The thing I don't get is why do people protest [slashdot.org] ideas like nano-tech without knowing what the possible beinfits are?
Sorta like you supporting ideas like nano-tech without knowing what the possible dangers are?
Just to clarify, Luddite != Stupid. Nor does it imply that they are incapable of prosecuting an argument, or dissecting a faulty one.
After all we wouldn't want to support the luddite belief that technofetishists just steamroller ahead without giving a thought to anything but the great god of technology...
Hmm, and somehow there is going to be more money in the future?
Heinlein said it best, the bit about humanity being too fragile to have all it's egg's in one basket.
We *HAVE* to get off this rock, pick your reason: polluting industries we can't do without, overpopulation, if nothing else, our sun has a finite lifetime. We can either start working on it now, or we can wait until we *HAVE* to. We're not likely to be better off financially at that point, lots of reasons to believe we'll be worse, so does waiting make any sense?
To most end users, a consistent look and feel, that works right out of the box, is really important.
Ahh, thank you, I've been looking for the rationale behind Stardock's continuing existence, and why there are almost as many lite step variants as there are linux distributions. It also explains why M$ offered up the plus pack, and the power toys collections. It also explains the plethora of developers and themers whose only raison d'etre is to radically alter said look and feel...
User interfaces +*ARE*+ important, but not the consistency of their look and feel.
The bigger obstacle are things like dependency resolution, and the sypmtoms of the practically non-existent efforts of folk who participate in the FOSS effort to bridge the gap between those who make the software, and those who use it.
At the end of the day, Joe Six-pack doesn't care if FOSSprogX is better than CSProgY because it is free as in speech. It can be free as in beer, and if he can't use it, because the documentation is abyssimal, or he can't install it because he can't resolve the dependencies, then the lower cost, or greater freedom, is moot.
So Joe Six-pack trundles down to CompUSA and buys CSProgY. Great! So now Joe's money goes to support Closed Source Development, which you avow to despise, and the profits from that can be spent on FUD to further minimalize the FOSS movement. Thanunk-you very much.
Now, if Joe got a FOSSprogZ, whose development group paid attention to things like providing *USEFUL* end user documentation, and providing an install script which did it's level best to try and resolve dependency issues, perhaps we can keep Joe, and deny his money to the forces of evil who seek to destroy all that is good in software development.
All the rest is tripe. Look and feel might have mattered before, but to worry about it now, is a waste of dev time. Look and feel is now at the point where we can talk about Windows and any of the major *nix DEs as the difference between right and left hand drive in a car. Yeah, you have to adjust, but that's all it is, an adjustment.
Unfortunately, right now, the major difference is the Closed source crowd *sells* them an assembled car, in right or left hand drive. FOSS *gives* them a partially assembled car, no instructions on how to finish assembly, nor the tools needed to complete assembly, and rationalize that we've given them a better alternative than buying a car.
Oh but wait, did I forget the Fakie-FOSS folks in the wings who will sell you services to assemble and help maintain your FOSS car, at a cost comparable to the CS car?
And folk even question that Linux will eventually kill Windows... Isn't it manifest that we're the superior model? After all, we guard the fundamental interests of our users... Just not their needs.
You of course assume that the readers of the web site have intelligence, or more importantly, the ability to distinguish fact from falsehood, or at the very least the willingness to do the research...
/. ought to be sufficient proof. I've read some well written and "intelligent" posts that have done nothing more than to convince me that everyone is entitled to a wrong opinion.
I know several brilliant people who have some very silly personal beliefs. Does this reduce their intelligence? No, but it is a good indicator of gullibility. Another phenom which/. could well have invented.
This fallacy that anything and everything can be posted with impunity and the moral obligation to process the information meaningfully is the onus of the reader needs to be rexamined. Freedoms without attendant responsibilities is the classic recipe for anarchy. Anarchy does not work people, history proves this. But on a more practical note, this attitude is directly responsible for all the woes of the net, phishing, spam, etc. etc. etc. All of these owe their genesis to simple fact that for some reason the rules which we automatically apply to our speech and behaviour every single day we view as being suspended on the Web. When spam started hitting my accounts, it was a nuisance, nothing more. (my "intelligence" protecting me from crap) Not so any more, spam has now reached the point where it affects all interaction on the net, if only because of the size of the traffic. And the content has gotten seedier and seedier over that same period of time. If people are not accountable, such is the inevitable result.
It is time to dispense with the fallacy and start exercising responsibility. Governments and corporations are more and more casting eyes toward the behaviours on the net which flout responsibility, and these are numerous. If we do not learn to behave responsibly, these bodies will endeavour to force us to. Wether they ultimately succeed or not is up in the air, but I will suggest that allready they are starting to exploit the "intelligence" phenom as well.
