Hackers was not made in the same vein as Tron, though. Hackers is an enjoyable tongue-in-cheek film that stands up to repeated watching because it recognizes itself for what it is. The general response to Tron and the new Tron seems to be "finally, they are bringing another part of the greatest story ever put to film and now whole new generations will FINALLY know what grand cinema truly is!".
Actually, that seems to be the attitude you assume *after* wasting ten or twenty years trying to be excellent and dedicated and realize that it's never appreciated, valued, or rewarded in any way whatsoever.
I tend to respect and admire Linus, but his attitude reminds me too much of dealing with all the prima-donas I have to deal with on a regular basis. An entire project may hinge on you. You may be the most prolific, genius, brilliant, fantastic, productive person on the entire project or in an entire company. That does NOT excuse your behavior.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people who are succinct and simply don't have time for bullshit. That's not what we're talking about here, though. But rather than the dickhead responses a lot of coders have (not just toward people outside of coding, or their own project, but even directly to those that participate on a one-to-one basis with them), they could have a little tact. It doesn't take any additional energy or effort to accomplish and it keeps people from avoiding working with you. I would rather work alongside someone with 98% of your skill who has a better attitude.
For example, in this response on the same thread to someone who admits they are not terribly familiar with the internals of TTY but is clearly trying to contribute however they can, Linus responds as follows:
On Tue, 28 Jul 2009, OGAWA Hirofumi wrote:
> If I read that part of emacs correctly, it seems to be assuming the data > was already sent to master side if the child process was exited.
That sounds like a rather obvious assumption.
(...)
So at what point do we just admit that the commit that caused all this was a buggy pile of sh*t and just revert it?
Is it really too much to ask for someone like Linus to respond with something like "I agree" rather than insulting the guy for making what appeared to the almighty godly genius as "obvious"? What is to be gained by making someone else feel like a tool? All you've done is given them reason to pause next time they try to contribute and change their mind during that pause. They'll decide "why should I bother trying to help in anyway when even my best effort is going to be dismissed and possibly with a snide insult?". And then people like this complain that "not enough people contribute to this open source project". Of course not, because you aren't receptive to them and make them feel unwelcome! You don't have to coddle them at all, but for fuck's sake at least try to be decent.
Otherwise, you'll eventually not just keep new blood from trying to help out in whatever ways they're capable or willing, but you'll drive away long-standing contributors who have given a LOT to the project and the community. Like Alan Cox.
Hell, it's hard enough justifying tolerating that kind of treatment when you're paid well for it. Much less when you're volunteering your time and intellect. And as was demonstrated here, if you just spend all your time criticizing the process and the people and not contributing a lot to the resolution, people will get tired of your shit and drop the problem in your lap so they can move on.
Damn, my $100 collector edition of Fallout 3 won't work anymore! I still have a vintage XBOX 360. And the game disc. But damn, for some reason every time I try to play the game, I just get a "you are not authorized to play this title" on the screen followed by an advertisement for a bunch of current generation videogames that they suggest I buy and play instead!
They don't care about keeping customers happy. They care about maintaining the "introduce a new format and require everyone to re-purchase their entire collection" model that they've had for the last century. With digital music, that's difficult to do unless they literally introduce a new and far superior digital format. Since they're not likely to do that -- or at least to the extent that the same number of people would switch from current mp3 or ogg that would switch from cassette to compact disc, they have to manufacture the turnover themselves. So, use DRM to simply cut off the music at a certain interval, requiring the user to go back and pay to download their entire library all over again.
I couldn't possibly care less about a Tron sequel. The original was enjoyable when you were a kid, but watching it as an adult, you just realize what boring and uninteresting crap it is. It isn't even watchable in stretches longer than about fifteen minutes. So anyone who has finally realized what crap it is won't care about a sequel and kids today who are the age that we were when we liked the first one won't care because they weren't around for the first one.
I could almost understand a remake and doing it right this time. But a sequel suggests that they thought the original was actually good. The only people who will care about this are those who are suffering a heavy bout of nostalgia and haven't watched it recently so still mistakenly believe it's AWESOME.
It's like Knight Rider. I'm sure a lot of us remember how cool Knight Rider was when we were kids. Then watched a couple episodes as adults and realized how stupid and terrible and uninteresting it is.
Instead of this shameless money-grab, they should... you know... do something new.
There were a couple interesting concepts, such as the combat. It had a bit of potential on that aspect. But overall, it was a heaping pile of meh. What drove me away after about two days was simply that every damn thing seemed so cookie-cutter and uninspired. Every room in every building and every person that populated the very dead, cold, sterile, uninteresting world were just so bland and similar.
I don't know who owned it when I played the game, but I gave up after only about two days of total boredom and decided to cancel my subscription. Only, at that point I discovered I had to CALL THEM UP and ask them to cancel it. And then had to answer a bunch of stupid "why are you cancelling?" questions.
