The troubles in this case seemed to have been compounded significantly by the choice of a poor license (from a legal standpoint). What licenses would you consider to be the strongest? (I'd assume BSD and MIT license, I guess, but am curious about others.)
The answer to that question depends heavily on whether the person answering is one of the "rich" people who can currently pay for the "best" medical care.
Someone who deliberately pursues a fair fight is a FOOL. It's not tactically sound. Surprise is your biggest asset, no matter what class you're playing, and especially if you're a class that cannot heal or escape. This is why world-pvp fights are invariably gankfests:
- If you see someone more dangerous than you, run the hell away or pray they're feeling nice - If not,/gank.
This is also why people "camp" in defensive positions when playing CounterStrike or Call of Duty objective-based matches. Some call it "cheap", but it's usually just applying sound tactics. (I agree, it certainly is not fun to be on the receiving end of being ganked.)
Conversely, they know that a major subset of their users are like my father.
When Itunes wants to be updated, it says, "Hey! Update me!". My father says OK, and a browser opens. He has to find the download link (took him a while to realize that was what needed doing). Then, he has to save it locally. Then, he has to FIND the file and actually run it. Some users think that after they've downloaded it, it's installed - whoops. If they do actually think they need to run it, sometimes they have a hard time finding it.
Download managers are a superb annoyance to power users like you or me, but are a great asset to users like my father. It downloads stuff in the background, and then says, "Hey, I have an update -- want me to install it?" Or, even better, "I've automagically updated your software to be more awesome."
Sure, sometimes they lie about it being more awesome, or don't tell that Lame Things are being installed. That's a problem, but it's a flaw of execution rather than a fundamental flaw of download managers themselves.
I'd even like a download manager, if it could be centrally arranged (so I didn't have Adobe, Real,Apple, Opera, Windows and Java all wanting to auto-update stuff). The only reason I DON'T use them is because they always pop up at a time when I want to get work (or play) done, and I usually don't CARE about whether I have the latest and greatest JVM or Quicktime or Flash or Acrobat Reader. (I *should* care about the adobe products, given their level of exploitability, but I don't often read PDFs, and when I do it's with Foxit.)
Of course if you are really *that good* you may get pissed when a lot of crybabies tag you as a cheater haha.
This is a very real problem.
When I used to play CounterStrike, I played nearly all the time on a server that was run as a demonstration of Qualcomm's CDMA wireless technology. (I plug them because it was hands-down the best server I ever played on.) I was probably only an average player, but was a bit below average on that server. There were about a dozen players (who were regulars) whose skill felt orders of magnitude better than mine. They would go several rounds without dying, and often rack up impressive kill:death ratios. I would often spectate them (after death or even for a whole round) so that I could learn what they did better than me, what mistakes they avoided, etc. They weren't cheaters. (or if they were, their cheats made lots of mistakes, and weren't reliably accurate;))
Fairly frequently, some new (to the server) players would get beaten repeatedly, so soundly that they would accuse the person of cheating. I assert that it's human nature for people to want to believe that an opponent is a cheater, rather than simply that they are better than we are. There was even one evening where I was accused of cheating... which was amusing because normally my scores were mediocre, but I had just had three rounds of never-before and never-since seen luck. (The CS_Rio gods were with me, I guess.) *I* know I wasn't cheating.:)
As a player, I want to play on a server with people who are just a bit better than me, that I can learn from and that challenge me to improve. I would not enjoy playing on a server with a cheater, and nor would I enjoy playing on servers where players are just So Much Better than me that I am no threat to them.
You can generally get free demos for PC games, you can generally hear an artist on the radio as examples, there are reviews you can read about these and films, and most films end up on the TV pretty quickly these days anyway.
When I buy a CD, I want to know that I will enjoy listening to more than one song on it. Often, a single (or two) heard on the radio doesn't give a good account of what the CD will be like. I've bought several CDs where I *still* only like the two songs I had originally heard.
In contrast, I've bought CDs based on having spent a week listening to MP3s by the artist. Both times, I have thoroughly enjoyed the CD, because at least a third of the songs were ones I'd already been listening to and decided I liked. (E.g., Kamelot's Epica and The Black Halo CDs.) Even with groups I've liked before, it's no guarantee that I'll like their next CD. (I didn't like Ghost Opera much.)
Music on the radio, or even single CDs, are not even in the same ballpark as a good game demo or a TV movie. In those cases, you can get a sample of a large portion of the meaningful bits of something (plot, cinematography, control scheme, voice acting), whereas a singe CD is only 10% of a CD. (Game demos are arguably closer to this, except that they gameplay mechanics don't usually change significantly as the game progresses, only the plot.)
