What about NNTP? Wasn't Usenet explicitly designed to run on limited hardware, an ad hoc network, and with any client simply needing to hit a server - ANY server - to have access to the whole network? Furthermore, because of the way articles propagate, you can use as much or as little coordination as necessary.- as long as everyone can hit a server, and that server can in turn hit another, and so on, your message reaches the whole network. For discussion, use normal groups, for files, use binary groups.
The lack of any central server also seems to be a major plus here - this is a situation where a server admin may very well get suddenly arrested, and since all articles will have already propogated, the destruction of one node leaves the overall network completely in tact - often with multiple routing paths, so nothing short of a door to door scouring of the network can destroy it... and even then, someone likely has everything saved to a USB stick and can smuggle it out and rebuild the network.
This also eliminates any need to constantly pass files and posts around - your server software will handle this automatically.
The main downsides to NNTP are: 1. It's not as user friendly as say... a modern forum system. While it's not all that difficult to use, some people ARE going to need a quick lesson, and that involves a bit of coordination. (It sounds like you're going to be going door to door to build your physical network anyway though, so this shouldn't be a huge issue. It IS going to increase the time involved though.) 2. You're probably going to need a dedicated client - web-based ones generally don't let you access groups that aren't on the main Usenet hierarchies of groups (and your groups won't be.) This means getting software distributed to basically everyone. If most people still have 'net access, and its just restricted, this is trivial. Just point everyone to a Gravity or XNews (or whatever) download, with a few mirror servers in case they filter out the official download. If that fails though, you may literally be down to running door to door with a USB stick to install the software. Again though, as you're probably going building to building to set up hardware anyway, this shouldn't add TOO much of an issue - but again, it's more time. 3. Propogation lag - simply put, messages have to be copied from server to server to server... to client, and when there isn't a good feed, that can take a while - hours sometimes. While that's fine for long term resistance planning, coordination, and generally just staying in touch, you can't count on it in a more urgent situation - you may very well be sending a message off that no one will read until you're already arrested!
It may not be the best or most elegant solution, but given the circumstances I think it's one of the better options.
Forging an email, as long as it wasn't to sign a contract or otherwise perform a legal action, isn't illegal anymore than a prank phone call is. Repeatedly pretending to be the guy and trying to actually start a gay relationship through email would probably classify as harassment, but I highly doubt a single email would.
Downloading pirated stuff isn't illegal either unless you're selling the material. (The company that made the material can sue for infringement, but that's a civil matter, and should not involve the police at any time.)
Changing grades is incredibly stupid, and grounds for being immediately kicked out of school with all credits earned voided, but I'm pretty sure it's not a crime. (Forging a degree IS a crime, so they could maybe argue that changing grades IS effectively forging a degree, but I'm not sure if that would hold up in court.)
So, how exactly was a search warrant issued when not a single crime was committed?
I would argue we've already taken the first step by teaching various primates sign language. This makes us perfectly capable of talking to other species - species extremely similar to humans yes, but different species nonetheless.
Next step? Dolphins. Dolphins have a complex language, call each other by name, and have an advanced social structure. The fact that a sonar component likely alters the "words" of their language much as body language does for us makes it language like nothing a human speaks... but that's exactly the point. We'd have to learn to use a language that probably isn't possible without the aid of technology (but tech that we can most definitely build), and we'd have to deal with the added challenge of dialects and the fact that there's no way there's a single global dolphin language - they're way too spread out for that. With dolphins were looking at a species of similar intelligence, MOSTLY similar senses, and an innate understanding that each other are in fact capable of speech, even if speech isn't quite the same thing for each species. This would be a huge step forward - we'd LEARN a language rather than teaching one, and one that's very different from human ones. We'd also get used to the idea that sometimes we need tech to talk in ways that the human body simply can't - and we'd have the first functional implementation of that field of tech.
If we can reach a point where it's possible to have a conversation with a dolphin, why not take it further? A few people have mentioned squid. We may not be able to fully "talk" to a squid, but we could probably achieve some level of communication - and as a squid's anatomy is a lot more alien to us than a dolphin's, that would be useful.
Now of course, there's likely to be even more significant differences between us and life on other planets... but if we already have experience in speaking to other species, then we're well on the way of being able to communicate with aliens. Like all technologies, you start with simple developments that aren't all that difficult with what we already have invented, and advanced the tech (and attached science) from there.
Of course, this all assumes that the aliens aren't so amazingly advanced that they can simply hand us tech to automatically understand what they're saying, in which case the answer to the question is "we don't do anything at all, they do." That's something we really CANT assume, especially if we're dealing with launching a signal to a destination light years away (which implies similar tech level) as opposed to them landing here (which means that at the very least, they're beyond us in vehicle development, and quite likely many other areas as well.)
Flash is Flash. Period. If your Flash file works in IE, it works in FF, Opera, Safari, etc. It requires a plugin sure, but it's one that's almost universally adopted.
By comparison just about everything else is developed in 2 phases: 1. Write standards-compliant code that's well-formatted and works properly. 2. Fix about 37,000 IE-only bugs, knowing that ~70% of your users are going to be viewing your site with that piece of crap. Additional time is required because IE6 and 7 aren't even consistent with each other in terms of how they piss on the standards. This is especially true with CSS, which IE is absolutely terrible with.
I welcome HTML 5, as I think it has a lot of nice improvements, as well as a lot of stuff that should've been there years ago. We just have to pray that browser support - especially from MS - actually allows us to USE the new features on a regular basis.
Also, one side note: Even assuming Flash is no longer used AT ALL for layouts or content delivery (and I hope it isn't), Flash movies and games will of course continue to exist... so Flash isn't going to die as some are saying, it'll simply be used for what it was actually designed for - creating animations and games.
Seriously. I'm sure the media lobby there is powerful, and I know that Sweden also has a significantly sized Pirate Party... but there has to be plenty of judges that are members of neither, and have no special reason to especially support either side.
Everyone is pointing out that Google would never lose this suit, because they can afford the world's best lawyers... this is true, and great... if you happen to be Google.
People are saying that TPB is different because it ranks the quality of torrents based on downloads, seeds, etc. Is it really that different though? Google has PageRank. which yes, is based on very different standards, but the function is identical... an attempt to separate the useful links from the crap, using an automated algorithm. The only real difference is that Google is a general search engine, while TPB is built for 1 specific type of file, and therefore optimized specifically for that file type. If you consider that to be significant, then compare Google Image Search to TPB rather than Google in general.
In the past, safe harbor laws have been upheld, because they thankfully realize that most people running websites: 1. Aren't lawyers 2. Have a handful of people running a service with far more content than they could ever monitor and 3. Aren't involved in copyright infringement any more than a store that sells you a case a blank discs.
I run a forum with thousands of threads in it. It's mainly a gamer's forum, though with various off topic forums for a variety of other stuff. We generally delete Warez threads and the like, but like most forums of this nature, there's way more posts than any of us could ever read through, and the chances we've missed at least one infringing post... somewhere, are just about 100%.
So what happens if someone goes digging through to find copyrighting content, and rather than simply asking us to take it down, they go straight to suing? This is a zero profit forum (negative profit really, as I'm paying the price of a VPS every month and using no advertising to recover it). Saying I couldn't afford to defend myself is an understatement.
In the past, the safe harbor laws were generally upheld... if it came to a court case, I could simply show up, point out that I'm a service provider, and that I comply with valid takedown requests, but can't possibly find everything that should be taken down without being notified.
If that law isn't upheld, it basically means the little guy can no longer run a website. To run a website, the standard is no longer "can afford a few bucks for hosting", it's "can afford a lawyer." That would kill probably 90% of the net.
It doesn't matter that the majority of websites don't actually infringe everything, all it takes is a lawsuit and a threat, and if you can't afford a defense, you're gone.