That kind of hassle, instead of just clicking a button online to cancel, is a sure way to make sure I'll never play another game from your company again for the rest of my life.
I actually just paused to think of the last time I wrote anything on paper using my hand and a pen. Other than filling out a lease, signing my name, or making a one or two word note on something, I don't think I've actually "written" anything by hand in years. Which is probably all for the better, because prolonged writing (when I was a kid, I wrote reams and reams and reams and reams) tends to cramp my hand anyway.
I've heard a lot of people suggest recently that the next couple of generations (those who are perhaps in their teens today) will look toward internet results and social networking hits on an applicant or social acquaintance or potential date with much less accusation. That they will give the benefit of the doubt to people they deal with because they'll take into account that anyone can impersonate you online, say things about you online, and that even legitimate things that are your responsibility may have been done when you were young and crazy. Further, because almost everyone will have some residual guilt from things *THEY* did online at one time or another, they'll extend a courtesy to everyone else. After all, if you catch them on something now, they'll catch you on something tomorrow. You look past it and they'll look past yours.
HOWEVER... this doesn't work so well today, does it? In fact, those with something to hide are traditionally THE MOST accusing and relentless in attacking others for the same things. Think of all the raging homophobic bigots that turn out to be in the closet doing coke off the asses of young men in the back of a night club?
No, I'm the AC you're responding to and I'm actually in my 30s. I just don't happen to have the octogenarian "them damn kids - get off my lawn!" attitude that you apparently have. You clearly have a gripe with social networks *period*, just like a few decades ago people would have complained about kids "on that darned phone all the time".
I'm not condoning the shitty practices they're clearly either piloting or considering, but to blame potentially shitty business or marketing or privacy practices of a business on the users of the social network or saying they "deserve it" is just ridiculous. It kind of sounds just a step away from saying how all those young people having sex deserve to get lots of STDs and you can't wait until they do... just because you're angry some people are having lots of great sex.
Now, for idiots who do actually post questionable pictures of themselves online (you know the type - the morons who often find themselves unemployed because someone saw their half naked pot smoking beer bonging pics from last weekend online)... that's fine. But that really has little to do with the other 98% of people and the social networks they frequent.
What's worse are some of the reactions in discussions on facebook this week. There are a lot of idiots who comment that "who cares if they use my image for commercials or whatever?!".
It's amazing how little the current generation of young people care about their brand, their imaging, their right to own their data and information, and being compensated for utilization of their likeness. After all, if it's worth it to the advertiser to use your information or likeness, then IT HAS VALUE and you should be compensated for it.
I almost find the lack of concern for what was initially purported to be the actions happening more vile than the purported actions themselves.
I'm sorry, but that's stupid. That's like saying that you deserve to have your information exploited and released in any way whatsoever for ANY website you use. Or, for that matter, for any ISP you use (since ISP terms of service often include the right for the ISP to use any content you transmit over their connections).
Facebook is no worse than many other services and much better than some. Like other sites, they COULD full out abuse their users, but even if they don't have a "do no evil" mission statement, they do want to keep good-will of their user base or else everyone will move on to the next thing just like everyone moved on from MySpace.
That said, Facebook has massive sketchy potential, but not anything particularly more than other sites like LinkedIn or Picassa, or Flickr or Slashdot (which for all we know could just decide one day to un-anonymize your every message you ever posted while logged in).
Now, using facebook applications? THAT I would definitely agree with you on. The first thing you should do on Facebook is shut off all applications and hooks to applications.
We have banned the third party applications responsible for exploiting the privacy of our userbase, because we reserve the right to exploit their privacy OURSELVES".
After all, there IS an option for this in the user settings, so its eems pretty clear that they either already do something similar or intend to in the future. The response from facebook is nothing more than Apple kicking an application out of their iphone app store, because they want to introduce their own version of it and make the money for themselves.
I would definitely want to know if this was part of the training for any medical professional that tended to me so that I could leave and find someone else.
The big one is clearly headed for us and the planet is doomed and they just don't want people to know and start panicking. So, I would encourage everyone to panic.
Slashdot Mirror
Hackers was not made in the same vein as Tron, though. Hackers is an enjoyable tongue-in-cheek film that stands up to repeated watching because it recognizes itself for what it is. The general response to Tron and the new Tron seems to be "finally, they are bringing another part of the greatest story ever put to film and now whole new generations will FINALLY know what grand cinema truly is!".
Actually, that seems to be the attitude you assume *after* wasting ten or twenty years trying to be excellent and dedicated and realize that it's never appreciated, valued, or rewarded in any way whatsoever.
