You think it's fair to waste someones time with detention or denying them access to what they use to learn, because they misunderstood that the instructions extended beyond not touching the mouse or keyboard, and then applied their brain to solving a trivial problem using the experience you had with computers knowing full well that you would not be causing harm?
OK, I worded that poorly. I didn't "deserve" it, but when I got sent to the office, I was expecting to get detention. The principal (who wasn't in the classroom at the time) saw it as a clear-cut case of the teacher saying "don't do X" and the kid doing X anyway. I didn't think I actually deserved to be in trouble, but I did know what would probably happen. The suspension came as a shock, and is probably the only reason I even still remember the incident...
Unless you had history of defying the teacher, I really don't understand how this warrants anything more than a stern look and an explanation that you should've checked with the teacher first
I had a history of showing off how smart I was, and letting teachers know when I thought they were wrong... As you probably know, they hate that, especially when they really *are* wrong.
With a school system like this, sometimes I'm surprised it produces anyone capable of independent thinking or innovation at all!
Preaching to the choir. I think the public school system is designed to turn out good little drones who do as they're told. It's more of an indoctrination than an education...
In this case, It's pretty obvious that the kids knew that they weren't supposed to be messing around with the data, so why should the law apply any less to them than it would someone hacking into police databases?
"Hacking into police databases" can actually cause harm on a large scale, in the real world... whereas "hacking" a student laptop at worst breaks that laptop so that it requires an OS reinstall/reimage. So... the sign is the same, but the magnitude is much smaller.
Laws are only worthwhile if they apply to everyone evenly, and if they don't they may as well not exist
Not so. The legal system recognizes the concept of "extenuating circumstances". If you're driving recklessly because you're trying to get your wife to the maternity ward before she gives birth in the passenger seat, you're likely to get a lesser sentence than the guy driving recklessly for no apparent reason.
Also, these kids are juveniles. The law doesn't apply equally to adults and juveniles, and society seems to be OK with that. Do you honestly think sending kids to prison for non-violent "white collar" crimes is the right thing to do? Suspension from school might be appropriate (I'd say it's excessive; see my other post), or suspension of computer privileges and/or detention, but felony charges are ludicrous. They deserve to get in trouble, but if you make them felons, they'll be felons for life. Make the punishment fit the crime, and hopefully they'll learn from it. Make it excessive, mark them for life, and all they'll learn is how to hate all authority. (Mind you, being skeptical of authority is a good and healthy thing... but blindly opposing it for no other reason than hatred is almost as bad as mindlessly following all orders like a sheep).
Instead, they wanted me to use the AUTOEXEC.BAT batch file to launch the menu system rather than a menuing application started directly on bootup. Why? So that they could watch and see who hit CTRL-C at boot to exit the batch file.
When I was 11 or 12, in public school, we got computers (TRS-80 CoCo's, which dates me I guess). The first day we had them, the teacher told us to turn them on, then don't touch anything until she told us to...
Well, I turned mine on, and the monitor just showed a black picture. So I turned up the brightness (it was down all the way), and fixed it. It never occurred to me that "don't touch anything" included the brightness control; I'd had one of those on my TV for as long as I could remember. I thought she meant "don't type anything"...
So I got suspended from school for a week. For turning up the brightness. Looking back on it now, I can see that I deserved *something* for disobeying a direct order... detention perhaps, or losing computer privileges for a week...
Of course, back then I thought of being suspended as a great vacation. I got to stay home and play with my computer (Atari 400, which I liked better than the CoCo anyway).
The thing was, when the teacher saw me tweak that knob, the expression on her face was one of *terror*. Not surprise, or anger... Utter, abject fear. I can only assume it was the machines she was afraid of, not me (I was big for my age, but not known for beating people up, especially not teachers).
Then and now, the teachers and administrators probably resent having to have the computers at all. They don't understand computers (well, OK, most people don't), but they *do* understand that the kids know more about computers than they ever will, which makes the adults feel like they're not in control. The type of person who becomes a school administrator is the type who hates being out of control, so they use (or abuse) their authority to make sure the kids are too terrified to step out of line.
Not too long ago, I did a contract job for a school system, setting up routers and proxy (censoring) software. One day the boss (former English teacher who was put in charge of the school's IT dept) asked me what I was doing, so I told her. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was probably something like "I'm installing Apache so you can use this CGI script to configure your whitelist and blacklist for the squid proxy". Her response was, "Don't use all those technical terms with me! How would you like it if I used educational jargon when talking to you?"
It almost made me crack up laughing... but she was dead serious. So I calmed myself, and I told her (and not in a smart-assed way either): "Well, if you used words I didn't understand, I'd ask you to explain them. You're a teacher, so you're probably pretty good at that. I was trying to communicate with you, not confuse you, so tell me what I said that you didn't understand, and I'll try to explain it."
She got *pissed*. I mean red-faced, white-knuckled, and shaking. She stormed off...
A week later my company was officially fired from that contract (possibly *only* because of that incident, but probably not: we were behind schedule, partly because we kept having explain basic networking concepts to the school's IT employees, who were supposed to be supervising us). Since then, I've avoided public schools like the plague, and been happier for it. If I ever have kids, there's no way I'd send them to a school where people like that English teacher have authority over them.
If these "hackers" were my kids, I wouldn't punish them, but I would take them aside and explain that the mundanes are terrified of them, and ask them to hide their brains when in such company. I'd tell 'em not to worry, the cream always rises to the top... I'd also send 'em to a good private school, even if it meant a second or third mortgage on the house.
So if my password was 'omg_this_is_hard_password!' i would write down 'you will never guess this months password, it's hard!' and that would be enough for me to remember
But what would you write down if it were "k%XFl3n]" or something equally impossible to remember? Sometimes they're machine-generated and you don't get a choice...
I think you're missing the point about teaching kids wrong vs. right. Most parents would like to prevent kids from accessing those sites -- not give them a choice.
