Funny, the reason I stay on Windows is exactly that, time. Yes, I have to use Windows update, or let it run in the background. Sometimes I have to wrestle with a graphics driver. As long as you keep WU and AV stuff up tp date, and avoid horrors liek IE and outlook, I find Windows XP very low maintence.
Generally though, software and hardware work pretty well. When I look at the time people using Linux sometimes spend getting thier hardware to work, getting the Windows programs (and games) to work, if at all, that keeps me away.
I use NIX at work, and I'm no big Windows fan, but valuing my time is exactly what keeps me off Linux.
Computers weren't designed to think; they were designed to follow instructions.
It seems to me, if you are trying to design a genuine AI, possibly from the ground up, that argument is meaningless. Sure, previous computers were not designed to think, but this one is.
Self-awareness is a property that the soul impinges on the mind, not an inherent property of neurons.
I'm curious how this works. I mean, if we go back far enough, our distant ancestors were not self aware. So I guess they had no souls, right? Was there a generation of proto-humans that suddenly had souls and self-awareness when their parents did not?
I've seen experiements designed to prove chimps are self aware. If you accept their results, does that mean chimps have souls? Do they go to heaven if they have been a good chimp?
The biggest problem with self-aware computers is that we can't even agree what it means, or how we would test it in a computer (the chimp experiment involved a chimp brain damagaed in a certain way). It may be the problem of designing a self-aware AI is too hard for the human brain, although we may be able to 'evolve' one.
It's a slippery thing, although at least we think we know it when we see it. Unlike, say, a soul, of which there is no evidence at all.
I've never understood this "creationism wins by default" argument. Even if evolution were proven wrong, that doesn't mean suddenly we should accept the ancient Jewish creation myth as true. Why not the ancient Greek, the Hindu or any other? As a "logic thinking guy" I'm not seeing much logic. Sure lots of people beleive it, but reality isn't a democracy.
If God did make everything, and us in his image, that doesn't seem humiliating. It means we matter, and are inherently important in someway. If we are just a cosmic accident in an uncaring universe, that seems a lot more diminishing to me.
I know, I'm responding to someone modded a troll, and Hawking's theories have nothing to do with evolution. Just wanted to get a few things off my chest.
Becuase of the whole "innocent until proven guilty (unless a suspected terrorist)" thing, news sources don't say some has commited a crime in the UK, until they have been found guilty. By adding 'allegedly' the news source can't be sued by the person if they are later found innocent.
In this case the crime is blackmail/extortion, and it is alleged until/if they are found guilty.
It's a running joke on the popular UK satrical news quiz Have I Got News For You they will say very rude and outrageous (although sometimes true) things about politicians and celebs, then add "...alegedly" afterwards.
And HTML allows you to decide how a website looks? Sure.
I don't know what browser you use, but I use FireFox, and I can choose to overide the web pages fonts and colours. I can set up my own style sheet and have it overide the sites' (for years I browsed with one that basic black and white and didn't show most images). I can also block specific images, and disable certain JavaScript functionality. That's before extentions like AdBlock and Nuke Anything that let me remove bits of pages with great control.
So, for a HTML + CSS + JavaScript pages I have a lot of control how it appears, and those rules apply to every page. I guess a flash programmer could write equivilent stuff for their site, but I never seen it happen, and I'd still have to set any display preferences on that site.
Thing with a sale is it is one sale if you kinda liked it, and one sale if you think it is the best music ever.
Of course there is no objective measure of the quality of things like music. You can measure the tehcnical skill of a musician to some degree, but beyond that you just have a combination of how popular it is at the time, and how popular it remains afterwards.
There isn't anything wrong with liking something that isn't good. I enjoy plenty of bad movies, they are fun, and enjoyable, but bad. Many people are too invested in what they enjoy, and don't, and feel that everything they like has to be good and defended, and everything they don't must be bad (or they would like it), and attacked.
Britney certainly isn't my taste (in music...), I don't like much pop. She does appear to do well crafted pop though, and these days (and for a good while now) look and dance are as much a part of pop as music. I don't think she is particularly talented, beyond her assets, but lots of people enjoy listening to her, and more power to them. Why some people who don't enjoy it have to knock them I don't understand.
Re:This is about as useful as saying...
