Its a trivial point but one that always causes confusion. I was in two minds about mentioning it, hence my rather lazy ambivalence. In full for any passers by who might like to consider this a footnote, British Public Schools are private schools. They are called this because when they were built the only alternative was religious schooling which wasn't available to everyone for obvious reasons. Education provided by the government through taxation are called State Schools.
Actually, there are some people who object to both "British" (what about Northern Ireland - rather politically charged to ignore them -... but do I really want to type out Great British every time, its sounds stupid) and "American" (should one nation lay claim to be the entire continent?) as rather lazy by the same token.
Its about basic skills and then I think, very much, teaching people how to learn from books and so on. Don't laugh, but for me a pivotal moment was reading "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" by Robert A. Heinlein because it has a reasonable account of it. It was completely new thinking to me at the time, learning was just what you did in school and the teacher told you to do...
The other thing is to foster the right atmosphere. Almost impossible but the main thing I think. I'm not from the US but I understand that there is a reasonable streak of anti-intellectualism (or whatever you might call it) in US public schools. I encountered the same thing myself at my UK state (read USian 'public' but not UKian "Public") school. I've no idea how to crack this problem but it seems to be by far the most ruinous thing to our children's self-esteem and educational development (virtually, you can have one but not the other). From what I know of the US school system though (2nd hand, true) I think maybe sport could be deemphasised a little. Or at any rate elite sport anyway. It seems it has way to much knock-on effect on things. I'm not saying no sport but perhaps a system more like Australia where they are the most skilled sportspeople on the planet man for man but have more of a culture of sport being something you do outside schools with clubs etc that have close relations with your school. Being an athelete is neither here nor there with regard to school. I know in the US the terms "scholastics" is used. Funnily enough you don't hear the equivalent much elsewhere...why? Because elsewhere thats all schools are supposed to be about, nothing else. Being good at a sport is nice but its for your own time really.
On a final note, being in the education game myself, I'd say its time to stop making school teachers social engineers and social workers. Their job is to teach, and teach well. Not the other metric tonne of shit they are supposed to deal with because nobody else in society will. Get that off their desks and you might see some general improvement.
I agree with you but have no idea what the answer is. From where I'm sitting you might imagine the fact that the US has apparently completely lost control of its prison system might be considered a matter of national shame, but for some reason its not. But I guess thats just answering a question with a question...
I confess I don't know much about these things but would it kill them to release a 1.01 to 1.0 "fix"? I really can't be bothered going through this uninstall -> reinstall rigmarole. I'd much rather they wasted their own time and got this done than waste mine.
A PhD is a qualification in research, not domain knowledge. Hence Doctor of Philosophy. I'd say your organisation wasn't very bright either if it was calling people to interview without understanding what their qualifications were (as is evident if you think a PhD is a qualification gained from 'education' that might 'regurgitated' amongst other things). Why on earth do you think they'd be any good at tests of implementation? Might as well interview a cat for a guard dog position. I guess the people with catering college qualifications and sea navigation certificates also let you down a bit eh.
Here we go again. I'm not even reading the comments but my spider sense is tingling, typical predicted comment I've known tens/hundreds/thousands of people with PhDs applying for jobs. They were pretty retarded and couldn't even spell ROM much less display any skills...random ranting about Ivory Towers and 'real world' knowledge. No insecurity there at all, natch. Just because you were once a student doesn't actually mean you know anything about academia anymore than going to school makes you a teacher. Its all irrelevant anyway.
Personally I agree with this guy in the sense he has every right to refuse something he feels is undignified and insulting to him, I don't actually care if he's a roadsweeper or the Lucasian Professor at Cambridge. Anyway, I'll let you Slashbots get back to saying everyone should bend over and take it (whatever it is, be it a pay cut, an elephant's turgid member, crap working hours or an insulting interview) up the arse if its coming from a corporation of some description. Yes he has to take the consequences, but thats his choice to make, not yours. Frankly I think its about time some of you nay sayers also considered having a bit of self respect in the face of the corporations.
Woah there fanboy. Thats my point. I'm not saying he's lying as much as he is often rather disingenuous in those books especially when it comes to the non-scientific content, according to his peers anyway. I don't have my copy to hand but I seem to recall with some clarity he does actually tell you this himself in one of his anecdotes anyway; that he's not to be entirely trusted.
