Take me out of context all you like. I didn't say "dumb brutes" or "brainless," you did. All I meant was I liked computer and books and art, and they liked sports and parties and clothes. I didn't have a problem with anyone in high school, I wasn't one of those TV stereotypes of bitter, picked-on geeks with no social skills who had to escape into an alternate reality to cope with how much the rest of my day sucked (but hey, not many people DO fit that exact stereotype). I just preferred doing other things.
It's a tangible difference in taste. I don't believe one is better than the other, especially now that I'm older and realize that most people turn out pretty much the same when the years even us out. I'm still not a sports fan, though.;)
And yes, wouldn't everyone rather hang out with people who use their intelligence (especially in creative ways, like I said)? I was drawing a line between that and the kids who drank themselves stupid in the parking lot before class and slept until lunch, when they went out and smoked pot in the park and skipped the rest of the day to watch TV or sit at the mall doing nothing. They might have been nice people, but they bored the hell outta me.
Or is the listing of all these MUDs more evidence of a geek subculture that sees itself as superior to society in general, so much so that it needs to withdraw and create more perfect worlds to exist within?
Oh, please. How about "different from society in general?" When I was a young teenager, discovering BBSs and MUDs was probably the best thing that ever could have happened to me. For the first time in my lonely little life, I found myself immersed in 'worlds' inhabited by people who thought and acted like I did, who actually read books not assigned in school, who used their intelligence in creative ways.. It was my first exposure to people who didn't care about how you looked or who you hung out with, but what you said and did and how well you did it.
Superior to reality? Nah, more like a release, an exploration. And yes, a subculture does need its own world to exist within. When I was in high school, the "jocks and cheerleaders" had their own little world of sports and parties -- but then, there were a lot more of them than there were of people like me. They could congregate easily in public. To find other people like myself, I had to go online.
Gaming and BBSs sparked my interest in the internet, html, coding, networking -- and, of course, more gaming. I'm willing to bet that the cumulative effect was the same for many others. When I would play around on the internet in the school library (mind you, this was in 1992, so the "internet" looked a bit different -- but there was still e-mail!) even the non-geeky people would want to know things like how to make a "home page" or get e-mail.
Cumulative effect on US culture in general? Well, we've got Britney Spears on AOL and all, and I won't categorize that as a good thing or a bad thing, but without the little gamer geeks decades ago... do you think that today, Suzi Cheerleader would know what instant messaging or e-mail was?
Oh, believe me, I'm trying to fix where I work. If you know anyone whose hiring a geek with military systems experience and a TS clearance, let me know!
Classified documents are NOT kept on machines that are internet-accessible. Any time a classified document accidently "spills" onto an unclass network, there is a major and immediate clean-up effort.
Confidential documents (such as personnel rosters) can be kept on unclassified networks, as can unclassified-but-sensitive (like network maps). Big difference between that and classified documents.
When telephone service was first widely implemented, you used to have to rent a phone. They just weren't commercially available from anyone from the telephone company. When phones became available from other sources, a lot of people still had perfectly good working phones from the company.. so they kept renting them.
Neuromancer -- or any other William Gibson novel
on
Dystopic Novels?
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· Score: 1
I can't believe no one mentioned the dystopian sci-fi/cyberpunk novels written by William Gibson, the man who coined the terms "microsoft" and "cyberspace!" Sheesh, Neuromancer only won the holy trinity of science fiction writing: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award. READ IT! I mean, come on, there's computers, sex, AND violence!
Books I reccomend by William Gibson, in this order: Neuromancer, Burning Chrome, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light
Okay, my above post makes absolutely no sense.. where the hell did the post go saying we should all boycott all big movies because of Hollywood's DECSS thing??
..your life must be incredibly small and boring if you refuse to see any Hollywood movie because of decss. Hate to tell you, but just about ALL indy films are in some way connected to, produced by, and funded by Hollywood money. You better quit watching TV too, my friend..
Man, there are SO many more important things in this world to worry about...