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IT's Musical Habits
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Admittedly it isn't serious, but how is saying that, say, developers like heavy metal is going a bit far? If most of them do like heavy metal (not that this survey proves that), wouldn't it infact be completely accurate?
To ascribe the reason to that to the sort of work they do and therefore the sort of brain they have may be going a bit far, particularly as there may be other factors (e.g. some jobs held more commonly by older people who prefer older music). Nothing wrong with saying people who do X tend to like Y though, marketing research does it all the time. It's evil, being marketing, but often right.
The major difference seems to be that in the case of child porn, the pictures are a large factor in the abuse happening in the first case. This is almost never a motivation in murder (snuff films being largely a myth).
So it is an attempt to stem demand. You won't stop it, but you may reduce it, and so reduce the abuse.
Then there is the victim's privacy. I really doubt they want people legally owning pitcures or film of them being abused, although you could certainly extend that argument to other crime victims (or their relatives).
While a murder scene photo may be legal, I'm not so sure about sex crimes. Is it ever legal to knowingly posses pictures (or film) of someone having sex who either hasn't or can't give constent (to both the act and recording it)?
I'm a work, so I'm not Googling for the answer to that one. Ultimately I guess its illegal because our society view sexual crimes and crimes against children as being particularly disturbing, and posessing pictures of them for the purpose of getting your jollies is considered unacceptable.
The site doesn't actually link to anything secret, it is all available to the public. What it does do is make it very easy to find, particulalry compared to getting this stuff of government websites.
Re:Over 10,000 public CCTV cameras in LONDON alone
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1984 Comes To Boston
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· Score: 1
Yes, us Englanders (good thing you used the proper term there, we hate being called English!) alway toast the Queen first thing in the morning while wishing that the pesky democraic House of Commons would go away and we could go back to the days of the divine right of kings.
I was a die hard PC gamer, but after getting an X box year and a half ago I'm finding I increasingly play on the console. I'll try and explain why in a non-religious war type way.
Why? Well mainly it just works. I work with PCs all day, I program them and I'm pretty technical, but when I come home I don't want to mess around with mine. I want to game to relax, not have to worry about patches, drivers, strange crashed and so on. I've never owned a PC that has flawless run evey game I've stuck in it.
As for resolution, I think its pretty overrated in terms of graphical prettiness. I mean, I watch DVDs on the (non-HD) TV, and nobody ever bitches about the resolution. Are all things watched on TV ugly beucase of the resolution? Lots of things like dynamic lighting, bumb and shine mapping, animation quality, over-exposure/bloom and now things like normal mapping contribute to graphics quality.
Sitting much father back from the TV than a monitor I can't say I notice. Games like Halo, Ninja Gaiden, Soul Calibur II all look really pretty to me.
Lack of mouse only matters in RTS and FPS games, the two games I usually still play on the PC (and space sims, but that's pretty much a dead genre, and they need joysticks). You can get a mouse for most consoles if you really want. I'd never play an RTS on one, but I've found FPS playable. Yes, without as much control, but a worthwhile tradeoff for me for it working and coop with a friend. I certainly prefer console controllers for just about any other type of game, although you can get similar things for the PC.
Less buttons do limit complexity, but many games don't need to be particularly complex. Indeed I find many PCs games overly complex, but this is a matter of taste.
As for the fixed archtecture, not only is the console cheaper but two years after buying it it still plays the latest games. The great new PC hardware only benefits you if you want to go out any buy it, and fit it (last time I upgraded my graphics card I had to reinstall Windows afterwards).
With PCs it seems I either have an out of date one, or the latest graphics card that never worked properly. I played KotOR on the XBox and had one bug, once. Played it on the PC with the latest ATI card and it crashed all over the place. My friend had the latest NVIDIA card, and it crashed on that too. It wouldn't even run without updating the drviers (lots of fun on dial up).
Consoles are only massivley inferior to PCs under some pretty specific circumstances, and for some specific types of games. If those types of things apply to you, then the PC is propably best for you. For low hassel, pick up and play, just working the consoles rule.
That's why this solution wouldn't appeal to me. I'm still goingt to have to worry abour drivers, patches and all the PC problems, as well as the machine having a shorter life before being obsolete.
