Because a lot of Google people love Unix, and the Mac is the best desktop Unix environment. That's why. I'm not sure it's OSX on desktop which is the primary appeal. I own a powerbook because when I bought it, it was the best unix laptop available. On the desktop I still think a more conventional distro of linux is better (but that's my personal opinion).
The demand for the picture (thanks to Adam Smith) causes the creation of the picture, which leads to the actual beating up of someone. What if I pretend to beat someone up? I'm creating the same picture, but without a crime taking place.
Why isn't any media (that has no political or artistic value) depicting a crime considered illegal? I think the distinction has to be between a picture which depicts a crime - and a picture which encourages crime, however, I think that's a very difficult decision to make.
In reality this appears to just be a knee-jerk think of the children law for the purposes of making people think the government is doing something about pedophiles. As is pointed out in other news articles around this - they are trying to close the loophole allowing images to be converted from a picture of a crime into a picture of a simulated crime (to hide the crime itself).
What you're assuming is that the OP is looking to purchase non-RIAA music instead of purchasing RIAA music. However, this is not strictly true, as far as I can see the OP is in a situation similar to my own. They want to discover NEW music, but they would also like to encourage non-RIAA bands, the obvious thing to do is to look for independant music. There is too much good music currently signed to RIAA labels to avoid buying it. But if I am actively looking for new music, I will go looking for independant stuff.
This way you can easily encourage good independant music, without having to discard music that you like. Just concentrate on the NEW music that you find.
It's interesting how the advertisements and crash tests are for the British market, yet the car has not been modified to put the driver's side on the right. The smart car came out in europe first, and the first models to appear in the UK were all left hand drive, naturally these are the ones used for the road tests, as they have to be filmed ready to be shown at the correct time.
The smart car gained such a following in the UK before they even made a right hand drive version that about 40% of the smart cars you see on the road here are actually european spec left handers.
Most Smarts are driven as fast as the can go I saw an article in the newspaper here in the UK few years ago, it gave a list of the cars most frequently caught speeding. At the top of the list was the smart car, ahead of all the various sports cars, all the various fast hatchbacks, all the various sporty saloons. I think this says a lot about the sort of people who buy them...
I've driven one. It was shit - but then I learnt to drive properly and have an inherent dislike for anything with an automatic gearbox.
My Motorola flip phone has a similar problem. It has two exposed buttons that can be used (while the phone is closed) to change your ring type (soft, loud, vibrate, silent). If your phone is not already set to silent, it gives a happy little chirp every time you change the type. So I'd be walking around during the day with my phone in my pocket with occasional random beeps caused by random button hits. I'd also miss calls occasionally when these hits happened to have switched my phone to silent. Very annoying, and there was no way I found to disable these keys. My phone has exactly the same problem, but they decided to disable the beep, so it just switches modes without any indication of what's happening. I keep my phone on vibrate all the time because I don't like to disturb conversations with the ringing - but it has a tendancy to put it back on loud.
The other annoying feature, is that when you put it on to charge - it insists on switching to loud mode. I charge my phone overnight, so the last thing I want is it on loud mode. So each time I charge it, I have to switch it back to vibrate mode straight away.
I fully intent to fix this feature by buying a different phone - I'm just waiting for the neo1973 to come out...
The way any sensible store selling media has done it for years is to only put CASES on display, you take the case to the paying desk, and they fill it it with a CD/DVD from the rack behind them. There's very few ways you can get around this sort of system.
This has actually become less common in stores that I have seen lately. They seem to be tagging cases with security tags. This doesn't prevent you from just removing the CD from the case and leaving the store with it, but people who just wanted the data, and not the complete product would have just downloaded it anyway.
NO! See, that's the whole point of my post: as a user, I shouldn't have to write the thing myself! Instead, the Gentoo developers should write it and integrate it into Portage, so that it just gets emerged and added to the rc scripts during installation, like cron and ssh and whatnot. Let me get this straight, you went through the entire gentoo installation process, and you're whinging about having to write a cron job?
Updateing without you knowing is a bad idea, on any operating system. But surely if you wanted to you could write a cron job which did it?
What would be nice is if you could pass a flag to emerge to only compile packages, not fully merge them. (You can already tell it to do fetch only)
That way, I could have an weekly script which downloaded and compiled all new packages, and then I could actually merge them when I was concentrating on what was happening (Ready to fix any issues). This would reduce the amount of attendance time required to update my system by quite a bit.
