There was only one title from (gaming genius) Jeff Minter: Attack of the Mutant Camels. Personally I think Megagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time or Sheep in Space would have been better examples of his unconventional naming style. As some have already pointed out some of the game names that made the list make perfect sense when taken in context.
for example, by making you produce your ID card when you get a job, so everyone is forced to either "volunteer" for a card, or else be unemployed.
It's may be restrictive than that. Without a card you won't be able to claim benefits (social security) and therefore will have no income. You won't be able to operate a bank account either, or negotiate your taxes, so being self employed is out. Ironically the only people who will be able to exist without an ID card will be professional criminals, or perhaps subsistence farmers.
The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp.
While I accept this this Orwellian vision is not quite the same as the instance contained in the story, it seems the logical conclusion. If a law is secret how can one obey it? If a law cannot be read does it even exist? If we are to be punished for breaking laws that cannot be shown to exist then what hope is there for our Freedoms?
I am not suggesting that there is a cover up or that if a cover up was attempted it would be successful, only that should some organisation discover it is responsible for causing autism in a large number of people it may attempt to cover it up.
I realise you were generalising, but I find your post a touch offensive. I am the parent of an autistic child and I have as much disdain for new age crystal swingers as any self respecting geek. Given that autism seems particularly prevalent in the children of technically minded people I suspect your assertion is unfounded. The rise in the incidence of autism cannot be explained by increased awareness and diagnosis alone, it's much too big for that. This would tend to suggest that there is some environmental factor that is causing autism on our children. I suspect that were some company to realise that it was responsible for this then there would be a lot of pressure to cover it up, such a cover-up may even be seen as right and proper according to capitalist ethics (preserve the stock price, protect the shareholders).
The Enemy Territory source code has been released, had it been considered I'm sure it would have come in in the #1 or #2 spot. ET is based on the Q3 engine, which has also been open sourced. Generally I'm not a fan of shooters, but I've probably spent thousands of hours playing ET. It may be that games that were developed with a closed source model and then later the source was released were not considered, I dunno, it's slashdotted.
Konq was the killer app for me, I have to confess I'm a little worried about Dolphin becoming the default file manager. I've not used Dolphin much yet, but it will have to be pretty damn good to match what Konq could do. Will I still be able to have terminal, web and file panes all within the same tab? How about dragging images from a website to my/home within a single window, or middle clicking a file or link to open it in a viewer in a new tab? Konq allowed me to keep the amount of open windows to a minimum. I guess time will tell and I should start playing with Dolphin.
I should note that I bloody hate Dolphins (my ex loved the damn things). They aren't as cute as you think, they smell of fish and have attempted genocide on porpoises and even attack humans. Why is it that every crystal swinging hippie who lives 1000 miles from the sea wants to be a marine biologist? Dolphins!
Umm??? I thought Heinlein... was just another second-rate American pulp writer with a fascist bent.
You were wrong. Right-wing yes, but the Libertarian (good) kind if I read his books correctly. He did have some peculiar ideas, but you only become a fascist when you try and force your ideas on others IMO. Personally I love his work, at his best he was on a par with the likes of H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley.
I think I'm a geek, this reads like a psychological profile of me. I am however relatively poor for a native of a western society. Personally I'm an anarchist, although not the window smashing reactionary kind. I suspect we are broadly libertarian because we are smart, we can see through the lies that the authoritarians use to bolster their authority.
I'm convinced, due to knowledge about human nature, that the climate change problem will only be solved with market-driven solutions.
I'm convinced, due to knowledge about human nature, that the climate change problem will only be solved by, well, climate change. Mankind has shown time and again that we are incapable of mass action now to prevent crisis later, the stories of Easter Island and the ancient population of New Zealand are good examples. If we (as a species) are lucky our environmental impact will be reduced to a sustainable level before we tip the scales beyond the point of no return.
I heard once that the reason jam preserves fruit is because it is so sugar rich that bacteria drowns in it's own waste before it can establish a viable colony. While I am not qualified to comment on the accuracy of this statement it does seem to strike a chord in relation to to the rise of man, particularly since the industrial revolution.
