If you protest the government, they imprison you, or just gun you down on the spot, free!
We're getting there, maybe not to gunning you down on the spot, but being arrested for protesting the government, or just refusing to go to a designated 'protest zone' at a Bush campaign rally. (Ironicallly I could only find a link from a paper outside the US on that. There were many occurrences similar to it throughout Bush's campaign.)
So give it time, I'm sure we'll have the gunning down protestors legalized eventually. (And no I don't think that's a good thing.)
I was in China earlier this summer and despite their "genius traffic lights" and cellphone coverage, you can still walk behind the internet bars and savvy shopping marts and find dirt roads, people living on other's garbage and sewage in the streets.
With the exception of dirt streets you can find all that in most American cities too. Granted the sewage in the streets is mainly from homeless people just going wherever it's convenient but it's there.
You'll also find plenty of dirt roads (and gravel roads) throughout the US, not everywhere is a major city.
The modernization of Chinese technology is less important than the quality of life of its people. In my opinion, they need to focus less on getting every single person in their country internet and more on getting every single person in their country fed and clean.
The same could be said for the US. We tend to focus on stuff like how many homes have Internet, or how many homes have cable instead of talking about ways to help the homeless and poor. While China's certainly not perfect, neither is any other country. All of them have problems hidden under the surface.
I've known of one traffic death from a yellow before green in Europe way back. Giving someone a accurate way of determining when they can be moving the microsecond the light turns green is bad given that people have incoporated not just the delayed green but the delayed start after green in their calculations of how late they can run a red light.
It should be trivial to factor that in and have the countdown be slightly off. Make it where the delay is variable between lights and drivers won't know that they can safely go right before it changes. It will still provide the benefits of having an idea of how long it will be till it changes, so you can brake if you're getting close. (Or even check the map while it's red.)
China is a huge threat in the region. China is best understood as a society with deadly, ultra-modern weapons coupled with a barbaric, medieval mindset. It is an ogre in the 21st century.
Actually the same could be said of the US, a lot of our foriegn policies of late have been decidely midieval, notably the "you're with us or you're against us" black and white take on things. Not to say China's not a potential problem, but this is not sound reasoning as to why it's a problem.
The Chinese routinely rape and kill Tibetan nuns and children. The Chinese routinely abort female fetuses, producing a skewed ratio of male babies to female babies. There is currently a deficit of about 15% (!) in the female baby population.
I'll decline to comment on the Tibetian bit except to point out the link you provide is decidely not an impartial one. They may be 100% accurate, but they have a vested interest in taking the Tibetian's side so it's hard to tell.
As far as the female babies being aborted, yes it happens, but it's not a government policy. It's a side-effect of the one child, one family policy and traditions. Many Chinese feel they must have a male child to support them when they're elderly so they will have female babies aborted. Actually I'm not entirely sure the process is legal. Given the government's nationalistic leanings, I suspect that something will be done about this, they won't want to rely on Chinese marrying women of other ancestries in order to reproduce.
That's not even considering that there's supposed to be a War on Terror taking place, and a nuclear power station must be one heck of a terrorism target. Why import a dirty bomb when the government just built 20 for you. And we're not just talking about the plants themselves, consider the ships and trains carrying new and spent fuel every four weeks, perhaps within a mile of your doorstep.
We already have all those concerns for existing plants, many of which weren't designed/built with security against terrorism as a concern. (Or at least not as much as it is now.) While we seem to be handling the potential problem fairly well with existing plants/infrastructure, it would be much easier to make a new plant safer since the possibility of terrorists attacks could be taken into consideration from the beginning.
Besides most people don't suggest switching to nuclear fission as a long-term solution, but as a way to wean ourselves from foriegn oil while we work on better, cleaner solutions.
If the US were really out to steal oil it would be much easier to go to Canada.
Not really, most of the big oil deposits in Canada would cost too much to extract to make it worthwhile, at least for now. Once the price of oil goes way up then a lot of people (not just the US) will be interested in the large Canadian oil fields.
It's not exactly the same but this looks awfully close for what the FTC's going after Spamford Wallace for. Given that this looks like a highly dubious financial move for the company.
Second, "what they want" in this case is for pedophiles to stop using Nintendo to screw up kids.
The AC replying to you said this as well but I wanted to point this out so it wouldn't get missed by others.
The jerks using Nintendo character names and stuff on porn sites to pull in links probably aren't pedophiles, and they probably don't give a shit that children get drawn in as well. They're just crooks hoping to cheat the system so they can pull in more money from their porn empire. Labeling this type of stuff as pedophilia hurts cracking down on the real problems by diluting what people think of as pedophilia and/or child porn. Frankly you're part of the problem, not the solution when you say things like this. We're all against child porn but most of us want to be helpful in stopping it, not mislabeling things to confuse the issue.
Reportedly, there's also interactive prostitution, as well as the bad language, torture and ultra-violent gameplay. GTA: San Andreas may not be the bad kid on the block anymore.
Well I never thought of GTA as the real bad boy of video games, at least not up till now (I haven't seen all of the game and played none of it so far, just saw a friend play some of it). Sure it had lots of violence and revolved around criminal activities but it didn't take itself very seriously. It was very much tounge-in-cheek all the way through. I just loved the name of the designer drug in GTA3, 'spank'. Most definitely they weren't trying to be very serious and were enjoying themselves.
From what I saw San Andreas continues at least some of this. I loved when they jumped off a cliff into the water and CJ yelled out "I hate gravity!" as he fell. It was also amusing to see you could attack people with the spray paint by spraying it in their faces. I'm guessing there's more stuff like that in there, at least I hope there is, I enjoyed the funny stuff a lot!
