Blizzard has most likely monitored his account over some period of time and seen, "hey, this guy is doing identical actions all over"... If they monitored anybody's account, they would see the same thing. You cannot advance in the game without repeating the same actions over and over again.
No, they wouldn't. While it's true that repetitive tasks and actions are necessary in order to level up, someone who isn't using macros/botting/whatever won't do the exact same thing over and over, with the exact same timing. Even the most accurate human can't perform repetitive actions with a computers' precision.
All this does is give a headsup to the botters that they have to throw a little random action in now and then, a delay here, a pause there, and the botters will keep going undetected.
The thing is, even if botters design a "random" algorithm, it will most likely be predictable over time, and hence it could be caught by GMs and/or their computers. For an example, just put your favorite music player program on random with a smallish number of songs. (I say "smallish number" because there are only so many actions that your MMORPG character can perform in a given situation.) Even without the help of a computer, soon you will be able to predict what will come next. Automated randomness/imprecision just isn't imprecisise enough to pass for human.
Also, I don't think you can really make the case that bullying helps the education process or that more learning takes place where bullying is present than where it's absent.
I'm not trying to make a case that bullying helps the education process. I'm trying to make a case that teachers, with the resources currently at their disposal, cannot effectively prevent bullying without their ability to teach being affected. This is especially true for non-physical bullying, which is much harder to detect than, for example, a fistfight.
If keeping bullying out of schools is going to take priority over education for teachers and teachers' unions, then teachers need more resources (less children per teacher, special ed and janitorial help, and the money to fund all of this help) as well as the ability to actually mete out consequences to bullies. Because public schools are funded by the public through taxes, and decisions about how school systems are run are affected by the opinions of society through the election of designates, public schools are directly affected by the views of the majority of society. If the cessation of bullying is to be top priority in schools, then the majority of society has to approve of the changes that are necessary to enforce this priority. Right now the American population, as evidenced through education budget cuts and the generally low opinion of teachers (I agree with this comment), is not willing to expend the resources necessary to make this change.
If teachers union funding depended on there being no school violence, that (and a lot more) would happen.
How exactly do you plan to evaluate the "no school violence" doctrine? Teachers are people, and they're as fallable as anyone else. Put one adult in a room of 30 children and tell them to supervise, let alone teach, them, then put a caveat on that "if there is any bullying that you don't catch, then your pay is compromised." Which turns it into a numbers game. A kid doesn't like a teacher? Complain that another student bullied them, and the teacher gets docked in pay (or whatever the related consequence is determined to be). On top of bogus harrassment, molestation, and assault suits, now it doesn't even take going to court for a student to get a teacher they don't like into trouble? The inevitable consequence of teachers' union funding depending on there being no school violence is that teachers will spend more time covering their asses by monitoring for bullying, and less time and effort on actually teaching. Is this what you really want?
Right now, it depends on keeping everyone (no matter how disruptive or violent) at school and then complaining about how hard your job is and how low the pay is and blaming the parents or "the system" for anything that goes wrong.
So you're saying that teachers should go against the doctrines of the society in which they teach in order to help reduce the occurrance of bullying? (I say "reduce the occurrance" because bullying happens off school property as well, where teachers have no more authority than anyone else.) A school is a construct of society that is created to teach children about the world around them through the viewpoint of the society in which they live. Schools are affected by the trends in society just as much as anything else -- perhaps more because public schools are run by the government, which is in turn directly influenced by the vote, and hence the opinion, of the general populace.
But let's take a moment and follow your example and see what would happen if teachers "got it together" and decided to move as one on the bullying issue. In order to have the resources to make this change, it would require a wide-scale school policy reform. Provisions would have to be made for lawsuits against teachers who restrain and separate combatants (as stated in my previous comment, this does not extend to corporeal punishment). More staff would have to be hired in order to supervise children more strictly; this means more teachers, teachers' aids, janitors (because in a lot of places right now, teachers have to do all the clean-up too), detention monitors, etc. Now what does this all add up to? The teachers union will have to ask for more money. Even if you believe that current teacher salaries are adequate (which I don't), the addition of more staff and legal costs would require that the school boards fork over more money. Otherwise, teachers would have to take a pay cut while at the same time taking on more responsibility and man-hours. I can't think of a single person who would accept their employer doing that.
At this point, no matter what the justification, the teachers' union will have to ask for more money. All this in a time where education budgets are being slashed. There will be a public outcry of, "Don't these teachers get paid enough?" "Not with my tax dollars!" and, not surprisingly, "Teachers should stick to teaching!" Like many changes negotiated through a union, it would likely lead to a work-to-rule and/or a strike. Suddenly there are X-amount of children without anyone to take care of them during the day, leading to the income of families with children being threatened from parents' either taking time off to care for the kids or paying someone else to do so. Do you really think that the parents would like this? Realistically, it would lead to parents being even more at conflict with the teachers, which the kids do pick up on and react to.
If funds for the teachers union were tied to eliminating school violence, there would be no school violence.
I cry bullshit. I don't think that teachers are paid nearly as much as they are worth; people spend millions of dollars a year to keep their favorite sports hero in the multi-million dollar tax bracket, but they object to raising the salaries of the people who are responsible for educating the next generation because it comes out of their taxes. (Of course, privately-funded schools are a different matter.) But that's a side point, really.
The main problem these days is that teachers are given more responsibility (more children per teacher, less special-ed and janitorial help, etc.), while at the same time parents and society in general are taking away their ability to discipline. I'm not speaking of corporal punishment here, I don't believe it's necessary to go that far. But God forbid you so much as touch a student even to restrain them from beating another student, or give them a hug when they're crying -- every teacher fears unwarranted assault and molestation charges. Even if the teacher is proven innocent, their career is ruined. And it's not just physical contact that has been restricted in recent years; teachers have pretty much lost the ability to suspend students, give them detentions (oh yes, and if a teacher metes out detention to a student, they usually have to supervise it as well), fail them, etc.
Basically, if you want teachers to work toward eliminating school violence other than in the most passive, "tut tut, you shouldn't do that" ways, you have to reinstate some of the authority that is necessary for their position.
Box office revenues aren't declining because Hollywood is telling stories that have been told before. After all, don't every story ever told boil down to one of something like eight possible plot lines? The problem is that Hollywood insists on telling stories that have been told before in the video medium. Remakes of old movies and TV shows, as well as far too many sequels where the plot from the first movie is recycled and tweaked for the second (or third, or fourth) movie, are par for the course these days.
