Post an article on slashdot about sensitive data being lost, and then see how many members of the military, DoD civilian employees, and DoD contractors pop up to tell about the various security procedures and technical safeguards for such information.
Whether that kind of security information is classified or not, you're not supposed to do your best to make it easy for the bad guys to find out. At least make them ask you in person. Or make them draw suspicion as they're asking around about it. Think of it this way, you wouldn't give out your password, but you also wouldn't announce on the internet that "no one can get my password because I keep it securely locked in my bedroom third drawer on the left at 1313 Quick Street".
A lot of people came out to show how much they think they know. Quite the social engineering coup.
Then why is it that the societies with strong laws against porn are growing with high birthrates while countries where prn and other permissive views toward sex is far more accepted?
I've read there have been recent studies on the negative effects on men of much exposure to prn - and it's not what you would expect. The problem isn't that the men go sex-crazed, it's that they start to have difficulty pleasing, and being pleased by, a real women, getting more pleasure instead from pictures and movies.
...relied on slavery for their economy, many of the founding fathers (especially Thomas Jefferson) sought to abolish it. They were certainly aware that blacks could be the intellectual and educational equals of whites, because they met some such people in business and from African nations.
From what I've read, Jefferson did not consider blacks to be equally intelligent. Indeed I read of a half-white half-black mathematician who tried to persuade Jefferson that blacks were intellectually as capable as whites. But Jefferson still believed that whatever the comparative intelligence, blacks should be free. Whatever Lincoln believed privately, his public speeches reflected a similar opinion that while blacks may not be equal, they should be free.
First, how is the violence in a video game "speech" or "the press", which are both mediums in which words are used so ideas, opinions and facts can be discussed?
Second, why is the production of violent video games protected but my right to donate money to a group that will publish ideas, opinions and facts I agree with not protected?
Third, perhaps California should have simply put a limit on how much money a person could spend on a video game containing violence and called it the "Video Game Finance Reform Law".
Perhaps the school has had a problem with students using cell phones and texting for other purposes. I've heard of places where they've banned the devices because too many students were using them during school time to set up drug sales or prostitution. If this is one of those schools, that would explain why the charges of having the device and refusing to give it up were considered so serious.
So I have come to realize that most slashdotters are for net neutrality, but I am still confused as to why?
It used to confuse me as well. I can't say I fully understand it, much less its implications. But if Feinstein is against, it almost certainly has to be a good thing.
If the theory of evolution of man wants broader acceptance, it should start with an attempts to portray it as something it is not. It is not proven fact. It is theory. A remarkably well supported theory with a lot of evidence to back it up. But it is theory.
Schools would get a lot less blowback if they would present it as a theory that must be learned and understood rather than as a fact that must be believed. Simple things like writing not your test questions as "T/F Man descended from other life forms", which my force a child to deny his beliefs in order to get a grade, would help. Instead write "T/F According to the theory of evolution, Man descended from other life forms". The kid learns the science and the community has no reason to get in an uproar.
Knowing what other educated people know and/or believe is an important part of an education. Ancient mythology was considered part of a good education for many years. Even the most anti-evolution parent should be able to understand the importance of "knowing your enemy". So long as the material is presented as something to know rather than something to believe, you should avoid a lot of trouble.
Of course of a lot of slashdotters will insist that the theory of evolution is fact, so why not present it that way. Well, if the evidence is enough to convince you, then why not let the evidence stand on its own and convince others? If the kids are required to learn what the theory of evolution says and what the supporting evidence is, why not let them reach their own conclusions about it? Why do you feel a need to insist that they agree with yours?
For those of you who think he's to going to make great changes, please point to ONE thing he has done, not said.
You're comment was modded to a 5. You had, if I count correctly, 8 direct replies. So your post hardly escaped notice. Yet no one took up your challenge. If I could mod you I would have to add another +1 insightful.