I don't think I missed the point.
If you prevent the kids from ever being able to do anything wrong, they never learn to make moral decisions because they've never had a chance to.
If you don't give them a choice, they'll never learn to make the right * choice. If you treat your kids this way, you're doing them a great disservice: they'll get old enough to have a job, a family, credit cards, all those adult things... but they still won't know right from wrong, and thus won't be mentally equipped to handle any of the responsibilities they'll be expected to take on.
If your kids are so young that you don't expect them to be able to make such decisions at all, then they're too young to have unsupervised access to the 'net (or the TV, or telephone, etc).
*In this case, "right" means whatever it is you're trying to teach your kid is right. I'm sidestepping the whole issue of what right and wrong are. Personally, if a kid's old enough to be curious, I'd say they're going to satisfy that curiosity one way or another, and to arbitrarily deny it will just make them more curious... but that's neither here nor there.
Is that the same Mary Whitehouse that Pink Floyd mentions in the song "Pigs" (from the album "Animals")?
You're trying to keep our feelings off the street
You're nearly a real treat
All tight lips and cold feet
And do you feel abused?
You got to stem the evil tide
And keep it all on the inside
Mary you're nearly a treat
Mary you're nearly a treat
But you're really a cry
I simply prefer that web sites, movies, video games be up-front and honest with what they contain and let us make the decisions for ourselves.
Most "reputable" pr0n sites will have a "Only click here to enter if you are over 18" splash page. Of course, it doesn't stop little kids... but it *does* make the kids aware that they're about to do something "wrong". A lot more sites require a credit card, which effectively stops kids dead in their tracks... though enough "free samples" are given out that there's plenty to see without paying for any of it. Don't think that anyone who buys a.xxx domain is going to suddenly abandon their existing.com domain, though, and don't think any kind of meaningful censorship can ever be imposed on.com by any government at this point: China can't do it, and they're supposed to be a 1984-style authoritarian nightmare state, so how are governments of "free" countries going to be able to do it?
Doing stuff like "hiding" porn in places like whitehouse.com instead of allowing it to be in whitehouse.xxx just seems wrong to me.
AFAIK, whitehouse.com was originally a print magazine called "White House". If that's the case (and I'm sure someone who knows will correct me if I'm wrong, as I can't remember the details), it made perfect sense to have a site called whitehouse.com: They were called White House, and they were commercial. The site went up many years ago, when everyone on the 'net knew the difference between.com and.gov (or at least, everyone was expected to know).
My take on the.xxx thing is that it's just a money-grab by Verisign (or whoever's pushing it): a way to sell existing businesses the same domain names they've already bought. If you own www.somepornsite.com, you do NOT want to let your competitor(s) buy up www.somepornsite.xxx; it'd be dilution of your brand.... so you're forced to pay yet again, when.xxx becomes available. 5 years later, you'll have to buy www.somepornsite.sex or whatever the "new, improved" top-level domain is by then. Verisign & co. can write their own ticket, since what they're selling costs nothing to produce, and they have a monopoly (nobody else can "invent" new TLDs). It's like printing money, except somehow it's not against the law...
With digital cable and satelite the way it is now, can't these companies track what you are watching (given that you use their provided cable/satelite boxes) and, therefore, determine if you are tuning into their ads?
How can they tell if I'm in the kitchen making a sandwich, or in the bathroom... or for that matter, whether I'm even home? I know a lot of people who leave the TV on 24/7 (maybe muted) whether they're even in the same room or not...
For that matter, what if I turn off the TV itself, but don't bother to turn off the cable box? Can it "tell" whether the TV is on?
I'm in the "hate all ads" camp, BTW... I use Firefox's Adblock extension aggressively. It's my screen, my bandwidth, and my eyes... and if I'm not going to buy whatever they're selling (which I'm not), what difference does it make whether I look at the ad (some sort of tree-falling-in-forest thing?)
...but cookies can be useful. They're a tool, a mechanism for imposing state on a stateless protocol. Like any tool, they can be used for good or evil... and like any client-supplied data, can be folded, spindled, and mutilated without the server's consent or knowledge.
If you really, really hate marketers tracking data, maybe you could start a "p2p cookie-sharing service". It'd create a pool of shared, effectively random cookies, and browsers could send a different one in each request... of course you'd need a way to stop it from sending garbage cookies for e.g. session cookies that you actually need...
This would be the WWW equivalent of people swapping frequent shoppers cards...
lda $00 ldx #$00 .clrloop: sta $c000,x ; fixed obvious typo, was $c0000 sta $c100,x ;... inx cpx $ff ; another typo: should be "cpx #$ff" bne.clrloop
Your "cpx $ff" compares X against the contents of location $ff. Probably not what you intended:)
As written, that won't zero out location $c000 through $c1ff anyway. It doesn't touch $c0ff or $c1ff (the loop terminates when "inx" increments X to $ff, *without* zeroing anything).
Get rid of the "cpx" entirely. Then, the "bne" won't branch until "inx" causes X to wrap around from $ff to $00, which is what you wanted.
Still, 2 typos and one real bug for 7 lines of assembly is not bad, if (as I assume) you're out of practice:)
Please define "sin" in a self-consistent way without resorting to deity.
I define it as "deliberately doing something I believe is wrong", usually "because I wouldn't want it done to me". Example: murder. I don't do it, and I hope nobody does it to me. Yes, there are fine shades of meaning I'm leaving out: is it murder to execute a murderer? What if he's a mass murderer? What if he killed your wife/kids? How about if you're drafted and forced to fight in a war where it's kill or be killed? What if you believe in the cause the war is about? You have to answer these yourself, honestly, and there will be no quiz after class. I won't hate you for answering them differently than I would, and I won't try to force you to see things my way.
I don't believe there is an easy yardstick to measure this stuff by. I also know that not everyone agrees, and I don't believe everybody should agree. I can only be responsible for my own choices and my own behaviour. Yours are up to you.
