Likewise, some kids will get their hands on copies of Playboy and other skin magazines, despite laws restricting their sale to minors.
What really worried me isn't this legislation per se - restricting the content that is sold to minors is something done in other media and is already done in videogame when the game is pornographic. It's the parents in the article who are worried about their kids getting access to sexual material, but don't care about the violence. For me, that was completely chilling.
Dead on. Also, consider that the prices of goods like games are not determined strictly by the cost to produce them, but by a complex network of considerations, including the size and wealth of the target market (costs are substantially lower in China, which puts them in the odd situation of having electronics hardware made locally which are far, far cheaper than the imported software and media products that get played on them) and the effect that a price-point has in communicating market expectations (if people get - legally, even - a great game for $3.00, it will be harder to sell them another one for $40.00).
After all, the SRP for a game in US is higher than the average monthly salary in most of China - or in much of Latin America, for that matter. You might think that would mean the game companies would simply give up on those areas, but insofar as the marginal costs of a game are virtually negligible, there's real reasons why they might not want to.
It's a tricky situation for game developers, who want to access the economy of scale on those other markets while still protecting the high mark-ups in cash-rich countries like the US and Japan.
The whole "gnats" analogy is pretty depressing. After all, have gnats ever brought down a large beast? As a rule, the large beast just gets annoyed but keeps on going.
I'm not a parent. I'm just older than a lot of the/. crowd, and I can tell you that they're very much wrapped up in adolescent self-righteousness. They can't conceive that you're right, even when you are.
I think there is a place for privacy in a child's life: it's in their personal journal. That's about it.
You can't plan for your whole life. I'm sorry, a lot of people pretend that you can, but you can't. You can predict the market well for 2, maybe 3 years, but after that, it's a crap shoot.
Seriously. Study what you like. Get good at it. No matter what the market, in the long run you will do better building a career doing something you enjoy than trying to chase this week's big bucks with last year's diploma. Trend-hopping is what sets of these epochs of oversupply, in which every anxious wanna-be professional was told that CS was "the place to be" and flooded the market. Follow your abilities and your passions, and you'll do fine.
Here's a reality: most people will be poor and unemployed for at least some time in their lives. And people will be unhappy throughout their lives, regardless of wealth. Stop listening to your Inner Parent and follow your own passions. (And then, show up on time, return phone calls, and think of what you can do for others - these 3 skills are some of the best things you can do for your employability, whatever your degree was in.)
"Under that logic," there's a free speech issue if I beat you up for what you are threatening to say. I'm not the government, but I'm pretty sure most of us would still consider it a violation of your rights. And most of us would agree that my actions have had a chilling effect on the speech of others.
I agree with your observation that this isn't quite a free speech issue, and that the employeed acted inappropriately. I disagree with the claim in the write-up that it is automatically not a free speech issue simply because the government was not involved.
An employer firing someone for their (non-business related, private) speech may not be a free speech issue from a constitutional perspective, but it certainly would be a free speech issue from a general perspective.
A copy of a recording is no longer reasonably framed as an alienable good.
Music is a service. Not a good. My plumber does not get a royalty every time someone flushes my toilet. They need to come up with a new business model.
If the only defense of your opinion is your right to have one, that opinion exists on the flimsiest of grounds.
The essential point is correct. It is no more a matter of concern for you if someone hacks their GC to load linux than if they put it in their washing machine. It may be reasonable to describe it as "silly," but to use the sort of moral/ethical language you chose is absurd.
First, it's best to do these things while the vets are still alive, because they can provide useful information to keep the simulations more accurate. I don't think they want their experiences to be unrepresented, either, and all of history is done a great disservice by "respectful" silence, omission and distortion. Almost as dangerous as ignoring history is cleaning it up into untroubling narratives of virtuous heroes and defeated evil. Even WW2's western front and pacific theater weren't nearly that simple: it can be also seen as a war between existing colonial empires (UK, France, USA) and upstart colonial wanna-bes (Germany, Japan.)
Also, a simulation is just that: it's a model of a dynamic process, not necessarily a recreation of every aspect of the conflict. The more elements that are modelled in ways that resemble the behaviour of the simulation targets, the more "realistic" we can say it is.
