These people who are settling know they got busted doing something they were not supposed to be doing.
And the ones who actually are innocent? Even if it's just a handful out of thousands? What is their recourse? Right now it's pay up $3K-$5K or risk ten to a hundred times that amount just to prove that you never did anything wrong. And after two or more years of legal wrangling the case might get dropped without prejudice and you're out many times the initial settlement. I'm not here to defend the guilty, I'm here to ask what the hell about the innocent caught in this dragnet? It's not a hypothetical either, there have been numerous examples of people wrongly charged in this campaign.
There needs to be a reform to this process that ensures that there are viable leagal options that don't involve choosing to pay extortionary fines or be bankrupted by lawyers out to prove a point, right or wrong. That can come in many forms, limiting damages, requiring a higher standard of evidence, precedent for winning lawyers' fees if found not to be infringing, etc. The RIAA has all the advantages right now, anyone guilty or innocent has such an unlevel playing field that it's laughable to call it a justice system in any sense. The courts need to close some cases with precedent, stop giving the RIAA the benefit of the doubt at every turn, and start demanding strong evidence for the RIAA to even initiate a suit. The whole fling shit and see what sticks, leaving the incidental innocent victims in financial ruin, has got to be stopped. THAT's the problem, not that the guilty are having a tough go of it, but that anyone actually innocent is basically trapped by the current tactics with no option but to pay up or go broke.
The President can declare anyone an enemy combatant under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Contrary to what some believe, this is NOT limited to non-citizens. Given how little judicial or other oversight or scrutiny that is able to be placed on the Presidents actions, even if the power were abused by declaring a civilly disobedient citizen an enemy combatant, how many years would they waste away in a secret prison before anyone was even able to find out what exactly happened to them or why?
Before I get into this response I should preface this all with the fact that I don't buy any music unless it's from a band at their concert, and even that is a rarity these days as I'm so busy. I haven't bought a CD from a store since about 2001, and I get most of my new music from indie artists on the Web like MC Frontalot and the occassional track from songfight.com. And while I loathe DRM and its negative consumer effects, and the general anti-consumer and monopolistic practices of the RIAA labels, I'm not on any sort of declared boycott of their products. In practice then, I'm already not supporting them, so let's not get personal in this conversation and start basing arguments on what you think my actions are or are not. I'm going to play devil's advocate in my arguments even though I think we're both agreeing to a large extent. Partly because I love playing devil's advocate, someone has to, and partly because I think a lot of the arguments against DRM/RIAA presented here leave out a lot of edge cases that are relevent to how this all plays out in the real world. OK, that said, here's some thoughts in response to your post.
Which they still have to prove to sue people. If you have no music from the artists on that label on your computer, that's going to be pretty hard.
You got a bit off topic here, for once we're not talking about the P2P lawsuits, however as others have pointed out, they don't need any more evidence than an IP address to bring a suit against you, which immediately places a financial threat of a couple thousand dollars (in lawyer fees or settlement) on the defedant. My point was that w/o informing the RIAA why they are losing sales they will announce more losses from piracy. This isn't something that is done without intention or effect on their part, it is in fact the justification they have already used before to go to congress and get anticonsumer legislation like the DMCA passed. The numbers were inflated and laughable then, but the representatives bought it anyway, why would it be any different in round 2, 3, 4? Congress has yet to demonstrate that they are onto the RIAA's game here, if the industry whines about more losses to "piracy" and has lower sales numebrs with handwaving backing up the reasons, I'm inclined to think they will still be believed, just like the first time. That's the danger, they will use the lower sales numbers to justify more restrictive laws/regulations unless other data points to obvious alternative explanations.
