would work. They'd just log all the data, and if there's a crime, they'll cross-reference the coordinates and time of the crime with the location of vehicles of known criminals at that given time. Bingo, you've blown someone's alibi!
Yeah, there's no way a metropolitan police precinct could afford several hundred $300 monitoring devices and the minimal cost of associated infrastructure. I mean, they don't spend money on hardly anything. It's not like they throw money around on $1k firearms routinely, or purchase $30k cars for their officers to sit in and drive.
$100,000 is trivial, considering it'll likely "make" the community that much in a matter of months in money saved due to investigator time for investigation, reduction of crime, and increased criminal paranoia. In drug prevention in particular.
Still, I can imagine criminals getting wise to these devices. I wonder how long it'll be until GPS-blocking or detecting devices are available on the (black) market.
Not only that, but several hundred GPS tracking devices won't really generate all that much data - maybe as much as a high-load log server, but nothing too incredibly pricey.
That, and it'll be (relatively) trivial to write a frontend to parse, display, and query such data. Especially if it's being deployed across the country, as I'm sure it soon will be.
I suspect we can expect to see vice,drug, and murder investigating cops will soon start 'tagging' suspects in an attempt to gain more info, or simply profile people and query it later to "connect the dots". It's hard to believe that this kind of thing would be admissible in court; very hard indeed. It seems to me as if this is along the lines of something which is illegally ceased. Almost exactly the same principle.
That would be a "yes" on the "Run a credit check?" question. Mobile phone companies are incredible asinine about that kind of thing.
Now, the real question is, "What right have they to keep it on file?"
I don't know. I've spent a good deal of time on my resume, and I think it is pretty well written. Granted, I'm not all that experienced in the field, but I've had a hard time finding anything at all, let alone a 'fun' job.
:P
So have I been parading around with my underwear showing, or is my resume pretty decent?
one feature I want would be "advanced bookmarking". it would essentially be a more complex tracking method for bookmarked pages. In addition, it would allow me to journal the pages in bookmarks routinely.
Another one I'd like would be the ability to have a "notebook" built into moz - I could make notes on pages and highlight interesting sections, while having those markups saved for me when I return to the site. There'd also be a "notebook" where all the pages that have been marked up would be saved. Goodness knows we've got the space for that kind of thing now.
And finally, I'd like to have SessionSaver (which is no longer compatible with FF past 0.8) built in by default. That was one handy little tool.
Is it a "security problem" in your software if it's a bug which could lead to fisionable material detonating a trillion-dollar warship and incite a world war?
Just askin'
All I can say is, it's a damned good thing Max Payne was a short game. It definately has/had the making for an addiction. Doubly so Deus Ex.
For me, it's movies.
I like to watch a certain set of films. It's a fantastical escape, just as games are, but with more of a story; for me, this makes them more "life-like" and enables me to pretend more easily.
I like films such as Braveheart, Die Hard, and The Boondock Saints. I suspect these films have drastically altered my outlook on existence, as I've watched them quite a bit. Identifying with them leads to subtle emotional and opinionistic changes in one's mind...
"penis" is one I've seen a lot of here in Sioux Falls.
Then there appears to be several others done by the same group with a similar theme - "MobilePenis", "HandheldPenis", "LaptopPenis" and the like. Of course, these are all open networks...
I've also seen "hacked" on a network with and 256 bit WEP and MAC filtering, as well as several other measures which are in the protocol layer.
Mechwarrior/battletech reference...?
Your nervous system is not like your average computer, where you can swap out one component (say, a 2-bus RAID card) and put another one in (a 4-bus card).
Your nervous system is intricately linked to every other part of your body: bones, muscles, balance, brain, immune system, skin - you name it. It has also grown with you for your entire life, adapting to the minute changes that take place throughout your body's growing and aging process. It subtly adapts to these changes. When a person grows too quickly, their nervous system often suffers. I know of a man that grew a full foot in a single year of his adolescence, and as a result his nervous system has given him a permanent "tick", resulting in him never being able to hold his hands steady (as someone shooting a gun, operating sensitive machinery, or performing an operation would require). Many people have varrying degrees of this 'unsteadyness' due to their rate of growth, as well.