I tend to respect and admire Linus, but his attitude reminds me too much of dealing with all the prima-donas I have to deal with on a regular basis. An entire project may hinge on you. You may be the most prolific, genius, brilliant, fantastic, productive person on the entire project or in an entire company. That does NOT excuse your behavior.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people who are succinct and simply don't have time for bullshit. That's not what we're talking about here, though. But rather than the dickhead responses a lot of coders have (not just toward people outside of coding, or their own project, but even directly to those that participate on a one-to-one basis with them), they could have a little tact. It doesn't take any additional energy or effort to accomplish and it keeps people from avoiding working with you. I would rather work alongside someone with 98% of your skill who has a better attitude.
For example, in this response on the same thread to someone who admits they are not terribly familiar with the internals of TTY but is clearly trying to contribute however they can, Linus responds as follows:
On Tue, 28 Jul 2009, OGAWA Hirofumi wrote:
> If I read that part of emacs correctly, it seems to be assuming the data
> was already sent to master side if the child process was exited.
That sounds like a rather obvious assumption.
(...)
So at what point do we just admit that the commit that caused all this was
a buggy pile of sh*t and just revert it?
Is it really too much to ask for someone like Linus to respond with something like "I agree" rather than insulting the guy for making what appeared to the almighty godly genius as "obvious"? What is to be gained by making someone else feel like a tool? All you've done is given them reason to pause next time they try to contribute and change their mind during that pause. They'll decide "why should I bother trying to help in anyway when even my best effort is going to be dismissed and possibly with a snide insult?". And then people like this complain that "not enough people contribute to this open source project". Of course not, because you aren't receptive to them and make them feel unwelcome! You don't have to coddle them at all, but for fuck's sake at least try to be decent.
Otherwise, you'll eventually not just keep new blood from trying to help out in whatever ways they're capable or willing, but you'll drive away long-standing contributors who have given a LOT to the project and the community. Like Alan Cox.
Hell, it's hard enough justifying tolerating that kind of treatment when you're paid well for it. Much less when you're volunteering your time and intellect. And as was demonstrated here, if you just spend all your time criticizing the process and the people and not contributing a lot to the resolution, people will get tired of your shit and drop the problem in your lap so they can move on.
Exactly.
Damn, my $100 collector edition of Fallout 3 won't work anymore! I still have a vintage XBOX 360. And the game disc. But damn, for some reason every time I try to play the game, I just get a "you are not authorized to play this title" on the screen followed by an advertisement for a bunch of current generation videogames that they suggest I buy and play instead!
They don't care about keeping customers happy. They care about maintaining the "introduce a new format and require everyone to re-purchase their entire collection" model that they've had for the last century. With digital music, that's difficult to do unless they literally introduce a new and far superior digital format. Since they're not likely to do that -- or at least to the extent that the same number of people would switch from current mp3 or ogg that would switch from cassette to compact disc, they have to manufacture the turnover themselves. So, use DRM to simply cut off the music at a certain interval, requiring the user to go back and pay to download their entire library all over again.
I'll get downed for the fanboys, but whatever:
I couldn't possibly care less about a Tron sequel. The original was enjoyable when you were a kid, but watching it as an adult, you just realize what boring and uninteresting crap it is. It isn't even watchable in stretches longer than about fifteen minutes. So anyone who has finally realized what crap it is won't care about a sequel and kids today who are the age that we were when we liked the first one won't care because they weren't around for the first one.
I could almost understand a remake and doing it right this time. But a sequel suggests that they thought the original was actually good. The only people who will care about this are those who are suffering a heavy bout of nostalgia and haven't watched it recently so still mistakenly believe it's AWESOME.
It's like Knight Rider. I'm sure a lot of us remember how cool Knight Rider was when we were kids. Then watched a couple episodes as adults and realized how stupid and terrible and uninteresting it is.
Instead of this shameless money-grab, they should... you know... do something new.
Except, in the movies, The Matrix was exactly like the varied real world around us. Not bland and sterile.
There were a couple interesting concepts, such as the combat. It had a bit of potential on that aspect. But overall, it was a heaping pile of meh. What drove me away after about two days was simply that every damn thing seemed so cookie-cutter and uninspired. Every room in every building and every person that populated the very dead, cold, sterile, uninteresting world were just so bland and similar.
I don't know who owned it when I played the game, but I gave up after only about two days of total boredom and decided to cancel my subscription. Only, at that point I discovered I had to CALL THEM UP and ask them to cancel it. And then had to answer a bunch of stupid "why are you cancelling?" questions.
That kind of hassle, instead of just clicking a button online to cancel, is a sure way to make sure I'll never play another game from your company again for the rest of my life.
I actually just paused to think of the last time I wrote anything on paper using my hand and a pen. Other than filling out a lease, signing my name, or making a one or two word note on something, I don't think I've actually "written" anything by hand in years. Which is probably all for the better, because prolonged writing (when I was a kid, I wrote reams and reams and reams and reams) tends to cramp my hand anyway.