Then your principled stand for buying DRM-free music is not a principled stand. See, this is the part of the conversation that doesn't actually apply directly to ME. I'm neither taking a stand, nor being hypocritical since I parenthetically pointed out in my original point that I understood that someone buying from even one RIAA artist would technically NOT be making a boycott. So we're on the same page here. But what I was getting at was one of those real world cases. Avg Joe may decide he's against DRM, but even before DRM was an issue he really like Arty McGee who was and still is on some RIAA label. Now, let's also suppose that Arty McGee is under contract and short of financially destroying himself, can't break ties with the label for a couple more albums. That's the reality, and where it becomes a problem to tell people "simple, just boycott". The artist is stuck, so they can't listen to their fans votes against DRM without breaking their contract, and the fans were fans before this whole DRM thing pitted them against their favorite artist. In my experience most people aren't willing to do a proper boycott, it's just not enough of an issue for them. And even if they are willing to do so, they're weak willed and still want to get music from their favorite artist, they're stuck. Those are the people we need to get in on this fight, there needs to be a critical mass of consumers, even if all the slashdot readers executed a perfect RIAA boycott - which I think functionally many of us already do - it wouldn't be eno
Except that the labels will see lower sales (from people buying indie labels/bands) and still scream "piracy is eating our profits!", so there needs to be an added step of not buying DRM'd music and telling the RIAA labels at the same time so they know WHY they lost a sale. Plus it's a non-solution for people who actually like a particular artist. Yes, a lot of mainstream RIAA-label music is pop crap, but some of the artists are worth listening to, so what do you do if you still want music from $ARTIST but still want to vote with your dollars? (leaving out the argument about how this wouldn't then be a boycott, but not everyone wants to do a wholesale boycott) The parent poster's solution was actually not that bad in that respect. You buy the music you want, but make it clear to the distributor, and therefore eventually the label, that you are not pleased with the DRM by harrowing their support with DRM related questions. Then the distributor sees their support costs going up from DRM, and tell the labels that DRM sucks.
The more pessismistic view is that there will always be enough ignorant or indifferent consumers of RIAA music that a personal boycott, even with telling the labels your reasons, will have little effect because of the huge number of consumers who don't care and will buy anyway. It's not enough in this situation to just not buy RIAA music, you have to make it affect their bottom line, and in such a way that they can't ignore/hype it as "economic effects of piracy". Driving up costs that are tied to specific metrics (aka can't be written off to piracy) like tech support is one good way to get the message across. To keep up the boycott aspect for those willing to do so, buy it, pursue support, then return it stating clearly your reasons for doing so.
No no no. You've got it backwards, lawyers have sidekicks - Birdman & Peanut/Avenger - and villains have henchmen - The Monarch & henchmen (but they prefer the term 'minions').
See? Adult Swim *is* good for something.;) 1-31-07, Never Forget!
The network administrator is responsible for any breach of security on the network.
By your own argument he was therefore absolutely responsible for the breach of security on the network that he himself caused. And yes, it was a breach, installing a backdoor for offsight access without permission - or at the very least notification to IT - is a breach of security.
I went to college under the impression that I would graduate with a degree in Computer Science.
In the third lecture of the intro course, the teacher discussed spending all night coding for labs and so forth
I mean no offence by this, but I think you probably made the right decision in this case. I happen to work as a programmer in a company where they don't require me to do rediculous amounts of overtime, and there are many other coding jobs that will have you working the standard corporate 8-5. What people hear about are the crazy work schedules of game developers and start-ups, but only because those are more publicized because they are more "glamorous." The state of programming jobs on the whole is not nearly so bad as those two niches make it out to be I think.
More to your point though, the people who tend to do very well in CS didn't choose the career/degree based on the job prospects and salary bases, but because they were likely already up late into the night coding for fun. If you weren't already interested enough in the field to have pulled some long coding nights for school, let alone voluntarily, then it was definitely not going to work out for you as a career choice. That's not a dig at you by any means, I had bio-chem friends that spent equal amounts of time on their assignments, and I sure as hell had no interest in staying up all night trying to balance stoichiometric equations! Bio-chewm wasn't my thing, it didn't interest me enough to put that much time into it, but I could certaintly stay up for hours perfecting a GO game engine for class.
IMHO part of the problem with CS degrees is that the computing field has become relatively glamourous in the last two decades, in large part because of the dot-com millionaire era and the large salaries that can be commanded in IT compared to other career tracks. Because of this there are a lot more people trying their hand at CS, many who hold no previous interest and are just looking at those graduation statistics with the nice high avergage starting salaries listed by major. I'm not saying that's inherently a bad thing, as it brings in others who do have talent that might have otherwise done something else, but I think there's a lot more fluff programmers getting degrees than there used to be before Silicon Valley was promising to make every geek a millionaire.
Bottom line is do right by you, whatever anyone chooses to do for work, I think it's better to go into it already liking your profession rather than choosing a career based solely on potential income levels or the like.
perhaps there should be some sort of war on virii declared
I have already declared it, and you are now the next target. 'Virii' is NOT a word, and does not mean the plural of virus, it is an incorrect usage of that form of pluralization, and at best it would be spelled 'viri' and would mean 'men' in Latin.