As to the stuff from "Shellshock" you mentioned. Damn, that's bad. I'm not generally interested in games like that (FPS games in general make me sick from vertigo) but I'm glad to learn about it so I can make sure not to ever play it. I certainly wouldn't want to see that scene ever, much less in a GAME. I know something that brutal and violent would probably give me nightmares, I can't imagine how it would affect a kid.
On that note, it's kinda sad that a game so horribly brutal (and yes I do realize that it's realistic) only gets an M, but a game just showing nudity (The Guy Game) gets an AO (Adult Only). Personally I'd think that the violence would be far worse for a kid to see than some breasts, but apparently I'm wrong.
What they really need is a label that states: "HEY MORON: if you're buying this game for your 12-year-old, that big shiney M in the corner means that it's adults only. When you buy it for him anyways and he pulls a shotgun on his classmate, don't blame us."
Sadly it wouldn't work on all people. My experience as a Sysamdmin at a major university convinced me of that once and for all. Here I was running computer labs in the Electrical & Computer Engineering dept. You wouldn't expect stupid students there, but.... Routinely students wouldn't read posted rules (posted in every lab in multiple places, around a minimum of 10 copies in each lab as well as a copy on the doors), wouldn't read the account user agreement they signed (which had the same info on it), and would come to complain about something that had never been allowed and was clearly explained as unallowed and why on these forms. In fact it was the vast majority of them that did this. I came out of it realizing that most people just won't read the rules/can't be bothered to learn them on their own/etc. I have no clue why this is, but it's really disheartening, you can count on people never reading obvious things in front of them, even if it's in 12 foot tall red flashing letters.
That also probably explains why some parents don't even know what the ESRB ratings are despite being posted all over the place in every game store/electronics dept. I've ever seen.
In regards to GTA:SA, changing the language would be akin to air brushing out George Burns' cigars. The player is essentially role playing a character in an historical environment, and the language is part of it. Editing out specific words from a game with drive-by's, corrupt cops, drugs, etc. seems a little selective to me.
You certainly didn't read my post terribly well, I said I wasn't one to be easily offended, in fact I tend to offend sensitive people, I cuss like a sailor. Yet still, parts of San Andreas's language offended me.
The more I think of it, the more I realize it wasn't the story/mission parts that bothered me. What was getting on my nerves was the constant random shit that you'd hear when walking/running/riding/driving/etc. A lot of it was beyond pointless, and it didn't help to establish a feel for the era/area. I'm quite sure that not all 1990s residents of Los Angelas cussed everytime they opened their mouth. Keep in mind not all the background chatter is caused by you, you'll hear NPCs yelling at each other as well. If it was only triggered by your rude/criminal actions it'd be understandable.
Basically it feels more like Rockstar went overboard and the cussing has ended up being there for shock value, not authenticity. That alone is pretty offensive. In any case for someone like me who cusses as much, or more, than the game characters do to end up being sick of the constant cussing and want to mute it says a lot about how they've used it in-game. I simply don't get offended easily, and this is the first GTA game to manage to offend me. (Actually it's the first game or movie to offend me.) At this point I'll probably rent it to spend some more time with it and see if the gameplay overcomes what I've felt watching it (admittedly for only a few hours). Maybe I'll get used to it, but I don't know. I came away from that session not terribly interested in the game and I'd been looking forward to it for months and was excited as hell to get to see it the other night.
And as far as having a less-cussing option, it's not the same. In this case you still get to present the work in its full glory, but for those less inclined to hear the language (or those sick of hearing it constantly) you can give them a break. After all would you rather stay true to your 'vision' or sell more games? Personally I think a game company would want to sell more games, if it tanks they'll lose money on it. (Granted that's not very likely with this series.) Air-brushing out George Burn's cigars would also be acceptable in the right context, say on a DVD that used multiple angles (or just came as a set with two versions) so that those that wanted to see it in its original format could, but those offended by smoking could also enjoy it. It's not censorship when the consumer is left with both options. After all nearly every movie release presents you with a choice of a modified movie (full screen) or one in its full original form (wide screen). Very few releases offer both versions in one package and I don't see many people saying that's a problem.
Although I'm probably going to be right out there with the rest of you picking this up, am I the only one that's a bit concerned about seeing all the parents buying the game for their kids?
No you're not, I've seen the game and even as an adult find the level of language in this one to be disturbing. I'm not easily offended either, but the constant amount of cussing gets old fast. Even a lot of the NPC comments you hear going about the game world are more cuss-filled than in the last two GTA games. Perhaps it's authentic, but this is a case where I'd have liked a less-cussing option myself. I only saw it for a few hours and was already thinking that the mute button looked like a great idea.
Supposedly the ESRB stuff is supposed to stop retailers from selling the game to people under 18, but I know that many parents don't have the time or the willpower to look into what media their children consume. And I know this series gets pretty bad, with things like picking up prostitutes, car theft, and massacre being rewarded in what some have termed a "pornography of violence".
Well the ESRB is working as it should in that case. If parents aren't willing to check into the game before they buy it for the kid, it's certainly not the ESRB or Rockstar's fault. You have to blame the parent there, it doesn't take much time to look at the package and see M (Mature) on it, then flip it over to see the sub warnings (which I'm sure include violence, adult language, adult situations, etc.) I worked at a Wal-mart for a few years in Electronics and I'd always point out that a game was Mature to parents in case they didn't realize it. Some parents didn't know about the ratings system (which is amazing as it's posted on every freaking game case at Wal-mart) and when they asked what it meant and found out they'd put it back and tell the kids they had to pick something else. Some would say "I know, I don't care" and buy the game for their 6yo. (Quite literally I saw someone buy Vice City for their 6yo.)
But in any case there's a recent article that was in Computer Gaming World or Electronic Gaming Monthly one where they sent a young-looking 15yo kid into several stores to try to buy M rated games to see what happened. (They showed a picture of him, he looked about 12.) Some stores sold him M rated games without even blinking, others refused from the start. Unfortunately a lot of stores and/or employees don't even try to enforce the ESRB, providing fuel to the anti-gaming camp.:(
Depends if the title says "Smartr bus routing program". CMS was right in the title of the story, and isn't a strange acronym.
