We can't trust companies because they have obvious profit motives. Leaves only one thing.
We use governments to test the water, the food, the air, the cars, everything pretty much which is essential to our lives but we do not have individually the resources to test.
The government doesn't test my cooking (that is what kids are for) because I have means to test that myself (if the milk still comes out of the carton, it is fresh enough for guests) but I do not have the means to test a can of Coke I buy on the street, so I expect/need someone else to check that these things are not made by just putting any old sugar and water and rust together, but only properly tested sugar, water and rust.
I would reason that computers have become such a common part of our lives and that we can get into so much trouble if we get it wrong, that government warning us about unsafe products, is the right thing to do.
Or wouldn't you want forced warnings and recalls if the brakes on your car turn out to be faulty? Guess who does that? You car maker? Think again, goverment regulators, my those guys just seem to be everywhere don't they.
Or have you forgotten the proof against Mad Cow disease being to feed your kid beef?
Labour got elected because the entire country was fed up with the sleaze of the conservatives. Watch all 30+ seasons of Have I Got News For You. It is amazing to see the transformation over the years. Blair was a hero, simply for not being the conservatives. The problem, he was.
This is what happens in a democracy when people vote for their wallet, not the country as whole, or their own long term future (the real one, not the one where you will hire Bill Gates as a butler).
Take the railroads (and american readers, please remember that in the denser populated areas, trains make more sense, and in old cities like london, public transport is the only solution, no space for millions of SUV drivers), the conservatives want low taxes and railroads are very very expensive. They provide a lot, but it is oh so tempting to cut down on maintenance just a bit. And then another bit. And a bit more. And then a big "accident" happens and the entire country grinds to a halt and for what? Lower taxes? No... for the promise of lower taxes but actually tax increases. Because everytime a tax seems to be lowered it comes down DOUBLE in some other form AND then afterwards you got to pay for the mess that the cost cutting measure cost. Such as fixing all the railroads in a hurry and months of disrupted service.
But Blair couldn't do anything about it. Left/Right european governments are basically about one spending to fix the cost cutting of the other side BUT neither side getting the full effect because then the populations gets fed up with the effects and switches their votes around.
Left wing build railroads, but raise taxes for it. People get fed up. Right wing cut spending, the railroads decline, people get fed up, long before any real tax cuts could be realized. And so on, back and forth.
It is the reason dictatorships "work". Consistent long term policy. Dubai and such places seem to make things happen because one person says "make it so" and nobody can turn it around in two years time.
In some ways, the left in England and America, should have just called it quits. Obama should have just said, "later rednecks" and watch the republicans ruin the entire country. Now he is being blamed for not being able to fix eight years of mis-management. Sometimes the top-job really isn't worth having.
And samething roughly happened in the UK. Blair got in, but with what? A labour party twisted between old and new labour. A economy down the drain, decades of cost cutting having put the country on the edge of disaster and a party that had no experience in leading with many of the people who did have a clue as "corrupted" as the conservatives by being in cosy jobs for to long.
People now are voting conservative again the UK. Right... that is going to solve things. These were the same people you threw out before. Think they changed their ways?
People often say that democracy is the worsed form of government, bar everything else. Perhaps that is true, but I think democracy also has a shelf life. Have it for to long and it start to rot.
The guy I am responding to says government needs to understand the scientific method. How can they? The voter doesn't, and they still are the ones who elect the guy in charge. The moment the voter can vote for a leader with bad teeth who doesn't smooth talk and isn't all that likeable but gets the boring accounting job that is government done, then we can move forward.
Exactly WHAT is Obama, or Blair, or any modern leader good at, except making speeches? And yet, we expect these people to turn our country around.
There are people who can do that. The kind of people who are hired to handle banktupt companies or turn companies around from the brink of disaster. They are very grey, very quiet, often downright ugly, little men who read papers a lot and don't attract much attention at all. And they tend to stay the hell away from anything to do with politics because NO solid leadership can ever be based on a popularity vote.
If you are still waiting on a strategy to move away from IE6, you will NEVER develop a strategy.