I might agree with the idea that we have too many military simulations, which tends to reinforce the fiction that history is primarilly about military conflicts. More political, social, and economic simulations games - and at a far higher granularity and realism than the Civ games - might be helpful. But, the biggest market for games is still boys who like guns.
I'm pissing in the wind here, but you do know that California, New England and other traditionally "blue" states are carrying the poor oppressed low-population states in terms of tax revenues, don't you? That flyover country gets more out of the federal tax till than it puts in?
The entire point of producing a console system is to have complete dominance over what software can run on it anyway.
And the point of that complete dominance is a consistant, reliable platform on which to play games that you can almost absolutely be sure will work on that hardware without any configuration, driver updating, or service pack installation.
The tech industry sucks throughout the US. That's not the point. People should do what they need to do to survive, but after all, if moving is out of the question, then they won't be submitting resumes to Chris' crew in San Francisco, will they?
The point really is that the until-recently so-privileged techies are quite happy to hypocritically make moral demands on others than they are incapable of even approaching themselves. How many times have these boards resounded with the "if you don't like it, find a new job" mantra whenever any complaint about labor-unfriendly policies is passed around?
I suggest you take a look at Paulina Borsook's "Cyberselfish" to get a sense of just how massive the whining hypocrisy of the tech sector really is. The entire tech crash is frankly one of the biggest acts of working karma I know of.
That's why Chris has a cut-off date (which puts the lie to your "any present or former SCO employees" rant.) To wit, September of this year. That's long, long after it was obvious to all and sundry that the only strategy SCO had was to sue wildly and hope that something would stick or someone would settle.
Think about this: the difference between the 3 dollars to make the jeans and the 100 dollars to buy them is as much - or in fact, more - the 60K per year IT salaries of the people at the jeans company as it is the 400K per year of executive management.
Don't you think that the single parents working at Starbuck's have to support kids, too? You think they're making $50,000 a year? What about the immigrant families - esp. the illegal aliens - living on $15,000 a year?
Christ, the sense of entitlement is mind-numbing.
I'll be honest - I'm picking on you partially based on guilt-by-association: I'm assuming that you're part of the Republican/Libertarian wing of the IT scene that was oh-so-happy to have labor costs go down in other industries, and all too glad to cut welfare benefits and prevent a single-payer health plan from being enacted. If you're not one of these, then I'm being unfair with my tone.
The cut-off date for Chrisd's SCO clause is September of this year - I think that's very fair. Anyone who is still with SCO at this point is pretty sad. I wouldn't print a clause like chrisd's on a public site, but let's just say that I would use the fact that someone was still working at a place like SCO as information, and not encouraging information.
Remember, every job-seeker is competing with job-seekers that may not have made the same moral compromises. And a value-driven job-seeker is going to be in a stronger position. Ironic, isn't it?
The flip side of Hollywood as cultural hegemon is that it is far easier for the rest of the world to adapt to an American culture that's been blasting at them for the past 40 years, than it is for Americans to adapt to other cultures that they only understand through, well, Hollywood.
I do like Delaney a lot, but that's another topic for another time. I can understand why someone might not like him, but I'm willing to invoke res gustibus and leave it at that.
But I think he's a great case of someone who has moved into academia. You're right, though - he's become more of a critic or meta-writer than a writer per se.
The problem of initiation exists no matter what, whether it's a committee, a publisher, or the market. If we're going to engage in the thought-experiment of a world of drastically reduced copyright, I think it would be fair to also speculate that the barriers to entry of those endowed positions would ease somewhat.
Hiring someone else isn't wrecking anyone's life - it's being selective about whose life you un-wreck. There's a big difference.
And I'm afraid that you are talking out of your ass on this. I have enough experience (and age) to have sired some of the Slashdot posters.
Does this mean I wouldn't hire someone with SCO on their resume? Think about it. Just what SCO code has been worthy of note lately? Someone with the job title of "software engineer" in a company whose strategy is entirely legal has, apparently, been part of a massive and ongoing failure to create worthwhile products and services. That would suggest, to me, a lack of initiative and ability, as well as a failure of conviction. I wouldn't throw out an application based on that, but I'd be very, very skeptical. And in this market, hiring managers can be extremely skeptical.
