Kinda ruins the game, already knowing the ending and major plot-devices, doesn't it?
Anyway, it'd be great to see games dominate the popular iconographic imagery of literary classics in the same way that films have. Will Frankenstein be perceived as a beautiful artifice once again, I wonder...?
Full drive encryption can brick netbooks/laptops unintentionally. Bad sectors, which might under other circumstances corrupt a file in a recoverable way, can render a whole drive unrecoverable if it's encrypted. Overheating is a commonly cited cause.
I don't know if some drive-encryption methods/settings are more susceptible than others, but if anyone is seriously considering this route then it's worth reading up on this type of failure.
Torrents. And not for compression, but for the multi-part quality.
Have a look on TPB for some seriously flame-rich debates on this very topic. It seems the pro-RAR cadre feel that breaking a large file into moderately-sized chunks makes it a trivial task to re-download selected pieces, should any become corrupted, and that this is much harder otherwise. I can't attest either way, but that seems to be the rationale.
Hear hear. I agree with you, 100%. This is a tragic anecdote and I deplore the behaviour of those who coerced the girl.
I think it's worth highlighting Hicks' caveat, though:
- as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet.
Clearly this girl was harmed by the event. The thing is, what happened to her was not really illegal; just highly immoral. The system has failed her, and will always fail someone if this trend continues, and a reactionary like this Senator will never really understand why.
Legislating against acts which some people find offensive (though not harmful to others) on the grounds that they are thus immoral is frankly disgusting, when the definition of morality revolves principally around the impact of our actions on the lives of others.
Detractors are often given to stating that such acts (and their portrayal) are harmful to society in general as they cause moral decay and encourage degradation among the impressionable, but I have a couple of strong objections to that position.
There has been no independent research, with clear results, that implicates the existence of such material or the legal permission of such acts (providing they are not harmful to others) in increasing incidence of sexual crimes, and
These regulatory attempts always revolve around the black-and-white, absolute morality of an act, with little consideration of context, intent or impact.
I think this last point is particularly important in the light of the quote I mentioned. The law is there for protection, to prevent people from doing harm to others and thus maintain equality and order. However, an act can be harmful to one person in one circumstance, and harmless to another in a different situation. This is why children are particularly protected by law - sexual contact is much more likely to cause emotional damage, and they are not considered mature enough to make rational decisions regarding their own welfare.
If that is the purpose of the law, then applying broad-brush bans to prevent fringe cases is a massive imposition on liberty, a fruitful source of repression, and potentially criminalises many people who are acting with appropriate care and consideration for the rights and liberties of others. Isn't that harmful to society?
What is needed is a human, qualitative approach to legal decisions. Until it can be significantly, substantially demonstrated that this sort of material has a net harmful impact on society, legislating against it is, frankly, fascistic and reactionary. "Innocent until proven guilty" is cold comfort when the laws are so absolute and inflexible as to make criminals of considerate people engaging in a harmless act.
To bring it back to your anecdote: even a fresh interpretation of the law in light of this new judgement would not have served to protect this poor girl. The law, in criminalising the act rather than the intent, has been made very easy to interpret, but unfortunately it does not protect the vulnerable, and so it fails in its main duty while simultaneously imposing on the rights of those who would never dream of abusing her in such a way.
Precisely. Bill Hicks would have had a bloody field-day with this.
Here is my final point. About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography and smoking and everything else. What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I fuck, what I take into my body - as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet?
So, so, so many questions of this nature suffer from the same basic flaw. "How do I do X using tool Y?"
The question betrays a basic misunderstanding of the problem, or of the context, or just a bloody-minded determination to stick to an inappropriate ideal.
If you haven't heard/seen his work, I strongly recommend you spend a little time acquainting yourself with it. I'm hoping the fact that people do keep mentioning it is reason enough.