Why would google spend costly resources to support an inferior product from a company that is using said product to fight them and everyone else who wants to do business on the web?
IE6 is not a market for Google, if you use IE6, you are NOT a google user.
This has been very long in coming and nobody remotely competent enough to tie his or her own shoe laces still uses IE6 for the web. And companies that got some horrid activex, they can use IE6 as much as they want, just install another browser next to it to access the web.
Really, just how much time do you need to upgrade software anyway. I could have audited Firefox's sourcecode in this time.
Skip it. Honestly, this process is so trustworthy, it had you use IE6 all these years.
Always cracks me up, people claiming they are stuck with IE6, for security reasons... no, it because you outsourced your IT to a crap company, that doesn't want to spend a penny on keeping up to date because they know you will pay them anyway.
How are the banks anyway? How much dole did they collect? Billions in government handouts?
Maybe the US car industry? How much did they get from the state?
Electricity? How is California doing?
Trains? The US gotten up-to-date yet, or still clunking along?
How about the medical industry? More money spend in the US then anywhere else, yet one of the worsed results.
Private industry, if you want to be sure it won't work, will be over budget and delayed until the end of time.
And before you protest, it was the STATE that put men on the moon. Private industry hasn't even come lose in all these years. Count the years between US starting and the appollo 11 mission, then the years of private spaceflight. Notice a difference? And private industry doesn't have to do all the early research anymore.
The case you mention SHOULD have been heard with the death penalty as demand. For the woman in question, clearly she preffered to die instead of being exposed, so give her what she wants.
Only if we start punishing the frivilous lawsuits, then can we stop them.
Eh, just last week, I lost my wallet? They promised it was in the mail and all they needed was my address and social security and bank details... mail is a bit slow but I am sure I will get my wallet back any day now.
MS is NOT selling its soul in China for revenue. You cannot sell what you do not have. Ballmer and Gates have no morals. Oh, they are not evil, that takes a commitment. They just have absolutely no moral compass whatsoever. Look at how Bill Gates does his charity work, always with an angle to somehow better MS. It is the way he thinks.
And before you defend him, remember that is a LOT easier to have morals if you are rich. If MS pulled out of China what would happen to these two guys? Absolutely nothing. They ain't doing this to survive, they are doing it for yet another billion whose difference they will never ever notice.
Thanks for making it so clear that there is no hope for self-regulation at all. The only hope to keep companies behaving even the slightest therefor must come from government control. Nothing like a honest capitalist to make clear the need for government interference.
You would have far less problems with speeding if all cars just work and had a speed limiter installed that just worked.
There would be less theft if every car was bio-keyed to the person and every person tracked...
Do I need to go on?
Why are the privacy nutcases always so ready to imagine the most terrible wrongs about potential abuse of power by the government, but think it is super okay to give all control to a corporation?
Apple has severe intrest in controlling how people consume their media and their hardware is reflecting this, making it harder and harder to install alternative methods. You can of course believe they won't abuse this, you can but you would be a silly person.
I really don't know if your kind can ever learn, there have been enough example shown that when companies get to comfortable with themselves, it is bad for their customers. Car companies that only produce the cars they want to make, not the ones they want, tell me, how is detroit doing? MS stopping development on IE because it had won, so why continue to invest? Apple buying up competing software and then stopping development.
Google is doing it as well, support h264, so that no competing video service can be started easily since they can't afford the millions in licensing costs.
It is all very subtle and long term, but you only got to be old enough to remember the old unixes to know how right the FSF is.
And the fact that you claim Ubuntu does the same... sudo -i [your own password] is all you need to do to have total control. One command and you can change everything and access everything...
If you want to see why the FSF is right, install IE6 as your main and only browser. If you last for less then a day, donate some money to the FSF.
The slashdotter who is confined to his mothers basement with no social contact, is indeed a danger to the general public but ONLY if he were ever to leave. Since he won't, there is no danger.
The prisoner however WILL sooner or later be released and staying in jail is not an option, even for prisoners who want to.
So, you got to deal with this prisoner on the street.