There is no "one size fits all" morality. You've asked me to define "sin" in a self-consistent way, but it's not self-consistent, any more than concepts like "love", "hate", or "fear" are. I decide what's right and wrong for me, and you decide what's right and wrong for you... or you accept a predefined "right and wrong" model from a religion (or maybe you start with a template and customize it a bit). Life is full of this sort of illogical stuff. To deny it, or to try to assign meaning where there is none, is an exercise in self-delusion.
At this point, a religious man would say "that's because God/Buddha/Allah/Odin/Whoever made things that way". I don't know the reasons (and neither do the truly faithful: they have faith, which doesn't require knowledge). I'm just stating what I've observed: the Universe doesn't always make sense to me (and to a lot of other people).
Sometimes I do ask myself, "What would Dad do?"... sometimes I call him up and ask. But ultimately I'm responsible for my own actions... because I hold myself responsible. (I find circular logic makes me dizzy, don't you?)
Wow, that was a long off-topic ramble. But you did ask...
Speaking as a life-long atheist, I find that most religious texts carry some wisdom, even though I don't believe in their literal truth ("Let him without sin cast the first stone" is a good tenet to live by, whether you believe in the godhood of the guy who said it or not).
In the same vein, I find a lot of wisdom in works of fiction without believing in their literal truth (go read Dune sometime, or anything by Vonnegut).
In this case, I'd say the Revelations comment is relevant: the book describes a nasty situation, whether you look at it as prophecy, allegory, or the ravings of a lunatic. It's a situation we don't want to get ourselves into, regardless of what we believe.
This could be used to allow people in the field to operate on a patient, remotely controlled by a doctor... Others have already mentioned the possibility of remote sex...
See "The Day the Icicle Works Closed", Frederik Pohl, 1959.
Quick summary: it's about a world where people rent out their bodies to tourists. Unlike the tech from the article, though, they don't sit like a prisoner inside their bodies while they're being remote-controlled. It does mention remote sex, though...
I have to deal with... bag searches at supermarkets because of idiots who shoplift
Actually, unless the person searching bags is an on-duty police officer, you don't have to deal with this. Just keep walking.
If the person doing the searches really thinks you're shoplifting, maybe they'll follow you out into the parking lot, tackle you, and call the police... but (a) they have to be damn sure you're stealing (to avoid lawsuits and assault charges), and (b) even if the $7/hr monkey thinks you're stealing, he doesn't get paid enough to get off his duff and follow you out the door.
Now, it may be different where you live. I have walked right past these bag-search people hundreds of times, and not once have there been any consequences (of course, I wasn't shoplifting, either).
(Disclaimer: I live in the US. This may not apply where you live. Also, I Am Not A Lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. The above is not legal advice.)
Just about everyone in the tech field already, from test to dev, signs a non-compete agreement now.
This can be good or bad, depending on how the agreement is worded, and how enforceable it is.
When I started my first W2 (non-contractor) full-time tech job, I was asked to sign a non-compete agreement that was worded so vaguely that, if enforced, it would have kept me from having any job that required touching any computer at all for a year after I left that job.
I'm only exaggerating slightly: I could have gotten a non-technical job and still used a computer to do "end-user" like things, but I wouldn't have been able to do any sort of sysadmin, code development, network design/installation, or even grunt-level PC repair.
Fortunately for me, I knew it would never hold up in court (I Am Not A Lawyer, but I know BS when I smell it). The boss also knew it; the non-compete was more of a scare tactic to use against his (mostly) college-age techies who (mostly) had no real-world experience.
Also fortunately for me, by the time I left that job, the company didn't have enough money to pay the utilities, much less sue me.
(I wasn't responsible for the company failing, either: it was a sole proprietorship, and the sole proprietor had a coke habit and a loose grip on reality even when he wasn't high...)
Of course, this wouldn't happen in a company the size of Microsoft: whatever their flaws might be, they've got plenty of expensive lawyers who would have made sure the non-compete was enforceable (and thus reasonable to a judge or jury). Depending on whose side you're on, that's a good or bad thing. I tend to side with individuals rather than corporations, but I'm admittedly biased.
If you're going to post an article about educational adequacies, please try spelling correctly. The disclaimer at the end does not exempt you from using the spell checking abilities of your computer.
Which commonly-used browser is it that ships with a spell-checker for textareas?
(Yes, I know there are plugins, but most people don't know about them, or get tired of installing them every time they reinstall or buy a new machine...)
For that matter, give me a browser that has an easy way to let me use my own favorite text editor to edit textareas. (Yes, there's Mozex for Firefox, and I love it, but it ain't perfect, and it ain't likely to be installed on $random_computer I'll encounter when not at home).
Actually, reading your post again, I realize I have something somewhat on-topic to say:
It's not ALL the parents' fault, but I believe the changes we need to make in society are much more involved than providing arbitrary and unnecessary testing. We need to somehow advocate more parental involvement in their own child's development and not advocate that everyone must work slavishly just to survive (or to purchase that nice boat).
Today at work, I had to turn a pre-employment test into a web form (I hate my job). About half the correct answers in the test were "Notify proper authorities and await further instructions".
Schools are turning out mindless drones because that's what corporations want to hire. If they let anyone but the very highest executives make any decisions, said executives can be held liable for "wrong" decisions. Only a very small percentage of the corporate workforce is in this category; everyone else is there to blindly follow orders.
It's not just the corporate world: witness the popularity of "Zero Tolerance" policies in the law enforcement world (though probably those policies are handed down to them by the more powerful legislators, instead of being invented by the police... this would be in keeping with the whole theme I'm talking about).
I can't even get the old cashier lady at the local "convenience" store to stop pestering me to join their "preferred customer" program. I've made it abundantly clear that I do not want yet another card to carry around with me, and she has made it abundantly clear that she is required to try to push the card on every customer, and has no authority to decide, on her own, that it's a waste of time with me. (At which point I made it abundantly clear that I would seek some other retailer of "convenience" items).
