That's why you don't make the confirmations a yes/no box on big things like that.
You make them a text box where it says you have to type a specific message that basically requires you *think* before you send it. For example, requiring someone to type "SEND THIS MESSAGE" to actually send out a message over the warning network would probably have gotten them to think twice.
I mean, even World of Warcraft requires that you type "DELETE" in a text field in order to delete a character or rare item - you'd think an emergency warning system would be better designed.
The ID10T error was 99% on the end of the people who designed the system such that a mistake like this is possible, and 1% on the end of the person who clicked "ok."
Being able to make their bed raise/lower, change a channel, turn on/off/up/down the AC, close shades, turn on/off the television/radio, change channels/stations, surf the web, play some games, chat (slowly) with others online, and any number of other uses would be pretty huge I'd think. And easy to connect to a computer. And would lead to big QoL improvements; there's a pretty GIGANTIC difference between being able to do something yourself and needing to ask a caretaker to do it for you.
I've a friend who is severely handicapped (thalidomide) and is 90% confined to a wheel chair as a result. He has little devices his dad made for him that allow him to do some tasks he previously had to ask for help on. We met through a role-playing gamer's group, and when we all brainstormed a way to set him up with a gadget that would let him pick and roll his own dice he was pretty freaking happy about it because it meant he no longer had to ask someone to do it for him.
Hell, even in my own life, and I am fortunately quite able bodied, when I've had times where I wasn't able to do things for myself I would often choose to suffer in silence rather than ask a caretaker to do something for me because I didn't want to bother them. This can be huge.
It's quite doable. Take a lesson from the real world, where we have billions of people all trying to change the world (to some extent).
Star Wars: Galaxies has a really flexible (albeit buggy as hell) system of professions and virtually no content at all back when it launched. So, it was a sandbox, basically.
Yet you had players having a massive impact on their servers - crafters would set up business empires employing dozens (or, in some cases, hundreds and maybe up to a thousand) people, politician classes would build and manage player run cities. ALL of the content in the game, except for really crappy theme parks (Work for Jabba the Hutt, win a fishing pole! For use on the desert planet Tatooine!) was player generated basically.
There was an incredible economy going on - it was subject to hyperinflation because there were no money sinks and limitless money generating missions - but it was still pretty amazing.
Scale that concept up - put some actual development talent into it instead of the "minds" behind SOE and you can have an amazing game where players can change the world in meaningful ways.
Why would a business in this environment bother trying to do something like give people what they want when their audience has essentially no other choice when it comes to getting those services except to do without? What are you gonna do, move to Europe to get a better deal on your mobile service?
How, exactly, would a start-up that was more competitive price-wise even begin to get started and compete when they'd have to either have stupendous amounts of cash to build up their own infrastructure or have to rent it from the dominant players in the game already and deal with basically being screwed every which way imaginable if they even began to seem like they might be a threat?
Honestly, your question may as well be: "Why is it that so many people I talk to feel that they should be given a billion dollars tax free, and NONE of the politicians they elect in the US get it?"
I don't mean to be rude or anything but seriously - why would the carriers have to get it when the very laws of the nation governing their conduct are essentially paid for and written by them?
Somewhat ironically, the iPhone got me to switch from ATT to T-Mobile - I had a first gen iPhone on ATT, but the service sucked so abysmally in my area that I jailbroke my phone and used it on T-Mobile, the only other compatible network in my area.
I'm on Sprint now, however - they made me an offer I couldn't refuse (hi, 4 lines for 4 HTC evos, unlimited everything including data/"4g" for under $180 USD/month!). I wish Sprint and T-Mobile had merged - Sprint's massive bandwidth that often goes unused + T-Mobile's excellent customer support would have made for a very competitive 3rd major network.
I can't really speak to the "I *need* this game" argument, but I will speak to one related: "I'd *like* to play this game..."
My take on IP and copyright issues is pretty straightforward: There was a compact between people who created works and people who consumed them. The consumers of those works would agree, in exchange for the work eventually entering the public domain, to give up some of their freedom in order to protect the creators of the work and give them a chance to profit. That's fair, fine, and a good thing.
Now, however, there is essentially no transaction. Works created now will NEVER enter public domain, unless their copyright holder expressly makes it happen. We give up some of our freedom and we get... Nothing in return. Not fair, not fine, and it's a very, very bad thing.
So, for me, I have essentially decided to revert, with companies who don't provide a better license term, to behave as if the whole copyright thing is null and void. I'm not getting what they "owe" me, so I'm not giving them what I "owe" them. Basically it's simply reverting to the state of things before protections were in place because one side won't play fair - why would I make a choice to not play a game or something I didn't pay for when, in essence, the only reason not to play it would be that it isn't fair to an entity that absolutely doesn't care about treating me fairly?
With entities that offer fair terms, I will pay - I've contributed money to OSS projects that I use even though I don't have to, I've overpaid for indie games (some I never even played but I supported the model) that did a "name your price" model, and so on. But I will unashamedly pirate something "I'd *like*" to have if the people offering it put DRM on it or otherwise support the whole perpetual copyright thing that is completely a one-way thing in their favor.
Actually, you're both missing kind of a big point:
The law is the law. If you break it - even for the best reasons - you have to be willing to accept that there may be consequences. Even if the law is eventually struck down, even if the law is blatantly wrong, even if the consequences you face vastly outweigh the "harm" done by violating the law.