Bad acting, poor writing, and a dependance on CG/special effects over plot do have an impact, it's true. And when you're making a decision about whether to go to the theater or not, prices can be prohibitive. But how can you justify spending $X to go to the movies when you've already seen the first/original King Kong/Star Wars/Jurassic Park/Psycho/Amityville Horror/Pink Panther etc. on the big screen? What's the thrill of seeing it again with slightly better film quality and special effects?
Movies become blockbuster hits the first time around primarily because the audience feels that they are watching something original. (Stories taken from books, plays, comic books, etc., while often made into movies, don't have the same "been there, done that" feel on screen because of the change in medium.) In King Kong and other films that rely heavily on special effects, when the original came to the screen, it was the first time that those exact plots had been aired, and the visual effects were spectacular for the time. For movies like Psycho that depend more on plot and acting than special effects, there was still suspense because people didn't already know all the plot twists.
Box office sales will go up, film piracy or no film piracy, when Hollywood stops investing most of its money in remakes and sequels.
...that is opening up a Tim Horton's in Kandahar. Canadian soldiers aren't over there to help keep the peace, they're slowly trying kill genetically-succeptable Afghanis with a coffee overdose!
Okay, that's a stretch, even for me. But honestly, what with the relationship between Canadians and the almighty Timmy's, it probably puts the soldiers more at risk than the average Afghani.
How many movies came out last year with King Kong's budget? Just one. The "average" cost of a movie is already far, far below $200 million... I would say that the "average" cost of movies is already in the $15-20 million range.
Let's consider the first X-Men movie. It was a blockbuster, had tonnes of special effects, well-known actors... And they did it all for a reported $75 million USD, plus marketing costs of about $22.7 million USD. Not to say that the movie was perfect (the script certainly needed work -- who's the idiot who came up with "Do you know what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning?"), but it was an undeniably huge success. X-Men almost made back its production costs on opening weekend by bringing in about $54 million, and has so far made back about three times the production & marketing budget with a total lifetime gross of about $296 million worldwide.
In my opinion:
a) A bigger budget doesn't guarantee a better movie. (Waterworld, anyone?) b) Spending more on scriptwriters and less on A-List actors would do many movies wonders. c) Who thought that a sequel of a remake of a remake was a good idea in the first place? d) One of the main reasons that people like indie films right now is because they don't suffer as much from over-recycled plots and characters. e) Stop charging $10 to $15 CAD a head for a movie at the theatre and people might go more often! f) Investors seem much too keen on throwing good money after bad on ideas for productions that haven't been thought through from a "what does the consumer want?" perspective.
There was a time not too long ago, when mail was carried on horseback... When telegrams were expensive and probably still took a few hours to deliver... The world did not end due to such delays.
This is entirely a case of "that was then, this is now." Times have changed. To use a similar analogy to your own, have you ever had the computers at work go down? Well, twenty years ago computers weren't widely used at work (unless you were researching them)... A hundred years ago, they didn't even exist! So because people used to do without them, you should be able to now, right?
Sure, there are a lot of rude people out there who use their cell phones when it is not appropriate, i.e. in meetings and when watching movies at the theatre. It's kind of like people who, despite warnings, download attachments and get the work computer network infected. There would be a huge outcry from nerds and non-nerds alike if everyone went back to stand-alone computers because some people just don't have a clue.
I will admit that "punished" is perhaps not the appropriate term. And yes, as many people have stated in previous comments, a lot of rude people out there answer their phones in movie theatres; I, too, believe that a 2-3 hour event can be worked around when it comes to being "contactable" at all times.
However, as to my mother "choosing to place herself in a situation where here phone may not work," riddle me this, Batman:
- She is the sole income provider for a family, so she cannot just up and quit her job because of a change in family health; - Her job is actually in her field, i.e. teaching. According to the summary, the paint would potentially be used in classrooms. This is not a case of interrupting people during a movie, it's a case of not being phone-accessible at work; - Specifically as a drama teacher, due to many field trips to theatres, concert halls, and other entertainment venues where she supervises children who are performing, there is no other way of getting ahold of her (i.e. you can't just call the school and have them give her a message).
So technically, my mother "has the option of not placing herself in that situation." Logistically, though, she doesn't. There are also many people who, for personal or professional reasons, must be ready to take a call 24/7. Many of these people are indespensable, like doctors, nurses, and crisis on-call tech support. Please note that the paint wouldn't just be applied to movie theatres, where everyone, including myself, seems to have objections to being interrupted by phones. Schools and other venues (where often you can take a call without disturbing someone) are also in the proposed list of places to use the paint.
You'd be just as up in arms as I would if someone you knew died because the doctor unknowingly walked into an area where someone had decided they didn't like people taking cell phone calls.
The people who may have a legitimate emergency interrupt them at any random time 24x7 often can take those calls without disrupting others. These people do not need to be punished.
My mother owns a cell phone for one reason only: because my father has heart disease and has already been hospitalized three times this year. Here's the problem: my mother is a drama teacher. Hence, she is in a classroom most of the day, with the remainder of her time spent in auditoriums, theatres, and other kinds of performance venues. She has her cell phone on her at all times (on vibrate) just in case an emergency call comes in from/in regards to my father. Nobody else calls her during the day on her cell; we all know that she's busy teaching and can't take calls!
As has been pointed out in the parent comment, the would paint "punish" my mother for discreet, extremely important use of her cell phone. What about doctors and other professionals who have to be reachable around the clock? Sure, they often use pagers instead of/as well as cell phones, but I have to assume that pager signals would be blocked as well. My aunt's baby ended up being stillborn because the small-town doctor wasn't able to be reached, and in transit to a larger hospital, the baby died in utero. Can you imagine something like this happening because the doctor was conscientious enough to go give a talk about the dangers of STD's at the local high school?
Who cares what you had for breakfast, or how someone cut you off in traffic today, or how you want to screw that cute new girl at work, or how your boss sucks?
This may be true if you're reading a blog that is written by someone you don't know. It gets bloody boring after a while. However, if you use blogs to let your real-life friends and family know what's up in your life, especially if you don't seem them often, it's a good thing. Hell, if you'd seen these people in person, those are the things you'd probably be talking about anyway.