Of cause it is all just theory, all science is 'all just theory'. There isn't some magic stage beyond, you just have theories people have used for a long time anc can't prove wrong, or can't prove wrong under certain circumstances which they are used for.
Good ol' slippery slope argument, how we have missed you. If we use radio tagging on children or convicts, the rest of us will be next!
As for children, I don't know about your country, but in the UK you get some rights at 16. Giving rights based on age isn't a great way of doing things, but it's the only practical one people have. They are considered fully human, but they aren't considered fully responsible humans.
I know in the US it is possible to get legally emancipated from your parents, and get the rights of an adult sooner.
Here in the UK some criminals are radio tagged, often as part of parole or early release for non-violent criminals. Been done for ages.
Seems if I trust the police and prision system to look after criminals when they lock them up, I'd trust them with this (Group 4 private security are another matter). So far, no sign of tagging everyone else.
It's easy for us non-parents to throw around trite advice that all it takes is better parenting (although with two teachers in my family, I think the world really could do with better parenting).
Even the best parents though, are not infalible. Sure, all us reading Slashdot now made it, but some people didn't. I live in a block of flats, and I'd just come home this weekend when I heard a child calling out for their Mummy. So I went to see what was happening. One of the neighbours kids was by the entrance, by himself. He isn't old enough to do more than baby-talk, so I couldn't find out where his Mum was, but he had clearly got seperated from here.
Our flats are right by some shops and a public car park. There is a door, but it is often left unlocked. I'm not going to leave a little kid by himself, even if the odds of an evil child snatcher around are tiny. So I stay with him.
After a few minutes, Mum shows up. She had been getting something out the car, and he had wandered off. You see, its easy to say "keep an eye on him" but parents can't do it all the time, and maybe a tracking device would let them find them if they do wander off and there isn't a freindly neighbout around.
Am I pro tracking devices? I'm not sure, I'm not a parent, and until I am I don't think I can really make an informed decision. I am aware that just saying "parent better" is no solution. Technology is no substitute for good parenting, and we need more of it. However, sometimes good parenting may be no substiture for technology. Lets discuss how it could be useful, and avoid being abused, rather than make pointless cheap shots.
You did notice that Windows 2000 and XP are only OS effected by the exploit? Mozilla doesn't say "go run this program" it says "I have a something I don't know about, what does the OS have registered to do with it?"
Windows itsn't supposed to run a shell: request like this, MS was supposed to have fixed the bug in XP SP1 so that it wouldn't do this. You don't need to "magically" tell shell: is a security risk, it very obviously is. The Newsforge article has more details.
While keeping the tapes seems reasonable, making complaints easier looks rather like censorship through the backdoor.
Rather than a govenrment body directly cracking down, they can say they are responding to complaints, and fear of complaints may force some broadcasters to change things.
That is a bit tinfoil hat thinking, but some people in the current US admistration do seem very keen on "cleaning things up" (Ashcroft anyone?).
The robots never got around the laws they were programmed with. In one story they are working in a fairly high risk environment, where humans are exposed to radiation, slightly risky to humans, but will destroy a robot brain.
Warning, spoiler for the story follows.
The robots are modifed so the "will not allow a human to come to harm". One of the robots kills a human by dropping a weight on him, it lets it go, knowing it can catch it safely, so it isn't enandering the human. Then when it is falling, it doesn't have to catch it, becuase it misssing that part of the law. Calvin has to figuire out which one of the identical robots is the killer.
There are also some occastions where the robots have to harm someone to avoid greater harm, but they aren't getting around the three laws, but trying to follow them as best they can. The laws are their programming (if they are programmed that way, as the story demonstrates humans can make robots that aren't), and sometimes they act in ways the programmers didn't expect, but they never 'get around' them, the programmers just don't realise the consequences.
Like the effort to help a robot decide which human is more worth saving if they have to choose, which tells them to ingore things like appearance and results in a robot concluding that robots are more worth saving becuase they posses better qualities than humans. It's pretty much right in a way too, in Asimov's world the robots really are better and more noble than the humans, adn pretty much save the human race.
Its abusrd becuase it's useless. If someone wants to steal data, and you let them in the building, they can easily hide a storage device you won't find short of a strip search. Or in a dozen other ways once they have access to it.