That's not the point, the grandparent implied that anyone not knowing what Postnuke was had their head under a rock ignoring the world. That's certainly not the case, people not needing the sofware have no reason to know what a CMS is, much less that Postnuke is an example of it. (Which was my point.)
The tort system does need revision, but the only proposal I've seen so far gives relief exclusively to corporations.
While I agree that we need Tort reform in general, in this case I don't see the threat of lawsuits as a problem. Frankly these are things that aren't needed in cars, especially not for the driver. Even with reasonable restrictions in place (shutting off the video when the car goes faster than 3mph) wouldn't stop idiots from killing themselves and others because of these distractions.
While a lot of the resulting carnage would probably be from people disabling built in safety restrictions, ultimately it's hard not to blame the company for selling something like a TV screen built-in to a car for the driver's usage. In this case the fear of lawsuits is probably helping to prevent many, many deaths due to unnecessary, distracting, potentially deadly car accessories.
PostNuke is one of the most common content management systems out there. Not to flame or anything, but if you've never heard of them the rock must have been very comfortable to be under.
Those of us without a need for Content Mangament Systems certainly aren't hiding under any rocks. To give a real-life example I'm sure most people here would have no clue what the program Smartr is for, simply because they have no need to do bus routing. Does that mean they were hiding under a rock oblivious to the world?
and how can we be sure that closed source software doesn't contain backdoors? open the source!
We don't, and to make it worse we likely wouldn't find out about an attack like this directly from the company involved. Companies are notoriously wary of even reporting breakins to the FBI because it would look bad to their shareholders. Given that, if the same scenario happenned with a publicly held company selling a closed-source product, would they even bother to notify those who'd downlaoded the trojaned version? After all the code is closed, so they could claim innocence (and how would someone prove otherwise) when the customer's computers got pwned.
I wonder how much productivity you lock-'em-down admins are costing the economy as a whole.... Your job is to help us users be more productive in doing our job, it isn't to cause you the least hassle.
We don't cause user productivity to go down with policies that don't allow users admin access. In fact, when you really get down to the nitty-gritty, we increase user productivity. You're forgetting/ignoring one very important thing -- your system is stable, it doesn't get slowed down from spyware/adware/viruses/etc. It doesn't crash repeatedly because of damage done by viruses and worms, or even just botched installs/uninstalls. It doesn't popup so many windows when you open IE that the system crashes. It runs great, and you can use it all day long without waiting for us to fix the problems you (or others) have caused it.
You probably won't believe that but I've seen proof of it myself. At one place I worked all employees had admin access when I arrived. As we upgraded systems from Windows 95/98 to Windows 2000 we also migrated to a Windows domain and login system where employees only had domain user privledges. Before the upgrade I had to go clean a virus off of both the secretary's computers at least once a week. Their systems weren't exactly stable either, what with all the infections and cleaning cycles. Unsurprisingly they were not thrilled with losing admin acess on the new systems, but we made it as painless as possible. We even went as far to let them have Webshots. It took a bit of testing but we made it work with non-admin priveledges.
After a few months they realized that they were much more productive. Their systems didn't crash regularly (in fact they stayed up for weeks at a time without being rebooted), they got no more viruses, and they got more work done.
So yes it's IT/IS's job to make sure the users are as productive as possible, but giving you admin access isn't the way to achieve that.
And frankly I seriously doubt you have that many emergency software needs. At best you might need some software installed once every three months, but I've found that most users need additional software about twice a year at most. Most don't need any at all for years at a time.
You wanna know something? LAN administration isn't the most important part of a company, you aren't making the company any money.
Perhaps it doesn't make money but shall we shutdown the network and see how much work you can get done? Need to print a document? Oops, the network's down so you can't reach the printers to send the job. Need to access a company database? Oops, the network's down, you can't get to it. Need to look up some information on a project? Well hope you have it all filed away to dig through, cause the network's down. You are vastly underestimating the importance of the LAN to businesses nowadays. When that network goes down, for whatever reason, work grinds to a halt company-wide. Until it's back up almost no work gets done. Every minute the company's losing tons of money because they're paying people to sit and stare at their computer instead of working on them. So the next time your feel the need to bitch about IT, remember that they don't have these policies just to make your life miserable. They're there to make sure you can do your job and be productive.
Of course in your case, as whiny and bitchy as you come across, they probably ARE out to make your life miserable, just to get even for you making theirs miserable. There's three groups of people it's dangerous to piss off in any company. 1) the secretaries, 2) the janitors, and 3) the IT/IS folks. All of them can make your life very miserable very fast. Pissing off all three's probably akin to suicide.
So what? I have never had a problem with my Firefox crashing (ever). Sure, if you try to make something crash, it eventually will. Considering how much security holes IE has, IE could be the missing link, and I still wouldnt use it.
Just because you haven't crashed it doesn't mean it's not happening. I switched my Mom over to Firefox for her computer's safety about 2 months back. She's still using it, but it crashes for her regularly and it's becoming a big frustration for her. As she put it "why does Firefox crash so much, IE never crashed on me?" If Mozilla/Firefox/Opera/etc. hope to continue gaining ground on IE, then this type of thing needs to be addressed.
As I see it the major problem that Mozilla/Firefox has is the vast majority of those using it (and most definitely the vast majority bothering to report bugs/crashes) are techies. Why is that a problem? Well we probably don't spend our time to going to "silly" E-card sites and joke sites that use bad flash/html. Sure we can dismiss those sites as not important, because to us they aren't, but to a large portion of the average users out there they're one of the most important things they do in a browser because to them they're fun.
So I'm betting Mozilla/Firefox actually crashes regularly on non-techies simply because they visit sites that most techies don't bother to test the browser on.