Feynman isn't credited with that or indeed a lot of things in "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman" and the other one the title of which escapes me. Feynman credits himself with many of those things. I'm not disputing his credentials as a great scientist, for sure he is universally recognised for those things, and as an influencial thinker (especially in self-professed "geek" circles) but even the man's best friends would and indeed on many occasions have pointed out his proclivity for self-promotion and tendency to portray himself in a certain light that might not be entirely accurate in his books.
From Jane Pinckard's reply: Yet as a community we should be cautious in embracing too whole-heartedly the over-simplified conclusion that violence in games has no impact, especially when taken out of the individual, anecdotal sphere and applied en masse as a cultural phenomenon.
I'm fine with this but I think its time the "concerned" lobby were also similarly cautious about embracing whole-heartedly the over simplified conclusion that violence in games has an impact especially when taken out of the individual, anecdotal sphere and applied en masse as a cultural phenomenon.
the symbolism and such like is therefore just a facet of character in the end. Its really that simple, the only reason American viewers choke on it is because American genre fiction is almost exclusively plot-driven and so they try to view everything in terms of plot. In each case the jiggery pokery, pseudo-technology and mysticism is just an externalisation of some part of the character associated with whatever is going on. This begins in the first episode with the "Absolute Terror" Field (personal problem manifest as an actual field) and never really lets up thereafter. If you see it like that then it all makes perfect sense, and thus we can see where the original ending came from. Its a perfectly acceptable ending if you think the show is about character, but its a problem if you thought it was about plot.
Gotcha. Sorry, so used to the Slashdotian neo-Libertarianism I thought you were saying something different along the lines that they piss money up the wall on silly things. They are of course not silly things as much as uncommerical things. Its actually in their mandate to produce minority programming (indeed, there is an ongoing argument from the commerical broadcasters that the BBC should do only this type of programming so as not to unfairly compete with them). I think what we are seeing here is to do with how far that mandate extends, especially as not everyone who has a TV necessarily has an internet connection. And obviously not everyone of those 700K people would have been a British license payer either. There have been a lot of complaints that the BBC is going too far in its immersion in digital broadcasting and the internet in general; to many it seems fairer if the money is "put on the screen" as it were for the terrrestrial viewer.
Whats wrong with that? As a long-term fan of "one man and his dog" I find sheep herding fascinating. Its just a part of daily rural life for a lot of folk. I don't see your problem.
I agree with what you say to some extent and I don't mean to rude here, but this isn't whats at stake. The problem is precisely with people who make it hard for other people to understand them because they don't pay sufficient care to English. For example, substituting "loose" when you mean "lose" can cause all kinds of confusion. This has nothing to do with the imperatives you describe above and would appear to have everything do with not really caring. To revisit another point you make, sure, all kinds of groups have their special terms and abbreviations (geekdom's use of these is mild compared with what goes on in military circles for example). But again, most of these groups go to the trouble of unpacking their language when talking to the general population, geeks are either unable or unwilling to do this. Personally I suspect these issues are just more evidence of the geek's failure to acquire solid social skills and a mildly autistic tendency to believe if you can understand what you've written then why can't everyone else?
There are obviously many different approaches and schools of thought in the area, but I'd take a look at anything written by James Reason, an academic who is basically the most famous name in the area. This book is a good place to start. Its a fairly practical guide explaining the principles with lots of case studies and also a description of the tools one might wish to use. I think you'll find the tone helpful and perhaps a bit surprising; his emphasis isn't on (unrealistically) eradicating risk or finger wagging exercises but rather dealing with risk in the most efficient manner.
I think you have a misapprehension as to what safety culture is about. Certainly I agree its implementation is disruptive to organisations, which is why its hard to to bring about. The issues of communication and prioritisating of risks certainly fall under its balliwick; what you are actually describing is an organisation without a safety culture attempting to "do" safety, thats my point really. When it comes to deciding to launch that should be a decision based on the prevailing conditions and so on presumably, not outstanding worries about the engineering processes that produced the equipment. See what I mean?
Further, theres no such thing as an engineer crying wolf. If they say theres a risk, based on their professional knowledge and activities, that should be respected. With an appropriate management framework there would be no issue of being "deluged" by risk reports, again, thats what you get pre-safety culture. In a safety culture safety is central to the engineering process so this doesn't happen (as, say, customer input and unit testing are in extreme programming).