The TPB case is, as far as I know, the first case where a service provider wasn't granted safe harbor status, and that's a VERY bad precedent.
I don't think an antitrust lawsuit is necessary. Google's phone will let you install whatever you want, so if you don't like Apple's iron fist iPhone management, there's a really obvious option: don't support it, go with the competition.
The current system is designed to allow for anonymity. You simply ask a T employee for a 0 balance card, and one is handed to you, no questions asked. As many of us would prefer to not have our every movement stored in a database and linked to us, this is a GOOD thing if you value privacy.
So sure, a central DB system would solve this security problem easily, but at a significant cost to privacy, especially when the database inevitably gets leaked and everyone can see where you go.
There's no question that MS is doing this specifically to confuse - especially with their "lesser" license which does precisely the opposite of what the LGPL does relative to the GPL - it locks you down more instead of less. They absolutely should be called out on that, and it's not unreasonable to demand that they make it clear exactly what they're doing.
That being said, I really don't see the problem with that proposed scale. Public domain DOES in fact give you more freedom than open source (whether that's a good thing, and if so, when, is of course the source of a many a debate), and there are indeed levels between open and closed. Allowing your code to be viewed and audited is clearly better than purely closed source, and it means that if you claim your code is solid, you better be prepared to answer to the many coders who will confirm that.
I'm not claiming auditable (but not modifiable) code is a substitute for open source - it most definitely is not, but it does have its place, and it's clearly an improvement from running a binary with no idea of how the codebase was done.
People who run into trouble with people they meet online generally do so because they're stupid about it. They don't tell their friends about the meeting in advance, they don't first meet in a public area to make sure that 16 year old girl isn't actually a 60 year old guy, etc. No matter how much you try, there's always going to be some people that ignore common sense and do it anyway, but an education program can definitely lower the rates of this stuff happening, and that's a good thing.
As for system security, that's another skill that really should be a standard lesson in a technological society. There's WAY too many spyware programs, virii, botnet zombies, etc, and learning to keep yourself mostly invulnerable really isn't all that difficult. Get a firewall (ideally on a router, but at least a software one if not), have an AV program, keep your OS patched, be wary of suspicious downloads... all of this is common sense to any experienced computer user, but it DOES need to be taught by some means, and you can't assume everyone will take the time to learn it on their own. Again, schools can definitely step in here.
Identity theft is the other big one, and this too is something that could be drastically reduced with simple education - make sure the URL says what you think it does, be wary if you save passwords in your browser and the site you opened isn't automatically finding your password, etc. Again, the warning sites are (if you're looking) usually quite obvious, but a lot of people simply don't think to look, or make mistakes like not realizing how ridiculously easy it is to spoof email so the address line says their bank sent it. Again, simply education can fix this problem.
It's safe to assume that computer use is pretty much a mandatory skill in modern society, and much like with any other skill, training generally does - and should - include safety. In that regard, Virginia mandating a computer program that includes safety isn't just a good idea - it's common sense.
That being said, there's a LOT than can be done horribly wrong with such a program, so it's important that some standards are followed - and indeed mandated by law:
1. Make sure your advice is age-appropriate. If you tell a high schooler he should never meet an online friend by any means, you can pretty safely assume your advice will be flat-out ignored, and for good reason. There's no reason someone at that age can't meet someone they met online, so long as they're not stupid about it - initially meet in a large public place, make sure others know what you're doing in case you're not back on time, etc.
2. Make sure the advice is actually sound. Recommending a software firewall for instance, is good practice for people not already sitting behind a firewalled router... but it's pretty silly for those that are.
2. Make sure the program promotes safety, common sense, and awareness, not fear, paranoia, and stunted growth. If it sounds like it was written by DHS, it needs to go in the trash. It's usually quite clear what crosses the line and what doesn't, but there needs to be a review board where people can examine the curriculum and get stuff removed that does cross it.
3. Make sure the program is reviewed by security professionals, so anything on a list of options actually works. There's a lot of fake security software that does precisely the opposite of securing your system, and it would truly suck to see a licensed program telling people to download it. Likewise, some software is just plain worthless, and recommending it would just give a false sense of security.
3. Make sure it's independently reviewed and approved, to make sure no corporation gets to manipulate the system - the MPAA/RIAA/BSA/MAFIAA obviously comes to mind here, but so does more regular corporate greed - I could easily see Norton trying to push their bloated, overpriced security products for instance, and they'd be quite happy to help fund a school program in exchange for that free endorsement... that needs to be preven
Phreaking is a trivial offense. Calling ID spoofing isn't even illegal, and there's perfectly valid reasons to do it. Hacking the phone system to run silly pranks is likewise pretty much harmless - depending on the prank, it might be offensive, but it's highly unlikely to do any real harm. Done well, it can even be fun for the target. "Stealing" long distance service is at WORST, petty theft, and should carry an appropriately minor penalty - a few hours of community service and maybe a small fine.
Sending an armed SWAT team to innocent man's hours, on the other hand, is NOT trivial in any way! Neither is calling ambulances to nonexistent emergencies. There's 2 issues here: 1. The SWAT teams are being called to what they think is a deadly situation involving hardened criminals. The innocent homeowner hears someone break into his house and is quite likely to do what a LOT of people would do in that situation - grab the nearest weapon. If he happens to own a gun, he's probably going to at least load it and make it quite visible, and quite possibly fire it at the intruder. Not only will he get mowed down in a hail of a gunfire from the SWAT team, but he may very well unknowingly kill a cop before he dies. 2. Guess what happens when some random guy has a heart attack, and arrives 20 minutes late to the hospital because all of the ambulances are busy responding to pranks?
"Swatting" and phoning false emergencies are NOT harmless phone pranks. They can both directly and indirectly kill innocents.
Whether the guy bribes a cop to get a false swat report put out or hacks the phone system to do it is totally irrelevant.
1. Come up with several question types. You don't need a ton - a dozen is probably sufficient.
2. For each question, have a few variants that can be chosen. For instance, let's say we chose "simple addition problem." If it always asked "what is three plus three", yeah, that wouldn't be hard to code a bot around. What if it did this however? -randomly chooses numbers from 0 to 20 -randomly chooses whether to display the numbers in number format (3) or word format (three) -randomly chooses to have you add 2 or 3 numbers together
This gives 20 * 20 * 21 * 2 = 16,800 possible questions, 61 possible answers, and only 1 correct answer each time.
3. Have your account creation script choose 3 of the question types.
Assuming we have 12 question types and assuming a similar answer range, this gives 12 * 11 * 10 = 1,320 possible quiz types, with 61 * 61 ^ 61 = 226,981 possible answer combinations, only 1 of which is correct... and that assumes your bot can even figure out which question type is which!
Of course, given enough time, someone could write a bot that parses every possible question asked in every possible form. However, it takes all of 15 minutes to add new rules to the existing questions and to add a few new question types, retire a couple, etc. Combine this with a temp IP lockout after 3-5 failures, and now the spammer not only needs to constantly update his software, but he needs to control a huge botnet with a massive IP range. A spammer faced with that is simply going to move onto an easier site.
Sure, it isn't absolutely foolproof, but nothing is.
Yeah, calling something a 'gateway' anything tends to be at best, misleading. Replace 'gateway' with 'indicator' in almost every place it's used though, and you'll usually get a valid argument.
Using the drugs one, is pot a gateway to crack? Probably not. It is an indicator though, sure. If you smoke pot, you're not opposed to illegal drug use. Sure, your logic may be that pot does little to no longterm damage, while crack obviously does, and if that's your logic, you're probably never going to use crack. However, ONE of the things stopping people from using crack is that it's illegal, so if that has no effect on you, then simple logic says you're more likely to use crack. By no means does that mean we should assume everyone we see holding a joint is a crackhead, but the simple argument that a pot user is MORE LIKELY than a normal person to use stronger drugs is a simple fact. The significance of this fact, if any, is obviously debatable.
