I recently bought the complete Civ IV specifically because it has no DRM what-so-ever, I like the game, and want to support further development. When I heard Civ V was going to have DRM like this, I sent a note to Firaxis saying that I certainly wasn't going to be buying the game if it's crippled by DRM.
Let them know that it's backfiring and will actually cost them sales.
Except that intellectual property laws were designed to protect the information, not the physical container - they were to stop other people from claiming the work as their own, or from simply copying it and publishing it on their own, without the copyright holder getting their cut.
I think you might be confusing IP laws with laws having to do with theft of a physical item - not uncommon since so many people refer to infringement as stealing, but there can be many ways "stealing" can apply without needing to involve a physical item.
To make it clear:
Going into a bookshop and physically taking every copy of a book that is there and reselling them: Theft Copying the information in a book (or whatever) and then making multiple copies to resell: Infringement
The IP laws were not about physical objects, and even back in ye olden days, people knew that information was not a physical item, as you say. There's no delusion, just lazy language.
I think the only near universal cure for all kinds of blindness would be direct connection to the brain - and even then, if the optical processing capability of the brain is destroyed/never developed, some people would still not be able to benefit.
So, as you point out, the fact that the mechanics for blindness differ in many ways, so, too, must the treatments used to correct it, which of course means it'll be highly specific.
Well, it's certainly small for a later stage clinical trial prior to deployment of the treatment, but it's about right for an early trial of efficacy.
With gene therapy you don't want to just start pumping people full of it - there have been some less than fortunate situations in the past, so limiting the initial trial is a wise choice.
Now that this demonstrates that there may be some beneficial effect without horrific side effects, they can ramp it up to a larger trial size and go from there in good conscience.
While I'm not remotely theistic, there's rather a difference between the use of tech to accomplish something and that same thing being (allegedly) accomplished without tech. People who are prone to take the bible and other works as, well, holy writ, are just going to say, "Sure, but Jesus did it without a board."
To give a less charged example, which one of these things is amazing:
Person jumps out of a plane, falls 10,000 feet, lands with minimal to no injury using a parachute
- or -
Person jumps out of a plane, falls 10,000 feet, lands with minimal to no injury yet was not using a parachute or the parachute failed to open
While I would likely attribute the second case to pure luck, it would still seem pretty amazing, and anyone but a complete cynic would likely be far more impressed despite the two activities (falling from 10,000 feet and living) being essentially the same.
For what it's worth, I would actually compare some of modern day humans to the ancient Greek Gods (albeit without the immortality) - we can watch things at vast distances, fly through the skies using various modes of transit, cause tremendous destruction at a whim, provide various draughts and unguents that can cure illness, speak to people on the other side of the world using devices, use other devices to see, hear or otherwise sense and manipulate things that are beyond the capabilities of normal humans to do alone, etc.
If some physicists are correct and black holes are (to us) miniature universes, then I imagine we'll be creating entire universes in the not too distant future. If we take a less grand approach, and just say that creating new species of life - or entirely new forms of life - is godlike, well, we're pretty much there, too.
Of course, we're also like the ancient Olympians in that we're a bunch of squabbling assholes who bicker endlessly over imagined slights and other nonsense, so with the good comes the bad.
But in any case, we're close to making the old gods look like pikers, that's true.
As to the "the appliance thing was tried" argument you make - tech improves.
For example, laptops and portable computers were tried for a couple of decades and never really took off until they became powerful enough to handle most people's tasks, cheap enough to fit into any budget, and portable in that they didn't weigh 10+ lbs.
In the case of a web consumption appliance, this one isn't tied to your home, is certainly portable, has a better UI, and is more or less affordable. WebTV wasn't any of those things, if I remember right, and the web itself wasn't really mature enough that it merited an appliance class of gadget when it came out, IMO.
Personally, I think there's plenty of room for open devices, closed devices, whatever kind of devices. Apple's product meets some people's needs, great. Android products meet other people's needs, great. What's the point of having a holy war over it?
I'd be willing to be generous and make it apply for the life of the author given that lifespans are much longer now, and the giant archive that is the internet means that people will continually re-discover a work during an author's lifetime.
However, the instant the copyright gets transferred to anyone else - person, corporation, alien from tau ceti, ANYONE but the original copyright holder - the clock starts and they have 10 years before it goes into the public domain. And on lawsuits alleging copyright infringement, make a 3-strikes rule: If you bring infringement suits and lose 3 times (no matter how many times you win) the copyright ceases to be valid immediately. This will make copyright holders exceptionally cautious about who they choose to go after.
Further, it should not be possible to re-copyright a work - even if a special edition is made. That's insanity. How does that even work??
It's worse than that: they steal from us, the public.