My experience of safety culture is in the military context, so its not about restricting progress or stopping people (ultimately) from doing dangerous things! Its about managing risk appropriately by building it into your core engineering processes not necessarily eliminating it altogether.
You think its reckless to spend money on a research service to inform democratically elected representatives with regard to the issues they are debating and making decisions upon?
I think you take this libertarian notion of not paying taxes for anything superfluous too far, or would you rather politicians legislated on the basis of dog-eared back issues of Time magazine and National Geographic?
Ah! This is why you need a safety culture!
To make sure the warning sticker isn't stuck over the instructions for opening the door in an emergency, made of rolled uranium and held in place with some plastic explosive that happened to be lying around.
I wonder if the reporting here has been a bit skewed by concerntrating on specific technical safety recommendations. Surely those are just symptoms that may or may not be addressed (and may or may not cause problems even if they aren't), the real compelling question is do NASA have an appropriate degree of safety culture? I know this is probably a less interesting issue for the Slashdot crowd to discuss than technical details but as anyone working in a safety-critical engineering area will appreciate, its really whats at stake here. And IMHE, whilst I appreciate to some it may sound like management wankery, safety culture is both absolutely vital and also damn hard to inculcate in an organisation. Whilst I understand the President was making rash claims about missions to mars, he was really needed here to make some very clear statements and devise policies to encourage NASA to change. It would seem to me if NASA are failing to meet clearly defined 'action points' they certainly haven't a safety culture which bodes ill for the future frankly. Seems in 2003 quite a few people called it correctly ("Experts say NASA's safety culture may be too broken to fix")
I agree with all the moral imperatives you describe, I just think that these things should be covered by laws. I think we trust corporations too far when they have shown time after time they are liars who cannot be trusted and I'm all out of patience. Of course, they keep up the charade that they are capable of ethical behaviour but its all so much BS. Its in their nature to make money however and whatever, and thats about it, might as well get mad at a dog for barking. That doesn't mean we have to put up with noise though, I suggest a big stick is wielded. I certainly don't like the amoral corporation but I think thats the reality and it should be fully faced and legislated against more actively whatever their arguments to the contrary. As regards the specific case here, the anger shouldn't be directed at IBM who ultimately have all the motivational complexity of a bacteria (1. sell stuff 2. profit) but rather the government for allowing them to get away with it. The alternative is the continued bastard behaviour of these organisations, lying adverts informing me MS really cares about me(!) and ever more indignant discussion of what they "should" do but never will until they are made to.
I don't think backing up a president's email and backing up some minor whitehouse aide's email should have equal importance.
I agree really but I also find the problem with data is you never know until its too late. The aide's email could be an international "smoking gun" lost forever vs. an eternally archived Presidential request for diet soda on Air Force One.
I feel that if you can't completely automate backups then the best thing is to give users easy access to backup resources for their own material so they can judge whats most important and what isn't. This happens in some organisations at the moment but not in all; I used to work in a place where I had to make a special appointment with a tech just to burn a CD of stuff on my HD. Guess how much data we regularly lost as an organisation...
On the whole I'm not very impressed with the quality of games journalism as compared with literary, cinema or musical writing. In the article the main quality of a good review appears to be wacky humour and then something about quality of information as regards being consumer reviews. I have nothing against consumer reviewing but there does still seem to be a lack of insightful (rather than merely informative) commentary that locates games within their proper context as for example newspaper book reviewers do. I guess Edge do that to some extent but its very rare outside that. I believe computer gaming now has a sufficient history, culture and widespread knowledge of technique to support such writing, one just wonders when it will arrive en mass. Certainly Edge do the type of thing I'm talking about and in particular I've seen good writing in the 'retro' gaming arena. This sounds a bit baa-humbug I know and I'm not really asking for pretentious academic chin rubbing as much as I'd like to know where a game fits in within the pantheon (and not just within the market) and not merely that its good/bad, but some ideas on why its good/bad and how that relates to the way in which it was implemented. I don't mean to slag off any of the nominated people, its just a general observation on the state of games writing at the moment.
Well OK, although I doubt you've actually been around since before the South Sea Company crashed which is really the background to the whole concept behind modern business practices:) Its a good read though.