And it HAS been proven that solitary confinement screws people up. You lock up criminals, and they get out worse then they ever were going in, and that is saying something since it ain't the pot smokers who are put in solitary.
You got two options (and personally I incline to the second of my suggestions)
1: You treat people humanely and educate them to become better people.
2: If they are or become a threat, then throw away the key.
Both however cost a lot of money.
Part of the problem is that we look at jail the wrong way. We think that it should EITHER rehabilitate OR punish OR keep them of the street. But you can't do it all at ONCE. So instead you should do it in sequence.
Person is awaiting trial: Decent, hotel like conditions for those who behave, solitary for those who don't, after all, innocent until proven guilty. You don't want someone who is not convicted to be turned into a criminal.
Person convincted: They start with the punishment part of the sentence. Say 10 years, then they are locked up on a decent but not nice environment with few if any principles. Over time, the prisoner can show which way he wants to go, behave, he gets switched to better conditions and can start the second part of his sentence early. Behave badly, and the prison becomes harsher and time is added.
Punishment part over: the prisoner has served his time, now it is time to rehabilitate, education and learning to function in a society and this INCLUDES NOT demanding respect. Nobody gets respect in our society and an ex-con doing some deadend job better be prepared to deal with it or he is going to get back into trouble and you best prepare them with in jail, because outside it is far to easy to stray. And all the time, it is the carrot and the stick method, and since for an con the carrot is very small, it better be a really big stick. During this period, the prisoner can work for a decent wage, but not spend his money.
Release: extended tracking, the earned money is used to arrange housing, and other necessities. It sounds like a punishment to work for pennies but if you put a thief out on the street with 0 cash, how is he going to get money? Geez, that is a hard one. Let him earn the money to get back on his feet during the rehabilitation period.
Safety: For the prisoner who isn't suited to be rehabilitated, continued imprisonment suited to the reason he can't be released. Prisons are increasingly the mental institutions of a country. Somebody might just be to insane to be released, not their fault. Think a pedo. Can lead a fine life, as long as their is a thick wall between him and any kids. Farm prisons for those who are unsuited to be released but not directly a danger to themselves or other WITHIN a prison. For the uncontroloably violent, high security prisons, geared to handle each prisonor always alone in the same way dangerous animals are handled. Humane, but with absolute control.
Such a system would work far better. You can't just lock people up, upset their entire lifes, force them to life by the violent laws of a prison and then just kick them out and expect things to turn out better. But the system would cost a lot and require us to ask ourselves: What are we releasing back into the streets.
I am not a bleeding heart, I think the death penalty is under-used as are life sentences. But we should more clearly seperate prisoners into those who can be released back with the right help AND then give them that help and those who simply can't.
Ah well, to get back slightly on topic: I think those playing D&D are the least of your problems. Anyone who
ATM's. I saw the first being installed in holland, before that if you wanted cash, you had to get it from a bank.
Phone boots were the only way to make a call outside your house, and they had paper phone books installed that we NOT stolen in seconds.
Computers were hooked up to your tv, that had a knob to tune it. Programs came on casettes, if you could afford it, else you had to retype your program each time. And yes, I did this.
Movies had animatronics and we thought it was the most amazing thing ever. Three enemy fighters at once! The hight of technology.
Kirk was the one true captain of the Enterprise and he never EVER called a conference meeting.
There was portable music, it was a record player that was a large orange oblong with a slot in the side that you could put a record in, that stuck out on all sides.
Sony owned the walkman and they were cool.
Pong was the height of CGI
MS had yet to steal the GUI.
Everyone was complaining about those Asians stealing all our production job. No, the other ones.
Apples were expensive. Oh wait...
The americans were driving V8's that guzzled gas despite the oil shortage...
You are right, everything is the same, just with cellphones.
I am sure you have seen it, when the characters watch a security video of something you saw earlier and apparently security camera's are on dolly's, move about and cut automatic to new shots for the most exciting action...
Although my worsed still is Jurassic Park, a time line underneath a live conversation...
