This is what disturbs me in the case. I feel like the whole thing could be thrown out by illegal search laws. I'm sure that the school official had the right to seize the cell phone, but what right did he have to go searching on in the contents of the phone?! In fact, why the hell was he looking around on the phone of a 16-year-old?! What relevance could that possibly have to the issue of the child using a cell phone when he wasn't supposed to be using it?
I feel like a good lawyer will be able to get out of this without too much trouble.
Yes, this sort of thing still occurs in places like China. Remember that, as far as progression goes, China is still quite a few years behind us. We always talk about how bad things have become. No, they've always been bad. Things are getting better. If a cop beat someone up 100 years, do you think there was any remote hope for justice? Hell, no! Things have a long way to go before we live in a Utopian society, but they are certainly improving.
And the beautiful thing is that there are so many cases where these sorts of things have gone to the court and the court has ruled against the police. We are not powerless.
It costs them very little to hold a gun to your head and demand "Hand over the encryption keys."
It actually costs quite a bit to do something like this. You really have to have people in your pocket to be able to pull off stuff like that. Seriously. What are they going to do once they have the gun to your head? Pull the trigger? That's when the real revolution begins. People will only accept so much.
I know that I'm going to be flamed by a bunch of libertarians by saying this, but how long ago was 1984 written? 24 years past the apocalypse and I'm still doing fine.
I generally do not like nickle-and-dime sorts of taxes, but I like this. You could just wrap this into the car registration and title-transfer process.
I feel like Jack Thompson has set himself up as a straw man argument against video games. It's hard to invent arguments more ridiculous that the ones he raises legitimately.
Excuse my ignorance, but please explain how this this different (or superior) to doxygen or any of the many systems that do just this. I'm not meaning to be rude, I'm just asking.
I don't think it would do all that well, but I would love to see a cyberpunk GTA. I think cyberpunk would lend itself very well to this sort of gameplay. I hoped the Shadowrun game would be this sort of game, but then they came out with just another cookie-cutter FPS.
If you even thought that Evolution was not a full on fact you'd fail it. No, you didn't have to think evolution is a fact, you simply had to know that the teacher thought that. Remember that most tests were exercises in "Guess the Teacher's Mind." This is especially true if you took any social sciences class (maybe this is why I studied Mathematics).
Also, evolution is fact in the same fashion that relativity is fact. Everything we have seen supports it. Does that mean it won't be disproven? Certainly not. It's a scientific fact, true until someone finds a problem with it and makes it better.
I have seen a disclaimer about Newtonian gravity before, basically saying that, while it's useful, it's also believed to be false and that there are newer, better methods of understanding gravity Newtonian physics isn't "believed to be false," it is known to be false. That's one of the results of relativity. I doubt you saw disclaimers of this nature before Einstein.
You could put a falsifiable disclaimer next to everything in science. That is the nature of science, it is falsifiable. What we believe today will be replaced. Does that mean we should write disclaimers around everything in our textbooks? Most certainly not.
The problem with the evolution disclaimer is that people want it for political/religious reasons. They aren't interested in aiding scientific inquiry; they are interested in establishing religious beliefs.
Here's the main thing that bothers me about ID discussion. People show problems with evolution then claim that it is support for ID. Even if evolution were shown to be completely false, that does not mean that ID is correct. Proving that a particular animal is not a dog does not make it a cat.
If not supporting the GPL hurts iPhone sales significantly, then Apple will adjust their license to permit GPL code. Honestly though, average Joe Shmoe probably ain't going to care very much that the iPhone can't run GPL'ed code. It's only going to bother the geeks, which probably isn't Apple's key demographic.
One of my favorite podcasts is one produced by just some random dude. He started producing it in his proverbial basement. It now has a huge following.
I agree that the majority of the podcasts are rubbish. Just like the majority of blogs are rubbish. This should be no surprise as podcasts are nothing more than audio blogs. In any case, there is that small percentage that ends up churning to the top. That's something I like about the internet, the cream has a way of making it to the top. YouTube is mostly full of self-indulgent crap, but there's a small percentage of value which ends up creeping its way into the lime-light. I remember when Google was just another online company.
Apple just wants to lock down the platform as much as possible, that's all there is to it.