Let's not even talk about mandatory ID laws: I have a grey beard and wrinkles, there is no possible way I could be under 21, but I have to show my ID to any $6/hour idiot who asks for it, if I want to purchase certain items that are perfectly legal for me to have... even if I showed the same clerk the same ID every day for the past month (it's not like I got younger since last time you sold me a 6-pack!). Even as recently as ten years ago, I didn't run into this sort of non-thinking at every retail establishment.
Wow, sorry about the ranting. I think I've posted more to/. today than I have in the past year... and I'm getting to that age where I sound like a grumpy old man. Think I'll call my Dad, see what he thinks:)
Except that there is so little chance of life occuring the way it is today through evolution alone.
I won't insult your beliefs (though I do not share them). However, here's some food for thought, if you're interested:
You said there is "little chance", and I agree: the odds are astronomical against intelligent life evolving in a given environment.
However... "astronomical" refers to stars and planets.
(note: I use the "zillion" instead of any real number because I don't want to get into any discussions about whether my numbers are right or wrong: I don't know the numbers, and freely admit it. Apologies in advance to anyone offended by this).
Suppose the odds are 1 in 10 zillion that life will develop on a given planet (or in a given solar system, even). Now, how many planets (or solar systems) are there in the universe? Do we actually know? Are we sure we know?
Suppose it happens to be 10 zillion...
Now, if the odds are 1 in 10 zillion, and there are 10 zillion planets... it had to happen somewhere, hm? (Statistically, there'd be a smaller chance of non-intelligent life evolving in several other somewheres, and of course the number might be 20 zillion, so there might be two intelligent life-forms, each of which believes it's the only one... or 20, or 200, or...?)
Now, I'm not preaching or expounding a fact here. It's not even really a theory. It's more of a speculation... the inhabitants of that one planet out of 10 zillion could be excused for thinking they're special: they are special, but only because their number came up on the cosmic die roll (hmm, my D&D set doesn't come with a D10zillion...)
As for what I actually believe, well, I'm going to have to be wishy-washy and admit that I don't have enough data to form a conclusion. I describe myself as a "non-practicing atheist", but that's more of a thumbed nose towards organized religion (including organized atheism).
Our educational system was specifically designed to manufacture interchangeable factory drones who followed orders and avoided thinking whenever possible - and it seems to have done it's job well. If anything it's a smashing success.
Re your sig: well, *I* like it, anyway. In fact, I've thought of making T-shirts. How does that strike you?
Re the actual topic: the sheer population of Asian countries may allow them to train more scientists and engineers than the U.S. while devoting a smaller share of their economy to science and technology.
I've always heard China was a nation that devotes most of its work force to growing food. After a long day in the rice paddies, (so the argument runs), nobody's going to feel like studying hard.
Now, that's the sort of thing my father and grandfather have said, with a smug attitude.
Can anyone who's actually been to China comment on this? (I haven't; neither have Dad nor Grandpa.)
"2 weeks to get installed" can you tell me specifically what advantages you have in a laptop that justify 2 weeks of work ?
(I'm not the original poster, none of this should be construed as an attempt to put words in his mouth)
I can tell you one advantage I'd have: a system that did *exactly* what I wanted, and the satisfaction of doing it myself.
OK, that's two advantages:)
Not everyone wants that, but for those of us that do, it's nice to have the option.
Another advantage: I wouldn't have to keep paying Microsoft every couple of years for updates to Windows, or McAfee every however many months for updates to Norton (or stealing them. Some of us really honestly don't want to use warez. Not accusing you of anything BTW, but there are a lot of people who use commercial Windows software and never pay for it, and never think of the "hidden cost" of running such software).
Re:FreeBSD is free'er, MacOS X better for users
on
Why FreeBSD
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The GPL, however, does take away freedom from anyone: If I modify GPL software, I am no longer allowed to own it and do with it what I see fit.
Agreed, but with one nitpick:
If you *don't* modify GPL software, you're still not allowed to "own it and do with it what [you] see fit."
Whether you modify it or not, you must provide source on request to anyone you distribute binaries to.
You're right, this does take away some of your freedom. To me, this is a freedom I'm willing to give up in return for the greater freedom of being able to get, use, modify, and (occasionally) redistribute lots and lots of useful apps and libraries that are guaranteed to stay free and open.
However, that doesn't make the GPL "better" or "more free". I definitely wouldn't try to talk you into using it for your projects, if you don't like it.
The only annoying thing about the different license styles is that they sometimes conflict. If everything were GPL, or if everything were BSD, we could all mix and match code to our hearts' content. As it is, we end up with GPL replacements for perfectly good BSD code, reinventing the wheel due to lawyers' quibbles (I refer to the OpenSSL vs. GNUTLS mess, and mpg123 vs. mpg321, and maybe XFree86 vs. X.org, though in that case I think a fork was just what was needed to de-stagnate X11 development).
Still, it's a minor complaint: there's so much good, free stuff out there that I really don't care enough to gripe about some of it being "more free" or "less free".
Big guy got all the chicks because he could provide and defend them. Little guy invented "the Almighty" (and the idea of priests) so he could instill fear in the big guy and be able to get some chicks, too.
Big guy retaliates by enforcing celibacy on little guys who become priests, so they can't get any chicks?
I would be far more interested in system status and activity indicators on various useless keys. Temperature, network and cpu activity and load, filesystem stats, etc.
If each key is 32x32 and has at least 4 colors, they could have shiny graphs... even ones that span multiple keys... or a really long load average graph on the space bar (even people who need to look at the keys would be OK using the space bar for graphics).
What would be really slick would be a wrapper for Windowmaker's dockapp API (or whatever Gnome/KDE use), so you could display existing icon-sized applets on the keys with just a recompile (or maybe even just an LD_PRELOAD, no source required).