If they don't want to steal data, it doesn't matter if they have a storage devide.
It's one of those stupid security measure that provide no actual security, but make some people feel more secure and better about things.
I deal with confidential data all the time, and I'm sitting here with a 40GB iRiver plugged into my machine that acts as a USB disk drive. If I wanted to steal the data, it's not like I'd need it.
Windows is most used desktop OS, if you have a whole load of people they are going to have problems, particularly the non-technical ones. If workplaces swithed to Macs or Linux those complaints would not magically go away. People would still lose thier work , machines would still crash. We used to have Macs and PCs on out network, and guess what? They both had about the same amount of issues (actaully the Macs had more, but only becuase the network admin software had problems with them).
Users like to blame screwups on the computers, often they don't uderstand what has happened. We actually used to have Macs at work as well as PCs, before they got removed they were no more reliable or better then the PCs (both worked fine most of the time).
Most non-technical people don't understand their computers, and often have problems becuase of it. Most of them use Windows, so yes when they complain about the computer its about Windows, but that is correlation, not causation. Sticking them on another OS wouldn't help. Except the non-technical home users, they may have an easier time with Macs due to the better hardware integration, but by that standard would be better with Windows than Linux.
As for your statmenet about stability, that is just not true. We have 2000 and XP on the desktops here and it is some much more stable than older versions, crashes are almost unheard of.
Data on servers routinely dissapears? Apart from the fact I've never seen this happen (occastionally, yes on PCs and Unix, and usually turns out to be user related, but routinely, no), what sort of cowboy outfit isn't backing up the data?. You should never be loosing more than a days worth.
I'm not a great Windows fan, it has its problems, but this sort of mindless groupthink Windows bashing ('Windoze' indeed, how witty) is irritating. Worse, it just makes those who push other OS look like irrational MS bashers and doesn't look at Window's real weakness with alternate systems could exploit.
Your point is real, but not really very relevant. Most people's fun at work has nothing to do with the OS they are using (unless it really sucks), and much more to do with other factors, like the nature of the work, and the tools.
I develop on windows and Unix machines for my job, the fun comes from the technical challanges of the software, I don't get a buzz logging into a computer becuase of its OS. Right now I prefer developing on windows becuase of the tools we have (Visual Studio, TOAD) make it much quicker and I can get on with the actual work. If those tools were on Unix, or Linux, or Mac OS I'd use those.
I don't get fun out of any OS, so I don't really care, I think this is true for most windows users. It isn't that they would suddenly get a thrill out of a different OS, its that they don't care about the OS much, so why use a niche one? (and on the desktop, everything non Windows is niche).
Its benefits are over-rated. Is it some badge of honour to continue to use an outdated, more complicated system of measurement?
Well, that's exactly how many Brits feel about the imperial system:). It's national pride that we aren't using some system the French, of all people, use.
Now take a look at a tape measure and tell me exactly where the.95375 mark is. It isn't there! The English system is much more accurate than the metric system is.
No human can read a tape measure to that degree of accuracy. You can see.9cm on the measure, you can propably judge the 0.95, but after that your into the realm of error anyway.
Here is the thing though, even if 5/16th is marked on your measure, you aren't really measuring to exactly 5/16ths. You have the same degree of error, your line on the meaure has some width, the measure isn't exact, or placed exaclty and so on. If your measuring to cut or nail that will have width.
The English system isn't more accurate (and I'm English, I use both), it is just equally inaccurate about simpler number. Yes you can't measure exactly 1/3 of a metre on a measure, but you can't measure exactly a 1/3 of a yard either.
There are times when one is easier than the other, metric rules for most scientific and engineering stuff, but imperial can be easier of everyday quick in your head calculation. But neither is more accurate.
Games also need lots of skills other than programming, more than most other apps. Level design, 2D and 3D art, sounds, possibly stories, CGI cutscence, dialog and so on.
While plenty of people do 2D and 3D art and levels for mods, trying to get them to work on a game that doesn't exist yet, and they can't see their results straight away, is going to be hard. Even harder if the tools to make the media for the game don't exist yet.
While games and other apps are part of it, much as I hate to say this having app compatibility is not a silver bullet and doesn't guarantee Linux being the dominant desktop OS.