So when you talk about the intelligence of the reader, keep in mind some of those readers live in your country, and many will end up supporting laws, initiatives and candidates you find abhorrent and unpalatable. Such are the breaks when you rely on the intelligence of the masses.
Individuals may be smart, or they may not be so graced with the intellectual gifts. Crowds universally are dumb. People in a crowd will do things that they would never do as individuals. Looting during a riot as an example, screaming "Sieg Hiel" while some deviant little demagogue preaches genocide is another. You can trust an individual, but you never turn your back on a crowd. Just ask a cop, he'll tell you.
So, when you publish something on a website, are you addressing individuals, or a mob?
People make excuses for those close to them or those things on which they depend.
Like perhaps their dearly held views that patents and copyrights are just legal scams?
So, copyright and patents are just legal scams perpetrated by the scammers, or the man, or whitey, or whatever to keep you down are they? So when the patent office opened all those years ago it was just to keep you down? Oh, sorry, I forgot about feeding your over-weaning paranoia...
No, in point of fact the raison d'etre for the patent office and the origins of patent law is quite the opposite. This is called history, and it is fact.
So you may abhor what that body of law has become, and you may abhor the gross abuses of the spirit of that body of law, but at least do yourself the courtesy to stop propogating lies to yourself. Arm yourself with some facts so that when dawn's battle arrives you at least are oriented in the the direction of the true enemy, and not flailing at his pawns and surrogates...
Now, copyright law, I agree is nothing but a scam, designed to keep the poor on the bottom and the rich on top. Copyright law is the reason we have no cure for cancer, it is a mechanism designed by the illuminati for the sole purpose of stiffling creativity, preventing the free flow of ideas and information. And you "know" you must be right because your prophet RMS made no use of copyright law when he drafted the GPL to protect F/OSS software...
There ought to be a new class of logic error for this. Fallacious Appeal to Misquoted Authority or something along those lines...
The point is, without copyright law, the GPL is just high grade toilet paper. Without patent law, Edison never has the means to realize the inventions of his later years.
It's called throwing the baby out with the bath water, and it is widely recognized as a sub-optimal choice. Perhaps if we can learn to seperate the abuse of process from the process, we can treat the abuse of process in a meaningful fashion. However, such a goal is nearly impossible to realize when otherwise rational, well-articulated folk refuse to identify the real issue, and consequently dilute and confuse the issue for the rest.
Once you have NOW working,then everyone else's fingers get in the pie. First and foremost, it seems to me that most Western democracies (where this stuff will be deployed) treat driving as a privelege, not a right. That is an important legal distinction that opens the door to a wide variety of unforeseen possibilities.
Given that, what is your local Police force going to want from NOW? Hmmm, anyone want a car that rat's them out for speeding because you passed an RF trigger in a lamppost? Anyone want a car that the Police can disable with a click of a mouse? Anyone want a car that automagically reports your HOV lane abuses? How about parking meters that automagically tally your parking charges, payable the next time you go to register your vehicle...
And that is just a trivial example. Not only is the potential for abuse (malware Et. Al.) high, the potential for unsavory but legitimate use is astronomical...
How many of us are aware of the information collected and stored by the chip what controls the air bag in our cars? Great, so now instead of having to physically access this device, it can now just broadcast the information to concerned parties.
Personally, my license plate is more than enough identifying info for my car. If I want to know about accidents and road conditions so badly, I'll install a CB scanner and listen to the truckers...
Go back to the Curriculum Design Moron, and insist that since they're internship policy is crippled at best, and thereby crippling your ability to satisfy it, that they should accept you volunteering on say snort for three months.
But, the battle ain't over by a long shot. First you have to convince them, then you have to reach terms. Obviously they aren't going to send you home for three months and accept on faith you've been doing whatever for the snort project. So once you have acceptable terms with your school, you'll then have to find a project maintainer who will work within those terms.
It should be doable. But you'll probably spend three months fighting the battles alone. Ironically, you'll learn as much (and very much the same things...) fighting those battles as you would in a three month internship in lots of places...
To the parent: Galley slave? Lucky SOB, mine allways ended up being paperweights for HR...
My brother-out-law (read S/O's brother, we aren't married...) is in a co-op program as an engineer, which at least gives him the benefit of a well established field with lots of choices. So much for the plusses.
What precisely are you going to learn in three months? For my BOL, physics is physics, and electrons are electrons, doesn't matter where you work. Not so in IT. Even where "experts" agree on a result, they rarely will agree on the method of achieving it. You'll spend that three months learning really nothing more than how to be an employee, and almost nothing relevant to your program.
