By rescinding the offer in 2005, he likely escapes, the key line being:
"...if any video game company will create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 like the following..."
Quoth TFA:
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The Golden Rule
This writer has been saying for seven years that violent video games can be "murder simulators" that incite as well as train some obsessive teen players to be violent.
I've been on 60 Minutes and in Reader's Digest this year explaining how an Alabama teen, with no criminal record, shot two policemen and a dispatcher in their heads and fled in a police car--a scenario he rehearsed for hundreds of hours on Take-Two/Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto video games.
I have sat with boys in jail cells, their lives over because of murder convictions, after they, with no history of violence, have killed innocents while in a dreamlike state. Said one cop who investigated such a murder in Grand Rapids, Michigan: "The killing was like an extension of the game."
The video game industry, through its lawyers, its spokesmen, and its head lobbyist, Doug Lowenstein, the president of the Entertainment Software Association, all say it is utter nonsense to suggest that what is dumped into a kid's head hour after hour, day after day, year after year, could possibly have behavioral consequences. Cigarette ads can persuade kids to smoke, but interactive simulators in which these same kids punch, hack, bludgeon, and maim affect not a wit their attitudes and behaviors, notwithstanding the findings of the American Psychological Association, published in August 2005.
The video game industry says Sticks and stones can break my bones, but games can never hurt me. Fine. I have a modest proposal for the video game industry. I'll write a check for $10,000 to the favorite charity of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc's chairman, Paul Eibeler - a man Bernard Goldberg ranks as #43 in his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America - if any video game company will create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 like the following:
Osaki Kim is the father of a high school boy beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer. The killer obsessively played a violent video game in which one of the favored ways of killing is with a bat. The opening scene, before the interactive game play begins, is the Los Angeles courtroom in which the killer is sentenced "only" to life in prison after the judge and the jury have heard experts explain the connection between the game and the murder.
Osaki Kim (O.K.) exits the courtroom swearing revenge upon the video game industry whom he is convinced contributed to his son's murder. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay" he says. And boy, is O.K. not kidding.
O.K. is provided in his virtual reality playpen a panoply of weapons: machetes, Uzis, revolvers, shotguns, sniper rifles, Molotov cocktails, you name it. Even baseball bats. Especially baseball bats.
O.K. first hops a plane from LAX to New York to reach the Long Island home of the CEO of the company (Take This) that made the murder simulator on which his son's killer trained. O.K. gets "justice" by taking out this female CEO, whose name is Paula Eibel, along with her husband and kids. "An eye for an eye," says O.K., as he urinates onto the severed brain stems of the Eibel family victims, just as you do on the decapitated cops in the real video game Postal2.
O.K. then works his way, methodically back to LA by car, but on his way makes a stop at the Philadelphia law firm of Blank, Stare and goes floor by floor to wipe out the lawyers who protect Take This in its wrongful death law suits. "So sue me" O.K. spits, with singer Jackson Brown's 1980's hit Lawyers in Love blaring.
With the FBI now after him, O.K. keeps moving westward, shooting up high-tech video arcades called GameWerks. "G
Burner-in-box saves more than postage. It has the potential to eliminate the need for a DVD stamping factory. The act of burning kicks the extra "DVD" fee, which should be *way* less than $17 total. If you don't burn it, you don't pay it.
Cover art and box contents are overrated, as are DVD extras. If you want all that crap, maybe the "purchase" comes with a code to unlock that content on the web -- go get it yourself.
If only people would carry their name and photo on a little piece of plastic inside their wallet...
...then you'd get busted for wearing a stolen jacket. Until you re-register the jacket in your own name, and pay the applicable licensing fee, you aren't allowed to wear it.
Waiter! A tin foil hat for my friend, here. No, no, I insist. My treat.
...some software like hospital life support and air traffic control come with a guarantee...