I'm not shitting you when I say it took me three days to bring a box which hadn't been updated for four months up to date. In my experience, updating a gentoo box infrequently is a bad idea. You should either update every week/month or not at all. The way I look at it, you either want a system with the latest everything, or you want a system which works. If you want the first, you should expect to spend a bit of time working on it. If you want the second - why on earth are you updating every four months.
If I wanted a system to be stable, but not that far behind current stuff. I'd probably be updating once a year - you have to do a bit of work to fix some of the updates, but at least you only have to do it once a year.
On the other hand, if I wanted a system that's always up to date, I'd be updating every other week. This is what I currently do on my two gentoo boxes, and I've very rarely had problems. (The last problem I had was when it upgraded mysql from 4 to 5, some of the defaults changed - I spent ages trying to work out why I couldn't connect from other machines.)
One thing to note, if you're having problems when updateing world add the --deep flag to emerge, it will update all libraries that need it as well. Then follow the emerge with a revdep-rebuild, to check for things that have been broken by updated libraries (and fix them)
Of course, most engineers on/. will take exception to the lumping in of CS with all the engineering disciplines (ie, ones that you can be a PE in), I generally do as well, but I think its interesting because it takes the same "kind" of person to declare any one of these majors - you have to like math, and thats the same for a real CS curriculum. I, for one, don't think that placing CS within an engineering perspective is wrong at all. I visited many CS departments here in the UK before choosing which to apply to, and some of them had been placed within Science Faculties and some in Engineering. I think it's perfectly possible to design a CS course which lies entirely within the realms of science, but I don't think this is where the spirit of CS is. The spirit of CS is very much about the solutions that can be obtained, to me, a science is all about looking at why and how a solution works. You see something happening around you, and you seek to explain it. CS on the other hand, is about seeing something around you and thinking "How can I do that with a computer?", "How could I simulate that?", or even imagining something that hasn't yet been possible, and making it possible. Which fits much better with the spirit of engineering.
Science is about bringing more/new understanding to something around us which is fixed, looking at the results that gives us. Engineering is about analysing things that exist, and seeking to make them better. Or coming up with new ways of doing things, or even new things to do.
I think the second one sounds more like CS - but that's just my opinion
Yes, if you have more than one machine, then you just keep one "safe" the entire time. If you only have the one machine, then you should be a little more careful - or go and work in the labs.
There's nothing to prevent you, if you rely on the computer to hand in work, playing with your computer during holidays...
This works well as a server, My flatmate recently bought one, and it worked pretty nicely out of the box - he stuck gentoo on it (which took a bit of fiddling), but now has a v low power file/web/subversion server which is on constantly.
However, the power is LOW, don't expect to be able to do much other than just let it sit and serve a few bits and pieces. I bought myself a Via Epia fanless 1GHz motherboard last october, which works as a mythtv front/backend, apache server, subversion server, a synchronisation machine (I have a script on both my other two computers which when run, will rsync all the important stuff, so that all 3 always have everything I need. The board itself takes about 15-17W, + a bit exta to power the PCI card, and the Hard Drive. I haven't measured it yet, but it's saved us quite a bit of money on our electricity because i now only need to turn my desktop on rarely.
The OP seemed to be suggesting he was looking to replace his current machine with a low power option. This is nearly impossible to do without having to make a significant performance sacrifice. What I suggest instead, is going for a low power, always on server to do all the stuff that you need to have available constantly, and then just turn off your powerful machine as often as possible.
but I really wouldn't call it C.S.; it's more like what I'd call "I.T." It's like what "learning to weld" is to "mechanical engineering:" It's awesome to know, and immensely practical, but by itself it prepares you neither for academic work nor for a particularly impressive job in the corporate world. I wasn't saying that's what he should STUDY, I'm saying that's what he should practice doing. I think you're welding example is quite apt here - if you're studying Mech Eng, you should probably know how to weld, how to put shit together. At the same time, if you're studying a CS degree - you should probably know how your computer is put together (and all the rest of the stuff I mentioned).
Interestingly enough, an arguement occasionally comes up where I go to uni, about whether CS is a Science or an Engineering subject. Currently the CS dept is part of the Engineering faculty, where I (and many others) believe it should be. Nevermind the name of the subject, CS (done properly) is far too practical to be classed as anything other than an Engineering subject (I have friends studying EE and their course is much more theoretical than ours).