By the same token, if you are knowingly using underhanded, unethical SEO, you've demonstrated that ethics are not a major concern to you. Regard for ethics is indeed one of the things that stops companies from committing outright fraud, false accounting, etc, so if you have demonstrated a willingness to violate ethics with the search engines, the odds are significantly higher that you do it in other - and very likely more damaging - places. This doesn't mean everyone who cheats a search engine is going to pull an Enron.
So, no correlation != causation, but that doesn't mean it correlation != significant, especially when there's an obvious logical link. By no means would I be in favor of ordering police investigations on everyone who cheated a search engine. At the same time, if I ran into a website that I knew what using unethical SEO, I wouldn't exactly be in a hurry to trust them with personal information. It's not a reason to call the cops, but it's most definitely a reason to question the overall integrity of the business, and as long as people know where to draw the line, I don't see the problem with being aware of a correlation, and using caution where it's present.
You aren't really cheating the search engine if you do that. You are posting real content... content that's posted purely for shock value sure, but content nonetheless. People are blogging about it because they feel your article is worthy of a blog post - maybe not for the usual reasons, sure, but legitimately. You aren't paying them, you aren't using fake sites, etc. So you're posting content that people feel is worth discussing, and your search rank is increasing accordingly.
Whether this is unethical is certainly open to debate, but if it is, it's not for SEO reasons.
There's nothing wrong with wanting a better search engine rank, and doing reasonable things to obtain it - proper use of keywords, making sure keywords are in page titles and not just the name of your site, asking sites in the same area of interest to trade links, having a good site map that a search bot can easily crawl, etc, etc.
There's a big difference, however, between tweaking your site to look better to a search engine, and employing underhanded tactics like white on white blocks of keywords that only a bot will see, running linkfarm sites with no content that exist only to link back to you, flat out stealing content from other sites, etc.
So yes, most people running a site that they intend to make popular pay at least some attention to their search rankings, and have made at least a couple of edits purely with search engines in mind. Most however, don't cross the line between "search engine optimization" and cheating the engine with garbage. The article is about the people who DO cross that line, not the rest of us who simply make sure our site is searchbot-friendly.
Errr, oops. Not sure where I got 'resume' from that. It was still a written assignment in a word processor though which did not involve web research. So the above is otherwise correct.
The assignment was to write a resume in a word processor. The kid was given a detention for ignoring the assignment and randomly surfing the web, then mouthing off to the teacher that told him to stop. I don't think that's unreasonable. Now, if he was writing his resume in say... Google docs instead of Word, then all these authority arguments would be relevant. However, he was simply ignoring the assignment and web surfing instead, so there really isn't a whole lot to discuss. He was given an assignment, he chose to ignore it completely, he was warned to stop, and then finally given a detention. I'd say that's both pretty standard and perfectly reasonable (unless he had already finished the assignment and that's why he was surfing... but I doubt that's the case.) Here's the article explaining this.
Levels are still used because in MANY cases, they make sense. There's several reasons for using levels.
#1 - You simply shouldn't be in the same place. Examples:
Say you're a covert agent. Levels make perfect sense - you have a mission - or maybe a short series of missions - in a set area. You complete your assignment, return to HQ, and get shipped elsewhere. There's no reason to do away with levels in that, because it doesn't make SENSE for seamlessness.
Ditto on an RTS. Sure, you might be fighting over a whole country, or continent, or solar system, or whatever, but you're still being deployed to major mission areas where they need a skilled commander - again, levels make sense.
If it's a fighting game, you fight your opponent and move on - 1 fight = 1 level.
If it's a sports game, you play one game, then head to the next stadium.
Even in an RPG, where it's one connected world, you still have levels in a way - the ancient temple you need the artifact from, the volcano you have to scale - whatever.
Reason #2: Difficulty Control
A tetris-style puzzle game is a bit different, as nothing really changes, but the levels get used for their other purpose - increased difficulty over time. Tetris on level 0 is pretty much impossible to lose - you either have to get ABSURDLY unlucky with the RNG, or you have to majorly screw up, multiple times. On level 15 (or whatever, there's a gazillion versions of the game) on the other hand, most players will fail within a minute or two. Since the game has no end, it's a matter of how long you can last, with player skill measured primarily by how high you can get the level counter, and secondarily how much of a score you can rack up.
#3: Crowd Control
This one only really exists in online games, but it's important. When you don't want 1000 people all crammed into a tiny battlefield, or dungeon, or whatever, you're going to need some kind of instancing system, which means a piece of your world needs to be cut off from the main and run as a separate level.
#4: Mechanics control
In some games, the rules simply aren't constant. Many online RPGs don't allow players to attack each other... except in certain areas where they can kill each other at will. In some cases, there's also a place where being pvped costs you equipment, designed for people looking for a majorly dangerous area. These are usually segmented off from the rest of the world by some clear boundaries.
#6. Splitting the game up
While sometimes this is a bad thing, sometimes it's good too. Can you imagine playing something like Mario Galaxy if it were one giant level. Navigating that would be an absolute nightmare.
If you really look at it, levels DO make sense in almost every game they exist. Sure, sometimes it's a cop-out to split up would should otherwise be a seamless world for the sake of easier programming, but usually, if the game has levels, it DOES have them for good reaosn.
Usenet is freely accessible sure, but there's a big difference between free and paid - retention. Most free servers have very short retention times for text groups (1-2 weeks is typical), and don't carry binary groups at all. If they do, you're looking at 1-2 days retention tops.
Pay servers, on the other hand, typically have extremely long text retention times (months, a year, or even no limit), and binary retentions of at least a couple of weeks or more. The simple fact is, it's not hard to store a week of text-only posts on simple server - you could run it off your cable modem if you really wanted to, provided you could find a couple of decent feeds to populate your server with (the way Usenet works, a server is useless unless it can exchange articles with at least a few others.)
On the other hand, running a news server that's constantly getting hammered by people downloading huge files generally requires a real server - or cluster if you're big enough. That costs real money, and you obviously have to pass that cost on to users... and if you're putting that kind of time into the service, you probably want a profit too.
There's no alternate method here either - you can't just display ads, for instance, because no one will use your website. Anyone who's been on Usenet a while is using a real newsreader that they downloaded, not your cheesy web ap.:)
I really see nothing wrong with running a pay server with all of this in mind, and if you don't WANT the extra retention or binaries, then you of course simply don't use a pay server.
As for policing a newsserver, first of all, Usenet (with the exception of a VERY small quantity of groups named *.moderated) is intended to be a completely unmoderated medium. Secondly, even if you DID choose to impose your own rules as to what gets displayed, good luck. Imagine a typical forum system on the 'net. Now give it 200,000 forums, have about a quarter of those be quite active (at least a dozen daily posts, and hundreds in some cases) and now try to sift through that and moderate. Good freaking luck.
I made the mistake of working for a Best Buy right after college. I can't comment specifically on the MSN thing, as I didn't see THAT particular scam, but from what I DID see, it would not surprise me in the slightest if employees were trained to at best, be extremely misleading, and at worst, outright lie and cheat the customer out of money.
One common package deal we were supposed to try to push was the 'advanced security setup' or something like that, I can't remember the exact name. The service in theory sounded fine - you sold the customer an AV program and a spyware blocker, explained the point of each, set it up, ran the install, updated definitions, ran windows update for all current security patches, etc - all the standard security precautions. The customer of course would be billed the price of the 2 programs, plus a fee for the service of I think 20 or 30 bucks. Ignoring the fact that Avast (free) is just as effective as Norton, it didn't sound like a terribly unreasonable deal. The user bought software he was probably going to need anyway, and paid a small fee to make sure that the basic security precautions were taken.