Where I work tried getting interns to work in my dept. I finally asked them to stop, I was doing nothing more than training a new intern every three months. Of course the majority of those interns make no significant contribution to the department, they spend most of their time learning how to be an employee in the department. Those few who actually tried to make meaningful contributions, well, that work went to/dev/null as soon as the intern went back to school. Great, we had a guy at a real cheap wage for three months, and he/she accomplished nothing of consequence, and this is a cost savings how? Three months just isn't enough time to make a decent IT employee in more places than I suspect the Curriculum Design moron at your institution realizes.
Real world experience is a valuable part of the educational process. In the case of your school, I would suggest starting with the Curriculum Design Moron. Get that individual out of their ivory tower, and out there talking to the people who do the work. Not only should they be helping you to find such a placement, maybe if they were they'd get some feedback from guys like me, and make some changes that would make interns an attractive option in IT.
No, let's make something clear. Scope, profitability, etc. etc. etc. don't matter one fucking whit. Wether you do it for your Mom, my Mom, or Bill Gates' mom, it is still unlawful, period. No amount of justification will change that, no amount of rationlization changes that stark reality.
And, wether that is how it should be or not is moot, that is how it is. If you want to see the system change, modding and pirating games for your Mother-in-law is less than a pointless activity.
Your discretion sir has nothing to do with valor, or any other noble trait, rather it is based on nothing but your greed.
Thanks for nothing, anyone can rationalize greed, it is no great public service. Perhaps in future you could turn your talents to finding a solution to the problem other than theft.
Seriously, you can't trust the parties to commission software, or vet it properly. So legislation requiring it to be Open Source only seems reasonable.
Things like this make me glad I'm an ex-patriate American. I love my country, I just hate all the assholes who live in it. Here, in Canada, my neighbors have an excuse, they're Canadian, and don't get a vote. At home, my neighbors have no such excuse. Most of them wouldn't even have voted, assholes and fools all. Some greater portion would have voted for the party of crooks and liars, assholes and fools all. Some lesser portion would have voted for the party which failed to vet software in keeping with their own (and the populace's) best interest, assholes and fools all. As for the remainder, well, they won't be assholes, or fools, but they are probably as frustrated and bitter as I am, and who wants that in a neighbor?
The thing of it is, Lincoln and Washington couldn't win a nomination, let alone a presidential election nowadays. They simply had too much honor and integrity. They were, by and large good men, honest men, and we are too "smart and sophisticated" to put such people in high office anymore...
Really, I think it is a perfectly normal reaction to being lied to. The games companies lied to us for the longest time on the effect of piracy. Then used that lie to leverage this Valve/Steam abortion, which apparently is nothing but a vehicle for more industry lies.
These people are no more ethical or palatable than any of the usual suspects, but the/. crowd by and large seems to turn a blind eye to this.
Fundamentally, as a group, games companies should be no more palatable than the Giant of Redmond, or RIAA/*AA. I get the real scary feeling that Valve/Steam could donate a portion of the profits to RIAA and Microsoft and the entertainment whores would be lining up to line the pockets of their enemy.
It seems very apparent that these guys get a lot more leeway from this crowd, and that is truly sad. No matter how much headway we make throughout the rest of computing, it seems that we will calmly and quietly accept lies from, and unacceptable onuses to the games companies.
Our linux community really needs something as FUBAR proof as microsoft's start menu icon that says autoupdate...or better yet a background app that does it all for us.
Not if you want to keep this member of the community it doesn't...
I see so many projects whose only goal is to make Linux easier to use for lusers. Folks, we allready have an OS for your grandmother, it's called Windows. Please stop trying to remake Linus' beautiful swan into an ugly fucking duck!
No, I'm not being revanchist, what I am saying is let's not remake Linux in Windows image... If to supplant Windows we must become Windows, well then let's forget supplanting Windows, the cost in unconscionable...
Bottom line, if that's the way Linux is going, stop the bus, I'm getting off. Hello *BSD where admins are admins and lusers are grateful...
That's very likely 20,000 less cheating bastards at Counter-Strike Source (leaving on a few million to deal with.)
Precisely the point. Valve is waving the falg that they have taken action against 20,000 accounts. Valve aknowledges that some percentage of them have been actioned unfairly. Well and good. The question is how many pirates haven't been caught yet?
Hard to comment on the efficacy of their anti-pirating measures in the absence of such data, but even poring through the posts, there are apparently a few they haven't caught...
IMHO, piracy is a serious problem, but I'm not sure that this is the solution.