What's the alternative? "Courts reaffirm the validity of industry pillaging of your rights"? That's a more likely prediction, but Ray Beckerman makes predictions on what he believes to be the proper reading of laws (and past rulings). He talks about how it should be, and how he hopes things will turn out.
Judges don't always agree with him. Sometimes they aren't as familiar with the facts as he is, other times they may just interpret something differently (or rule that something doesn't apply). NYCL is still a great contributor to Slashdot.
Do we have other lawyers who monitor Nerd-Worthy cases the way Mr. Beckerman does? Do they bother to submit to Slashdot? (I don't know.)
Also, buy chargers online. My wife and I bought extra phone chargers online (car, car, and home) for our phones (different models). Hers was $5 plus shipping, mine was $0.69 plus shipping. Sure, shipping was five bucks but it's still less than the $15 or $20 I'd pay in the AT&T store.
I found also that the deductible ($50) on my phone insurance was roughly the cost of buying a phone of the same type off of Ebay or other internet sites. I don't plan to insure my next phone.
Reasons like this are why I am a Baen customer. I read several years ago about Baen's disdain for DRM, and their feeling that the free advertising from free e-books is still a net win.
The first Baen book I bought was "In Fury Born". I was on vacation, and needed a scifi book. I was browsing a stack of books I'd never heard of, and was about to walk away, and then I noticed the "Baen" sigil in the corner. So, I picked it up... and have never regretted it. The book was excellent, and I've been reading (and buying) books by that author ever since.
If anyone from Baen ever reads this, Thanks. You've made me a loyal customer. Now, I can't wait until the next Honor Harrington book is out in paperback... (:
I find it especially handy when you need to debug (or just report on) or test the parts of an equation. My giant multi-term formula is Failing Somehow... why? is it bad input? Which sub-term is nil? Am I even implementing the formula correctly? Intermediate named variables really help with this.
Well, a voice synthesizer and an AI unsympathetic to human life.:D
It would certainly be an excellent dalek mimic, though. I would totally love to hear my roomba chanting "Exterminate! Exterminate!" while it wheels around my porch zapping mosquitos. (Or, I would if I had a porch, roomba, mosquitos, and a mosquito-killin' laser.)
I figure that there should be mandatory classes, at the mid to upper high school level...: - How to think carefully, logically. - How to search. - How to formulate good questions. - How to recognize bias - How to form beliefs using epistemic responsibility
It needs to be MUCH earlier. Yes, there need to be classes for teens, but also in earlier grades. Otherwise, the kids will already be accustomed to formulating poor questions (or none at all), not seeing bias, or trying to argue based on opinion rather than evidence.
That was a poor way to word the last part. Opinions are good. What I'd like to see less of is, "I believe X, so let me find evidence that supports it and not even bother to look for contradictory evidence or arguments". (To be fair, they tried to teach us the process of finding such information for good arguments in our advanced writing classes... but the vast majority of kids won't get that.)
I realize the grandparent was modded funny, but thank you for the sane and well-written (and complete) response which was better than what I would have written. If I had mod points I would have modded you up.
That argument sounds remarkably similar to a claim that guns aren't designed to kill people, they just are designed to accurately propel projectiles at high velocities. The fact that the main intended use for such a device is to facilitate killing is secondary.
TPM, while having many technical niceties ("Oh, I don't have to remember my passphrase!"), has been seen for a long time as a tool to prevent people from using their computer in ways that they like. Sure, it can make sure you've not been rootkitted before booting Windows (or your iPad)... but it can also ensure that you are only able to run the [cryptographically signed] Official OS for your hardware, rather than the latest version of Linux, BSD, or a hacked firmware on your XBox.
Similarly, microchipping everyone and tracking us all in realtime by your favourite means would [if possible] allow all sorts of GREAT things like preventing child abductions, lost Alzheimer's patients, and a super Twitter. It would also be a gigantic invasion of privacy, capable (and perhaps designed for) of mass monitoring of Anyone that the government might care to monitor. Or suppress. Best of all, it could be run by a corporate entity, contracted by the gov't, and therefore be much more opaque to the citizenry. Lots of potential bad stuff, marketed to us under the guise of Something Awesome. It might even have been originally intended as something innocent and awesome and non-repressive, but history shows that if we humans can abuse some power, we will. Witness patent trolls and DRM on DVDs.
I was appalled by the focus-follows-mouse misfeature. It turns moving your mouse into navigating a minefield.... I will never, ever enable focus-follows mouse.