The software that goes into aircraft instrumentation goes through certification with the FAA. You can choose to buy a one-seat "experimental" aircraft with uncertified software and fly it in designated airspace. As soon as you carry passengers, the price goes up astronomically. You could outfit your cockpit with sweet electronics for just a few $k, uncertified. Certified components for small (say, 4-6 seats) aircraft are about an order of magnitude more expensive. Certified software for full-size airliners gets up into the $1M range.
I can testify that the certification contributes mightily to the expense, having trudged through the process numerous times myself. You can spend a month certfiying a new feature that takes an hour to code. It's the difference between buying a new car from a dealer for a major manufacturer, and buying a car that was built from scrap iron by one of those guys on "Monster Garage". Both might look cool, one might be a lot cheaper, but you're probably better off driving your kids around in the Honda.
The more people your stuff can kill, the harder it is to certify, and the more it will cost to develop. If you only want to kill yourself, you can do it on the cheap.
Mail order [across] state lines have never been subject to sales tax...How is ordering over the Internet different?
It's not, which should have mail-order retailers worried about this move, because it would almost certainly end up affecting them.
One way to apply this is to charge it based on the state of origination. It is a sales tax, not a purchase tax, even though the purchaser pays that tax for the seller. The seller would pay the tax on all sales to their home state, no matter where the product is shipped.
This would be good news for no-sales-tax states like New Hampshire, because it would encourage e-tailers to set up shop there. I'm sure that some creative loophole-hunter could work up a way to sell from one state, ship from a warehouse in a second state, to a destination in a third state.
It shows that you can 1) persevere, 2) learn, 3) troubleshoot and 4) Work Hard.
What magnificent irony. If you check out another article of his, Hope Springs Infernal, he nearly quotes you verbatim (emphasis mine):
"...we must give the Iraqis the tools to sustain prosperity by teaching them the plain, dreary lessons of hard work, innovation, perseverance, and integrity that make modern economies function."
It is a classic case of applying rules to others that he refuses to apply to himself.
It's as if they think [employees and children] are nearly synonymous.
...except that children are somewhat more trusted by their parents.
The likely objective is to threaten parents and employers alike. With such software available, both can now be held liable for the transgressions of their children or employees, who are to be brainwashed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H taught to recognize the RIAA's sovereign right to take your money in exchange for the privelege to listen.
Besides, sharing at work takes away from the time you should be working and is a glaring abuse of company resources. Kinda like posting on/. (ahem).
Perhaps it should read: Is AOL the Key to Microsoft 'Killing' Microsoft?
Parent is on the right track: Google has forward momentum, a positive Karma of the internet. Google does what you want it to do (find stuff) and stays out of the way. That's a big plus when you just want to get things done. Outside of search, Google seems to be one place where fresh ideas originate in rapid succession, even if a lot of those ideas never materialize. These new ideas, good or bad, still don't get in the way of their core product, which is still fast and stays out of the way.
Microsoft is in the opposite situtation. They've stalled and in many ways, are slipping backwards. They are widely seen as the behemoth, to the point that you don't have to even read the latest security warning to know that it's from another "Buffer Overflow" problem. Office hasn't done anything inventive in years, except for Clippy. Business users (the ones who actually pay for it) are getting the idea that new versions of Office don't do anything new but do screw up the UI enough that it's not worth the trouble to upgrade. These paying users are steadfastly not paying anymore by sticking with the 2k generation of products. New sales of MS Windows and Office are driven mostly by new computer sales, but some businesses are just moving the software and licenses over from retired systems.
XBox has done well, but it has a different appeal and is becoming its own division, anyway.
AOL is another old behemoth, and if AOL and Microsoft want to hold on for dear life together, so be it. It won't help either one.
Actually, it's quite the opposite... they want to warn you because they can void the warranty when you ignore the warning, for example:
Monthly sensor reports indicate slow oil leak.
Mysterious "engine problem" warning displayed to driver, instructing driver to take to dealer for service.
Driver ignores idiot light until next scheduled service.
Engine seizes from lack of oil.
Dealer voids warranty repair because warning was ignored.
Profit!