I am not a grammar nazi, I am a grammar freedom fighter!;)
It's not funny in a standalone sort of way. And in fact when playing that particular text adventure it was quite maddening (as were many *many* other parts - who plants fluff???). It's one of those "you had to be there" comments, if you never played Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure, off a nice oldschool 5.25" floppy, then this one is lost on you I'm afraid. However for those of us that have played it, I think this bit sums up Vista protections nicely.;)
See, I understand that there do exist legitimate reasons for quitting early, and like I said I do it myself from time to time. Part of the problem, as you stated, is the general abundance these days of modders who completely unbalance an otherwise good match. Halo 2 matches used to be blissfully free of such cheating but either new undetectable mods have been devised or the banhammer is not being used as often as it should, or some combination thereof. Once you get the cheaters and modders out of the picture you don't need to worry as much about legit players quitting out of frustration (and this could be tracked anyway by monitoring how many players quit and if the game had other anomolies, like a guy who got 100% headshots being in the game).
After that, statistical analysis should remove most any other false positives for people quitting, and this might include looking at lag times when the person quit to see if it was because of a poor connection. And I would argue that if your (not you personally, but hypothetical user) connection is so bad that you find yourself consistently quitting midmatch because of lag then you are still causing a problem for others that needs to be addressed. Either one needs to deal with the lag or admit that their internet connection just can't handle the game requirements.
I would certainly grant a lot of leeway to users for early quitting offences, but there are definitely others who would be outright guilty if this went into effect tomorrow. I'm also not suggesting immediate across the board bans or such, but even adding 30 seconds or 1 minute to the next one or two matching queue times (similar to betrayal respawn penalties) might ease the problem considerably. There's defintely a balance to be struck with such a system, but letting the offences go completely unpunished and un-noted is certainly not helping currently.
"A feature for the upcoming Halo 3, that they've just announced, will be most welcomed by aging FPS players tired of hearing high-pitched squeals through their headsets."
OK, so there may be some correlation between older players wanting more strategy-oriented comms, and younger players getting out of hand verbally, but it is by no means a "hey you kids, get off my lawn" issue! Please, at any age if there's someone on your team just swearing constantly, belittling other players, screaming, singing, or my personal un-favorite - putting the mic next to their stereo - it is distracting and annoying to others. You don't have to be old to hate idiots yelling into their mics, and you don't have to be young to act like a trash-talking jerk.
Then there are the folks who say they do it "cuz you other people take this game way too seriously man!". Except that there's plenty of us who don't take the game to seriously, it's just that when we signed on to play that was what we expected would occur, not some crapfest of screaming idiots who can't be bothered to actually play the game. If we're talking it too seriously by wanting to enjoy a couple matches then these griefers are taking the game way too UN-seriously by thinking that any behavior at all is acceptible by virtue of just showing up.
I think this is a long overdue enhancement to the system, right now you can mute these jerks but it's a bit unwieldy and can take too long when you're actually trying to concentrate on play. I'd also like to see them add a feedback options for people who quit early - or at least internal tracking that affects game matching queues accordingly. While I understand that every now and again some of us have to quit mid-match, there are lots of people that abuse it by quitting when the other team scores once, or they don't like the map, or the gametype, or.... etc. If someone starts ranking up a statistically significant number of "left game early" feedbacks they should have an automatic wait penalty added to any game queue, and make it big and obvious so they know why they're being sanctioned in such a way. Just my $0.02 as a frustrated weekend gamer.
The way I read this, it means any state would have to accept your state-issued ID card (a public record) as valid identification.
I mean no offense by saying this but you are either interpretting that line of the constitution wrong - as in not how it is legally interpretted - or else, and i find this more likely, it's already just being ignored unconstitutionally. The easy example is trying to purchase alcohol or get into a bar with an out of state ID. There are lots of bars that just won't accept an out of state ID as proof of age. Now, the constitutional article you quoted may only apply to state entities and not to private businesses, but I would argue that since the private businesses (bars in this case) are using government-issued IDs to enforce a state law (min drinnking age) then they should be held to the same standards as the state in accepting other forms of ID. Anyone know of specific laws regarding this practice?
However, there is a flaw, the earth, solar system, and galaxy itself are moving at incredible rates, the point in space we occupy now will not be the same point that the laser will return to in a hojillion years give or take. BUT! I think you have come up with a very novel approach at creating the proverbial write-only memory. Quick, patent it!
To keep on topic (some mod has been busting my chops lately for trying to have actual interesting conversations), since the bill sets no maximums on the retention requirements I think it's very likely that Gonzalez et al are going to ask for a rediculous amount of data retention. They've been dropping hints about it for years now, something like a permanent record of every website visited would be the first thing they try to mandate. That alone will be a gut-busting storage requirement, and force many non-mega ISPs right out of business. This bill has the potential to radically affect the businesses that provide internet access, and radically alter the privacy people expect when using the internet. While I hope this bill dies quickly, I fear it will ride the tide of "think of the children" with few obstacles.:(
Ah, we're all safe until someone invents robotically aimed telephoto cameras.
