I found his second/. interview last week, which was a good read.. So as soon as I saw the article name.. yeah, I said "Damn, shoulda bought my pass already."
Somebody in this thread wondered who else might lurk here. I'm sure there are many who use aliases, many more than the ones who are known. Slashdotters are a special breed.. There are many sites with interesting articles and smart, nerdy communities but none of them have the inherently nerdy style of Slashdot (I'm serious, I really think/. speaks to our subconscious minds in nerd). And that green glow might have something to do with it too.
Should a student who is breaking rules they've agreed to abide by be liable for their actions? Yes, but they shouldn't be suffering most of the penalties we hear about in the news.
Should the school and/or its administrative staff be liable for leaving insecurities in its systems? Yes, but within reason. A school is supposed to be a learning environment, and as such some restrictions can't be imposed without also restricting valuable learning resources.
Those are simple straightforward answers that I believe to be correct, but there is another underlying issue that most people don't seem to be aware of. Technology presents scenarios that require rules and regulations unlike any other element common in schools. Because of that, there is no tried and true baseline for school officials to expand off of, and most of the rules and regulations that are set up leave a poor balance due to a lack of knowledge and understanding of technology.
Since the percentage of students with the knowledge to exploit an insecure situation (well intentioned or otherwise) is rising more quickly than that of the staff, a proper balance is becoming harder to maintain. Why is it harder to maintain when the students should be following the rules and regulations? Because as general knowledge increases, so does the awareness of learning opportunities present in the technology.
And of course a school is a place to learn, so any decent student who cares about themselves at all will want to take advantage of the opportunity, and any administrator or staff member worth anything will encourage the student to do so; they just won't realize that this encouragement will cause curiosity that leads to the breaking of important rules. And when a student knows they're learning something new, and knows they're not causing any negative effect on themselves, their peers, or their school, why wouldn't they exploit insecurities?
I agree that the parent is funny. But that statement is also true.
Before getting my current job I struggled just to get interviews, even when I was completely qualified for the position. I have lots of knowledge and experience, but no formal education. Perhaps recruiters assumed I was exaggerating my skills because I don't have an 'Education' section on my resume.
I finally got the job I have now, and am the most qualified person on my team (IMO). Another guy started on the same day as I, from the same contracting agency. He had an impressive resume listing all kinds of related experience and Web technology skills. It turns out his related experience was as a phone tech reading answers out of a manual, his Web knowledge of things like PHP are actually him installing PHP extensions and using pre-made.php files, and he doesn't know his left from his right (I'm not joking, it took 30 seconds for him to find the icon at the bottom right of the Control Panel window. The whole time I sat, with my jaw down, watching his cursor hover up and down the left side). And guess what: he makes the same hourly wage that I do.
Has anybody else experienced this or something similar? Are you completely honest in your application materials? Thanks for helping me realize my errors Mrs. Jones and AC. I always told the truth on my resume and just tried to present it as well as possible. In the future I'm pretty sure I will try adding a little bit of fiction.
Many people hate Mr. Thompson because they fail to realize the positive effect he's had on so many hopeless gamers in our society. His campaign to raise awareness of the fact that games are training simulations saved my life.
Thank you Mr. Thompson, thank you so much. I grew up playing Sega Genesis in the early 1990's, and without you I would be fully trained by now. I can't imagine how empty, meaningless, and flat out bizarre my life would be if I were still rolling along grassy hills jumping into ginormous mechanical bees operated by small bunny rabbits. Not to mention the constant urge to collect mysterious emeralds and find early PowerMacs to jump on, until I turned yellow, hovered momentarily in the air screaming, and then proceeded to run really fucking fast into a sign with my picture on it. Victory!
Okay, I don't know where I pulled my number out of.. SATA2 is actually 3Gbits/sec.
And from Ars Technica:
"Each x1 lane of PCIe 1.1 offers a 250MB/s transfer rate, which puts a x16 link like the ones that host some GPUs at 4GB/s. The new PCIe 2.0 spec will double the per-lane speed to 500MB/s, boosting a x16 link to 8GB/s. This puts a x16 PCIe 2.0 link in the same ballpark, at least in terms of peak transfer speed, as a frontside bus based on the HyperTransport 1.0 spec (12.6GB/s aggregate bandwidth over two 32-bit links)."