I've lived out of town from a lot of friends and family for most of my life. To me, blogging is a great replacement for the "this is what's up with me right now" letters and bulk emails which go out to everyone you know. Then you have to reply to X-number of letters and emails. Between the commenting system and reading your friends' blogs, you can keep much more up to date with what's going on in your friends' lives than otherwise.
Also, there's nothing forcing you to read peoples' personal, intended-for-my-friends' blogs. As with any kind of writing, there is loads of stuff out there that you won't like to read -- and there's nothing saying that you have to read it. However, the content is enjoyable and important to someone, somewhere, even if it's just the person writing it.
1. How long has it been since you bought a physical music CD? Two months.
2. How long has it been since you were in an actual music store? Not counting online music stores like iTunes? About a week.
3. How long has it been since you bought a physical movie DVD? Once again, about a week.
Hmmm, this would make a gread Slashdot poll, or series of polls.
As a related aside, despite the fact that the MPAA/RIAA are claiming that they're losing $X-milion dollars to piracy, has anyone actually noticed physical CD/DVD stores closing down over the last few years? Personally, I can't think of a single one in my area, except perhaps for one small, independant one that was "muscled out" by another (larger) nearby store. On the contrary, I have noticed that more and more media stores have been popping up lately (video, audio, games & software), and that department stores that didn't have media departments or had small ones are actually increasing their size and variety. Doesn't that argue that the movie and music industries are actually doing quite well?
Sure, there are lots of people out there who download video and music and never intend to pay for them in any way, shape or form. The thing is, even if P2P/filesharing/etc. didn't exist, these people wouldn't be paying for this media. However, there are a lot of people like myself who use filesharing as a way to preview media to see if they like it before they buy it. Case in point:
I live in Canada, and we don't get a lot of the shows from other countries here, even if you pay for digital cable or satellite. At one point, I read a review online about a show called Dead Like Me that I thought had an interesting premise. Unfortunately, it wasn't playing at all in Canada, so I dowloaded the first season and watched it. I loved the show! When it finally was released in Canada two years later, I bought Season 1 and Season 2 on DVD -- Season 2 sight unseen. However, there is no way in hell that I was going to spend $50 per box set on a series that I wasn't even sure if I was going to like. This goes double for movies/TV shows that I'd have to order special and pay an arm or a leg for (especially European imports, as they have to be converted). I'd like to know what I'm buying first, especially when, as with opened DVDs, you can't take them back!
So yes, MPAA, shove tonnes of money at lawsuits against P2P/BitTorrent/etc. Maybe you'll even close some of the services down. However, you'll lose money on the legal fees, you'll lose money when people can't preview the video that they want to see, and you'll definitely lose consumer backing. Way to go.
If a user can get answers from a quantum computer even when a program isn't running... Doesn't that mean that the program is running, at least in some way, shape or form?
All I can think of is Star-Trek-esque time paradoxes here...
Crime in the area around my first college was bad, I'd hate to think what it would be like with _every_ student carrying several hundred dollars worth of pawnable hardware.
The college that I went to was in one of the seedier areas of a big city. Property was often stolen from the dorms by people who snuck in the emergency exits, there were rapes in the passcard-access areas of campus by people who didn't have passcards, and muggings at gun- and knife-point at the bus stops for iPods and cell phones. Not saying that crime wasn't perpetrated by people from the school as well, but they were easier to track and prosecute because they had to come back.
In such an environment, can you imagine how the crime rate would soar once the word got out that every single student had a $2,000+ laptop on them? Fuck taking the bus after that, man.
(Yes, I know, many people have mp3 players and cell phones now, but that's a trend through the whole populace. Go to any bus shelter and you will find at least one person on a cell and one listening to an mp3 player. But not everyone has a laptop -- and nobody will have a $20-$400 laptop (comparing the prices to low and high-range cells and mp3 players).)
So? When I was in college I was 'forced' to buy a bunch of textbooks. They were my property, but the University mandated I used a particular set of books that the professors had chosen to teach from. It's really no different.
It is very different. First of all, you had the option to buy the books second-hand most of the time, reducing the cost of the books to you. There's not really a good option out there for buying a second-hand laptop that will be able to keep up with the latest programs (especially graphics and video). Secondly, you also had the option to take the book out of the library (school or public), and not pay anything at all. Please remember that the average college/university student doesn't have a lot of money. It's possible to budget in $1,000USD or more for textbooks -- it's even covered by many student loans and bursaries. But how about this kind of budget:
That's the absolute minimum that an average graphics design student would have to spend, on top of textbooks. Doing any courses in animation or web design? Expect to spend $699 on Adobe After Effects or $999 on the Macromedia Suite. Video editing? That's $849 for Adobe Premiere Pro if you're running Windows or $1,299 for Final Cut Studio for Mac. God forbid you have to buy your another (larger) monitor, peripherals, an OS, or your course requires you to use Media 100 or Avid. Soon you're paying more for your laptop than you paid for your whole school year in residence (including meal plan), tuition, and possibly your entire school experience combined!
One of the primary reasons that schools offer computer labs is because most students cannot afford to buy the requisite hardware and software. Schools pool resources from the government and tuitions in order to get computer labs, which is something that an individual cannot do. Schools also get trememdous discounts on the products and liscences that they buy because they buy in bulk.
Please remember that many of us went through school on student loans and part-time jobs. Where I live (Ontario, Canada), they have decreased what the government-sponsored loans will lend out, and even bank loans (which have to be co-signed by your parents) are limited. The average student can hope to receive about $6,000CAD max from the government, and maybe another $8,000CAD from the bank, and, if you're lucky, a couple of hundred bucks a paycheck from a part-time job. This has to last you for lodging, food, tuition, and supplies for eight months. Can you imagine what a $3,000 (minimum) mandatory laptop will take out of your ability to pay for things like, say, food?
Also, think about the tech support necessary to keep everyone's computer running smoothly when every numbnuts out there has administrative privileges. Books don't exactly require support. If the school doesn't provide the technical support, then a large percent of student-owned laptops will be out for service so much that they're rendered useless for educational purposes.
To me, it doesn't seem like a question of "at what age should I introduce my child to computers?" Rather, it's more of a "what should I encourage my child to do with computers?"