There appear to be 3 types of CS course:
- Theoretical Computer Science
- Practical Computer Science
- Programming
I've seen Computer Science courses which are nothing more than a 3 year Java course, you learn how to program, but not much about what goes on underneath. I've seen CS courses which are basically just Maths with a little bit of programming, you learn how the algorithms are working, exactly how each one works, proving that they do work, and you code a few. And I've seen CS courses (IMO the best ones) where you spend your time learning the theory, then learning the practical stuff, then learning how to make the theory work practically, how to make the theory fit into practical requirements. How things are implemented, why they are implemented that way, how the hardware works, how to interact with it, how to make things fast/small/efficient/accurate(enough)/maintainably /quickly. Unfortunately every university has a different approach, and they're all called "Computer Science".
What you need to do is work out which of these you want to do - and the work out where you can do it... (personally I'm a great fan of the practical computer science)
No, seriously - have a program somewhere on your computer, which finds a random system file and deletes it! Then try and find out what went missing, how to replace it, etc...
OK, maybe that's a little excessive, but learn to play with your computer, break it, fix it, install linux on it, install a different linux on it, download random shit from the internet and run it - work out what it does, how to use it, how it works. Compile stuff, add a feature to it, break it, write shell scripts that do stuff you don't actually need to do. Setup some server applications.
A few rules for a proper CS student's computer - NEVER store important stuff on it - if it's the sort of stuff that would cause a problem if it was deleted, backup, daily. NEVER let it stay constant
DO NOT spend your degree doing the sort of stuff that you will end up doing in a proper job. Spend your degree doing all the stuff you won't really be able to in the real world. If it's a good CS course, it will give you enough grounding to approach more or less any RW problem. There is an exception - make sure you do at least one groupwork project.
Take a wide range of courses. Believe me when I say, you're tastes will change, and you should make sure you don't cut off your options too soon.
How about about a system where a patent could be released if it has been dormant for a certain number of years. However, in order to get a patent released, you (as a company who would like to make use of the technology it describes) would have to request it. It would then be the filer's responsibility to prove they are implementing the patent within a reasonable timeframe. If they cannot, then the patent would be released to the public domain.
This would effectively mean that companies would only be required to release a patent if someone else has come up with an idea which requires that technology. This means that innovation is not prevented by patents. It should be that the process of getting a patent released from a company is no more complicated than applying for a patent in the first place.
What you fail to see, is that most regulation is not about limiting what can be shown on TV, it's about limiting when. It provides a period of the day when parents know that certain things will not be shown. This allows the parent to give their child freedom without having to monitor too closely.
When I was quite a young child, my parents let me and my sister walk down to the local shop on most Saturday mornings, to buy some sweets. They knew the area well enough to know that the danger was limited. However, they gave us the freedom to do this. If they did not know the area well, then it would have been irresponsible at that age to allow us to do that. TV regulation, means that the parents can do the same thing with the TV - they know that before a certain time, they can give their children the freedom to watch TV alone.
Being a good parent, is not about constantly watching over what your child is doing. It's about making sure that they are unlikely to end up in a situation where the risk is high. And making sure that when they do end up in a risky situation, they know what to do.
Much of your arguement would make sense, if the bad guys were the only one's using violence. However, how frequently do you see the good guy just stand there and take it? The good guy is often responsible for just as much violence as the bad guy. How does a child tell between good violence and bad violence? Why can't the child apply similar rules to spot the difference between "good sex" and "bad sex"?
I think the issue appears to be more that violence has been a public part of our culture for a very long time. Both violence and sex have existed longer than humans have. However, violence has always been more acceptable publicly. Violence is as much an instinct as sex is - as long as there have been members of the opposite sex, there have been fights over who gets to mate with them!
Violence is always about being nasty to someone - you can't have violence without hurting someone, which provides a moral dilemma about when violence is suitable. Sex however, is normally about being nice to someone. This isn't so much a dilemma, as an education issue - providing both (or more) parties understand what they are doing. The chances of hurting anyone are minimal.
Why is it that you see children as better able to solve the moral dilemma surrounding violence, than understand the basics of responsible sex?
If you take your laptop with you, you will spend half your time looking for places to charge it, use it, and connect to the internet with it. You'll spend the other half your time, trying to ensure it doesn't get nicked/damaged. You said yourself it's nice and shiny. Keep it that way, and leave it at home.
I recommend you do take something to offload your photos to though. I have an iAudio X5, which I primarily use for listening to music, however it has a USB Host function so I can copy photos off my camera. I'm able to fill up a 256MB card in about a week, so if I go for any longer, it's very useful.