Laws are laws. Work to change them if you disagree with them, protest them by breaking them if you want, but be willing to accept that you may face severe consequences if you do.
That isn't quite true. For example, even though we don't know if P==NP or not, people have ideas for what could be or could not be done in either scenario. We don't know *how* to implement a quick factorization algorithm, for example, but we know that if P==NP we *could* eventually figure that algorithm out because we would know that it must exist.
And the "theory that super-symmetry allows awesome stuf" is probably exactly what the original poster was asking about, and I'm in the same boat.
The troll in that thread was the idiot who didn't even read the summary where the answer to the question he had was given. In this case, I know I (and I assume the AC) genuinely want to understand what exactly this means because of a lack of understanding about physics.
The way I'd look at it is this:
If someone discovers a proof that P==NP, then even though we haven't found the practical solutions to some problems (factorization or whatever) yet, it means that there IS at least one "quick" solution. So, that basic knowledge has that potential practical application - even though we don't know how to do it yet we know it CAN be done, if this were so.
If someone discovers that super-symmetry or the Higgs is true or false, what does that mean? What practical applications, even in theory, would come from that discovery? I know that the basic research is important, but I'm curious as to what it might mean. Would we be able to then say "oh, hey, this means that even though we don't know how to do it, artificial gravity is possible" or time travel or whatever kind of thing?
The question then that I would have is "Why don't people who are trying to come up with practical applications act 'as if' the theory were true?"
I guess what I'm getting at (I'm not the AC who started this but I am also in a similar boat, understanding-wise) is: Right now it seems that most physicists THINK this theory is true. If that belief is validated, okay, great, they know they're on the right track, but aren't they already basing a lot of ideas for steps further down the line on the notion that this might be true? And, if that's the case, then aren't people coming up with, or at least thinking about, practical applications based on that assumption?
To me, it seems like the really interesting result would be if this assumption of super-symmetry (or anything else in a particular theory that is widely believed) doesn't actually prove true or doesn't behave like it has to for the theories to be true.
In case I'm being obtuse, I'll use an analogy:
When people were making rockets, they had some theories about what might happen in space, or what might be needed for the rocket to work, or what might happen to the people on a rocket, etc. They behaved "as if" those theories they had were true, or, at least, "as if" the most risky/dangerous versions of their theories were true and designed accordingly. So, they launched rockets, people were in them, and some of their theories panned out, some did not.
What could be built if these theories are true?
And, I am totally 100% behind the idea of learning stuff just to learn it - even if there isn't a practical application, understanding the universe is important.
Bleh, sorry, sick as a dog and on massive doses of NyQuil so I ramble.
I know plenty of people without that kind of common sense who have large amounts of money available, if not readily, readily enough, and almost all of them actually worked for it. Heck, this website probably has had thousands of members who had plenty of money, no ability to understand people what-so-ever, and a desperate desire to find SOMEONE, ANYONE who much get into a relationship with them, however shallow.
Over the years, I've been on dates with geeky guys who were flat out fucking RICH (you wouldn't know it to look at them) who offered to take me on trips to Europe, bought me expensive (and ridiculously inappropriate) things, or just basically made it clear that if I stayed with them I was set for life, often by the 3rd or 4th date. It wasn't even flattering, just kind of fucked up and sad - they really thought that money could solve that whole "interpersonal" thing not working out deal.
Anyway, tl;dr version: Totally seems feasible someone with $200,000 and not a lick of people-based common sense would fall for this.
Yeah, it's always racism when someone can't get a girlfriend. No other option, really.
Couldn't possibly be your implication that women are whores who won't put out to asian men despite being "show the ca$h" and the whole underlying thought process that goes along with such comments.
By doing more than JUST taking classes and getting good grades - pretty much like most other fields where someone either goes on to grad school or works in their field.
Do internships while you're in school - any university that's halfway decent will have internship programs or even just student/faculty match opportunities where everybody can mix, learn a little about the work faculty are doing, and see about working there for credit.
Get a job while you're in school - at the university I work at, at least 90% of the academic computing staff are students, from basic helpdesk up to some (small) network administrators & engineers. My lab currently has 2 CS students working for us - one of them is writing software, the other is helping us design our data transfer systems; while what they make isn't the best I've ever seen, it's definitely better than we'd have otherwise, works well enough, and they're learning some solid skills. So far everyone who has worked for our lab as a student has gotten a job after graduation, and reported back to us that one of the big clinchers was being able to point to the real work they did for us.
What's funny is that most universities are *desperate* for students to take advantage of exactly these opportunities to build up student skillsets (and, of course, do work cheap), but most students either can't be bothered, or simply don't know about all the stuff they could be doing.
I agree on many of the other issues, but with regards to the issuance of permits for gatherings on public space and rules regarding vehicles, there are pretty good reasons.
For gatherings making use of public spaces that are not traditionally used for such things it can cause disruptions in traffic patterns and other uses. I live in Chicago where we have neighborhood festivals all the time, and it can cause major issues if you have disruptions caused by multiple events happening in various places at the same time. It's kind of a way of helping to schedule things to cause the least amount of trouble. Additionally, it's also a way of preventing a group from completely monopolizing a space and ensures that everyone who wants to make use of a space can do so, equally.