Granted, IANAParent (yet), but I have many friends with young children. It seems to me that the children who help daddy or mommy assemble old computers gain a great deal of knowledge about how a computer works and not just how to make it do pretty things. (A friend of mine was very proud when his six-year-old successfully replaced a video card.) Also, there is a great deal of difference between simple point-and-click or steer-the-character-through-the-map games and programs that allow the child to be creative. Use of text programs, programming, video and image editing programs are a great outlet for creativity, just as much as a box of crayons and some construction paper can be. The Internet, too, is a valuable tool for research and discovering the world, so long as the parent supervises.
I'll give an example. I was raised in the TV-as-parent generation. While I did watch some TV, my parents also gave me access to the family video camera from a very young age. Using that video camera, one or two VCRs, and my parents' stereo system, I spent a lot of my creative time putting together basic videos for my family to watch. Now, as an adult, I have retained my love for video production, and I work in the TV industry.
So, to me, it's not so much when to introduce technology into the lives of children, as so may previous posters have stated. It's what the children are encouraged to do with the technology. It's the difference between consuming whatever is on the screen and creating things for the screen, in whatever form.
That's what gets me! The word "sales". i.e. People are buying commercial copies of DVDs and bringing/shipping them to other countries that are technically different region codes. So why is the MPAA insisting on region coding in the first place? People are buying your product, generating cash flow for you, not pirating! So what's the point of region coding, exactly, except to annoy the consumer?
Any recall would be useless - if someone has one of these players and wants to keep it they'll just say it broke and they binned it.
Actually, this whole lawsuit is a farce. Let's assume that the MPAA wins, and this model of Samsung DVD player gets pulled off store shelves. With this model being a year or two old, how many of these DVD players will still be on store shelves? Essentially, Samsung has already made their profit off of this model; in today's "newer is better" consumer technology market, older models remaining on the shelves will either not sell or have been relegated to the bargain bin.
Additionally, there's no way that the MPAA can force consumers who have already purchased the product to return it. While Samsung may have violated an agreement, the consumer has done nothing wrong, and the ownership of this model of DVD player is not illegal. Conversely, with all the hooferah created by the lawsuit, Joe Sixpack will end up realizing what a great deal they got when they purchased their DVD player. They will either keep it for their own use or sell it for an insane profit on EBay.
So what will this gain the MPAA? Samsung won't lose a lot of money through a recall, although they will have to spend some money on lawyers. Consumers who didn't know that their DVD player could be unlocked through hidden menus will now be informed. In reality, the average consumer will become more informed as to the problems with DRM, and more people will seek out ways of circumventing it. Not much of a warning or deterrent, is it?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Radio Shack recently get bought out by Circuit City anyway? I thought they were all called "The Source (By Circuit City)" now. Or is that just here in Canada?
Does it really surprise anyone that kids actually swear? You can't blame this one on video games. I learned all my swear words when my parents argued when I was a child...
Kids learn how to swear through imitation, and they don't need video games in order to have a source to imitate. A lot of the time, children don't actually understand the meaning of the words they say -- that comes later. But the fact remains that children curse, many of them fluently and sometimes in more than one language, and children have cursed long before video games were invented.
In my house, video games were not allowed until I was about 13 or so. (Also, because of when I grew up, the games available when I was 13 consisted of things like Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt -- no real sources for curse words, there!) However, when I was about 7 years old and my little brother was about 4, my brother asked me what the words spraypainted on the park's jungle gym said. "Fuck!" I told him. He proceeded to repeat the word over and over again like a mantra for a couple of days... And the first word that he ever learned how to read was a curse.
Honestly, the only way to keep kids from swearing is not to swear around them at all. That's never going to happen.
The first computer I ever had was a Vic 20, which ran games from cassettes (always fun) and helped me learn how to program in BASIC. Not so useful these days, but it was a great time for a 5-year-old, and it brought me into the computer world at a young age.
This watermarking scheme is yet another reason for me to continue downloading music via P2P (which is legal here in Canada) as opposed to buying it on CD or over the net. I personally think that tracking what someone does with the product that they have bought and paid for, so long as it's not hurting anyone (and don't give me the bull about it hurting the artists), is ridiculous. It's also economically unfeasable for the music industry; behemoth that they are, the RIAA will have to invest millions of dollars to pay for the manpower and technology to track the watermarks and make investing in the technology worthwhile. Even if the RIAA tracks a file-sharer down, then sues and wins, they'll probably never see the money. With the kind of fines the RIAA is imposing, most people will never be able to pay; they'll just go bankrupt.
Between watermarking and DRM, I have absolutely no inclination to buy the music that I listen to. That is, unless the music is from an independant artist who uses neither method, and honestly, they're the ones who need the money the most in the first place.
Let's set the argument regarding who is at fault aside for a moment. Let's even set aside the "this wouldn't have happened on a non-Microsoft OS" hyperbole. My main question is this:
WHY WERE THE HOSPITAL'S COMPUTERS CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET IN THE FIRST PLACE?
I can't think of a single reason that the computers containing confidential information, personal medical records, and systems necessary for the day-to-day running of the hospital weren't on a stand-alone network in the first place. There are probably some tools that require internet connection, but why weren't these tools run on separate computers? It's fairly easy to transfer data from an internet-connected computer to a non-internet-connected computer (and vice-versa) with floppy discs, removable drives, CDs, DVDs, etc. It may create a small extra step every once and a while, but it's not like the dangers of computers being hacked over the internet is unknown. Even if it did not create an ethical dilemma to have patient records possibly available to a competent internet hacker, the threat of massive lawsuits should such information be stolen should be enough to create some justifiable paranoia about internet attacks. Also, if someone had died because of a slowing of communications within the hospital due to the current hacking, the hospital probably would have been faced with a wrongful death suit. Whether the hospital lost such a lawsuit or not, it would still cost a lot of money and effect the bottom line.
Come on, people, this should be a case of enlightened self-interest. It may be the robber's fault if the robber comes into your house through an unlocked door, but the insurance company won't cover your losses if you left the door unlocked. Locking your doors can be a bit inconveninent if you have to get the door open again while carrying an armload of groceries, but it's worth the security in the long run.
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Blizzard has most likely monitored his account over some period of time and seen, "hey, this guy is doing identical actions all over"... If they monitored anybody's account, they would see the same thing. You cannot advance in the game without repeating the same actions over and over again.
