I've been playing GuildWars for years--not quite since it was first released, but soon thereafter. When I first heard about GW2, I was really excited. However, as the years have moved on and the release has been pushed further and further back, I lost my enthusiasm and recently got to the point where I was thinking of skipping it once it was released.
The article changed all that for me.
If they pull off what was described, I'll gladly fade into a trance-like state and play for hours and hours and hours. The way it was described really did stir something in me--what they described is how I've always wanted software RPGs to be (whether MMO or not). Four of my sons and I have been playing GW for some time now, and while they've kept playing over the past year, I've logged only a few hours of time. I'm now looking forward to getting my copy, and spending some time with them in GW2.
The problem is that we all react differently to stress and trauma. I'm an old scout, and we were taught to stay calm in emergency situations. When you practice such things enough, they become part of you. I've had to make a number of 9-1-1 calls over the years, but I've always stayed calm, just as I was taught (so you can make sure you communicate clearly, and convey all the appropriate information).
Not everyone responds the same way, however. Get a parent who can't stand the sight of blood and the system might prioritize the hysterical caller even though the wound might be minor. A tiny head wound can present a lot of blood in a short period of time. Or, get someone with no first aid or medical training, and they might call 9-1-1, panicked, if they see someone have a seizure. I was with someone who had grand mauls seizures regularly, and I knew what to do. No ambulance was needed, and I could deal with everything. When one occurred in a public place, however, a number of panicked people called 9-1-1 and an ambulance was dispatched. She didn't need to go to the hospital--she just needed to rest--but the complex owner (likely for liability reasons) insisted that she be transported. [Which doubly sucked, because she ended up stuck with the ambulance service and ER bills.]
In short, such a system could prioritize someone screaming about a big sliver while someone like me, who can remain calm, does not get priority, even though I might be calling in a more serious problem.
"Don't be evil" just makes the juxtaposition more clear. The purpose of a motto is to convey a key value and provide a guide for living (action, in Google's case). Both the way I wrote it (incorrectly, as you noted) and the correct way convey the same basic idea.
I believe the researcher's point was that we don't need as many H1B workers because they clearly are not the creme de la creme as based on his analysis of the wages they are paid and other data, and the aim of the H1B program was to bring in highly skilled and specialized workers who could not be found here (in the US). The data he presents suggests that employers are using the H1B program more as a means of getting cheap labor than as a means to get the best and brightest with the rarest skill sets.
The scope of the law is too narrow. It should protect educators regardless of the theory of origin to which they hold. We all know the pendulum swings both ways. That way, if (when) things do go the other way, at least they won't be able to kick out those who hold to evolutionary theory.
In the scenario you describe, who bears responsibility for monitoring the "bad" employees' behavior? The harassed employee can report them. I would not tolerate a representative of my employer following me around or nosing into the "bad" employees social network posts just to find out if they are being bad.
If a student comes to the school administrations and lets them know that other students are harassing them (inside or outside of school), then the administration has some basis for following up with the alleged offenders. I don't ever want to see it codified that school administrators must dig around in kids' out-of-school lives to find potential abuse/mistreatment of others.
Point taken. The point I was trying to make is that "freedom of speech" does not mean we really can say whatever we want, whenever we want and expect it to be protected speech.
"Sticks and stones" is a wonderful rhyme that might help some kids get through mistreatment at the time (heck, I know, as I was "the fat kid" {among dozens of other names I won't list here}), but anyone who lived through such mistreatment can tell you that those words did hurt, and they can have a lasting impact on one's psyche.
The only way to keep Facebook out of school during the school day would be to block it from all school networks, and then to bar all cell phones and similar devices. Of course, we all know how effective such bans would be. In some ways, it might make the situation worse (with kids secretly pulling up FB content on smart phones in bathrooms or unmonitored hallways). Making something forbidden seems to always increase its appeal.