Things like inertia and useability also have to be considered.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny, the reason I stay on Windows is exactly that, time. Yes, I have to use Windows update, or let it run in the background. Sometimes I have to wrestle with a graphics driver. As long as you keep WU and AV stuff up tp date, and avoid horrors liek IE and outlook, I find Windows XP very low maintence.
Generally though, software and hardware work pretty well. When I look at the time people using Linux sometimes spend getting thier hardware to work, getting the Windows programs (and games) to work, if at all, that keeps me away.
I use NIX at work, and I'm no big Windows fan, but valuing my time is exactly what keeps me off Linux.
Computers weren't designed to think; they were designed to follow instructions.
It seems to me, if you are trying to design a genuine AI, possibly from the ground up, that argument is meaningless. Sure, previous computers were not designed to think, but this one is.
Self-awareness is a property that the soul impinges on the mind, not an inherent property of neurons.
I'm curious how this works. I mean, if we go back far enough, our distant ancestors were not self aware. So I guess they had no souls, right? Was there a generation of proto-humans that suddenly had souls and self-awareness when their parents did not?
I've seen experiements designed to prove chimps are self aware. If you accept their results, does that mean chimps have souls? Do they go to heaven if they have been a good chimp?
The biggest problem with self-aware computers is that we can't even agree what it means, or how we would test it in a computer (the chimp experiment involved a chimp brain damagaed in a certain way). It may be the problem of designing a self-aware AI is too hard for the human brain, although we may be able to 'evolve' one.
It's a slippery thing, although at least we think we know it when we see it. Unlike, say, a soul, of which there is no evidence at all.
I've never understood this "creationism wins by default" argument. Even if evolution were proven wrong, that doesn't mean suddenly we should accept the ancient Jewish creation myth as true. Why not the ancient Greek, the Hindu or any other? As a "logic thinking guy" I'm not seeing much logic. Sure lots of people beleive it, but reality isn't a democracy.
If God did make everything, and us in his image, that doesn't seem humiliating. It means we matter, and are inherently important in someway. If we are just a cosmic accident in an uncaring universe, that seems a lot more diminishing to me.
I know, I'm responding to someone modded a troll, and Hawking's theories have nothing to do with evolution. Just wanted to get a few things off my chest.
Becuase of the whole "innocent until proven guilty (unless a suspected terrorist)" thing, news sources don't say some has commited a crime in the UK, until they have been found guilty. By adding 'allegedly' the news source can't be sued by the person if they are later found innocent.
In this case the crime is blackmail/extortion, and it is alleged until/if they are found guilty.
It's a running joke on the popular UK satrical news quiz Have I Got News For You they will say very rude and outrageous (although sometimes true) things about politicians and celebs, then add "...alegedly" afterwards.
And HTML allows you to decide how a website looks? Sure.
I don't know what browser you use, but I use FireFox, and I can choose to overide the web pages fonts and colours. I can set up my own style sheet and have it overide the sites' (for years I browsed with one that basic black and white and didn't show most images). I can also block specific images, and disable certain JavaScript functionality. That's before extentions like AdBlock and Nuke Anything that let me remove bits of pages with great control.
So, for a HTML + CSS + JavaScript pages I have a lot of control how it appears, and those rules apply to every page. I guess a flash programmer could write equivilent stuff for their site, but I never seen it happen, and I'd still have to set any display preferences on that site.
Thing with a sale is it is one sale if you kinda liked it, and one sale if you think it is the best music ever.
Of course there is no objective measure of the quality of things like music. You can measure the tehcnical skill of a musician to some degree, but beyond that you just have a combination of how popular it is at the time, and how popular it remains afterwards.
There isn't anything wrong with liking something that isn't good. I enjoy plenty of bad movies, they are fun, and enjoyable, but bad. Many people are too invested in what they enjoy, and don't, and feel that everything they like has to be good and defended, and everything they don't must be bad (or they would like it), and attacked.
Britney certainly isn't my taste (in music...), I don't like much pop. She does appear to do well crafted pop though, and these days (and for a good while now) look and dance are as much a part of pop as music. I don't think she is particularly talented, beyond her assets, but lots of people enjoy listening to her, and more power to them. Why some people who don't enjoy it have to knock them I don't understand.