... on the part of 'cyberbuffs,' it's insufficient perspective on the part of those who would regulate and control. Recent history has already proven that the instantaneous exchange of ideas and data is changing our world (work from home! develop software with people from all over the world! see the newest release from Indian cinema! get a Japanese pen-pal! Read the news from other countries!) Clamping down on this kind of exchange is a Draconian measure meant to protect industries that are proving themselves to be falling rapidly behind-the-times.
The internet is here. It's time for the business world to adapt, not those that are taking advantage of new technology in every way possible.
Who was it that said "the internet views censorship as damage.. and routes around it accordingly."????
There's always the user friendly J-List! I mean, their slogan is even "you've got a friend in Japan..."
Oh yeah, and they sell the famous Hello Kitty Vibrator, and a t-shirt that says looking for a japanese girlfriend -- in Japanese...
Man, I love this site.
I've found that a lot of tabletop gaming and comic book stores sell/rent anime as well.. Seems the genres go hand-in-hand. Good thing, too.. I always know where to look for my anime when I move to a new city.
You weren't told about an NDA until after you "had the job," eh? Does that mean that they offered you the job and then asked you to sign and NDA? An NDA is only binding if you sign it, and if you don't agree to it and accept by signing, well, then, you don't have to take the job.
*...okay, imagine the rest of this post in a stoner-hippie-berkeley kinda voice, for the humorous effect that is intended...*
Nah, man, the only thing you're a slave to in this case is the capitalist system and the culture of materialism. You're the one who wants to get a better job, so you can make more money, so you can buy more things, eh? Where's the forced servitude in that? No one's forcing you to live in a nice house and buy more stuff.
If you don't want to be a "slave" to the "system," you could always stick to one of those burger-flipping jobs. Or, better yet, go live off the land!;)
You're right, my poor choice of wording is making me sound like a hypocritical idiot. My bad. Blame it on a late-afternoon caffeine crash.
*cringes*
*goes to get another coke*
If you voluntarily sign an NDA and are paid well for your services, it's hardly slavery. That's hardly involuntary servitude. In the US, you are certainly not forced to work for and be paid by a company that requires an NDA or IP contract..
In fact, I know a heck of a lot of people who would sign just about ANYTHING to be employed at the moment..
I believe that sort of implementation could still be considered intellectual property violation.. but then again, i'm not certainly not an IP lawyer.:)
I'm not one to steal thunder; I'll give credit where credit is due. You're correct about NDAs. However, the original Ask Slashdot question just stated that the developer was experienced in the field and concerned about IP/copyright, not about violating an NDA.
If the programmer is a good developer and has been hired to solve a problem, his experience and knowledge should allow him to solve the similar problem in a similar, but still unique, way.
No, but large amounts of similarities in problem-solving methods do not automatically equal copyright infringement either.
Clean-room design and implementation would secure this. If the developer had no access to the code he'd written previously, then there isn't much chance of true copyright infringement.
.. where people couldn't list exact locations of jobs for security reasons, where people couldn't list exact job duties for security reasons, where you got explanations like "well, I worked heavily on a project that I can't really tell you about, but I assure you, I did a lot of coding, but I can't tell you exactly what...":)
Profits? Hah.. try being salaried and spending many, many overtime hours attempting to route your network around an M$ bug, or repairing damage done by a M$-enabled worm...
Well, if the only thing that changes are the comments and something like variable names, then yeah, I'd agree the students probably copied off each other, wouldn't you?
In all the years I spent in a university environment, I never saw a professor grade a student down for solving a problem in a simliar way as another student. After all, correct solution methods become finite at some point.. Or, if you care to believe they're infinite, then correct, CLEAN solutions become finite at some point.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Take me out of context all you like. I didn't say "dumb brutes" or "brainless," you did. All I meant was I liked computer and books and art, and they liked sports and parties and clothes. I didn't have a problem with anyone in high school, I wasn't one of those TV stereotypes of bitter, picked-on geeks with no social skills who had to escape into an alternate reality to cope with how much the rest of my day sucked (but hey, not many people DO fit that exact stereotype). I just preferred doing other things.