As a counter-anecdote, I find focus-follows-mouse absolutely indispensable. I will go to nearly any lengths to enable it, even following obscure and hard to find tutorials on what registry values to change in order to get that behavior in Windows Vista. Clicking to change windows is very jarring to me, because things aren't working the way I expect them to.
I consider Raise-on-focus to be a similar degree of abomination as you feel focus-follows-mouse to be. (If I wanted it raised, I would have clicked on it!)
Different users have different likes and expectations. I'm sorry you don't like focus following the mouse, in much the same way that I am sad to hear when people dislike sushi.
I enjoyed it as a story, as well as the visual spectacle. Its pacing was better than Dances with Wolves, even if the story isn't all that different. I'm after entertainment, not necessarily originality. Both together is best, but I'll settle for the former. I've seen some dreadfully original or "creative" movies that failed completely to entertain me (Mulholland Drive, for example).
The movie was spectacular without 3D, as I haven't seen it in 3D yet. The Navi could have been people in blue paint and I'd have liked it pretty much just as much -- the breathtaking parts for me were the bioluminescent flora and the breathtaking landscape views.
Most importantly, you can help your child understand their behavior, and how it affects their experience. Also, a bully's behavior is not in your (or your child's) locus of control. Beating up a bully only encourages him to stop bullying you... sure, it may work a lot but ultimately your kids (or you) need to learn those social skills, rather than relying on fists.
When someone is suing you for a life-destroying amount of money, I could imagine someone (who doesn't believe in an afterlife where suicide or murder are punished) deciding that it was financially better for their loved ones and offspring to:
- Divorce oneself from one's family legally - Murder-Suicide.
What are they going to do, stick your children with the bill?
I mean, on the one hand it's completely ethically bankrupt. On the other, it discourages potential counsel for the life-destroying corporation, protects (?) your family, etc. Is losing one's parent that way more or less traumatic than losing them in war? (Thank god I don't know.)
I was going to moderate some very good posts, but it occurred to me...
I would gladly drive extra or pay extra to fly the Unsafe Skies. I bet that if some airlines and a specific airport in a major metropolitan area were to adopt a "We won't scan/frisk/xray/etc you" policy, customers would jump on it. Imagine this scenario:
- You don't have to take off your shoes. - We don't want to see you naked. - Aside from some bomb sniffing dogs and some Israeli-style attention, we don't check for much on planes. - You can bring knives on the airplane. So can everyone else, though. - Please no guns. - We only fly to other airports with similar "relaxed" security, or else you need to go through normal security when you get where you're going.
I guess x-raying might be necessary, or perhaps a chemical sniffer (?) for bomb-stuff... but the general idea would be that we are Okay with armed passengers, as anyone that tries something with a box cutter will have a herd of angry passengers to deal with.
I wonder how financially viable that would be. Would it get more demand than the strip-search airports?
In contrast to your anecdote, I read the entire Honor Harrington series of books in my web browser, usually in the evenings in blocks of 3-4 hours. I felt noticeable eye fatigue. I'm currently reading some Warhammer 40k books at a similar pace, but in paperback form, and have felt none of those symptoms. Perhaps it's the nature of reading on an uninterrupted scrollable window, rather than having to turn (real or virtual) pages, perhaps its the nature of what I'm looking at. I don't know.
I agree. I'm curious as to what it was, but appreciated that he took the time NOT to shill for it. The comments above about building social circles of shared interest, and of trying to cater to what users need (rather than adding features in hopes that they might attract users). Both were great and generic advice.
Slashdot Mirror
The troubles in this case seemed to have been compounded significantly by the choice of a poor license (from a legal standpoint). What licenses would you consider to be the strongest? (I'd assume BSD and MIT license, I guess, but am curious about others.)
The answer to that question depends heavily on whether the person answering is one of the "rich" people who can currently pay for the "best" medical care.
Someone who deliberately pursues a fair fight is a FOOL. It's not tactically sound. Surprise is your biggest asset, no matter what class you're playing, and especially if you're a class that cannot heal or escape. This is why world-pvp fights are invariably gankfests:
- If you see someone more dangerous than you, run the hell away or pray they're feeling nice /gank.
- If not,
This is also why people "camp" in defensive positions when playing CounterStrike or Call of Duty objective-based matches. Some call it "cheap", but it's usually just applying sound tactics. (I agree, it certainly is not fun to be on the receiving end of being ganked.)
Conversely, they know that a major subset of their users are like my father.
When Itunes wants to be updated, it says, "Hey! Update me!". My father says OK, and a browser opens. He has to find the download link (took him a while to realize that was what needed doing). Then, he has to save it locally. Then, he has to FIND the file and actually run it. Some users think that after they've downloaded it, it's installed - whoops. If they do actually think they need to run it, sometimes they have a hard time finding it.