But, largely it seems discordant and scattered to me... Is HL2 software or a service? The activation, Et. Al. makes it seem a service, but undeniably there have been software issues along the way too. The software, based on what I'm seeing, is capable of standing alone, without the cobbled together service it has been tied to. The service however is so singularly devoid of value as to make questionable how many people would voluntarily undertake those terms of service without the lock in.
Really, is Steam offering you something that you would accept under their terms if you did not have to? Most of us probably wouldn't.
However, for arguments sake, let's say that the Valve/Steam unholy duo has made a positive impact on piracy. Okay, where are the benefits to me? Games companies in particular have hammered us for years that piracy results in higher costs to legitimate users of the software... Well, now we get to see how much of a lie that was. Has HL2 started the trend of games costs going down? Wait a minute, you have good piracy protection, according to you, and that allways increased the costs of our games. So why aren't the prices going down?
Don't hold your breath. *IF* piracy affected income before (which is precidcated on everyone who used a pirated edition buying the software in the absence of a pirated version...) it only affected income. The anti-piracy measure, on the other hand is a recurring fixed cost, wether or not piracy occurs, and one which is merely being handed on to the customer. So, instead of lowering game prices by fighting piracy, we replace lost income with a fixed cost.
Ultimately, wait and see if you reap the financial rewards which the games companies have allways claimed would be our due from the elimination of piracy. I suspect you won't see it, not in the next Valve/Steam release, nor the one after it.
So whatever else, this is not something Valve/Steam undertook with your best interests as their customer at heart, remember that the next time you shell out for your Steam-enabled game...
Damn, my company will host the world championships
on
RF Connector Chess Set
·
· Score: 1
We must have enough BNC hardware left in the ceilings to make *all* the required pieces for many simultaneous matches...
No my friend, Fuck you and your support of Valve's decision to make on-line activation an unbearable requirement to use Valve's software.
If anyone doesn't fucking get it pal, it is pretty clear that it is not me. I said I don't like the activation crap, and therefore I won't give valve my money to support future versions of the activation crap. You however *claim* to hate the activation crap, but are going to reward Valve by buying the game...
It's pretty clear that you would balance a turd on your head while fucking the fat bird from hollyoaks, and whilts licking the sweat from the collective ass-cracks of the Wanderer's starting 11, so long as Valve condescended to let you play their fucking game. Never mind you wouldn't do any of the above to keep a job what paid the bills, or the love of your life, but you'll be able to play HLIX or whenever they get around to putting turd balancing in the TOS, won't you?
Perspective motherfucker, it is *just* a game. You aren't winning a Nobel, or guaranteeing world peace, or anything remotely worth compromising your stated values over.
Bottom line, actions speak louder than words, and by your actions you clearly state that support Steam and Valve treating you like a potential criminal.
As for me and my one man army, every worthwhile idea starts with one individual. Or in terms you might understand: Everyone you know is jumping off London Bridge, better queue up, you don't want to be a one man army do you?
Trust me friend, I'd rather be an army of one, all alone than to be cloistered with simpletons and troglodytes as yourself. The company is better, and the conversation involves more than four letter words and unsubstantiated character assasination. If I wanted my character maligned and targeted, I'd buy HL2 and submit to Valve's view of me as a potential pirate...
1) Why rant about Steam, Valve, on-line registration and the fact you weren't breastfed, then turn around and applaud the game? Yeah, that sends a clear message to Steam, Et. Al. The message being, it doesn't matter how fucked up we are, so long as the eye candy is good...
2) Everyone who isn't going to buy this game because of Steam, Et. Al. Good for you! Stay the course, your values should be more important than your entertainment.
3) Everyone who talks about in five years when the reg servers are gone should give their head a shake. How hard is it in a year or so to release a patch that obviates the on-line registration process? And that is merely the least trivial of the solutions. I trust someone at Steam is trying to devise a revenue stream off of that process too.
4) The guy who has the unconfigurable firewall - Buy a new one and stop posting about it. After all, you can easily obtain a configurable firewall, or stop buying games. Your questionable firewall decisions are nobody's issue but yours.
I'm not buying HL2, largely due to the fact I try to avoid rewarding companies with (IMHO) questionable or unethical business practices. To have bought HL2 and then rant on/., well at the least is just another exercise in herding cats.
THEY ALLREADY HAVE YOUR MONEY. By so giving, you have allready clearly indicated that you do accept their diseased view of the world, proclaiming otherwise on/. doesn't change a thing.
I am not a software pirate, I refuse to be the target of anti-piracy "features" in software. It isn't that hard to find out what a particular game expects and avoid those which are onerous or unreasonable.