;)
It's a tangible difference in taste. I don't believe one is better than the other, especially now that I'm older and realize that most people turn out pretty much the same when the years even us out. I'm still not a sports fan, though.
And yes, wouldn't everyone rather hang out with people who use their intelligence (especially in creative ways, like I said)? I was drawing a line between that and the kids who drank themselves stupid in the parking lot before class and slept until lunch, when they went out and smoked pot in the park and skipped the rest of the day to watch TV or sit at the mall doing nothing. They might have been nice people, but they bored the hell outta me.
But hey, believe what you want.
Gaming subculture contributed massively to the popularity of the internet, thereby affecting US culture in general.
And boy.. if Britney Spears WAS wandering around some dungeon on AOL.. or maybe just some dungeon.. what a better place this world would be!
Or is the listing of all these MUDs more evidence of a geek subculture that sees itself as superior to society in general, so much so that it needs to withdraw and create more perfect worlds to exist within?
Oh, please. How about "different from society in general?" When I was a young teenager, discovering BBSs and MUDs was probably the best thing that ever could have happened to me. For the first time in my lonely little life, I found myself immersed in 'worlds' inhabited by people who thought and acted like I did, who actually read books not assigned in school, who used their intelligence in creative ways.. It was my first exposure to people who didn't care about how you looked or who you hung out with, but what you said and did and how well you did it.
Superior to reality? Nah, more like a release, an exploration. And yes, a subculture does need its own world to exist within. When I was in high school, the "jocks and cheerleaders" had their own little world of sports and parties -- but then, there were a lot more of them than there were of people like me. They could congregate easily in public. To find other people like myself, I had to go online.
Gaming and BBSs sparked my interest in the internet, html, coding, networking -- and, of course, more gaming. I'm willing to bet that the cumulative effect was the same for many others. When I would play around on the internet in the school library (mind you, this was in 1992, so the "internet" looked a bit different -- but there was still e-mail!) even the non-geeky people would want to know things like how to make a "home page" or get e-mail.
Cumulative effect on US culture in general? Well, we've got Britney Spears on AOL and all, and I won't categorize that as a good thing or a bad thing, but without the little gamer geeks decades ago... do you think that today, Suzi Cheerleader would know what instant messaging or e-mail was?
Oh, believe me, I'm trying to fix where I work. If you know anyone whose hiring a geek with military systems experience and a TS clearance, let me know!
Agreed. You exactly what I meant better than what I could come up with as early as it was when I replied.
Classified documents are NOT kept on machines that are internet-accessible. Any time a classified document accidently "spills" onto an unclass network, there is a major and immediate clean-up effort. Confidential documents (such as personnel rosters) can be kept on unclassified networks, as can unclassified-but-sensitive (like network maps). Big difference between that and classified documents.
When telephone service was first widely implemented, you used to have to rent a phone. They just weren't commercially available from anyone from the telephone company. When phones became available from other sources, a lot of people still had perfectly good working phones from the company.. so they kept renting them.
I can't believe no one mentioned the dystopian sci-fi/cyberpunk novels written by William Gibson, the man who coined the terms "microsoft" and "cyberspace!" Sheesh, Neuromancer only won the holy trinity of science fiction writing: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award. READ IT! I mean, come on, there's computers, sex, AND violence! Books I reccomend by William Gibson, in this order: Neuromancer, Burning Chrome, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light
Okay, my above post makes absolutely no sense.. where the hell did the post go saying we should all boycott all big movies because of Hollywood's DECSS thing??
..your life must be incredibly small and boring if you refuse to see any Hollywood movie because of decss. Hate to tell you, but just about ALL indy films are in some way connected to, produced by, and funded by Hollywood money. You better quit watching TV too, my friend.. Man, there are SO many more important things in this world to worry about...