Back when copyrights were first codified into law, there was a deal:
We, the people, gave protections to people who created works so that they could profit from those works, but in exchange for those protections, the creators of the works agreed to give us, the people, their work after a certain timeframe had passed.
Works may now - if the copyright holder wishes - no longer come into the public domain because copyright holders are corporations who are solely interested in making a profit, and who use their political influence (money) to ensure that copyright NEVER expires.
While it certainly won't give me any kind of legal defense, I simply do not care about copyright because the very basis for it has been completely violated by the holders of that copyright.
If we go back to the original law - life of the initial copyright holder + a small extension past that, and only real-live human beings can be considered to be initial copyright holders - I will give up piracy. Until then, I really don't consider copyright law to be valid because the fundamental premise of it: you get yours, we get ours, has now become "they get theirs, everyone else gets fucked."
Copyright no longer benefits anyone but the copyright holder, and that is NOT what it was intended to do.
So you're saying that the ER was packed to the rafters, but doctors and nurses in Arizona are too fucking stupid to implement a triage system? You were too much of a pussy to stand up to the charge nurse and say, "Hey, that guy is here with a fucking cough, my kid's bleeding like a stuck pig - he gets priority?"
Here's what I think: You're lying. Flat out making things up to try to support the points you want to be true. Except the part about you being a shitty parent, that is - that I can believe completely.
Also, take your Internet Tough Guy "many of us have fought and killed for this country and may be near you HINT HINT" bullshit and get fucked. Sure, you'll say it wasn't a threat, but what, exactly, was the point of your fought and killed/be careful bullshit if not a feeble attempt to intimidate?
There are many ways to handle the issue of illegal immigration. Arizona - unsurprisingly, as it counts braintrusts such as yourself in its population - came up with one of the worst ones. It is NOT just "enforcing federal law" - it's giving cops like good old Sheriff Joe - carte blanche to fuck over anyone they feel like and you know it. You just don't care because it likely won't be you. On top of that, it is going to make any illegal immigrant terrified to go to the police for anything - and that's going to mean that the absolute worst of the worst kinds of illegal immigrants are going to be able to operate with impunity. That means sex slavery, murder, drug trade - you name it, there will be an entire class of people who will now be more likely to avoid seeking help and getting the *real* bad guys busted.
Here's how you fix illegal immigration without completely fucking over the most vulnerable people. It's easy. Ready?
Fine the ever-loving fuck out of the people who hire them. Seize their assets. Ruin them economically. Shift the risk/reward ratio to a point where only someone truly insane would even think of hiring an illegal immigrant. When there are no jobs for illegals there will be a vastly lower incentive to come here. All this law does is, at the absolute *best* hassle a few brown people who are also citizens, and at the absolute worst does nothing to stop illegal immigration, just makes it even more possible for illegal immigrants to be abused by exploiters.
That's more or less how we run things now. Everyone in our group is, for the most part, responsible for their own kit. We had to do a bit of training to make it work, but the results have been wonderful - our group is largely able to solve their own problems, generally doesn't do stupid shit in regards downloads, and we're able to get our work done. The only time we need to interface with IT is when there's some kind of hiccup between our group and theirs. We're happier, they're happier, and everyone is more productive.
You can set different policies for different kinds of users. Users who are in the psychology department and who do sex research *probably* shouldn't be barred from going to websites the net-nanny software calls "sexual or adult content" while people who work in the university accounting office *probably* should. Someone who doesn't work in IT but who's job requires installing and trying out 2-3 bits of software on an average day to see if it's useful for research should *probably* not have their ability to install software on a sandbox computer restricted, while someone who works with very sensitive records in the hospital patient records office probably shouldn't be given the keys to the kingdom. Regardless of whether or not the workplace has 5 or 50,000 (as there are at my university, including students) users, there are usually going to be a fairly limited number of groups people will fall into.
Computers in the workplace are to get work done, not to be the private fiefdom of some control-freak. I don't, actually, care if keeping my computer locked down so I am continually inconvenienced because I can't install software myself or go to websites I need to visit reduces the burden on IT. I'm an educator and a researcher at a university; the purpose of the university is to educate people and do research, not maintain good computers. My needs trump theirs, to put it bluntly, so they need to get the hell out of my way and let me work.
I probably sound like a complete bitch, but the fact of the matter is, I don't enjoy wasting my time or my student's money sitting around with my thumb up my ass because some nitwit admin has decided that he can't be bothered to learn how to do his job well.
And forgive the self reply, but there were other circumstances leading up to this - the guy was a complete martinet, a very stereotypical misanthrope who seemed to be more interested in denying services than in helping people do their work. This was just the last straw.