Richard Stallman, must maligned by the "I just want my bread and circuses" crowd, is still one of the few who will say this consistently. Either you have free software or you are owned by the companies, and there is no half way.
In 2010, the free license for h264 runs out, and then what? Must everyone suddenly pay for every use of the codec? It is all to easy to sacrifice freedom for a little bit of convenience, but every time you do it, you must spend far more if you ever want to get it back.
Look at the origins of Firefox. We surrendered our freedom to IE, and it took a LOT of hard work to get it back. Now we want to do the same again? And for what? Replace Flash with another 3rd party program that is under the control of a company only seeking to maximize its profit?
It will be interesting to see what is going to happen, I think it will be yet another setback, forever increasing the gap between open and closed software. Just as browsers are becoming more standardized so that everyone can use the web with whatever software they wish, another closed source element sneaks its way back in. Google might have reasons to do this, but it might well end up biting them in the ass. All MS has to do is create their own youtube, that supports HTML5, with only THEIR codec pre-installed on the OS. Google and Apple would have NO grounds to complain, since they did the same.
Where do you draw the line? Simple example: Picasso. Mainstream or not? Once he was not, now he is. Rap was once extreme, now it is so mundane white people do it. Elvis Presley once shocked the world, now he is elevator music.
Movies were once extreme, daring, shocking and made in Hollywood, now Hollywood stands for everyday commercial crap.
When someone made the first shadow portrait, he or she was the first, pushing technology to new limits. Now it is old hat.
The paintings and photographs you mentioned all developed over time (get it, photographs, developed?) into different forms. The super realistic paintings that are considered "not proper art" anymore by the snobs but the rest of us buy (Rembrandt) were NEW once.
The media wants to show us new things. The first guy to break the 1 minute on the 10 mile run is news, the second isn't. The first moon-landing was news, by the time of Apollo 13, people famously didn't care anymore.
For art to be news worthy, it got to do something new. You wouldn't accept a slashdot story on a guy painting the ceiling of a church in high detail with just paint and brushes would you? Been done.
I knew this story wouldn't go well on this site. Nerds typically don't get art. I don't get it either but am at least aware that the "art" in this case is NOT the physical black box but the entire concept. The concept of the black box (as a device that functions without you knowing what goes on inside) and the concept of it selling itself and needing to be resold.
A lot of art AIN'T about the physical product, but about the idea behind it.
Since I am a geek, I don't pretend to fully understand the artists thinking behind it and am even willing to admit that I personally think he might be blowing a bit of smoke. But the failing is mine, not his.
It is an interesting idea, but you got to be able to look beyond the mechanics. I predict that only a handful of real/.ers (as in people who don't think XP is the first and best OS ever) can truly get art. Forever outsiders looking in.
Then again, we get tech, which I notice some more socially aware just don't get... if only we could use both halfs of our minds at the same time:P
US: Bush and now a clipped Obama blamed for not being able to instantly change everything the republicans did wrong so to punish him, you give the republicans even more power.
Britain: Oh okay these guys never had a revolution but still. Blair?
Cops taser people at the drop of a head, this will be same.
Drunk/High people will make just make sure that their car is 20 years old.
The EMP gun will fry everything in car and the stopped criminal can now sue (based on the logic that you can also sue for your tires being punctured by a nail-mat)
The EMP gun will be useless because the car is a faraday cage (based on the logic that faraday cages are metal and so any metal cage no matter the size of the holes, it being connected to the things inside the cage or not being grounded)
Carjackers will use this because a car that won't run is exactly what they want (the reason car jackers exist is because modern cars are to hard to steal)
Rapists will target female drivers because it is so easy to do (people really need to stop watching crime shows)
Criminals will suddenly use this for whatever reason because these devices could not be produced by anyone for a long time with complete howto's on the web.
...
I would go on, but you can read the comments yourself and feel your brain start to rot.
Twitter is a news source for the people who think an SMS message service can predict the gender of your baby.
Twitter is the proof democracy is a bad thing. Every man a voice and this is what you get.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you, will be here all evening. Try the beef bone.