I suppose it'd be possible to write an X11 driver (or Windows video driver) so you could run whatever you want and display it across all the keys as a single surface. Then you could have your useful information, I could have my useless movie, and the other guy could have his xterm running "less +F/var/log/messages":)
So 4 or 8 bit color would have no trouble going over a USB1 connection, and that's assuming all keys are animated simulataneously.
So how long before someone writes an MPlayer video output plugin for watching movies on the keyboard? If you used just the main alphanumeric part of the keyboard, it'd be about right for a "widescreen" movie (with gaps in between the keys I guess).
'Cuz I never use the numeric keypad. It's a giant waste of space for me, and I'm forced to put my mouse very far to the right because of it.
You should train yourself to use the mouse left-handed. It's probably no worse than learning to use the mouse was in the first place... I can't say, because I was born mostly ambidextrous:)
It looks like this thing is still in development.. I bet within a year or two, they'll be available with different options (no numpad, or with a trackpoint/clitmouse, or with a black case instead of the gaudy silvery-grey look). At least, if they're trying to appeal to "keyboard snobs", they'd better cater to our preferences/prejudices.
What I want to know is: does this Optimus keyboard use buckling springs, like a real keyboard? That's the only way this keyboard snob would consider buying one...
In particular, if you intend to port a proprietary (non-GPL'd) application using Cygwin, you will need the proprietary-use license for the Cygwin library.
Yuck.
MinGW
doesn't have such a Draconian clause in its license.
We ended up using a proprietary package because it was cheaper.
Did you evaluate MinGW and find that it wouldn't work? You can't get much cheaper than that... and it works well, too (or at least it Works For Me, YMMV, IANAL, WTFLOL etc).
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OK, I worded that poorly. I didn't "deserve" it, but when I got sent to the office, I was expecting to get detention. The principal (who wasn't in the classroom at the time) saw it as a clear-cut case of the teacher saying "don't do X" and the kid doing X anyway. I didn't think I actually deserved to be in trouble, but I did know what would probably happen. The suspension came as a shock, and is probably the only reason I even still remember the incident...
Unless you had history of defying the teacher, I really don't understand how this warrants anything more than a stern look and an explanation that you should've checked with the teacher first
I had a history of showing off how smart I was, and letting teachers know when I thought they were wrong... As you probably know, they hate that, especially when they really *are* wrong.
With a school system like this, sometimes I'm surprised it produces anyone capable of independent thinking or innovation at all!
Preaching to the choir. I think the public school system is designed to turn out good little drones who do as they're told. It's more of an indoctrination than an education...
"Hacking into police databases" can actually cause harm on a large scale, in the real world... whereas "hacking" a student laptop at worst breaks that laptop so that it requires an OS reinstall/reimage. So... the sign is the same, but the magnitude is much smaller.
Laws are only worthwhile if they apply to everyone evenly, and if they don't they may as well not exist
Not so. The legal system recognizes the concept of "extenuating circumstances". If you're driving recklessly because you're trying to get your wife to the maternity ward before she gives birth in the passenger seat, you're likely to get a lesser sentence than the guy driving recklessly for no apparent reason.
Also, these kids are juveniles. The law doesn't apply equally to adults and juveniles, and society seems to be OK with that. Do you honestly think sending kids to prison for non-violent "white collar" crimes is the right thing to do? Suspension from school might be appropriate (I'd say it's excessive; see my other post), or suspension of computer privileges and/or detention, but felony charges are ludicrous. They deserve to get in trouble, but if you make them felons, they'll be felons for life. Make the punishment fit the crime, and hopefully they'll learn from it. Make it excessive, mark them for life, and all they'll learn is how to hate all authority. (Mind you, being skeptical of authority is a good and healthy thing... but blindly opposing it for no other reason than hatred is almost as bad as mindlessly following all orders like a sheep).
When I was 11 or 12, in public school, we got computers (TRS-80 CoCo's, which dates me I guess). The first day we had them, the teacher told us to turn them on, then don't touch anything until she told us to...
Well, I turned mine on, and the monitor just showed a black picture. So I turned up the brightness (it was down all the way), and fixed it. It never occurred to me that "don't touch anything" included the brightness control; I'd had one of those on my TV for as long as I could remember. I thought she meant "don't type anything"...
So I got suspended from school for a week. For turning up the brightness. Looking back on it now, I can see that I deserved *something* for disobeying a direct order... detention perhaps, or losing computer privileges for a week...
Of course, back then I thought of being suspended as a great vacation. I got to stay home and play with my computer (Atari 400, which I liked better than the CoCo anyway).
The thing was, when the teacher saw me tweak that knob, the expression on her face was one of *terror*. Not surprise, or anger... Utter, abject fear. I can only assume it was the machines she was afraid of, not me (I was big for my age, but not known for beating people up, especially not teachers).
Then and now, the teachers and administrators probably resent having to have the computers at all. They don't understand computers (well, OK, most people don't), but they *do* understand that the kids know more about computers than they ever will, which makes the adults feel like they're not in control. The type of person who becomes a school administrator is the type who hates being out of control, so they use (or abuse) their authority to make sure the kids are too terrified to step out of line.
Not too long ago, I did a contract job for a school system, setting up routers and proxy (censoring) software. One day the boss (former English teacher who was put in charge of the school's IT dept) asked me what I was doing, so I told her. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was probably something like "I'm installing Apache so you can use this CGI script to configure your whitelist and blacklist for the squid proxy". Her response was, "Don't use all those technical terms with me! How would you like it if I used educational jargon when talking to you?"
It almost made me crack up laughing... but she was dead serious. So I calmed myself, and I told her (and not in a smart-assed way either): "Well, if you used words I didn't understand, I'd ask you to explain them. You're a teacher, so you're probably pretty good at that. I was trying to communicate with you, not confuse you, so tell me what I said that you didn't understand, and I'll try to explain it."
She got *pissed*. I mean red-faced, white-knuckled, and shaking. She stormed off...