Collection and evaluation of data for bad trends is a good thing. Using the good mechanism to screw the vehicle owner for unnecessary service or to void legitimate warranty claims would be a bad thing. While the engineers who came up with the ideas might have had good intentions, history has shown we ought not trust that profit-hungry ghouls will not misuse a potentially great feature.
The silver bullet is competence
on
The New C Standard
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The common thread, as I read it:
In the hands of a competent programmer... you get something usable. ...in the hands of an incompetent programmer... you get crap.
There is no silver bullet.
It sounds to me like the silver bullet is competence, which is acquired through a combination of aptitude, training, and experience. Silver bullet methodologies attempt to negate the importance of aptitude by relating experience into best practices for training. Silver bullet languages attempt to negate the importance of aptitude by making the languages more robust against stupidity. Yet, in the hands of the inept, silver bullets invariably embed themselves in the nearest available foot.
One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to DO BODILY HARM... is liable for the resulting acts of BODILY HARM by third parties using the device, regardless of the device's lawful uses.
This is why firearms manufacturers and the NRA are very careful to use the words "defense" and "protection" as often as possible in their arguments, e.g.: Guns are for self-defense. Defend your home and your family.
File-sharing services seemed to deliberately take the opposite approach: they are a mechanism for cirumventing copyright. They weren't promoting Fair Use, like sharing your own music files from home to work for your own casual listening. They were promoting the copying of copyrighted material to other users without paying the requisite royalities.
I know of an American company that decided to find out for themselves and ran the same project twice: once with its American staff and once by outsourcing it to an Indian firm. This wasn't a particularly big bet: the American bid was 2 engineers for 9 months.
The American team finished in 9 months. After 15 months, the (larger) Indian team was still working and had overrun the budget, as well.
I believe that language plays more of a part in such failures than does techincal competency. Specifications are difficult to write well when the customer and engineer speak the same language. Translation makes this task even more difficult and cumbersome. You can blame it on the grunts in India, or the PHBs in America who can't make a good decision -- either way, the project is a failure.
Outsourcing may help companies become less reliant on hero-oriented success, which will eventually even the playing field on the language issue. Better and more stable specifications will also help the American engineer -- only then will we be able to compare the competency of each.
Meanwhile, the California DOT has whored itself out to the Green lobby. In a fashion remiscent of the Neo-Con "we'll reduce spending by cutting taxes first", the Greens have successfully waged a war against adding new highway capacity in the belief that it will force drivers into alternative modes of transportation. As a result, the California highway system is much as it was when major construction ended in the 1960s.
How has this policy fared? Over the period 1980-2000, the state population increased ~50% while vehicle-miles doubled to ~300 billion. So, rather than driving less, Californians actually drive more. Meanwhile, decaying roads and no new capacity have lead to longer travel times and more emissions per mile traveled.
Yahoo Greens! You did it!
Computer-controlled traffic offers a solution to massively overburdened roads. Computers can reduce the inter-vehicle gap to nearly nil. The shorter gap reduces drag that is the greatest contributor to poor fuel economy at highway speeds. To wit, the staff at Car and Driver managed to get 120 MPG out of a Honda Insight mostly from very tight drafting. That's about twice its normal economy. Secondly, the short gap effectively increases the capacity of existing roads. You may think you're right on the bumper of the car in front of you but chances are good that there is room for at least 2 more cars in that gap -- meaning the road is running at 1/3 its potential capacity.
The system may be broken, but saying so does nothing. Individualized transport is and will be for some time the overwhelmingly primary form of transportation. That fact has tightly integrated itself into both urban and rural design. Perhaps, with the aid of computers, we can gain some of the the efficiency of mass transport on the individualized system.
Slashdot Mirror
Forgot the attribution on TFA quote: Advanced Media Network.
By rescinding the offer in 2005, he likely escapes, the key line being:
Quoth TFA:
Mod parent up, Insightful.