I imagine that if you were to actually be able to graft an artificial limb in place, it would still function much like a phantom limb - and that's if it's a proper replacement limb, not an 'extra' limb. I'd think an extra limb(s) would completely throw off a person's internal ballance ("chi", or whatever you want to call it), resulting in the limb being - at best - a clumsy, yet strong, piece of baggage.
No, replacement or additional limbs probably aren't the fields of intended use of this technology - not for a good long time. The more immediate application of this technology is to use it for military purposes: mechanized infantry, at its finest. Forget tanks - a single 6', 240lb man, fully encased in a body suit would completely dominate against our modern "mechanized infantry". Aside from having immense lifting and movement advantages, they'd also probably have reactive armor and a full compliment (think: weapons locker) of weapons. Reactive armor, rocket launchers, built-in navigation systems, several thousand rounds of ammunition for an automatic rifle, half a dozen different supplimentary round types (grenade launcher, explosive rounds, armor-penetrating rounds, etc.), and God knows what else.
In most businesses, not using IE is essentially the same as "don't do business". There are way too many web applications out there - the vast majority - for a slew of different things which won't work on anything but IE, let alone work and simply not be supported.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm a huge history buff, and this MMORPG appeals to me a lot more than any of the others, with the exception of SW:Galaxies, and that interest quickly waned after the release of the game (I didn't get it right off, and don't regret it). The appeal of having a pre-Civil War US or world in which I could essentially "live the life" of someone of that era is quite appealing if it's historically accurate on the broader sense.
All the more so for a Revolutionary War-era setting.
So, what will it take to get this virus ported to reality? :P
there are plenty of other online sources with different DRM that might suit this customers needs
Since when did DRM have anything to do with the needs or desires of the customers?
This is partially caused by the american education system's "group" instructional mentality. "Let's break into groups and solve this problem!" the teacher says. The kids break up and then commence sitting around doing nothing for half an hour. They'll then panic near the end, and pick a completely asinine solution which probably won't even work. Since everybody does the same thing, they all get an A for a good group effort! - despite the fact that their output is barely distinguishable from a re-digested lump of dog shit. This happens in college, too. My experience has taught me that most of these types are business and HR majors, while anyone with half a wit of leadership has either formed a cult, taken a degree of solitude (science, literature, art, etc.) or dropped out.
The problem is, nobody is taught how to be a leader. Kids are taught how to be 'team players'. Team players are not able to get anything done without being told what to do. They need a coach. It doesn't work to have an organization made completely out of team players, because none of them know how to make an intelligent, informed decision. Thank God for intelligent immigrants. They're taught to excel.
While I agree with you - that the requirement for a college degree does indeed inhale with great force - I can at least see the reason why these companies require a diplomic pedigree.
In essence, it's to make things easier for those that are interviewing.
Take, for example, the parable of the Bayesian rule-based spam filtering package. A good filter (ie, the degree requirement) will filter out/mark the majority of the spam (ie, the unqualified/unintelligent people) as such, and promptly heed it no longer. A smaller percentage of the spam (ie, the ass-licking incompetents who end up getting positions in spite of their qualifications or real merit as a human being) will get through this filter (the degree requirement) than would get through without the requirement, and the signal:noise ratio is healthily improved. However, the use of such filters (degree requirements) is not without loss. Every once in a while, there might be a scenario where an important message that looks like spam (ie, someone without a degree of definate human qualities) but is not will get caught by the filter, as the message (person) does not fit the typical mold for legit mail (employees). The message might even be better in some way than normal mail. But none the less, it gets caught by the filter.