There was one slight problem. Best buy is not exactly a place where you build your own custom box. Anything you get from there is going to be a pre-built machine, almost always including some pre-installed software. In nearly every case, that included a copy of an AV program, usually with a 30 or 90 day trial, with a $10-15 subscription fee needed after that - not the 50 bucks you'd pay for a new copy (which of course, also had the fee, just after a year.)
Here's where the scam comes in. The job of the salesman is to inform the user that while yes, your machine will come with AV protection, it'll only last 1 or 3 months, and after that, you won't be covered any more, so you really ought to buy our full protection plan, where you'll have everything done for you.
In case you didn't fill in the blank on that, the job was to convince the customer to pay you to uninstall their already active AV program and replace it with another, charging them for both comparable software (in some cases, THE EXACT SAME PROGRAM) that they already had, and a service that had already been done!
As for the 'there's no commission' argument, that's BS as well. The employee doesn't get commission, but his SUPERVISOR does. So they have you use the fact that YOU aren't on commission (which IS true) as part of your sales pitch.
Also, BB has a very interesting way of making sure all staff participate in these scams. You're on quota. They'll never call it a quota of course - it's a sales goal, a revenue objective, a team target - whatever, they'll call it anything but a quota. When you don't meet the quota, you aren't fired. In fact, there's no penalty at all, other than the expression of disappointment, and strong encouragement to do better as a team. Unfortunately, it seems there's just not enough in the budget this week to cover your department, and everyone's hours need to be cut back. Oh, and if your hours are cut to oh, say... 4 or 8 per week and you can't possibly pay rent, well, if it's a such a problem, you're an at will employee, and hey, nothing is stopping you from quitting. Oh, and if you're thinking of getting a second job, well, you you signed a thing when you were hired that said your available hours would not change in your first X months (3 or 6, I forget), so if you choose to violate that, while, you'll have to fired for that of course.
Funny thing, I don't think they've ever fired someone for not selling enough, they can proudly announce that - and happily do as they sell you stuff, and it's even true!... sort of. As for that absurdly high turnover rate, well, hey, it's retail, and not everyone can stay with it.
I didn't last long there before I quit in disgust at the total disregard for ethics they have.
Is convincing someone to buy software they already own racketeering? Maybe. Is it outright FRAUD? Yes.
Linux is more stable, more secure, more efficient, gets fixes faster, it's cheaper even if you are buying support for it, etc, etc. All of this is true, and if you stop there, it's hard not to look at that 1% usage stat and wonder how that's possible.
If you look at the web server market, Linux dominates, and rightfully so. Think about why though...
With a web server, you want a secure box with all necessary server apps running and properly communicating with each other, on a machine that handles high loads - in particular spikes for when you get Slashdotted/Farked/Dugg/Whatever. You also want it to be cost-effective, especially when you're also buying your bandwidth. Linux excels at all of this. Ease of use is generally not a huge concern - most sites are either on shared accounts or professional dedicated hosting, and in either case, you're paying someone to handle the actual server work for you - if you can navigate a directory tree and set intelligent file permissions (and your FTP client probably spells out how to do that for you), then you're good to go. Sure, some huge companies run the entire operation themselves, but they're also big enough to hire a dedicated server admin, so still no problem. Likewise, ability to run a huge array of programs isn't an issue either - if it can serve, it runs what it needs to.
For home users, it's a much different story. Think about a few things:
1. Games - VERY few games were made for Linux, and at the professional game company level, you're looking at a few decent ports, whatever Wine will run, and that's pretty much it. (You can also emulate, but that's never pretty unless you're WAY over spec for the game in question.) Sure, Wine will run quite a bit, but when the best you can say is 'we can run the others guys' stuff... usually', you don't exactly have a selling point. Business users obviously couldn't care less, but for the home user, this is likely one of the major reasons they have a computer, and THE main reason they bought one with a good spec, if they did.
2. Variety of user levels - Unfortunately, nearly all Linux distros are aimed at either the OS expert who can compile his own kernel, or the complete newbie who absolutely must be able to hit one button and have the thing install without a hitch. The majority of users, on the other hand, are between those extremes, and indeed, when you think about the advantages Linux offers, it's NOT the newbie that's going to jump on them. Many an intermediate user finds himself either trying the advanced distros (and failing) or trying the newbie friendly ones and finding it extremely difficult to get up to the skill level he previously had with Windows. Many others have no trouble, but consider the time it's going to take, question the benefits, and give up.
2b. Because of the above, Linux doesn't get passed on - after all, it's usually those experienced (but not expert) users that are setting up their friends' machines, and if they couldn't find a use for it, they aren't going to be recommending it to a newbie either.
3. The familiarity barrier - MS has owned the home market for 20 years now. Most of the current generation started on Windows, and most of the previous generation started on DOS. Very, very, few people started on *nix. This means that switching to Linux means learning a whole new environment, something that no matter how great the tutorials get, is never good to be a simple process. This means the user needs a clear reward - that big Linux-only thing that makes it all worth it. Unfortunately, when I think of the great Linux apps, usually it's either 'they duplicated the functionality of (program)' or 'they took the idea of (program), and they significantly improved on it... but it's not a giant leap.'
None of these are easy to address, and so I think it's going to be quite a while before Linux really has a chance to take off as a home OS and not one for servers and hobbyist users.
"FBI is offering to brief faculty, students and staff on what it calls 'espionage indicators' aimed at identifying foreign agents.
Unexplained affluence You mean, like the affluence that lets you afford the world's most expensive university system?
failing to report overseas travel Yes, I'm sure the when the student visits his family on spring break, he's going to be in a huge hurry to file a report.
showing unusual interest in information outside the job scope Oh noes! A FOREIGN SCHOLAR is interested in learning. EVERYBODY PANIC!
keeping unusual work hours Ignoring the joke majors, good luck finding a college student who DOESN'T occasionally need to do work at 5 AM, whether the result of too much work, too much procrastination, or as is usually the case, both.
unreported contacts with foreign nationals Yeah, I'm sure he's going to fill out paperwork every time he has an IM conversation with a friend from his home country.
unreported contact with foreign government, military, or intelligence officials This is probably about the only item on this entire list that DOES deserve attention, though even here - it better be military and intelligence, as 'government' includes things like the guys he's getting the loan from.
attempting to gain new accesses without the need to know Horrifically vague. There's a big difference between asking for a tour of a building relevant to your major so you know how things actually work, and trying to lie your way into a military base. I suppose the 'need to know' clause is supposed to fix that problem, but it doesn't. If you have enough of a passion for learning that you're coming overseas to do it, you're probably a rather curious person by nature, and probably have quite a bit of random knowledge that you don't 'need to know.'
and unexplained absences Does anyone seriously bother to explain to most of their professors why they were absent? Can anyone say with a straight face that they've NEVER cut class without a valid reason - ESPECIALLY when you get that one professor you know you're going to learn absolutely nothing from?
Overall, this list might not be quite as bad as the old duct tape announcement, but it does show about the same level of paranoia.
Easy. Morality and ethics are societal standards. They're almost always tied to laws. You can certainly believe that an action is moral and/or ethical, but you can only perform that action if society doesn't disagree with you.
To think that law and morality are one in the same is the worst thing you can possibly do. If you lived in nazi Germany, the law said that you should round up all the jews, disabled people, and every other targetted group and kill them. If you think that makes doing so right, there is something VERY wrong with you.
Right now, the laws say that downloading MP3s of songs that you never bought is illegal. It doesn't matter if hundreds of thousands of people are doing it, large-scale civil disobedience doesn't change the law any more than it has forced pot to be legalized.
Large-scale disobedience was one of the main tools of the civil rights movement of the 60s... and since blacks aren't treated like shit anymore, guess what? It works.
Plus, your arguments are specious, narrowly tailored to suit your MP3 habits. You don't make any sense -- you're arguing that if an artist's catalog is made available to anyone for free, that the artist can make that up in volume? Sure, someone may get turned on to an artist by downloading a song for free, but how is that going to translate to sales if the product is available FOR FREE?