The dividing line here is between morality and legality. I'm not well up on the Enron thing but if something is illegal or unethical (grey area but lets says we talking about an agreed code of practice) then of course a corporation shouldn't do it, but lets not confuse laws with morals. What I'm trying to get at it is that corporations don't exist to make the world better, or even to provide jobs or services to consumers. They exist to make the shareholders richer and thats it. If they tear up the environment and ruin the lives of common people, thats absolutely 100% fine unless it was specfically illegal for them to have acted as they did. Ultimately its not the job of say, BP, to worry about the environment. Its for legislators to worry about it and stop BP from doing those things.
However, I'm not an apologist for big business: I very much dislike the notion of ethical business and voluntary governance because its ultimately only an illusion designed to keep regulators off their backs and, to some extent, a marketing stunt. If it wasn't a lie, the point is, it would be illegal. Fact. It creates a rather stupid situation where companies lie to us every single day about their nature ("we're good people really" when it should be "we are patholigically devoted to profit. get in our way and subject to rules and regulations we will crush you. the end.") whilst at the same time calling into question the rightness of regulating these organisations (c.f., regulatory laws are always the enemy of capitalism vs. post-enron/tyco regulatory laws are necessary for capitalism to exist in the first place). Personally I'd prefer a world where governments aren't scared to legislate and sodding BP don't spend millions trying to get me to believe they are basically OK people and really into trees and stuff when they are an organisation devoted to growing capital through selling oil and oil products. I don't have a problem with that, but lets open our eyes and know, really know, who and what we are dealing with and most importantly what their basic nature is. The corporation is an entity without basic feelings; it feels no shame, no remorse, no guilt and legally bound not exhibit any vestiges of mercy, compassion or generosity. Anything that suggests or mimics such traits is at best marketing, at heart there is a howling void.
I think of this a lot whilst reading Slashdot because the average poster is both a feverent capitalist but also a hater of Microsoft who seems to attribute certain sly traits to MS. There is also a great deal of whining about outsourcing. Why do these things even invite comment? Its like Joe Average Poster seems to suspect that the corporation is like Darth Vader; somewhere in the corner of his blackened, charred heart is a spark of good. Unfortunately this is not the case, this time Darth is 100% robot.
Slashdot Mirror
Hehehe. That was much better than my comment really. I'll set them up, you put them away huh.
I was of the understanding the Mrs Clinton was rather good at overlooking sexual escapades right under her nose.
Its a trivial point but one that always causes confusion. I was in two minds about mentioning it, hence my rather lazy ambivalence. In full for any passers by who might like to consider this a footnote, British Public Schools are private schools. They are called this because when they were built the only alternative was religious schooling which wasn't available to everyone for obvious reasons. Education provided by the government through taxation are called State Schools. Actually, there are some people who object to both "British" (what about Northern Ireland - rather politically charged to ignore them - ... but do I really want to type out Great British every time, its sounds stupid) and "American" (should one nation lay claim to be the entire continent?) as rather lazy by the same token.
Its about basic skills and then I think, very much, teaching people how to learn from books and so on. Don't laugh, but for me a pivotal moment was reading "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" by Robert A. Heinlein because it has a reasonable account of it. It was completely new thinking to me at the time, learning was just what you did in school and the teacher told you to do...
The other thing is to foster the right atmosphere. Almost impossible but the main thing I think. I'm not from the US but I understand that there is a reasonable streak of anti-intellectualism (or whatever you might call it) in US public schools. I encountered the same thing myself at my UK state (read USian 'public' but not UKian "Public") school. I've no idea how to crack this problem but it seems to be by far the most ruinous thing to our children's self-esteem and educational development (virtually, you can have one but not the other). From what I know of the US school system though (2nd hand, true) I think maybe sport could be deemphasised a little. Or at any rate elite sport anyway. It seems it has way to much knock-on effect on things. I'm not saying no sport but perhaps a system more like Australia where they are the most skilled sportspeople on the planet man for man but have more of a culture of sport being something you do outside schools with clubs etc that have close relations with your school. Being an athelete is neither here nor there with regard to school. I know in the US the terms "scholastics" is used. Funnily enough you don't hear the equivalent much elsewhere...why? Because elsewhere thats all schools are supposed to be about, nothing else. Being good at a sport is nice but its for your own time really.
On a final note, being in the education game myself, I'd say its time to stop making school teachers social engineers and social workers. Their job is to teach, and teach well. Not the other metric tonne of shit they are supposed to deal with because nobody else in society will. Get that off their desks and you might see some general improvement.
