I think it was probably more of a "look back on this some day and laugh" sort of issue. At the time, I think the prospect of being unable to land would have been strict brown trousers time.
It seems to me that @Home suffers from the same disease that a lot of other broadband providers do -- they don't really care if you're their customer or not.
This can be seen in their terrible customer service (and I don't just mean tech support) -- I've never seen a company where the sales team was less inclined to help you subscribe. It's as if I signed up for a magazine only to be told I had to staple the thing together myself.
I realize that individual customers don't mean a lot when you have a few hundred thousand, but they must treat everyone this way. That's *got* to hurt the bottom line.
Am I alone in thinking that just a "touch the screen pick the President" thing is wasting the potential of a computerized voting center?
For example, what if each candidate was allowed to submit a 1-page position paper that the voter could access when they're voting (hit "Details" or something?). I think that would be terrifically helpful in, say, local elections where you might not know the differences between the candidates or even what the office entails (WTF is a city controller?).
Or what about having the booth voice-enabled for the vision impared (especially the elderly)? What about vote confirmation ("You have voted to xxx; press 'Change' to alter your ballot or 'Commit' to continue")?
Can anyone think of other useful features? I mean, you want it to be clean and straight-forward, but why squander the potential?
You think so? Personally, I found the way the whole place was interested in killing them rather scary.
I can stand a book that takes it's time to build tension (esp. in reflection of the Overlook's complete isolation), but the movie just confused me until later on when I got around to reading the book -- I didn't get the guy in the dog suit, for instance, until I read about him. Kubrick, regardless of the spelling of his name, would have been better off with just misc. self-explanatory hotel ghosts.
Reading Niven is like getting drunk on Coors -- it can be interesting and even engaging, but in the end just wasn't as worthwhile as you'd hoped.
Niven's stories are almost always entertaining while you're reading them, but the guy couldn't write an end to a story to save his life; I always felt jipped when I came to the end of a book.
Also, he falls into that Heinlein trap of not being able to bear killing his characters (tell me Lazarus shouldn't have died at the end of Stranger -- tell me that last chapter wasn't the most tacked-on POS you've ever read). Sure, he offed Teela, but I think it was just because he didn't know waht else to do with her -- Louis Wu and friends were always safe. I understand that it's nice to carry over all the really developed characters, but c'mon...
Look, there are elements which make a great book and elements which make a great movie. Very few of these elements are in common between the two.
The best movie/book combinations are those in which the screenwriter uses the book for inspiration, then feels free to adjust the staging and the story in a way which will play well on film. Take Fight Club, for instance, or High Fidelity: same basic story, same basic themes, but the movie was a good movie because the changes needed for good translation were made.
On the other hand, think of the really close-to-the-book movies you've seen. Tend to suck, don't they? They either run really, really long or shave out a lot of the entertaining bits.
Of course, this isn't to say that all movies reinterpreted from books end up well, either: American Psycho (the movie) missed the raw, revolting, sarcastic nature or the book. The Shining (Kuberick's) was *boring*. Etc.
Still, I maintain that the only way to make these watchible is to roll the dice and take a chance to make them really entertaining on-screen instead of just lifting directly from the book.
That miniseries was absolutely painful -- I watched the whole thing just waiting for it to improve, and yet somehow the acting managed never to improve. Christ, the guy playing Paul made a certain young Jedi look like academy award material.
I think the real trouble is they tried to be *too* faithful to the book. It should be obvious that certain things work in print that just don't translate (and, actually, vice versa). I think whoever wrote the screenplay was too reverant to the whole Dune mythos to understand that someplace between that terrible movie and this terrible miniseries would lay a good screen interpretation.
I can only hope for major overhauls; I don't think I could watch another miniseries like that last one. They'll have exactly one episode to change my mind.
I suppose this probably is legal; I mean, in theory you could always not use their software if you don't like their terms.
Things are probably a little more complicated given MS's monopoly status, however. I can't imagine that even the Republicans could argue that this is just maintainance of their existing monopoly (although Bush does have a way of getting away with policies that should have Americans storming the White House with torches and pitchforks).
Anyhow, I'm sure this won't change anything -- people will take it as seriously as the other bits in the EULA. I mean, have *you* ever paid for a copy of Windows you were using? I haven't. If they can't enforce that they can't enforce anything.
I contend therefore that Judges and Lawyers do not understand the creative process involved in writing computer programs, and are therefore unqualified to make laws regarding them.
Hello in there, Chris. What color is the sky in your world?