With regards to vehicles, those laws are in place to protect vulnerable populations. If you have vehicle codes, you can't pack 50 people into a truck designed to hold 10 and make them hang on for dear life. Why is this important, when someone could just choose to not ride in that vehicle? Because some places would hire workers and have the only way to get to the job site be to either get there on your own (difficult if you haven't got a vehicle) or to take the incredibly dangerous company provided transit. This way, if the company does provide transit, at least it's marginally safe and they can't take advantage of people so desperate for work they'll risk their lives.
Which is not to say we don't have incredibly stupid laws here on other things, as you point out.
So is a conversation in a restraunt, but I don't think we should expect people to be fired for venting about work in their off time. That's a recipe for disaster. People should feel free to express themselves, and as long as it doesn't directly impact their performance then it shouldn't affect their employment. Show me where it has measurably affected her treatment of her students and I'm on board 100%.
I agree that people should feel free to express themselves, but at the same time, I think people should also be ready to accept the consequences of that expression when they do so in a forum that could, potentially, be public. Basically, exercise discretion if they are worried about potential consequences.
Maybe I'm weird, but when I go out with friends and we are venting our frustrations about the day, I do make it a habit to look around and make sure that I'm not about to do so while someone I work with is sitting at the table right behind me, unless I'm willing to accept whatever consequences might come from them overhearing.
With regards to having a rather more, uh, vehement... reaction to this kind of behavior on the teacher's part, I don't disagree that it may be so.
I don't know what the advantages of near universal high-speed access would be, specifically, but I can certainly say that it doesn't seem unlikely that there would be some emergent behavior going on where unexpected benefits can crop up.
The main reason I'm in favor of spending money on something like this is because I think that increasing access and convenience to vast amounts of information can be transformative.
From my own experience, the shift from dial-up to an always-on DSL connection years ago was actually pretty dramatic. With dial-up, I really didn't use the Internet very much unless I pretty much scheduled it - signing on took time, connections would break when I got a phone call (or I'd miss calls, and so couldn't use it when I was expecting an important call) etc. When I shifted to always-on DSL, suddenly I started using the 'net and various sites a LOT. Because of that tiny shift - from needing to dial-in to just needing to launch a browser - my way (and a lot of people's way) of using the 'net changed dramatically.
It's also transformed the landscape of the Internet: Easier connectivity = more people using it for more things = more chance of really neat things coming out of it. Back in the days of dial-up it was a lot harder to have something take off like wildfire because there were simply fewer people on-line and the ones that were used it less.
Another transformative thing is wireless access via my phone. I've got a "4g" phone, and it is quite responsive and I carry it with me most of the time. If I run into something where I have a question, I can quickly find an answer. Or, if I'm out and I have an idea that could be really useful, I can very quickly do a bit of basic research into it, make a note, send an email to ask someone else about it, etc.
Granted, 99% of people will use it for porn and cat videos and facebook, but I think that it's very likely that massive access to mobile broadband will change the way many people interact with the Internet, and that could lead to some really amazing things - just like every other time we've changed the way people are able to use the 'net it's lead to some amazing things.
Anything on the internet that is not explicitly protected by a password is, essentially, public. Nothing is obscure - and saying that there's a difference between some blogspot blog and Wired magazine is not relevant to this particular issue. Sure, the blog will likely be lower ranked than the Wired article, but for a search by name, they'd both likely show up on the first page or three of results. It's public enough. More to the point, this kind of thing (someone finding a supposedly "obscure" comment or post or picture) happens frequently enough that it should be considered reasonable to assume that it will be found rather than it won't. I've had students who come to work for me tell me that they Googled me and found stuff that I wrote in a casual usenet post almost 20 years previous - no kidding, one of my student workers asked me about some posts I wrote in various game groups. Certainly she could expect her students to google her or look her up - they're curious about this person they see every day.
As to the consequences - in the cases that have said you shouldn't expect to be fired for on-line statements about your workplace - it would be interesting to compare the decisions to the question as to whether those on-line statements had an impact on the ability to perform at your job, or on your co-worker's ability to work with you. Harassment, on-line or off, is still grounds to be fired because it creates a hostile environment; this, I think, goes far to creating a hostile environment.
My tone is a little fierce (in other posts replying to you) with this because I actually do work with youth (specifically highly at-risk youth who have often been severely mistreated by adults and other authority figures in their lives), and it is extremely hard for a kid who has been attacked in this way to get past it and still work with the people who transgressed. Maybe I'm giving too little credit, but seeing the rather profound effects that this kind of bullying can have on a vulnerable population - it's just not something I'm willing to chalk up to "shit happens, people need to learn to deal."
I'm also, I admit, way more protective of my young people and young people in general, because there really IS a lot of incredibly awful shit that gets heaped on kids with the idea of "they'll get over it" or "they need to learn to deal with this because the real world is worse." The fact is, though, that 99% of that awful shit that they have to learn to deal with is completely unnecessary and wouldn't need to be dealt with if people who were in positions of responsibility would actually behave like menschen rather than just shrugging and saying that's how it is. I'm certainly not advocating helicopter parenting or a "think of the children!" mindset, nor do I think young people are incapable of handling adversity - it's just that they have enough of that to deal with, and pointless abuse from adults who should know better should be something we can help them not have to put up with.