Oh, no! If your handwriting sucks, you might be forced to go into the completely unprofitable profession of being a Doctor! Oh NO!
Or using adblock, like anyone with a brain should be doing to begin with.
You see advertisements? Why aren't you using adblock like the rest of us?
Until this whole ordeal, I didn't even realize Facebook *had* ads.
Like unlimited bandwidth with your ISP contract.
Oh, wait . . . Oops. :)
I've heard a lot of people suggest recently that the next couple of generations (those who are perhaps in their teens today) will look toward internet results and social networking hits on an applicant or social acquaintance or potential date with much less accusation. That they will give the benefit of the doubt to people they deal with because they'll take into account that anyone can impersonate you online, say things about you online, and that even legitimate things that are your responsibility may have been done when you were young and crazy. Further, because almost everyone will have some residual guilt from things *THEY* did online at one time or another, they'll extend a courtesy to everyone else. After all, if you catch them on something now, they'll catch you on something tomorrow. You look past it and they'll look past yours.
HOWEVER... this doesn't work so well today, does it? In fact, those with something to hide are traditionally THE MOST accusing and relentless in attacking others for the same things. Think of all the raging homophobic bigots that turn out to be in the closet doing coke off the asses of young men in the back of a night club?
No, I'm the AC you're responding to and I'm actually in my 30s. I just don't happen to have the octogenarian "them damn kids - get off my lawn!" attitude that you apparently have. You clearly have a gripe with social networks *period*, just like a few decades ago people would have complained about kids "on that darned phone all the time".
I'm not condoning the shitty practices they're clearly either piloting or considering, but to blame potentially shitty business or marketing or privacy practices of a business on the users of the social network or saying they "deserve it" is just ridiculous. It kind of sounds just a step away from saying how all those young people having sex deserve to get lots of STDs and you can't wait until they do... just because you're angry some people are having lots of great sex.
Now, for idiots who do actually post questionable pictures of themselves online (you know the type - the morons who often find themselves unemployed because someone saw their half naked pot smoking beer bonging pics from last weekend online)... that's fine. But that really has little to do with the other 98% of people and the social networks they frequent.
What's worse are some of the reactions in discussions on facebook this week. There are a lot of idiots who comment that "who cares if they use my image for commercials or whatever?!".
It's amazing how little the current generation of young people care about their brand, their imaging, their right to own their data and information, and being compensated for utilization of their likeness. After all, if it's worth it to the advertiser to use your information or likeness, then IT HAS VALUE and you should be compensated for it.
I almost find the lack of concern for what was initially purported to be the actions happening more vile than the purported actions themselves.
Mine was opted-in by default. I never changed it. I didn't even know it existed. And I don't use applications so none of those changed it.
I ball BS on that, too.
It doesn't say "Advertise your participation in Facebook groups and fan pages", it says "Appearance in FACEBOOK ADS".
It's weird, I don't miss Vista one bit. Actually, I haven't even used Vista in the first place.
Of course, I use OSX, Solaris, and Linux exclusively, so . . .
I'm sorry, but that's stupid. That's like saying that you deserve to have your information exploited and released in any way whatsoever for ANY website you use. Or, for that matter, for any ISP you use (since ISP terms of service often include the right for the ISP to use any content you transmit over their connections).
Facebook is no worse than many other services and much better than some. Like other sites, they COULD full out abuse their users, but even if they don't have a "do no evil" mission statement, they do want to keep good-will of their user base or else everyone will move on to the next thing just like everyone moved on from MySpace.
That said, Facebook has massive sketchy potential, but not anything particularly more than other sites like LinkedIn or Picassa, or Flickr or Slashdot (which for all we know could just decide one day to un-anonymize your every message you ever posted while logged in).
Now, using facebook applications? THAT I would definitely agree with you on. The first thing you should do on Facebook is shut off all applications and hooks to applications.
What Mark Zuckerberg really means is:
We have banned the third party applications responsible for exploiting the privacy of our userbase, because we reserve the right to exploit their privacy OURSELVES".
After all, there IS an option for this in the user settings, so its eems pretty clear that they either already do something similar or intend to in the future. The response from facebook is nothing more than Apple kicking an application out of their iphone app store, because they want to introduce their own version of it and make the money for themselves.
I would definitely want to know if this was part of the training for any medical professional that tended to me so that I could leave and find someone else.
The big one is clearly headed for us and the planet is doomed and they just don't want people to know and start panicking. So, I would encourage everyone to panic.
Of course, you can't choose the color of your skin, but you CAN choose your mythology. So it's a little unfair to compare the two.
Also -- "negroes"? What the fuck, man. 1984? Are you sure you're not stuck in 1884?