I love admins like you. I work for a university and our individual desktop machines were - until the policy was changed - "locked down tight" as you say.
So my group spent a week harassing IT by constantly sending emails to them - and to the relevant department heads - asking them to google stuff for us, print it out, and deliver it. We had them over at least 3-4 times a day to install software we wanted to test out. We called them about every. Single. Issue. We could come up with.
Five days of this and we were given admin privileges, the net-nanny software was removed, and the admin who came up with the "lock it down tight" policy was sent on to greener pastures because, after all, the purpose of computers in the workplace is to get work done, not to just avoid getting them infected with malware.
I'm 5'7" - a little on the tall side, I guess, for a woman my age.
I have had co-workers - people I have worked alongside for *years* guess my height at anywhere between 5'4" and 6'. As for age, I'm 38 but I have people who're older than me guessing I'm in my early to mid-20's, while people who are in their mid-20's guess I'm in my early to mid 40's.
I've had people tell me they were "shocked" to hear me describe myself as brunette because they thought my hair was black, or blonde, depending on the time of year. And people have also said I look either Italian (read: dusky) or Irish (read: freckles and pale) again depending on the time of year.
Given that people who work with me 20-40 hours/week have such a hard time describing me, I am actually impressed that the height and age-range of the attacker in question is so narrow.
Personally, I think SETI should be looking for patterns in everything that's out there - patterns that might indicate intelligent life - and I don't just mean via radio/light/whatever transmissions.
It is not unreasonable to think that in 1000 years humanity would be capable - assuming we survive and continue to advance at even a fraction of the speed we are advancing today - of projects that would essentially engineer our solar system to make it over into a place that is more conducive and efficient for human (or trans-human, if you go that way) life. Certainly in 10,000 years it isn't unreasonable to think - again assuming survival and any kind of advancement - that we wouldn't be capable of essentially gardening our sun to make it much, much more stable than it already is, extend the lifecycle of it, etc.
Let's look for that kind of change - stars that simply should not, by our theories, actually look like they do. On a bigger scale, areas of the universe that seem to have been tended or tuned to better serve life's (whatever that life is) purpose. We may not be able to recognize it as anything but a random pattern, but I'd say that it seems pretty reasonable to think, given our single example of an intelligent and technologically capable species, that intelligent and technologically capable life elsewhere in the universe might decide to modify its environment to better suit it as we have ours. Given how early we are in our own technological development it makes sense to look for the evidence left behind from species far in advance of ours (as it's astronomically unlikely they'll be at or near our level of advancement).
Radio signals are great and all, but that's not the only way to prove there's something out there. Let's look for sources that are in disequilibrium and figure out how that's happening. At the worse we find nothing, middle of the road we find things that are perfectly natural but that our theories don't account for, and best case we find some truly amazing stuff.
Is it going to be multi-touch capable and actually responsive, rather than barely touch aware and laggy?
I have yet to see a piece of hardware running android that doesn't feel slow to the point of non-response or that is just as comfortable to use as the UI on my iPhone. Anyone recommend a device running android that doesn't feel like a sluggish piece of poop?
Re:The end of homebrew
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The Apple Two
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· Score: 1
People who want to tinker can still tinker - far more than they ever could back in the days before Apple. The barrier to entry for tinkers who want to make something useful is much, much lower because there's so much basic kit that they can buy and modify to their heart's content.
What has changed is that there's a whole "new" class of people who get involved with computing - people who use the computers as tools rather than hobbies, and who consume products rather than create them.
Still plenty (more, probably, than in the olden days) of tinkers out there, but their portion of the population of people who use computers has been dwarfed by the consumer class. Look at open source software and hardware, MAKE groups, and stuff like that - it's still going on, just less prominently than back in the day.
At a basic level, using simple parts rather than IC boards, is wonderful for learning, but once people get past the basics they want to use things that are actually relevant to the world today. The only difference is that back then you didn't use libraries or ICs or anything else off the shelf because it didn't exist, so the basic parts *were* as advanced as it got, for the most part.
Re:CmdrTaco drags big brass ones along the ground
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iPad Review
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· Score: 1
You're totally right.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is *obviously* a flawed product because my mother - who only uses the computer to send email and occasionally go to websites if someone gives her the URL - doesn't see the need for it. It couldn't possibly be that it was designed to appeal to people with much different desires than my mother's. Therefore Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a complete failure.
I honestly am not sure who the market for the iPad is, but I can safely say that the typical slashdotter is NOT a member of that group, and I have no problem what-so-ever with the idea that some products are, in fact, actually targeted to appeal to certain demographics. To claim that it is possible to develop a device that does anything beyond an EXTREMELY simple task that will NOT be aimed at any particular chunk of a market is just ridiculous.