Admittedly it isn't serious, but how is saying that, say, developers like heavy metal is going a bit far? If most of them do like heavy metal (not that this survey proves that), wouldn't it infact be completely accurate?
To ascribe the reason to that to the sort of work they do and therefore the sort of brain they have may be going a bit far, particularly as there may be other factors (e.g. some jobs held more commonly by older people who prefer older music). Nothing wrong with saying people who do X tend to like Y though, marketing research does it all the time. It's evil, being marketing, but often right.
The major difference seems to be that in the case of child porn, the pictures are a large factor in the abuse happening in the first case. This is almost never a motivation in murder (snuff films being largely a myth).
So it is an attempt to stem demand. You won't stop it, but you may reduce it, and so reduce the abuse.
Then there is the victim's privacy. I really doubt they want people legally owning pitcures or film of them being abused, although you could certainly extend that argument to other crime victims (or their relatives).
While a murder scene photo may be legal, I'm not so sure about sex crimes. Is it ever legal to knowingly posses pictures (or film) of someone having sex who either hasn't or can't give constent (to both the act and recording it)?
I'm a work, so I'm not Googling for the answer to that one. Ultimately I guess its illegal because our society view sexual crimes and crimes against children as being particularly disturbing, and posessing pictures of them for the purpose of getting your jollies is considered unacceptable.
The site doesn't actually link to anything secret, it is all available to the public. What it does do is make it very easy to find, particulalry compared to getting this stuff of government websites.
Yes, us Englanders (good thing you used the proper term there, we hate being called English!) alway toast the Queen first thing in the morning while wishing that the pesky democraic House of Commons would go away and we could go back to the days of the divine right of kings.
:)
Well, Sun readers do anway
I was a die hard PC gamer, but after getting an X box year and a half ago I'm finding I increasingly play on the console. I'll try and explain why in a non-religious war type way.
Why? Well mainly it just works. I work with PCs all day, I program them and I'm pretty technical, but when I come home I don't want to mess around with mine. I want to game to relax, not have to worry about patches, drivers, strange crashed and so on. I've never owned a PC that has flawless run evey game I've stuck in it.
As for resolution, I think its pretty overrated in terms of graphical prettiness. I mean, I watch DVDs on the (non-HD) TV, and nobody ever bitches about the resolution. Are all things watched on TV ugly beucase of the resolution? Lots of things like dynamic lighting, bumb and shine mapping, animation quality, over-exposure/bloom and now things like normal mapping contribute to graphics quality.
Sitting much father back from the TV than a monitor I can't say I notice. Games like Halo, Ninja Gaiden, Soul Calibur II all look really pretty to me.
Lack of mouse only matters in RTS and FPS games, the two games I usually still play on the PC (and space sims, but that's pretty much a dead genre, and they need joysticks). You can get a mouse for most consoles if you really want. I'd never play an RTS on one, but I've found FPS playable. Yes, without as much control, but a worthwhile tradeoff for me for it working and coop with a friend. I certainly prefer console controllers for just about any other type of game, although you can get similar things for the PC.
Less buttons do limit complexity, but many games don't need to be particularly complex. Indeed I find many PCs games overly complex, but this is a matter of taste.
As for the fixed archtecture, not only is the console cheaper but two years after buying it it still plays the latest games. The great new PC hardware only benefits you if you want to go out any buy it, and fit it (last time I upgraded my graphics card I had to reinstall Windows afterwards).
With PCs it seems I either have an out of date one, or the latest graphics card that never worked properly. I played KotOR on the XBox and had one bug, once. Played it on the PC with the latest ATI card and it crashed all over the place. My friend had the latest NVIDIA card, and it crashed on that too. It wouldn't even run without updating the drviers (lots of fun on dial up).
Consoles are only massivley inferior to PCs under some pretty specific circumstances, and for some specific types of games. If those types of things apply to you, then the PC is propably best for you. For low hassel, pick up and play, just working the consoles rule.
That's why this solution wouldn't appeal to me. I'm still goingt to have to worry abour drivers, patches and all the PC problems, as well as the machine having a shorter life before being obsolete.