You are correct in saying that most artists will lose album sales to MP3 downloading. However, this will NOT lower the artist's profit - here's why:
When you buy a CD, the artist makes a VERY small amount of money, 25 cents if he's lucky. The same artist, even if not extremely popular, can rake in 100K PER CONCERT. So what happens when more people are getting their music for free (at a loss of 25 cents each)? More people go to concerts. With those numbers, even a 5% increase in concert sales would make up for losing every last CD sale - and if you don't want to take my word for it - read
THIS.
As for your identity thing, your argument is 100% USDA-approved Grade A flawed logic. Your whole argument centers around losing nothing physical, and therefore suffering no DIRECT income loss, only indirect. The thing is, since the artist MAKES more indirect income than he loses, the entire argument is negated.
Slashdot Mirror
What about NNTP? Wasn't Usenet explicitly designed to run on limited hardware, an ad hoc network, and with any client simply needing to hit a server - ANY server - to have access to the whole network? Furthermore, because of the way articles propagate, you can use as much or as little coordination as necessary.- as long as everyone can hit a server, and that server can in turn hit another, and so on, your message reaches the whole network. For discussion, use normal groups, for files, use binary groups.
The lack of any central server also seems to be a major plus here - this is a situation where a server admin may very well get suddenly arrested, and since all articles will have already propogated, the destruction of one node leaves the overall network completely in tact - often with multiple routing paths, so nothing short of a door to door scouring of the network can destroy it... and even then, someone likely has everything saved to a USB stick and can smuggle it out and rebuild the network.
This also eliminates any need to constantly pass files and posts around - your server software will handle this automatically.
The main downsides to NNTP are:
1. It's not as user friendly as say... a modern forum system. While it's not all that difficult to use, some people ARE going to need a quick lesson, and that involves a bit of coordination. (It sounds like you're going to be going door to door to build your physical network anyway though, so this shouldn't be a huge issue. It IS going to increase the time involved though.)
2. You're probably going to need a dedicated client - web-based ones generally don't let you access groups that aren't on the main Usenet hierarchies of groups (and your groups won't be.) This means getting software distributed to basically everyone. If most people still have 'net access, and its just restricted, this is trivial. Just point everyone to a Gravity or XNews (or whatever) download, with a few mirror servers in case they filter out the official download. If that fails though, you may literally be down to running door to door with a USB stick to install the software. Again though, as you're probably going building to building to set up hardware anyway, this shouldn't add TOO much of an issue - but again, it's more time.
3. Propogation lag - simply put, messages have to be copied from server to server to server... to client, and when there isn't a good feed, that can take a while - hours sometimes. While that's fine for long term resistance planning, coordination, and generally just staying in touch, you can't count on it in a more urgent situation - you may very well be sending a message off that no one will read until you're already arrested!
It may not be the best or most elegant solution, but given the circumstances I think it's one of the better options.
IANAL, but I really don't see any crime here.
Forging an email, as long as it wasn't to sign a contract or otherwise perform a legal action, isn't illegal anymore than a prank phone call is. Repeatedly pretending to be the guy and trying to actually start a gay relationship through email would probably classify as harassment, but I highly doubt a single email would.
Downloading pirated stuff isn't illegal either unless you're selling the material. (The company that made the material can sue for infringement, but that's a civil matter, and should not involve the police at any time.)
Changing grades is incredibly stupid, and grounds for being immediately kicked out of school with all credits earned voided, but I'm pretty sure it's not a crime. (Forging a degree IS a crime, so they could maybe argue that changing grades IS effectively forging a degree, but I'm not sure if that would hold up in court.)
So, how exactly was a search warrant issued when not a single crime was committed?
I would argue we've already taken the first step by teaching various primates sign language. This makes us perfectly capable of talking to other species - species extremely similar to humans yes, but different species nonetheless.
Next step? Dolphins. Dolphins have a complex language, call each other by name, and have an advanced social structure. The fact that a sonar component likely alters the "words" of their language much as body language does for us makes it language like nothing a human speaks... but that's exactly the point. We'd have to learn to use a language that probably isn't possible without the aid of technology (but tech that we can most definitely build), and we'd have to deal with the added challenge of dialects and the fact that there's no way there's a single global dolphin language - they're way too spread out for that. With dolphins were looking at a species of similar intelligence, MOSTLY similar senses, and an innate understanding that each other are in fact capable of speech, even if speech isn't quite the same thing for each species. This would be a huge step forward - we'd LEARN a language rather than teaching one, and one that's very different from human ones. We'd also get used to the idea that sometimes we need tech to talk in ways that the human body simply can't - and we'd have the first functional implementation of that field of tech.
If we can reach a point where it's possible to have a conversation with a dolphin, why not take it further? A few people have mentioned squid. We may not be able to fully "talk" to a squid, but we could probably achieve some level of communication - and as a squid's anatomy is a lot more alien to us than a dolphin's, that would be useful.
Now of course, there's likely to be even more significant differences between us and life on other planets... but if we already have experience in speaking to other species, then we're well on the way of being able to communicate with aliens. Like all technologies, you start with simple developments that aren't all that difficult with what we already have invented, and advanced the tech (and attached science) from there.
Of course, this all assumes that the aliens aren't so amazingly advanced that they can simply hand us tech to automatically understand what they're saying, in which case the answer to the question is "we don't do anything at all, they do." That's something we really CANT assume, especially if we're dealing with launching a signal to a destination light years away (which implies similar tech level) as opposed to them landing here (which means that at the very least, they're beyond us in vehicle development, and quite likely many other areas as well.)
Flash is Flash. Period. If your Flash file works in IE, it works in FF, Opera, Safari, etc. It requires a plugin sure, but it's one that's almost universally adopted.
By comparison just about everything else is developed in 2 phases:
1. Write standards-compliant code that's well-formatted and works properly.
2. Fix about 37,000 IE-only bugs, knowing that ~70% of your users are going to be viewing your site with that piece of crap. Additional time is required because IE6 and 7 aren't even consistent with each other in terms of how they piss on the standards. This is especially true with CSS, which IE is absolutely terrible with.
I welcome HTML 5, as I think it has a lot of nice improvements, as well as a lot of stuff that should've been there years ago. We just have to pray that browser support - especially from MS - actually allows us to USE the new features on a regular basis.
Also, one side note: Even assuming Flash is no longer used AT ALL for layouts or content delivery (and I hope it isn't), Flash movies and games will of course continue to exist... so Flash isn't going to die as some are saying, it'll simply be used for what it was actually designed for - creating animations and games.
Seriously. I'm sure the media lobby there is powerful, and I know that Sweden also has a significantly sized Pirate Party... but there has to be plenty of judges that are members of neither, and have no special reason to especially support either side.
Everyone is pointing out that Google would never lose this suit, because they can afford the world's best lawyers... this is true, and great... if you happen to be Google.
People are saying that TPB is different because it ranks the quality of torrents based on downloads, seeds, etc. Is it really that different though? Google has PageRank. which yes, is based on very different standards, but the function is identical... an attempt to separate the useful links from the crap, using an automated algorithm. The only real difference is that Google is a general search engine, while TPB is built for 1 specific type of file, and therefore optimized specifically for that file type. If you consider that to be significant, then compare Google Image Search to TPB rather than Google in general.
In the past, safe harbor laws have been upheld, because they thankfully realize that most people running websites:
1. Aren't lawyers
2. Have a handful of people running a service with far more content than they could ever monitor
and 3. Aren't involved in copyright infringement any more than a store that sells you a case a blank discs.
I run a forum with thousands of threads in it. It's mainly a gamer's forum, though with various off topic forums for a variety of other stuff. We generally delete Warez threads and the like, but like most forums of this nature, there's way more posts than any of us could ever read through, and the chances we've missed at least one infringing post... somewhere, are just about 100%.