I agree to a point. What they do on their own time is no business of the schools until those outside activities are brought into the schools. If something posted during a student's own time starts circulating around the school during the school day, one could make a fair argument that the outside activity is now something affecting the everyday goings-on at the school.
To me, that suggests a very fine line--one that should be handled on a case-by-case basis.
What everyone seems to forget is that this kind of behavior went on long before Facebook, and it will continue long after Facebook fades to a bad memory.
Before FB, kids passed notes, made phone calls, or whispered snarky comments, both at and away from school. Should schools hire monitors to follow kids around to all their activities? Should cameras with facial recognitions software go up at every mall, so school administrators may monitor the conduct of their students in such environments? If administrators are truly required to monitor kids' behaviors outside of school, I hope administrators across the country will resign en masse. That might be the only way to draw attention to the issue and force a change.
I think you've carried some assumptions too far. Children are not afforded all the same rights as adults because they are viewed as not fully developed--they are immature. Would you really want that view changed? After all, that's the reasoning that allows for a juvenile justice system, so we don't see most child offenders thrown into adult prisons with adult terms (though such does happen with older kids convicted of particularly heinous crimes, especially if those crimes required much forethought and planning). It is that segregation of the immature from the mature that allows the vast majority of those juvenile offenders to re-enter society when they reach the legal age of adulthood, with sealed records so that the rest of their lives will not be tainted by youthful mistakes.
That said, I believe children in the US remain immature longer because we do not expect them to mature sooner. In many cultures, children are afforded the rights of adulthood at earlier ages (e.g., 16, 13). In those cultures, children are expected to be more mature at an earlier age, and their behavior often follows society's expectations. I'm all in favor of that kind of expectation of maturity. Unfortunately, imparting that to my children won't have an impact on millions of other children across the country.
I don't know that using credit cards for age verification would work anymore, since anyone can get a pre-paid Visa gift card. Those cards have numbers that follow the same format as the traditional bank cards. Unless there is some back-end database that can sort between gift card and non-gift card numbers, credit cards are worthless for age verification.
That won't work, beceause kids can lie about their age. I know one young person who listed her birth year as being in the early 1900s. Unless age verification is part of the process, that will never work.
Besides, if FB were taken out of the equation, more sites would pop up that cater to the youth culture. Then administrators would need to monitor even more sites.
So, I should be free to say,"someone should kill you", or "I want you dead", or "I'm going to cut your throat while you're asleep"?
No, freedom of speech in the United States has never meant what you want it to mean. There have always been limits on "free" speech.
The codification of a right to free speech (per a long tradition of interpretation) was designed to allow the press and the people to voice divergent political views without fear of censorship or retaliation from the ruling government. Laws against liable and slander were part of our early legal landscape. People are allowed to voice their opinions, but when those opinions turn into attacks, our legal system has long viewed such speech as something less that a civil liberty. Indeed, there's nothing civil about such speech, so claims that it is a protected right--a civil liberty--is (imo) simply a biggoted pipe dream.
In theory, words are just words. In practice, words can be emotional/psychological payloads.
I've only met two types of people who believe words don't hurt. The first is a person who has never been on the receiving end of unkind words. The second is someone who has been deeply hurt by unkind words, but puts on a strong front, claiming "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me."
In my experience, that second type is far more common than the first.
Bigotry is bigotry, no matter where it occurs. What I find offensive is that school officials are being directed to monitor students activities when they are outside of school and school activities. That's the line that has no business being crossed.
You're right that the exchange of physical goods carries a more obvious risk, but there's also risk in losing one's IP. In the case of a crime syndicate, that IP includes knowledge of operations, the technologies used (including attack vectors), and perhaps even server locations/service providers--all information that would be valuable to competing syndicates or law enforcement agencies. I doubt any crime syndicate that's hiring coders is simply going to let them run free with something as simple as a non-compete agreement.