The NEA has been eviscerated because the US has a strong anti-intellectual, anti-art sentiment. The model works quite well in Japan - it keeps many arts and crafts alive - as well as in Europe. Many excellent writers are in academia - such as Czeslow Milosz, June Jordan, Delaney, Robert Duncan. In fact, to survive, most good writers need to be in academia or turn out pop trash. And good writers (like good researchers) usually have reduced teaching expectations.
I'm swimming in an ocean filled, not with water, but with irony.
The US has enjoyed the benefits of globalization for decades now. Look at all the goods at your disposal, right now. Look at the computer, the mouse, the car, the food. Realize how much of it is affordable to you because they exported the labor, to a place that could make your underwear with labor that cost $1 a day.
Now, imagine all the prices of all those goods increasing as every individual on the production and supply chain, all the way back to the origin, gets paid in US-standard wages that allows each and every worker to buy a US-sized house on a US-sized tract of land for a small nuclear family, with 2 recent-make cars for the family, health care, home entertainment systems, etc. Are you willing to pay $20 for a pair of socks to make that happen? $50,000 for an entry-level car?
I'm all for wage convergance, labor and environmental riders on trade agreements - although that will also end up making your goods more expensive. But to think that the US has suffered under globalism is completley misguided.
Also, the H1B visas were granted because of something that most IT professionals, particularly the libertarianish ones, just don't understand: class conflict. IT was very expensive blue-collar labor. The US economy is managerial capitalism, and it is in their class interests to push down the cost of that labor.
Most IT types mistook their good wages for a sign of inclusion in the "wealth-generating," upper-classes. In fact, it was an artifact of a labor scarcity that has been engineered away. Now, the IT rabble has to take its place in front of the punch-clock like all the other line-workers.
Slashdot Mirror
If the alternative to IM is setting up two meetings a day for back-and-forth Q&A, does IM sound still sound so bad?
Just because there's a good explanation, doesn't mean it isn't a problem.
Likewise, some kids will get their hands on copies of Playboy and other skin magazines, despite laws restricting their sale to minors.
What really worried me isn't this legislation per se - restricting the content that is sold to minors is something done in other media and is already done in videogame when the game is pornographic. It's the parents in the article who are worried about their kids getting access to sexual material, but don't care about the violence. For me, that was completely chilling.
Dead on. Also, consider that the prices of goods like games are not determined strictly by the cost to produce them, but by a complex network of considerations, including the size and wealth of the target market (costs are substantially lower in China, which puts them in the odd situation of having electronics hardware made locally which are far, far cheaper than the imported software and media products that get played on them) and the effect that a price-point has in communicating market expectations (if people get - legally, even - a great game for $3.00, it will be harder to sell them another one for $40.00).
After all, the SRP for a game in US is higher than the average monthly salary in most of China - or in much of Latin America, for that matter. You might think that would mean the game companies would simply give up on those areas, but insofar as the marginal costs of a game are virtually negligible, there's real reasons why they might not want to.
It's a tricky situation for game developers, who want to access the economy of scale on those other markets while still protecting the high mark-ups in cash-rich countries like the US and Japan.
Piracy is competition.
The whole "gnats" analogy is pretty depressing. After all, have gnats ever brought down a large beast? As a rule, the large beast just gets annoyed but keeps on going.
I'm not a parent. I'm just older than a lot of the /. crowd, and I can tell you that they're very much wrapped up in adolescent self-righteousness. They can't conceive that you're right, even when you are.
I think there is a place for privacy in a child's life: it's in their personal journal. That's about it.
You can't plan for your whole life. I'm sorry, a lot of people pretend that you can, but you can't. You can predict the market well for 2, maybe 3 years, but after that, it's a crap shoot.
Seriously. Study what you like. Get good at it. No matter what the market, in the long run you will do better building a career doing something you enjoy than trying to chase this week's big bucks with last year's diploma. Trend-hopping is what sets of these epochs of oversupply, in which every anxious wanna-be professional was told that CS was "the place to be" and flooded the market. Follow your abilities and your passions, and you'll do fine.