How hard is that?
As a professional robotics engineer who is also taking a computer vision class at the moment I'm glad you asked! IMHO the answer is about a 6 on a scale of 10 for difficulty by my estimates, even easier if you don't have the requirement to ID every single person in a crowd, and if the subject introduction rate is low enough.
There is already software to identify and track multiple human targets, there are algorithms which identify faces and specifically the eye area. And once you've got that part of the image the software to zoom in and track with a servo mounted zoom camera is simple compared to the other parts.
Where it gets difficult is doing it fast and for lots of targets, it probably won't be something you could deploy with perfect results on a sidewalk in NYC, or a crowded mall at Christmas, but that can be overcome by adding more systems. What really starts to slow you down is the physical zooming and tracking. The zoom time could be removed from the problem by having both a wide and narrow field of view camera on the same rig so one acquires and centers and the other just snaps pictures. The accuracy of the system is still directly tied to the accuracy of the iris identification software, if that is where the bottleneck in accuracy is then it's still a wash.
If anyone else has thoughts on constructing such a system I'm open to discussion, this has really peaked my interest and I've only barely outlined a solution here.:)
The facts of the case are that the woman received 3rd degree burns, it was documented at the hospital and is indisputable in this case. Also it is undisputable as facts of the case that the coffee caused the burns. Ergo you can call BS on the precise exposure time or temperature the OP stated, but the damage was in reality done. If a food product is so hot that exposure to it causes 3rd degree burns then it is likely unsafely hot. In this case this particular McDonalds location was serving their coffee well above industry standard temperatures and hotter than the guidelines given by the American Coffee Association. They had in fact received numerous complaints prior to this infamous incident that their coffee was too hot. The Coffee Association guidelines are in no way binding but when people (non-experts) say "coffee should be served at 200 degrees!" and it directly conflicts with the recommendations of an organization whose job is to give best practices then I have to side with the organization which has done more research than simply being a coffee drinker.
Also I will point out that skin has different heat tolerances at different points on the body,and likely from person to person, thus just because you only got 2nd degree burns out of your "experiment" doesn't automatically disprove that it could cause worse burns to someone else.
the question is: do they mean six months use of the system at no cost, or six months free reign on the system?;-)
It seems to me that if you've hacked your way to sysadmin status then you're positioned to give yourself unlimited free use of the system. Why spoil a good thing by reporting your success?;)
I await your landmark case to prove all criminal punishment is unconstitutional,
I think you missed this guy's point, he's not saying all criminal punishments are unconstitutional, he's saying that the curtailment or removal of otherwise gauranteed rights after being convicted of a crime is unconstitutional. In other words, the second amendment (let's pretend for a minute that it's actually respected by congress) gives the right to bear arms, however someone convicted of a crime has that right revoked. There is a disconnect then between the constitutional right to own a firearm and the law revoking that right, where in the constitution is there a clause that says that all rights that are otherwise guaranteed here can be revoked after a conviction?
Note that I'm playing devil's advocate for this argument, there is obviously hundreds of years of case history supporting this practice, and I suspect it is also inherent in the common law system you referenced, upon which our constitution was constructed. However A) without time to do the research through common law at the moment I don't know if it specifically allows for the revocation of rights (though I am rather sure it does), and B) one can see how - on the face of it without being aware of the common law basis - it seems conflicting to have the constitution guarantee rights, but allow the interpreters (judicial) of that document to revoke rights that are supposed to be sacrosanct.
I'll admit that Halo 2 sucked me in for way too long, to the exclusion of other titles. But now there's so many original XBox games turning up in the used market I've more than doubled my game library on the cheap! Keep up those trade-ins next-geners, those of us who don't ride the bleeding edge are still getting plenty of use out of these games.:)
Slashdot Mirror
These people who are settling know they got busted doing something they were not supposed to be doing.
And the ones who actually are innocent? Even if it's just a handful out of thousands? What is their recourse? Right now it's pay up $3K-$5K or risk ten to a hundred times that amount just to prove that you never did anything wrong. And after two or more years of legal wrangling the case might get dropped without prejudice and you're out many times the initial settlement. I'm not here to defend the guilty, I'm here to ask what the hell about the innocent caught in this dragnet? It's not a hypothetical either, there have been numerous examples of people wrongly charged in this campaign.
