It seems more and more like we have a double standard when it comes to "computer trespass" laws. People can be threatened with prosecution for downloading files which a company mistakenly posts on a public webserver, yet when it comes to a citizen and their own personal site they have no mechanism to keep people out.
Because for many people schools aren't about education, they are about control. Obviously not everybody feels this way, but apparently there are enough that do for us to see these news stories every week. Companies, churches, and the government demonstrate exactly the same tendencies, but they are kept in check by adults who won't put up with that crap. Adolescents are in a worse position, and are not used to asserting their rights. Maybe it's a form of education after all.
It seems unlikely that Nintendo would go below $250 in the US. That price point is already well below the PS3 and Xbox 360, and I can't see that they would get any more customers. It's much more likely that Nintendo will bundle a game, and if they're smart, it will be a good one.
Professionals will take the time to do something correctly, regardless of the tools available. I was talking about students who are supposed to be learning something, often against their will.
There seems to be something about hand-drawing letters that gives a distinct advantage.
The "advantage" is simply the amount of time the student spends thinking about writing. Writing by hand is time consuming. Also, you are forced to think about what you write, because if you make a mistake then correcting it is tedious and the result tends to look bad. With a word processor you don't have to think very much about what you write. You can just pour crap onto the page and "edit" it later. Most people don't spend a lot of time editing. Certainly they expect to spend less time editing a paper than they did writing it.
The end result of this process is almost always crap, because the person can get away with putting less thought into what they are doing. This is true of any intellectual task, and the justifications for quicker approaches (calculators in math class, IDEs in computer science, etc) usually boil down to an excuse that something is not worth the time it takes to learn. That can be true in many cases, but it is never true for the foundations of a subject.
I also note the external monitor the MacBook will drive is LESS then the ones my 12" iBook G4 will drive (1920x1440), and it has shared video/main RAM. Clearly the graphics are the thing sacrificed on this one.
Have you ever tried to use an iBook at 1920x1440 on an external monitor ? The refresh rate sucks! The shared video RAM is the real issue, and because of it 512MB of RAM is definitely not enough (as usual).
I'd say the chance of that is roughly zero. Then again, if you have a 30in cinema display then you're a rat bastard and nobody will feel sorry for you:)
This makes me wonder, how much weight does the legal system put on applications of existing, more generic technology?
Basically none. They don't even really notice prior implementations of the exact same idea, unless someone already filed a patent on it. Hence XOR for mouse cursor, wireless email, and the gobs of other technically invalid patents that are used to bludgeon anyone who is remotely successful.
While I understand that there is no proof that our phone conversations are recorded...
There is reason to believe they are recorded. As discussed on a previous slashdot thread, a database of call records only would consume an amount in the terabyte range per year, barely more than your average PC! And that was without compression. The NSA has a much bigger budget than that, and if they're spending millions of dollars it's likely that a significant percentage of calls are recorded, possibly all of them.
If the government were operating within the law, citizens would not need to resort to illegal actions to check their power. The leaking of information about corruption and abuse is the last resort of non-violent persons. Without this measure, the only remaining recourse is to overthrow the government by force. That's an even bigger mess, because then people have to trust someone (either the government, or the revolutionaries) without any real facts or information. Being both violent and ignorant, that is far from a civilized solution.
We should not let the government have this power (legal or illegal) to prevent leaks. It is not a noble cause, and the result is a more barbaric society because people have fewer avenues of recourse to address injustice.
From where I stand, the whole argument AGAINST tiered service is that the economies of scale in the averaged cost model favor a single tier of consumer service. Then again, I'm a Speakeasy customer now, so I've essentially opted for tiered service anyway by paying more than your average cable Internet user.
I think you've got this wrong. Nobody really cares if ISPs offer tiered service to their customers, ie: different plans with different prices, speeds, and monthly quotas. That is what they should be doing in order to adapt to the needs of the marketplace. The issue is whether they can go out and charge third parties for access to their customers. So the customer pays extra to download video from Google, and Google pays extra to send it to them. That is not the way the internet works, and if they are allowed to make this change then the internet will no longer be a free market or communications medium because ISPs will have the power to discriminate against anyone whose service uses more than a webpage's worth of bandwidth.