3Gbits = 3/8GByte/s, so, yeah, PCI-e is a _little_ faster than SATA;)
You didn't say what you're talking about, but I'll assume you're referring to Robson. Flash-based hard drives don't really compare because of the interface. I'm don't actually know how fast PCI-E is, but I know it's much faster than the current SATA (300Mbits/s).
"At the same time I find it a little disturbing. And it seems the higher up the ladder one goes, the less competence there seems to be regarding making intelligent conclusions about the IT landscape.."
You're completely right about that, it is the norm. At every tech job I've had there has been a maximum of 2 levels of superiors being knowledgeable and intelligent. Often, everybody above my immediate boss sounds braindead when trying to instruct their workers. And unfortunately, there are always some workers at the same level as I who are complete morons requiring help with the simplest of tasks - which really gets me if they're paid the same wage that I receive.
I don't know how these people get jobs with their employers and I have no clue how the employers are able to keep their customers over a long term with marketing alone. Very disturbing.
stratjakt may be trolling but he's mostly right.. The analog control thing is in an uncomfortable position for many people, and many of its best games don't appeal to enough people. I wouldn't say the battery life is bad, but my DS seems to last _forever_ before it needs a charge.
The whole "white is better, let's chain up a black dude and put it on a billboard" thing probably didn't help either.
"A person engaged in prohibited uses, continuously for one hour, could typically use 100 to 200 MBs, or, if engaged in prohibited uses for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, could use more than 5 GBs in a month."
Unless I'm missing something, everybody seems to be misreading this. That paragraph says nothing about a 5GB limit. It estimates that using the service 10 hours a day for 7 days a week could add up to 5GB+ of data transfer. It says a person engaged in prohibited use might use it that much. But a person engaged in prohibited use could use much less than 5GB too. And a person engaged in legitimate use could use much more than that, since their definition of intranet access is very broad.
Verizon has never hesitated when penalizing its users; even for slight, highly debatable, misuses. This is just a TOS tweak. Verizon will be notifying you on your bill if you have actually crossed their imaginary line, which is probably determined by a script somewhere. A script probably written by the same person responsible for that script that sent a DMCA takedown on behalf of the BSA because an OOo RPM was noticed on a university server in Europe. =)
If the versions currently being sold run a BIOS version that's been dumped and hacked. If not, it will probably only take a few weeks. I don't care how great the DS is (I have one, it's pretty great) because a big shiny 16:9 handheld that plays PlayStation games is _sweet_. You don't have to be interested in any of the other stuff it can do (which is a lot) if you ever liked the PSX.. Pull out your old PSX discs and spend $50 on a big MSPD and you'll be the most badass kid on the bus.
A true Linux user has a moral responsibility to spread awareness of Linux and all its wonders to the wandering souls of the world. Were it not for the Enlightenment brought forth from these Disciples of Torvalds we would all be condemned to an eternity in the fiery pits of welded-hood doom. Amen brothers!
Not currently possible, and much more difficult than it was for the Xbox and the PS2. Advancements and discoveries are made all the time, but don't expect anything like that to ever happen on the 360. We'll be very lucky if it does.
The leverage to voice or influence change is nice. But the main problem is that hourly contractors are expendable. They're long-term temps. The company wants so badly to save money that they make hiring managers get contractors instead of employees so they don't have to provide benefits. The 12-month mark rolls around and you're let go, because they're afraid the IRS will get on their backs if a person is contracted for a long time.
Bye-bye! We hope you are in need of a job 6 months from now when we're willing to contract you again!
"For about a hundred bucks I can pick up a 120gig drive and a copy of Norton Ghost, clone my data over to the new drive and slap it into the 360 (yes, this actually works.)"
It does? It used to be that you could finagle another drive into functioning, but any additional space was unusable. I started poking around and haven't found anything new yet.. But apparently its been known for a few months that a 120GB was coming in the near future.
"So, my point: Is installed user-base all there is to care about? Don't Sony/MS/Nintendo make the bulk of their profits on the games?"
Maybe, but MS and Sony take hits on their hardware, the size of which depends on where the console is in its life cycle.. Nintendo does not take a hit. Even if the same number of DS and PSP units were sold, and on average PSP owners purchased more games than DS owners, Nintendo would still be making as much money as Sony or possibly even more.
