First of all, realize that this game has been the target of parents and politicians for a long time. This isn't suddenly a new thing that popped up just because some sex was added. The sex just gave them something new to rant about, and a new angle from which to attack the game.
That and its a minority of people. I doubt theres any parent that suddenly decides the game is innapropriate for their children given the new content. Those who own the game are likely to continue to own the game (except for the irresponsible parents who suddenly start taking an interest in their child's game collection). This is just a very vocal minority trying to push an agenda against Rockstar and the game industry. Unfortunately, despite the fact that a lot of us Americans aren't idiots, the idiots are the one who always seem to get on TV and the news.
Second, as some other point out, its not necessarily the sex, but the precedence that you can place stuff in a game, then lock it, fully expecting it to be unlocked later, just so you can push it to a younger crowd. For GTA, it doesn't really matter all that much: the difference between the M rating and AO rating is a laughable one year. But what if the game had been E?
I'd say its more of a matter of biased mods rather than you actually having a point. The GP was a well-thought out response. If I had mod points I would mod him up.
Making it impossible to figure out on your own would also make it harder for your support people to support. Plus you'd have to pay your people more for the extra skilled required.
In the end, it mostly doesn't matter how usable you make Linux. Your customers would rather pay money so that you can do the work maintaining their systems rather than spend the time and effort to learn to do it on their own. Because spending that time and effort means that they aren't doing other productive things that they are better suited for. And no matter how "usable" you make it, they're still going to have to spend time and effort, especially if they are not "computer people."
I know I wouldn't want to make my accountant try to figure out how to set up a web server. Its the same reason many people pay mechanics to change the oil in their cars, despite the fact that its simple to do.
Are you suggesting something along the lines of a foreach loop in C#? You can iterate over an entire collection by going:
foreach(ObjectType ot in ObjectCollection)
I think that we've been getting more powerful tools slowly but surely. Like many things in computing, its an incremental improvement rather than a huge change. Its much easier to build a large program in C# or Java then it is in C or C++.
According to the article, nearly half the deaths on that list are because of "non-error, negative effects of drugs," which sounds like your assessment.
And more to the point, why would people want to hand it over to a group of people who's stated objectives (from the original article) amount to wanting to exert more control over the content of the internet?
My guess - based on more than 20 years of purely anecdotal evidence - is that it has something to do with the rampant immaturity and mysogynism of a significant minority of the males who choose some sort of computer work for a profession.
I can't say I've had as much experience as you, but I'm not sure if thats the entire case. I really haven't come across this kind of mysogynism in my workplace, although being at a university might help with that.
I think you'd have to take into account the fact that programming and working with computers has generally been considered a "guy thing" for a long time, and that tends to make getting into computer related fields undesirable for women. People naturally gravitate towards the things that are deemed to be the social norms, and I'd argue that this pressure is even greater for women than it is for men.
We pass on our notions of what is desirable behavior for a girl or boy onto our children, which often steers their paths in life. Its a very powerful influence, and it takes a very long time to correct. The ideas that "science and computers are for boys," have been rapidly dissapearing, but its still pretty early for them to be entirely gone. After all, my mother was told that girls were nurses and boys were doctors, and that was only 20 or so years ago.
Methinks you're simplifying this a bit too much. Sure it may be easy to program... for certain programs. The difficulty of programming is very closely related to what task you're trying to get done.
I could probably teach anyone to write simple programs like "Hello World." In fact, I have. But thats worlds apart from writing a full-featured database driven web application. Or an operating system. Or device drivers. Or maybe a video game. Are you going to tell me that just anyone can learn to program this stuff because they can use a computer? I've got a lot of former classmates that would definately beg to differ.
Otaku insistence at maintaining "purity" in the name. The same people will quibble over whether or not the character in FF7 was named Aeris or Aerith (an example off the top of my head).
It's all rather silly when you consider that Japanese have a completely different character system than us. But Japanese fanboys tend to place great importance on appearing to have a superior knowledge in these sorts of things.
How about the "entitlement" non-Americans that think that because they can use the internet they are somehow entitled to owning a portion of it, despite the fact that the basic research and developement of it was done in the US, and most of the hardware is owned by the US?
I don't think they have any room to point fingers.
Oh and lets not forget that the solution is to take a system that has been working perfectly fine and give it to an unelected group of people with a incredibly bad track record. A group of people that have members who don't believe in little things such as freedom of speech, which is pretty darn fundamental to the internet.
As another person stated, do you really want China, responsible for massive censorship of the internet, to have a say in how its run?
This is a solution in search of a problem. The only real problem is political, and politics is something that the internet can do without.
I wouldn't say its a niche, since its still in very wide use. Research, special effects production, etc. use it primarily.
The issue is that the game industry is incredibly massive now, so much that its the primary driver in developing new graphics cards. And of course, since DirectX is used by the overwhelming majority of computer games, of course is going to be focused on by nVidia. Gotta sell your product.