[tinfoilhat]Yes, it's unenforceable. Yes, they know it's unenforceable.Yes, they will use it's enforceability to justify new draconian controls on the internet (like DRM, but more evil and less greedy). Think of the children!![/tinfoilhat]
I'm a UK citizen and resident. In my experience government departments don't talk to each other and it does lead to problems for everyday people, this would be a valid way of working towards solving that problem. I'm sure our glorious leaders are aware of the benefits it will give them in controlling the population, and I expect they think it's a good idea. IMHO the bureaucracy has become so complex and unwieldy that even it's professional administrators can't keep up.
Of course this is a UK government IT project, so it is doomed to failure.
As the parent of 3 children in the Scottish school system (which is substantially different from the system in England and Wales) I can confirm that M$ has a strangle hold on education in my country. A couple of years ago I sent a detailed letter expressing my concerns to the local director of education. After some time I received a considered response saying that M$ is the only game in town and that alternatives are irrelevant at best. Some of the phrasing in this letter I recognised from previous/. stories concerning M$ FUD, I suspect that the director of education contacted her IT dept. who in turn contacted their software vendor (M$) seeking reasons to justify the status quo.
Personally I blame the IT staff who tend to be very M$ centric and in the business for the perceived financial rewards rather than the love of IT itself. They will never recommend the use of something they don't understand as they will have to retrain and/or find themselves looking for another job. Windows as we know it is on the way out, in a decade or so it will no longer have a monopoly on the desktop or anywhere else.
It is my belief that teaching 'The Windows way' is harmful to my children's education, they would be much better served by learning software that conforms to true standards and that fosters a real understanding of the principles involved in IT rather than simple button clicking. I run Linux exclusively at home (I've been Windows free since ME), my daughters both understand IT well and rarely have to come to me for help with their web pages or anything else. They have both avoided studying IT subjects at school as they view the IT syllabus as 'A joke', their words, not mine.
Perhaps the science that gave rise to the refrigerator mother theory wasn't good science, I can't really comment on that since I am not a scientist. I can comment on autism as I have an 8 year old autistic son. Until the age of 4 he was raised soley by his mother, a particularly emotionally distant person. When he came to live with me he couldn't talk, wasn't toilet trained, didn't make eye contact and didn't even know what a cuddle was. He gave the impression that he was in his own little bubble or reality. A couple of months after coming to live with me he was talking, making eye contact and enjoying interacting with the rest of the family. More importantly he seemed connected to our reality. He will always be autistic, but his progress continues within a warm and loving environment.
My experienceh is subjective not scientific, but regardless of the quality of the scientific work done in TFA or the earlier work I linked to the underlying assertion rings true, at least in my son's case. Such a huge increase in autism IMO cannot be explained away by better detection and diagnosis. The nurture of children is not as high a priority for some parents as it once was, often TV is used to occupy kids while the parents get on with other things. There may well be other factors, and lack of parental warmth may not be a factor in all cases, but I feel that the scientific community has become wary of suggesting that the relationship with the mother has any part to play.
There was some research that linked an unusual relationship with the mother with the incidence of autism, although it has fallen foul of modern political correctness it has to my knowledge never been disproved. TVs are incapable if being emotionally responsive, and I would expect that parents who leave their kids in front of a TV for long periods are more likely to be emotionally distant from their children.
Kubuntu works fine for me. IMO Gentoo isn't for new converts from windows, someone who tries and fails to make the switch is much worse for GNU/Linux adoption than someone who never switches at all.
I've used both Smoothwall and then IPCop for extended periods on my own home router box (an old P200/128MB). I have now been using M0n0wall for a couple of years and I am very happy with it. It doesn't have the silly coloured NIC idea, I can just add new subnets as I require and name them myself. I find it more powerful and intuitive than IPCop in other ways too. IPCop served me well for a long time but I don't think it's quite on the same level as M0n0wall, I can't comment on the non-free versions of Smoothwall.