Here's a reality: most people will be poor and unemployed for at least some time in their lives. And people will be unhappy throughout their lives, regardless of wealth. Stop listening to your Inner Parent and follow your own passions. (And then, show up on time, return phone calls, and think of what you can do for others - these 3 skills are some of the best things you can do for your employability, whatever your degree was in.)
Well, her getting mad is also speech.
"Under that logic," there's a free speech issue if I beat you up for what you are threatening to say. I'm not the government, but I'm pretty sure most of us would still consider it a violation of your rights. And most of us would agree that my actions have had a chilling effect on the speech of others.
I agree with your observation that this isn't quite a free speech issue, and that the employeed acted inappropriately. I disagree with the claim in the write-up that it is automatically not a free speech issue simply because the government was not involved.
An employer firing someone for their (non-business related, private) speech may not be a free speech issue from a constitutional perspective, but it certainly would be a free speech issue from a general perspective.
A copy of a recording is no longer reasonably framed as an alienable good.
Music is a service. Not a good. My plumber does not get a royalty every time someone flushes my toilet. They need to come up with a new business model.
If the only defense of your opinion is your right to have one, that opinion exists on the flimsiest of grounds.
The essential point is correct. It is no more a matter of concern for you if someone hacks their GC to load linux than if they put it in their washing machine. It may be reasonable to describe it as "silly," but to use the sort of moral/ethical language you chose is absurd.
I disagree on two fronts (ha ha):
First, it's best to do these things while the vets are still alive, because they can provide useful information to keep the simulations more accurate. I don't think they want their experiences to be unrepresented, either, and all of history is done a great disservice by "respectful" silence, omission and distortion. Almost as dangerous as ignoring history is cleaning it up into untroubling narratives of virtuous heroes and defeated evil. Even WW2's western front and pacific theater weren't nearly that simple: it can be also seen as a war between existing colonial empires (UK, France, USA) and upstart colonial wanna-bes (Germany, Japan.)
Also, a simulation is just that: it's a model of a dynamic process, not necessarily a recreation of every aspect of the conflict. The more elements that are modelled in ways that resemble the behaviour of the simulation targets, the more "realistic" we can say it is.
I might agree with the idea that we have too many military simulations, which tends to reinforce the fiction that history is primarilly about military conflicts. More political, social, and economic simulations games - and at a far higher granularity and realism than the Civ games - might be helpful. But, the biggest market for games is still boys who like guns.
I'm pissing in the wind here, but you do know that California, New England and other traditionally "blue" states are carrying the poor oppressed low-population states in terms of tax revenues, don't you? That flyover country gets more out of the federal tax till than it puts in?
And the point of that complete dominance is a consistant, reliable platform on which to play games that you can almost absolutely be sure will work on that hardware without any configuration, driver updating, or service pack installation.
In other words, it's a feature, not a bug.
The tech industry sucks throughout the US. That's not the point. People should do what they need to do to survive, but after all, if moving is out of the question, then they won't be submitting resumes to Chris' crew in San Francisco, will they?
The point really is that the until-recently so-privileged techies are quite happy to hypocritically make moral demands on others than they are incapable of even approaching themselves. How many times have these boards resounded with the "if you don't like it, find a new job" mantra whenever any complaint about labor-unfriendly policies is passed around?
I suggest you take a look at Paulina Borsook's "Cyberselfish" to get a sense of just how massive the whining hypocrisy of the tech sector really is. The entire tech crash is frankly one of the biggest acts of working karma I know of.
That's why Chris has a cut-off date (which puts the lie to your "any present or former SCO employees" rant.) To wit, September of this year. That's long, long after it was obvious to all and sundry that the only strategy SCO had was to sue wildly and hope that something would stick or someone would settle.
I get the feeling that Ron Record's gonna land on his feet, no matter what. :)
Think about this: the difference between the 3 dollars to make the jeans and the 100 dollars to buy them is as much - or in fact, more - the 60K per year IT salaries of the people at the jeans company as it is the 400K per year of executive management.