I can say that I know of at least one potential market for this thing: We are considering using a couple for one of our studies - reasonably light-weight, responsive touch interface, easy to program for, our participants will do minimal typing and only use it for 15 or so minutes at a time, and the wireless will let us synch the data collected. None of the limitations that other people have mentioned will apply. So maybe *I'm* the target market, which is really silly because I don't think there are a million people like me and my lab in the world, which is about how many they'd need to make this thing a staggering success.
making them think u will get physical is violence too, but i get what u mean. but u gotta be ready to put them down if they do try to hit u. even with adults u should never swing first, will get u out of a LOT of legal trouble believe me.
"For the most part" food prices are set by the market... Except for massive subsidies for staple foods, secondary factors like welfare and foodstamps enabling people who can't afford food to have food, etc. There are also varying tiers of food as far as pricing goes - I can eat incredibly cheaply (and healthfully) if I'm willing to go through some effort and cook with various beans and cheap veggies, or I can spend staggering sums - more than some people's monthly wage in the US - on a single meal.
The market for vital organs is different. If you do allow people to sell their kidneys, would you also provide funds so that poor people could compete on equal footing with the rich when it comes to getting a life-saving transplant, so there's rough parity in opportunity to survive, much like there is with food? There also aren't tiers of organs - it's pretty much one-size-fits-all - so in the case of a free market for vital organs you wind up with the rich getting to live and the poor getting nothing, as opposed to the food situation where the rich can eat like kings and the poor can get enough (usually) to survive, but they aren't going to have surf n' turf every night.
(And, I'm aware that people are still hungry in the US despite welfare programs, soup kitchens and other programs designed to lend a hand - as another poster said, it's amazing to me that we pay to have food destroyed in this country when there are still hungry people here and elsewhere - but I wanted to point out how food markets are radically different from organ markets).
Also, I think we actually agree to some extent on the general idea of how it should be handled - but differ in one important detail: Adults don't hit first, period. If it comes to it, if they hit you first, THEN you can hit back, but not before.
I'm sure it's tempting to want to kick someone's ass when they sorely deserve it, but the fact of the matter is, it's still unfair to do it when they aren't a credible threat and won't *actually* do anything but talk. We are agreed that they need to be shown how pathetic their behavior is - but the adult must ABSOLUTELY not be the first to lay hands.
Wrong answer. You don't lay hands on someone unless they are a direct threat/self-defense. Using physical violence as an adult upon a child as a way to stop bullying is just flat out fucking retarded. And really, "they heal quick!" are you fucking retarded?
Here's how you fix a bully: Shame them. Humiliate them. Make it clear to them - and most importantly, to them and EVERYONE they think looks up to them - just what a pathetic coward they actually are. And that can be done without actually laying hands on them. Try this one on for size:
Bigger adult goes up to bully, gets right in his face: "So you like picking on people who are smaller than you, huh? Well, how about you prove what a man you are by taking me on, right now? Get up, take a swing - let's see what that gets you, you pathetic child. Let's see if you're man enough to take a shot at me." If they start to threaten you or talk, say "Shut the fuck up and hit me, you little bitch!" I mean, really get in their fce and back them down, hard. When they inevitably back off - calling you crazy or saying that you're lucky they won't take a swing, follow it up, DEMAND that they take a shot at you. Don't let them off the hook. Make them back down, and when they do, explain to them exactly how they just demonstrated that they are a pathetic coward - explain it to them AND any of their cronies. Completely humiliate them.
Then explain how if their previous victim says they even looked at him funny you'll make damn sure they won't be able to do it again. Finally, tell them to get off the bus. I mean it - explain to them that they are no longer allowed to be in the same space as you and your friend.
You won't need to hit them, you'll completely humiliate them, and best of all you won't have to run the risk of going to jail for beating up a child. If they do swing at you - and they won't, but if they do - then it's self defense, and THEN it's justified.
I never said tell them nicely to stop doing it - I say give them a dose of the absolute terror that they try to instill in their victims. But you don't need to resort to violence to do it - that just reinforces the idea that might makes right and doesn't actually *scare* them. Make them scared - and believe me, the whole mind game of making them think you're going to tear them apart is much Much MUCH more terrifying than anything you'd actually physically do to them. In his mind you've just beaten the everloving shit out of him; in reality the worst you'd do is grab him by the collar and push him away/off the bus or whatever. One of those will stay with him for a long time, the other will make him realize that even if someone does fight back he isn't going to be hurt.
Slashdot Mirror
Write to Firaxis and let them know.
I recently bought the complete Civ IV specifically because it has no DRM what-so-ever, I like the game, and want to support further development. When I heard Civ V was going to have DRM like this, I sent a note to Firaxis saying that I certainly wasn't going to be buying the game if it's crippled by DRM.