We can't trust companies because they have obvious profit motives. Leaves only one thing.
We use governments to test the water, the food, the air, the cars, everything pretty much which is essential to our lives but we do not have individually the resources to test.
The government doesn't test my cooking (that is what kids are for) because I have means to test that myself (if the milk still comes out of the carton, it is fresh enough for guests) but I do not have the means to test a can of Coke I buy on the street, so I expect/need someone else to check that these things are not made by just putting any old sugar and water and rust together, but only properly tested sugar, water and rust.
I would reason that computers have become such a common part of our lives and that we can get into so much trouble if we get it wrong, that government warning us about unsafe products, is the right thing to do.
Or wouldn't you want forced warnings and recalls if the brakes on your car turn out to be faulty? Guess who does that? You car maker? Think again, goverment regulators, my those guys just seem to be everywhere don't they.
Or have you forgotten the proof against Mad Cow disease being to feed your kid beef?
Labour got elected because the entire country was fed up with the sleaze of the conservatives. Watch all 30+ seasons of Have I Got News For You. It is amazing to see the transformation over the years. Blair was a hero, simply for not being the conservatives. The problem, he was.
This is what happens in a democracy when people vote for their wallet, not the country as whole, or their own long term future (the real one, not the one where you will hire Bill Gates as a butler).
Take the railroads (and american readers, please remember that in the denser populated areas, trains make more sense, and in old cities like london, public transport is the only solution, no space for millions of SUV drivers), the conservatives want low taxes and railroads are very very expensive. They provide a lot, but it is oh so tempting to cut down on maintenance just a bit. And then another bit. And a bit more. And then a big "accident" happens and the entire country grinds to a halt and for what? Lower taxes? No... for the promise of lower taxes but actually tax increases. Because everytime a tax seems to be lowered it comes down DOUBLE in some other form AND then afterwards you got to pay for the mess that the cost cutting measure cost. Such as fixing all the railroads in a hurry and months of disrupted service.
But Blair couldn't do anything about it. Left/Right european governments are basically about one spending to fix the cost cutting of the other side BUT neither side getting the full effect because then the populations gets fed up with the effects and switches their votes around.
Left wing build railroads, but raise taxes for it. People get fed up. Right wing cut spending, the railroads decline, people get fed up, long before any real tax cuts could be realized. And so on, back and forth.
It is the reason dictatorships "work". Consistent long term policy. Dubai and such places seem to make things happen because one person says "make it so" and nobody can turn it around in two years time.
In some ways, the left in England and America, should have just called it quits. Obama should have just said, "later rednecks" and watch the republicans ruin the entire country. Now he is being blamed for not being able to fix eight years of mis-management. Sometimes the top-job really isn't worth having.
And samething roughly happened in the UK. Blair got in, but with what? A labour party twisted between old and new labour. A economy down the drain, decades of cost cutting having put the country on the edge of disaster and a party that had no experience in leading with many of the people who did have a clue as "corrupted" as the conservatives by being in cosy jobs for to long.
People now are voting conservative again the UK. Right... that is going to solve things. These were the same people you threw out before. Think they changed their ways?
People often say that democracy is the worsed form of government, bar everything else. Perhaps that is true, but I think democracy also has a shelf life. Have it for to long and it start to rot.
The guy I am responding to says government needs to understand the scientific method. How can they? The voter doesn't, and they still are the ones who elect the guy in charge. The moment the voter can vote for a leader with bad teeth who doesn't smooth talk and isn't all that likeable but gets the boring accounting job that is government done, then we can move forward.
Exactly WHAT is Obama, or Blair, or any modern leader good at, except making speeches? And yet, we expect these people to turn our country around.
There are people who can do that. The kind of people who are hired to handle banktupt companies or turn companies around from the brink of disaster. They are very grey, very quiet, often downright ugly, little men who read papers a lot and don't attract much attention at all. And they tend to stay the hell away from anything to do with politics because NO solid leadership can ever be based on a popularity vote.
If you are still waiting on a strategy to move away from IE6, you will NEVER develop a strategy.