I agree with you but have no idea what the answer is. From where I'm sitting you might imagine the fact that the US has apparently completely lost control of its prison system might be considered a matter of national shame, but for some reason its not. But I guess thats just answering a question with a question...
I confess I don't know much about these things but would it kill them to release a 1.01 to 1.0 "fix"? I really can't be bothered going through this uninstall -> reinstall rigmarole. I'd much rather they wasted their own time and got this done than waste mine.
A PhD is a qualification in research, not domain knowledge. Hence Doctor of Philosophy. I'd say your organisation wasn't very bright either if it was calling people to interview without understanding what their qualifications were (as is evident if you think a PhD is a qualification gained from 'education' that might 'regurgitated' amongst other things). Why on earth do you think they'd be any good at tests of implementation? Might as well interview a cat for a guard dog position. I guess the people with catering college qualifications and sea navigation certificates also let you down a bit eh.
Here we go again. I'm not even reading the comments but my spider sense is tingling, typical predicted comment I've known tens/hundreds/thousands of people with PhDs applying for jobs. They were pretty retarded and couldn't even spell ROM much less display any skills...random ranting about Ivory Towers and 'real world' knowledge. No insecurity there at all, natch. Just because you were once a student doesn't actually mean you know anything about academia anymore than going to school makes you a teacher. Its all irrelevant anyway.
Personally I agree with this guy in the sense he has every right to refuse something he feels is undignified and insulting to him, I don't actually care if he's a roadsweeper or the Lucasian Professor at Cambridge. Anyway, I'll let you Slashbots get back to saying everyone should bend over and take it (whatever it is, be it a pay cut, an elephant's turgid member, crap working hours or an insulting interview) up the arse if its coming from a corporation of some description. Yes he has to take the consequences, but thats his choice to make, not yours. Frankly I think its about time some of you nay sayers also considered having a bit of self respect in the face of the corporations.
I can now reveal its called "What do YOU care what other people think?". I believe it was supposed to be a rhetorical question though...
Woah there fanboy. Thats my point. I'm not saying he's lying as much as he is often rather disingenuous in those books especially when it comes to the non-scientific content, according to his peers anyway. I don't have my copy to hand but I seem to recall with some clarity he does actually tell you this himself in one of his anecdotes anyway; that he's not to be entirely trusted.
Feynman isn't credited with that or indeed a lot of things in "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman" and the other one the title of which escapes me. Feynman credits himself with many of those things. I'm not disputing his credentials as a great scientist, for sure he is universally recognised for those things, and as an influencial thinker (especially in self-professed "geek" circles) but even the man's best friends would and indeed on many occasions have pointed out his proclivity for self-promotion and tendency to portray himself in a certain light that might not be entirely accurate in his books.
From Jane Pinckard's reply:
Yet as a community we should be cautious in embracing too whole-heartedly the over-simplified conclusion that violence in games has no impact, especially when taken out of the individual, anecdotal sphere and applied en masse as a cultural phenomenon.
I'm fine with this but I think its time the "concerned" lobby were also similarly cautious about embracing whole-heartedly the over simplified conclusion that violence in games has an impact especially when taken out of the individual, anecdotal sphere and applied en masse as a cultural phenomenon.
the symbolism and such like is therefore just a facet of character in the end. Its really that simple, the only reason American viewers choke on it is because American genre fiction is almost exclusively plot-driven and so they try to view everything in terms of plot. In each case the jiggery pokery, pseudo-technology and mysticism is just an externalisation of some part of the character associated with whatever is going on. This begins in the first episode with the "Absolute Terror" Field (personal problem manifest as an actual field) and never really lets up thereafter. If you see it like that then it all makes perfect sense, and thus we can see where the original ending came from. Its a perfectly acceptable ending if you think the show is about character, but its a problem if you thought it was about plot.
Gotcha. Sorry, so used to the Slashdotian neo-Libertarianism I thought you were saying something different along the lines that they piss money up the wall on silly things. They are of course not silly things as much as uncommerical things. Its actually in their mandate to produce minority programming (indeed, there is an ongoing argument from the commerical broadcasters that the BBC should do only this type of programming so as not to unfairly compete with them). I think what we are seeing here is to do with how far that mandate extends, especially as not everyone who has a TV necessarily has an internet connection. And obviously not everyone of those 700K people would have been a British license payer either. There have been a lot of complaints that the BBC is going too far in its immersion in digital broadcasting and the internet in general; to many it seems fairer if the money is "put on the screen" as it were for the terrrestrial viewer.