It's not like this registration process is a bug, y'all should have known going in. Why you chose to go in anyways is the decision which needs to be analyzed, not Steam or Valves decisions on the distribution. After all, you vindicate their decisions when you buy the game.
Read the sig, I guess by extension I need to define talk with contradictory action equals...
The issue should be that the bill is not internally consistent, even to casual observation. The bill is poorly worded, rife with loopholes, and prone to abuse at every turn.
When you write to your representatives, make sure you stay centered on the real problems with the bill.
Also, for pity's sake, use the spellchecker! Then have someone who understands how to construct a sentence review your grammar. The slack-jawed-troglogeek thing works fine for/. but don't expect your representatives to be that sophisticated...
Slashdot Mirror
Sorta like you supporting ideas like nano-tech without knowing what the possible dangers are?
Just to clarify, Luddite != Stupid. Nor does it imply that they are incapable of prosecuting an argument, or dissecting a faulty one.
After all we wouldn't want to support the luddite belief that technofetishists just steamroller ahead without giving a thought to anything but the great god of technology...
Of course they had to use AIX...
Someone had to have an old United Linux disc they could have used! Oh the missed opportunitites!
Heinlein said it best, the bit about humanity being too fragile to have all it's egg's in one basket.
We *HAVE* to get off this rock, pick your reason: polluting industries we can't do without, overpopulation, if nothing else, our sun has a finite lifetime. We can either start working on it now, or we can wait until we *HAVE* to. We're not likely to be better off financially at that point, lots of reasons to believe we'll be worse, so does waiting make any sense?
Ahh, thank you, I've been looking for the rationale behind Stardock's continuing existence, and why there are almost as many lite step variants as there are linux distributions. It also explains why M$ offered up the plus pack, and the power toys collections. It also explains the plethora of developers and themers whose only raison d'etre is to radically alter said look and feel...
User interfaces +*ARE*+ important, but not the consistency of their look and feel.
The bigger obstacle are things like dependency resolution, and the sypmtoms of the practically non-existent efforts of folk who participate in the FOSS effort to bridge the gap between those who make the software, and those who use it.
At the end of the day, Joe Six-pack doesn't care if FOSSprogX is better than CSProgY because it is free as in speech. It can be free as in beer, and if he can't use it, because the documentation is abyssimal, or he can't install it because he can't resolve the dependencies, then the lower cost, or greater freedom, is moot.
So Joe Six-pack trundles down to CompUSA and buys CSProgY. Great! So now Joe's money goes to support Closed Source Development, which you avow to despise, and the profits from that can be spent on FUD to further minimalize the FOSS movement. Thanunk-you very much.
Now, if Joe got a FOSSprogZ, whose development group paid attention to things like providing *USEFUL* end user documentation, and providing an install script which did it's level best to try and resolve dependency issues, perhaps we can keep Joe, and deny his money to the forces of evil who seek to destroy all that is good in software development.
All the rest is tripe. Look and feel might have mattered before, but to worry about it now, is a waste of dev time. Look and feel is now at the point where we can talk about Windows and any of the major *nix DEs as the difference between right and left hand drive in a car. Yeah, you have to adjust, but that's all it is, an adjustment.
Unfortunately, right now, the major difference is the Closed source crowd *sells* them an assembled car, in right or left hand drive. FOSS *gives* them a partially assembled car, no instructions on how to finish assembly, nor the tools needed to complete assembly, and rationalize that we've given them a better alternative than buying a car.
Oh but wait, did I forget the Fakie-FOSS folks in the wings who will sell you services to assemble and help maintain your FOSS car, at a cost comparable to the CS car?
And folk even question that Linux will eventually kill Windows... Isn't it manifest that we're the superior model? After all, we guard the fundamental interests of our users... Just not their needs.
Well, at least here on /. it is...
You of course assume that the readers of the web site have intelligence, or more importantly, the ability to distinguish fact from falsehood, or at the very least the willingness to do the research...
I know several brilliant people who have some very silly personal beliefs. Does this reduce their intelligence? No, but it is a good indicator of gullibility. Another phenom which
This fallacy that anything and everything can be posted with impunity and the moral obligation to process the information meaningfully is the onus of the reader needs to be rexamined. Freedoms without attendant responsibilities is the classic recipe for anarchy. Anarchy does not work people, history proves this. But on a more practical note, this attitude is directly responsible for all the woes of the net, phishing, spam, etc. etc. etc. All of these owe their genesis to simple fact that for some reason the rules which we automatically apply to our speech and behaviour every single day we view as being suspended on the Web. When spam started hitting my accounts, it was a nuisance, nothing more. (my "intelligence" protecting me from crap) Not so any more, spam has now reached the point where it affects all interaction on the net, if only because of the size of the traffic. And the content has gotten seedier and seedier over that same period of time. If people are not accountable, such is the inevitable result.