So will this prevent spammers from sending spams via a Gmail account?
I doubt that's really the concern, most spammers don't use mainstream ISPs/E-mail providers as it is, they just fake return addresses from domains of known ISPS/E-mail providers. This would help E-mail servers on the receiving end (who've implemented the DomainKeys stuff too) to know for sure if the return address is real or not. So they could just toss out all @gmail.com addresses that aren't authentic, most of them would be spam anyway. It also simplifies Google's spam investigations, if a spam E-mail supposedly from gmail.com doesn't have the DomanKeys validation no further time needs to be spent on it, just send it back with a form "This didn't originate from our domain" message and go on to the next one.
Of course that just means spammers will start using different domain names as return addresses.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of them Google bashers (I don't believe the Google Desktop is spywer, for example), but in this case I would like to have an opt-out option!
Since Gmail's a free service, I believe your opt-out mechanism is to use something else. Given this is largely an anti-spam technique (to prove an E-mail is legitimately from the domain it says it is) I can't see Google being willing to provide an opt-out on this, it would undermine the whole effort.
I like gadgets as much as the next geek, but isn't this a little absurd? Grocery shopping is not that difficult, people.
True, except that it can be a pain when the store rearranges things, or when you're in one of the "super" centers (the size of small shopping malls). I can see where the locate an item feature would be very useful, but everything else seems just silly. I know I'd have appreciated something like that when trying to figure out where our Wal-mart hid the Q-tips recently. (Finally found them in Health and Beauty Aids, on the deoderant aisle. Yeah that's just where everyone expects to find them!)
I haven't used WinXP in awhile, so correct me if I am wrong... doesn't XP have a little checkbox in the "User Accounts" dialog that says something like "Make my data private" or something to that effect? I believe it is unchecked by default. Can anyone confirm that by default XP doesn't make user folders strict, and that you have to explicitly enable this option. I'm pretty sure Windows 2000 doesn't work this way.
I can confirm it, I just got done doing one clean install of XP Pro and configuration of a new Dell with XP Pro on it for work. On both machines XP asked for an administrator password, then gave an option to create individual user accounts. All accounts it creates default to null password, no option to assign one from setup or first time login. I'm really not sure what the administrator password is for as it doesn't create an administrator account.
If you go to uses under the control panel and set a password for an account it'll prompt you to see if you want to make your files private. By default they're not, and that means anyone can view your whole subdirectory under the documents and settings folder. Once it's turned on, other users with admin privledges can't view your directory. I haven't checked to see if they can reset your password and log in as you to access them, but at least it's an extra step.
On a related note, I can find no way to assign ownership to specific directories. On Win2K this was easy, under XP it doesn't appear to be possible. I had a data directory on the drive of a laptop I had to share until a new employee's computer arrives. I wanted the data to be inaccessible to them, but it's too large to just move for a week or two. I ended up setting it to be hidden so they wouldn't see the directory without fiddling with file view options. Not my preferred choice though, I was annoyed.
How about making the customers happy? Personally, I can't believe that 1 out of 5 CDs are sold in Walmarts. I can't stand their stores. I absolutely DREAD entering one. They aren't clean, they aren't friendly after you pass the greeter, and they aren't someplace that I want to shop for music as it's just usually a mess and full of people.
Why not concentrate on making music available for less money somewhere that I might want to buy it instead of worrying about making sure Walmart is happy.
While much of what you say about the stores are true, you should feel sorry for the folks trapped working there. I've worked at one, appalling is about the only word that comes close to describing how management treats employees. Many of the people there can't find other work, or Wal-mart pays more than anything else they can find. Wal-mart knows this and abuses it. I fully expect there to be lots more class-action lawsuits against the company in the near future, even with current ones they're getting worse if anything.
But the 1 in 5 figure is quite believable. While Wal-mart might not have as large a selection, their core customer base isn't looking for one. The CDs sell like proverbial hotcakes at even smaller Wal-marts, bigger ones move so many it's scary. Around here (Tennessee) there are very few chain record stores left. Of the two malls in the closest large city to me, there's one record store apiece. There are a few small retailers, but the biggest of those is a local used-CD chain (two locations).
I don't like dealing with either company and I certainly don't think that Walmart is going to bat for the consumer. They are only doing this to make themselves richer. We aren't exactly benefiting by buying a $10 CD.
On this one you're both right and wrong. Wal-mart is indeed wanting to make more money, but their entire business plan is to buy low and pass along the savings, keeping profit margins lower and making up their money by selling tons of the stuff. Anything Wal-mart can get cheaper will benefit consumers because then the consumers will get it cheaper. Granted Wal-mart's not doing it because they're some grand benefactor, but the end result helps consumers a bit. Actually I suspect that Wal-mart is pushing for this because the overwhelming consensus of their customers is that the CDs cost too much, even at Wal-mart's prices. (I worked in Electronics, you hear this constantly, although people still buy.)
Wal-Mart is like no traditional record seller. Unlike a typical Tower store, which stocks 60,000 titles, an average Wal-Mart carries about 5,000 CDs. That leaves little room on the shelf for developing artists or independent labels.
I was at Walmart recently buying something I couldn't find at Target. I happened to stop into the electronics section while my fiancé did some shopping elsewhere. Perhaps I wasn't looking in the right spots but I wasn't finding anything by developing and independent artists. If anything it was most older music that wasn't exactly getting radio play. I saw the typical teenybopper crap but nothing that I would consider new and exciting.
Umm, did you not read the sentence you posted? It said it left little room, which is exactly what you found to be true. Wal-mart's not big on new and exciting though, they're big on selling decent stuff cheap and lots of it. Independent artists and developing artists don't fit that so it's no surprise they're absent.