It's fair to disagree with the way the system works, but retreating into the little fantasyland of your own imaginary world isn't a really good way to go about it (much less wasting bandwidth by shooting your load all over Slashdot). I mean, I think that rock stars shouldn't get the Supermodels and that I should, but that's not happening, either.
Besides, if you're doing most of your programming solo, you're probably in the minority. In my experience (and I do tend to work for places that make appliances, not straight hardware), software development is massively collaborative.
I agree; unlike what some of the other posters think, I seriously doubt that the judicial system in general will be willing to endorse an erosion of the ground they've managed to stake out for themselves a la judicial review.
The court's primary source of power is the ability to force congress to conform to their interpretation of the constitution. Allowing this power to take a hit just because one of the parties is big business doesn't seem very consistant (otherwise, Standard Oil would still be the only place to buy gas).
Besides, sooner or later this will get to a court that isn't comprised entirely or Reagan appointees (who, let's face it, tend to be whores to big business).
The longer answer is that, since fair use is the safety valve by which the First Amendment and copyright exist peacefully, if different media permit different levels of individual expression through fair use, then decisions by Congress to impede the most useful means require justification under the First Amendment. A prohibition on using copy machines to make fair use could not be answered under today's First Amendment law with the retort that one can hire monks to scribe the relevant passages.
*sigh* I feel like I have to keep restating the obvious.
Not all parenting tools are appropriate for all children. It is, and always has been, up to the parent to decide the appropriate amount of latitude any particular child should enjoy.
When I was in high school, my parents gave me a lot of latitude because I could (usually) handle it without abusing it. My kid sister, on the other hand, proved that she needed to be watched more closely in high school than I was. When this became evident, my parents were willing to monitor her. Yes, this included calling friend's parents to be sure they were home and she was there. Yes, this included checking the milage on the car. Yes, this included checking her drawers.
She hated it. She complained, she bitched, she tried to get around it. She also lived long enough to be grateful about it without developing a drug problem or getting pregnant.
The difficult truth of parenting is that you *must* be willing to be the bad guy if you have to be. You have to do whatever's necessary to raise your kid and keep them away from the Really Bad stuff. Of *course* it's also your responsibility to teach them to be independant and self-sufficiant -- the mistake is thinking that keeping them in line is somehow mutually exclusive of this.
Of course, there is a varying scale of what you need to worry about as a parent.
A two year old is generally not competent to make decisions regarding crossing the street. A fifteen year old can make these decisions, but is similarly unable to make intelligent decisions regarding sex.
If you don't think you need to keep a close eye on a kid, you don't have to. On the other hand, if I have a kid who starts acting out to the point where it becomes dangerous, I want to have the ability to keep tabs on them at school, monitor how fast they drive, and even test for drugs if I have to.
Parenting means getting your kid to adulthood by any means necessary. This doesn't mean you have to keep an eye on every kid, but it means you should be willing to if it becomes evident that it's necessary.
The idea is to have a relationship with your kids based on trust, understanding, and friendship, not by controlling them or doing all you can to keep trakc of their every move.
Of course, I should mention that no one parenting approach is appropriate for all kids, but...
You are not your child's friend. You are your child's parent. As such, it is your responsibility to make sure they grow up, and you must be willing to use all the tools at your disposal if need be, even if it means you have to be the bad guy.
Kids naturally explore their limits. This is normal and healthy, but they also will almost always go too far and require corrective action (what used to be called "punishment"). Some kids decide to catch air in the car, some skip school, some do drugs, etc. A good parent will put a stop to this behavior one way or the other -- that's just the way it has to work.
Children, even high schoolers, are not miniature adults. They lack both the biological maturity and life experience to make intelligent decisions on certain subjects, and it's the basic role of a parent to persuade, convince, or force them to straighten out.
Given the fact that parents are legally reponsible for making sure their kids are in school and not out getting into trouble (not to mention that this is also a basic part of good parenting), I'm not sure what the problem is here.
I know that this isn't a popular concept with the Slashdot hivemind, but the fact is that certain kids demand constant monitoring -- these devices, from those that make sure they're not driving the car too fast to gadgets that check to be sure they're at school are simply means to this end.
High school kids are not adults, despite what the criminal justice system seems to think lately (and what they've thought all along). Some are more mature than others, and some need closer attention than others. Hell, when I was in high school I saw a father have to recussitate his kid after an all-day boozefest on Senior Skip Day. That image is burned into my mind -- it was the first time I saw things from an adult rather than a high school viewpoint.
Yeah, but basically the bots end up hurting good players. I used to take it as flattery when some idiot started yelling about how I was a bot, but it gets old really quickly to have your hard-won Quaking skills (thank you, college!) credited to cheating.