There needs to be a reform to this process that ensures that there are viable leagal options that don't involve choosing to pay extortionary fines or be bankrupted by lawyers out to prove a point, right or wrong. That can come in many forms, limiting damages, requiring a higher standard of evidence, precedent for winning lawyers' fees if found not to be infringing, etc. The RIAA has all the advantages right now, anyone guilty or innocent has such an unlevel playing field that it's laughable to call it a justice system in any sense. The courts need to close some cases with precedent, stop giving the RIAA the benefit of the doubt at every turn, and start demanding strong evidence for the RIAA to even initiate a suit. The whole fling shit and see what sticks, leaving the incidental innocent victims in financial ruin, has got to be stopped. THAT's the problem, not that the guilty are having a tough go of it, but that anyone actually innocent is basically trapped by the current tactics with no option but to pay up or go broke.
The President can declare anyone an enemy combatant under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Contrary to what some believe, this is NOT limited to non-citizens. Given how little judicial or other oversight or scrutiny that is able to be placed on the Presidents actions, even if the power were abused by declaring a civilly disobedient citizen an enemy combatant, how many years would they waste away in a secret prison before anyone was even able to find out what exactly happened to them or why?
I bought the UK version on eBay, and I probably play the internet on my DS more than any other game now.
Best series-of-tubes game since Pipe Dream!
That would be the "ilk" the parent poster was talking about.
Before I get into this response I should preface this all with the fact that I don't buy any music unless it's from a band at their concert, and even that is a rarity these days as I'm so busy. I haven't bought a CD from a store since about 2001, and I get most of my new music from indie artists on the Web like MC Frontalot and the occassional track from songfight.com. And while I loathe DRM and its negative consumer effects, and the general anti-consumer and monopolistic practices of the RIAA labels, I'm not on any sort of declared boycott of their products. In practice then, I'm already not supporting them, so let's not get personal in this conversation and start basing arguments on what you think my actions are or are not. I'm going to play devil's advocate in my arguments even though I think we're both agreeing to a large extent. Partly because I love playing devil's advocate, someone has to, and partly because I think a lot of the arguments against DRM/RIAA presented here leave out a lot of edge cases that are relevent to how this all plays out in the real world. OK, that said, here's some thoughts in response to your post.
Which they still have to prove to sue people. If you have no music from the artists on that label on your computer, that's going to be pretty hard.
You got a bit off topic here, for once we're not talking about the P2P lawsuits, however as others have pointed out, they don't need any more evidence than an IP address to bring a suit against you, which immediately places a financial threat of a couple thousand dollars (in lawyer fees or settlement) on the defedant. My point was that w/o informing the RIAA why they are losing sales they will announce more losses from piracy. This isn't something that is done without intention or effect on their part, it is in fact the justification they have already used before to go to congress and get anticonsumer legislation like the DMCA passed. The numbers were inflated and laughable then, but the representatives bought it anyway, why would it be any different in round 2, 3, 4? Congress has yet to demonstrate that they are onto the RIAA's game here, if the industry whines about more losses to "piracy" and has lower sales numebrs with handwaving backing up the reasons, I'm inclined to think they will still be believed, just like the first time. That's the danger, they will use the lower sales numbers to justify more restrictive laws/regulations unless other data points to obvious alternative explanations.
Then your principled stand for buying DRM-free music is not a principled stand.
See, this is the part of the conversation that doesn't actually apply directly to ME. I'm neither taking a stand, nor being hypocritical since I parenthetically pointed out in my original point that I understood that someone buying from even one RIAA artist would technically NOT be making a boycott. So we're on the same page here. But what I was getting at was one of those real world cases. Avg Joe may decide he's against DRM, but even before DRM was an issue he really like Arty McGee who was and still is on some RIAA label. Now, let's also suppose that Arty McGee is under contract and short of financially destroying himself, can't break ties with the label for a couple more albums. That's the reality, and where it becomes a problem to tell people "simple, just boycott". The artist is stuck, so they can't listen to their fans votes against DRM without breaking their contract, and the fans were fans before this whole DRM thing pitted them against their favorite artist. In my experience most people aren't willing to do a proper boycott, it's just not enough of an issue for them. And even if they are willing to do so, they're weak willed and still want to get music from their favorite artist, they're stuck. Those are the people we need to get in on this fight, there needs to be a critical mass of consumers, even if all the slashdot readers executed a perfect RIAA boycott - which I think functionally many of us already do - it wouldn't be eno
Except that the labels will see lower sales (from people buying indie labels/bands) and still scream "piracy is eating our profits!", so there needs to be an added step of not buying DRM'd music and telling the RIAA labels at the same time so they know WHY they lost a sale. Plus it's a non-solution for people who actually like a particular artist. Yes, a lot of mainstream RIAA-label music is pop crap, but some of the artists are worth listening to, so what do you do if you still want music from $ARTIST but still want to vote with your dollars? (leaving out the argument about how this wouldn't then be a boycott, but not everyone wants to do a wholesale boycott) The parent poster's solution was actually not that bad in that respect. You buy the music you want, but make it clear to the distributor, and therefore eventually the label, that you are not pleased with the DRM by harrowing their support with DRM related questions. Then the distributor sees their support costs going up from DRM, and tell the labels that DRM sucks.