Why would google spend costly resources to support an inferior product from a company that is using said product to fight them and everyone else who wants to do business on the web?
IE6 is not a market for Google, if you use IE6, you are NOT a google user.
This has been very long in coming and nobody remotely competent enough to tie his or her own shoe laces still uses IE6 for the web. And companies that got some horrid activex, they can use IE6 as much as they want, just install another browser next to it to access the web.
Really, just how much time do you need to upgrade software anyway. I could have audited Firefox's sourcecode in this time.
Already in the certification process for IE8?
Skip it. Honestly, this process is so trustworthy, it had you use IE6 all these years.
Always cracks me up, people claiming they are stuck with IE6, for security reasons... no, it because you outsourced your IT to a crap company, that doesn't want to spend a penny on keeping up to date because they know you will pay them anyway.
People keep saying this, but it ain't illegal at all. Show me the law.
How are the banks anyway? How much dole did they collect? Billions in government handouts?
Maybe the US car industry? How much did they get from the state?
Electricity? How is California doing?
Trains? The US gotten up-to-date yet, or still clunking along?
How about the medical industry? More money spend in the US then anywhere else, yet one of the worsed results.
Private industry, if you want to be sure it won't work, will be over budget and delayed until the end of time.
And before you protest, it was the STATE that put men on the moon. Private industry hasn't even come lose in all these years. Count the years between US starting and the appollo 11 mission, then the years of private spaceflight. Notice a difference? And private industry doesn't have to do all the early research anymore.
The case you mention SHOULD have been heard with the death penalty as demand. For the woman in question, clearly she preffered to die instead of being exposed, so give her what she wants.
Only if we start punishing the frivilous lawsuits, then can we stop them.
But how do I know I can trust you?
Eh, just last week, I lost my wallet? They promised it was in the mail and all they needed was my address and social security and bank details... mail is a bit slow but I am sure I will get my wallet back any day now.
What?
Come on, once a sucker, always a sucker.
MS is NOT selling its soul in China for revenue. You cannot sell what you do not have. Ballmer and Gates have no morals. Oh, they are not evil, that takes a commitment. They just have absolutely no moral compass whatsoever. Look at how Bill Gates does his charity work, always with an angle to somehow better MS. It is the way he thinks.
And before you defend him, remember that is a LOT easier to have morals if you are rich. If MS pulled out of China what would happen to these two guys? Absolutely nothing. They ain't doing this to survive, they are doing it for yet another billion whose difference they will never ever notice.
Thanks for making it so clear that there is no hope for self-regulation at all. The only hope to keep companies behaving even the slightest therefor must come from government control. Nothing like a honest capitalist to make clear the need for government interference.
And so you are forcing your kids to learn what you want them to learn.
What freedom do your kids have?
You would have far less problems with speeding if all cars just work and had a speed limiter installed that just worked.
There would be less theft if every car was bio-keyed to the person and every person tracked...
Do I need to go on?
Why are the privacy nutcases always so ready to imagine the most terrible wrongs about potential abuse of power by the government, but think it is super okay to give all control to a corporation?
Apple has severe intrest in controlling how people consume their media and their hardware is reflecting this, making it harder and harder to install alternative methods. You can of course believe they won't abuse this, you can but you would be a silly person.
I really don't know if your kind can ever learn, there have been enough example shown that when companies get to comfortable with themselves, it is bad for their customers. Car companies that only produce the cars they want to make, not the ones they want, tell me, how is detroit doing? MS stopping development on IE because it had won, so why continue to invest? Apple buying up competing software and then stopping development.
Google is doing it as well, support h264, so that no competing video service can be started easily since they can't afford the millions in licensing costs.
It is all very subtle and long term, but you only got to be old enough to remember the old unixes to know how right the FSF is.
And the fact that you claim Ubuntu does the same... sudo -i [your own password] is all you need to do to have total control. One command and you can change everything and access everything...
If you want to see why the FSF is right, install IE6 as your main and only browser. If you last for less then a day, donate some money to the FSF.
I think you forgot an area of crime. Try again please.