Except it's a two way street. Her students need to be able to learn from her, and if her behavior impacts her students' ability to learn, she is not doing her job.
The students wouldn't be sitting in the class focusing on the lesson. They would very likely be focusing on how their teacher is probably going to go and humiliate them - publicly - and how other students will make fun of them and call them a rat or whatever it is the teacher has done.
When her students are unable to learn effectively because she has created a hostile environment, she is not able to do her job.
This even happens in workplaces all the time. If someone does something to create a hostile work environment, they are held responsible, even if their work doesn't necessarily suffer. It's because, by being an asshole, they cause other people to have difficulty working with them.
She has not behaved responsibly because she didn't take responsibility for the way her own outrageous behavior might affect other people.
And, to pre-empt any kind of ridiculous "But she can't be responsible for how other people react!" argument: If people respond poorly to behavior that is within the normally accepted bounds of a workplace, then the person responding poorly is culpable. But when someone behaves in a way that transgresses those boundaries, they then become responsible for the reaction of other people because their behavior is poor.
Ex: A co-worker makes an error in a formula on a spreadsheet and I say, "Oh, hey, Bob, this field has an error in it - would you mind fixing it and getting it back to me?" If Bob is then unable to handle that gentle criticism, it's on him because my request was perfectly normal.
Ex 2: A co-worker makes an error in a formula on a spreadsheet and I say, "Oh, Bob, you are a fucking moron. How can you be SO FUCKING DUMB? Hey everyone, Bob fucked up this spreadsheet!" and then I blog about it, naming Bob, the company, and just talking about what a drooling moron Bob is, how he's sub-human filth, etc... Yeah, if Bob has a poor reaction to that and can't work with me, then his reaction is entirely my fault because my behavior was transgressive.
Teachers publicly humiliating and insulting students, by name, in a public forum that reaches far past the classroom, is transgressive. If her students are not able to work with her, it's her fault.
The problem is that if the students did the same thing writing about her and it was found, they'd get in trouble, with some explanation along the lines that by publicly insulting their teacher they were making her an object of ridicule and diminishing her ability to teach. I've seen that happen.
By publicly naming and insulting her students in this way, she's being a bully. She's also opening them up to tons of harassment and humiliation at school, and essentially diminishing THEIR ability to learn by turning that environment hostile.
There's also a difference in power here. She's a teacher, and so has authority of position, and also an adult, so has emotional resources and (supposed) maturity that her students simply do not have. It's about like a grown man punching a 10 year old boy in the face - that 10 year old boy is NOT going to have the resources to deal with that situation.
It *is* abusing her students because her students are in no way, shape, or form able to, by themselves, deal with the situation. It makes their learning environment needlessly hostile and opens them up to more abuse.
I work with people I don't like or respect, many of whom do not like or respect me. However, if I went to my blog and wrote insults about them and put their full names on them, I would fully expect consequences at work. And that's with people who, at least, I don't necessarily have authority over and who are, in theory, at the same level of emotional development as I am.
Now, she may be capable of instructing people she doesn't like or respect, but who cares about her? Can the kids learn from someone who has publicly humiliated them? From someone they know hates them? Do you think the kids are saying, "Well, my teacher thinks I'm a drooling moron who is rat-like and stinky, but hey, it's time to focus on maths so that's what I'm going to do"?
You're also completely missing the point by trying to compare what these kids are having to deal with to what you have to deal with at work. You aren't a child, you aren't being publicly humiliated by someone who has vastly more authority than you do - it's just entirely different.
Please explain how "rat-like" is remotely corrective for any student who is not, literally, behaving like a rodent.
You won't be able to because it's not. It's just an attack with absolutely zero corrective, constructive value.
Please explain how doing this correction on a blog, as a way of blowing off steam, is remotely corrective.
You won't be able to because it's not. It's, again, just a string of attacks with no corrective value, and intended to humiliate rather than instruct.
Please explain how these kids were being disruptive or misbehaving in such a way to warrant that kind of commentary about them.
You won't be able to because you don't know what the hell they were doing, and all of her comments were just personal attacks.
I've had some truly awful teachers in my life. Some teachers would use a cutting remark to restore order or take the wind out of a disruptive student - that's fine. But some - many - of the worst teachers I ran across seemed to truly hate their students and want to use their position of authority to inflict pain. That's what this woman is doing - because there is no useful purpose to what she's doing here at all. None. Not a whit.
I don't disagree with you that students these days tend to be coddled too much in some ways (and completely have their basic rights trampled in others), and that there are valid ways to shame them into shaping up. This is not one of them.
It would be rather different if these weren't children - if they were adults, I could see them having the emotional resources and maturity to approach her on more of an equal footing. But there is such a vast, vast developmental gulf here and a massive power imbalance that it's simply wrong.
I will admit that I can be a total bitch to people from time to time - I'm sarcastic, snarky, and often assume that people should just suck it up and deal. However, I don't do that kind of thing to people who are essentially unable to respond back because that's just flat out cruel.
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That's why you don't make the confirmations a yes/no box on big things like that.
You make them a text box where it says you have to type a specific message that basically requires you *think* before you send it. For example, requiring someone to type "SEND THIS MESSAGE" to actually send out a message over the warning network would probably have gotten them to think twice.