It is interesting to note that Wal-mart doesn't handle the merchandising of the CDs itself, they hire a company that does it, so I'm not sure how much direct control Wal-mart has over exactly what is on the racks.
Most independent stores I have gone to shop for music in are charing $16+ for a CD. If you're buying it for $12 and making $4+ a CD I seriously believe that you are gouging us. I don't feel bad for you.
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If you protest the government, they imprison you, or just gun you down on the spot, free!
We're getting there, maybe not to gunning you down on the spot, but being arrested for protesting the government, or just refusing to go to a designated 'protest zone' at a Bush campaign rally. (Ironicallly I could only find a link from a paper outside the US on that. There were many occurrences similar to it throughout Bush's campaign.)So give it time, I'm sure we'll have the gunning down protestors legalized eventually. (And no I don't think that's a good thing.)
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I was in China earlier this summer and despite their "genius traffic lights" and cellphone coverage, you can still walk behind the internet bars and savvy shopping marts and find dirt roads, people living on other's garbage and sewage in the streets.
With the exception of dirt streets you can find all that in most American cities too. Granted the sewage in the streets is mainly from homeless people just going wherever it's convenient but it's there.You'll also find plenty of dirt roads (and gravel roads) throughout the US, not everywhere is a major city.
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The modernization of Chinese technology is less important than the quality of life of its people. In my opinion, they need to focus less on getting every single person in their country internet and more on getting every single person in their country fed and clean.
The same could be said for the US. We tend to focus on stuff like how many homes have Internet, or how many homes have cable instead of talking about ways to help the homeless and poor. While China's certainly not perfect, neither is any other country. All of them have problems hidden under the surface.-
I've known of one traffic death from a yellow before green in Europe way back. Giving someone a accurate way of determining when they can be moving the microsecond the light turns green is bad given that people have incoporated not just the delayed green but the delayed start after green in their calculations of how late they can run a red light.
It should be trivial to factor that in and have the countdown be slightly off. Make it where the delay is variable between lights and drivers won't know that they can safely go right before it changes. It will still provide the benefits of having an idea of how long it will be till it changes, so you can brake if you're getting close. (Or even check the map while it's red.)-
China is a huge threat in the region. China is best understood as a society with deadly, ultra-modern weapons coupled with a barbaric, medieval mindset. It is an ogre in the 21st century.
Actually the same could be said of the US, a lot of our foriegn policies of late have been decidely midieval, notably the "you're with us or you're against us" black and white take on things. Not to say China's not a potential problem, but this is not sound reasoning as to why it's a problem.-
The Chinese routinely rape and kill Tibetan nuns and children. The Chinese routinely abort female fetuses, producing a skewed ratio of male babies to female babies. There is currently a deficit of about 15% (!) in the female baby population.
I'll decline to comment on the Tibetian bit except to point out the link you provide is decidely not an impartial one. They may be 100% accurate, but they have a vested interest in taking the Tibetian's side so it's hard to tell.As far as the female babies being aborted, yes it happens, but it's not a government policy. It's a side-effect of the one child, one family policy and traditions. Many Chinese feel they must have a male child to support them when they're elderly so they will have female babies aborted. Actually I'm not entirely sure the process is legal. Given the government's nationalistic leanings, I suspect that something will be done about this, they won't want to rely on Chinese marrying women of other ancestries in order to reproduce.
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That's not even considering that there's supposed to be a War on Terror taking place, and a nuclear power station must be one heck of a terrorism target. Why import a dirty bomb when the government just built 20 for you. And we're not just talking about the plants themselves, consider the ships and trains carrying new and spent fuel every four weeks, perhaps within a mile of your doorstep.
We already have all those concerns for existing plants, many of which weren't designed/built with security against terrorism as a concern. (Or at least not as much as it is now.) While we seem to be handling the potential problem fairly well with existing plants/infrastructure, it would be much easier to make a new plant safer since the possibility of terrorists attacks could be taken into consideration from the beginning.Besides most people don't suggest switching to nuclear fission as a long-term solution, but as a way to wean ourselves from foriegn oil while we work on better, cleaner solutions.
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If the US were really out to steal oil it would be much easier to go to Canada.
Not really, most of the big oil deposits in Canada would cost too much to extract to make it worthwhile, at least for now. Once the price of oil goes way up then a lot of people (not just the US) will be interested in the large Canadian oil fields.It's not exactly the same but this looks awfully close for what the FTC's going after Spamford Wallace for. Given that this looks like a highly dubious financial move for the company.
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Second, "what they want" in this case is for pedophiles to stop using Nintendo to screw up kids.
The AC replying to you said this as well but I wanted to point this out so it wouldn't get missed by others.The jerks using Nintendo character names and stuff on porn sites to pull in links probably aren't pedophiles, and they probably don't give a shit that children get drawn in as well. They're just crooks hoping to cheat the system so they can pull in more money from their porn empire. Labeling this type of stuff as pedophilia hurts cracking down on the real problems by diluting what people think of as pedophilia and/or child porn. Frankly you're part of the problem, not the solution when you say things like this. We're all against child porn but most of us want to be helpful in stopping it, not mislabeling things to confuse the issue.
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Reportedly, there's also interactive prostitution, as well as the bad language, torture and ultra-violent gameplay. GTA: San Andreas may not be the bad kid on the block anymore.
Well I never thought of GTA as the real bad boy of video games, at least not up till now (I haven't seen all of the game and played none of it so far, just saw a friend play some of it). Sure it had lots of violence and revolved around criminal activities but it didn't take itself very seriously. It was very much tounge-in-cheek all the way through. I just loved the name of the designer drug in GTA3, 'spank'. Most definitely they weren't trying to be very serious and were enjoying themselves.From what I saw San Andreas continues at least some of this. I loved when they jumped off a cliff into the water and CJ yelled out "I hate gravity!" as he fell. It was also amusing to see you could attack people with the spray paint by spraying it in their faces. I'm guessing there's more stuff like that in there, at least I hope there is, I enjoyed the funny stuff a lot!