I can do plenty of misschief with just a pen and some paper. It is called fraud. And if I were a better artist, counterfeiting.
The slashdotter who is confined to his mothers basement with no social contact, is indeed a danger to the general public but ONLY if he were ever to leave. Since he won't, there is no danger.
The prisoner however WILL sooner or later be released and staying in jail is not an option, even for prisoners who want to.
So, you got to deal with this prisoner on the street.
And it HAS been proven that solitary confinement screws people up. You lock up criminals, and they get out worse then they ever were going in, and that is saying something since it ain't the pot smokers who are put in solitary.
You got two options (and personally I incline to the second of my suggestions)
1: You treat people humanely and educate them to become better people.
2: If they are or become a threat, then throw away the key.
Both however cost a lot of money.
Part of the problem is that we look at jail the wrong way. We think that it should EITHER rehabilitate OR punish OR keep them of the street. But you can't do it all at ONCE. So instead you should do it in sequence.
Person is awaiting trial: Decent, hotel like conditions for those who behave, solitary for those who don't, after all, innocent until proven guilty. You don't want someone who is not convicted to be turned into a criminal.
Person convincted: They start with the punishment part of the sentence. Say 10 years, then they are locked up on a decent but not nice environment with few if any principles. Over time, the prisoner can show which way he wants to go, behave, he gets switched to better conditions and can start the second part of his sentence early. Behave badly, and the prison becomes harsher and time is added.
Punishment part over: the prisoner has served his time, now it is time to rehabilitate, education and learning to function in a society and this INCLUDES NOT demanding respect. Nobody gets respect in our society and an ex-con doing some deadend job better be prepared to deal with it or he is going to get back into trouble and you best prepare them with in jail, because outside it is far to easy to stray. And all the time, it is the carrot and the stick method, and since for an con the carrot is very small, it better be a really big stick. During this period, the prisoner can work for a decent wage, but not spend his money.
Release: extended tracking, the earned money is used to arrange housing, and other necessities. It sounds like a punishment to work for pennies but if you put a thief out on the street with 0 cash, how is he going to get money? Geez, that is a hard one. Let him earn the money to get back on his feet during the rehabilitation period.
Safety: For the prisoner who isn't suited to be rehabilitated, continued imprisonment suited to the reason he can't be released. Prisons are increasingly the mental institutions of a country. Somebody might just be to insane to be released, not their fault. Think a pedo. Can lead a fine life, as long as their is a thick wall between him and any kids. Farm prisons for those who are unsuited to be released but not directly a danger to themselves or other WITHIN a prison. For the uncontroloably violent, high security prisons, geared to handle each prisonor always alone in the same way dangerous animals are handled. Humane, but with absolute control.
Such a system would work far better. You can't just lock people up, upset their entire lifes, force them to life by the violent laws of a prison and then just kick them out and expect things to turn out better. But the system would cost a lot and require us to ask ourselves: What are we releasing back into the streets.
I am not a bleeding heart, I think the death penalty is under-used as are life sentences. But we should more clearly seperate prisoners into those who can be released back with the right help AND then give them that help and those who simply can't.
Ah well, to get back slightly on topic: I think those playing D&D are the least of your problems. Anyone who
ATM's. I saw the first being installed in holland, before that if you wanted cash, you had to get it from a bank.
Phone boots were the only way to make a call outside your house, and they had paper phone books installed that we NOT stolen in seconds.
Computers were hooked up to your tv, that had a knob to tune it. Programs came on casettes, if you could afford it, else you had to retype your program each time. And yes, I did this.
Movies had animatronics and we thought it was the most amazing thing ever. Three enemy fighters at once! The hight of technology.
Kirk was the one true captain of the Enterprise and he never EVER called a conference meeting.
There was portable music, it was a record player that was a large orange oblong with a slot in the side that you could put a record in, that stuck out on all sides.
Sony owned the walkman and they were cool.
Pong was the height of CGI
MS had yet to steal the GUI.
Everyone was complaining about those Asians stealing all our production job. No, the other ones.