And why do they want to lock down the platform? Is it because they are nefarious beasts for the nether-regions, or is possibly because they have examined the market and made a choice which they believe will help them sell more units? Clearly it is the last one. Now it is definitely arguable whether or not their reasoning is correct. That's exactly what I will discuss in the next paragraph. I'll see you there.
The limitations that Apple has placed on their third-party applications are pretty small. They are annoying for us techies, but the average user does not care, nor will they care about the lack of background applications. Sure, there's a few things that users won't get access to that they would otherwise, but I don't think this is going to be a huge show-stopper, as people are claiming above. Hell, look at how the iPhone has sold with absolutely no SDK, I think they're fine.
Apple's mantra and largely the mother of their success with the iPod is to build a device that does not need to be independently maintained. You just plug the device into your computer and it works. Contrast that with the other MP3 players on the market that require a pact with the devil in order to load music on them. Apple has lived by this ease-of-use, iPod as an appendage to your computer rather than a separate device. The iPhone has the same allure. It's the reason why I bought it. I maintain my computer, then my iPhone is taken care of when it gets plugged in. That's nice. Applications are a dangerous thing in the eyes of Apple, they threaten to ruin that paradigm. Honestly, that is why I believe they have fought against an SDK and why they continue to restrict certain activities on the iPhone.
Sure, we might be annoyed by certain restrictions on the iPhone platform, but I don't expect this is going to hurt Apple at all. And if they find that it does, they will change it.
Why must everyone focus on the negatives? I have been playing with the SDK for the past few days and have found it to be wonderful. Sure, there are some limitations, but I can understand that. Apple is stuck with a difficult task. They have to balance their desire to provide an open platform for development with privacy and economic concerns. The strength of the iPhone as well as the iPod is that it is this easy to maintain device. I just plug it into my computer and it works. If they are not careful, then they may hinder said benefit. Think of facebook. We were excited about the third-party applications, especially since they had almost no restrictions. Who among us is now not wishing for restrictions, because of all the crappy annoying applications out there?
I for one am pleased with what they have offered, especially the 70/30 store. That is unprecedented. It also provides a great mechanism for selling open source, which has been very difficult in the past.
Lastly, as a side note, one big realization, as I have played with the SDK, is actually how unnecessary it is. I also was among the people who was really frustrated with the iPhone SDK is Web 2.0 garbage last year. Now that the power of the iPhone has been unlocked before my eyes, I'm realizing that the majority of the functionality you want to give in an app is completely suppliable by Web 2.0. As I've thought about what I should write, I keep realizing, "No, there's no point in doing that natively, because it could be done in a Web app." Granted, I am not a game developer.
There's a huge difference between your example and perpetual motion. Before cars and trains it was UNBELIEVABLE to travel at such accelerated speeds, but it was not impossible. There were no well tested scientific laws that would need to be broken for someone to travel 60 mph.
Something that really bothered me in the article was the way the author spoke of the scientific community. He mentioned the guy last year who claimed to have a perpetual motion machine but went out of business. His mentioning of the company felt like he was implying that his failure was because of the criticism rather than the fact that perpetual motion is impossible.
Thank you for your response. It scared me for a minute; I was nervous that I had misspoken. I was pretty sure I had read, on a number of occasions, that Ron Paul was anti-free trade. So I looked to see if I had been right. I found this page which clearly shows his voting record on the issue of free trade. You will see that he is definitely NOT a proponent of free trade. I know, it seems weird. I thought he was a libertarian as well.
There are a few problems. To begin with, those are indeed his two big stumping points: Iraq and the economy. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for America, things are finally starting to take a turn for the better in Iraq. As for the economy, it doesn't take en economist to acknowledge that Paul's solutions to the economic problems are bad, bad, bad! He believes in extreme isolationism, which any economist can tell you is bad news.
Now, I had wondered why anyone could possibly vote for Ron Paul. Let's face it; the guy is a nut. But I think I understand why people support him. First let's ignore the nut contingent. As I'm sure he has quite a few nuts supporting him, but that doesn't come close to explaining the amount of support he has. They can't all be nuts. What I believe is that he is gaining a lot of support because he is the only Republican who is against the war. So, if you are a Republican, but strongly oppose the war, who are you going to vote for? Also, with regards to the economy, he is talking about how taxes are a problem, which resonates with people. But most people haven't looked into how he wants to fix the economy. It sounds good until you start digging a little. So people support him on those two topics and that's where they stop. I have spoken with a number of friends who supported Paul. They would talk about the war. I then encourage them to look into his views on other topics. The next time I speak with them, they no longer support Paul.