No, they wouldn't. While it's true that repetitive tasks and actions are necessary in order to level up, someone who isn't using macros/botting/whatever won't do the exact same thing over and over, with the exact same timing. Even the most accurate human can't perform repetitive actions with a computers' precision.
All this does is give a headsup to the botters that they have to throw a little random action in now and then, a delay here, a pause there, and the botters will keep going undetected.
The thing is, even if botters design a "random" algorithm, it will most likely be predictable over time, and hence it could be caught by GMs and/or their computers. For an example, just put your favorite music player program on random with a smallish number of songs. (I say "smallish number" because there are only so many actions that your MMORPG character can perform in a given situation.) Even without the help of a computer, soon you will be able to predict what will come next. Automated randomness/imprecision just isn't imprecisise enough to pass for human.
Also, I don't think you can really make the case that bullying helps the education process or that more learning takes place where bullying is present than where it's absent.
I'm not trying to make a case that bullying helps the education process. I'm trying to make a case that teachers, with the resources currently at their disposal, cannot effectively prevent bullying without their ability to teach being affected. This is especially true for non-physical bullying, which is much harder to detect than, for example, a fistfight.
If keeping bullying out of schools is going to take priority over education for teachers and teachers' unions, then teachers need more resources (less children per teacher, special ed and janitorial help, and the money to fund all of this help) as well as the ability to actually mete out consequences to bullies. Because public schools are funded by the public through taxes, and decisions about how school systems are run are affected by the opinions of society through the election of designates, public schools are directly affected by the views of the majority of society. If the cessation of bullying is to be top priority in schools, then the majority of society has to approve of the changes that are necessary to enforce this priority. Right now the American population, as evidenced through education budget cuts and the generally low opinion of teachers (I agree with this comment), is not willing to expend the resources necessary to make this change.
If teachers union funding depended on there being no school violence, that (and a lot more) would happen.
How exactly do you plan to evaluate the "no school violence" doctrine? Teachers are people, and they're as fallable as anyone else. Put one adult in a room of 30 children and tell them to supervise, let alone teach, them, then put a caveat on that "if there is any bullying that you don't catch, then your pay is compromised." Which turns it into a numbers game. A kid doesn't like a teacher? Complain that another student bullied them, and the teacher gets docked in pay (or whatever the related consequence is determined to be). On top of bogus harrassment, molestation, and assault suits, now it doesn't even take going to court for a student to get a teacher they don't like into trouble? The inevitable consequence of teachers' union funding depending on there being no school violence is that teachers will spend more time covering their asses by monitoring for bullying, and less time and effort on actually teaching. Is this what you really want?
Right now, it depends on keeping everyone (no matter how disruptive or violent) at school and then complaining about how hard your job is and how low the pay is and blaming the parents or "the system" for anything that goes wrong.
So you're saying that teachers should go against the doctrines of the society in which they teach in order to help reduce the occurrance of bullying? (I say "reduce the occurrance" because bullying happens off school property as well, where teachers have no more authority than anyone else.) A school is a construct of society that is created to teach children about the world around them through the viewpoint of the society in which they live. Schools are affected by the trends in society just as much as anything else -- perhaps more because public schools are run by the government, which is in turn directly influenced by the vote, and hence the opinion, of the general populace.
But let's take a moment and follow your example and see what would happen if teachers "got it together" and decided to move as one on the bullying issue. In order to have the resources to make this change, it would require a wide-scale school policy reform. Provisions would have to be made for lawsuits against teachers who restrain and separate combatants (as stated in my previous comment, this does not extend to corporeal punishment). More staff would have to be hired in order to supervise children more strictly; this means more teachers, teachers' aids, janitors (because in a lot of places right now, teachers have to do all the clean-up too), detention monitors, etc. Now what does this all add up to? The teachers union will have to ask for more money. Even if you believe that current teacher salaries are adequate (which I don't), the addition of more staff and legal costs would require that the school boards fork over more money. Otherwise, teachers would have to take a pay cut while at the same time taking on more responsibility and man-hours. I can't think of a single person who would accept their employer doing that.
At this point, no matter what the justification, the teachers' union will have to ask for more money. All this in a time where education budgets are being slashed. There will be a public outcry of, "Don't these teachers get paid enough?" "Not with my tax dollars!" and, not surprisingly, "Teachers should stick to teaching!" Like many changes negotiated through a union, it would likely lead to a work-to-rule and/or a strike. Suddenly there are X-amount of children without anyone to take care of them during the day, leading to the income of families with children being threatened from parents' either taking time off to care for the kids or paying someone else to do so. Do you really think that the parents would like this? Realistically, it would lead to parents being even more at conflict with the teachers, which the kids do pick up on and react to.
Think this scenario is
If funds for the teachers union were tied to eliminating school violence, there would be no school violence.
I cry bullshit. I don't think that teachers are paid nearly as much as they are worth; people spend millions of dollars a year to keep their favorite sports hero in the multi-million dollar tax bracket, but they object to raising the salaries of the people who are responsible for educating the next generation because it comes out of their taxes. (Of course, privately-funded schools are a different matter.) But that's a side point, really.
The main problem these days is that teachers are given more responsibility (more children per teacher, less special-ed and janitorial help, etc.), while at the same time parents and society in general are taking away their ability to discipline. I'm not speaking of corporal punishment here, I don't believe it's necessary to go that far. But God forbid you so much as touch a student even to restrain them from beating another student, or give them a hug when they're crying -- every teacher fears unwarranted assault and molestation charges. Even if the teacher is proven innocent, their career is ruined. And it's not just physical contact that has been restricted in recent years; teachers have pretty much lost the ability to suspend students, give them detentions (oh yes, and if a teacher metes out detention to a student, they usually have to supervise it as well), fail them, etc.
Basically, if you want teachers to work toward eliminating school violence other than in the most passive, "tut tut, you shouldn't do that" ways, you have to reinstate some of the authority that is necessary for their position.
Box office revenues aren't declining because Hollywood is telling stories that have been told before. After all, don't every story ever told boil down to one of something like eight possible plot lines? The problem is that Hollywood insists on telling stories that have been told before in the video medium. Remakes of old movies and TV shows, as well as far too many sequels where the plot from the first movie is recycled and tweaked for the second (or third, or fourth) movie, are par for the course these days.