They are essentially saying that the internet = web+email, and that any other service such Skype, webcams, Bittorrent, internet radio, and streaming video, or even just downloading large files, can not be used without their consent and some form of payment. If they expected this payment from their customers, then fine. That would mean they offer a reduced level of service in exchange for a (presumably) reduced rate. But they are trying to extort that money from third parties, while telling their customers to expect full service.
This trend will eventually drive people away from each other. In a society where everyone can be watched, who is going to trust somebody to know them ? Of course, maybe that's the point.
It's like one big Panopticon. Note that before the involvement of the general public, the cameras were there really to collect evidence for after the fact. Now somebody is watching. Wonderful.
What's next, are we all going to get a two-way video link in our homes that we can't turn off ?
I think we can all agree that Madden is the antithesis of innovation, but I would argue that the people who play Madden want incremental improvements. They do not want some crazy Madden 2007 where you control a horde of drug-using mutants using a trackpad in some inexplicable game that almost resembles football. Personally I think it would be great, but it's just not what the people buying Madden expect.
Also, when will indie and OSS developers learn that sharp, angled graphics look like crap ? The only thing worse is dithering. I looked at this guy's games and they seem interesting enough, however the graphics are a turnoff. I understand indie developers do not have gobs of money, but you only need to make one good tileset and then change the pallette:) This game would look 10 times less cheap if it were run at 300x200.
This guy is out to lunch. He mentions Gish, but how about games like Darwinia ? The reason people look to indie developers is that there are so many of them, and 90% of of everything is crap. So if I had to choose between looking at five big companies and 1000's of small ones, where would I look ? Well I guess it depends on how many games the big companies crank out, which is not many, because they cost so much money. So even though there are 100 tetris clones the indie scene is the place to look to find quirky, original games. Very much like open source and it's thousands of text editors. There's got to be one good program in there, right ?
Slashdot Mirror
It seems more and more like we have a double standard when it comes to "computer trespass" laws. People can be threatened with prosecution for downloading files which a company mistakenly posts on a public webserver, yet when it comes to a citizen and their own personal site they have no mechanism to keep people out.
Amendment2 does not grant US people weapons of mass destructions, only "arms"...
How long will it be until that is interpreted to mean real arms, like the kind you can hit people with ? Somebody could get hurt.
You should have saved this one for April 1st.
+1 Insightful for you. A two tiered internet is really more of a red-herring. There will be only one real tier, and it will suck.
According to the spam in my inbox, for $5000 you could have a penis the size of a city block.
Because for many people schools aren't about education, they are about control. Obviously not everybody feels this way, but apparently there are enough that do for us to see these news stories every week. Companies, churches, and the government demonstrate exactly the same tendencies, but they are kept in check by adults who won't put up with that crap. Adolescents are in a worse position, and are not used to asserting their rights. Maybe it's a form of education after all.
It seems unlikely that Nintendo would go below $250 in the US. That price point is already well below the PS3 and Xbox 360, and I can't see that they would get any more customers. It's much more likely that Nintendo will bundle a game, and if they're smart, it will be a good one.
Professionals will take the time to do something correctly, regardless of the tools available. I was talking about students who are supposed to be learning something, often against their will.
There seems to be something about hand-drawing letters that gives a distinct advantage.
The "advantage" is simply the amount of time the student spends thinking about writing. Writing by hand is time consuming. Also, you are forced to think about what you write, because if you make a mistake then correcting it is tedious and the result tends to look bad. With a word processor you don't have to think very much about what you write. You can just pour crap onto the page and "edit" it later. Most people don't spend a lot of time editing. Certainly they expect to spend less time editing a paper than they did writing it. The end result of this process is almost always crap, because the person can get away with putting less thought into what they are doing. This is true of any intellectual task, and the justifications for quicker approaches (calculators in math class, IDEs in computer science, etc) usually boil down to an excuse that something is not worth the time it takes to learn. That can be true in many cases, but it is never true for the foundations of a subject.
It was probably generated by autocomplete :)
Panasonic Toughbook ? Those are sweet machines.
I also note the external monitor the MacBook will drive is LESS then the ones my 12" iBook G4 will drive (1920x1440), and it has shared video/main RAM. Clearly the graphics are the thing sacrificed on this one.
Have you ever tried to use an iBook at 1920x1440 on an external monitor ? The refresh rate sucks! The shared video RAM is the real issue, and because of it 512MB of RAM is definitely not enough (as usual).