Let them know that it's backfiring and will actually cost them sales.
Except that intellectual property laws were designed to protect the information, not the physical container - they were to stop other people from claiming the work as their own, or from simply copying it and publishing it on their own, without the copyright holder getting their cut.
I think you might be confusing IP laws with laws having to do with theft of a physical item - not uncommon since so many people refer to infringement as stealing, but there can be many ways "stealing" can apply without needing to involve a physical item.
To make it clear:
Going into a bookshop and physically taking every copy of a book that is there and reselling them: Theft
Copying the information in a book (or whatever) and then making multiple copies to resell: Infringement
The IP laws were not about physical objects, and even back in ye olden days, people knew that information was not a physical item, as you say. There's no delusion, just lazy language.
You mean we can't do this kind of thing?
Dammit. Next you'll tell me I can't use Visual Basic to hack together a Graphical User Interface to backtrack someone's IP address either, huh?
GOD DAMMIT TELEVISION! I trusted you!
I think the only near universal cure for all kinds of blindness would be direct connection to the brain - and even then, if the optical processing capability of the brain is destroyed/never developed, some people would still not be able to benefit.
So, as you point out, the fact that the mechanics for blindness differ in many ways, so, too, must the treatments used to correct it, which of course means it'll be highly specific.
Well, it's certainly small for a later stage clinical trial prior to deployment of the treatment, but it's about right for an early trial of efficacy.
With gene therapy you don't want to just start pumping people full of it - there have been some less than fortunate situations in the past, so limiting the initial trial is a wise choice.
Now that this demonstrates that there may be some beneficial effect without horrific side effects, they can ramp it up to a larger trial size and go from there in good conscience.
While I'm not remotely theistic, there's rather a difference between the use of tech to accomplish something and that same thing being (allegedly) accomplished without tech. People who are prone to take the bible and other works as, well, holy writ, are just going to say, "Sure, but Jesus did it without a board."
To give a less charged example, which one of these things is amazing:
Person jumps out of a plane, falls 10,000 feet, lands with minimal to no injury using a parachute
- or -
Person jumps out of a plane, falls 10,000 feet, lands with minimal to no injury yet was not using a parachute or the parachute failed to open
While I would likely attribute the second case to pure luck, it would still seem pretty amazing, and anyone but a complete cynic would likely be far more impressed despite the two activities (falling from 10,000 feet and living) being essentially the same.
For what it's worth, I would actually compare some of modern day humans to the ancient Greek Gods (albeit without the immortality) - we can watch things at vast distances, fly through the skies using various modes of transit, cause tremendous destruction at a whim, provide various draughts and unguents that can cure illness, speak to people on the other side of the world using devices, use other devices to see, hear or otherwise sense and manipulate things that are beyond the capabilities of normal humans to do alone, etc.
If some physicists are correct and black holes are (to us) miniature universes, then I imagine we'll be creating entire universes in the not too distant future. If we take a less grand approach, and just say that creating new species of life - or entirely new forms of life - is godlike, well, we're pretty much there, too.
Of course, we're also like the ancient Olympians in that we're a bunch of squabbling assholes who bicker endlessly over imagined slights and other nonsense, so with the good comes the bad.
But in any case, we're close to making the old gods look like pikers, that's true.
I never imagined that NAMBLAs membership was that large.
As to the "the appliance thing was tried" argument you make - tech improves.
For example, laptops and portable computers were tried for a couple of decades and never really took off until they became powerful enough to handle most people's tasks, cheap enough to fit into any budget, and portable in that they didn't weigh 10+ lbs.
In the case of a web consumption appliance, this one isn't tied to your home, is certainly portable, has a better UI, and is more or less affordable. WebTV wasn't any of those things, if I remember right, and the web itself wasn't really mature enough that it merited an appliance class of gadget when it came out, IMO.
Personally, I think there's plenty of room for open devices, closed devices, whatever kind of devices. Apple's product meets some people's needs, great. Android products meet other people's needs, great. What's the point of having a holy war over it?
I'd be willing to be generous and make it apply for the life of the author given that lifespans are much longer now, and the giant archive that is the internet means that people will continually re-discover a work during an author's lifetime.
However, the instant the copyright gets transferred to anyone else - person, corporation, alien from tau ceti, ANYONE but the original copyright holder - the clock starts and they have 10 years before it goes into the public domain. And on lawsuits alleging copyright infringement, make a 3-strikes rule: If you bring infringement suits and lose 3 times (no matter how many times you win) the copyright ceases to be valid immediately. This will make copyright holders exceptionally cautious about who they choose to go after.