Of cause it is all just theory, all science is 'all just theory'. There isn't some magic stage beyond, you just have theories people have used for a long time anc can't prove wrong, or can't prove wrong under certain circumstances which they are used for.
Good ol' slippery slope argument, how we have missed you. If we use radio tagging on children or convicts, the rest of us will be next!
As for children, I don't know about your country, but in the UK you get some rights at 16. Giving rights based on age isn't a great way of doing things, but it's the only practical one people have. They are considered fully human, but they aren't considered fully responsible humans.
I know in the US it is possible to get legally emancipated from your parents, and get the rights of an adult sooner.
Here in the UK some criminals are radio tagged, often as part of parole or early release for non-violent criminals. Been done for ages.
Seems if I trust the police and prision system to look after criminals when they lock them up, I'd trust them with this (Group 4 private security are another matter). So far, no sign of tagging everyone else.
It's easy for us non-parents to throw around trite advice that all it takes is better parenting (although with two teachers in my family, I think the world really could do with better parenting).
Even the best parents though, are not infalible. Sure, all us reading Slashdot now made it, but some people didn't. I live in a block of flats, and I'd just come home this weekend when I heard a child calling out for their Mummy. So I went to see what was happening. One of the neighbours kids was by the entrance, by himself. He isn't old enough to do more than baby-talk, so I couldn't find out where his Mum was, but he had clearly got seperated from here.
Our flats are right by some shops and a public car park. There is a door, but it is often left unlocked. I'm not going to leave a little kid by himself, even if the odds of an evil child snatcher around are tiny. So I stay with him.
After a few minutes, Mum shows up. She had been getting something out the car, and he had wandered off. You see, its easy to say "keep an eye on him" but parents can't do it all the time, and maybe a tracking device would let them find them if they do wander off and there isn't a freindly neighbout around.
Am I pro tracking devices? I'm not sure, I'm not a parent, and until I am I don't think I can really make an informed decision. I am aware that just saying "parent better" is no solution. Technology is no substitute for good parenting, and we need more of it. However, sometimes good parenting may be no substiture for technology. Lets discuss how it could be useful, and avoid being abused, rather than make pointless cheap shots.
You did notice that Windows 2000 and XP are only OS effected by the exploit? Mozilla doesn't say "go run this program" it says "I have a something I don't know about, what does the OS have registered to do with it?"
Windows itsn't supposed to run a shell: request like this, MS was supposed to have fixed the bug in XP SP1 so that it wouldn't do this. You don't need to "magically" tell shell: is a security risk, it very obviously is. The Newsforge article has more details.
While keeping the tapes seems reasonable, making complaints easier looks rather like censorship through the backdoor.
Rather than a govenrment body directly cracking down, they can say they are responding to complaints, and fear of complaints may force some broadcasters to change things.
That is a bit tinfoil hat thinking, but some people in the current US admistration do seem very keen on "cleaning things up" (Ashcroft anyone?).
The robots never got around the laws they were programmed with. In one story they are working in a fairly high risk environment, where humans are exposed to radiation, slightly risky to humans, but will destroy a robot brain.
Warning, spoiler for the story follows.
The robots are modifed so the "will not allow a human to come to harm". One of the robots kills a human by dropping a weight on him, it lets it go, knowing it can catch it safely, so it isn't enandering the human. Then when it is falling, it doesn't have to catch it, becuase it misssing that part of the law. Calvin has to figuire out which one of the identical robots is the killer.
There are also some occastions where the robots have to harm someone to avoid greater harm, but they aren't getting around the three laws, but trying to follow them as best they can. The laws are their programming (if they are programmed that way, as the story demonstrates humans can make robots that aren't), and sometimes they act in ways the programmers didn't expect, but they never 'get around' them, the programmers just don't realise the consequences.
Like the effort to help a robot decide which human is more worth saving if they have to choose, which tells them to ingore things like appearance and results in a robot concluding that robots are more worth saving becuase they posses better qualities than humans. It's pretty much right in a way too, in Asimov's world the robots really are better and more noble than the humans, adn pretty much save the human race.
Its abusrd becuase it's useless. If someone wants to steal data, and you let them in the building, they can easily hide a storage device you won't find short of a strip search. Or in a dozen other ways once they have access to it.
If they don't want to steal data, it doesn't matter if they have a storage devide.