Dems voted for the war. They voted for military spending. They voted for the Patriot Act and the DCMA. They voted for the act with Real ID. They consistently vote to give more power to corporations. The liberal judges in SCOTUS voted that states can take your property and give it to private entities.
So yes, I think all of those things, with the exception of Roe V. Wade, would continue to happen with a dem.
I'll say it before and I'll say it again. There are precious few politicians, Republican or Democrat, who are looking out for your best interest. We in America need a new breed of politicians with integrity and the best interest of their constituents in mind.
I'm pretty sure that you could sue them for damages, thus holding them responsible for identity theft. The problem is that its really hard to sue corporations, and most people don't have the time or money.
Well for one, if my credit card data is compromised then I'd probably be pretty interested in knowing about it so that I can cancel my cards. Plus, knowing that your data is compromised before hand can help you to act faster if its actually abused. And I'm sure it would help ironing out issues with credit and lawsuits if you did have proof that your data is compromised.
Except that they tried to breed and release it, but it died. At that point, whats more wasteful? Throwing it away, stuffing it, or using it for nourishment.
What I usually do is download Service Pack 2 ahead of time, and get a good software firewall, and install both of those, then plug it into a router and run Windows Update right away. I haven't been compromised yet.
Let's not forget that he's also comparing this against the cheapest version of Visual Studio. I don't think that many serious developers are going to be using the Standard Edition. Last time I checked, Standard Edition had a crippled optimizer. Any serious developer is going to be using at least pro, which is around $500. The Enterprise Architect version, which is what we use where I work, seems to be around $1,200.
It doesn't really matter. Both Democrats and Republicans whore themselves out to corporations, and sacrifice your rights for more power. The smartest thing both parties have done is make the other look like the bad guys. That way you can feel like you're morally superior, even though you're voting for the same bunch of crooks that the other guy is voting for.
Its right up there with people getting all wrapped up about the President, when Congress is just as important. It was Congress that allowed the DCMA and PATRIOT acts, and allowed the invasion of Iraq.
People need to wake up. I just wonder what its going to take for that to happen.
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First of all, realize that this game has been the target of parents and politicians for a long time. This isn't suddenly a new thing that popped up just because some sex was added. The sex just gave them something new to rant about, and a new angle from which to attack the game.
That and its a minority of people. I doubt theres any parent that suddenly decides the game is innapropriate for their children given the new content. Those who own the game are likely to continue to own the game (except for the irresponsible parents who suddenly start taking an interest in their child's game collection). This is just a very vocal minority trying to push an agenda against Rockstar and the game industry. Unfortunately, despite the fact that a lot of us Americans aren't idiots, the idiots are the one who always seem to get on TV and the news.
Second, as some other point out, its not necessarily the sex, but the precedence that you can place stuff in a game, then lock it, fully expecting it to be unlocked later, just so you can push it to a younger crowd. For GTA, it doesn't really matter all that much: the difference between the M rating and AO rating is a laughable one year. But what if the game had been E?
The content was programmed into the game. It was unlocked with a code. The content WAS in the game, just unnaccessable until the code came along.
I'd say its more of a matter of biased mods rather than you actually having a point. The GP was a well-thought out response. If I had mod points I would mod him up.
Making it impossible to figure out on your own would also make it harder for your support people to support. Plus you'd have to pay your people more for the extra skilled required.
In the end, it mostly doesn't matter how usable you make Linux. Your customers would rather pay money so that you can do the work maintaining their systems rather than spend the time and effort to learn to do it on their own. Because spending that time and effort means that they aren't doing other productive things that they are better suited for. And no matter how "usable" you make it, they're still going to have to spend time and effort, especially if they are not "computer people."
I know I wouldn't want to make my accountant try to figure out how to set up a web server. Its the same reason many people pay mechanics to change the oil in their cars, despite the fact that its simple to do.
Are you suggesting something along the lines of a foreach loop in C#? You can iterate over an entire collection by going:
foreach(ObjectType ot in ObjectCollection)
I think that we've been getting more powerful tools slowly but surely. Like many things in computing, its an incremental improvement rather than a huge change. Its much easier to build a large program in C# or Java then it is in C or C++.
According to the article, nearly half the deaths on that list are because of "non-error, negative effects of drugs," which sounds like your assessment.
And more to the point, why would people want to hand it over to a group of people who's stated objectives (from the original article) amount to wanting to exert more control over the content of the internet?
Yep, because the US has definately been leveraging our "control" of the internet to impose our views on other countries.... oh wait.
My guess - based on more than 20 years of purely anecdotal evidence - is that it has something to do with the rampant immaturity and mysogynism of a significant minority of the males who choose some sort of computer work for a profession.
I can't say I've had as much experience as you, but I'm not sure if thats the entire case. I really haven't come across this kind of mysogynism in my workplace, although being at a university might help with that.