... on the part of 'cyberbuffs,' it's insufficient perspective on the part of those who would regulate and control. Recent history has already proven that the instantaneous exchange of ideas and data is changing our world (work from home! develop software with people from all over the world! see the newest release from Indian cinema! get a Japanese pen-pal! Read the news from other countries!) Clamping down on this kind of exchange is a Draconian measure meant to protect industries that are proving themselves to be falling rapidly behind-the-times.
The internet is here. It's time for the business world to adapt, not those that are taking advantage of new technology in every way possible.
Who was it that said "the internet views censorship as damage.. and routes around it accordingly."????
nihilistic technofetishist: William Gibson. Panther Moderns.
There's always the user friendly J-List! I mean, their slogan is even "you've got a friend in Japan..." Oh yeah, and they sell the famous Hello Kitty Vibrator, and a t-shirt that says looking for a japanese girlfriend -- in Japanese... Man, I love this site.
You're kidding.. there are movies of real people having sex out there? You mean I've been wasting my time watching all this hentai?!?
Man... if I'd ONLY KNOWN!
I've found that a lot of tabletop gaming and comic book stores sell/rent anime as well.. Seems the genres go hand-in-hand. Good thing, too.. I always know where to look for my anime when I move to a new city.
You weren't told about an NDA until after you "had the job," eh? Does that mean that they offered you the job and then asked you to sign and NDA? An NDA is only binding if you sign it, and if you don't agree to it and accept by signing, well, then, you don't have to take the job.
;)
*...okay, imagine the rest of this post in a stoner-hippie-berkeley kinda voice, for the humorous effect that is intended...*
Nah, man, the only thing you're a slave to in this case is the capitalist system and the culture of materialism. You're the one who wants to get a better job, so you can make more money, so you can buy more things, eh? Where's the forced servitude in that? No one's forcing you to live in a nice house and buy more stuff.
If you don't want to be a "slave" to the "system," you could always stick to one of those burger-flipping jobs. Or, better yet, go live off the land!
You're right, my poor choice of wording is making me sound like a hypocritical idiot. My bad. Blame it on a late-afternoon caffeine crash. *cringes* *goes to get another coke*
Isn't that exactly what evilpaul13 was suggesting?
:)
Yup. And I thought I was agreeing with him.
If you voluntarily sign an NDA and are paid well for your services, it's hardly slavery. That's hardly involuntary servitude. In the US, you are certainly not forced to work for and be paid by a company that requires an NDA or IP contract..
In fact, I know a heck of a lot of people who would sign just about ANYTHING to be employed at the moment..
I believe that sort of implementation could still be considered intellectual property violation.. but then again, i'm not certainly not an IP lawyer. :)
I'm not one to steal thunder; I'll give credit where credit is due. You're correct about NDAs. However, the original Ask Slashdot question just stated that the developer was experienced in the field and concerned about IP/copyright, not about violating an NDA.
If the programmer is a good developer and has been hired to solve a problem, his experience and knowledge should allow him to solve the similar problem in a similar, but still unique, way.
No, but large amounts of similarities in problem-solving methods do not automatically equal copyright infringement either. Clean-room design and implementation would secure this. If the developer had no access to the code he'd written previously, then there isn't much chance of true copyright infringement.
.. where people couldn't list exact locations of jobs for security reasons, where people couldn't list exact job duties for security reasons, where you got explanations like "well, I worked heavily on a project that I can't really tell you about, but I assure you, I did a lot of coding, but I can't tell you exactly what..." :)
Profits? Hah.. try being salaried and spending many, many overtime hours attempting to route your network around an M$ bug, or repairing damage done by a M$-enabled worm...
Well, if the only thing that changes are the comments and something like variable names, then yeah, I'd agree the students probably copied off each other, wouldn't you? In all the years I spent in a university environment, I never saw a professor grade a student down for solving a problem in a simliar way as another student. After all, correct solution methods become finite at some point.. Or, if you care to believe they're infinite, then correct, CLEAN solutions become finite at some point. :)