I mean, even World of Warcraft requires that you type "DELETE" in a text field in order to delete a character or rare item - you'd think an emergency warning system would be better designed.
The ID10T error was 99% on the end of the people who designed the system such that a mistake like this is possible, and 1% on the end of the person who clicked "ok."
Being able to make their bed raise/lower, change a channel, turn on/off/up/down the AC, close shades, turn on/off the television/radio, change channels/stations, surf the web, play some games, chat (slowly) with others online, and any number of other uses would be pretty huge I'd think. And easy to connect to a computer. And would lead to big QoL improvements; there's a pretty GIGANTIC difference between being able to do something yourself and needing to ask a caretaker to do it for you.
I've a friend who is severely handicapped (thalidomide) and is 90% confined to a wheel chair as a result. He has little devices his dad made for him that allow him to do some tasks he previously had to ask for help on. We met through a role-playing gamer's group, and when we all brainstormed a way to set him up with a gadget that would let him pick and roll his own dice he was pretty freaking happy about it because it meant he no longer had to ask someone to do it for him.
Hell, even in my own life, and I am fortunately quite able bodied, when I've had times where I wasn't able to do things for myself I would often choose to suffer in silence rather than ask a caretaker to do something for me because I didn't want to bother them. This can be huge.
It's quite doable. Take a lesson from the real world, where we have billions of people all trying to change the world (to some extent).
Star Wars: Galaxies has a really flexible (albeit buggy as hell) system of professions and virtually no content at all back when it launched. So, it was a sandbox, basically.
Yet you had players having a massive impact on their servers - crafters would set up business empires employing dozens (or, in some cases, hundreds and maybe up to a thousand) people, politician classes would build and manage player run cities. ALL of the content in the game, except for really crappy theme parks (Work for Jabba the Hutt, win a fishing pole! For use on the desert planet Tatooine!) was player generated basically.
There was an incredible economy going on - it was subject to hyperinflation because there were no money sinks and limitless money generating missions - but it was still pretty amazing.
Scale that concept up - put some actual development talent into it instead of the "minds" behind SOE and you can have an amazing game where players can change the world in meaningful ways.
Because what are we going to do, move to Europe to get a better deal on wireless?
The have a captive audience here and the carriers have huge warchests to make sure that strong consumer protections aren't enacted.
Why would a business in this environment bother trying to do something like give people what they want when their audience has essentially no other choice when it comes to getting those services except to do without? What are you gonna do, move to Europe to get a better deal on your mobile service?
How, exactly, would a start-up that was more competitive price-wise even begin to get started and compete when they'd have to either have stupendous amounts of cash to build up their own infrastructure or have to rent it from the dominant players in the game already and deal with basically being screwed every which way imaginable if they even began to seem like they might be a threat?
Honestly, your question may as well be: "Why is it that so many people I talk to feel that they should be given a billion dollars tax free, and NONE of the politicians they elect in the US get it?"
I don't mean to be rude or anything but seriously - why would the carriers have to get it when the very laws of the nation governing their conduct are essentially paid for and written by them?
Somewhat ironically, the iPhone got me to switch from ATT to T-Mobile - I had a first gen iPhone on ATT, but the service sucked so abysmally in my area that I jailbroke my phone and used it on T-Mobile, the only other compatible network in my area.
I'm on Sprint now, however - they made me an offer I couldn't refuse (hi, 4 lines for 4 HTC evos, unlimited everything including data/"4g" for under $180 USD/month!). I wish Sprint and T-Mobile had merged - Sprint's massive bandwidth that often goes unused + T-Mobile's excellent customer support would have made for a very competitive 3rd major network.
Depending on the question, yes, yes it does.
I can't really speak to the "I *need* this game" argument, but I will speak to one related: "I'd *like* to play this game..."
My take on IP and copyright issues is pretty straightforward: There was a compact between people who created works and people who consumed them. The consumers of those works would agree, in exchange for the work eventually entering the public domain, to give up some of their freedom in order to protect the creators of the work and give them a chance to profit. That's fair, fine, and a good thing.
Now, however, there is essentially no transaction. Works created now will NEVER enter public domain, unless their copyright holder expressly makes it happen. We give up some of our freedom and we get... Nothing in return. Not fair, not fine, and it's a very, very bad thing.
So, for me, I have essentially decided to revert, with companies who don't provide a better license term, to behave as if the whole copyright thing is null and void. I'm not getting what they "owe" me, so I'm not giving them what I "owe" them. Basically it's simply reverting to the state of things before protections were in place because one side won't play fair - why would I make a choice to not play a game or something I didn't pay for when, in essence, the only reason not to play it would be that it isn't fair to an entity that absolutely doesn't care about treating me fairly?
With entities that offer fair terms, I will pay - I've contributed money to OSS projects that I use even though I don't have to, I've overpaid for indie games (some I never even played but I supported the model) that did a "name your price" model, and so on. But I will unashamedly pirate something "I'd *like*" to have if the people offering it put DRM on it or otherwise support the whole perpetual copyright thing that is completely a one-way thing in their favor.
Actually, you're both missing kind of a big point:
The law is the law. If you break it - even for the best reasons - you have to be willing to accept that there may be consequences. Even if the law is eventually struck down, even if the law is blatantly wrong, even if the consequences you face vastly outweigh the "harm" done by violating the law.