Burner-in-box saves more than postage. It has the potential to eliminate the need for a DVD stamping factory. The act of burning kicks the extra "DVD" fee, which should be *way* less than $17 total. If you don't burn it, you don't pay it.
Cover art and box contents are overrated, as are DVD extras. If you want all that crap, maybe the "purchase" comes with a code to unlock that content on the web -- go get it yourself.
...then you'd get busted for wearing a stolen jacket. Until you re-register the jacket in your own name, and pay the applicable licensing fee, you aren't allowed to wear it.
Waiter! A tin foil hat for my friend, here. No, no, I insist. My treat.
The software that goes into aircraft instrumentation goes through certification with the FAA. You can choose to buy a one-seat "experimental" aircraft with uncertified software and fly it in designated airspace. As soon as you carry passengers, the price goes up astronomically. You could outfit your cockpit with sweet electronics for just a few $k, uncertified. Certified components for small (say, 4-6 seats) aircraft are about an order of magnitude more expensive. Certified software for full-size airliners gets up into the $1M range.
I can testify that the certification contributes mightily to the expense, having trudged through the process numerous times myself. You can spend a month certfiying a new feature that takes an hour to code. It's the difference between buying a new car from a dealer for a major manufacturer, and buying a car that was built from scrap iron by one of those guys on "Monster Garage". Both might look cool, one might be a lot cheaper, but you're probably better off driving your kids around in the Honda.
The more people your stuff can kill, the harder it is to certify, and the more it will cost to develop. If you only want to kill yourself, you can do it on the cheap.
It's not, which should have mail-order retailers worried about this move, because it would almost certainly end up affecting them.
One way to apply this is to charge it based on the state of origination. It is a sales tax, not a purchase tax, even though the purchaser pays that tax for the seller. The seller would pay the tax on all sales to their home state, no matter where the product is shipped.
This would be good news for no-sales-tax states like New Hampshire, because it would encourage e-tailers to set up shop there. I'm sure that some creative loophole-hunter could work up a way to sell from one state, ship from a warehouse in a second state, to a destination in a third state.
It shows that you can 1) persevere, 2) learn, 3) troubleshoot and 4) Work Hard.
What magnificent irony. If you check out another article of his, Hope Springs Infernal, he nearly quotes you verbatim (emphasis mine):
It is a classic case of applying rules to others that he refuses to apply to himself.
It's as if they think [employees and children] are nearly synonymous.
...except that children are somewhat more trusted by their parents.
The likely objective is to threaten parents and employers alike. With such software available, both can now be held liable for the transgressions of their children or employees, who are to be brainwashed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H taught to recognize the RIAA's sovereign right to take your money in exchange for the privelege to listen.
Besides, sharing at work takes away from the time you should be working and is a glaring abuse of company resources. Kinda like posting on /. (ahem).
Parent is on the right track: Google has forward momentum, a positive Karma of the internet. Google does what you want it to do (find stuff) and stays out of the way. That's a big plus when you just want to get things done. Outside of search, Google seems to be one place where fresh ideas originate in rapid succession, even if a lot of those ideas never materialize. These new ideas, good or bad, still don't get in the way of their core product, which is still fast and stays out of the way.
Microsoft is in the opposite situtation. They've stalled and in many ways, are slipping backwards. They are widely seen as the behemoth, to the point that you don't have to even read the latest security warning to know that it's from another "Buffer Overflow" problem. Office hasn't done anything inventive in years, except for Clippy. Business users (the ones who actually pay for it) are getting the idea that new versions of Office don't do anything new but do screw up the UI enough that it's not worth the trouble to upgrade. These paying users are steadfastly not paying anymore by sticking with the 2k generation of products. New sales of MS Windows and Office are driven mostly by new computer sales, but some businesses are just moving the software and licenses over from retired systems.
XBox has done well, but it has a different appeal and is becoming its own division, anyway.
AOL is another old behemoth, and if AOL and Microsoft want to hold on for dear life together, so be it. It won't help either one.
- Monthly sensor reports indicate slow oil leak.
