Yeah, but you _do_ have to navigate successfully to a relatively small target and fly precisely enough to strike it squarely. You can't convince me that it didn't take serious planning and training to accomplish that... especially in light of the fact that the attacks were so successful.
But only when they get caught, which isn't very often.
How the hell do you know how often police get caught for their crimes? Where are you getting this statistic?
Cops are often small, small human beings. The type that got made fun of in junior high and could never get dates.
Now this is obiviously complete bullshit. You have some beef with cops and your venting on slashdot.
These things have to be taken on a case by case basis. Do cops make mistakes? Yes. Are they sometimes overly brutal? Absolutely. But imagine the stress they have to put up with each day. Every choice they make potentially saves or destroys lives, frequently their own. If somebody looks like they're going to pull a gun, the cop has one second to decide if he lives or dies... what choice would you make? Police are people just like you or me -- don't condemn them just because they're cops.
The shame of it all is that your post is "Score:5 Insightful", when it's anything but.
Xbox will probably do some damage in America, but what about Japan? Microsoft's usual solution to this sort of problem is to throw a bunch of money at it, but unless they do something crazy I think they're going to get a serious wake-up call.
Bill Gates did the keynote at the Tokyo Games Show this past March, and apparently he wasn't very well received. Normally, I would take this sort of analysis with a grain of salt, but considering this came from a pro-xbox site I am more inclined to believe it.
Quite frankly, you make me sick. How could you POSSIBLY know the cause of this kid's suicide. Just because you can identify with one facet of his life doesn't give you the right to judge the administration of a school that was merely disciplining a boy for breaking the rules. By jumping to rash conclusions like this, you only make the problem worse.
It's a shame such a young person ended his life, but one can hardly blame the school suspension for his suicide. The fact is no matter how gifted or talented he was, the kid broke the rules and he needed to be punished for it. Even if he had no idea what he was doing (which I seriously doubt), he was breaking the law.
The thing that bugs me reading the comments on this story is that there seems to be a lot of people with "me too" stories about how they were unjustly punished for similar crimes. When we read a story like this we can't let our emotions or sympathies get in the way of our reason.
According to the quote:
"He said if (Shinjan) was an adult, hacking into the computer system could be a crime," said Fitzsimons, who spoke on behalf of Mayer. [my emphasis]
...the principal did not threaten the kid with jail time, but merely told him that if he were an adult he could go to jail for this sort of crime (which is true). We can't hold the principal responsible for this kid's suicide just because he punished him for doing something wrong and warned him of the consequences of future hacking.
To me there is no moral conflict here... if someone breaks a rule they should be punished (within reason), and I think that a 10-day suspension is perfectly reasonable for hacking a school computer system. According to the information in the article I have no problem with how the school handled the situation.
I recently attended a lecture on software engineering by one of the developers of Microsoft Office, and he mentioned that a significant number of users that they had polled for research didn't even *know* that there was a second mouse button on their PC mouse. I can't for the life of me remember the exact percentage, but it was pretty significant... something like 30-40%. If that's true (and it's an accurate measurement), then IMO Apple's one-button approach isn't a bad idea.
Based on my experiences, nothing could be further from the truth. I am taking my last semester of computer science classes this fall, and if I weren't a cs major I would be either music composition or graphic design. While computing "...is a science governed by mathematical laws and logical premises...", so are music composition and architecture -- both decidedly artistic endeavors. In my mind programming is best summed up as creative problem solving.
Some excellent examples of this creativity are the programs that come out of the European demo scene. Groups of middle school to university-aged people will get together to show off their skillfully coded 'demos' complete with original musical accompaniment. Though extremely technical and well-optimised, some of the better demos out there are fantastic artistically.
I hope this helps shed some light on the fact that a lot of programmers are really artists with a technical edge... and code _is_ a form of artistic expression.
Actually, I believe it's the games that generate the revenues for a company, not the system itself. Sony actually loses money on selling the playstation consoles, but they more than make up for it by getting a cut of all the games (I believe this came up during the whole Sony vs. Bleem thing). Anyway, if X-Box had emulators for all of these other systems they would be doing Sony/Sega/Nintendo/Vectorex (ha) a favor rather than helping themselves. The last thing they want is to encourage their users to buy competitors' games.
Considering that there will be computers in just about everything in the near future, it seems odd that we would exclude them from the classroom. I think the problem right now is merely that they're not being used properly. Once the new generations of teachers who have been trained how to use computers effectively in the classroom begin to filter into the school system (it's already happening) I think these problems will become much less significant. The thing about computers is that they offer an excellent visualization tool for visual learners... especially for math and sciences. The problems arise when the teacher expects the computer to do his/her job for him/her. This really only applies to primary education, of course. Since it's getting harder and harder to find jobs that don't expect you to have at least a little computer experience, I think that computers in education become an absolute necessity once students reach the high school level. At the very least a high school graduate should be able to get around an OS and use a word processor/email/browse the web.