It is time to dispense with the fallacy and start exercising responsibility. Governments and corporations are more and more casting eyes toward the behaviours on the net which flout responsibility, and these are numerous. If we do not learn to behave responsibly, these bodies will endeavour to force us to. Wether they ultimately succeed or not is up in the air, but I will suggest that allready they are starting to exploit the "intelligence" phenom as well.
So when you talk about the intelligence of the reader, keep in mind some of those readers live in your country, and many will end up supporting laws, initiatives and candidates you find abhorrent and unpalatable. Such are the breaks when you rely on the intelligence of the masses.
Individuals may be smart, or they may not be so graced with the intellectual gifts. Crowds universally are dumb. People in a crowd will do things that they would never do as individuals. Looting during a riot as an example, screaming "Sieg Hiel" while some deviant little demagogue preaches genocide is another. You can trust an individual, but you never turn your back on a crowd. Just ask a cop, he'll tell you.
So, when you publish something on a website, are you addressing individuals, or a mob?
I interviewed for a position at SecurityFocus. Damn, I would have lied my ass off if I thought it would have led to this!
I assume you just forgot...
So, copyright and patents are just legal scams perpetrated by the scammers, or the man, or whitey, or whatever to keep you down are they? So when the patent office opened all those years ago it was just to keep you down? Oh, sorry, I forgot about feeding your over-weaning paranoia...
No, in point of fact the raison d'etre for the patent office and the origins of patent law is quite the opposite. This is called history, and it is fact.
So you may abhor what that body of law has become, and you may abhor the gross abuses of the spirit of that body of law, but at least do yourself the courtesy to stop propogating lies to yourself. Arm yourself with some facts so that when dawn's battle arrives you at least are oriented in the the direction of the true enemy, and not flailing at his pawns and surrogates...
Now, copyright law, I agree is nothing but a scam, designed to keep the poor on the bottom and the rich on top. Copyright law is the reason we have no cure for cancer, it is a mechanism designed by the illuminati for the sole purpose of stiffling creativity, preventing the free flow of ideas and information. And you "know" you must be right because your prophet RMS made no use of copyright law when he drafted the GPL to protect F/OSS software...
There ought to be a new class of logic error for this. Fallacious Appeal to Misquoted Authority or something along those lines...
The point is, without copyright law, the GPL is just high grade toilet paper. Without patent law, Edison never has the means to realize the inventions of his later years.
It's called throwing the baby out with the bath water, and it is widely recognized as a sub-optimal choice. Perhaps if we can learn to seperate the abuse of process from the process, we can treat the abuse of process in a meaningful fashion. However, such a goal is nearly impossible to realize when otherwise rational, well-articulated folk refuse to identify the real issue, and consequently dilute and confuse the issue for the rest.
Never quite have equalled that experience either...
Given that, what is your local Police force going to want from NOW? Hmmm, anyone want a car that rat's them out for speeding because you passed an RF trigger in a lamppost? Anyone want a car that the Police can disable with a click of a mouse? Anyone want a car that automagically reports your HOV lane abuses? How about parking meters that automagically tally your parking charges, payable the next time you go to register your vehicle...
And that is just a trivial example. Not only is the potential for abuse (malware Et. Al.) high, the potential for unsavory but legitimate use is astronomical...
How many of us are aware of the information collected and stored by the chip what controls the air bag in our cars? Great, so now instead of having to physically access this device, it can now just broadcast the information to concerned parties.
Personally, my license plate is more than enough identifying info for my car. If I want to know about accidents and road conditions so badly, I'll install a CB scanner and listen to the truckers...
Or at least no mention of being able to anything but deny them, in the parent^3 post.
But, that is a neat idea, having /. keep the posts you ticked to post anonymously under your list of posts...
Now if you can figure out a way to submit such a request without it being summarily rejected...
Or maybe I'm just bitter...
'Nuf said
Go back to the Curriculum Design Moron, and insist that since they're internship policy is crippled at best, and thereby crippling your ability to satisfy it, that they should accept you volunteering on say snort for three months.
But, the battle ain't over by a long shot. First you have to convince them, then you have to reach terms. Obviously they aren't going to send you home for three months and accept on faith you've been doing whatever for the snort project. So once you have acceptable terms with your school, you'll then have to find a project maintainer who will work within those terms.