Bad acting, poor writing, and a dependance on CG/special effects over plot do have an impact, it's true. And when you're making a decision about whether to go to the theater or not, prices can be prohibitive. But how can you justify spending $X to go to the movies when you've already seen the first/original King Kong/Star Wars/Jurassic Park/Psycho/Amityville Horror/Pink Panther etc. on the big screen? What's the thrill of seeing it again with slightly better film quality and special effects?
Movies become blockbuster hits the first time around primarily because the audience feels that they are watching something original. (Stories taken from books, plays, comic books, etc., while often made into movies, don't have the same "been there, done that" feel on screen because of the change in medium.) In King Kong and other films that rely heavily on special effects, when the original came to the screen, it was the first time that those exact plots had been aired, and the visual effects were spectacular for the time. For movies like Psycho that depend more on plot and acting than special effects, there was still suspense because people didn't already know all the plot twists.
Box office sales will go up, film piracy or no film piracy, when Hollywood stops investing most of its money in remakes and sequels.
...that is opening up a Tim Horton's in Kandahar. Canadian soldiers aren't over there to help keep the peace, they're slowly trying kill genetically-succeptable Afghanis with a coffee overdose!
Okay, that's a stretch, even for me. But honestly, what with the relationship between Canadians and the almighty Timmy's, it probably puts the soldiers more at risk than the average Afghani.
How many movies came out last year with King Kong's budget? Just one. The "average" cost of a movie is already far, far below $200 million... I would say that the "average" cost of movies is already in the $15-20 million range.
Let's consider the first X-Men movie. It was a blockbuster, had tonnes of special effects, well-known actors... And they did it all for a reported $75 million USD, plus marketing costs of about $22.7 million USD. Not to say that the movie was perfect (the script certainly needed work -- who's the idiot who came up with "Do you know what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning?"), but it was an undeniably huge success. X-Men almost made back its production costs on opening weekend by bringing in about $54 million, and has so far made back about three times the production & marketing budget with a total lifetime gross of about $296 million worldwide.
In my opinion:
a) A bigger budget doesn't guarantee a better movie. (Waterworld, anyone?)
b) Spending more on scriptwriters and less on A-List actors would do many movies wonders.
c) Who thought that a sequel of a remake of a remake was a good idea in the first place?
d) One of the main reasons that people like indie films right now is because they don't suffer as much from over-recycled plots and characters.
e) Stop charging $10 to $15 CAD a head for a movie at the theatre and people might go more often!
f) Investors seem much too keen on throwing good money after bad on ideas for productions that haven't been thought through from a "what does the consumer want?" perspective.
There was a time not too long ago, when mail was carried on horseback... When telegrams were expensive and probably still took a few hours to deliver... The world did not end due to such delays.
This is entirely a case of "that was then, this is now." Times have changed. To use a similar analogy to your own, have you ever had the computers at work go down? Well, twenty years ago computers weren't widely used at work (unless you were researching them)... A hundred years ago, they didn't even exist! So because people used to do without them, you should be able to now, right?
Sure, there are a lot of rude people out there who use their cell phones when it is not appropriate, i.e. in meetings and when watching movies at the theatre. It's kind of like people who, despite warnings, download attachments and get the work computer network infected. There would be a huge outcry from nerds and non-nerds alike if everyone went back to stand-alone computers because some people just don't have a clue.
I will admit that "punished" is perhaps not the appropriate term. And yes, as many people have stated in previous comments, a lot of rude people out there answer their phones in movie theatres; I, too, believe that a 2-3 hour event can be worked around when it comes to being "contactable" at all times.
However, as to my mother "choosing to place herself in a situation where here phone may not work," riddle me this, Batman:
- She is the sole income provider for a family, so she cannot just up and quit her job because of a change in family health;
- Her job is actually in her field, i.e. teaching. According to the summary, the paint would potentially be used in classrooms. This is not a case of interrupting people during a movie, it's a case of not being phone-accessible at work;
- Specifically as a drama teacher, due to many field trips to theatres, concert halls, and other entertainment venues where she supervises children who are performing, there is no other way of getting ahold of her (i.e. you can't just call the school and have them give her a message).
So technically, my mother "has the option of not placing herself in that situation." Logistically, though, she doesn't. There are also many people who, for personal or professional reasons, must be ready to take a call 24/7. Many of these people are indespensable, like doctors, nurses, and crisis on-call tech support. Please note that the paint wouldn't just be applied to movie theatres, where everyone, including myself, seems to have objections to being interrupted by phones. Schools and other venues (where often you can take a call without disturbing someone) are also in the proposed list of places to use the paint.
You'd be just as up in arms as I would if someone you knew died because the doctor unknowingly walked into an area where someone had decided they didn't like people taking cell phone calls.
The people who may have a legitimate emergency interrupt them at any random time 24x7 often can take those calls without disrupting others. These people do not need to be punished.
My mother owns a cell phone for one reason only: because my father has heart disease and has already been hospitalized three times this year. Here's the problem: my mother is a drama teacher. Hence, she is in a classroom most of the day, with the remainder of her time spent in auditoriums, theatres, and other kinds of performance venues. She has her cell phone on her at all times (on vibrate) just in case an emergency call comes in from/in regards to my father. Nobody else calls her during the day on her cell; we all know that she's busy teaching and can't take calls!
As has been pointed out in the parent comment, the would paint "punish" my mother for discreet, extremely important use of her cell phone. What about doctors and other professionals who have to be reachable around the clock? Sure, they often use pagers instead of/as well as cell phones, but I have to assume that pager signals would be blocked as well. My aunt's baby ended up being stillborn because the small-town doctor wasn't able to be reached, and in transit to a larger hospital, the baby died in utero. Can you imagine something like this happening because the doctor was conscientious enough to go give a talk about the dangers of STD's at the local high school?
Who cares what you had for breakfast, or how someone cut you off in traffic today, or how you want to screw that cute new girl at work, or how your boss sucks?
This may be true if you're reading a blog that is written by someone you don't know. It gets bloody boring after a while. However, if you use blogs to let your real-life friends and family know what's up in your life, especially if you don't seem them often, it's a good thing. Hell, if you'd seen these people in person, those are the things you'd probably be talking about anyway.