As for pfSense, it looks interesting, I may well give it a try
Slashdot Mirror
There was only one title from (gaming genius) Jeff Minter: Attack of the Mutant Camels. Personally I think Megagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time or Sheep in Space would have been better examples of his unconventional naming style. As some have already pointed out some of the game names that made the list make perfect sense when taken in context.
...and an almost fanatical devotion to developers, developers, developers!
I would have thought the BOFH would have a lower /. id :o
It's may be restrictive than that. Without a card you won't be able to claim benefits (social security) and therefore will have no income. You won't be able to operate a bank account either, or negotiate your taxes, so being self employed is out. Ironically the only people who will be able to exist without an ID card will be professional criminals, or perhaps subsistence farmers.
Life imitates art once again.
While I accept this this Orwellian vision is not quite the same as the instance contained in the story, it seems the logical conclusion. If a law is secret how can one obey it? If a law cannot be read does it even exist? If we are to be punished for breaking laws that cannot be shown to exist then what hope is there for our Freedoms?
I am not suggesting that there is a cover up or that if a cover up was attempted it would be successful, only that should some organisation discover it is responsible for causing autism in a large number of people it may attempt to cover it up.
Understood, and to be fair I never bought into the vaccine theory :)
I realise you were generalising, but I find your post a touch offensive. I am the parent of an autistic child and I have as much disdain for new age crystal swingers as any self respecting geek. Given that autism seems particularly prevalent in the children of technically minded people I suspect your assertion is unfounded. The rise in the incidence of autism cannot be explained by increased awareness and diagnosis alone, it's much too big for that. This would tend to suggest that there is some environmental factor that is causing autism on our children. I suspect that were some company to realise that it was responsible for this then there would be a lot of pressure to cover it up, such a cover-up may even be seen as right and proper according to capitalist ethics (preserve the stock price, protect the shareholders).
The Enemy Territory source code has been released, had it been considered I'm sure it would have come in in the #1 or #2 spot. ET is based on the Q3 engine, which has also been open sourced. Generally I'm not a fan of shooters, but I've probably spent thousands of hours playing ET. It may be that games that were developed with a closed source model and then later the source was released were not considered, I dunno, it's slashdotted.
The Martians will be fine. The Old Ones just need to grok the rock and remove it from the universe, at which point there will be nothing to see here.
Konq was the killer app for me, I have to confess I'm a little worried about Dolphin becoming the default file manager. I've not used Dolphin much yet, but it will have to be pretty damn good to match what Konq could do. Will I still be able to have terminal, web and file panes all within the same tab? How about dragging images from a website to my /home within a single window, or middle clicking a file or link to open it in a viewer in a new tab? Konq allowed me to keep the amount of open windows to a minimum. I guess time will tell and I should start playing with Dolphin.
I should note that I bloody hate Dolphins (my ex loved the damn things). They aren't as cute as you think, they smell of fish and have attempted genocide on porpoises and even attack humans. Why is it that every crystal swinging hippie who lives 1000 miles from the sea wants to be a marine biologist? Dolphins!
K2Fe++Cl42(H2O)?
I think I'm a geek, this reads like a psychological profile of me. I am however relatively poor for a native of a western society. Personally I'm an anarchist, although not the window smashing reactionary kind. I suspect we are broadly libertarian because we are smart, we can see through the lies that the authoritarians use to bolster their authority.
I'm convinced, due to knowledge about human nature, that the climate change problem will only be solved by, well, climate change. Mankind has shown time and again that we are incapable of mass action now to prevent crisis later, the stories of Easter Island and the ancient population of New Zealand are good examples. If we (as a species) are lucky our environmental impact will be reduced to a sustainable level before we tip the scales beyond the point of no return.
I heard once that the reason jam preserves fruit is because it is so sugar rich that bacteria drowns in it's own waste before it can establish a viable colony. While I am not qualified to comment on the accuracy of this statement it does seem to strike a chord in relation to to the rise of man, particularly since the industrial revolution.