It should be doable. But you'll probably spend three months fighting the battles alone. Ironically, you'll learn as much (and very much the same things...) fighting those battles as you would in a three month internship in lots of places...
To the parent: Galley slave? Lucky SOB, mine allways ended up being paperweights for HR...
My brother-out-law (read S/O's brother, we aren't married...) is in a co-op program as an engineer, which at least gives him the benefit of a well established field with lots of choices. So much for the plusses.
What precisely are you going to learn in three months? For my BOL, physics is physics, and electrons are electrons, doesn't matter where you work. Not so in IT. Even where "experts" agree on a result, they rarely will agree on the method of achieving it. You'll spend that three months learning really nothing more than how to be an employee, and almost nothing relevant to your program.
Where I work tried getting interns to work in my dept. I finally asked them to stop, I was doing nothing more than training a new intern every three months. Of course the majority of those interns make no significant contribution to the department, they spend most of their time learning how to be an employee in the department. Those few who actually tried to make meaningful contributions, well, that work went to /dev/null as soon as the intern went back to school. Great, we had a guy at a real cheap wage for three months, and he/she accomplished nothing of consequence, and this is a cost savings how? Three months just isn't enough time to make a decent IT employee in more places than I suspect the Curriculum Design moron at your institution realizes.
Real world experience is a valuable part of the educational process. In the case of your school, I would suggest starting with the Curriculum Design Moron. Get that individual out of their ivory tower, and out there talking to the people who do the work. Not only should they be helping you to find such a placement, maybe if they were they'd get some feedback from guys like me, and make some changes that would make interns an attractive option in IT.
And, wether that is how it should be or not is moot, that is how it is. If you want to see the system change, modding and pirating games for your Mother-in-law is less than a pointless activity.
Your discretion sir has nothing to do with valor, or any other noble trait, rather it is based on nothing but your greed.
Thanks for nothing, anyone can rationalize greed, it is no great public service. Perhaps in future you could turn your talents to finding a solution to the problem other than theft.
Seriously, you can't trust the parties to commission software, or vet it properly. So legislation requiring it to be Open Source only seems reasonable.
Things like this make me glad I'm an ex-patriate American. I love my country, I just hate all the assholes who live in it. Here, in Canada, my neighbors have an excuse, they're Canadian, and don't get a vote. At home, my neighbors have no such excuse. Most of them wouldn't even have voted, assholes and fools all. Some greater portion would have voted for the party of crooks and liars, assholes and fools all. Some lesser portion would have voted for the party which failed to vet software in keeping with their own (and the populace's) best interest, assholes and fools all. As for the remainder, well, they won't be assholes, or fools, but they are probably as frustrated and bitter as I am, and who wants that in a neighbor?
The thing of it is, Lincoln and Washington couldn't win a nomination, let alone a presidential election nowadays. They simply had too much honor and integrity. They were, by and large good men, honest men, and we are too "smart and sophisticated" to put such people in high office anymore...
These people are no more ethical or palatable than any of the usual suspects, but the /. crowd by and large seems to turn a blind eye to this.
Fundamentally, as a group, games companies should be no more palatable than the Giant of Redmond, or RIAA/*AA. I get the real scary feeling that Valve/Steam could donate a portion of the profits to RIAA and Microsoft and the entertainment whores would be lining up to line the pockets of their enemy.
It seems very apparent that these guys get a lot more leeway from this crowd, and that is truly sad. No matter how much headway we make throughout the rest of computing, it seems that we will calmly and quietly accept lies from, and unacceptable onuses to the games companies.
I see so many projects whose only goal is to make Linux easier to use for lusers. Folks, we allready have an OS for your grandmother, it's called Windows. Please stop trying to remake Linus' beautiful swan into an ugly fucking duck!
No, I'm not being revanchist, what I am saying is let's not remake Linux in Windows image... If to supplant Windows we must become Windows, well then let's forget supplanting Windows, the cost in unconscionable...
Bottom line, if that's the way Linux is going, stop the bus, I'm getting off. Hello *BSD where admins are admins and lusers are grateful...
Precisely the point. Valve is waving the falg that they have taken action against 20,000 accounts. Valve aknowledges that some percentage of them have been actioned unfairly. Well and good. The question is how many pirates haven't been caught yet?
Hard to comment on the efficacy of their anti-pirating measures in the absence of such data, but even poring through the posts, there are apparently a few they haven't caught...
IMHO, piracy is a serious problem, but I'm not sure that this is the solution.
But, largely it seems discordant and scattered to me... Is HL2 software or a service? The activation, Et. Al. makes it seem a service, but undeniably there have been software issues along the way too. The software, based on what I'm seeing, is capable of standing alone, without the cobbled together service it has been tied to. The service however is so singularly devoid of value as to make questionable how many people would voluntarily undertake those terms of service without the lock in.