The more pessismistic view is that there will always be enough ignorant or indifferent consumers of RIAA music that a personal boycott, even with telling the labels your reasons, will have little effect because of the huge number of consumers who don't care and will buy anyway. It's not enough in this situation to just not buy RIAA music, you have to make it affect their bottom line, and in such a way that they can't ignore/hype it as "economic effects of piracy". Driving up costs that are tied to specific metrics (aka can't be written off to piracy) like tech support is one good way to get the message across. To keep up the boycott aspect for those willing to do so, buy it, pursue support, then return it stating clearly your reasons for doing so.
Lawyers don't have sidekicks, they have henchmen.
;) 1-31-07, Never Forget!
No no no. You've got it backwards, lawyers have sidekicks - Birdman & Peanut/Avenger - and villains have henchmen - The Monarch & henchmen (but they prefer the term 'minions').
See? Adult Swim *is* good for something.
Those of us that are downloading TV to keep mid/long term [....] 'Give us what we want, or we'll go away'
Technically, based on all of your above comments, shouldn't that quote be 'Give us what we want or we'll just take it anyway'?
The network administrator is responsible for any breach of security on the network.
By your own argument he was therefore absolutely responsible for the breach of security on the network that he himself caused. And yes, it was a breach, installing a backdoor for offsight access without permission - or at the very least notification to IT - is a breach of security.
I still find myself using yahoo mail exclusively over gmail. That thing ever gonna move from beta?
I do believe that's what happened last month.
I went to college under the impression that I would graduate with a degree in Computer Science. In the third lecture of the intro course, the teacher discussed spending all night coding for labs and so forth
I mean no offence by this, but I think you probably made the right decision in this case. I happen to work as a programmer in a company where they don't require me to do rediculous amounts of overtime, and there are many other coding jobs that will have you working the standard corporate 8-5. What people hear about are the crazy work schedules of game developers and start-ups, but only because those are more publicized because they are more "glamorous." The state of programming jobs on the whole is not nearly so bad as those two niches make it out to be I think.
More to your point though, the people who tend to do very well in CS didn't choose the career/degree based on the job prospects and salary bases, but because they were likely already up late into the night coding for fun. If you weren't already interested enough in the field to have pulled some long coding nights for school, let alone voluntarily, then it was definitely not going to work out for you as a career choice. That's not a dig at you by any means, I had bio-chem friends that spent equal amounts of time on their assignments, and I sure as hell had no interest in staying up all night trying to balance stoichiometric equations! Bio-chewm wasn't my thing, it didn't interest me enough to put that much time into it, but I could certaintly stay up for hours perfecting a GO game engine for class.
IMHO part of the problem with CS degrees is that the computing field has become relatively glamourous in the last two decades, in large part because of the dot-com millionaire era and the large salaries that can be commanded in IT compared to other career tracks. Because of this there are a lot more people trying their hand at CS, many who hold no previous interest and are just looking at those graduation statistics with the nice high avergage starting salaries listed by major. I'm not saying that's inherently a bad thing, as it brings in others who do have talent that might have otherwise done something else, but I think there's a lot more fluff programmers getting degrees than there used to be before Silicon Valley was promising to make every geek a millionaire.
Bottom line is do right by you, whatever anyone chooses to do for work, I think it's better to go into it already liking your profession rather than choosing a career based solely on potential income levels or the like.
perhaps there should be some sort of war on virii declared
;)
I have already declared it, and you are now the next target. 'Virii' is NOT a word, and does not mean the plural of virus, it is an incorrect usage of that form of pluralization, and at best it would be spelled 'viri' and would mean 'men' in Latin.
I am not a grammar nazi, I am a grammar freedom fighter!