A week later my company was officially fired from that contract (possibly *only* because of that incident, but probably not: we were behind schedule, partly because we kept having explain basic networking concepts to the school's IT employees, who were supposed to be supervising us). Since then, I've avoided public schools like the plague, and been happier for it. If I ever have kids, there's no way I'd send them to a school where people like that English teacher have authority over them.
If these "hackers" were my kids, I wouldn't punish them, but I would take them aside and explain that the mundanes are terrified of them, and ask them to hide their brains when in such company. I'd tell 'em not to worry, the cream always rises to the top... I'd also send 'em to a good private school, even if it meant a second or third mortgage on the house.
But what would you write down if it were "k%XFl3n]" or something equally impossible to remember? Sometimes they're machine-generated and you don't get a choice...
I don't think I missed the point.
If you prevent the kids from ever being able to do anything wrong, they never learn to make moral decisions because they've never had a chance to.
If you don't give them a choice, they'll never learn to make the right * choice. If you treat your kids this way, you're doing them a great disservice: they'll get old enough to have a job, a family, credit cards, all those adult things... but they still won't know right from wrong, and thus won't be mentally equipped to handle any of the responsibilities they'll be expected to take on.
If your kids are so young that you don't expect them to be able to make such decisions at all, then they're too young to have unsupervised access to the 'net (or the TV, or telephone, etc).
*In this case, "right" means whatever it is you're trying to teach your kid is right. I'm sidestepping the whole issue of what right and wrong are. Personally, if a kid's old enough to be curious, I'd say they're going to satisfy that curiosity one way or another, and to arbitrarily deny it will just make them more curious... but that's neither here nor there.
You're trying to keep our feelings off the street
You're nearly a real treat
All tight lips and cold feet
And do you feel abused?
You got to stem the evil tide
And keep it all on the inside
Mary you're nearly a treat
Mary you're nearly a treat
But you're really a cry
Most "reputable" pr0n sites will have a "Only click here to enter if you are over 18" splash page. Of course, it doesn't stop little kids... but it *does* make the kids aware that they're about to do something "wrong". A lot more sites require a credit card, which effectively stops kids dead in their tracks... though enough "free samples" are given out that there's plenty to see without paying for any of it. Don't think that anyone who buys a .xxx domain is going to suddenly abandon their existing .com domain, though, and don't think any kind of meaningful censorship can ever be imposed on .com by any government at this point: China can't do it, and they're supposed to be a 1984-style authoritarian nightmare state, so how are governments of "free" countries going to be able to do it?
Doing stuff like "hiding" porn in places like whitehouse.com instead of allowing it to be in whitehouse.xxx just seems wrong to me.
AFAIK, whitehouse.com was originally a print magazine called "White House". If that's the case (and I'm sure someone who knows will correct me if I'm wrong, as I can't remember the details), it made perfect sense to have a site called whitehouse.com: They were called White House, and they were commercial. The site went up many years ago, when everyone on the 'net knew the difference between .com and .gov (or at least, everyone was expected to know).
My take on the .xxx thing is that it's just a money-grab by Verisign (or whoever's pushing it): a way to sell existing businesses the same domain names they've already bought. If you own www.somepornsite.com, you do NOT want to let your competitor(s) buy up www.somepornsite.xxx; it'd be dilution of your brand.... so you're forced to pay yet again, when .xxx becomes available. 5 years later, you'll have to buy www.somepornsite.sex or whatever the "new, improved" top-level domain is by then. Verisign & co. can write their own ticket, since what they're selling costs nothing to produce, and they have a monopoly (nobody else can "invent" new TLDs). It's like printing money, except somehow it's not against the law...
How can they tell if I'm in the kitchen making a sandwich, or in the bathroom... or for that matter, whether I'm even home? I know a lot of people who leave the TV on 24/7 (maybe muted) whether they're even in the same room or not...
For that matter, what if I turn off the TV itself, but don't bother to turn off the cable box? Can it "tell" whether the TV is on?
I'm in the "hate all ads" camp, BTW... I use Firefox's Adblock extension aggressively. It's my screen, my bandwidth, and my eyes... and if I'm not going to buy whatever they're selling (which I'm not), what difference does it make whether I look at the ad (some sort of tree-falling-in-forest thing?)
If you really, really hate marketers tracking data, maybe you could start a "p2p cookie-sharing service". It'd create a pool of shared, effectively random cookies, and browsers could send a different one in each request... of course you'd need a way to stop it from sending garbage cookies for e.g. session cookies that you actually need...
This would be the WWW equivalent of people swapping frequent shoppers cards...
Your "cpx $ff" compares X against the contents of location $ff. Probably not what you intended :)
As written, that won't zero out location $c000 through $c1ff anyway. It doesn't touch $c0ff or $c1ff (the loop terminates when "inx" increments X to $ff, *without* zeroing anything).
Get rid of the "cpx" entirely. Then, the "bne" won't branch until "inx" causes X to wrap around from $ff to $00, which is what you wanted.
Still, 2 typos and one real bug for 7 lines of assembly is not bad, if (as I assume) you're out of practice :)
I define it as "deliberately doing something I believe is wrong", usually "because I wouldn't want it done to me". Example: murder. I don't do it, and I hope nobody does it to me. Yes, there are fine shades of meaning I'm leaving out: is it murder to execute a murderer? What if he's a mass murderer? What if he killed your wife/kids? How about if you're drafted and forced to fight in a war where it's kill or be killed? What if you believe in the cause the war is about? You have to answer these yourself, honestly, and there will be no quiz after class. I won't hate you for answering them differently than I would, and I won't try to force you to see things my way.
I don't believe there is an easy yardstick to measure this stuff by. I also know that not everyone agrees, and I don't believe everybody should agree. I can only be responsible for my own choices and my own behaviour. Yours are up to you.