He's a difficult guy to quote in most instances, because he was radical to the core and a lot of people tried to imitate him by doing "shock comedy", but his message was more heartfelt and warm than all the vitriol and bile he apparently spilled on stage in getting that message across. It's difficult to portray faithfully. However, for the sake of the thread I don't mind throwing this one in:
By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. Thank you, thank you. Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they'll take root. I don't know. You try. You do what you can. Kill yourselves. Seriously though, if you are, do. No really, there's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, OK? Kill yourselves, seriously. You're the ruiner of all things good. Seriously, no, this is not a joke. "There's gonna be a joke coming..." There's no fucking joke coming, you are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage, you are fucked and you are fucking us, kill yourselves, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now. Now, back to the show.
"You know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar, that's a big dollar, a lot of people are feeling that indignation, we've done research, huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scumbags, quit putting a godamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
I'm currently reading his collected transcripts, and for all that it's sick and funny, it's also a work of optimistic humanist philosophy of the highest order.
I hope I've done a little to convince you to at least google him.
The film industry, pretty much from the start, was plagued by concerns over markets and metrics - targeting their films to capture the largest "typical" audience rather than just trying to make good films. Usually, when someone set out with the noble intention of quite simply making a great film, they would surprise and shake up the industry, and the marketing gurus were left with their cocks in their hands, going "Wow, there's a whole market dollar we didn't think of there," and suddenly the studios are churning out flicks to appeal to that audience instead.
Bill Hicks certainly had a few things to say about the crooked industry of marketing.
So now we have the same problem with the games industry, and it's been documented in all sorts of ways. Who's the saviour? Independent developers, of course. Make something new, fun, addictive - even on a low budget - and suddenly the big boys are less afraid to stick their necks out.
Independent developers are fulfilling the same role as independent film-makers have been doing for years, and they're an inevitable product of the current money-grabbing system. "The topics of fun or creativity were rarely if ever addressed." Well, strike the light...
I've been working with the ICS project (similar kind of mandate, but for children's social services - in the UK again) and we're seeing exactly the problems you've described. It's got nothing to do with the system being conceptually difficult, and everything to do with massive, chronic project mismanagement by central government from the very start.
Specifications were set out without any significant consultation from users, practitioners or even IT project management specialists (a field full of charlatans, but some experienced input at the initial phase would have been helpful). The specs were then handed - untested, mind you - to software suppliers, most of whom have been in the business of supplying under-performing systems to the public sector for decades, and who therefore know exactly what they have to say in order to win contracts, and what they can get away with while still turning a profit.
I'll lay out the process:
These public-sector bodies are floundering around looking for a solution to meet a poorly-advised government mandate on ICT systems, and they come across this well-established company who have the experience to sound capable. They've been in the business for years, and have a number of high-profile projects to their name (irrespective of how badly said projects went...)
The company promises the earth, and under-bids massively at the tender stage, under-cutting any supplier who might provide a competent system at a realistic price. Inexperienced public-sector org says "Wow, they know what they're doing, and we'll have a contract so they have to provide - great!"
After committing all their allocated funding to this company, the product then falls very, very short of expectations. Assuming it even meets the minimum spec set out by central gov, the spec was poorly drafted to begin with and has many awful omissions. Besides all this, the product probably sucks and is full of bugs.
Public-sector body is stuffed. They can't afford to start from scratch - they've committed their funding, and the damage that would be caused to user-acceptance and to their ability to meet project deadlines would be catastrophic if they were to terminate the contract. It's vendor lock-in, aggravated by the fact that they need the supplier to keep working to fix bugs, and to modify the product to do what it's supposed to do, rather than what it's specified to do.
Public body is stuck with a buggy system and a high-cost maintenance contract with a crooked supplier, because abandoning either would invite the displeasure of central gov
Supplier milks the contract for maintenance payment in perpetuity, turning a decent profit and gaining another "successful" project to their name.
The failed system causes problems to the service, who whine and bitch to central gov but to no avail. Then something goes wrong, and there is a press outcry. So central gov decides they must be seen to act, and start another project...