Given that Nintendo has sold about twice as many units as Sony, they're making a ton more than Sony is.
Unfortunately Microsoft requires you to pay for the game and pay for broadband Internet access too. I went out and spent $400 on an Xbox360 and another $60 on a game. I got home and it didn't work because the console needed an update from the Internet.
Microsoft just expects that everybody has broadband Internet at home. If it's not available in your area you're screwed. Their old system worked fine, the updates were included on Xbox game discs and installed automatically. Now, anybody who can't get broadband can't play their Xbox360.
Yes, I called Xbox360 support. They said update discs aren't available. I was instructed that I could buy broadband or lug my huge-ass console to a friend's house to use their broadband. Not just once, but every time a new game comes out that requires an update. I asked why it was designed to be so difficult and the phone rep, completely unaware that rural areas exist or that some people can't afford broadband, explained that I was mistaken in being annoyed and it was infact very easy to do.
I've always been aware that Microsoft uses some unfriendly tactics to force users into using their products, but this is really an ass move.
God of War has a more sophisticated storyline, rooted in ancient history and full of references to ancient times. Because of this, its audience tends to be older or more knowledgeable than that of the GTA games, which are played by everyone.
In other words, he's just attacking what's popular and known enough that non-gamers have heard of it. That way he will get more air time and print coverage, which will lead to the misguided anger of the weirdos in religious and activist groups. That's all he's really about.. Just another weirdo trying to impose (not-in-touch-with-reality) views on poor helpless innocents (normal people).
Does anybody know? Obviously she is knowledgeable and creative, I'm just asking because there was a similar story a while ago about a kid winning a science competition for a beowulf cluster made from Xboxes. He did a nice job putting it together and wrote a good paper about the process and potential uses, but there were already several complete tutorials on building beowulf clusters, specifically from Xboxes, when he did his project. That annoyed me a bit, and I'm sure if somebody else has already completed a similar project and is now seeing this girl receive $100k they're not too happy.
Timeline: ..
Jan 03, 2007 - vendor contact established, full details disclosed
Jan 09, 2007 - vendor releases patch ..
Patch Development Time (In Days): 6
Interesting to compare timelines affecting Microsoft's users to timelines affecting Microsoft's control schemes.
Slashdot Mirror
I found his second /. interview last week, which was a good read.. So as soon as I saw the article name.. yeah, I said "Damn, shoulda bought my pass already."
Somebody in this thread wondered who else might lurk here. I'm sure there are many who use aliases, many more than the ones who are known. Slashdotters are a special breed.. There are many sites with interesting articles and smart, nerdy communities but none of them have the inherently nerdy style of Slashdot (I'm serious, I really think /. speaks to our subconscious minds in nerd).
And that green glow might have something to do with it too.
Trying to make numbers illegal is quite common. If you haven't noticed, over the past few years they've been trying to outlaw 64 69 73 73 65 6e 74.
Should a student who is breaking rules they've agreed to abide by be liable for their actions? Yes, but they shouldn't be suffering most of the penalties we hear about in the news.
Should the school and/or its administrative staff be liable for leaving insecurities in its systems? Yes, but within reason. A school is supposed to be a learning environment, and as such some restrictions can't be imposed without also restricting valuable learning resources.
Those are simple straightforward answers that I believe to be correct, but there is another underlying issue that most people don't seem to be aware of. Technology presents scenarios that require rules and regulations unlike any other element common in schools. Because of that, there is no tried and true baseline for school officials to expand off of, and most of the rules and regulations that are set up leave a poor balance due to a lack of knowledge and understanding of technology.
Since the percentage of students with the knowledge to exploit an insecure situation (well intentioned or otherwise) is rising more quickly than that of the staff, a proper balance is becoming harder to maintain. Why is it harder to maintain when the students should be following the rules and regulations? Because as general knowledge increases, so does the awareness of learning opportunities present in the technology.
And of course a school is a place to learn, so any decent student who cares about themselves at all will want to take advantage of the opportunity, and any administrator or staff member worth anything will encourage the student to do so; they just won't realize that this encouragement will cause curiosity that leads to the breaking of important rules.
And when a student knows they're learning something new, and knows they're not causing any negative effect on themselves, their peers, or their school, why wouldn't they exploit insecurities?