Laws are laws. Work to change them if you disagree with them, protest them by breaking them if you want, but be willing to accept that you may face severe consequences if you do.
Compare the suicide rate of Foxconn workers to the suicide rate of other Chinese. Or to college students in the US.
Then get back to me and talk about it.
There is a rather large difference between writing a story about something being done and something actually being done.
That isn't quite true. For example, even though we don't know if P==NP or not, people have ideas for what could be or could not be done in either scenario. We don't know *how* to implement a quick factorization algorithm, for example, but we know that if P==NP we *could* eventually figure that algorithm out because we would know that it must exist.
And the "theory that super-symmetry allows awesome stuf" is probably exactly what the original poster was asking about, and I'm in the same boat.
The troll in that thread was the idiot who didn't even read the summary where the answer to the question he had was given. In this case, I know I (and I assume the AC) genuinely want to understand what exactly this means because of a lack of understanding about physics.
The way I'd look at it is this:
If someone discovers a proof that P==NP, then even though we haven't found the practical solutions to some problems (factorization or whatever) yet, it means that there IS at least one "quick" solution. So, that basic knowledge has that potential practical application - even though we don't know how to do it yet we know it CAN be done, if this were so.
If someone discovers that super-symmetry or the Higgs is true or false, what does that mean? What practical applications, even in theory, would come from that discovery? I know that the basic research is important, but I'm curious as to what it might mean. Would we be able to then say "oh, hey, this means that even though we don't know how to do it, artificial gravity is possible" or time travel or whatever kind of thing?
The question then that I would have is "Why don't people who are trying to come up with practical applications act 'as if' the theory were true?"
I guess what I'm getting at (I'm not the AC who started this but I am also in a similar boat, understanding-wise) is: Right now it seems that most physicists THINK this theory is true. If that belief is validated, okay, great, they know they're on the right track, but aren't they already basing a lot of ideas for steps further down the line on the notion that this might be true? And, if that's the case, then aren't people coming up with, or at least thinking about, practical applications based on that assumption?
To me, it seems like the really interesting result would be if this assumption of super-symmetry (or anything else in a particular theory that is widely believed) doesn't actually prove true or doesn't behave like it has to for the theories to be true.
In case I'm being obtuse, I'll use an analogy:
When people were making rockets, they had some theories about what might happen in space, or what might be needed for the rocket to work, or what might happen to the people on a rocket, etc. They behaved "as if" those theories they had were true, or, at least, "as if" the most risky/dangerous versions of their theories were true and designed accordingly. So, they launched rockets, people were in them, and some of their theories panned out, some did not.
What could be built if these theories are true?
And, I am totally 100% behind the idea of learning stuff just to learn it - even if there isn't a practical application, understanding the universe is important.
Bleh, sorry, sick as a dog and on massive doses of NyQuil so I ramble.
They have not made PowerBooks for years.
I know plenty of people without that kind of common sense who have large amounts of money available, if not readily, readily enough, and almost all of them actually worked for it.
Heck, this website probably has had thousands of members who had plenty of money, no ability to understand people what-so-ever, and a desperate desire to find SOMEONE, ANYONE who much get into a relationship with them, however shallow.
Over the years, I've been on dates with geeky guys who were flat out fucking RICH (you wouldn't know it to look at them) who offered to take me on trips to Europe, bought me expensive (and ridiculously inappropriate) things, or just basically made it clear that if I stayed with them I was set for life, often by the 3rd or 4th date. It wasn't even flattering, just kind of fucked up and sad - they really thought that money could solve that whole "interpersonal" thing not working out deal.
Anyway, tl;dr version: Totally seems feasible someone with $200,000 and not a lick of people-based common sense would fall for this.
Yeah, it's always racism when someone can't get a girlfriend. No other option, really.
Couldn't possibly be your implication that women are whores who won't put out to asian men despite being "show the ca$h" and the whole underlying thought process that goes along with such comments.
Nope. Gotta be racism.
By doing more than JUST taking classes and getting good grades - pretty much like most other fields where someone either goes on to grad school or works in their field.
Do internships while you're in school - any university that's halfway decent will have internship programs or even just student/faculty match opportunities where everybody can mix, learn a little about the work faculty are doing, and see about working there for credit.
Get a job while you're in school - at the university I work at, at least 90% of the academic computing staff are students, from basic helpdesk up to some (small) network administrators & engineers. My lab currently has 2 CS students working for us - one of them is writing software, the other is helping us design our data transfer systems; while what they make isn't the best I've ever seen, it's definitely better than we'd have otherwise, works well enough, and they're learning some solid skills. So far everyone who has worked for our lab as a student has gotten a job after graduation, and reported back to us that one of the big clinchers was being able to point to the real work they did for us.
What's funny is that most universities are *desperate* for students to take advantage of exactly these opportunities to build up student skillsets (and, of course, do work cheap), but most students either can't be bothered, or simply don't know about all the stuff they could be doing.
I agree on many of the other issues, but with regards to the issuance of permits for gatherings on public space and rules regarding vehicles, there are pretty good reasons.