It's not funny in a standalone sort of way. And in fact when playing that particular text adventure it was quite maddening (as were many *many* other parts - who plants fluff???). It's one of those "you had to be there" comments, if you never played Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure, off a nice oldschool 5.25" floppy, then this one is lost on you I'm afraid. However for those of us that have played it, I think this bit sums up Vista protections nicely. ;)
Although many of the other people who responded to your post made excellent points, none of them addressed the following, so I will.
Fine stores whose clerks don't card for MA+ games. This isn't fascist, it's simply obeying the law.
What law?
See, I understand that there do exist legitimate reasons for quitting early, and like I said I do it myself from time to time. Part of the problem, as you stated, is the general abundance these days of modders who completely unbalance an otherwise good match. Halo 2 matches used to be blissfully free of such cheating but either new undetectable mods have been devised or the banhammer is not being used as often as it should, or some combination thereof. Once you get the cheaters and modders out of the picture you don't need to worry as much about legit players quitting out of frustration (and this could be tracked anyway by monitoring how many players quit and if the game had other anomolies, like a guy who got 100% headshots being in the game).
After that, statistical analysis should remove most any other false positives for people quitting, and this might include looking at lag times when the person quit to see if it was because of a poor connection. And I would argue that if your (not you personally, but hypothetical user) connection is so bad that you find yourself consistently quitting midmatch because of lag then you are still causing a problem for others that needs to be addressed. Either one needs to deal with the lag or admit that their internet connection just can't handle the game requirements.
I would certainly grant a lot of leeway to users for early quitting offences, but there are definitely others who would be outright guilty if this went into effect tomorrow. I'm also not suggesting immediate across the board bans or such, but even adding 30 seconds or 1 minute to the next one or two matching queue times (similar to betrayal respawn penalties) might ease the problem considerably. There's defintely a balance to be struck with such a system, but letting the offences go completely unpunished and un-noted is certainly not helping currently.
"A feature for the upcoming Halo 3, that they've just announced, will be most welcomed by aging FPS players tired of hearing high-pitched squeals through their headsets."
OK, so there may be some correlation between older players wanting more strategy-oriented comms, and younger players getting out of hand verbally, but it is by no means a "hey you kids, get off my lawn" issue! Please, at any age if there's someone on your team just swearing constantly, belittling other players, screaming, singing, or my personal un-favorite - putting the mic next to their stereo - it is distracting and annoying to others. You don't have to be old to hate idiots yelling into their mics, and you don't have to be young to act like a trash-talking jerk.
Then there are the folks who say they do it "cuz you other people take this game way too seriously man!". Except that there's plenty of us who don't take the game to seriously, it's just that when we signed on to play that was what we expected would occur, not some crapfest of screaming idiots who can't be bothered to actually play the game. If we're talking it too seriously by wanting to enjoy a couple matches then these griefers are taking the game way too UN-seriously by thinking that any behavior at all is acceptible by virtue of just showing up.
I think this is a long overdue enhancement to the system, right now you can mute these jerks but it's a bit unwieldy and can take too long when you're actually trying to concentrate on play. I'd also like to see them add a feedback options for people who quit early - or at least internal tracking that affects game matching queues accordingly. While I understand that every now and again some of us have to quit mid-match, there are lots of people that abuse it by quitting when the other team scores once, or they don't like the map, or the gametype, or.... etc. If someone starts ranking up a statistically significant number of "left game early" feedbacks they should have an automatic wait penalty added to any game queue, and make it big and obvious so they know why they're being sanctioned in such a way. Just my $0.02 as a frustrated weekend gamer.
And what would happen to your seoul?
Well, depending on its calibur, it may still burn.
And now off to pay penance for the above. Would that be self-inflicted punishment?
The way I read this, it means any state would have to accept your state-issued ID card (a public record) as valid identification.
I mean no offense by saying this but you are either interpretting that line of the constitution wrong - as in not how it is legally interpretted - or else, and i find this more likely, it's already just being ignored unconstitutionally. The easy example is trying to purchase alcohol or get into a bar with an out of state ID. There are lots of bars that just won't accept an out of state ID as proof of age. Now, the constitutional article you quoted may only apply to state entities and not to private businesses, but I would argue that since the private businesses (bars in this case) are using government-issued IDs to enforce a state law (min drinnking age) then they should be held to the same standards as the state in accepting other forms of ID. Anyone know of specific laws regarding this practice?
Or I would have given you an "Insightful" for most accurate acronym for a US law, ever.
:(
I do agree with you, but I think CAN-SPAM is still the winner. It says what it does and does what it says.