I think you'd have to take into account the fact that programming and working with computers has generally been considered a "guy thing" for a long time, and that tends to make getting into computer related fields undesirable for women. People naturally gravitate towards the things that are deemed to be the social norms, and I'd argue that this pressure is even greater for women than it is for men.
We pass on our notions of what is desirable behavior for a girl or boy onto our children, which often steers their paths in life. Its a very powerful influence, and it takes a very long time to correct. The ideas that "science and computers are for boys," have been rapidly dissapearing, but its still pretty early for them to be entirely gone. After all, my mother was told that girls were nurses and boys were doctors, and that was only 20 or so years ago.
We just have to stay diligent and be patient.
Methinks you're simplifying this a bit too much. Sure it may be easy to program... for certain programs. The difficulty of programming is very closely related to what task you're trying to get done.
I could probably teach anyone to write simple programs like "Hello World." In fact, I have. But thats worlds apart from writing a full-featured database driven web application. Or an operating system. Or device drivers. Or maybe a video game. Are you going to tell me that just anyone can learn to program this stuff because they can use a computer? I've got a lot of former classmates that would definately beg to differ.
Otaku insistence at maintaining "purity" in the name. The same people will quibble over whether or not the character in FF7 was named Aeris or Aerith (an example off the top of my head).
It's all rather silly when you consider that Japanese have a completely different character system than us. But Japanese fanboys tend to place great importance on appearing to have a superior knowledge in these sorts of things.
How about the "entitlement" non-Americans that think that because they can use the internet they are somehow entitled to owning a portion of it, despite the fact that the basic research and developement of it was done in the US, and most of the hardware is owned by the US?
I don't think they have any room to point fingers.
Oh and lets not forget that the solution is to take a system that has been working perfectly fine and give it to an unelected group of people with a incredibly bad track record. A group of people that have members who don't believe in little things such as freedom of speech, which is pretty darn fundamental to the internet.
As another person stated, do you really want China, responsible for massive censorship of the internet, to have a say in how its run?
This is a solution in search of a problem. The only real problem is political, and politics is something that the internet can do without.
I've used Run As... for a massive amount of apps and haven't had a problem. What are some apps that don't run properly under it?
I wouldn't say its a niche, since its still in very wide use. Research, special effects production, etc. use it primarily.
The issue is that the game industry is incredibly massive now, so much that its the primary driver in developing new graphics cards. And of course, since DirectX is used by the overwhelming majority of computer games, of course is going to be focused on by nVidia. Gotta sell your product.
Let's just make our entire site in PostScript, or better yet an OpenOffice.org .sxw or an OpenDocument .odp file format.
Sadly, I've actually seen a site made entirely in PDF.
Maybe you can do what this guy did, if you haven't already seen it.
Dems voted for the war. They voted for military spending. They voted for the Patriot Act and the DCMA. They voted for the act with Real ID. They consistently vote to give more power to corporations. The liberal judges in SCOTUS voted that states can take your property and give it to private entities.
So yes, I think all of those things, with the exception of Roe V. Wade, would continue to happen with a dem.
I'll say it before and I'll say it again. There are precious few politicians, Republican or Democrat, who are looking out for your best interest. We in America need a new breed of politicians with integrity and the best interest of their constituents in mind.
True but software that is open source isn't necessarily free by the FSF's definition.
I'm pretty sure that you could sue them for damages, thus holding them responsible for identity theft. The problem is that its really hard to sue corporations, and most people don't have the time or money.
Well for one, if my credit card data is compromised then I'd probably be pretty interested in knowing about it so that I can cancel my cards. Plus, knowing that your data is compromised before hand can help you to act faster if its actually abused. And I'm sure it would help ironing out issues with credit and lawsuits if you did have proof that your data is compromised.
Except that they tried to breed and release it, but it died. At that point, whats more wasteful? Throwing it away, stuffing it, or using it for nourishment.
See this guy's comment.
What I usually do is download Service Pack 2 ahead of time, and get a good software firewall, and install both of those, then plug it into a router and run Windows Update right away. I haven't been compromised yet.
Let's not forget that he's also comparing this against the cheapest version of Visual Studio. I don't think that many serious developers are going to be using the Standard Edition. Last time I checked, Standard Edition had a crippled optimizer. Any serious developer is going to be using at least pro, which is around $500. The Enterprise Architect version, which is what we use where I work, seems to be around $1,200.
It doesn't really matter. Both Democrats and Republicans whore themselves out to corporations, and sacrifice your rights for more power. The smartest thing both parties have done is make the other look like the bad guys. That way you can feel like you're morally superior, even though you're voting for the same bunch of crooks that the other guy is voting for.
Its right up there with people getting all wrapped up about the President, when Congress is just as important. It was Congress that allowed the DCMA and PATRIOT acts, and allowed the invasion of Iraq.
People need to wake up. I just wonder what its going to take for that to happen.
You mean Eminent Domain? That thing we've had for a long time? That many other countries have as well?