Yes, I know it's a bold thing to liken Obama to Kennedy and King but, I'm sorry, I get flashes of both great men when I watch Obama speak. He possesses an enormous amount of charisma and motivates people and fills them with hope.
If you believe he's just another politician; if you believe he's going to be a big flop and disappoint and all that garbage, do yourself a favour and, more importantly, do everyone around you a favour and shut up. Keep your thoughts to yourself. You're allowed to have them and I won't take that away from you but, at a time when people are filled with hope and idealism, let them be. Don't try to shatter that hope.
Sure he inspires. Yes King inspired. Kennedy inspired. So did Mussolini and Jim Jones. They also filled people with hope.
The fact that he talks well doesn't imply good or evil. It merely makes him more capable of doing whichever he chooses to do. I hope you don't mind if I keep my eyes and mind open, and speak when I see things happening that disturb me. A failure to speak up can shatter hope too.
To anyone not overly familiar with Article II, Section 1, Clause 8 of the Constitution, it looked like Obama was confused- or stumbled, but he was just in shock to hear Roberts put things out of order.
Don't worry. I certainly don't have the oath memorized, but it was clear to me that it was Roberts who had messed up.
I hope Obama is a faithful to the wording of the rest of the Constitution as he is to that one section. It would be nice to have a Democrat who believes in following the law rather than claiming that a "living breathing constitution" gives him an excuse to do whatever seems convenient at the time.
I'd recommend that anyone that's tired of this "shit" read The Game by Neil Strauss.
I always figured that the kind of girls who Strauss's games would work on were not the kind of girls I wanted to date. Who wants the leftovers from every guy who has 8 bucks for a book?
Ars Technica reports that the FTC is getting ready to take a hard look at gaming DRM, setting up a town hall meeting to be held on March 25th. They're currently recruiting panelists, and they say the meeting will, in part, "address the need to improve disclosures to consumers about DRM limitations."
A longer legal notice will be included with each product (alongside the warnings about not sticking a fork in electric sockets or using the device as a parachute when jumping from an airplane) thus making it less likely to be read by comsumers, less likely to be understood if they do read it, and written in a smaller font so it can still fit on the same amount of paper.
The controversy over DRM came to a head in 2008 with the release of Spore and the multiple subsequent class-action lawsuits focusing on the SecuROM software that came with the game. Ars Technica says the town hall meeting will also look at "legal issues surrounding DRM"
New laws will be written to protect the makers of Spore, SecuROM and other DRM enabled or enabling technology from the evils of class action lawsuits that would otherwise result when consumers find they can't use the products they have paid for.
and "the potential need for government involvement to protect consumers."
Consumers will be protected from the higher prices that result when people are able to use a purchased product more than once. By making sure people can only use a product one time, people will need to keep repurchasing the same item over and over, allowing manufacturers to produce larger numbers of the same item and sell these items at a volume discount.
The phrase government involvement may scare some readers, but don't worry! Those generous manufacturers, who only want to keep our prices low after all, will be watching the FTC, providing donations to the right lawmakers, all to make sure that consumer interests are protected every step of the way.
The election wouldn't have to be fraudulent or deliberately swung. It would just have to be close (consider the current recount underway in Minnesota). With the electoral college, you might have close elections in a few states that force a recount in those particular states (assuming the state has enough electoral votes to swing the whole election), but you're rarely going to need to recount all 50 states when using an electoral college. Without the electoral college, every close election means a recount of the whole country.
Listen to the seasoned programmers. Find out about the successful programs they've delivered and what made the effort successful. Trust their judgments on technical matters. If you have to overrule them, make sure you've heard them out first and explain your decision. Even if the decision doesn't go their way they'll feel better about it if they believe they've had input.
Go to bat for them. They're programmers, not persuaders. You're the guy who has to make the cases for their technical decisions and judgments to upper management, and protect them from poor decisions made by upper management.