For gatherings making use of public spaces that are not traditionally used for such things it can cause disruptions in traffic patterns and other uses. I live in Chicago where we have neighborhood festivals all the time, and it can cause major issues if you have disruptions caused by multiple events happening in various places at the same time. It's kind of a way of helping to schedule things to cause the least amount of trouble. Additionally, it's also a way of preventing a group from completely monopolizing a space and ensures that everyone who wants to make use of a space can do so, equally.
With regards to vehicles, those laws are in place to protect vulnerable populations. If you have vehicle codes, you can't pack 50 people into a truck designed to hold 10 and make them hang on for dear life. Why is this important, when someone could just choose to not ride in that vehicle? Because some places would hire workers and have the only way to get to the job site be to either get there on your own (difficult if you haven't got a vehicle) or to take the incredibly dangerous company provided transit. This way, if the company does provide transit, at least it's marginally safe and they can't take advantage of people so desperate for work they'll risk their lives.
Which is not to say we don't have incredibly stupid laws here on other things, as you point out.
So is a conversation in a restraunt, but I don't think we should expect people to be fired for venting about work in their off time. That's a recipe for disaster. People should feel free to express themselves, and as long as it doesn't directly impact their performance then it shouldn't affect their employment. Show me where it has measurably affected her treatment of her students and I'm on board 100%.
I agree that people should feel free to express themselves, but at the same time, I think people should also be ready to accept the consequences of that expression when they do so in a forum that could, potentially, be public. Basically, exercise discretion if they are worried about potential consequences.
Maybe I'm weird, but when I go out with friends and we are venting our frustrations about the day, I do make it a habit to look around and make sure that I'm not about to do so while someone I work with is sitting at the table right behind me, unless I'm willing to accept whatever consequences might come from them overhearing.
With regards to having a rather more, uh, vehement... reaction to this kind of behavior on the teacher's part, I don't disagree that it may be so.
I don't know what the advantages of near universal high-speed access would be, specifically, but I can certainly say that it doesn't seem unlikely that there would be some emergent behavior going on where unexpected benefits can crop up.
The main reason I'm in favor of spending money on something like this is because I think that increasing access and convenience to vast amounts of information can be transformative.
From my own experience, the shift from dial-up to an always-on DSL connection years ago was actually pretty dramatic. With dial-up, I really didn't use the Internet very much unless I pretty much scheduled it - signing on took time, connections would break when I got a phone call (or I'd miss calls, and so couldn't use it when I was expecting an important call) etc. When I shifted to always-on DSL, suddenly I started using the 'net and various sites a LOT. Because of that tiny shift - from needing to dial-in to just needing to launch a browser - my way (and a lot of people's way) of using the 'net changed dramatically.
It's also transformed the landscape of the Internet: Easier connectivity = more people using it for more things = more chance of really neat things coming out of it. Back in the days of dial-up it was a lot harder to have something take off like wildfire because there were simply fewer people on-line and the ones that were used it less.
Another transformative thing is wireless access via my phone. I've got a "4g" phone, and it is quite responsive and I carry it with me most of the time. If I run into something where I have a question, I can quickly find an answer. Or, if I'm out and I have an idea that could be really useful, I can very quickly do a bit of basic research into it, make a note, send an email to ask someone else about it, etc.
Granted, 99% of people will use it for porn and cat videos and facebook, but I think that it's very likely that massive access to mobile broadband will change the way many people interact with the Internet, and that could lead to some really amazing things - just like every other time we've changed the way people are able to use the 'net it's lead to some amazing things.
Anything on the internet that is not explicitly protected by a password is, essentially, public. Nothing is obscure - and saying that there's a difference between some blogspot blog and Wired magazine is not relevant to this particular issue. Sure, the blog will likely be lower ranked than the Wired article, but for a search by name, they'd both likely show up on the first page or three of results. It's public enough. More to the point, this kind of thing (someone finding a supposedly "obscure" comment or post or picture) happens frequently enough that it should be considered reasonable to assume that it will be found rather than it won't. I've had students who come to work for me tell me that they Googled me and found stuff that I wrote in a casual usenet post almost 20 years previous - no kidding, one of my student workers asked me about some posts I wrote in various game groups. Certainly she could expect her students to google her or look her up - they're curious about this person they see every day.
As to the consequences - in the cases that have said you shouldn't expect to be fired for on-line statements about your workplace - it would be interesting to compare the decisions to the question as to whether those on-line statements had an impact on the ability to perform at your job, or on your co-worker's ability to work with you. Harassment, on-line or off, is still grounds to be fired because it creates a hostile environment; this, I think, goes far to creating a hostile environment.
My tone is a little fierce (in other posts replying to you) with this because I actually do work with youth (specifically highly at-risk youth who have often been severely mistreated by adults and other authority figures in their lives), and it is extremely hard for a kid who has been attacked in this way to get past it and still work with the people who transgressed. Maybe I'm giving too little credit, but seeing the rather profound effects that this kind of bullying can have on a vulnerable population - it's just not something I'm willing to chalk up to "shit happens, people need to learn to deal."
I'm also, I admit, way more protective of my young people and young people in general, because there really IS a lot of incredibly awful shit that gets heaped on kids with the idea of "they'll get over it" or "they need to learn to deal with this because the real world is worse." The fact is, though, that 99% of that awful shit that they have to learn to deal with is completely unnecessary and wouldn't need to be dealt with if people who were in positions of responsibility would actually behave like menschen rather than just shrugging and saying that's how it is. I'm certainly not advocating helicopter parenting or a "think of the children!" mindset, nor do I think young people are incapable of handling adversity - it's just that they have enough of that to deal with, and pointless abuse from adults who should know better should be something we can help them not have to put up with.