There is no "one size fits all" morality. You've asked me to define "sin" in a self-consistent way, but it's not self-consistent, any more than concepts like "love", "hate", or "fear" are. I decide what's right and wrong for me, and you decide what's right and wrong for you... or you accept a predefined "right and wrong" model from a religion (or maybe you start with a template and customize it a bit). Life is full of this sort of illogical stuff. To deny it, or to try to assign meaning where there is none, is an exercise in self-delusion.
At this point, a religious man would say "that's because God/Buddha/Allah/Odin/Whoever made things that way". I don't know the reasons (and neither do the truly faithful: they have faith, which doesn't require knowledge). I'm just stating what I've observed: the Universe doesn't always make sense to me (and to a lot of other people).
Sometimes I do ask myself, "What would Dad do?"... sometimes I call him up and ask. But ultimately I'm responsible for my own actions... because I hold myself responsible. (I find circular logic makes me dizzy, don't you?)
Wow, that was a long off-topic ramble. But you did ask...
Speaking as a life-long atheist, I find that most religious texts carry some wisdom, even though I don't believe in their literal truth ("Let him without sin cast the first stone" is a good tenet to live by, whether you believe in the godhood of the guy who said it or not).
In the same vein, I find a lot of wisdom in works of fiction without believing in their literal truth (go read Dune sometime, or anything by Vonnegut).
In this case, I'd say the Revelations comment is relevant: the book describes a nasty situation, whether you look at it as prophecy, allegory, or the ravings of a lunatic. It's a situation we don't want to get ourselves into, regardless of what we believe.
See "The Day the Icicle Works Closed", Frederik Pohl, 1959.
Quick summary: it's about a world where people rent out their bodies to tourists. Unlike the tech from the article, though, they don't sit like a prisoner inside their bodies while they're being remote-controlled. It does mention remote sex, though...
Actually, unless the person searching bags is an on-duty police officer, you don't have to deal with this. Just keep walking.
If the person doing the searches really thinks you're shoplifting, maybe they'll follow you out into the parking lot, tackle you, and call the police... but (a) they have to be damn sure you're stealing (to avoid lawsuits and assault charges), and (b) even if the $7/hr monkey thinks you're stealing, he doesn't get paid enough to get off his duff and follow you out the door.
Now, it may be different where you live. I have walked right past these bag-search people hundreds of times, and not once have there been any consequences (of course, I wasn't shoplifting, either).
(Disclaimer: I live in the US. This may not apply where you live. Also, I Am Not A Lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. The above is not legal advice.)
This can be good or bad, depending on how the agreement is worded, and how enforceable it is.
When I started my first W2 (non-contractor) full-time tech job, I was asked to sign a non-compete agreement that was worded so vaguely that, if enforced, it would have kept me from having any job that required touching any computer at all for a year after I left that job.
I'm only exaggerating slightly: I could have gotten a non-technical job and still used a computer to do "end-user" like things, but I wouldn't have been able to do any sort of sysadmin, code development, network design/installation, or even grunt-level PC repair.
Fortunately for me, I knew it would never hold up in court (I Am Not A Lawyer, but I know BS when I smell it). The boss also knew it; the non-compete was more of a scare tactic to use against his (mostly) college-age techies who (mostly) had no real-world experience.
Also fortunately for me, by the time I left that job, the company didn't have enough money to pay the utilities, much less sue me. (I wasn't responsible for the company failing, either: it was a sole proprietorship, and the sole proprietor had a coke habit and a loose grip on reality even when he wasn't high...)
Of course, this wouldn't happen in a company the size of Microsoft: whatever their flaws might be, they've got plenty of expensive lawyers who would have made sure the non-compete was enforceable (and thus reasonable to a judge or jury). Depending on whose side you're on, that's a good or bad thing. I tend to side with individuals rather than corporations, but I'm admittedly biased.
Which commonly-used browser is it that ships with a spell-checker for textareas?
(Yes, I know there are plugins, but most people don't know about them, or get tired of installing them every time they reinstall or buy a new machine...)
For that matter, give me a browser that has an easy way to let me use my own favorite text editor to edit textareas. (Yes, there's Mozex for Firefox, and I love it, but it ain't perfect, and it ain't likely to be installed on $random_computer I'll encounter when not at home).
Actually, reading your post again, I realize I have something somewhat on-topic to say:
It's not ALL the parents' fault, but I believe the changes we need to make in society are much more involved than providing arbitrary and unnecessary testing. We need to somehow advocate more parental involvement in their own child's development and not advocate that everyone must work slavishly just to survive (or to purchase that nice boat).
Today at work, I had to turn a pre-employment test into a web form (I hate my job). About half the correct answers in the test were "Notify proper authorities and await further instructions".
Schools are turning out mindless drones because that's what corporations want to hire. If they let anyone but the very highest executives make any decisions, said executives can be held liable for "wrong" decisions. Only a very small percentage of the corporate workforce is in this category; everyone else is there to blindly follow orders.
It's not just the corporate world: witness the popularity of "Zero Tolerance" policies in the law enforcement world (though probably those policies are handed down to them by the more powerful legislators, instead of being invented by the police... this would be in keeping with the whole theme I'm talking about).
I can't even get the old cashier lady at the local "convenience" store to stop pestering me to join their "preferred customer" program. I've made it abundantly clear that I do not want yet another card to carry around with me, and she has made it abundantly clear that she is required to try to push the card on every customer, and has no authority to decide, on her own, that it's a waste of time with me. (At which point I made it abundantly clear that I would seek some other retailer of "convenience" items).
Let's not even talk about mandatory ID laws: I have a grey beard and wrinkles, there is no possible way I could be under 21, but I have to show my ID to any $6/hour idiot who asks for it, if I want to purchase certain items that are perfectly legal for me to have... even if I showed the same clerk the same ID every day for the past month (it's not like I got younger since last time you sold me a 6-pack!). Even as recently as ten years ago, I didn't run into this sort of non-thinking at every retail establishment.