I thought the same thing at first about the chip, but then I realized that the chip actually only decrypts RSA. If you remember, at the end of the movie they are talking with the NSA. Bishop (Robert Redford) tells the agent (James Earl Jones) that it will only work on American codes because international encryption is based upon different algorithms. Also, even if that weren't the case, I'm willing to accept a magical sort of premise. That's where the suspension of disbelief comes in. I'm fine with that. Once they've established there universe in which we will be watching, I want people to do reasonable things.
Speaking of movies that just plain get it wrong, what movies are there that get it right, or right enough? The only two tech movies, that I can think of at the moment, that haven't made me grown have been Sneakers and Anti-Trust. I'll also admit that Hackers holds a special place in my heart. It's amazing that you can possibly get a movie that wrong. It was the most spectacular pile of crap that mankind has ever created. But I digress. Any other recommendations for actually good tech movies?
Wow! I have become a fanboi (I was hoping to be a fanboy someday, but I suppose I will have to settle with "always a vowel" variant). I guess I just don't see this as a slippery slope. I do not have any interest to dtrace iTunes. I am a developer (other posts claimed I was not). But my development is based more upon writing new software than upon snooping on iTunes. I am thrilled that Apple has given us such an awesome tool in DTrace. I have already had the opportunity to use it and am impressed with the power. The fact that Apple disabled it for iTunes does not personally hurt me. I can see why they did it. I don't necessarily agree with the action, but more importantly, I don't care.
I feel that this sort of alarmist reaction (that is oh so common on Slashdot) is so quixotic. I have too many other things going on in my life to constantly worry about how the world is out to get me. For heaven's sake, we are supposed to be fairly intelligent people here. It strikes me as odd that such intelligent, rational people can be so paranoid.
I'm so sick of alarmists telling me that stuff that's broken is broken for an evil reason and that I should be concerned that someone has disabled a feature that I don't need, nor care about.
Once again, if this were to happen to me. I would quit. The money I generate for the company exceeds the money they would save by monitoring my personal behavior.
Slashdot Mirror
This is what disturbs me in the case. I feel like the whole thing could be thrown out by illegal search laws. I'm sure that the school official had the right to seize the cell phone, but what right did he have to go searching on in the contents of the phone?! In fact, why the hell was he looking around on the phone of a 16-year-old?! What relevance could that possibly have to the issue of the child using a cell phone when he wasn't supposed to be using it?
I feel like a good lawyer will be able to get out of this without too much trouble.
packet sniffer
Yes, this sort of thing still occurs in places like China. Remember that, as far as progression goes, China is still quite a few years behind us. We always talk about how bad things have become. No, they've always been bad. Things are getting better. If a cop beat someone up 100 years, do you think there was any remote hope for justice? Hell, no! Things have a long way to go before we live in a Utopian society, but they are certainly improving.
And the beautiful thing is that there are so many cases where these sorts of things have gone to the court and the court has ruled against the police. We are not powerless.
It costs them very little to hold a gun to your head and demand "Hand over the encryption keys."
It actually costs quite a bit to do something like this. You really have to have people in your pocket to be able to pull off stuff like that. Seriously. What are they going to do once they have the gun to your head? Pull the trigger? That's when the real revolution begins. People will only accept so much.
I know that I'm going to be flamed by a bunch of libertarians by saying this, but how long ago was 1984 written? 24 years past the apocalypse and I'm still doing fine.
I generally do not like nickle-and-dime sorts of taxes, but I like this. You could just wrap this into the car registration and title-transfer process.
I feel like Jack Thompson has set himself up as a straw man argument against video games. It's hard to invent arguments more ridiculous that the ones he raises legitimately.
Excuse my ignorance, but please explain how this this different (or superior) to doxygen or any of the many systems that do just this. I'm not meaning to be rude, I'm just asking.
I don't think it would do all that well, but I would love to see a cyberpunk GTA. I think cyberpunk would lend itself very well to this sort of gameplay. I hoped the Shadowrun game would be this sort of game, but then they came out with just another cookie-cutter FPS.