Except it's a two way street. Her students need to be able to learn from her, and if her behavior impacts her students' ability to learn, she is not doing her job.
The students wouldn't be sitting in the class focusing on the lesson. They would very likely be focusing on how their teacher is probably going to go and humiliate them - publicly - and how other students will make fun of them and call them a rat or whatever it is the teacher has done.
When her students are unable to learn effectively because she has created a hostile environment, she is not able to do her job.
This even happens in workplaces all the time. If someone does something to create a hostile work environment, they are held responsible, even if their work doesn't necessarily suffer. It's because, by being an asshole, they cause other people to have difficulty working with them.
She has not behaved responsibly because she didn't take responsibility for the way her own outrageous behavior might affect other people.
And, to pre-empt any kind of ridiculous "But she can't be responsible for how other people react!" argument: If people respond poorly to behavior that is within the normally accepted bounds of a workplace, then the person responding poorly is culpable. But when someone behaves in a way that transgresses those boundaries, they then become responsible for the reaction of other people because their behavior is poor.
Ex: A co-worker makes an error in a formula on a spreadsheet and I say, "Oh, hey, Bob, this field has an error in it - would you mind fixing it and getting it back to me?" If Bob is then unable to handle that gentle criticism, it's on him because my request was perfectly normal.
Ex 2: A co-worker makes an error in a formula on a spreadsheet and I say, "Oh, Bob, you are a fucking moron. How can you be SO FUCKING DUMB? Hey everyone, Bob fucked up this spreadsheet!" and then I blog about it, naming Bob, the company, and just talking about what a drooling moron Bob is, how he's sub-human filth, etc... Yeah, if Bob has a poor reaction to that and can't work with me, then his reaction is entirely my fault because my behavior was transgressive.
Teachers publicly humiliating and insulting students, by name, in a public forum that reaches far past the classroom, is transgressive. If her students are not able to work with her, it's her fault.
The problem is that if the students did the same thing writing about her and it was found, they'd get in trouble, with some explanation along the lines that by publicly insulting their teacher they were making her an object of ridicule and diminishing her ability to teach. I've seen that happen.
By publicly naming and insulting her students in this way, she's being a bully. She's also opening them up to tons of harassment and humiliation at school, and essentially diminishing THEIR ability to learn by turning that environment hostile.
There's also a difference in power here. She's a teacher, and so has authority of position, and also an adult, so has emotional resources and (supposed) maturity that her students simply do not have. It's about like a grown man punching a 10 year old boy in the face - that 10 year old boy is NOT going to have the resources to deal with that situation.
It *is* abusing her students because her students are in no way, shape, or form able to, by themselves, deal with the situation. It makes their learning environment needlessly hostile and opens them up to more abuse.
I work with people I don't like or respect, many of whom do not like or respect me. However, if I went to my blog and wrote insults about them and put their full names on them, I would fully expect consequences at work. And that's with people who, at least, I don't necessarily have authority over and who are, in theory, at the same level of emotional development as I am.
Now, she may be capable of instructing people she doesn't like or respect, but who cares about her? Can the kids learn from someone who has publicly humiliated them? From someone they know hates them? Do you think the kids are saying, "Well, my teacher thinks I'm a drooling moron who is rat-like and stinky, but hey, it's time to focus on maths so that's what I'm going to do"?
You're also completely missing the point by trying to compare what these kids are having to deal with to what you have to deal with at work. You aren't a child, you aren't being publicly humiliated by someone who has vastly more authority than you do - it's just entirely different.
Please explain how "rat-like" is remotely corrective for any student who is not, literally, behaving like a rodent.
You won't be able to because it's not. It's just an attack with absolutely zero corrective, constructive value.
Please explain how doing this correction on a blog, as a way of blowing off steam, is remotely corrective.
You won't be able to because it's not. It's, again, just a string of attacks with no corrective value, and intended to humiliate rather than instruct.
Please explain how these kids were being disruptive or misbehaving in such a way to warrant that kind of commentary about them.
You won't be able to because you don't know what the hell they were doing, and all of her comments were just personal attacks.
I've had some truly awful teachers in my life. Some teachers would use a cutting remark to restore order or take the wind out of a disruptive student - that's fine. But some - many - of the worst teachers I ran across seemed to truly hate their students and want to use their position of authority to inflict pain. That's what this woman is doing - because there is no useful purpose to what she's doing here at all. None. Not a whit.
I don't disagree with you that students these days tend to be coddled too much in some ways (and completely have their basic rights trampled in others), and that there are valid ways to shame them into shaping up. This is not one of them.
It would be rather different if these weren't children - if they were adults, I could see them having the emotional resources and maturity to approach her on more of an equal footing. But there is such a vast, vast developmental gulf here and a massive power imbalance that it's simply wrong.
I will admit that I can be a total bitch to people from time to time - I'm sarcastic, snarky, and often assume that people should just suck it up and deal. However, I don't do that kind of thing to people who are essentially unable to respond back because that's just flat out cruel.