As to the stuff from "Shellshock" you mentioned. Damn, that's bad. I'm not generally interested in games like that (FPS games in general make me sick from vertigo) but I'm glad to learn about it so I can make sure not to ever play it. I certainly wouldn't want to see that scene ever, much less in a GAME. I know something that brutal and violent would probably give me nightmares, I can't imagine how it would affect a kid.
On that note, it's kinda sad that a game so horribly brutal (and yes I do realize that it's realistic) only gets an M, but a game just showing nudity (The Guy Game) gets an AO (Adult Only). Personally I'd think that the violence would be far worse for a kid to see than some breasts, but apparently I'm wrong.
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What they really need is a label that states: "HEY MORON: if you're buying this game for your 12-year-old, that big shiney M in the corner means that it's adults only. When you buy it for him anyways and he pulls a shotgun on his classmate, don't blame us."
Sadly it wouldn't work on all people. My experience as a Sysamdmin at a major university convinced me of that once and for all. Here I was running computer labs in the Electrical & Computer Engineering dept. You wouldn't expect stupid students there, but.... Routinely students wouldn't read posted rules (posted in every lab in multiple places, around a minimum of 10 copies in each lab as well as a copy on the doors), wouldn't read the account user agreement they signed (which had the same info on it), and would come to complain about something that had never been allowed and was clearly explained as unallowed and why on these forms. In fact it was the vast majority of them that did this. I came out of it realizing that most people just won't read the rules/can't be bothered to learn them on their own/etc. I have no clue why this is, but it's really disheartening, you can count on people never reading obvious things in front of them, even if it's in 12 foot tall red flashing letters.That also probably explains why some parents don't even know what the ESRB ratings are despite being posted all over the place in every game store/electronics dept. I've ever seen.
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In regards to GTA:SA, changing the language would be akin to air brushing out George Burns' cigars. The player is essentially role playing a character in an historical environment, and the language is part of it. Editing out specific words from a game with drive-by's, corrupt cops, drugs, etc. seems a little selective to me.
You certainly didn't read my post terribly well, I said I wasn't one to be easily offended, in fact I tend to offend sensitive people, I cuss like a sailor. Yet still, parts of San Andreas's language offended me.The more I think of it, the more I realize it wasn't the story/mission parts that bothered me. What was getting on my nerves was the constant random shit that you'd hear when walking/running/riding/driving/etc. A lot of it was beyond pointless, and it didn't help to establish a feel for the era/area. I'm quite sure that not all 1990s residents of Los Angelas cussed everytime they opened their mouth. Keep in mind not all the background chatter is caused by you, you'll hear NPCs yelling at each other as well. If it was only triggered by your rude/criminal actions it'd be understandable.
Basically it feels more like Rockstar went overboard and the cussing has ended up being there for shock value, not authenticity. That alone is pretty offensive. In any case for someone like me who cusses as much, or more, than the game characters do to end up being sick of the constant cussing and want to mute it says a lot about how they've used it in-game. I simply don't get offended easily, and this is the first GTA game to manage to offend me. (Actually it's the first game or movie to offend me.) At this point I'll probably rent it to spend some more time with it and see if the gameplay overcomes what I've felt watching it (admittedly for only a few hours). Maybe I'll get used to it, but I don't know. I came away from that session not terribly interested in the game and I'd been looking forward to it for months and was excited as hell to get to see it the other night.
And as far as having a less-cussing option, it's not the same. In this case you still get to present the work in its full glory, but for those less inclined to hear the language (or those sick of hearing it constantly) you can give them a break. After all would you rather stay true to your 'vision' or sell more games? Personally I think a game company would want to sell more games, if it tanks they'll lose money on it. (Granted that's not very likely with this series.) Air-brushing out George Burn's cigars would also be acceptable in the right context, say on a DVD that used multiple angles (or just came as a set with two versions) so that those that wanted to see it in its original format could, but those offended by smoking could also enjoy it. It's not censorship when the consumer is left with both options. After all nearly every movie release presents you with a choice of a modified movie (full screen) or one in its full original form (wide screen). Very few releases offer both versions in one package and I don't see many people saying that's a problem.
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Although I'm probably going to be right out there with the rest of you picking this up, am I the only one that's a bit concerned about seeing all the parents buying the game for their kids?
No you're not, I've seen the game and even as an adult find the level of language in this one to be disturbing. I'm not easily offended either, but the constant amount of cussing gets old fast. Even a lot of the NPC comments you hear going about the game world are more cuss-filled than in the last two GTA games. Perhaps it's authentic, but this is a case where I'd have liked a less-cussing option myself. I only saw it for a few hours and was already thinking that the mute button looked like a great idea.-
Supposedly the ESRB stuff is supposed to stop retailers from selling the game to people under 18, but I know that many parents don't have the time or the willpower to look into what media their children consume. And I know this series gets pretty bad, with things like picking up prostitutes, car theft, and massacre being rewarded in what some have termed a "pornography of violence".
Well the ESRB is working as it should in that case. If parents aren't willing to check into the game before they buy it for the kid, it's certainly not the ESRB or Rockstar's fault. You have to blame the parent there, it doesn't take much time to look at the package and see M (Mature) on it, then flip it over to see the sub warnings (which I'm sure include violence, adult language, adult situations, etc.) I worked at a Wal-mart for a few years in Electronics and I'd always point out that a game was Mature to parents in case they didn't realize it. Some parents didn't know about the ratings system (which is amazing as it's posted on every freaking game case at Wal-mart) and when they asked what it meant and found out they'd put it back and tell the kids they had to pick something else. Some would say "I know, I don't care" and buy the game for their 6yo. (Quite literally I saw someone buy Vice City for their 6yo.)But in any case there's a recent article that was in Computer Gaming World or Electronic Gaming Monthly one where they sent a young-looking 15yo kid into several stores to try to buy M rated games to see what happened. (They showed a picture of him, he looked about 12.) Some stores sold him M rated games without even blinking, others refused from the start. Unfortunately a lot of stores and/or employees don't even try to enforce the ESRB, providing fuel to the anti-gaming camp. :(
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Depends if the title says "Smartr bus routing program". CMS was right in the title of the story, and isn't a strange acronym.