The fact that there's been a move from the idealistic and casual hackers to organized crime has been sounded by wise security folks for years and years and years. The writing seemed to be on the wall pretty clearly since about 2004, and I was warning IT auditors and bank examiners about it from the mid-2000s onward.
It should be no surprise to anyone in the IT field, but I can see how there might be a big disparity between contemporary IT thought and the knowledge held by law enforcement units around the country (and, perhaps, around the world). Sure, not all of them are that far behind, but only those who have been engaged in the fight really have any feel for what is going on, so many of the smaller police departments and rural units probably have limited exposure, and even fewer resources for dealing with IT threats.
They're not financing workstations in basements--they're paying for real coding talent, for information, and for new exploits (or new uses of old exploits). If you know what game development teams look like, you've got an idea of what more and more criminal enterprise teams look like, except that, instead of a semi-competant boss who is looking out for the company's bottom line, you have a trusted semi-competant boss whose only mission is to pass the deliverables on to the syndicate. Slacking off, or throwing some code for a traditional employer might, at worst, find you looking for another job. Doing the same for your evil overlords might net you a bit more trouble (don't mess with dudes with guns).
As a condition of its purchase of Alltel, Verizon was forced to sell all its accounts in certain parts of the midwest. Maybe that's one of the reasons why they want the limits in place by May.
Between April and June AT&T is picking up all the accounts Verizon and Alltel had in this area of Minnesota (in areas where Verizon and Alltel territories overlapped when Verizon bought the smaller carrier).
It might be coincidental, but it provides me an opportunity to rant, either way. Forcing Verizon to sell the accounts to AT&T is just BS!, especially since we chose Verizon for its coverage where our customers are, and because AT&T in our area has a reputation for poor customer service and spotty network coverage (many dropped calls).
It does seem like something AT&T would do, however--to put some limits in place before they pick up more Verizon customers, including those with active data plans.
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I've been playing GuildWars for years--not quite since it was first released, but soon thereafter. When I first heard about GW2, I was really excited. However, as the years have moved on and the release has been pushed further and further back, I lost my enthusiasm and recently got to the point where I was thinking of skipping it once it was released.
The article changed all that for me.
If they pull off what was described, I'll gladly fade into a trance-like state and play for hours and hours and hours. The way it was described really did stir something in me--what they described is how I've always wanted software RPGs to be (whether MMO or not). Four of my sons and I have been playing GW for some time now, and while they've kept playing over the past year, I've logged only a few hours of time. I'm now looking forward to getting my copy, and spending some time with them in GW2.
In reality, it's probably more like 2,000 kids who keep trying to get a profile that sticks...
"Come on...the tenth time's the charm!"
The problem is that we all react differently to stress and trauma. I'm an old scout, and we were taught to stay calm in emergency situations. When you practice such things enough, they become part of you. I've had to make a number of 9-1-1 calls over the years, but I've always stayed calm, just as I was taught (so you can make sure you communicate clearly, and convey all the appropriate information).
Not everyone responds the same way, however. Get a parent who can't stand the sight of blood and the system might prioritize the hysterical caller even though the wound might be minor. A tiny head wound can present a lot of blood in a short period of time. Or, get someone with no first aid or medical training, and they might call 9-1-1, panicked, if they see someone have a seizure. I was with someone who had grand mauls seizures regularly, and I knew what to do. No ambulance was needed, and I could deal with everything. When one occurred in a public place, however, a number of panicked people called 9-1-1 and an ambulance was dispatched. She didn't need to go to the hospital--she just needed to rest--but the complex owner (likely for liability reasons) insisted that she be transported. [Which doubly sucked, because she ended up stuck with the ambulance service and ER bills.]
In short, such a system could prioritize someone screaming about a big sliver while someone like me, who can remain calm, does not get priority, even though I might be calling in a more serious problem.
"Don't be evil" just makes the juxtaposition more clear. The purpose of a motto is to convey a key value and provide a guide for living (action, in Google's case). Both the way I wrote it (incorrectly, as you noted) and the correct way convey the same basic idea.