I always thought that books were Gaiman's weakest point -- his short stories are generally pretty good (and in certain cases exceptional), but the medium where I think he really shines is in graphic novels.
I mean, how do you argue with Sandman? IMHO, it's easily the best graphic novel series out ther (although I rather enjoyed the first Books of Magic series, which he wrote).
Anyhow, I'll still buy it and read it and all, but I'd be more excited if I'd heard he was coming out with a new collection of short stories.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it was probably more of a "look back on this some day and laugh" sort of issue. At the time, I think the prospect of being unable to land would have been strict brown trousers time.
It seems to me that @Home suffers from the same disease that a lot of other broadband providers do -- they don't really care if you're their customer or not.
This can be seen in their terrible customer service (and I don't just mean tech support) -- I've never seen a company where the sales team was less inclined to help you subscribe. It's as if I signed up for a magazine only to be told I had to staple the thing together myself.
I realize that individual customers don't mean a lot when you have a few hundred thousand, but they must treat everyone this way. That's *got* to hurt the bottom line.
Am I alone in thinking that just a "touch the screen pick the President" thing is wasting the potential of a computerized voting center? For example, what if each candidate was allowed to submit a 1-page position paper that the voter could access when they're voting (hit "Details" or something?). I think that would be terrifically helpful in, say, local elections where you might not know the differences between the candidates or even what the office entails (WTF is a city controller?). Or what about having the booth voice-enabled for the vision impared (especially the elderly)? What about vote confirmation ("You have voted to xxx; press 'Change' to alter your ballot or 'Commit' to continue")? Can anyone think of other useful features? I mean, you want it to be clean and straight-forward, but why squander the potential?
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Guess I had Stranger in my head from the parent post. This'll learn you never to try and sound intelligent following your run.
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I can stand a book that takes it's time to build tension (esp. in reflection of the Overlook's complete isolation), but the movie just confused me until later on when I got around to reading the book -- I didn't get the guy in the dog suit, for instance, until I read about him. Kubrick, regardless of the spelling of his name, would have been better off with just misc. self-explanatory hotel ghosts.
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Niven's stories are almost always entertaining while you're reading them, but the guy couldn't write an end to a story to save his life; I always felt jipped when I came to the end of a book.
Also, he falls into that Heinlein trap of not being able to bear killing his characters (tell me Lazarus shouldn't have died at the end of Stranger -- tell me that last chapter wasn't the most tacked-on POS you've ever read). Sure, he offed Teela, but I think it was just because he didn't know waht else to do with her -- Louis Wu and friends were always safe. I understand that it's nice to carry over all the really developed characters, but c'mon...
----
Look, there are elements which make a great book and elements which make a great movie. Very few of these elements are in common between the two.
The best movie/book combinations are those in which the screenwriter uses the book for inspiration, then feels free to adjust the staging and the story in a way which will play well on film. Take Fight Club, for instance, or High Fidelity: same basic story, same basic themes, but the movie was a good movie because the changes needed for good translation were made.
On the other hand, think of the really close-to-the-book movies you've seen. Tend to suck, don't they? They either run really, really long or shave out a lot of the entertaining bits.
Of course, this isn't to say that all movies reinterpreted from books end up well, either: American Psycho (the movie) missed the raw, revolting, sarcastic nature or the book. The Shining (Kuberick's) was *boring*. Etc.
Still, I maintain that the only way to make these watchible is to roll the dice and take a chance to make them really entertaining on-screen instead of just lifting directly from the book.
----
That miniseries was absolutely painful -- I watched the whole thing just waiting for it to improve, and yet somehow the acting managed never to improve. Christ, the guy playing Paul made a certain young Jedi look like academy award material.
I think the real trouble is they tried to be *too* faithful to the book. It should be obvious that certain things work in print that just don't translate (and, actually, vice versa). I think whoever wrote the screenplay was too reverant to the whole Dune mythos to understand that someplace between that terrible movie and this terrible miniseries would lay a good screen interpretation.
I can only hope for major overhauls; I don't think I could watch another miniseries like that last one. They'll have exactly one episode to change my mind.
----
Things are probably a little more complicated given MS's monopoly status, however. I can't imagine that even the Republicans could argue that this is just maintainance of their existing monopoly (although Bush does have a way of getting away with policies that should have Americans storming the White House with torches and pitchforks).
Anyhow, I'm sure this won't change anything -- people will take it as seriously as the other bits in the EULA. I mean, have *you* ever paid for a copy of Windows you were using? I haven't. If they can't enforce that they can't enforce anything.