Knowing a little algebra confused the heck out of me when I was taught programming. How can X = X + 1 make any sense? That would imply 1 = 0!
Pure nonsense!
The author seems to be saying that because the user has greater connection with the events on screen, there is no fourth wall. He has a point, but he misses the point. Yes, the fourth wall that keeps the user from affecting events on screen has disappeared, but it could never be broken by the actors in movies anyway. What "breaking the fourth wall" really refers to is interfering with complete immersion or complete escapism. A few exceptional cases in film have broken the fourth wall successfully, but most times it is done either in comedies or documentaries. Very rarely is it done in action movies or dramas.
Video games have controllers, and that is a fact. But so is the fact that movies have a 2D screen. Both are attempts to immerse the viewer/player, and both have limitations. As technology improves, the immersion improves. The movies went from silent, to talkies, to color. Controllers have gone from keyboards to unmoving controllers to rumbling controllers. Nothing in these progressions suggests that people no longer want immersion and escapism.
The author mentions that Zork had instructions that referred to the user. Big deal, I remember watching slide shows that contained instructions at the beginning to flip the slide every time I heard a ding. When you have new users or new technologies you have to do some upfront instruction, and perhaps some instruction throughout. But you only do as much as you need to. You don't go looking for ways to break that barrier.
The author also mentions the impatient behavior of Sonic when the user doesn't do anything for a while. The problem with this example is mentioned by the author, but not recognized by the author as a problem. When Sonic acts impatient, the user has already dropped out of the immersion. The user is most likely talking to a friend, going to the bathroom, or is in some other way distracted from the game. So Sonic is not breaking the wall, it was broken by the user.
The Sanity game mentioned seems like an interesting exception. But it hardly makes the case that fourth wall breaking is ok in general.
Another paper by the libertarian-leaning CATO institute also said this: Banks, financial lenders, and mortgage providers "work better" if they are responsible and provide only secure financial investments, and are therefore not likely to enter a worldwide financial meltdown. For that reason, financial oversight legislation is neither necessary nor desirable. QED.
Our recent meltdown is due to regulations that encouraged bad loans. Our future meltdowns will be due to the assumptions by banks that they don't need to be responsible because the government will step in with billions of dollars to bail them out if anything goes wrong.
It's silly to blame the current mess on lack of regulation when the banks, financial lenders, and mortgage provides were regulated.
I used to pose that question: You have to have a demo working in one hour to generate all the prime numbers between 1 and 100. Show me the psuedo code. But I had to give it up because no one even could think of where to start. But one candidate struck me as possibly management material. She said, "It's a demo, right? Look up the numbers in a book or on the web, then write a single 'print' statement."
If the countermeasures taken were legal, then how is it vigilantism? It's more like social pressure, or people refusing to let their property be used in ways they disapprove of. That's not vigilantism. It's the kind of non-governmental community action that allows freedom to exist instead of every tiny bit of our lives being micro-managed by a big-brother government.
Reporters, journalist, etc. are self-selecting. They're people who chose to go into the field of journalism. Is it any surprise that people with similar interests and similar education would come out with similar ideas and beliefs? Research has shown time and again that journalists overwhelmingly vote for democrats. Human nature being what it is, we shouldn't find it surprising that journalists under deadline pressures don't always have time to go back and carefully remove any of their own biases, or that they may not even recognize their own bias, particularly when their peers have the same biases.
I have no problem with his wife and kids being black too. I just don't understand people refusing to vote for someone with multi-racial kids like John McCain.
Slashdot Mirror
Fuller wrote twenty one Star Trek episodes over four years, two in Deep Space Nine's final season, and the rest for Voyager.
So the guy wrote 19 episodes of Voyager? I worry that if runs a new TV series, it could be the final nail in Star Trek's coffin.
Post an article on slashdot about sensitive data being lost, and then see how many members of the military, DoD civilian employees, and DoD contractors pop up to tell about the various security procedures and technical safeguards for such information.