I believe the researcher's point was that we don't need as many H1B workers because they clearly are not the creme de la creme as based on his analysis of the wages they are paid and other data, and the aim of the H1B program was to bring in highly skilled and specialized workers who could not be found here (in the US). The data he presents suggests that employers are using the H1B program more as a means of getting cheap labor than as a means to get the best and brightest with the rarest skill sets.
The scope of the law is too narrow. It should protect educators regardless of the theory of origin to which they hold. We all know the pendulum swings both ways. That way, if (when) things do go the other way, at least they won't be able to kick out those who hold to evolutionary theory.
Google's motto is "Do no evil", but I wonder if they think they're not responsible for evil if it spreads because they do northing.
In the scenario you describe, who bears responsibility for monitoring the "bad" employees' behavior? The harassed employee can report them. I would not tolerate a representative of my employer following me around or nosing into the "bad" employees social network posts just to find out if they are being bad.
If a student comes to the school administrations and lets them know that other students are harassing them (inside or outside of school), then the administration has some basis for following up with the alleged offenders. I don't ever want to see it codified that school administrators must dig around in kids' out-of-school lives to find potential abuse/mistreatment of others.
Point taken. The point I was trying to make is that "freedom of speech" does not mean we really can say whatever we want, whenever we want and expect it to be protected speech.
"Sticks and stones" is a wonderful rhyme that might help some kids get through mistreatment at the time (heck, I know, as I was "the fat kid" {among dozens of other names I won't list here}), but anyone who lived through such mistreatment can tell you that those words did hurt, and they can have a lasting impact on one's psyche.
The only way to keep Facebook out of school during the school day would be to block it from all school networks, and then to bar all cell phones and similar devices. Of course, we all know how effective such bans would be. In some ways, it might make the situation worse (with kids secretly pulling up FB content on smart phones in bathrooms or unmonitored hallways). Making something forbidden seems to always increase its appeal.
I agree to a point. What they do on their own time is no business of the schools until those outside activities are brought into the schools. If something posted during a student's own time starts circulating around the school during the school day, one could make a fair argument that the outside activity is now something affecting the everyday goings-on at the school.
To me, that suggests a very fine line--one that should be handled on a case-by-case basis.
What everyone seems to forget is that this kind of behavior went on long before Facebook, and it will continue long after Facebook fades to a bad memory.
Before FB, kids passed notes, made phone calls, or whispered snarky comments, both at and away from school. Should schools hire monitors to follow kids around to all their activities? Should cameras with facial recognitions software go up at every mall, so school administrators may monitor the conduct of their students in such environments? If administrators are truly required to monitor kids' behaviors outside of school, I hope administrators across the country will resign en masse. That might be the only way to draw attention to the issue and force a change.
I think you've carried some assumptions too far. Children are not afforded all the same rights as adults because they are viewed as not fully developed--they are immature. Would you really want that view changed? After all, that's the reasoning that allows for a juvenile justice system, so we don't see most child offenders thrown into adult prisons with adult terms (though such does happen with older kids convicted of particularly heinous crimes, especially if those crimes required much forethought and planning). It is that segregation of the immature from the mature that allows the vast majority of those juvenile offenders to re-enter society when they reach the legal age of adulthood, with sealed records so that the rest of their lives will not be tainted by youthful mistakes.
That said, I believe children in the US remain immature longer because we do not expect them to mature sooner. In many cultures, children are afforded the rights of adulthood at earlier ages (e.g., 16, 13). In those cultures, children are expected to be more mature at an earlier age, and their behavior often follows society's expectations. I'm all in favor of that kind of expectation of maturity. Unfortunately, imparting that to my children won't have an impact on millions of other children across the country.
I don't know that using credit cards for age verification would work anymore, since anyone can get a pre-paid Visa gift card. Those cards have numbers that follow the same format as the traditional bank cards. Unless there is some back-end database that can sort between gift card and non-gift card numbers, credit cards are worthless for age verification.