I agree that the parent is funny. But that statement is also true.
Before getting my current job I struggled just to get interviews, even when I was completely qualified for the position. I have lots of knowledge and experience, but no formal education. Perhaps recruiters assumed I was exaggerating my skills because I don't have an 'Education' section on my resume.
I finally got the job I have now, and am the most qualified person on my team (IMO). Another guy started on the same day as I, from the same contracting agency. He had an impressive resume listing all kinds of related experience and Web technology skills. It turns out his related experience was as a phone tech reading answers out of a manual, his Web knowledge of things like PHP are actually him installing PHP extensions and using pre-made .php files, and he doesn't know his left from his right (I'm not joking, it took 30 seconds for him to find the icon at the bottom right of the Control Panel window. The whole time I sat, with my jaw down, watching his cursor hover up and down the left side). And guess what: he makes the same hourly wage that I do.
Has anybody else experienced this or something similar? Are you completely honest in your application materials? Thanks for helping me realize my errors Mrs. Jones and AC. I always told the truth on my resume and just tried to present it as well as possible. In the future I'm pretty sure I will try adding a little bit of fiction.
Many people hate Mr. Thompson because they fail to realize the positive effect he's had on so many hopeless gamers in our society. His campaign to raise awareness of the fact that games are training simulations saved my life.
Thank you Mr. Thompson, thank you so much. I grew up playing Sega Genesis in the early 1990's, and without you I would be fully trained by now. I can't imagine how empty, meaningless, and flat out bizarre my life would be if I were still rolling along grassy hills jumping into ginormous mechanical bees operated by small bunny rabbits. Not to mention the constant urge to collect mysterious emeralds and find early PowerMacs to jump on, until I turned yellow, hovered momentarily in the air screaming, and then proceeded to run really fucking fast into a sign with my picture on it. Victory!
You haven't seen any instructions? Where the heck did you look?
A SuperGameCube? That sounds totally rad, but I haven't seen one of these in stores anywhere - where can I get one!?
Okay, I don't know where I pulled my number out of.. SATA2 is actually 3Gbits/sec.
And from Ars Technica:
3Gbits = 3/8GByte/s, so, yeah, PCI-e is a _little_ faster than SATA ;)
I have been told that is an OS limitation, it has nothing to do with the platform (i.e. Vista 64 will recognize all 4GB).
You didn't say what you're talking about, but I'll assume you're referring to Robson. Flash-based hard drives don't really compare because of the interface. I'm don't actually know how fast PCI-E is, but I know it's much faster than the current SATA (300Mbits/s).
You're completely right about that, it is the norm. At every tech job I've had there has been a maximum of 2 levels of superiors being knowledgeable and intelligent. Often, everybody above my immediate boss sounds braindead when trying to instruct their workers. And unfortunately, there are always some workers at the same level as I who are complete morons requiring help with the simplest of tasks - which really gets me if they're paid the same wage that I receive.
I don't know how these people get jobs with their employers and I have no clue how the employers are able to keep their customers over a long term with marketing alone. Very disturbing.
Hahaha, after this post got to 2: Interesting your FP went from 0: Troll to 5: Insightful quickfast.
And now this post is 1: Troll.
stratjakt may be trolling but he's mostly right.. The analog control thing is in an uncomfortable position for many people, and many of its best games don't appeal to enough people. I wouldn't say the battery life is bad, but my DS seems to last _forever_ before it needs a charge.
The whole "white is better, let's chain up a black dude and put it on a billboard" thing probably didn't help either.
Unless I'm missing something, everybody seems to be misreading this. That paragraph says nothing about a 5GB limit. It estimates that using the service 10 hours a day for 7 days a week could add up to 5GB+ of data transfer. It says a person engaged in prohibited use might use it that much.
But a person engaged in prohibited use could use much less than 5GB too. And a person engaged in legitimate use could use much more than that, since their definition of intranet access is very broad.
Verizon has never hesitated when penalizing its users; even for slight, highly debatable, misuses. This is just a TOS tweak. Verizon will be notifying you on your bill if you have actually crossed their imaginary line, which is probably determined by a script somewhere.