Whether that kind of security information is classified or not, you're not supposed to do your best to make it easy for the bad guys to find out. At least make them ask you in person. Or make them draw suspicion as they're asking around about it. Think of it this way, you wouldn't give out your password, but you also wouldn't announce on the internet that "no one can get my password because I keep it securely locked in my bedroom third drawer on the left at 1313 Quick Street".
A lot of people came out to show how much they think they know. Quite the social engineering coup.
"Sex is bad" would help to reduce the population.
Then why is it that the societies with strong laws against porn are growing with high birthrates while countries where prn and other permissive views toward sex is far more accepted?
I've read there have been recent studies on the negative effects on men of much exposure to prn - and it's not what you would expect. The problem isn't that the men go sex-crazed, it's that they start to have difficulty pleasing, and being pleased by, a real women, getting more pleasure instead from pictures and movies.
...relied on slavery for their economy, many of the founding fathers (especially Thomas Jefferson) sought to abolish it. They were certainly aware that blacks could be the intellectual and educational equals of whites, because they met some such people in business and from African nations.
From what I've read, Jefferson did not consider blacks to be equally intelligent. Indeed I read of a half-white half-black mathematician who tried to persuade Jefferson that blacks were intellectually as capable as whites. But Jefferson still believed that whatever the comparative intelligence, blacks should be free. Whatever Lincoln believed privately, his public speeches reflected a similar opinion that while blacks may not be equal, they should be free.
First, how is the violence in a video game "speech" or "the press", which are both mediums in which words are used so ideas, opinions and facts can be discussed?
Second, why is the production of violent video games protected but my right to donate money to a group that will publish ideas, opinions and facts I agree with not protected?
Third, perhaps California should have simply put a limit on how much money a person could spend on a video game containing violence and called it the "Video Game Finance Reform Law".
Perhaps the school has had a problem with students using cell phones and texting for other purposes. I've heard of places where they've banned the devices because too many students were using them during school time to set up drug sales or prostitution. If this is one of those schools, that would explain why the charges of having the device and refusing to give it up were considered so serious.
So I have come to realize that most slashdotters are for net neutrality, but I am still confused as to why?
It used to confuse me as well. I can't say I fully understand it, much less its implications. But if Feinstein is against, it almost certainly has to be a good thing.
If the theory of evolution of man wants broader acceptance, it should start with an attempts to portray it as something it is not. It is not proven fact. It is theory. A remarkably well supported theory with a lot of evidence to back it up. But it is theory.
Schools would get a lot less blowback if they would present it as a theory that must be learned and understood rather than as a fact that must be believed. Simple things like writing not your test questions as "T/F Man descended from other life forms", which my force a child to deny his beliefs in order to get a grade, would help. Instead write "T/F According to the theory of evolution, Man descended from other life forms". The kid learns the science and the community has no reason to get in an uproar.
Knowing what other educated people know and/or believe is an important part of an education. Ancient mythology was considered part of a good education for many years. Even the most anti-evolution parent should be able to understand the importance of "knowing your enemy". So long as the material is presented as something to know rather than something to believe, you should avoid a lot of trouble.
Of course of a lot of slashdotters will insist that the theory of evolution is fact, so why not present it that way. Well, if the evidence is enough to convince you, then why not let the evidence stand on its own and convince others? If the kids are required to learn what the theory of evolution says and what the supporting evidence is, why not let them reach their own conclusions about it? Why do you feel a need to insist that they agree with yours?
For those of you who think he's to going to make great changes, please point to ONE thing he has done, not said.
You're comment was modded to a 5. You had, if I count correctly, 8 direct replies. So your post hardly escaped notice. Yet no one took up your challenge. If I could mod you I would have to add another +1 insightful.
...reaffirmed the separation of church/state...
Sigh. I guess he knows article II better than he knows the first amendment.