Also, evolution is fact in the same fashion that relativity is fact. Everything we have seen supports it. Does that mean it won't be disproven? Certainly not. It's a scientific fact, true until someone finds a problem with it and makes it better. I have seen a disclaimer about Newtonian gravity before, basically saying that, while it's useful, it's also believed to be false and that there are newer, better methods of understanding gravity Newtonian physics isn't "believed to be false," it is known to be false. That's one of the results of relativity. I doubt you saw disclaimers of this nature before Einstein.
You could put a falsifiable disclaimer next to everything in science. That is the nature of science, it is falsifiable. What we believe today will be replaced. Does that mean we should write disclaimers around everything in our textbooks? Most certainly not.
The problem with the evolution disclaimer is that people want it for political/religious reasons. They aren't interested in aiding scientific inquiry; they are interested in establishing religious beliefs.
Here's the main thing that bothers me about ID discussion. People show problems with evolution then claim that it is support for ID. Even if evolution were shown to be completely false, that does not mean that ID is correct. Proving that a particular animal is not a dog does not make it a cat.
I don't understand your comment. Please expound.
If not supporting the GPL hurts iPhone sales significantly, then Apple will adjust their license to permit GPL code. Honestly though, average Joe Shmoe probably ain't going to care very much that the iPhone can't run GPL'ed code. It's only going to bother the geeks, which probably isn't Apple's key demographic.
One of my favorite podcasts is one produced by just some random dude. He started producing it in his proverbial basement. It now has a huge following.
I agree that the majority of the podcasts are rubbish. Just like the majority of blogs are rubbish. This should be no surprise as podcasts are nothing more than audio blogs. In any case, there is that small percentage that ends up churning to the top. That's something I like about the internet, the cream has a way of making it to the top. YouTube is mostly full of self-indulgent crap, but there's a small percentage of value which ends up creeping its way into the lime-light. I remember when Google was just another online company.
And why do they want to lock down the platform? Is it because they are nefarious beasts for the nether-regions, or is possibly because they have examined the market and made a choice which they believe will help them sell more units? Clearly it is the last one. Now it is definitely arguable whether or not their reasoning is correct. That's exactly what I will discuss in the next paragraph. I'll see you there.
The limitations that Apple has placed on their third-party applications are pretty small. They are annoying for us techies, but the average user does not care, nor will they care about the lack of background applications. Sure, there's a few things that users won't get access to that they would otherwise, but I don't think this is going to be a huge show-stopper, as people are claiming above. Hell, look at how the iPhone has sold with absolutely no SDK, I think they're fine.
Apple's mantra and largely the mother of their success with the iPod is to build a device that does not need to be independently maintained. You just plug the device into your computer and it works. Contrast that with the other MP3 players on the market that require a pact with the devil in order to load music on them. Apple has lived by this ease-of-use, iPod as an appendage to your computer rather than a separate device. The iPhone has the same allure. It's the reason why I bought it. I maintain my computer, then my iPhone is taken care of when it gets plugged in. That's nice. Applications are a dangerous thing in the eyes of Apple, they threaten to ruin that paradigm. Honestly, that is why I believe they have fought against an SDK and why they continue to restrict certain activities on the iPhone.
Sure, we might be annoyed by certain restrictions on the iPhone platform, but I don't expect this is going to hurt Apple at all. And if they find that it does, they will change it.
Here's a comment you don't generally read on Slashdot:
That's a good point. I hadn't thought about the iPod Touch.
Why must everyone focus on the negatives? I have been playing with the SDK for the past few days and have found it to be wonderful. Sure, there are some limitations, but I can understand that. Apple is stuck with a difficult task. They have to balance their desire to provide an open platform for development with privacy and economic concerns. The strength of the iPhone as well as the iPod is that it is this easy to maintain device. I just plug it into my computer and it works. If they are not careful, then they may hinder said benefit. Think of facebook. We were excited about the third-party applications, especially since they had almost no restrictions. Who among us is now not wishing for restrictions, because of all the crappy annoying applications out there?
I for one am pleased with what they have offered, especially the 70/30 store. That is unprecedented. It also provides a great mechanism for selling open source, which has been very difficult in the past.