It's one of those stupid security measure that provide no actual security, but make some people feel more secure and better about things.
I deal with confidential data all the time, and I'm sitting here with a 40GB iRiver plugged into my machine that acts as a USB disk drive. If I wanted to steal the data, it's not like I'd need it.
Windows is most used desktop OS, if you have a whole load of people they are going to have problems, particularly the non-technical ones. If workplaces swithed to Macs or Linux those complaints would not magically go away. People would still lose thier work , machines would still crash. We used to have Macs and PCs on out network, and guess what? They both had about the same amount of issues (actaully the Macs had more, but only becuase the network admin software had problems with them).
Users like to blame screwups on the computers, often they don't uderstand what has happened. We actually used to have Macs at work as well as PCs, before they got removed they were no more reliable or better then the PCs (both worked fine most of the time).
Most non-technical people don't understand their computers, and often have problems becuase of it. Most of them use Windows, so yes when they complain about the computer its about Windows, but that is correlation, not causation. Sticking them on another OS wouldn't help. Except the non-technical home users, they may have an easier time with Macs due to the better hardware integration, but by that standard would be better with Windows than Linux.
As for your statmenet about stability, that is just not true. We have 2000 and XP on the desktops here and it is some much more stable than older versions, crashes are almost unheard of.
Data on servers routinely dissapears? Apart from the fact I've never seen this happen (occastionally, yes on PCs and Unix, and usually turns out to be user related, but routinely, no), what sort of cowboy outfit isn't backing up the data?. You should never be loosing more than a days worth.
I'm not a great Windows fan, it has its problems, but this sort of mindless groupthink Windows bashing ('Windoze' indeed, how witty) is irritating. Worse, it just makes those who push other OS look like irrational MS bashers and doesn't look at Window's real weakness with alternate systems could exploit.
Your point is real, but not really very relevant. Most people's fun at work has nothing to do with the OS they are using (unless it really sucks), and much more to do with other factors, like the nature of the work, and the tools.
I develop on windows and Unix machines for my job, the fun comes from the technical challanges of the software, I don't get a buzz logging into a computer becuase of its OS. Right now I prefer developing on windows becuase of the tools we have (Visual Studio, TOAD) make it much quicker and I can get on with the actual work. If those tools were on Unix, or Linux, or Mac OS I'd use those.
I don't get fun out of any OS, so I don't really care, I think this is true for most windows users. It isn't that they would suddenly get a thrill out of a different OS, its that they don't care about the OS much, so why use a niche one? (and on the desktop, everything non Windows is niche).
Its benefits are over-rated. Is it some badge of honour to continue to use an outdated, more complicated system of measurement?
Well, that's exactly how many Brits feel about the imperial system :). It's national pride that we aren't using some system the French, of all people, use.
Now take a look at a tape measure and tell me exactly where the .95375 mark is. It isn't there! The English system is much more accurate than the metric system is.
No human can read a tape measure to that degree of accuracy. You can see .9cm on the measure, you can propably judge the 0.95, but after that your into the realm of error anyway.
Here is the thing though, even if 5/16th is marked on your measure, you aren't really measuring to exactly 5/16ths. You have the same degree of error, your line on the meaure has some width, the measure isn't exact, or placed exaclty and so on. If your measuring to cut or nail that will have width.
The English system isn't more accurate (and I'm English, I use both), it is just equally inaccurate about simpler number. Yes you can't measure exactly 1/3 of a metre on a measure, but you can't measure exactly a 1/3 of a yard either.
There are times when one is easier than the other, metric rules for most scientific and engineering stuff, but imperial can be easier of everyday quick in your head calculation. But neither is more accurate.
Games also need lots of skills other than programming, more than most other apps. Level design, 2D and 3D art, sounds, possibly stories, CGI cutscence, dialog and so on.
While plenty of people do 2D and 3D art and levels for mods, trying to get them to work on a game that doesn't exist yet, and they can't see their results straight away, is going to be hard. Even harder if the tools to make the media for the game don't exist yet.
While games and other apps are part of it, much as I hate to say this having app compatibility is not a silver bullet and doesn't guarantee Linux being the dominant desktop OS.
Things like inertia and useability also have to be considered.