Further, it should not be possible to re-copyright a work - even if a special edition is made. That's insanity. How does that even work??
It's worse than that: they steal from us, the public.
Back when copyrights were first codified into law, there was a deal:
We, the people, gave protections to people who created works so that they could profit from those works, but in exchange for those protections, the creators of the works agreed to give us, the people, their work after a certain timeframe had passed.
Works may now - if the copyright holder wishes - no longer come into the public domain because copyright holders are corporations who are solely interested in making a profit, and who use their political influence (money) to ensure that copyright NEVER expires.
While it certainly won't give me any kind of legal defense, I simply do not care about copyright because the very basis for it has been completely violated by the holders of that copyright.
If we go back to the original law - life of the initial copyright holder + a small extension past that, and only real-live human beings can be considered to be initial copyright holders - I will give up piracy. Until then, I really don't consider copyright law to be valid because the fundamental premise of it: you get yours, we get ours, has now become "they get theirs, everyone else gets fucked."
Copyright no longer benefits anyone but the copyright holder, and that is NOT what it was intended to do.
So you're saying that the ER was packed to the rafters, but doctors and nurses in Arizona are too fucking stupid to implement a triage system? You were too much of a pussy to stand up to the charge nurse and say, "Hey, that guy is here with a fucking cough, my kid's bleeding like a stuck pig - he gets priority?"
Here's what I think: You're lying. Flat out making things up to try to support the points you want to be true. Except the part about you being a shitty parent, that is - that I can believe completely.
Also, take your Internet Tough Guy "many of us have fought and killed for this country and may be near you HINT HINT" bullshit and get fucked. Sure, you'll say it wasn't a threat, but what, exactly, was the point of your fought and killed/be careful bullshit if not a feeble attempt to intimidate?
There are many ways to handle the issue of illegal immigration. Arizona - unsurprisingly, as it counts braintrusts such as yourself in its population - came up with one of the worst ones. It is NOT just "enforcing federal law" - it's giving cops like good old Sheriff Joe - carte blanche to fuck over anyone they feel like and you know it. You just don't care because it likely won't be you. On top of that, it is going to make any illegal immigrant terrified to go to the police for anything - and that's going to mean that the absolute worst of the worst kinds of illegal immigrants are going to be able to operate with impunity. That means sex slavery, murder, drug trade - you name it, there will be an entire class of people who will now be more likely to avoid seeking help and getting the *real* bad guys busted.
Here's how you fix illegal immigration without completely fucking over the most vulnerable people. It's easy. Ready?
Fine the ever-loving fuck out of the people who hire them. Seize their assets. Ruin them economically. Shift the risk/reward ratio to a point where only someone truly insane would even think of hiring an illegal immigrant. When there are no jobs for illegals there will be a vastly lower incentive to come here. All this law does is, at the absolute *best* hassle a few brown people who are also citizens, and at the absolute worst does nothing to stop illegal immigration, just makes it even more possible for illegal immigrants to be abused by exploiters.
That's more or less how we run things now. Everyone in our group is, for the most part, responsible for their own kit. We had to do a bit of training to make it work, but the results have been wonderful - our group is largely able to solve their own problems, generally doesn't do stupid shit in regards downloads, and we're able to get our work done. The only time we need to interface with IT is when there's some kind of hiccup between our group and theirs. We're happier, they're happier, and everyone is more productive.
You can set different policies for different kinds of users. Users who are in the psychology department and who do sex research *probably* shouldn't be barred from going to websites the net-nanny software calls "sexual or adult content" while people who work in the university accounting office *probably* should. Someone who doesn't work in IT but who's job requires installing and trying out 2-3 bits of software on an average day to see if it's useful for research should *probably* not have their ability to install software on a sandbox computer restricted, while someone who works with very sensitive records in the hospital patient records office probably shouldn't be given the keys to the kingdom. Regardless of whether or not the workplace has 5 or 50,000 (as there are at my university, including students) users, there are usually going to be a fairly limited number of groups people will fall into.
Computers in the workplace are to get work done, not to be the private fiefdom of some control-freak. I don't, actually, care if keeping my computer locked down so I am continually inconvenienced because I can't install software myself or go to websites I need to visit reduces the burden on IT. I'm an educator and a researcher at a university; the purpose of the university is to educate people and do research, not maintain good computers. My needs trump theirs, to put it bluntly, so they need to get the hell out of my way and let me work.
I probably sound like a complete bitch, but the fact of the matter is, I don't enjoy wasting my time or my student's money sitting around with my thumb up my ass because some nitwit admin has decided that he can't be bothered to learn how to do his job well.