Whats wrong with that? As a long-term fan of "one man and his dog" I find sheep herding fascinating. Its just a part of daily rural life for a lot of folk. I don't see your problem.
I agree with what you say to some extent and I don't mean to rude here, but this isn't whats at stake. The problem is precisely with people who make it hard for other people to understand them because they don't pay sufficient care to English. For example, substituting "loose" when you mean "lose" can cause all kinds of confusion. This has nothing to do with the imperatives you describe above and would appear to have everything do with not really caring. To revisit another point you make, sure, all kinds of groups have their special terms and abbreviations (geekdom's use of these is mild compared with what goes on in military circles for example). But again, most of these groups go to the trouble of unpacking their language when talking to the general population, geeks are either unable or unwilling to do this. Personally I suspect these issues are just more evidence of the geek's failure to acquire solid social skills and a mildly autistic tendency to believe if you can understand what you've written then why can't everyone else?
There are obviously many different approaches and schools of thought in the area, but I'd take a look at anything written by James Reason, an academic who is basically the most famous name in the area. This book is a good place to start. Its a fairly practical guide explaining the principles with lots of case studies and also a description of the tools one might wish to use. I think you'll find the tone helpful and perhaps a bit surprising; his emphasis isn't on (unrealistically) eradicating risk or finger wagging exercises but rather dealing with risk in the most efficient manner.
I think you have a misapprehension as to what safety culture is about. Certainly I agree its implementation is disruptive to organisations, which is why its hard to to bring about. The issues of communication and prioritisating of risks certainly fall under its balliwick; what you are actually describing is an organisation without a safety culture attempting to "do" safety, thats my point really. When it comes to deciding to launch that should be a decision based on the prevailing conditions and so on presumably, not outstanding worries about the engineering processes that produced the equipment. See what I mean?
Further, theres no such thing as an engineer crying wolf. If they say theres a risk, based on their professional knowledge and activities, that should be respected. With an appropriate management framework there would be no issue of being "deluged" by risk reports, again, thats what you get pre-safety culture. In a safety culture safety is central to the engineering process so this doesn't happen (as, say, customer input and unit testing are in extreme programming).
My experience of safety culture is in the military context, so its not about restricting progress or stopping people (ultimately) from doing dangerous things! Its about managing risk appropriately by building it into your core engineering processes not necessarily eliminating it altogether.
You think its reckless to spend money on a research service to inform democratically elected representatives with regard to the issues they are debating and making decisions upon?
I think you take this libertarian notion of not paying taxes for anything superfluous too far, or would you rather politicians legislated on the basis of dog-eared back issues of Time magazine and National Geographic?
Ah! This is why you need a safety culture! To make sure the warning sticker isn't stuck over the instructions for opening the door in an emergency, made of rolled uranium and held in place with some plastic explosive that happened to be lying around.
I wonder if the reporting here has been a bit skewed by concerntrating on specific technical safety recommendations. Surely those are just symptoms that may or may not be addressed (and may or may not cause problems even if they aren't), the real compelling question is do NASA have an appropriate degree of safety culture? I know this is probably a less interesting issue for the Slashdot crowd to discuss than technical details but as anyone working in a safety-critical engineering area will appreciate, its really whats at stake here. And IMHE, whilst I appreciate to some it may sound like management wankery, safety culture is both absolutely vital and also damn hard to inculcate in an organisation. Whilst I understand the President was making rash claims about missions to mars, he was really needed here to make some very clear statements and devise policies to encourage NASA to change. It would seem to me if NASA are failing to meet clearly defined 'action points' they certainly haven't a safety culture which bodes ill for the future frankly. Seems in 2003 quite a few people called it correctly ("Experts say NASA's safety culture may be too broken to fix")
Hmm, perhaps I didn't express myself very well.
I agree with all the moral imperatives you describe, I just think that these things should be covered by laws. I think we trust corporations too far when they have shown time after time they are liars who cannot be trusted and I'm all out of patience. Of course, they keep up the charade that they are capable of ethical behaviour but its all so much BS. Its in their nature to make money however and whatever, and thats about it, might as well get mad at a dog for barking. That doesn't mean we have to put up with noise though, I suggest a big stick is wielded. I certainly don't like the amoral corporation but I think thats the reality and it should be fully faced and legislated against more actively whatever their arguments to the contrary. As regards the specific case here, the anger shouldn't be directed at IBM who ultimately have all the motivational complexity of a bacteria (1. sell stuff 2. profit) but rather the government for allowing them to get away with it. The alternative is the continued bastard behaviour of these organisations, lying adverts informing me MS really cares about me(!) and ever more indignant discussion of what they "should" do but never will until they are made to.