Lastly, as a side note, one big realization, as I have played with the SDK, is actually how unnecessary it is. I also was among the people who was really frustrated with the iPhone SDK is Web 2.0 garbage last year. Now that the power of the iPhone has been unlocked before my eyes, I'm realizing that the majority of the functionality you want to give in an app is completely suppliable by Web 2.0. As I've thought about what I should write, I keep realizing, "No, there's no point in doing that natively, because it could be done in a Web app." Granted, I am not a game developer.
There's a huge difference between your example and perpetual motion. Before cars and trains it was UNBELIEVABLE to travel at such accelerated speeds, but it was not impossible. There were no well tested scientific laws that would need to be broken for someone to travel 60 mph.
Something that really bothered me in the article was the way the author spoke of the scientific community. He mentioned the guy last year who claimed to have a perpetual motion machine but went out of business. His mentioning of the company felt like he was implying that his failure was because of the criticism rather than the fact that perpetual motion is impossible.
Thank you for your response. It scared me for a minute; I was nervous that I had misspoken. I was pretty sure I had read, on a number of occasions, that Ron Paul was anti-free trade. So I looked to see if I had been right. I found this page which clearly shows his voting record on the issue of free trade. You will see that he is definitely NOT a proponent of free trade. I know, it seems weird. I thought he was a libertarian as well.
http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Ron_Paul_Free_Trade.htm
There are a few problems. To begin with, those are indeed his two big stumping points: Iraq and the economy. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for America, things are finally starting to take a turn for the better in Iraq. As for the economy, it doesn't take en economist to acknowledge that Paul's solutions to the economic problems are bad, bad, bad! He believes in extreme isolationism, which any economist can tell you is bad news.
Now, I had wondered why anyone could possibly vote for Ron Paul. Let's face it; the guy is a nut. But I think I understand why people support him. First let's ignore the nut contingent. As I'm sure he has quite a few nuts supporting him, but that doesn't come close to explaining the amount of support he has. They can't all be nuts. What I believe is that he is gaining a lot of support because he is the only Republican who is against the war. So, if you are a Republican, but strongly oppose the war, who are you going to vote for? Also, with regards to the economy, he is talking about how taxes are a problem, which resonates with people. But most people haven't looked into how he wants to fix the economy. It sounds good until you start digging a little. So people support him on those two topics and that's where they stop. I have spoken with a number of friends who supported Paul. They would talk about the war. I then encourage them to look into his views on other topics. The next time I speak with them, they no longer support Paul.
I thought the same thing at first about the chip, but then I realized that the chip actually only decrypts RSA. If you remember, at the end of the movie they are talking with the NSA. Bishop (Robert Redford) tells the agent (James Earl Jones) that it will only work on American codes because international encryption is based upon different algorithms. Also, even if that weren't the case, I'm willing to accept a magical sort of premise. That's where the suspension of disbelief comes in. I'm fine with that. Once they've established there universe in which we will be watching, I want people to do reasonable things.
Speaking of movies that just plain get it wrong, what movies are there that get it right, or right enough? The only two tech movies, that I can think of at the moment, that haven't made me grown have been Sneakers and Anti-Trust. I'll also admit that Hackers holds a special place in my heart. It's amazing that you can possibly get a movie that wrong. It was the most spectacular pile of crap that mankind has ever created. But I digress. Any other recommendations for actually good tech movies?
Wow! I have become a fanboi (I was hoping to be a fanboy someday, but I suppose I will have to settle with "always a vowel" variant). I guess I just don't see this as a slippery slope. I do not have any interest to dtrace iTunes. I am a developer (other posts claimed I was not). But my development is based more upon writing new software than upon snooping on iTunes. I am thrilled that Apple has given us such an awesome tool in DTrace. I have already had the opportunity to use it and am impressed with the power. The fact that Apple disabled it for iTunes does not personally hurt me. I can see why they did it. I don't necessarily agree with the action, but more importantly, I don't care.
I feel that this sort of alarmist reaction (that is oh so common on Slashdot) is so quixotic. I have too many other things going on in my life to constantly worry about how the world is out to get me. For heaven's sake, we are supposed to be fairly intelligent people here. It strikes me as odd that such intelligent, rational people can be so paranoid.
I'm so sick of alarmists telling me that stuff that's broken is broken for an evil reason and that I should be concerned that someone has disabled a feature that I don't need, nor care about.
Once again, if this were to happen to me. I would quit. The money I generate for the company exceeds the money they would save by monitoring my personal behavior.