And forgive the self reply, but there were other circumstances leading up to this - the guy was a complete martinet, a very stereotypical misanthrope who seemed to be more interested in denying services than in helping people do their work. This was just the last straw.
I love admins like you. I work for a university and our individual desktop machines were - until the policy was changed - "locked down tight" as you say.
So my group spent a week harassing IT by constantly sending emails to them - and to the relevant department heads - asking them to google stuff for us, print it out, and deliver it. We had them over at least 3-4 times a day to install software we wanted to test out. We called them about every. Single. Issue. We could come up with.
Five days of this and we were given admin privileges, the net-nanny software was removed, and the admin who came up with the "lock it down tight" policy was sent on to greener pastures because, after all, the purpose of computers in the workplace is to get work done, not to just avoid getting them infected with malware.
I think your sig isn't quite true for that one - the title of your post sounds sarcastic, and the content surely was derisive.
Of course, mine's wrong too - I actually wanna be treated like a cat: food, sunbeams, naps and belly-rubs on demand.
I'm 5'7" - a little on the tall side, I guess, for a woman my age.
I have had co-workers - people I have worked alongside for *years* guess my height at anywhere between 5'4" and 6'. As for age, I'm 38 but I have people who're older than me guessing I'm in my early to mid-20's, while people who are in their mid-20's guess I'm in my early to mid 40's.
I've had people tell me they were "shocked" to hear me describe myself as brunette because they thought my hair was black, or blonde, depending on the time of year. And people have also said I look either Italian (read: dusky) or Irish (read: freckles and pale) again depending on the time of year.
Given that people who work with me 20-40 hours/week have such a hard time describing me, I am actually impressed that the height and age-range of the attacker in question is so narrow.
Personally, I think SETI should be looking for patterns in everything that's out there - patterns that might indicate intelligent life - and I don't just mean via radio/light/whatever transmissions.
It is not unreasonable to think that in 1000 years humanity would be capable - assuming we survive and continue to advance at even a fraction of the speed we are advancing today - of projects that would essentially engineer our solar system to make it over into a place that is more conducive and efficient for human (or trans-human, if you go that way) life. Certainly in 10,000 years it isn't unreasonable to think - again assuming survival and any kind of advancement - that we wouldn't be capable of essentially gardening our sun to make it much, much more stable than it already is, extend the lifecycle of it, etc.
Let's look for that kind of change - stars that simply should not, by our theories, actually look like they do. On a bigger scale, areas of the universe that seem to have been tended or tuned to better serve life's (whatever that life is) purpose. We may not be able to recognize it as anything but a random pattern, but I'd say that it seems pretty reasonable to think, given our single example of an intelligent and technologically capable species, that intelligent and technologically capable life elsewhere in the universe might decide to modify its environment to better suit it as we have ours. Given how early we are in our own technological development it makes sense to look for the evidence left behind from species far in advance of ours (as it's astronomically unlikely they'll be at or near our level of advancement).
Radio signals are great and all, but that's not the only way to prove there's something out there. Let's look for sources that are in disequilibrium and figure out how that's happening. At the worse we find nothing, middle of the road we find things that are perfectly natural but that our theories don't account for, and best case we find some truly amazing stuff.
Is it going to be multi-touch capable and actually responsive, rather than barely touch aware and laggy?
I have yet to see a piece of hardware running android that doesn't feel slow to the point of non-response or that is just as comfortable to use as the UI on my iPhone. Anyone recommend a device running android that doesn't feel like a sluggish piece of poop?
People who want to tinker can still tinker - far more than they ever could back in the days before Apple. The barrier to entry for tinkers who want to make something useful is much, much lower because there's so much basic kit that they can buy and modify to their heart's content.
What has changed is that there's a whole "new" class of people who get involved with computing - people who use the computers as tools rather than hobbies, and who consume products rather than create them.
Still plenty (more, probably, than in the olden days) of tinkers out there, but their portion of the population of people who use computers has been dwarfed by the consumer class. Look at open source software and hardware, MAKE groups, and stuff like that - it's still going on, just less prominently than back in the day.
At a basic level, using simple parts rather than IC boards, is wonderful for learning, but once people get past the basics they want to use things that are actually relevant to the world today. The only difference is that back then you didn't use libraries or ICs or anything else off the shelf because it didn't exist, so the basic parts *were* as advanced as it got, for the most part.
You're totally right.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is *obviously* a flawed product because my mother - who only uses the computer to send email and occasionally go to websites if someone gives her the URL - doesn't see the need for it. It couldn't possibly be that it was designed to appeal to people with much different desires than my mother's. Therefore Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a complete failure.