I'd say the chance of that is roughly zero. Then again, if you have a 30in cinema display then you're a rat bastard and nobody will feel sorry for you :)
This makes me wonder, how much weight does the legal system put on applications of existing, more generic technology?
Basically none. They don't even really notice prior implementations of the exact same idea, unless someone already filed a patent on it. Hence XOR for mouse cursor, wireless email, and the gobs of other technically invalid patents that are used to bludgeon anyone who is remotely successful.
While I understand that there is no proof that our phone conversations are recorded...
There is reason to believe they are recorded. As discussed on a previous slashdot thread, a database of call records only would consume an amount in the terabyte range per year, barely more than your average PC! And that was without compression. The NSA has a much bigger budget than that, and if they're spending millions of dollars it's likely that a significant percentage of calls are recorded, possibly all of them.
If the government were operating within the law, citizens would not need to resort to illegal actions to check their power. The leaking of information about corruption and abuse is the last resort of non-violent persons. Without this measure, the only remaining recourse is to overthrow the government by force. That's an even bigger mess, because then people have to trust someone (either the government, or the revolutionaries) without any real facts or information. Being both violent and ignorant, that is far from a civilized solution.
We should not let the government have this power (legal or illegal) to prevent leaks. It is not a noble cause, and the result is a more barbaric society because people have fewer avenues of recourse to address injustice.
From where I stand, the whole argument AGAINST tiered service is that the economies of scale in the averaged cost model favor a single tier of consumer service. Then again, I'm a Speakeasy customer now, so I've essentially opted for tiered service anyway by paying more than your average cable Internet user.
I think you've got this wrong. Nobody really cares if ISPs offer tiered service to their customers, ie: different plans with different prices, speeds, and monthly quotas. That is what they should be doing in order to adapt to the needs of the marketplace. The issue is whether they can go out and charge third parties for access to their customers. So the customer pays extra to download video from Google, and Google pays extra to send it to them. That is not the way the internet works, and if they are allowed to make this change then the internet will no longer be a free market or communications medium because ISPs will have the power to discriminate against anyone whose service uses more than a webpage's worth of bandwidth.
They are essentially saying that the internet = web+email, and that any other service such Skype, webcams, Bittorrent, internet radio, and streaming video, or even just downloading large files, can not be used without their consent and some form of payment. If they expected this payment from their customers, then fine. That would mean they offer a reduced level of service in exchange for a (presumably) reduced rate. But they are trying to extort that money from third parties, while telling their customers to expect full service.
This trend will eventually drive people away from each other. In a society where everyone can be watched, who is going to trust somebody to know them ? Of course, maybe that's the point.
The short version of the theory: we're all going to be monitored, because those in power want to.
Talk about your authoritarian nonsense, what's next: "resistance is futile" ?
It's like one big Panopticon. Note that before the involvement of the general public, the cameras were there really to collect evidence for after the fact. Now somebody is watching. Wonderful.
What's next, are we all going to get a two-way video link in our homes that we can't turn off ?
I tell them it's like chopping up your bowl of spaghetti and trying to build a model ship.
Nah, I'd be content just to watch it burst into flames :)
I think we can all agree that Madden is the antithesis of innovation, but I would argue that the people who play Madden want incremental improvements. They do not want some crazy Madden 2007 where you control a horde of drug-using mutants using a trackpad in some inexplicable game that almost resembles football. Personally I think it would be great, but it's just not what the people buying Madden expect.
Also, when will indie and OSS developers learn that sharp, angled graphics look like crap ? The only thing worse is dithering. I looked at this guy's games and they seem interesting enough, however the graphics are a turnoff. I understand indie developers do not have gobs of money, but you only need to make one good tileset and then change the pallette :) This game would look 10 times less cheap if it were run at 300x200.
This guy is out to lunch. He mentions Gish, but how about games like Darwinia ? The reason people look to indie developers is that there are so many of them, and 90% of of everything is crap. So if I had to choose between looking at five big companies and 1000's of small ones, where would I look ? Well I guess it depends on how many games the big companies crank out, which is not many, because they cost so much money. So even though there are 100 tetris clones the indie scene is the place to look to find quirky, original games. Very much like open source and it's thousands of text editors. There's got to be one good program in there, right ?