I agree completely, except that I would think of Amazon.com as more of a 'store' object that implemented the buyBook() method first. Now that they have their customer base, they are implementing the other methods like buyToy()... gosh, that's nerdy:)
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but you _do_ have to navigate successfully to a relatively small target and fly precisely enough to strike it squarely. You can't convince me that it didn't take serious planning and training to accomplish that... especially in light of the fact that the attacks were so successful.
In that case, you should really check out Front-X. I think it does pretty much what you want.
magic chefHow the hell do you know how often police get caught for their crimes? Where are you getting this statistic?
Cops are often small, small human beings. The type that got made fun of in junior high and could never get dates.Now this is obiviously complete bullshit. You have some beef with cops and your venting on slashdot.
These things have to be taken on a case by case basis. Do cops make mistakes? Yes. Are they sometimes overly brutal? Absolutely. But imagine the stress they have to put up with each day. Every choice they make potentially saves or destroys lives, frequently their own. If somebody looks like they're going to pull a gun, the cop has one second to decide if he lives or dies... what choice would you make? Police are people just like you or me -- don't condemn them just because they're cops.
The shame of it all is that your post is "Score:5 Insightful", when it's anything but.
Xbox will probably do some damage in America, but what about Japan? Microsoft's usual solution to this sort of problem is to throw a bunch of money at it, but unless they do something crazy I think they're going to get a serious wake-up call.
Bill Gates did the keynote at the Tokyo Games Show this past March, and apparently he wasn't very well received. Normally, I would take this sort of analysis with a grain of salt, but considering this came from a pro-xbox site I am more inclined to believe it.
magic chef>HE IS DEAD.
>IT IS YOUR FAULT.
Quite frankly, you make me sick. How could you POSSIBLY know the cause of this kid's suicide. Just because you can identify with one facet of his life doesn't give you the right to judge the administration of a school that was merely disciplining a boy for breaking the rules. By jumping to rash conclusions like this, you only make the problem worse.
magic chef
It's a shame such a young person ended his life, but one can hardly blame the school suspension for his suicide. The fact is no matter how gifted or talented he was, the kid broke the rules and he needed to be punished for it. Even if he had no idea what he was doing (which I seriously doubt), he was breaking the law.
The thing that bugs me reading the comments on this story is that there seems to be a lot of people with "me too" stories about how they were unjustly punished for similar crimes. When we read a story like this we can't let our emotions or sympathies get in the way of our reason.
According to the quote:To me there is no moral conflict here... if someone breaks a rule they should be punished (within reason), and I think that a 10-day suspension is perfectly reasonable for hacking a school computer system. According to the information in the article I have no problem with how the school handled the situation.
magic chefI recently attended a lecture on software engineering by one of the developers of Microsoft Office, and he mentioned that a significant number of users that they had polled for research didn't even *know* that there was a second mouse button on their PC mouse. I can't for the life of me remember the exact percentage, but it was pretty significant... something like 30-40%. If that's true (and it's an accurate measurement), then IMO Apple's one-button approach isn't a bad idea.
magic chef
Based on my experiences, nothing could be further from the truth. I am taking my last semester of computer science classes this fall, and if I weren't a cs major I would be either music composition or graphic design. While computing "...is a science governed by mathematical laws and logical premises...", so are music composition and architecture -- both decidedly artistic endeavors. In my mind programming is best summed up as creative problem solving.
Some excellent examples of this creativity are the programs that come out of the European demo scene. Groups of middle school to university-aged people will get together to show off their skillfully coded 'demos' complete with original musical accompaniment. Though extremely technical and well-optimised, some of the better demos out there are fantastic artistically.
I hope this helps shed some light on the fact that a lot of programmers are really artists with a technical edge... and code _is_ a form of artistic expression.
magic chef
Actually, I believe it's the games that generate the revenues for a company, not the system itself. Sony actually loses money on selling the playstation consoles, but they more than make up for it by getting a cut of all the games (I believe this came up during the whole Sony vs. Bleem thing). Anyway, if X-Box had emulators for all of these other systems they would be doing Sony/Sega/Nintendo/Vectorex (ha) a favor rather than helping themselves. The last thing they want is to encourage their users to buy competitors' games.
magic chef
Considering that there will be computers in just about everything in the near future, it seems odd that we would exclude them from the classroom. I think the problem right now is merely that they're not being used properly. Once the new generations of teachers who have been trained how to use computers effectively in the classroom begin to filter into the school system (it's already happening) I think these problems will become much less significant. The thing about computers is that they offer an excellent visualization tool for visual learners... especially for math and sciences. The problems arise when the teacher expects the computer to do his/her job for him/her. This really only applies to primary education, of course. Since it's getting harder and harder to find jobs that don't expect you to have at least a little computer experience, I think that computers in education become an absolute necessity once students reach the high school level. At the very least a high school graduate should be able to get around an OS and use a word processor/email/browse the web.
magic chef
I agree completely, except that I would think of Amazon.com as more of a 'store' object that implemented the buyBook() method first. Now that they have their customer base, they are implementing the other methods like buyToy()... gosh, that's nerdy :)
Magic Chef