I don't think backing up a president's email and backing up some minor whitehouse aide's email should have equal importance.
I agree really but I also find the problem with data is you never know until its too late. The aide's email could be an international "smoking gun" lost forever vs. an eternally archived Presidential request for diet soda on Air Force One.
I feel that if you can't completely automate backups then the best thing is to give users easy access to backup resources for their own material so they can judge whats most important and what isn't. This happens in some organisations at the moment but not in all; I used to work in a place where I had to make a special appointment with a tech just to burn a CD of stuff on my HD. Guess how much data we regularly lost as an organisation...
On the whole I'm not very impressed with the quality of games journalism as compared with literary, cinema or musical writing. In the article the main quality of a good review appears to be wacky humour and then something about quality of information as regards being consumer reviews. I have nothing against consumer reviewing but there does still seem to be a lack of insightful (rather than merely informative) commentary that locates games within their proper context as for example newspaper book reviewers do. I guess Edge do that to some extent but its very rare outside that. I believe computer gaming now has a sufficient history, culture and widespread knowledge of technique to support such writing, one just wonders when it will arrive en mass. Certainly Edge do the type of thing I'm talking about and in particular I've seen good writing in the 'retro' gaming arena. This sounds a bit baa-humbug I know and I'm not really asking for pretentious academic chin rubbing as much as I'd like to know where a game fits in within the pantheon (and not just within the market) and not merely that its good/bad, but some ideas on why its good/bad and how that relates to the way in which it was implemented. I don't mean to slag off any of the nominated people, its just a general observation on the state of games writing at the moment.
Well OK, although I doubt you've actually been around since before the South Sea Company crashed which is really the background to the whole concept behind modern business practices :) Its a good read though.
The dividing line here is between morality and legality. I'm not well up on the Enron thing but if something is illegal or unethical (grey area but lets says we talking about an agreed code of practice) then of course a corporation shouldn't do it, but lets not confuse laws with morals. What I'm trying to get at it is that corporations don't exist to make the world better, or even to provide jobs or services to consumers. They exist to make the shareholders richer and thats it. If they tear up the environment and ruin the lives of common people, thats absolutely 100% fine unless it was specfically illegal for them to have acted as they did. Ultimately its not the job of say, BP, to worry about the environment. Its for legislators to worry about it and stop BP from doing those things.
However, I'm not an apologist for big business:
I very much dislike the notion of ethical business and voluntary governance because its ultimately only an illusion designed to keep regulators off their backs and, to some extent, a marketing stunt. If it wasn't a lie, the point is, it would be illegal. Fact. It creates a rather stupid situation where companies lie to us every single day about their nature ("we're good people really" when it should be "we are patholigically devoted to profit. get in our way and subject to rules and regulations we will crush you. the end.") whilst at the same time calling into question the rightness of regulating these organisations (c.f., regulatory laws are always the enemy of capitalism vs. post-enron/tyco regulatory laws are necessary for capitalism to exist in the first place). Personally I'd prefer a world where governments aren't scared to legislate and sodding BP don't spend millions trying to get me to believe they are basically OK people and really into trees and stuff when they are an organisation devoted to growing capital through selling oil and oil products. I don't have a problem with that, but lets open our eyes and know, really know, who and what we are dealing with and most importantly what their basic nature is. The corporation is an entity without basic feelings; it feels no shame, no remorse, no guilt and legally bound not exhibit any vestiges of mercy, compassion or generosity. Anything that suggests or mimics such traits is at best marketing, at heart there is a howling void.
I think of this a lot whilst reading Slashdot because the average poster is both a feverent capitalist but also a hater of Microsoft who seems to attribute certain sly traits to MS. There is also a great deal of whining about outsourcing. Why do these things even invite comment? Its like Joe Average Poster seems to suspect that the corporation is like Darth Vader; somewhere in the corner of his blackened, charred heart is a spark of good. Unfortunately this is not the case, this time Darth is 100% robot.