First, I love this idea, bravo. ;)
:(
However, there is a flaw, the earth, solar system, and galaxy itself are moving at incredible rates, the point in space we occupy now will not be the same point that the laser will return to in a hojillion years give or take. BUT! I think you have come up with a very novel approach at creating the proverbial write-only memory. Quick, patent it!
To keep on topic (some mod has been busting my chops lately for trying to have actual interesting conversations), since the bill sets no maximums on the retention requirements I think it's very likely that Gonzalez et al are going to ask for a rediculous amount of data retention. They've been dropping hints about it for years now, something like a permanent record of every website visited would be the first thing they try to mandate. That alone will be a gut-busting storage requirement, and force many non-mega ISPs right out of business. This bill has the potential to radically affect the businesses that provide internet access, and radically alter the privacy people expect when using the internet. While I hope this bill dies quickly, I fear it will ride the tide of "think of the children" with few obstacles.
Ah, we're all safe until someone invents robotically aimed telephoto cameras. How hard is that?
:)
As a professional robotics engineer who is also taking a computer vision class at the moment I'm glad you asked! IMHO the answer is about a 6 on a scale of 10 for difficulty by my estimates, even easier if you don't have the requirement to ID every single person in a crowd, and if the subject introduction rate is low enough.
There is already software to identify and track multiple human targets, there are algorithms which identify faces and specifically the eye area. And once you've got that part of the image the software to zoom in and track with a servo mounted zoom camera is simple compared to the other parts.
Where it gets difficult is doing it fast and for lots of targets, it probably won't be something you could deploy with perfect results on a sidewalk in NYC, or a crowded mall at Christmas, but that can be overcome by adding more systems. What really starts to slow you down is the physical zooming and tracking. The zoom time could be removed from the problem by having both a wide and narrow field of view camera on the same rig so one acquires and centers and the other just snaps pictures.
The accuracy of the system is still directly tied to the accuracy of the iris identification software, if that is where the bottleneck in accuracy is then it's still a wash.
If anyone else has thoughts on constructing such a system I'm open to discussion, this has really peaked my interest and I've only barely outlined a solution here.
The facts of the case are that the woman received 3rd degree burns, it was documented at the hospital and is indisputable in this case. Also it is undisputable as facts of the case that the coffee caused the burns. Ergo you can call BS on the precise exposure time or temperature the OP stated, but the damage was in reality done. If a food product is so hot that exposure to it causes 3rd degree burns then it is likely unsafely hot. In this case this particular McDonalds location was serving their coffee well above industry standard temperatures and hotter than the guidelines given by the American Coffee Association. They had in fact received numerous complaints prior to this infamous incident that their coffee was too hot. The Coffee Association guidelines are in no way binding but when people (non-experts) say "coffee should be served at 200 degrees!" and it directly conflicts with the recommendations of an organization whose job is to give best practices then I have to side with the organization which has done more research than simply being a coffee drinker.
Also I will point out that skin has different heat tolerances at different points on the body,and likely from person to person, thus just because you only got 2nd degree burns out of your "experiment" doesn't automatically disprove that it could cause worse burns to someone else.
the question is: do they mean six months use of the system at no cost, or six months free reign on the system? ;-)
;)
It seems to me that if you've hacked your way to sysadmin status then you're positioned to give yourself unlimited free use of the system. Why spoil a good thing by reporting your success?
I await your landmark case to prove all criminal punishment is unconstitutional,
I think you missed this guy's point, he's not saying all criminal punishments are unconstitutional, he's saying that the curtailment or removal of otherwise gauranteed rights after being convicted of a crime is unconstitutional. In other words, the second amendment (let's pretend for a minute that it's actually respected by congress) gives the right to bear arms, however someone convicted of a crime has that right revoked. There is a disconnect then between the constitutional right to own a firearm and the law revoking that right, where in the constitution is there a clause that says that all rights that are otherwise guaranteed here can be revoked after a conviction?
Note that I'm playing devil's advocate for this argument, there is obviously hundreds of years of case history supporting this practice, and I suspect it is also inherent in the common law system you referenced, upon which our constitution was constructed. However A) without time to do the research through common law at the moment I don't know if it specifically allows for the revocation of rights (though I am rather sure it does), and B) one can see how - on the face of it without being aware of the common law basis - it seems conflicting to have the constitution guarantee rights, but allow the interpreters (judicial) of that document to revoke rights that are supposed to be sacrosanct.
I'll admit that Halo 2 sucked me in for way too long, to the exclusion of other titles. But now there's so many original XBox games turning up in the used market I've more than doubled my game library on the cheap! Keep up those trade-ins next-geners, those of us who don't ride the bleeding edge are still getting plenty of use out of these games. :)