Apples were expensive. Oh wait...
The americans were driving V8's that guzzled gas despite the oil shortage...
You are right, everything is the same, just with cellphones.
Reach to your screen to close this window: Oops, data obscured.
Solution? Put the controls BELOW the data.
Different inputs require different UI designs.
I am sure you have seen it, when the characters watch a security video of something you saw earlier and apparently security camera's are on dolly's, move about and cut automatic to new shots for the most exciting action...
Although my worsed still is Jurassic Park, a time line underneath a live conversation...
Richard Stallman, must maligned by the "I just want my bread and circuses" crowd, is still one of the few who will say this consistently. Either you have free software or you are owned by the companies, and there is no half way.
In 2010, the free license for h264 runs out, and then what? Must everyone suddenly pay for every use of the codec? It is all to easy to sacrifice freedom for a little bit of convenience, but every time you do it, you must spend far more if you ever want to get it back.
Look at the origins of Firefox. We surrendered our freedom to IE, and it took a LOT of hard work to get it back. Now we want to do the same again? And for what? Replace Flash with another 3rd party program that is under the control of a company only seeking to maximize its profit?
It will be interesting to see what is going to happen, I think it will be yet another setback, forever increasing the gap between open and closed software. Just as browsers are becoming more standardized so that everyone can use the web with whatever software they wish, another closed source element sneaks its way back in. Google might have reasons to do this, but it might well end up biting them in the ass. All MS has to do is create their own youtube, that supports HTML5, with only THEIR codec pre-installed on the OS. Google and Apple would have NO grounds to complain, since they did the same.
Where do you draw the line? Simple example: Picasso. Mainstream or not? Once he was not, now he is. Rap was once extreme, now it is so mundane white people do it. Elvis Presley once shocked the world, now he is elevator music.
Movies were once extreme, daring, shocking and made in Hollywood, now Hollywood stands for everyday commercial crap.
When someone made the first shadow portrait, he or she was the first, pushing technology to new limits. Now it is old hat.
The paintings and photographs you mentioned all developed over time (get it, photographs, developed?) into different forms. The super realistic paintings that are considered "not proper art" anymore by the snobs but the rest of us buy (Rembrandt) were NEW once.
The media wants to show us new things. The first guy to break the 1 minute on the 10 mile run is news, the second isn't. The first moon-landing was news, by the time of Apollo 13, people famously didn't care anymore.
For art to be news worthy, it got to do something new. You wouldn't accept a slashdot story on a guy painting the ceiling of a church in high detail with just paint and brushes would you? Been done.
I knew this story wouldn't go well on this site. Nerds typically don't get art. I don't get it either but am at least aware that the "art" in this case is NOT the physical black box but the entire concept. The concept of the black box (as a device that functions without you knowing what goes on inside) and the concept of it selling itself and needing to be resold.
A lot of art AIN'T about the physical product, but about the idea behind it.
Since I am a geek, I don't pretend to fully understand the artists thinking behind it and am even willing to admit that I personally think he might be blowing a bit of smoke. But the failing is mine, not his.
It is an interesting idea, but you got to be able to look beyond the mechanics. I predict that only a handful of real /.ers (as in people who don't think XP is the first and best OS ever) can truly get art. Forever outsiders looking in.
Then again, we get tech, which I notice some more socially aware just don't get... if only we could use both halfs of our minds at the same time :P
From riches to richer.
Brings a tear to my eye.
France: Sarkozy
US: Bush and now a clipped Obama blamed for not being able to instantly change everything the republicans did wrong so to punish him, you give the republicans even more power.
Britain: Oh okay these guys never had a revolution but still. Blair?
Holland: Bakellende.
Australia, Japan... the list goes on and on.
As Douglas Adams said, people are a problem.
Lets use slashdot, the EMP gun article.
News facts according to slashdot:
I would go on, but you can read the comments yourself and feel your brain start to rot.
Twitter is a news source for the people who think an SMS message service can predict the gender of your baby.
Twitter is the proof democracy is a bad thing. Every man a voice and this is what you get.