- Mysterious "engine problem" warning displayed to driver, instructing driver to take to dealer for service.
- Driver ignores idiot light until next scheduled service.
- Engine seizes from lack of oil.
- Dealer voids warranty repair because warning was ignored.
- Profit!
Collection and evaluation of data for bad trends is a good thing. Using the good mechanism to screw the vehicle owner for unnecessary service or to void legitimate warranty claims would be a bad thing. While the engineers who came up with the ideas might have had good intentions, history has shown we ought not trust that profit-hungry ghouls will not misuse a potentially great feature.The common thread, as I read it:
It sounds to me like the silver bullet is competence, which is acquired through a combination of aptitude, training, and experience. Silver bullet methodologies attempt to negate the importance of aptitude by relating experience into best practices for training. Silver bullet languages attempt to negate the importance of aptitude by making the languages more robust against stupidity. Yet, in the hands of the inept, silver bullets invariably embed themselves in the nearest available foot.
Some people just don't get it, whatever "it" is.
The actual text of the ruling: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?c ourt=US&navby=case&vol=000&invol=04-480
This is why firearms manufacturers and the NRA are very careful to use the words "defense" and "protection" as often as possible in their arguments, e.g.: Guns are for self-defense. Defend your home and your family.
File-sharing services seemed to deliberately take the opposite approach: they are a mechanism for cirumventing copyright. They weren't promoting Fair Use, like sharing your own music files from home to work for your own casual listening. They were promoting the copying of copyrighted material to other users without paying the requisite royalities.
The American team finished in 9 months. After 15 months, the (larger) Indian team was still working and had overrun the budget, as well.
I believe that language plays more of a part in such failures than does techincal competency. Specifications are difficult to write well when the customer and engineer speak the same language. Translation makes this task even more difficult and cumbersome. You can blame it on the grunts in India, or the PHBs in America who can't make a good decision -- either way, the project is a failure.
Outsourcing may help companies become less reliant on hero-oriented success, which will eventually even the playing field on the language issue. Better and more stable specifications will also help the American engineer -- only then will we be able to compare the competency of each.
I'll buy that as an interesting idea, provided that you'll take a second to follow that up with more explanation.
The Neo-Con movement seemed to grow out of the Nixonian period. Remember that Bush Sr. and Rummy were close to Nixon.
Sigh. So much for an explanation. Instead, you offer up only guilt by association, and very weak association at that.
When do Nixon references start to qualify as a corollary to Godwin's law?
There's no such thing as a stupid question... only stupid people who ask questions.
Meanwhile, the California DOT has whored itself out to the Green lobby. In a fashion remiscent of the Neo-Con "we'll reduce spending by cutting taxes first", the Greens have successfully waged a war against adding new highway capacity in the belief that it will force drivers into alternative modes of transportation. As a result, the California highway system is much as it was when major construction ended in the 1960s. How has this policy fared? Over the period 1980-2000, the state population increased ~50% while vehicle-miles doubled to ~300 billion. So, rather than driving less, Californians actually drive more. Meanwhile, decaying roads and no new capacity have lead to longer travel times and more emissions per mile traveled. Yahoo Greens! You did it! Computer-controlled traffic offers a solution to massively overburdened roads. Computers can reduce the inter-vehicle gap to nearly nil. The shorter gap reduces drag that is the greatest contributor to poor fuel economy at highway speeds. To wit, the staff at Car and Driver managed to get 120 MPG out of a Honda Insight mostly from very tight drafting. That's about twice its normal economy. Secondly, the short gap effectively increases the capacity of existing roads. You may think you're right on the bumper of the car in front of you but chances are good that there is room for at least 2 more cars in that gap -- meaning the road is running at 1/3 its potential capacity. The system may be broken, but saying so does nothing. Individualized transport is and will be for some time the overwhelmingly primary form of transportation. That fact has tightly integrated itself into both urban and rural design. Perhaps, with the aid of computers, we can gain some of the the efficiency of mass transport on the individualized system.