Really, is Steam offering you something that you would accept under their terms if you did not have to? Most of us probably wouldn't.
However, for arguments sake, let's say that the Valve/Steam unholy duo has made a positive impact on piracy. Okay, where are the benefits to me? Games companies in particular have hammered us for years that piracy results in higher costs to legitimate users of the software... Well, now we get to see how much of a lie that was. Has HL2 started the trend of games costs going down? Wait a minute, you have good piracy protection, according to you, and that allways increased the costs of our games. So why aren't the prices going down?
Don't hold your breath. *IF* piracy affected income before (which is precidcated on everyone who used a pirated edition buying the software in the absence of a pirated version...) it only affected income. The anti-piracy measure, on the other hand is a recurring fixed cost, wether or not piracy occurs, and one which is merely being handed on to the customer. So, instead of lowering game prices by fighting piracy, we replace lost income with a fixed cost.
Ultimately, wait and see if you reap the financial rewards which the games companies have allways claimed would be our due from the elimination of piracy. I suspect you won't see it, not in the next Valve/Steam release, nor the one after it.
So whatever else, this is not something Valve/Steam undertook with your best interests as their customer at heart, remember that the next time you shell out for your Steam-enabled game...
We must have enough BNC hardware left in the ceilings to make *all* the required pieces for many simultaneous matches...
If anyone doesn't fucking get it pal, it is pretty clear that it is not me. I said I don't like the activation crap, and therefore I won't give valve my money to support future versions of the activation crap. You however *claim* to hate the activation crap, but are going to reward Valve by buying the game...
It's pretty clear that you would balance a turd on your head while fucking the fat bird from hollyoaks, and whilts licking the sweat from the collective ass-cracks of the Wanderer's starting 11, so long as Valve condescended to let you play their fucking game. Never mind you wouldn't do any of the above to keep a job what paid the bills, or the love of your life, but you'll be able to play HLIX or whenever they get around to putting turd balancing in the TOS, won't you?
Perspective motherfucker, it is *just* a game. You aren't winning a Nobel, or guaranteeing world peace, or anything remotely worth compromising your stated values over.
Bottom line, actions speak louder than words, and by your actions you clearly state that support Steam and Valve treating you like a potential criminal.
As for me and my one man army, every worthwhile idea starts with one individual. Or in terms you might understand: Everyone you know is jumping off London Bridge, better queue up, you don't want to be a one man army do you?
Trust me friend, I'd rather be an army of one, all alone than to be cloistered with simpletons and troglodytes as yourself. The company is better, and the conversation involves more than four letter words and unsubstantiated character assasination. If I wanted my character maligned and targeted, I'd buy HL2 and submit to Valve's view of me as a potential pirate...
2) Everyone who isn't going to buy this game because of Steam, Et. Al. Good for you! Stay the course, your values should be more important than your entertainment.
3) Everyone who talks about in five years when the reg servers are gone should give their head a shake. How hard is it in a year or so to release a patch that obviates the on-line registration process? And that is merely the least trivial of the solutions. I trust someone at Steam is trying to devise a revenue stream off of that process too.
4) The guy who has the unconfigurable firewall - Buy a new one and stop posting about it. After all, you can easily obtain a configurable firewall, or stop buying games. Your questionable firewall decisions are nobody's issue but yours.
I'm not buying HL2, largely due to the fact I try to avoid rewarding companies with (IMHO) questionable or unethical business practices. To have bought HL2 and then rant on /., well at the least is just another exercise in herding cats.
THEY ALLREADY HAVE YOUR MONEY. By so giving, you have allready clearly indicated that you do accept their diseased view of the world, proclaiming otherwise on /. doesn't change a thing.
I am not a software pirate, I refuse to be the target of anti-piracy "features" in software. It isn't that hard to find out what a particular game expects and avoid those which are onerous or unreasonable.
It's not like this registration process is a bug, y'all should have known going in. Why you chose to go in anyways is the decision which needs to be analyzed, not Steam or Valves decisions on the distribution. After all, you vindicate their decisions when you buy the game.
Read the sig, I guess by extension I need to define talk with contradictory action equals...
Yep, hence the advice. Play to your audience. Hell, I don't recall any literacy requirement to run for office.
When you write to your representatives, make sure you stay centered on the real problems with the bill.
Also, for pity's sake, use the spellchecker! Then have someone who understands how to construct a sentence review your grammar. The slack-jawed-troglogeek thing works fine for /. but don't expect your representatives to be that sophisticated...