So what happens if someone goes digging through to find copyrighting content, and rather than simply asking us to take it down, they go straight to suing? This is a zero profit forum (negative profit really, as I'm paying the price of a VPS every month and using no advertising to recover it). Saying I couldn't afford to defend myself is an understatement.
In the past, the safe harbor laws were generally upheld... if it came to a court case, I could simply show up, point out that I'm a service provider, and that I comply with valid takedown requests, but can't possibly find everything that should be taken down without being notified.
If that law isn't upheld, it basically means the little guy can no longer run a website. To run a website, the standard is no longer "can afford a few bucks for hosting", it's "can afford a lawyer." That would kill probably 90% of the net.
It doesn't matter that the majority of websites don't actually infringe everything, all it takes is a lawsuit and a threat, and if you can't afford a defense, you're gone.
The TPB case is, as far as I know, the first case where a service provider wasn't granted safe harbor status, and that's a VERY bad precedent.
I don't think an antitrust lawsuit is necessary. Google's phone will let you install whatever you want, so if you don't like Apple's iron fist iPhone management, there's a really obvious option: don't support it, go with the competition.
The current system is designed to allow for anonymity. You simply ask a T employee for a 0 balance card, and one is handed to you, no questions asked. As many of us would prefer to not have our every movement stored in a database and linked to us, this is a GOOD thing if you value privacy.
So sure, a central DB system would solve this security problem easily, but at a significant cost to privacy, especially when the database inevitably gets leaked and everyone can see where you go.
There's no question that MS is doing this specifically to confuse - especially with their "lesser" license which does precisely the opposite of what the LGPL does relative to the GPL - it locks you down more instead of less. They absolutely should be called out on that, and it's not unreasonable to demand that they make it clear exactly what they're doing.
That being said, I really don't see the problem with that proposed scale. Public domain DOES in fact give you more freedom than open source (whether that's a good thing, and if so, when, is of course the source of a many a debate), and there are indeed levels between open and closed. Allowing your code to be viewed and audited is clearly better than purely closed source, and it means that if you claim your code is solid, you better be prepared to answer to the many coders who will confirm that.
I'm not claiming auditable (but not modifiable) code is a substitute for open source - it most definitely is not, but it does have its place, and it's clearly an improvement from running a binary with no idea of how the codebase was done.
People who run into trouble with people they meet online generally do so because they're stupid about it. They don't tell their friends about the meeting in advance, they don't first meet in a public area to make sure that 16 year old girl isn't actually a 60 year old guy, etc. No matter how much you try, there's always going to be some people that ignore common sense and do it anyway, but an education program can definitely lower the rates of this stuff happening, and that's a good thing.
As for system security, that's another skill that really should be a standard lesson in a technological society. There's WAY too many spyware programs, virii, botnet zombies, etc, and learning to keep yourself mostly invulnerable really isn't all that difficult. Get a firewall (ideally on a router, but at least a software one if not), have an AV program, keep your OS patched, be wary of suspicious downloads... all of this is common sense to any experienced computer user, but it DOES need to be taught by some means, and you can't assume everyone will take the time to learn it on their own. Again, schools can definitely step in here.
Identity theft is the other big one, and this too is something that could be drastically reduced with simple education - make sure the URL says what you think it does, be wary if you save passwords in your browser and the site you opened isn't automatically finding your password, etc. Again, the warning sites are (if you're looking) usually quite obvious, but a lot of people simply don't think to look, or make mistakes like not realizing how ridiculously easy it is to spoof email so the address line says their bank sent it. Again, simply education can fix this problem.
It's safe to assume that computer use is pretty much a mandatory skill in modern society, and much like with any other skill, training generally does - and should - include safety. In that regard, Virginia mandating a computer program that includes safety isn't just a good idea - it's common sense.
That being said, there's a LOT than can be done horribly wrong with such a program, so it's important that some standards are followed - and indeed mandated by law:
1. Make sure your advice is age-appropriate. If you tell a high schooler he should never meet an online friend by any means, you can pretty safely assume your advice will be flat-out ignored, and for good reason. There's no reason someone at that age can't meet someone they met online, so long as they're not stupid about it - initially meet in a large public place, make sure others know what you're doing in case you're not back on time, etc.
2. Make sure the advice is actually sound. Recommending a software firewall for instance, is good practice for people not already sitting behind a firewalled router... but it's pretty silly for those that are.
2. Make sure the program promotes safety, common sense, and awareness, not fear, paranoia, and stunted growth. If it sounds like it was written by DHS, it needs to go in the trash. It's usually quite clear what crosses the line and what doesn't, but there needs to be a review board where people can examine the curriculum and get stuff removed that does cross it.
3. Make sure the program is reviewed by security professionals, so anything on a list of options actually works. There's a lot of fake security software that does precisely the opposite of securing your system, and it would truly suck to see a licensed program telling people to download it. Likewise, some software is just plain worthless, and recommending it would just give a false sense of security.
3. Make sure it's independently reviewed and approved, to make sure no corporation gets to manipulate the system - the MPAA/RIAA/BSA/MAFIAA obviously comes to mind here, but so does more regular corporate greed - I could easily see Norton trying to push their bloated, overpriced security products for instance, and they'd be quite happy to help fund a school program in exchange for that free endorsement... that needs to be preven
Phreaking is a trivial offense. Calling ID spoofing isn't even illegal, and there's perfectly valid reasons to do it. Hacking the phone system to run silly pranks is likewise pretty much harmless - depending on the prank, it might be offensive, but it's highly unlikely to do any real harm. Done well, it can even be fun for the target. "Stealing" long distance service is at WORST, petty theft, and should carry an appropriately minor penalty - a few hours of community service and maybe a small fine.
Sending an armed SWAT team to innocent man's hours, on the other hand, is NOT trivial in any way! Neither is calling ambulances to nonexistent emergencies. There's 2 issues here:
1. The SWAT teams are being called to what they think is a deadly situation involving hardened criminals. The innocent homeowner hears someone break into his house and is quite likely to do what a LOT of people would do in that situation - grab the nearest weapon. If he happens to own a gun, he's probably going to at least load it and make it quite visible, and quite possibly fire it at the intruder. Not only will he get mowed down in a hail of a gunfire from the SWAT team, but he may very well unknowingly kill a cop before he dies.
2. Guess what happens when some random guy has a heart attack, and arrives 20 minutes late to the hospital because all of the ambulances are busy responding to pranks?
"Swatting" and phoning false emergencies are NOT harmless phone pranks. They can both directly and indirectly kill innocents.
Whether the guy bribes a cop to get a false swat report put out or hacks the phone system to do it is totally irrelevant.
It's not that hard actually.
1. Come up with several question types. You don't need a ton - a dozen is probably sufficient.
2. For each question, have a few variants that can be chosen. For instance, let's say we chose "simple addition problem." If it always asked "what is three plus three", yeah, that wouldn't be hard to code a bot around. What if it did this however?
-randomly chooses numbers from 0 to 20
-randomly chooses whether to display the numbers in number format (3) or word format (three)
-randomly chooses to have you add 2 or 3 numbers together
This gives 20 * 20 * 21 * 2 = 16,800 possible questions, 61 possible answers, and only 1 correct answer each time.
3. Have your account creation script choose 3 of the question types.
Assuming we have 12 question types and assuming a similar answer range, this gives 12 * 11 * 10 = 1,320 possible quiz types, with 61 * 61 ^ 61 = 226,981 possible answer combinations, only 1 of which is correct... and that assumes your bot can even figure out which question type is which!
Of course, given enough time, someone could write a bot that parses every possible question asked in every possible form. However, it takes all of 15 minutes to add new rules to the existing questions and to add a few new question types, retire a couple, etc. Combine this with a temp IP lockout after 3-5 failures, and now the spammer not only needs to constantly update his software, but he needs to control a huge botnet with a massive IP range. A spammer faced with that is simply going to move onto an easier site.