Now, I ask you: did that make any sense? If so, let me also ask you: would you be half-sane still if you had to manually filter through tens/hundreds/thousands of spam messages a day to get to the small percentage of legit stuff? Do you really care all that much if you're losing 0.05% or so of your legit mail, at the benefit of hours/tens of hours saved per week?
If you treat a child as anything less than sheer terrifying genius, they will grow up behind your back with you fully in the dark as to their actual behaviors and personality.
:P
Furthermore, if you treat them in such a way, they will grow up to be simple, small-minded people, having never been chalenged to be an adult.
Children become adults by seeing the challenge of being an addult intentionally set before them, and then striving to meet it. This is why small children will constantly do 'cute' things that immitate the behavior of adults: talking on "phones" which are really just blocks or toy cars, getting into their parents' closets and try on their clothing, and various other things. All of these things are in the aspiration of becoming a complete person.
My son is just now 1 year old this past week. He can climb both up and down stairs, say "mom" and "dad", loves to cuddle with people, will give you a hug when asked, and is fully able to communicate which solid foods he wants and which he does not (by shaking his head, pointing, frowning, smiling, etc.). He's 1 year old and is already developing a sense of humor, understands subtle things like "dad hid the cell phone under the couch pillows, and I'm not being fooled by that 'it looks like he put it in his pocket' bullshit".
I say all this not because I think my son is anything particularly stellar, but because he's a child. Yes, I love my son to death, but he's not all that great simply because he's my son. He's great because we've taken the time to challenge him, to give him attention, and most importantly heeded his needs at a very young age.
Now, I'm not saying that you're a bad parent, or that your child is stupid. I just got off on a tangent (long day, little sleep, shouldn't be slashotting, yadda). I am saying that, even at an incredibly young age, kids demonstrate the potential for incredible intelligence. My son started walking at 9 months. Part of that is due to the fact that we encouraged him, let him roam, and didn't keep him in a play pen. My son hardly ever cries and is commonly refered to as a "perfect child" by friends and family, with constant statements of "I can't believe he's not fussing" - and it's because we never let him "cry things out" or cry to sleep, but heeded his needs when crying was the only way he knew how to communicate that he was unhappy.
Anyway AGAIN, I guess I'm just trying to say that kids are more than able to appreciate a good epic which is enjoyable for 'all ages' (ie, the original SW), just as well as they are a bad one which caters to children.
In addition, some of the other comments under your post about the Pixar guys are also along my line of thought - or would be, were I not so bone tired that sequential thoughts with meaning are painful.
Anyway, longwinded... sleep. Now.
Excuse me, but... what problems?
Valve used the source code leak as an excuse for their prolonged development process instead of fessing up to the fact that they did, infact, not plan properly. They released a massively profitable and popular game which has put them, once again, at the forefront of the gaming industry.
The music and movie industry is doing better now than ever before. It's been shown that the pirating of software, music, and movies all leads to further increased sale of tickets, DVDs, CDs, and software (through correlation, none the less, but still). On the other hand, there is absolutely no evidence that piracy is hurting anyone. Hell, the article (did you read it?) even mentions that such groups are now using their networks for commercial gain - both for themselves and their clients - by pirating their clients' artistic works.
No media monopolies have been 'broken' by their efforts, in the least. Get over it. If anything, their efforts increase the profitability of the effected companies.
It has nothing to do with the fact that they don't care. So what? The problems they're creating are imaginary and fictional, merely being produced to get more publicity and profit.
It's not just that EA has made poor judgements that negatively impact the game industry.
It's that EA is allowed to exist at all in its current form, really. It's a monopoly which regularly behaves in a predatory manner - fully exercising the business model set forth by Bill Gates and company.
Small game companies get bought out, or simply can't compete against the megolithic monster that is EA. When a small game company has the option of make a good game, or advertise, and they decide to make a good game - nobody buys it, because a) it doesn't get shelf or advertising space, and b) EA markets the hell out of even their mediocre games.