The whole merry-go-round keeps turning, and there's no way off it because it's an inevitable product of a system of government that lends itself to knee-jerk policy- and decision-making according to the whims of the press and public rather than the mandate of their manifesto.
Reactionary "solutions" to systemic problems invite crooked opportunists when the money starts flying, and I don't see this changing, ever.
The only downside is that you have to spend all of your time interacting with a fundamentally broken system which, I discovered, was not something I wanted to put up with.
I think you've just described the common denominator underlying the frustrations of every single major profession.
Slashdot Mirror
Kinda ruins the game, already knowing the ending and major plot-devices, doesn't it?
Anyway, it'd be great to see games dominate the popular iconographic imagery of literary classics in the same way that films have. Will Frankenstein be perceived as a beautiful artifice once again, I wonder...?
But it's a DOS vulnerability!!! Sheesh, read the title...
They were talking about pigment, not light.
Double-plus-ironic.
Anyone else put in mind of EM emissions deterring bats? Wonder how much you'd have to heat an elephant's skull to deter it...
See, this is exactly why I said "netbook" instead of "laptop". Everyone else is right though - I don't have kids.
Just be thankful there's no way of cramming buttered toast into a netbook.
4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42...
Full drive encryption can brick netbooks/laptops unintentionally. Bad sectors, which might under other circumstances corrupt a file in a recoverable way, can render a whole drive unrecoverable if it's encrypted. Overheating is a commonly cited cause.
I don't know if some drive-encryption methods/settings are more susceptible than others, but if anyone is seriously considering this route then it's worth reading up on this type of failure.
Torrents. And not for compression, but for the multi-part quality.
Have a look on TPB for some seriously flame-rich debates on this very topic. It seems the pro-RAR cadre feel that breaking a large file into moderately-sized chunks makes it a trivial task to re-download selected pieces, should any become corrupted, and that this is much harder otherwise. I can't attest either way, but that seems to be the rationale.
Show some respect, goddammit!
It's just a very small PIG. "Robot" is indeed a massive overstatement.
Hear hear. I agree with you, 100%. This is a tragic anecdote and I deplore the behaviour of those who coerced the girl.
I think it's worth highlighting Hicks' caveat, though:
- as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet.
Clearly this girl was harmed by the event. The thing is, what happened to her was not really illegal; just highly immoral. The system has failed her, and will always fail someone if this trend continues, and a reactionary like this Senator will never really understand why.
Legislating against acts which some people find offensive (though not harmful to others) on the grounds that they are thus immoral is frankly disgusting, when the definition of morality revolves principally around the impact of our actions on the lives of others.
Detractors are often given to stating that such acts (and their portrayal) are harmful to society in general as they cause moral decay and encourage degradation among the impressionable, but I have a couple of strong objections to that position.
I think this last point is particularly important in the light of the quote I mentioned. The law is there for protection, to prevent people from doing harm to others and thus maintain equality and order. However, an act can be harmful to one person in one circumstance, and harmless to another in a different situation. This is why children are particularly protected by law - sexual contact is much more likely to cause emotional damage, and they are not considered mature enough to make rational decisions regarding their own welfare.
If that is the purpose of the law, then applying broad-brush bans to prevent fringe cases is a massive imposition on liberty, a fruitful source of repression, and potentially criminalises many people who are acting with appropriate care and consideration for the rights and liberties of others. Isn't that harmful to society?
What is needed is a human, qualitative approach to legal decisions. Until it can be significantly, substantially demonstrated that this sort of material has a net harmful impact on society, legislating against it is, frankly, fascistic and reactionary. "Innocent until proven guilty" is cold comfort when the laws are so absolute and inflexible as to make criminals of considerate people engaging in a harmless act.
To bring it back to your anecdote: even a fresh interpretation of the law in light of this new judgement would not have served to protect this poor girl. The law, in criminalising the act rather than the intent, has been made very easy to interpret, but unfortunately it does not protect the vulnerable, and so it fails in its main duty while simultaneously imposing on the rights of those who would never dream of abusing her in such a way.