I've lived out of town from a lot of friends and family for most of my life. To me, blogging is a great replacement for the "this is what's up with me right now" letters and bulk emails which go out to everyone you know. Then you have to reply to X-number of letters and emails. Between the commenting system and reading your friends' blogs, you can keep much more up to date with what's going on in your friends' lives than otherwise.
Also, there's nothing forcing you to read peoples' personal, intended-for-my-friends' blogs. As with any kind of writing, there is loads of stuff out there that you won't like to read -- and there's nothing saying that you have to read it. However, the content is enjoyable and important to someone, somewhere, even if it's just the person writing it.
1. How long has it been since you bought a physical music CD?
Two months.
2. How long has it been since you were in an actual music store?
Not counting online music stores like iTunes? About a week.
3. How long has it been since you bought a physical movie DVD?
Once again, about a week.
Hmmm, this would make a gread Slashdot poll, or series of polls.
As a related aside, despite the fact that the MPAA/RIAA are claiming that they're losing $X-milion dollars to piracy, has anyone actually noticed physical CD/DVD stores closing down over the last few years? Personally, I can't think of a single one in my area, except perhaps for one small, independant one that was "muscled out" by another (larger) nearby store. On the contrary, I have noticed that more and more media stores have been popping up lately (video, audio, games & software), and that department stores that didn't have media departments or had small ones are actually increasing their size and variety. Doesn't that argue that the movie and music industries are actually doing quite well?
...to shoot off, at this point.
Sure, there are lots of people out there who download video and music and never intend to pay for them in any way, shape or form. The thing is, even if P2P/filesharing/etc. didn't exist, these people wouldn't be paying for this media. However, there are a lot of people like myself who use filesharing as a way to preview media to see if they like it before they buy it. Case in point:
I live in Canada, and we don't get a lot of the shows from other countries here, even if you pay for digital cable or satellite. At one point, I read a review online about a show called Dead Like Me that I thought had an interesting premise. Unfortunately, it wasn't playing at all in Canada, so I dowloaded the first season and watched it. I loved the show! When it finally was released in Canada two years later, I bought Season 1 and Season 2 on DVD -- Season 2 sight unseen. However, there is no way in hell that I was going to spend $50 per box set on a series that I wasn't even sure if I was going to like. This goes double for movies/TV shows that I'd have to order special and pay an arm or a leg for (especially European imports, as they have to be converted). I'd like to know what I'm buying first, especially when, as with opened DVDs, you can't take them back!
So yes, MPAA, shove tonnes of money at lawsuits against P2P/BitTorrent/etc. Maybe you'll even close some of the services down. However, you'll lose money on the legal fees, you'll lose money when people can't preview the video that they want to see, and you'll definitely lose consumer backing. Way to go.
If a user can get answers from a quantum computer even when a program isn't running... Doesn't that mean that the program is running, at least in some way, shape or form?
All I can think of is Star-Trek-esque time paradoxes here...
Crime in the area around my first college was bad, I'd hate to think what it would be like with _every_ student carrying several hundred dollars worth of pawnable hardware.
The college that I went to was in one of the seedier areas of a big city. Property was often stolen from the dorms by people who snuck in the emergency exits, there were rapes in the passcard-access areas of campus by people who didn't have passcards, and muggings at gun- and knife-point at the bus stops for iPods and cell phones. Not saying that crime wasn't perpetrated by people from the school as well, but they were easier to track and prosecute because they had to come back.
In such an environment, can you imagine how the crime rate would soar once the word got out that every single student had a $2,000+ laptop on them? Fuck taking the bus after that, man.
(Yes, I know, many people have mp3 players and cell phones now, but that's a trend through the whole populace. Go to any bus shelter and you will find at least one person on a cell and one listening to an mp3 player. But not everyone has a laptop -- and nobody will have a $20-$400 laptop (comparing the prices to low and high-range cells and mp3 players).)
So? When I was in college I was 'forced' to buy a bunch of textbooks. They were my property, but the University mandated I used a particular set of books that the professors had chosen to teach from. It's really no different.
It is very different. First of all, you had the option to buy the books second-hand most of the time, reducing the cost of the books to you. There's not really a good option out there for buying a second-hand laptop that will be able to keep up with the latest programs (especially graphics and video). Secondly, you also had the option to take the book out of the library (school or public), and not pay anything at all. Please remember that the average college/university student doesn't have a lot of money. It's possible to budget in $1,000USD or more for textbooks -- it's even covered by many student loans and bursaries. But how about this kind of budget:
Mac 2GHz Intel Core Duo: $2,499.00
Microsoft Office 2004 -- Student and Teacher Edition (For Mac): $149.99
Adobe Photoshop CS2: $649.00
Total: $3297.99
That's the absolute minimum that an average graphics design student would have to spend, on top of textbooks. Doing any courses in animation or web design? Expect to spend $699 on Adobe After Effects or $999 on the Macromedia Suite. Video editing? That's $849 for Adobe Premiere Pro if you're running Windows or $1,299 for Final Cut Studio for Mac. God forbid you have to buy your another (larger) monitor, peripherals, an OS, or your course requires you to use Media 100 or Avid. Soon you're paying more for your laptop than you paid for your whole school year in residence (including meal plan), tuition, and possibly your entire school experience combined!
One of the primary reasons that schools offer computer labs is because most students cannot afford to buy the requisite hardware and software. Schools pool resources from the government and tuitions in order to get computer labs, which is something that an individual cannot do. Schools also get trememdous discounts on the products and liscences that they buy because they buy in bulk.
Please remember that many of us went through school on student loans and part-time jobs. Where I live (Ontario, Canada), they have decreased what the government-sponsored loans will lend out, and even bank loans (which have to be co-signed by your parents) are limited. The average student can hope to receive about $6,000CAD max from the government, and maybe another $8,000CAD from the bank, and, if you're lucky, a couple of hundred bucks a paycheck from a part-time job. This has to last you for lodging, food, tuition, and supplies for eight months. Can you imagine what a $3,000 (minimum) mandatory laptop will take out of your ability to pay for things like, say, food?
Also, think about the tech support necessary to keep everyone's computer running smoothly when every numbnuts out there has administrative privileges. Books don't exactly require support. If the school doesn't provide the technical support, then a large percent of student-owned laptops will be out for service so much that they're rendered useless for educational purposes.
To me, it doesn't seem like a question of "at what age should I introduce my child to computers?" Rather, it's more of a "what should I encourage my child to do with computers?"