That's not the point, the grandparent implied that anyone not knowing what Postnuke was had their head under a rock ignoring the world. That's certainly not the case, people not needing the sofware have no reason to know what a CMS is, much less that Postnuke is an example of it. (Which was my point.)-
The tort system does need revision, but the only proposal I've seen so far gives relief exclusively to corporations.
While I agree that we need Tort reform in general, in this case I don't see the threat of lawsuits as a problem. Frankly these are things that aren't needed in cars, especially not for the driver. Even with reasonable restrictions in place (shutting off the video when the car goes faster than 3mph) wouldn't stop idiots from killing themselves and others because of these distractions.While a lot of the resulting carnage would probably be from people disabling built in safety restrictions, ultimately it's hard not to blame the company for selling something like a TV screen built-in to a car for the driver's usage. In this case the fear of lawsuits is probably helping to prevent many, many deaths due to unnecessary, distracting, potentially deadly car accessories.
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PostNuke is one of the most common content management systems out there. Not to flame or anything, but if you've never heard of them the rock must have been very comfortable to be under.
Those of us without a need for Content Mangament Systems certainly aren't hiding under any rocks. To give a real-life example I'm sure most people here would have no clue what the program Smartr is for, simply because they have no need to do bus routing. Does that mean they were hiding under a rock oblivious to the world?-
and how can we be sure that closed source software doesn't contain backdoors? open the source!
We don't, and to make it worse we likely wouldn't find out about an attack like this directly from the company involved. Companies are notoriously wary of even reporting breakins to the FBI because it would look bad to their shareholders. Given that, if the same scenario happenned with a publicly held company selling a closed-source product, would they even bother to notify those who'd downlaoded the trojaned version? After all the code is closed, so they could claim innocence (and how would someone prove otherwise) when the customer's computers got pwned.-
I wonder how much productivity you lock-'em-down admins are costing the economy as a whole.
... Your job is to help us users be more productive in doing our job, it isn't to cause you the least hassle.
We don't cause user productivity to go down with policies that don't allow users admin access. In fact, when you really get down to the nitty-gritty, we increase user productivity. You're forgetting/ignoring one very important thing -- your system is stable, it doesn't get slowed down from spyware/adware/viruses/etc. It doesn't crash repeatedly because of damage done by viruses and worms, or even just botched installs/uninstalls. It doesn't popup so many windows when you open IE that the system crashes. It runs great, and you can use it all day long without waiting for us to fix the problems you (or others) have caused it.You probably won't believe that but I've seen proof of it myself. At one place I worked all employees had admin access when I arrived. As we upgraded systems from Windows 95/98 to Windows 2000 we also migrated to a Windows domain and login system where employees only had domain user privledges. Before the upgrade I had to go clean a virus off of both the secretary's computers at least once a week. Their systems weren't exactly stable either, what with all the infections and cleaning cycles. Unsurprisingly they were not thrilled with losing admin acess on the new systems, but we made it as painless as possible. We even went as far to let them have Webshots. It took a bit of testing but we made it work with non-admin priveledges.
After a few months they realized that they were much more productive. Their systems didn't crash regularly (in fact they stayed up for weeks at a time without being rebooted), they got no more viruses, and they got more work done.
So yes it's IT/IS's job to make sure the users are as productive as possible, but giving you admin access isn't the way to achieve that.
And frankly I seriously doubt you have that many emergency software needs. At best you might need some software installed once every three months, but I've found that most users need additional software about twice a year at most. Most don't need any at all for years at a time.
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You wanna know something? LAN administration isn't the most important part of a company, you aren't making the company any money.
Perhaps it doesn't make money but shall we shutdown the network and see how much work you can get done? Need to print a document? Oops, the network's down so you can't reach the printers to send the job. Need to access a company database? Oops, the network's down, you can't get to it. Need to look up some information on a project? Well hope you have it all filed away to dig through, cause the network's down. You are vastly underestimating the importance of the LAN to businesses nowadays. When that network goes down, for whatever reason, work grinds to a halt company-wide. Until it's back up almost no work gets done. Every minute the company's losing tons of money because they're paying people to sit and stare at their computer instead of working on them. So the next time your feel the need to bitch about IT, remember that they don't have these policies just to make your life miserable. They're there to make sure you can do your job and be productive.Of course in your case, as whiny and bitchy as you come across, they probably ARE out to make your life miserable, just to get even for you making theirs miserable. There's three groups of people it's dangerous to piss off in any company. 1) the secretaries, 2) the janitors, and 3) the IT/IS folks. All of them can make your life very miserable very fast. Pissing off all three's probably akin to suicide.
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So what? I have never had a problem with my Firefox crashing (ever). Sure, if you try to make something crash, it eventually will. Considering how much security holes IE has, IE could be the missing link, and I still wouldnt use it.
Just because you haven't crashed it doesn't mean it's not happening. I switched my Mom over to Firefox for her computer's safety about 2 months back. She's still using it, but it crashes for her regularly and it's becoming a big frustration for her. As she put it "why does Firefox crash so much, IE never crashed on me?" If Mozilla/Firefox/Opera/etc. hope to continue gaining ground on IE, then this type of thing needs to be addressed.As I see it the major problem that Mozilla/Firefox has is the vast majority of those using it (and most definitely the vast majority bothering to report bugs/crashes) are techies. Why is that a problem? Well we probably don't spend our time to going to "silly" E-card sites and joke sites that use bad flash/html. Sure we can dismiss those sites as not important, because to us they aren't, but to a large portion of the average users out there they're one of the most important things they do in a browser because to them they're fun.