[tinfoilhat]Yes, it's unenforceable. Yes, they know it's unenforceable.Yes, they will use it's enforceability to justify new draconian controls on the internet (like DRM, but more evil and less greedy). Think of the children!![/tinfoilhat]
I'm a UK citizen and resident. In my experience government departments don't talk to each other and it does lead to problems for everyday people, this would be a valid way of working towards solving that problem. I'm sure our glorious leaders are aware of the benefits it will give them in controlling the population, and I expect they think it's a good idea. IMHO the bureaucracy has become so complex and unwieldy that even it's professional administrators can't keep up.
Of course this is a UK government IT project, so it is doomed to failure.
As the parent of 3 children in the Scottish school system (which is substantially different from the system in England and Wales) I can confirm that M$ has a strangle hold on education in my country. A couple of years ago I sent a detailed letter expressing my concerns to the local director of education. After some time I received a considered response saying that M$ is the only game in town and that alternatives are irrelevant at best. Some of the phrasing in this letter I recognised from previous /. stories concerning M$ FUD, I suspect that the director of education contacted her IT dept. who in turn contacted their software vendor (M$) seeking reasons to justify the status quo.
Personally I blame the IT staff who tend to be very M$ centric and in the business for the perceived financial rewards rather than the love of IT itself. They will never recommend the use of something they don't understand as they will have to retrain and/or find themselves looking for another job. Windows as we know it is on the way out, in a decade or so it will no longer have a monopoly on the desktop or anywhere else.
It is my belief that teaching 'The Windows way' is harmful to my children's education, they would be much better served by learning software that conforms to true standards and that fosters a real understanding of the principles involved in IT rather than simple button clicking. I run Linux exclusively at home (I've been Windows free since ME), my daughters both understand IT well and rarely have to come to me for help with their web pages or anything else. They have both avoided studying IT subjects at school as they view the IT syllabus as 'A joke', their words, not mine.
...or switch to the excellent Postgres which is more open and a more complete SQL implementation than MySQL anyway.
Expect to see more things like this happening as the IT landscape undergoes it's coming changes.
Response
.I'm not trying to assign blame, and I agree with your point about attention starved children getting fasionable diagnoses of autism or ADHD.
Perhaps the science that gave rise to the refrigerator mother theory wasn't good science, I can't really comment on that since I am not a scientist. I can comment on autism as I have an 8 year old autistic son. Until the age of 4 he was raised soley by his mother, a particularly emotionally distant person. When he came to live with me he couldn't talk, wasn't toilet trained, didn't make eye contact and didn't even know what a cuddle was. He gave the impression that he was in his own little bubble or reality. A couple of months after coming to live with me he was talking, making eye contact and enjoying interacting with the rest of the family. More importantly he seemed connected to our reality. He will always be autistic, but his progress continues within a warm and loving environment.
My experienceh is subjective not scientific, but regardless of the quality of the scientific work done in TFA or the earlier work I linked to the underlying assertion rings true, at least in my son's case. Such a huge increase in autism IMO cannot be explained away by better detection and diagnosis. The nurture of children is not as high a priority for some parents as it once was, often TV is used to occupy kids while the parents get on with other things. There may well be other factors, and lack of parental warmth may not be a factor in all cases, but I feel that the scientific community has become wary of suggesting that the relationship with the mother has any part to play.
There was some research that linked an unusual relationship with the mother with the incidence of autism, although it has fallen foul of modern political correctness it has to my knowledge never been disproved. TVs are incapable if being emotionally responsive, and I would expect that parents who leave their kids in front of a TV for long periods are more likely to be emotionally distant from their children.
Kubuntu works fine for me. IMO Gentoo isn't for new converts from windows, someone who tries and fails to make the switch is much worse for GNU/Linux adoption than someone who never switches at all.
I've used both Smoothwall and then IPCop for extended periods on my own home router box (an old P200/128MB). I have now been using M0n0wall for a couple of years and I am very happy with it. It doesn't have the silly coloured NIC idea, I can just add new subnets as I require and name them myself. I find it more powerful and intuitive than IPCop in other ways too. IPCop served me well for a long time but I don't think it's quite on the same level as M0n0wall, I can't comment on the non-free versions of Smoothwall.
As for pfSense, it looks interesting, I may well give it a try