I honestly am not sure who the market for the iPad is, but I can safely say that the typical slashdotter is NOT a member of that group, and I have no problem what-so-ever with the idea that some products are, in fact, actually targeted to appeal to certain demographics. To claim that it is possible to develop a device that does anything beyond an EXTREMELY simple task that will NOT be aimed at any particular chunk of a market is just ridiculous.
I can say that I know of at least one potential market for this thing: We are considering using a couple for one of our studies - reasonably light-weight, responsive touch interface, easy to program for, our participants will do minimal typing and only use it for 15 or so minutes at a time, and the wireless will let us synch the data collected. None of the limitations that other people have mentioned will apply. So maybe *I'm* the target market, which is really silly because I don't think there are a million people like me and my lab in the world, which is about how many they'd need to make this thing a staggering success.
making them think u will get physical is violence too, but i get what u mean. but u gotta be ready to put them down if they do try to hit u. even with adults u should never swing first, will get u out of a LOT of legal trouble believe me.
"For the most part" food prices are set by the market... Except for massive subsidies for staple foods, secondary factors like welfare and foodstamps enabling people who can't afford food to have food, etc. There are also varying tiers of food as far as pricing goes - I can eat incredibly cheaply (and healthfully) if I'm willing to go through some effort and cook with various beans and cheap veggies, or I can spend staggering sums - more than some people's monthly wage in the US - on a single meal.
The market for vital organs is different. If you do allow people to sell their kidneys, would you also provide funds so that poor people could compete on equal footing with the rich when it comes to getting a life-saving transplant, so there's rough parity in opportunity to survive, much like there is with food? There also aren't tiers of organs - it's pretty much one-size-fits-all - so in the case of a free market for vital organs you wind up with the rich getting to live and the poor getting nothing, as opposed to the food situation where the rich can eat like kings and the poor can get enough (usually) to survive, but they aren't going to have surf n' turf every night.
(And, I'm aware that people are still hungry in the US despite welfare programs, soup kitchens and other programs designed to lend a hand - as another poster said, it's amazing to me that we pay to have food destroyed in this country when there are still hungry people here and elsewhere - but I wanted to point out how food markets are radically different from organ markets).
Also, I think we actually agree to some extent on the general idea of how it should be handled - but differ in one important detail: Adults don't hit first, period. If it comes to it, if they hit you first, THEN you can hit back, but not before.
I'm sure it's tempting to want to kick someone's ass when they sorely deserve it, but the fact of the matter is, it's still unfair to do it when they aren't a credible threat and won't *actually* do anything but talk. We are agreed that they need to be shown how pathetic their behavior is - but the adult must ABSOLUTELY not be the first to lay hands.
Wrong answer. You don't lay hands on someone unless they are a direct threat/self-defense. Using physical violence as an adult upon a child as a way to stop bullying is just flat out fucking retarded. And really, "they heal quick!" are you fucking retarded?
Here's how you fix a bully: Shame them. Humiliate them. Make it clear to them - and most importantly, to them and EVERYONE they think looks up to them - just what a pathetic coward they actually are. And that can be done without actually laying hands on them. Try this one on for size:
Bigger adult goes up to bully, gets right in his face: "So you like picking on people who are smaller than you, huh? Well, how about you prove what a man you are by taking me on, right now? Get up, take a swing - let's see what that gets you, you pathetic child. Let's see if you're man enough to take a shot at me." If they start to threaten you or talk, say "Shut the fuck up and hit me, you little bitch!" I mean, really get in their fce and back them down, hard. When they inevitably back off - calling you crazy or saying that you're lucky they won't take a swing, follow it up, DEMAND that they take a shot at you. Don't let them off the hook. Make them back down, and when they do, explain to them exactly how they just demonstrated that they are a pathetic coward - explain it to them AND any of their cronies. Completely humiliate them.
Then explain how if their previous victim says they even looked at him funny you'll make damn sure they won't be able to do it again. Finally, tell them to get off the bus. I mean it - explain to them that they are no longer allowed to be in the same space as you and your friend.
You won't need to hit them, you'll completely humiliate them, and best of all you won't have to run the risk of going to jail for beating up a child. If they do swing at you - and they won't, but if they do - then it's self defense, and THEN it's justified.
I never said tell them nicely to stop doing it - I say give them a dose of the absolute terror that they try to instill in their victims. But you don't need to resort to violence to do it - that just reinforces the idea that might makes right and doesn't actually *scare* them. Make them scared - and believe me, the whole mind game of making them think you're going to tear them apart is much Much MUCH more terrifying than anything you'd actually physically do to them. In his mind you've just beaten the everloving shit out of him; in reality the worst you'd do is grab him by the collar and push him away/off the bus or whatever. One of those will stay with him for a long time, the other will make him realize that even if someone does fight back he isn't going to be hurt.