Yes, I know it's a bold thing to liken Obama to Kennedy and King but, I'm sorry, I get flashes of both great men when I watch Obama speak. He possesses an enormous amount of charisma and motivates people and fills them with hope.
If you believe he's just another politician; if you believe he's going to be a big flop and disappoint and all that garbage, do yourself a favour and, more importantly, do everyone around you a favour and shut up. Keep your thoughts to yourself. You're allowed to have them and I won't take that away from you but, at a time when people are filled with hope and idealism, let them be. Don't try to shatter that hope.
Sure he inspires. Yes King inspired. Kennedy inspired. So did Mussolini and Jim Jones. They also filled people with hope.
The fact that he talks well doesn't imply good or evil. It merely makes him more capable of doing whichever he chooses to do. I hope you don't mind if I keep my eyes and mind open, and speak when I see things happening that disturb me. A failure to speak up can shatter hope too.
To anyone not overly familiar with Article II, Section 1, Clause 8 of the Constitution, it looked like Obama was confused- or stumbled, but he was just in shock to hear Roberts put things out of order.
Don't worry. I certainly don't have the oath memorized, but it was clear to me that it was Roberts who had messed up.
I hope Obama is a faithful to the wording of the rest of the Constitution as he is to that one section. It would be nice to have a Democrat who believes in following the law rather than claiming that a "living breathing constitution" gives him an excuse to do whatever seems convenient at the time.
Hah, no. The millennium started in January, 2001.
Which milennium? The one that started in Jan 1000 and ended in Dec 1999? Or the one that started in Jan 1001 and ended in Dec 2000?
I'd recommend that anyone that's tired of this "shit" read The Game by Neil Strauss.
I always figured that the kind of girls who Strauss's games would work on were not the kind of girls I wanted to date. Who wants the leftovers from every guy who has 8 bucks for a book?
Who wants leftovers, period?
Allow me to translate:
Ars Technica reports that the FTC is getting ready to take a hard look at gaming DRM, setting up a town hall meeting to be held on March 25th. They're currently recruiting panelists, and they say the meeting will, in part, "address the need to improve disclosures to consumers about DRM limitations."
A longer legal notice will be included with each product (alongside the warnings about not sticking a fork in electric sockets or using the device as a parachute when jumping from an airplane) thus making it less likely to be read by comsumers, less likely to be understood if they do read it, and written in a smaller font so it can still fit on the same amount of paper.
The controversy over DRM came to a head in 2008 with the release of Spore and the multiple subsequent class-action lawsuits focusing on the SecuROM software that came with the game. Ars Technica says the town hall meeting will also look at "legal issues surrounding DRM"
New laws will be written to protect the makers of Spore, SecuROM and other DRM enabled or enabling technology from the evils of class action lawsuits that would otherwise result when consumers find they can't use the products they have paid for.
and "the potential need for government involvement to protect consumers."
Consumers will be protected from the higher prices that result when people are able to use a purchased product more than once. By making sure people can only use a product one time, people will need to keep repurchasing the same item over and over, allowing manufacturers to produce larger numbers of the same item and sell these items at a volume discount.
The phrase government involvement may scare some readers, but don't worry! Those generous manufacturers, who only want to keep our prices low after all, will be watching the FTC, providing donations to the right lawmakers, all to make sure that consumer interests are protected every step of the way.
The election wouldn't have to be fraudulent or deliberately swung. It would just have to be close (consider the current recount underway in Minnesota). With the electoral college, you might have close elections in a few states that force a recount in those particular states (assuming the state has enough electoral votes to swing the whole election), but you're rarely going to need to recount all 50 states when using an electoral college. Without the electoral college, every close election means a recount of the whole country.
You missed the advantage of limiting the damage of close counts or contested elections.
Remember the mess in Florida in 2000? Now imagine that instead of having to consider recounting one state, we have to consider recounting all FIFTY.