A script probably written by the same person responsible for that script that sent a DMCA takedown on behalf of the BSA because an OOo RPM was noticed on a university server in Europe. =)
If the versions currently being sold run a BIOS version that's been dumped and hacked. If not, it will probably only take a few weeks. I don't care how great the DS is (I have one, it's pretty great) because a big shiny 16:9 handheld that plays PlayStation games is _sweet_. You don't have to be interested in any of the other stuff it can do (which is a lot) if you ever liked the PSX.. Pull out your old PSX discs and spend $50 on a big MSPD and you'll be the most badass kid on the bus.
A true Linux user has a moral responsibility to spread awareness of Linux and all its wonders to the wandering souls of the world. Were it not for the Enlightenment brought forth from these Disciples of Torvalds we would all be condemned to an eternity in the fiery pits of welded-hood doom. Amen brothers!
Not currently possible, and much more difficult than it was for the Xbox and the PS2. Advancements and discoveries are made all the time, but don't expect anything like that to ever happen on the 360. We'll be very lucky if it does.
The leverage to voice or influence change is nice. But the main problem is that hourly contractors are expendable. They're long-term temps. The company wants so badly to save money that they make hiring managers get contractors instead of employees so they don't have to provide benefits. The 12-month mark rolls around and you're let go, because they're afraid the IRS will get on their backs if a person is contracted for a long time.
Bye-bye! We hope you are in need of a job 6 months from now when we're willing to contract you again!
"For about a hundred bucks I can pick up a 120gig drive and a copy of Norton Ghost, clone my data over to the new drive and slap it into the 360 (yes, this actually works.)"
It does? It used to be that you could finagle another drive into functioning, but any additional space was unusable. I started poking around and haven't found anything new yet.. But apparently its been known for a few months that a 120GB was coming in the near future.
"So, my point: Is installed user-base all there is to care about? Don't Sony/MS/Nintendo make the bulk of their profits on the games?"
Maybe, but MS and Sony take hits on their hardware, the size of which depends on where the console is in its life cycle.. Nintendo does not take a hit. Even if the same number of DS and PSP units were sold, and on average PSP owners purchased more games than DS owners, Nintendo would still be making as much money as Sony or possibly even more.
Given that Nintendo has sold about twice as many units as Sony, they're making a ton more than Sony is.
Unfortunately Microsoft requires you to pay for the game and pay for broadband Internet access too. I went out and spent $400 on an Xbox360 and another $60 on a game. I got home and it didn't work because the console needed an update from the Internet.
Microsoft just expects that everybody has broadband Internet at home. If it's not available in your area you're screwed. Their old system worked fine, the updates were included on Xbox game discs and installed automatically. Now, anybody who can't get broadband can't play their Xbox360.
Yes, I called Xbox360 support. They said update discs aren't available. I was instructed that I could buy broadband or lug my huge-ass console to a friend's house to use their broadband. Not just once, but every time a new game comes out that requires an update. I asked why it was designed to be so difficult and the phone rep, completely unaware that rural areas exist or that some people can't afford broadband, explained that I was mistaken in being annoyed and it was infact very easy to do.
I've always been aware that Microsoft uses some unfriendly tactics to force users into using their products, but this is really an ass move.
God of War has a more sophisticated storyline, rooted in ancient history and full of references to ancient times. Because of this, its audience tends to be older or more knowledgeable than that of the GTA games, which are played by everyone.
In other words, he's just attacking what's popular and known enough that non-gamers have heard of it. That way he will get more air time and print coverage, which will lead to the misguided anger of the weirdos in religious and activist groups. That's all he's really about.. Just another weirdo trying to impose (not-in-touch-with-reality) views on poor helpless innocents (normal people).
Does anybody know? Obviously she is knowledgeable and creative, I'm just asking because there was a similar story a while ago about a kid winning a science competition for a beowulf cluster made from Xboxes. He did a nice job putting it together and wrote a good paper about the process and potential uses, but there were already several complete tutorials on building beowulf clusters, specifically from Xboxes, when he did his project. That annoyed me a bit, and I'm sure if somebody else has already completed a similar project and is now seeing this girl receive $100k they're not too happy.
Sure it's offtopic; but aren't all funny posts?
Timeline:
..
..
Jan 03, 2007 - vendor contact established, full details disclosed
Jan 09, 2007 - vendor releases patch
Patch Development Time (In Days): 6
Interesting to compare timelines affecting Microsoft's users to timelines affecting Microsoft's control schemes.