Granted, IANAParent (yet), but I have many friends with young children. It seems to me that the children who help daddy or mommy assemble old computers gain a great deal of knowledge about how a computer works and not just how to make it do pretty things. (A friend of mine was very proud when his six-year-old successfully replaced a video card.) Also, there is a great deal of difference between simple point-and-click or steer-the-character-through-the-map games and programs that allow the child to be creative. Use of text programs, programming, video and image editing programs are a great outlet for creativity, just as much as a box of crayons and some construction paper can be. The Internet, too, is a valuable tool for research and discovering the world, so long as the parent supervises.
I'll give an example. I was raised in the TV-as-parent generation. While I did watch some TV, my parents also gave me access to the family video camera from a very young age. Using that video camera, one or two VCRs, and my parents' stereo system, I spent a lot of my creative time putting together basic videos for my family to watch. Now, as an adult, I have retained my love for video production, and I work in the TV industry.
So, to me, it's not so much when to introduce technology into the lives of children, as so may previous posters have stated. It's what the children are encouraged to do with the technology. It's the difference between consuming whatever is on the screen and creating things for the screen, in whatever form.
You aren't cutting sales of R1 discs to the UK.
That's what gets me! The word "sales". i.e. People are buying commercial copies of DVDs and bringing/shipping them to other countries that are technically different region codes. So why is the MPAA insisting on region coding in the first place? People are buying your product, generating cash flow for you, not pirating! So what's the point of region coding, exactly, except to annoy the consumer?
Any recall would be useless - if someone has one of these players and wants to keep it they'll just say it broke and they binned it.
Actually, this whole lawsuit is a farce. Let's assume that the MPAA wins, and this model of Samsung DVD player gets pulled off store shelves. With this model being a year or two old, how many of these DVD players will still be on store shelves? Essentially, Samsung has already made their profit off of this model; in today's "newer is better" consumer technology market, older models remaining on the shelves will either not sell or have been relegated to the bargain bin.
Additionally, there's no way that the MPAA can force consumers who have already purchased the product to return it. While Samsung may have violated an agreement, the consumer has done nothing wrong, and the ownership of this model of DVD player is not illegal. Conversely, with all the hooferah created by the lawsuit, Joe Sixpack will end up realizing what a great deal they got when they purchased their DVD player. They will either keep it for their own use or sell it for an insane profit on EBay.
So what will this gain the MPAA? Samsung won't lose a lot of money through a recall, although they will have to spend some money on lawyers. Consumers who didn't know that their DVD player could be unlocked through hidden menus will now be informed. In reality, the average consumer will become more informed as to the problems with DRM, and more people will seek out ways of circumventing it. Not much of a warning or deterrent, is it?
For those who are interested in the letter that got the Chinese censors so up in arms, a copy of Li Datong's letter can be found here.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Radio Shack recently get bought out by Circuit City anyway? I thought they were all called "The Source (By Circuit City)" now. Or is that just here in Canada?
Does it really surprise anyone that kids actually swear? You can't blame this one on video games. I learned all my swear words when my parents argued when I was a child...
Kids learn how to swear through imitation, and they don't need video games in order to have a source to imitate. A lot of the time, children don't actually understand the meaning of the words they say -- that comes later. But the fact remains that children curse, many of them fluently and sometimes in more than one language, and children have cursed long before video games were invented.
In my house, video games were not allowed until I was about 13 or so. (Also, because of when I grew up, the games available when I was 13 consisted of things like Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt -- no real sources for curse words, there!) However, when I was about 7 years old and my little brother was about 4, my brother asked me what the words spraypainted on the park's jungle gym said. "Fuck!" I told him. He proceeded to repeat the word over and over again like a mantra for a couple of days... And the first word that he ever learned how to read was a curse.
Honestly, the only way to keep kids from swearing is not to swear around them at all. That's never going to happen.
The first computer I ever had was a Vic 20, which ran games from cassettes (always fun) and helped me learn how to program in BASIC. Not so useful these days, but it was a great time for a 5-year-old, and it brought me into the computer world at a young age.
This watermarking scheme is yet another reason for me to continue downloading music via P2P (which is legal here in Canada) as opposed to buying it on CD or over the net. I personally think that tracking what someone does with the product that they have bought and paid for, so long as it's not hurting anyone (and don't give me the bull about it hurting the artists), is ridiculous. It's also economically unfeasable for the music industry; behemoth that they are, the RIAA will have to invest millions of dollars to pay for the manpower and technology to track the watermarks and make investing in the technology worthwhile. Even if the RIAA tracks a file-sharer down, then sues and wins, they'll probably never see the money. With the kind of fines the RIAA is imposing, most people will never be able to pay; they'll just go bankrupt.
Between watermarking and DRM, I have absolutely no inclination to buy the music that I listen to. That is, unless the music is from an independant artist who uses neither method, and honestly, they're the ones who need the money the most in the first place.
Let's set the argument regarding who is at fault aside for a moment. Let's even set aside the "this wouldn't have happened on a non-Microsoft OS" hyperbole. My main question is this:
WHY WERE THE HOSPITAL'S COMPUTERS CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET IN THE FIRST PLACE?
I can't think of a single reason that the computers containing confidential information, personal medical records, and systems necessary for the day-to-day running of the hospital weren't on a stand-alone network in the first place. There are probably some tools that require internet connection, but why weren't these tools run on separate computers? It's fairly easy to transfer data from an internet-connected computer to a non-internet-connected computer (and vice-versa) with floppy discs, removable drives, CDs, DVDs, etc. It may create a small extra step every once and a while, but it's not like the dangers of computers being hacked over the internet is unknown. Even if it did not create an ethical dilemma to have patient records possibly available to a competent internet hacker, the threat of massive lawsuits should such information be stolen should be enough to create some justifiable paranoia about internet attacks. Also, if someone had died because of a slowing of communications within the hospital due to the current hacking, the hospital probably would have been faced with a wrongful death suit. Whether the hospital lost such a lawsuit or not, it would still cost a lot of money and effect the bottom line.
Come on, people, this should be a case of enlightened self-interest. It may be the robber's fault if the robber comes into your house through an unlocked door, but the insurance company won't cover your losses if you left the door unlocked. Locking your doors can be a bit inconveninent if you have to get the door open again while carrying an armload of groceries, but it's worth the security in the long run.