Sure, it isn't absolutely foolproof, but nothing is.
Yeah, calling something a 'gateway' anything tends to be at best, misleading. Replace 'gateway' with 'indicator' in almost every place it's used though, and you'll usually get a valid argument.
Using the drugs one, is pot a gateway to crack? Probably not. It is an indicator though, sure. If you smoke pot, you're not opposed to illegal drug use. Sure, your logic may be that pot does little to no longterm damage, while crack obviously does, and if that's your logic, you're probably never going to use crack. However, ONE of the things stopping people from using crack is that it's illegal, so if that has no effect on you, then simple logic says you're more likely to use crack. By no means does that mean we should assume everyone we see holding a joint is a crackhead, but the simple argument that a pot user is MORE LIKELY than a normal person to use stronger drugs is a simple fact. The significance of this fact, if any, is obviously debatable.
By the same token, if you are knowingly using underhanded, unethical SEO, you've demonstrated that ethics are not a major concern to you. Regard for ethics is indeed one of the things that stops companies from committing outright fraud, false accounting, etc, so if you have demonstrated a willingness to violate ethics with the search engines, the odds are significantly higher that you do it in other - and very likely more damaging - places. This doesn't mean everyone who cheats a search engine is going to pull an Enron.
So, no correlation != causation, but that doesn't mean it correlation != significant, especially when there's an obvious logical link. By no means would I be in favor of ordering police investigations on everyone who cheated a search engine. At the same time, if I ran into a website that I knew what using unethical SEO, I wouldn't exactly be in a hurry to trust them with personal information. It's not a reason to call the cops, but it's most definitely a reason to question the overall integrity of the business, and as long as people know where to draw the line, I don't see the problem with being aware of a correlation, and using caution where it's present.
You aren't really cheating the search engine if you do that. You are posting real content... content that's posted purely for shock value sure, but content nonetheless. People are blogging about it because they feel your article is worthy of a blog post - maybe not for the usual reasons, sure, but legitimately. You aren't paying them, you aren't using fake sites, etc. So you're posting content that people feel is worth discussing, and your search rank is increasing accordingly.
Whether this is unethical is certainly open to debate, but if it is, it's not for SEO reasons.
There's nothing wrong with wanting a better search engine rank, and doing reasonable things to obtain it - proper use of keywords, making sure keywords are in page titles and not just the name of your site, asking sites in the same area of interest to trade links, having a good site map that a search bot can easily crawl, etc, etc. There's a big difference, however, between tweaking your site to look better to a search engine, and employing underhanded tactics like white on white blocks of keywords that only a bot will see, running linkfarm sites with no content that exist only to link back to you, flat out stealing content from other sites, etc. So yes, most people running a site that they intend to make popular pay at least some attention to their search rankings, and have made at least a couple of edits purely with search engines in mind. Most however, don't cross the line between "search engine optimization" and cheating the engine with garbage. The article is about the people who DO cross that line, not the rest of us who simply make sure our site is searchbot-friendly.
Errr, oops. Not sure where I got 'resume' from that. It was still a written assignment in a word processor though which did not involve web research. So the above is otherwise correct.
The assignment was to write a resume in a word processor. The kid was given a detention for ignoring the assignment and randomly surfing the web, then mouthing off to the teacher that told him to stop. I don't think that's unreasonable. Now, if he was writing his resume in say... Google docs instead of Word, then all these authority arguments would be relevant. However, he was simply ignoring the assignment and web surfing instead, so there really isn't a whole lot to discuss. He was given an assignment, he chose to ignore it completely, he was warned to stop, and then finally given a detention. I'd say that's both pretty standard and perfectly reasonable (unless he had already finished the assignment and that's why he was surfing... but I doubt that's the case.)
Here's the article explaining this.
Levels are still used because in MANY cases, they make sense. There's several reasons for using levels.
#1 - You simply shouldn't be in the same place.
Examples:
Say you're a covert agent. Levels make perfect sense - you have a mission - or maybe a short series of missions - in a set area. You complete your assignment, return to HQ, and get shipped elsewhere. There's no reason to do away with levels in that, because it doesn't make SENSE for seamlessness.
Ditto on an RTS. Sure, you might be fighting over a whole country, or continent, or solar system, or whatever, but you're still being deployed to major mission areas where they need a skilled commander - again, levels make sense.
If it's a fighting game, you fight your opponent and move on - 1 fight = 1 level.
If it's a sports game, you play one game, then head to the next stadium.
Even in an RPG, where it's one connected world, you still have levels in a way - the ancient temple you need the artifact from, the volcano you have to scale - whatever.
Reason #2: Difficulty Control
A tetris-style puzzle game is a bit different, as nothing really changes, but the levels get used for their other purpose - increased difficulty over time. Tetris on level 0 is pretty much impossible to lose - you either have to get ABSURDLY unlucky with the RNG, or you have to majorly screw up, multiple times. On level 15 (or whatever, there's a gazillion versions of the game) on the other hand, most players will fail within a minute or two. Since the game has no end, it's a matter of how long you can last, with player skill measured primarily by how high you can get the level counter, and secondarily how much of a score you can rack up.
#3: Crowd Control
This one only really exists in online games, but it's important. When you don't want 1000 people all crammed into a tiny battlefield, or dungeon, or whatever, you're going to need some kind of instancing system, which means a piece of your world needs to be cut off from the main and run as a separate level.
#4: Mechanics control
In some games, the rules simply aren't constant. Many online RPGs don't allow players to attack each other... except in certain areas where they can kill each other at will. In some cases, there's also a place where being pvped costs you equipment, designed for people looking for a majorly dangerous area. These are usually segmented off from the rest of the world by some clear boundaries.
#6. Splitting the game up
While sometimes this is a bad thing, sometimes it's good too. Can you imagine playing something like Mario Galaxy if it were one giant level. Navigating that would be an absolute nightmare.
If you really look at it, levels DO make sense in almost every game they exist. Sure, sometimes it's a cop-out to split up would should otherwise be a seamless world for the sake of easier programming, but usually, if the game has levels, it DOES have them for good reaosn.
Usenet is freely accessible sure, but there's a big difference between free and paid - retention. Most free servers have very short retention times for text groups (1-2 weeks is typical), and don't carry binary groups at all. If they do, you're looking at 1-2 days retention tops. Pay servers, on the other hand, typically have extremely long text retention times (months, a year, or even no limit), and binary retentions of at least a couple of weeks or more. The simple fact is, it's not hard to store a week of text-only posts on simple server - you could run it off your cable modem if you really wanted to, provided you could find a couple of decent feeds to populate your server with (the way Usenet works, a server is useless unless it can exchange articles with at least a few others.) On the other hand, running a news server that's constantly getting hammered by people downloading huge files generally requires a real server - or cluster if you're big enough. That costs real money, and you obviously have to pass that cost on to users... and if you're putting that kind of time into the service, you probably want a profit too. There's no alternate method here either - you can't just display ads, for instance, because no one will use your website. Anyone who's been on Usenet a while is using a real newsreader that they downloaded, not your cheesy web ap. :)
I really see nothing wrong with running a pay server with all of this in mind, and if you don't WANT the extra retention or binaries, then you of course simply don't use a pay server.
As for policing a newsserver, first of all, Usenet (with the exception of a VERY small quantity of groups named *.moderated) is intended to be a completely unmoderated medium. Secondly, even if you DID choose to impose your own rules as to what gets displayed, good luck. Imagine a typical forum system on the 'net. Now give it 200,000 forums, have about a quarter of those be quite active (at least a dozen daily posts, and hundreds in some cases) and now try to sift through that and moderate. Good freaking luck.