That won't work, beceause kids can lie about their age. I know one young person who listed her birth year as being in the early 1900s. Unless age verification is part of the process, that will never work.
Besides, if FB were taken out of the equation, more sites would pop up that cater to the youth culture. Then administrators would need to monitor even more sites.
So, I should be free to say,"someone should kill you", or "I want you dead", or "I'm going to cut your throat while you're asleep"?
No, freedom of speech in the United States has never meant what you want it to mean. There have always been limits on "free" speech.
The codification of a right to free speech (per a long tradition of interpretation) was designed to allow the press and the people to voice divergent political views without fear of censorship or retaliation from the ruling government. Laws against liable and slander were part of our early legal landscape. People are allowed to voice their opinions, but when those opinions turn into attacks, our legal system has long viewed such speech as something less that a civil liberty. Indeed, there's nothing civil about such speech, so claims that it is a protected right--a civil liberty--is (imo) simply a biggoted pipe dream.
In theory, words are just words. In practice, words can be emotional/psychological payloads.
I've only met two types of people who believe words don't hurt. The first is a person who has never been on the receiving end of unkind words. The second is someone who has been deeply hurt by unkind words, but puts on a strong front, claiming "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me."
In my experience, that second type is far more common than the first.
Bigotry is bigotry, no matter where it occurs. What I find offensive is that school officials are being directed to monitor students activities when they are outside of school and school activities. That's the line that has no business being crossed.
...the president of a major bicycle manufacturing company said that cars are dead.
You're right that the exchange of physical goods carries a more obvious risk, but there's also risk in losing one's IP. In the case of a crime syndicate, that IP includes knowledge of operations, the technologies used (including attack vectors), and perhaps even server locations/service providers--all information that would be valuable to competing syndicates or law enforcement agencies. I doubt any crime syndicate that's hiring coders is simply going to let them run free with something as simple as a non-compete agreement.
The fact that there's been a move from the idealistic and casual hackers to organized crime has been sounded by wise security folks for years and years and years. The writing seemed to be on the wall pretty clearly since about 2004, and I was warning IT auditors and bank examiners about it from the mid-2000s onward.
It should be no surprise to anyone in the IT field, but I can see how there might be a big disparity between contemporary IT thought and the knowledge held by law enforcement units around the country (and, perhaps, around the world). Sure, not all of them are that far behind, but only those who have been engaged in the fight really have any feel for what is going on, so many of the smaller police departments and rural units probably have limited exposure, and even fewer resources for dealing with IT threats.
They're not financing workstations in basements--they're paying for real coding talent, for information, and for new exploits (or new uses of old exploits). If you know what game development teams look like, you've got an idea of what more and more criminal enterprise teams look like, except that, instead of a semi-competant boss who is looking out for the company's bottom line, you have a trusted semi-competant boss whose only mission is to pass the deliverables on to the syndicate. Slacking off, or throwing some code for a traditional employer might, at worst, find you looking for another job. Doing the same for your evil overlords might net you a bit more trouble (don't mess with dudes with guns).
Probably so...
As a condition of its purchase of Alltel, Verizon was forced to sell all its accounts in certain parts of the midwest. Maybe that's one of the reasons why they want the limits in place by May.
Between April and June AT&T is picking up all the accounts Verizon and Alltel had in this area of Minnesota (in areas where Verizon and Alltel territories overlapped when Verizon bought the smaller carrier).
It might be coincidental, but it provides me an opportunity to rant, either way. Forcing Verizon to sell the accounts to AT&T is just BS!, especially since we chose Verizon for its coverage where our customers are, and because AT&T in our area has a reputation for poor customer service and spotty network coverage (many dropped calls).
It does seem like something AT&T would do, however--to put some limits in place before they pick up more Verizon customers, including those with active data plans.