Wow, sorry about the ranting. I think I've posted more to /. today than I have in the past year... and I'm getting to that age where I sound like a grumpy old man. Think I'll call my Dad, see what he thinks :)
I won't insult your beliefs (though I do not share them). However, here's some food for thought, if you're interested:
You said there is "little chance", and I agree: the odds are astronomical against intelligent life evolving in a given environment.
However... "astronomical" refers to stars and planets.
(note: I use the "zillion" instead of any real number because I don't want to get into any discussions about whether my numbers are right or wrong: I don't know the numbers, and freely admit it. Apologies in advance to anyone offended by this).
Suppose the odds are 1 in 10 zillion that life will develop on a given planet (or in a given solar system, even). Now, how many planets (or solar systems) are there in the universe? Do we actually know? Are we sure we know?
Suppose it happens to be 10 zillion...
Now, if the odds are 1 in 10 zillion, and there are 10 zillion planets... it had to happen somewhere, hm? (Statistically, there'd be a smaller chance of non-intelligent life evolving in several other somewheres, and of course the number might be 20 zillion, so there might be two intelligent life-forms, each of which believes it's the only one... or 20, or 200, or...?)
Now, I'm not preaching or expounding a fact here. It's not even really a theory. It's more of a speculation... the inhabitants of that one planet out of 10 zillion could be excused for thinking they're special: they are special, but only because their number came up on the cosmic die roll (hmm, my D&D set doesn't come with a D10zillion...)
As for what I actually believe, well, I'm going to have to be wishy-washy and admit that I don't have enough data to form a conclusion. I describe myself as a "non-practicing atheist", but that's more of a thumbed nose towards organized religion (including organized atheism).
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that.
For anyone interested in further reading on the topic, you might try the Underground Grammarian.
Re your sig: well, *I* like it, anyway. In fact, I've thought of making T-shirts. How does that strike you?
Re the actual topic: the sheer population of Asian countries may allow them to train more scientists and engineers than the U.S. while devoting a smaller share of their economy to science and technology.
I've always heard China was a nation that devotes most of its work force to growing food. After a long day in the rice paddies, (so the argument runs), nobody's going to feel like studying hard.
Now, that's the sort of thing my father and grandfather have said, with a smug attitude.
Can anyone who's actually been to China comment on this? (I haven't; neither have Dad nor Grandpa.)
Did you ever wonder about the poor guys who beta tested preparations A through G? That had to be a crappy job...
(I'm not the original poster, none of this should be construed as an attempt to put words in his mouth)
I can tell you one advantage I'd have: a system that did *exactly* what I wanted, and the satisfaction of doing it myself.
OK, that's two advantages :)
Not everyone wants that, but for those of us that do, it's nice to have the option.
Another advantage: I wouldn't have to keep paying Microsoft every couple of years for updates to Windows, or McAfee every however many months for updates to Norton (or stealing them. Some of us really honestly don't want to use warez. Not accusing you of anything BTW, but there are a lot of people who use commercial Windows software and never pay for it, and never think of the "hidden cost" of running such software).
Agreed, but with one nitpick:
If you *don't* modify GPL software, you're still not allowed to "own it and do with it what [you] see fit."
Whether you modify it or not, you must provide source on request to anyone you distribute binaries to.
You're right, this does take away some of your freedom. To me, this is a freedom I'm willing to give up in return for the greater freedom of being able to get, use, modify, and (occasionally) redistribute lots and lots of useful apps and libraries that are guaranteed to stay free and open.
However, that doesn't make the GPL "better" or "more free". I definitely wouldn't try to talk you into using it for your projects, if you don't like it.
The only annoying thing about the different license styles is that they sometimes conflict. If everything were GPL, or if everything were BSD, we could all mix and match code to our hearts' content. As it is, we end up with GPL replacements for perfectly good BSD code, reinventing the wheel due to lawyers' quibbles (I refer to the OpenSSL vs. GNUTLS mess, and mpg123 vs. mpg321, and maybe XFree86 vs. X.org, though in that case I think a fork was just what was needed to de-stagnate X11 development).
Still, it's a minor complaint: there's so much good, free stuff out there that I really don't care enough to gripe about some of it being "more free" or "less free".
Big guy retaliates by enforcing celibacy on little guys who become priests, so they can't get any chicks?
If each key is 32x32 and has at least 4 colors, they could have shiny graphs... even ones that span multiple keys... or a really long load average graph on the space bar (even people who need to look at the keys would be OK using the space bar for graphics).
What would be really slick would be a wrapper for Windowmaker's dockapp API (or whatever Gnome/KDE use), so you could display existing icon-sized applets on the keys with just a recompile (or maybe even just an LD_PRELOAD, no source required).
I suppose it'd be possible to write an X11 driver (or Windows video driver) so you could run whatever you want and display it across all the keys as a single surface. Then you could have your useful information, I could have my useless movie, and the other guy could have his xterm running "less +F /var/log/messages" :)
So how long before someone writes an MPlayer video output plugin for watching movies on the keyboard? If you used just the main alphanumeric part of the keyboard, it'd be about right for a "widescreen" movie (with gaps in between the keys I guess).
You should train yourself to use the mouse left-handed. It's probably no worse than learning to use the mouse was in the first place... I can't say, because I was born mostly ambidextrous :)
It looks like this thing is still in development.. I bet within a year or two, they'll be available with different options (no numpad, or with a trackpoint/clitmouse, or with a black case instead of the gaudy silvery-grey look). At least, if they're trying to appeal to "keyboard snobs", they'd better cater to our preferences/prejudices.
What I want to know is: does this Optimus keyboard use buckling springs, like a real keyboard? That's the only way this keyboard snob would consider buying one...
Yuck.
MinGW doesn't have such a Draconian clause in its license.
We ended up using a proprietary package because it was cheaper.
Did you evaluate MinGW and find that it wouldn't work? You can't get much cheaper than that... and it works well, too (or at least it Works For Me, YMMV, IANAL, WTFLOL etc).