Take spare batteries - hundreds of them. The rechargeables for my camera will last about a week each, and I have two of them, backpacking in Europe it was easy to charge them up frequently enough to cover that, but as we were camping most nights we had to plan it!
With everything you take, think "What if I lost this?" and "what if this was stolen?" and the key question "Will the use outweigh the risk of loss"
If you want to check your email/use the net - find an internet cafe, it's much more convenient than trying to carry your own computer.
Children copy everything they see, this has always been the case. But a small amount of proper parenting can avoid any issues here... Please not, proper parenting does not involve complaining to other people! As a parent you can do any of the following:
- Turn off the TV (if you're whinging about the fact you don't know the schedule for ads, WTF is your 2/3/4/5 year old doing watching TV that late in the evening without you there as well!)
- Teach your children that cars are dangerous, do them a favour and try and give them a little bit of common sense. Finally, the killer one...
- KEEP THE KEYS SOMEWHERE SENSIBLE! If you're worried about your child driving your car, don't provide them access to the keys.
On the other hand, if what another person said is true about an australian law banning car adverts portraying illegal activity is true, then I can understand them pulling it - but the complaints are just retarded...
Well, not any more. I think aardman got what they needed - they became a slightly better known in america. The curse of the were-rabbit was a very funny film, but when you compare it to Aardmann's other stuff, it has some noticeable lackings. The humour isn't quite as good, and goes for the guaranteed laugh rather than the actual funny stuff.
Aardmann are an excellent creative company and the last thing they need is a company like dreamworks breathing down their back.
That said, dreamworks are good, I loved the Shrek films, but what they needed to do with aardman is just leave them alone and let them exercise their own creativeness. However, they've decided to dump them now, and I don't think that will really make much of a difference.
Who gets to vote on who these IT experts are? Everybody? How many average Joes would be able to tell the difference between an IT expert and someone who knows how to use a couple of office programs? It's simple for someone like us to spot a fraud when we see one, but how many other people do you know who could?
Slashdot Mirror
In reality this appears to just be a knee-jerk think of the children law for the purposes of making people think
the government is doing something about pedophiles. As is pointed out in other news articles around this - they
are trying to close the loophole allowing images to be converted from a picture of a crime into a picture of
a simulated crime (to hide the crime itself).
What you're assuming is that the OP is looking to purchase non-RIAA music instead of purchasing RIAA music. However, this is not strictly true, as far as I can see the OP is in a situation similar to my own. They want to discover NEW music, but they would also like to encourage non-RIAA bands, the obvious thing to do is to look for independant music. There is too much good music currently signed to RIAA labels to avoid buying it. But if I am actively looking for new music, I will go looking for independant stuff.
This way you can easily encourage good independant music, without having to discard music that you like. Just concentrate on the NEW music that you find.
Give "Transmission" a try, I used it for a while, but have since moved to using rtorrent in a screen session on my server instead.
http://transmission.m0k.org/
The smart car gained such a following in the UK before they even made a right hand drive version that about 40% of the smart cars you see on the road here are actually european spec left handers.
I've driven one. It was shit - but then I learnt to drive properly and have an inherent dislike for anything with an automatic gearbox.
The other annoying feature, is that when you put it on to charge - it insists on switching to loud mode. I charge my phone overnight, so the last thing I want is it on loud mode. So each time I charge it, I have to switch it back to vibrate mode straight away.
I fully intent to fix this feature by buying a different phone - I'm just waiting for the neo1973 to come out...
The way any sensible store selling media has done it for years is to only put CASES on display, you take the case to the paying desk, and they fill it it with a CD/DVD from the rack behind them. There's very few ways you can get around this sort of system.
This has actually become less common in stores that I have seen lately. They seem to be tagging cases with security tags. This doesn't prevent you from just removing the CD from the case and leaving the store with it, but people who just wanted the data, and not the complete product would have just downloaded it anyway.
Updateing without you knowing is a bad idea, on any operating system. But surely if you wanted to you could write a cron job which did it?
What would be nice is if you could pass a flag to emerge to only compile packages, not fully merge them. (You can already tell it to do fetch only)
That way, I could have an weekly script which downloaded and compiled all new packages, and then I could actually merge them when I was concentrating on what was happening (Ready to fix any issues). This would reduce the amount of attendance time required to update my system by quite a bit.
If I wanted a system to be stable, but not that far behind current stuff. I'd probably be updating once a year - you have to do a bit of work to fix some of the updates, but at least you only have to do it once a year.