Listen to the seasoned programmers. Find out about the successful programs they've delivered and what made the effort successful. Trust their judgments on technical matters. If you have to overrule them, make sure you've heard them out first and explain your decision. Even if the decision doesn't go their way they'll feel better about it if they believe they've had input.
Go to bat for them. They're programmers, not persuaders. You're the guy who has to make the cases for their technical decisions and judgments to upper management, and protect them from poor decisions made by upper management.
Knowing a little algebra confused the heck out of me when I was taught programming. How can X = X + 1 make any sense? That would imply 1 = 0! Pure nonsense!
The author seems to be saying that because the user has greater connection with the events on screen, there is no fourth wall. He has a point, but he misses the point. Yes, the fourth wall that keeps the user from affecting events on screen has disappeared, but it could never be broken by the actors in movies anyway. What "breaking the fourth wall" really refers to is interfering with complete immersion or complete escapism. A few exceptional cases in film have broken the fourth wall successfully, but most times it is done either in comedies or documentaries. Very rarely is it done in action movies or dramas.
Video games have controllers, and that is a fact. But so is the fact that movies have a 2D screen. Both are attempts to immerse the viewer/player, and both have limitations. As technology improves, the immersion improves. The movies went from silent, to talkies, to color. Controllers have gone from keyboards to unmoving controllers to rumbling controllers. Nothing in these progressions suggests that people no longer want immersion and escapism.
The author mentions that Zork had instructions that referred to the user. Big deal, I remember watching slide shows that contained instructions at the beginning to flip the slide every time I heard a ding. When you have new users or new technologies you have to do some upfront instruction, and perhaps some instruction throughout. But you only do as much as you need to. You don't go looking for ways to break that barrier.
The author also mentions the impatient behavior of Sonic when the user doesn't do anything for a while. The problem with this example is mentioned by the author, but not recognized by the author as a problem. When Sonic acts impatient, the user has already dropped out of the immersion. The user is most likely talking to a friend, going to the bathroom, or is in some other way distracted from the game. So Sonic is not breaking the wall, it was broken by the user.
The Sanity game mentioned seems like an interesting exception. But it hardly makes the case that fourth wall breaking is ok in general.
Another paper by the libertarian-leaning CATO institute also said this: Banks, financial lenders, and mortgage providers "work better" if they are responsible and provide only secure financial investments, and are therefore not likely to enter a worldwide financial meltdown. For that reason, financial oversight legislation is neither necessary nor desirable. QED.
Our recent meltdown is due to regulations that encouraged bad loans. Our future meltdowns will be due to the assumptions by banks that they don't need to be responsible because the government will step in with billions of dollars to bail them out if anything goes wrong.
It's silly to blame the current mess on lack of regulation when the banks, financial lenders, and mortgage provides were regulated.
I used to pose that question: You have to have a demo working in one hour to generate all the prime numbers between 1 and 100. Show me the psuedo code. But I had to give it up because no one even could think of where to start. But one candidate struck me as possibly management material. She said, "It's a demo, right? Look up the numbers in a book or on the web, then write a single 'print' statement."
If the countermeasures taken were legal, then how is it vigilantism? It's more like social pressure, or people refusing to let their property be used in ways they disapprove of. That's not vigilantism. It's the kind of non-governmental community action that allows freedom to exist instead of every tiny bit of our lives being micro-managed by a big-brother government.
Reporters, journalist, etc. are self-selecting. They're people who chose to go into the field of journalism. Is it any surprise that people with similar interests and similar education would come out with similar ideas and beliefs? Research has shown time and again that journalists overwhelmingly vote for democrats. Human nature being what it is, we shouldn't find it surprising that journalists under deadline pressures don't always have time to go back and carefully remove any of their own biases, or that they may not even recognize their own bias, particularly when their peers have the same biases.
I have no problem with his wife and kids being black too. I just don't understand people refusing to vote for someone with multi-racial kids like John McCain.