Finally, EA is the largest game producer, bar none. They've got more money, more production studios, etc. This "monoculture" is bad, as it stifles the creative process - it would be the same as having all the film studios belonging to a single parent studio, and all the producers answering directly to the top. It wouldn't work, creatively. Even less creative, original films would get through the cracks than do now.
Is it too much to hope for Duke Nukem Forever before the end of this financial year, at least? :)
:)
Maybe. But that'd make for one hell of an Xmas present.
While I'm not entirely sure what is meant by "language school", I'm going to guess it means either a computer language school (ie, a technical school), or a spoken language school (ie, teach english to japanese children, or vice versa). Either way, it really doesn't make a whole lot of difference in what I'm going to say...
I thought most technically savy people were aware of the shitty nature of all the schools which claim to be "high tech" schools, such as DeVry, ITT Tech, etc.? Maybe you aren't. Let me inform you.
Adding all these "complications" such as high-tech instruction simply detract from the overall education experience. Computer labs are fine, a network is fine, and various other IT infrastructure is fine, but don't let yourself get distracted. If you focus on making the campus (and off-campus access) as high-tech as possible, try to integrate as much cool technology into the courses as possible, and make certain tools prevailant (such as web-cam learning) you will degrade from the quality of the base skills which the students will acquire - simply because these 'tools' will consume time that would be better put towards the more base conceptual skills you're trying to teach.
I've seen this first-hand in many places, and not only in tech schools. Public primary schools in the US (I don't know where you're based, as you don't explicitly mention it) spend copious amounts of money on labs full of computers which never get used. Teachers are required to try and find a use for the labs, and end up bringing their classes to the labs with no goal (resulting in solitaire expert 7th graders). The same occurs in colleges - all the "high tech" goes mostly unused, and when it is used, it's for chat, porn, and various other things that are fairly contrary to the education process.
Not only that, but high-tech stuff adds to the cost of the education, putting a fairly high barrier in place for those who might want to attend. I'm currently in the situation where I'm seriously considering a transfer to another school, as we now have a $400 quarterly (as we're on a quarter system here, not semester) technology fee for all the "high tech" things the school has recently added: a mandatory school-provided laptop for every student, cisco 802.11g APs, Radius (which is used to restrict people from using their own hardware on the network), Altiris (monitoring software for the laptops, as they're still owned by the school), Blackboard corporate edition (courseware, which costs nearly 1M$ for licensing), and a slew of new MS software which is on every laptop but not used. In addition to that, they've got labs full of brand new Dells with the latest geforce fx cards which never get used for classes (due to the laptops) and can't be used for other things such as games (as the students only get a User account on them and fairly strict useage guidelines). Meanwhile, the actual education suffers because they've forced web integration into damned near every course, (resulting in half-assed applications of the technology) and the newly hired professors make less and are of lower quality.
Let me make the following suggestions:
1) Above all else, make course registration simple, your advisors knowledgeable and helpful, and your course requirements logical and not needlessly repetitive (ie, don't require "CS100 Intro to Programming Logic" and "CS150 Intro to C++" both requirements for another course when the content in both CS150 and CS100 is largely the same. Better yet, don't have courses with painfully similar content - you'll only piss off your students).
2) if you are going to sink more money into technology for the school, sink it into infrastructure: Linux servers which the users can have shell accounts on, Samba servers with large amounts of user share space, and various other things which can be broadly applied as a tool for learning.
3) Make the school network accessable from the outside via VPN.
4) Spend more time and money finding the right people to teach and planning
maybe it's just me, but encrypting a filesystem that is used (relatively) frequently for fairly large reads and writes - and is already fairly processor bound in performance - doesn't seem like an idea which will make the system respond too snappy. If you need to use swap, chances are you're already taking a performance hit. If you need to encrypt your swap, chances are it should be important enough to spend a little extra money for more RAM instead of taking the performance hit. :)