On the other hand, if I wanted a system that's always up to date, I'd be updating every other week. This is what I currently do on my two gentoo boxes, and I've very rarely had problems. (The last problem I had was when it upgraded mysql from 4 to 5, some of the defaults changed - I spent ages trying to work out why I couldn't connect from other machines.)
One thing to note, if you're having problems when updateing world add the --deep flag to emerge, it will update all libraries that need it as well. Then follow the emerge with a revdep-rebuild, to check for things that have been broken by updated libraries (and fix them)
Science is about bringing more/new understanding to something around us which is fixed, looking at the results that gives us.
Engineering is about analysing things that exist, and seeking to make them better. Or coming up with new ways of doing things, or even new things to do.
I think the second one sounds more like CS - but that's just my opinion
Yes, if you have more than one machine, then you just keep one "safe" the entire time. If you only have the one machine, then you should be a little more careful - or go and work in the labs.
There's nothing to prevent you, if you rely on the computer to hand in work, playing with your computer during holidays...
This works well as a server, My flatmate recently bought one, and it worked pretty nicely out of the box - he stuck gentoo on it (which took a bit of fiddling), but now has a v low power file/web/subversion server which is on constantly.
However, the power is LOW, don't expect to be able to do much other than just let it sit and serve a few bits and pieces. I bought myself a Via Epia fanless 1GHz motherboard last october, which works as a mythtv front/backend, apache server, subversion server, a synchronisation machine (I have a script on both my other two computers which when run, will rsync all the important stuff, so that all 3 always have everything I need. The board itself takes about 15-17W, + a bit exta to power the PCI card, and the Hard Drive. I haven't measured it yet, but it's saved us quite a bit of money on our electricity because i now only need to turn my desktop on rarely.
The OP seemed to be suggesting he was looking to replace his current machine with a low power option. This is nearly impossible to do without having to make a significant performance sacrifice. What I suggest instead, is going for a low power, always on server to do all the stuff that you need to have available constantly, and then just turn off your powerful machine as often as possible.
Interestingly enough, an arguement occasionally comes up where I go to uni, about whether CS is a Science or an Engineering subject. Currently the CS dept is part of the Engineering faculty, where I (and many others) believe it should be. Nevermind the name of the subject, CS (done properly) is far too practical to be classed as anything other than an Engineering subject (I have friends studying EE and their course is much more theoretical than ours).
There appear to be 3 types of CS course:
- Theoretical Computer Science
- Practical Computer Science
- Programming
I've seen Computer Science courses which are nothing more than a 3 year Java course, you learn how to program, but not much about what goes on underneath. I've seen CS courses which are basically just Maths with a little bit of programming, you learn how the algorithms are working, exactly how each one works, proving that they do work, and you code a few. And I've seen CS courses (IMO the best ones) where you spend your time learning the theory, then learning the practical stuff, then learning how to make the theory work practically, how to make the theory fit into practical requirements. How things are implemented, why they are implemented that way, how the hardware works, how to interact with it, how to make things fast/small/efficient/accurate(enough)/maintainabl
What you need to do is work out which of these you want to do - and the work out where you can do it... (personally I'm a great fan of the practical computer science)
No, seriously - have a program somewhere on your computer, which finds a random system file and deletes it! Then try and find out what went missing, how to replace it, etc...
OK, maybe that's a little excessive, but learn to play with your computer, break it, fix it, install linux on it, install a different linux on it, download random shit from the internet and run it - work out what it does, how to use it, how it works. Compile stuff, add a feature to it, break it, write shell scripts that do stuff you don't actually need to do. Setup some server applications.
A few rules for a proper CS student's computer - NEVER store important stuff on it - if it's the sort of stuff that would cause a problem if it was deleted, backup, daily. NEVER let it stay constant
DO NOT spend your degree doing the sort of stuff that you will end up doing in a proper job. Spend your degree doing all the stuff you won't really be able to in the real world. If it's a good CS course, it will give you enough grounding to approach more or less any RW problem. There is an exception - make sure you do at least one groupwork project.
Take a wide range of courses. Believe me when I say, you're tastes will change, and you should make sure you don't cut off your options too soon.
How about about a system where a patent could be released if it has been dormant for a certain number of years. However, in order to get a patent released, you (as a company who would like to make use of the technology it describes) would have to request it. It would then be the filer's responsibility to prove they are implementing the patent within a reasonable timeframe. If they cannot, then the patent would be released to the public domain.