Here is my final point. About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography and smoking and everything else. What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I fuck, what I take into my body - as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet?
So, so, so many questions of this nature suffer from the same basic flaw. "How do I do X using tool Y?"
The question betrays a basic misunderstanding of the problem, or of the context, or just a bloody-minded determination to stick to an inappropriate ideal.
Most of the time, the answer is simply that You're asking the wrong question.
XML is like violence: if it doesn't solve the problem, you're not using enough.
I think that, while the GP meant to complete the sentence with a clause.
There aren't any. Mod GP down!!
This only works within the confines of the M25. Unfortunately, metaphysically, the M25 encompasses all of humanity.
If you haven't heard/seen his work, I strongly recommend you spend a little time acquainting yourself with it. I'm hoping the fact that people do keep mentioning it is reason enough.
He's a difficult guy to quote in most instances, because he was radical to the core and a lot of people tried to imitate him by doing "shock comedy", but his message was more heartfelt and warm than all the vitriol and bile he apparently spilled on stage in getting that message across. It's difficult to portray faithfully. However, for the sake of the thread I don't mind throwing this one in:
By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. Thank you, thank you. Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they'll take root. I don't know. You try. You do what you can. Kill yourselves. Seriously though, if you are, do. No really, there's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, OK? Kill yourselves, seriously. You're the ruiner of all things good. Seriously, no, this is not a joke. "There's gonna be a joke coming..." There's no fucking joke coming, you are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage, you are fucked and you are fucking us, kill yourselves, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now. Now, back to the show. "You know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar, that's a big dollar, a lot of people are feeling that indignation, we've done research, huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scumbags, quit putting a godamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
I'm currently reading his collected transcripts, and for all that it's sick and funny, it's also a work of optimistic humanist philosophy of the highest order.
I hope I've done a little to convince you to at least google him.
... and is an independent title! :-)
Personally I'm not going to pass comment until NewYorkCountryLawyer has said his... Oh, wait.
The film industry, pretty much from the start, was plagued by concerns over markets and metrics - targeting their films to capture the largest "typical" audience rather than just trying to make good films. Usually, when someone set out with the noble intention of quite simply making a great film, they would surprise and shake up the industry, and the marketing gurus were left with their cocks in their hands, going "Wow, there's a whole market dollar we didn't think of there," and suddenly the studios are churning out flicks to appeal to that audience instead.
Bill Hicks certainly had a few things to say about the crooked industry of marketing.
So now we have the same problem with the games industry, and it's been documented in all sorts of ways. Who's the saviour? Independent developers, of course. Make something new, fun, addictive - even on a low budget - and suddenly the big boys are less afraid to stick their necks out.
Independent developers are fulfilling the same role as independent film-makers have been doing for years, and they're an inevitable product of the current money-grabbing system. "The topics of fun or creativity were rarely if ever addressed." Well, strike the light...
I've been working with the ICS project (similar kind of mandate, but for children's social services - in the UK again) and we're seeing exactly the problems you've described. It's got nothing to do with the system being conceptually difficult, and everything to do with massive, chronic project mismanagement by central government from the very start.
Specifications were set out without any significant consultation from users, practitioners or even IT project management specialists (a field full of charlatans, but some experienced input at the initial phase would have been helpful). The specs were then handed - untested, mind you - to software suppliers, most of whom have been in the business of supplying under-performing systems to the public sector for decades, and who therefore know exactly what they have to say in order to win contracts, and what they can get away with while still turning a profit.
I'll lay out the process:
The whole merry-go-round keeps turning, and there's no way off it because it's an inevitable product of a system of government that lends itself to knee-jerk policy- and decision-making according to the whims of the press and public rather than the mandate of their manifesto.
Reactionary "solutions" to systemic problems invite crooked opportunists when the money starts flying, and I don't see this changing, ever.
The only downside is that you have to spend all of your time interacting with a fundamentally broken system which, I discovered, was not something I wanted to put up with.
I think you've just described the common denominator underlying the frustrations of every single major profession.