I made the mistake of working for a Best Buy right after college. I can't comment specifically on the MSN thing, as I didn't see THAT particular scam, but from what I DID see, it would not surprise me in the slightest if employees were trained to at best, be extremely misleading, and at worst, outright lie and cheat the customer out of money.
One common package deal we were supposed to try to push was the 'advanced security setup' or something like that, I can't remember the exact name. The service in theory sounded fine - you sold the customer an AV program and a spyware blocker, explained the point of each, set it up, ran the install, updated definitions, ran windows update for all current security patches, etc - all the standard security precautions. The customer of course would be billed the price of the 2 programs, plus a fee for the service of I think 20 or 30 bucks. Ignoring the fact that Avast (free) is just as effective as Norton, it didn't sound like a terribly unreasonable deal. The user bought software he was probably going to need anyway, and paid a small fee to make sure that the basic security precautions were taken.
There was one slight problem. Best buy is not exactly a place where you build your own custom box. Anything you get from there is going to be a pre-built machine, almost always including some pre-installed software. In nearly every case, that included a copy of an AV program, usually with a 30 or 90 day trial, with a $10-15 subscription fee needed after that - not the 50 bucks you'd pay for a new copy (which of course, also had the fee, just after a year.)
Here's where the scam comes in. The job of the salesman is to inform the user that while yes, your machine will come with AV protection, it'll only last 1 or 3 months, and after that, you won't be covered any more, so you really ought to buy our full protection plan, where you'll have everything done for you.
In case you didn't fill in the blank on that, the job was to convince the customer to pay you to uninstall their already active AV program and replace it with another, charging them for both comparable software (in some cases, THE EXACT SAME PROGRAM) that they already had, and a service that had already been done!
As for the 'there's no commission' argument, that's BS as well. The employee doesn't get commission, but his SUPERVISOR does. So they have you use the fact that YOU aren't on commission (which IS true) as part of your sales pitch.
Also, BB has a very interesting way of making sure all staff participate in these scams. You're on quota. They'll never call it a quota of course - it's a sales goal, a revenue objective, a team target - whatever, they'll call it anything but a quota. When you don't meet the quota, you aren't fired. In fact, there's no penalty at all, other than the expression of disappointment, and strong encouragement to do better as a team. Unfortunately, it seems there's just not enough in the budget this week to cover your department, and everyone's hours need to be cut back. Oh, and if your hours are cut to oh, say... 4 or 8 per week and you can't possibly pay rent, well, if it's a such a problem, you're an at will employee, and hey, nothing is stopping you from quitting. Oh, and if you're thinking of getting a second job, well, you you signed a thing when you were hired that said your available hours would not change in your first X months (3 or 6, I forget), so if you choose to violate that, while, you'll have to fired for that of course.
Funny thing, I don't think they've ever fired someone for not selling enough, they can proudly announce that - and happily do as they sell you stuff, and it's even true!... sort of. As for that absurdly high turnover rate, well, hey, it's retail, and not everyone can stay with it.
I didn't last long there before I quit in disgust at the total disregard for ethics they have.
Is convincing someone to buy software they already own racketeering? Maybe.
Is it outright FRAUD? Yes.
Linux is more stable, more secure, more efficient, gets fixes faster, it's cheaper even if you are buying support for it, etc, etc. All of this is true, and if you stop there, it's hard not to look at that 1% usage stat and wonder how that's possible. If you look at the web server market, Linux dominates, and rightfully so. Think about why though... With a web server, you want a secure box with all necessary server apps running and properly communicating with each other, on a machine that handles high loads - in particular spikes for when you get Slashdotted/Farked/Dugg/Whatever. You also want it to be cost-effective, especially when you're also buying your bandwidth. Linux excels at all of this. Ease of use is generally not a huge concern - most sites are either on shared accounts or professional dedicated hosting, and in either case, you're paying someone to handle the actual server work for you - if you can navigate a directory tree and set intelligent file permissions (and your FTP client probably spells out how to do that for you), then you're good to go. Sure, some huge companies run the entire operation themselves, but they're also big enough to hire a dedicated server admin, so still no problem. Likewise, ability to run a huge array of programs isn't an issue either - if it can serve, it runs what it needs to. For home users, it's a much different story. Think about a few things: 1. Games - VERY few games were made for Linux, and at the professional game company level, you're looking at a few decent ports, whatever Wine will run, and that's pretty much it. (You can also emulate, but that's never pretty unless you're WAY over spec for the game in question.) Sure, Wine will run quite a bit, but when the best you can say is 'we can run the others guys' stuff... usually', you don't exactly have a selling point. Business users obviously couldn't care less, but for the home user, this is likely one of the major reasons they have a computer, and THE main reason they bought one with a good spec, if they did. 2. Variety of user levels - Unfortunately, nearly all Linux distros are aimed at either the OS expert who can compile his own kernel, or the complete newbie who absolutely must be able to hit one button and have the thing install without a hitch. The majority of users, on the other hand, are between those extremes, and indeed, when you think about the advantages Linux offers, it's NOT the newbie that's going to jump on them. Many an intermediate user finds himself either trying the advanced distros (and failing) or trying the newbie friendly ones and finding it extremely difficult to get up to the skill level he previously had with Windows. Many others have no trouble, but consider the time it's going to take, question the benefits, and give up. 2b. Because of the above, Linux doesn't get passed on - after all, it's usually those experienced (but not expert) users that are setting up their friends' machines, and if they couldn't find a use for it, they aren't going to be recommending it to a newbie either. 3. The familiarity barrier - MS has owned the home market for 20 years now. Most of the current generation started on Windows, and most of the previous generation started on DOS. Very, very, few people started on *nix. This means that switching to Linux means learning a whole new environment, something that no matter how great the tutorials get, is never good to be a simple process. This means the user needs a clear reward - that big Linux-only thing that makes it all worth it. Unfortunately, when I think of the great Linux apps, usually it's either 'they duplicated the functionality of (program)' or 'they took the idea of (program), and they significantly improved on it... but it's not a giant leap.' None of these are easy to address, and so I think it's going to be quite a while before Linux really has a chance to take off as a home OS and not one for servers and hobbyist users.
Easy. Morality and ethics are societal standards. They're almost always tied to laws. You can certainly believe that an action is moral and/or ethical, but you can only perform that action if society doesn't disagree with you.
To think that law and morality are one in the same is the worst thing you can possibly do. If you lived in nazi Germany, the law said that you should round up all the jews, disabled people, and every other targetted group and kill them. If you think that makes doing so right, there is something VERY wrong with you.
Right now, the laws say that downloading MP3s of songs that you never bought is illegal. It doesn't matter if hundreds of thousands of people are doing it, large-scale civil disobedience doesn't change the law any more than it has forced pot to be legalized.
Large-scale disobedience was one of the main tools of the civil rights movement of the 60s... and since blacks aren't treated like shit anymore, guess what? It works.
Plus, your arguments are specious, narrowly tailored to suit your MP3 habits. You don't make any sense -- you're arguing that if an artist's catalog is made available to anyone for free, that the artist can make that up in volume? Sure, someone may get turned on to an artist by downloading a song for free, but how is that going to translate to sales if the product is available FOR FREE?
You are correct in saying that most artists will lose album sales to MP3 downloading. However, this will NOT lower the artist's profit - here's why: When you buy a CD, the artist makes a VERY small amount of money, 25 cents if he's lucky. The same artist, even if not extremely popular, can rake in 100K PER CONCERT. So what happens when more people are getting their music for free (at a loss of 25 cents each)? More people go to concerts. With those numbers, even a 5% increase in concert sales would make up for losing every last CD sale - and if you don't want to take my word for it - read THIS.
As for your identity thing, your argument is 100% USDA-approved Grade A flawed logic. Your whole argument centers around losing nothing physical, and therefore suffering no DIRECT income loss, only indirect. The thing is, since the artist MAKES more indirect income than he loses, the entire argument is negated.