This would effectively mean that companies would only be required to release a patent if someone else has come up with an idea which requires that technology. This means that innovation is not prevented by patents. It should be that the process of getting a patent released from a company is no more complicated than applying for a patent in the first place.
What you fail to see, is that most regulation is not about limiting what can be shown on TV, it's about limiting when. It provides a period of the day when parents know that certain things will not be shown. This allows the parent to give their child freedom without having to monitor too closely.
When I was quite a young child, my parents let me and my sister walk down to the local shop on most Saturday mornings, to buy some sweets. They knew the area well enough to know that the danger was limited. However, they gave us the freedom to do this. If they did not know the area well, then it would have been irresponsible at that age to allow us to do that. TV regulation, means that the parents can do the same thing with the TV - they know that before a certain time, they can give their children the freedom to watch TV alone.
Being a good parent, is not about constantly watching over what your child is doing. It's about making sure that they are unlikely to end up in a situation where the risk is high. And making sure that when they do end up in a risky situation, they know what to do.
Much of your arguement would make sense, if the bad guys were the only one's using violence. However, how frequently do you see the good guy just stand there and take it? The good guy is often responsible for just as much violence as the bad guy. How does a child tell between good violence and bad violence? Why can't the child apply similar rules to spot the difference between "good sex" and "bad sex"?
I think the issue appears to be more that violence has been a public part of our culture for a very long time. Both violence and sex have existed longer than humans have. However, violence has always been more acceptable publicly. Violence is as much an instinct as sex is - as long as there have been members of the opposite sex, there have been fights over who gets to mate with them!
Violence is always about being nasty to someone - you can't have violence without hurting someone, which provides a moral dilemma about when violence is suitable. Sex however, is normally about being nice to someone. This isn't so much a dilemma, as an education issue - providing both (or more) parties understand what they are doing. The chances of hurting anyone are minimal.
Why is it that you see children as better able to solve the moral dilemma surrounding violence, than understand the basics of responsible sex?
If you take your laptop with you, you will spend half your time looking for places to charge it, use it, and connect to the internet with it. You'll spend the other half your time, trying to ensure it doesn't get nicked/damaged. You said yourself it's nice and shiny. Keep it that way, and leave it at home.
I recommend you do take something to offload your photos to though. I have an iAudio X5, which I primarily use for listening to music, however it has a USB Host function so I can copy photos off my camera. I'm able to fill up a 256MB card in about a week, so if I go for any longer, it's very useful.
Take spare batteries - hundreds of them. The rechargeables for my camera will last about a week each, and I have two of them, backpacking in Europe it was easy to charge them up frequently enough to cover that, but as we were camping most nights we had to plan it!
With everything you take, think "What if I lost this?" and "what if this was stolen?" and the key question "Will the use outweigh the risk of loss"
If you want to check your email/use the net - find an internet cafe, it's much more convenient than trying to carry your own computer.
I did it, it just took a bit of re-arrangment:
"Can't afford Microsoft"
Children copy everything they see, this has always been the case. But a small amount of proper parenting can avoid any issues here... Please not, proper parenting does not involve complaining to other people! As a parent you can do any of the following:
- Turn off the TV (if you're whinging about the fact you don't know the schedule for ads, WTF is your 2/3/4/5 year old doing watching TV that late in the evening without you there as well!)
- Teach your children that cars are dangerous, do them a favour and try and give them a little bit of common sense.
Finally, the killer one...
- KEEP THE KEYS SOMEWHERE SENSIBLE! If you're worried about your child driving your car, don't provide them access to the keys.
On the other hand, if what another person said is true about an australian law banning car adverts portraying illegal activity is true, then I can understand them pulling it - but the complaints are just retarded...
Well, not any more. I think aardman got what they needed - they became a slightly better known in america. The curse of the were-rabbit was a very funny film, but when you compare it to Aardmann's other stuff, it has some noticeable lackings. The humour isn't quite as good, and goes for the guaranteed laugh rather than the actual funny stuff.
Aardmann are an excellent creative company and the last thing they need is a company like dreamworks breathing down their back.
That said, dreamworks are good, I loved the Shrek films, but what they needed to do with aardman is just leave them alone and let them exercise their own creativeness. However, they've decided to dump them now, and I don't think that will really make much of a difference.
needs an elected body of IT experts
Who gets to vote on who these IT experts are? Everybody? How many average Joes would be able to tell the difference between an IT expert and someone who knows how to use a couple of office programs? It's simple for someone like us to spot a fraud when we see one, but how many other people do you know who could?