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Hello in there, Chris. What color is the sky in your world?
It's fair to disagree with the way the system works, but retreating into the little fantasyland of your own imaginary world isn't a really good way to go about it (much less wasting bandwidth by shooting your load all over Slashdot). I mean, I think that rock stars shouldn't get the Supermodels and that I should, but that's not happening, either.
Besides, if you're doing most of your programming solo, you're probably in the minority. In my experience (and I do tend to work for places that make appliances, not straight hardware), software development is massively collaborative.
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The court's primary source of power is the ability to force congress to conform to their interpretation of the constitution. Allowing this power to take a hit just because one of the parties is big business doesn't seem very consistant (otherwise, Standard Oil would still be the only place to buy gas).
Besides, sooner or later this will get to a court that isn't comprised entirely or Reagan appointees (who, let's face it, tend to be whores to big business).
----
The longer answer is that, since fair use is the safety valve by which the First Amendment and copyright exist peacefully, if different media permit different levels of individual expression through fair use, then decisions by Congress to impede the most useful means require justification under the First Amendment. A prohibition on using copy machines to make fair use could not be answered under today's First Amendment law with the retort that one can hire monks to scribe the relevant passages.
I thought that was cute.
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Not all parenting tools are appropriate for all children. It is, and always has been, up to the parent to decide the appropriate amount of latitude any particular child should enjoy.
When I was in high school, my parents gave me a lot of latitude because I could (usually) handle it without abusing it. My kid sister, on the other hand, proved that she needed to be watched more closely in high school than I was. When this became evident, my parents were willing to monitor her. Yes, this included calling friend's parents to be sure they were home and she was there. Yes, this included checking the milage on the car. Yes, this included checking her drawers.
She hated it. She complained, she bitched, she tried to get around it. She also lived long enough to be grateful about it without developing a drug problem or getting pregnant.
The difficult truth of parenting is that you *must* be willing to be the bad guy if you have to be. You have to do whatever's necessary to raise your kid and keep them away from the Really Bad stuff. Of *course* it's also your responsibility to teach them to be independant and self-sufficiant -- the mistake is thinking that keeping them in line is somehow mutually exclusive of this.
----
A two year old is generally not competent to make decisions regarding crossing the street. A fifteen year old can make these decisions, but is similarly unable to make intelligent decisions regarding sex.
If you don't think you need to keep a close eye on a kid, you don't have to. On the other hand, if I have a kid who starts acting out to the point where it becomes dangerous, I want to have the ability to keep tabs on them at school, monitor how fast they drive, and even test for drugs if I have to.
Parenting means getting your kid to adulthood by any means necessary. This doesn't mean you have to keep an eye on every kid, but it means you should be willing to if it becomes evident that it's necessary.
----
Of course, I should mention that no one parenting approach is appropriate for all kids, but...
You are not your child's friend. You are your child's parent. As such, it is your responsibility to make sure they grow up, and you must be willing to use all the tools at your disposal if need be, even if it means you have to be the bad guy.
Kids naturally explore their limits. This is normal and healthy, but they also will almost always go too far and require corrective action (what used to be called "punishment"). Some kids decide to catch air in the car, some skip school, some do drugs, etc. A good parent will put a stop to this behavior one way or the other -- that's just the way it has to work.
Children, even high schoolers, are not miniature adults. They lack both the biological maturity and life experience to make intelligent decisions on certain subjects, and it's the basic role of a parent to persuade, convince, or force them to straighten out.
----
I know that this isn't a popular concept with the Slashdot hivemind, but the fact is that certain kids demand constant monitoring -- these devices, from those that make sure they're not driving the car too fast to gadgets that check to be sure they're at school are simply means to this end.
High school kids are not adults, despite what the criminal justice system seems to think lately (and what they've thought all along). Some are more mature than others, and some need closer attention than others. Hell, when I was in high school I saw a father have to recussitate his kid after an all-day boozefest on Senior Skip Day. That image is burned into my mind -- it was the first time I saw things from an adult rather than a high school viewpoint.
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Patches that turn opponent's skins completely red or white, occassional-use aimbots, wireframe patches, hardware arms races.
The real kick in playing this way is when you win anyway.
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I mean, how do you argue with Sandman? IMHO, it's easily the best graphic novel series out ther (although I rather enjoyed the first Books of Magic series, which he wrote).
Anyhow, I'll still buy it and read it and all, but I'd be more excited if I'd heard he was coming out with a new collection of short stories.
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