Don't you think that the single parents working at Starbuck's have to support kids, too? You think they're making $50,000 a year? What about the immigrant families - esp. the illegal aliens - living on $15,000 a year?
Christ, the sense of entitlement is mind-numbing.
I'll be honest - I'm picking on you partially based on guilt-by-association: I'm assuming that you're part of the Republican/Libertarian wing of the IT scene that was oh-so-happy to have labor costs go down in other industries, and all too glad to cut welfare benefits and prevent a single-payer health plan from being enacted. If you're not one of these, then I'm being unfair with my tone.
The cut-off date for Chrisd's SCO clause is September of this year - I think that's very fair. Anyone who is still with SCO at this point is pretty sad. I wouldn't print a clause like chrisd's on a public site, but let's just say that I would use the fact that someone was still working at a place like SCO as information, and not encouraging information.
Remember, every job-seeker is competing with job-seekers that may not have made the same moral compromises. And a value-driven job-seeker is going to be in a stronger position. Ironic, isn't it?
The flip side of Hollywood as cultural hegemon is that it is far easier for the rest of the world to adapt to an American culture that's been blasting at them for the past 40 years, than it is for Americans to adapt to other cultures that they only understand through, well, Hollywood.
I do like Delaney a lot, but that's another topic for another time. I can understand why someone might not like him, but I'm willing to invoke res gustibus and leave it at that.
But I think he's a great case of someone who has moved into academia. You're right, though - he's become more of a critic or meta-writer than a writer per se.
The problem of initiation exists no matter what, whether it's a committee, a publisher, or the market. If we're going to engage in the thought-experiment of a world of drastically reduced copyright, I think it would be fair to also speculate that the barriers to entry of those endowed positions would ease somewhat.
Hiring someone else isn't wrecking anyone's life - it's being selective about whose life you un-wreck. There's a big difference.
And I'm afraid that you are talking out of your ass on this. I have enough experience (and age) to have sired some of the Slashdot posters.
Does this mean I wouldn't hire someone with SCO on their resume? Think about it. Just what SCO code has been worthy of note lately? Someone with the job title of "software engineer" in a company whose strategy is entirely legal has, apparently, been part of a massive and ongoing failure to create worthwhile products and services. That would suggest, to me, a lack of initiative and ability, as well as a failure of conviction. I wouldn't throw out an application based on that, but I'd be very, very skeptical. And in this market, hiring managers can be extremely skeptical.
The NEA has been eviscerated because the US has a strong anti-intellectual, anti-art sentiment. The model works quite well in Japan - it keeps many arts and crafts alive - as well as in Europe. Many excellent writers are in academia - such as Czeslow Milosz, June Jordan, Delaney, Robert Duncan. In fact, to survive, most good writers need to be in academia or turn out pop trash. And good writers (like good researchers) usually have reduced teaching expectations.
I'm swimming in an ocean filled, not with water, but with irony.
The US has enjoyed the benefits of globalization for decades now. Look at all the goods at your disposal, right now. Look at the computer, the mouse, the car, the food. Realize how much of it is affordable to you because they exported the labor, to a place that could make your underwear with labor that cost $1 a day.
Now, imagine all the prices of all those goods increasing as every individual on the production and supply chain, all the way back to the origin, gets paid in US-standard wages that allows each and every worker to buy a US-sized house on a US-sized tract of land for a small nuclear family, with 2 recent-make cars for the family, health care, home entertainment systems, etc. Are you willing to pay $20 for a pair of socks to make that happen? $50,000 for an entry-level car?
I'm all for wage convergance, labor and environmental riders on trade agreements - although that will also end up making your goods more expensive. But to think that the US has suffered under globalism is completley misguided.
Also, the H1B visas were granted because of something that most IT professionals, particularly the libertarianish ones, just don't understand: class conflict. IT was very expensive blue-collar labor. The US economy is managerial capitalism, and it is in their class interests to push down the cost of that labor.
Most IT types mistook their good wages for a sign of inclusion in the "wealth-generating," upper-classes. In fact, it was an artifact of a labor scarcity that has been engineered away. Now, the IT rabble has to take its place in front of the punch-clock like all the other line-workers.