So I'm betting Mozilla/Firefox actually crashes regularly on non-techies simply because they visit sites that most techies don't bother to test the browser on.
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So we have all these featurs even Yahoo doesn't have.. and yet we're still beta?
So sometimes you do get more than you pay for.-
So will this prevent spammers from sending spams via a Gmail account?
I doubt that's really the concern, most spammers don't use mainstream ISPs/E-mail providers as it is, they just fake return addresses from domains of known ISPS/E-mail providers. This would help E-mail servers on the receiving end (who've implemented the DomainKeys stuff too) to know for sure if the return address is real or not. So they could just toss out all @gmail.com addresses that aren't authentic, most of them would be spam anyway. It also simplifies Google's spam investigations, if a spam E-mail supposedly from gmail.com doesn't have the DomanKeys validation no further time needs to be spent on it, just send it back with a form "This didn't originate from our domain" message and go on to the next one.Of course that just means spammers will start using different domain names as return addresses.
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Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of them Google bashers (I don't believe the Google Desktop is spywer, for example), but in this case I would like to have an opt-out option!
Since Gmail's a free service, I believe your opt-out mechanism is to use something else. Given this is largely an anti-spam technique (to prove an E-mail is legitimately from the domain it says it is) I can't see Google being willing to provide an opt-out on this, it would undermine the whole effort.-
I like gadgets as much as the next geek, but isn't this a little absurd? Grocery shopping is not that difficult, people.
True, except that it can be a pain when the store rearranges things, or when you're in one of the "super" centers (the size of small shopping malls). I can see where the locate an item feature would be very useful, but everything else seems just silly. I know I'd have appreciated something like that when trying to figure out where our Wal-mart hid the Q-tips recently. (Finally found them in Health and Beauty Aids, on the deoderant aisle. Yeah that's just where everyone expects to find them!)-
I haven't used WinXP in awhile, so correct me if I am wrong... doesn't XP have a little checkbox in the "User Accounts" dialog that says something like "Make my data private" or something to that effect? I believe it is unchecked by default. Can anyone confirm that by default XP doesn't make user folders strict, and that you have to explicitly enable this option. I'm pretty sure Windows 2000 doesn't work this way.
I can confirm it, I just got done doing one clean install of XP Pro and configuration of a new Dell with XP Pro on it for work. On both machines XP asked for an administrator password, then gave an option to create individual user accounts. All accounts it creates default to null password, no option to assign one from setup or first time login. I'm really not sure what the administrator password is for as it doesn't create an administrator account.If you go to uses under the control panel and set a password for an account it'll prompt you to see if you want to make your files private. By default they're not, and that means anyone can view your whole subdirectory under the documents and settings folder. Once it's turned on, other users with admin privledges can't view your directory. I haven't checked to see if they can reset your password and log in as you to access them, but at least it's an extra step.
On a related note, I can find no way to assign ownership to specific directories. On Win2K this was easy, under XP it doesn't appear to be possible. I had a data directory on the drive of a laptop I had to share until a new employee's computer arrives. I wanted the data to be inaccessible to them, but it's too large to just move for a week or two. I ended up setting it to be hidden so they wouldn't see the directory without fiddling with file view options. Not my preferred choice though, I was annoyed.
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It sounds to me like you live near Nashville. Possibly Murfreesboro. Am I correct?
Close, but off a bit, I'm near Knoxville.Why not concentrate on making music available for less money somewhere that I might want to buy it instead of worrying about making sure Walmart is happy.
While much of what you say about the stores are true, you should feel sorry for the folks trapped working there. I've worked at one, appalling is about the only word that comes close to describing how management treats employees. Many of the people there can't find other work, or Wal-mart pays more than anything else they can find. Wal-mart knows this and abuses it. I fully expect there to be lots more class-action lawsuits against the company in the near future, even with current ones they're getting worse if anything.
But the 1 in 5 figure is quite believable. While Wal-mart might not have as large a selection, their core customer base isn't looking for one. The CDs sell like proverbial hotcakes at even smaller Wal-marts, bigger ones move so many it's scary. Around here (Tennessee) there are very few chain record stores left. Of the two malls in the closest large city to me, there's one record store apiece. There are a few small retailers, but the biggest of those is a local used-CD chain (two locations).
On this one you're both right and wrong. Wal-mart is indeed wanting to make more money, but their entire business plan is to buy low and pass along the savings, keeping profit margins lower and making up their money by selling tons of the stuff. Anything Wal-mart can get cheaper will benefit consumers because then the consumers will get it cheaper. Granted Wal-mart's not doing it because they're some grand benefactor, but the end result helps consumers a bit. Actually I suspect that Wal-mart is pushing for this because the overwhelming consensus of their customers is that the CDs cost too much, even at Wal-mart's prices. (I worked in Electronics, you hear this constantly, although people still buy.)
I was at Walmart recently buying something I couldn't find at Target. I happened to stop into the electronics section while my fiancé did some shopping elsewhere. Perhaps I wasn't looking in the right spots but I wasn't finding anything by developing and independent artists. If anything it was most older music that wasn't exactly getting radio play. I saw the typical teenybopper crap but nothing that I would consider new and exciting.
Umm, did you not read the sentence you posted? It said it left little room, which is exactly what you found to be true. Wal-mart's not big on new and exciting though, they're big on selling decent stuff cheap and lots of it. Independent artists and developing artists don't fit that so it's no surprise they're absent.
It is interesting to note that Wal-mart doesn't handle the merchandising of the CDs itself, they hire a company that does it, so I'm not sure how much direct control Wal-mart has over exactly what is on the racks.
While it's hard to understand t