Download managers are a superb annoyance to power users like you or me, but are a great asset to users like my father. It downloads stuff in the background, and then says, "Hey, I have an update -- want me to install it?" Or, even better, "I've automagically updated your software to be more awesome."
Sure, sometimes they lie about it being more awesome, or don't tell that Lame Things are being installed. That's a problem, but it's a flaw of execution rather than a fundamental flaw of download managers themselves.
I'd even like a download manager, if it could be centrally arranged (so I didn't have Adobe, Real,Apple, Opera, Windows and Java all wanting to auto-update stuff). The only reason I DON'T use them is because they always pop up at a time when I want to get work (or play) done, and I usually don't CARE about whether I have the latest and greatest JVM or Quicktime or Flash or Acrobat Reader. (I *should* care about the adobe products, given their level of exploitability, but I don't often read PDFs, and when I do it's with Foxit.)
This is a very real problem.
When I used to play CounterStrike, I played nearly all the time on a server that was run as a demonstration of Qualcomm's CDMA wireless technology. (I plug them because it was hands-down the best server I ever played on.) I was probably only an average player, but was a bit below average on that server. There were about a dozen players (who were regulars) whose skill felt orders of magnitude better than mine. They would go several rounds without dying, and often rack up impressive kill:death ratios. I would often spectate them (after death or even for a whole round) so that I could learn what they did better than me, what mistakes they avoided, etc. They weren't cheaters. (or if they were, their cheats made lots of mistakes, and weren't reliably accurate ;))
Fairly frequently, some new (to the server) players would get beaten repeatedly, so soundly that they would accuse the person of cheating. I assert that it's human nature for people to want to believe that an opponent is a cheater, rather than simply that they are better than we are. There was even one evening where I was accused of cheating ... which was amusing because normally my scores were mediocre, but I had just had three rounds of never-before and never-since seen luck. (The CS_Rio gods were with me, I guess.) *I* know I wasn't cheating. :)
As a player, I want to play on a server with people who are just a bit better than me, that I can learn from and that challenge me to improve. I would not enjoy playing on a server with a cheater, and nor would I enjoy playing on servers where players are just So Much Better than me that I am no threat to them.
When I buy a CD, I want to know that I will enjoy listening to more than one song on it. Often, a single (or two) heard on the radio doesn't give a good account of what the CD will be like. I've bought several CDs where I *still* only like the two songs I had originally heard.
In contrast, I've bought CDs based on having spent a week listening to MP3s by the artist. Both times, I have thoroughly enjoyed the CD, because at least a third of the songs were ones I'd already been listening to and decided I liked. (E.g., Kamelot's Epica and The Black Halo CDs.) Even with groups I've liked before, it's no guarantee that I'll like their next CD. (I didn't like Ghost Opera much.)
Music on the radio, or even single CDs, are not even in the same ballpark as a good game demo or a TV movie. In those cases, you can get a sample of a large portion of the meaningful bits of something (plot, cinematography, control scheme, voice acting), whereas a singe CD is only 10% of a CD. (Game demos are arguably closer to this, except that they gameplay mechanics don't usually change significantly as the game progresses, only the plot.)
What's the alternative? "Courts reaffirm the validity of industry pillaging of your rights"? That's a more likely prediction, but Ray Beckerman makes predictions on what he believes to be the proper reading of laws (and past rulings). He talks about how it should be, and how he hopes things will turn out.
Judges don't always agree with him. Sometimes they aren't as familiar with the facts as he is, other times they may just interpret something differently (or rule that something doesn't apply). NYCL is still a great contributor to Slashdot.
Do we have other lawyers who monitor Nerd-Worthy cases the way Mr. Beckerman does? Do they bother to submit to Slashdot? (I don't know.)
Also, buy chargers online. My wife and I bought extra phone chargers online (car, car, and home) for our phones (different models). Hers was $5 plus shipping, mine was $0.69 plus shipping. Sure, shipping was five bucks but it's still less than the $15 or $20 I'd pay in the AT&T store.
I found also that the deductible ($50) on my phone insurance was roughly the cost of buying a phone of the same type off of Ebay or other internet sites. I don't plan to insure my next phone.
Reasons like this are why I am a Baen customer. I read several years ago about Baen's disdain for DRM, and their feeling that the free advertising from free e-books is still a net win.
The first Baen book I bought was "In Fury Born". I was on vacation, and needed a scifi book. I was browsing a stack of books I'd never heard of, and was about to walk away, and then I noticed the "Baen" sigil in the corner. So, I picked it up ... and have never regretted it. The book was excellent, and I've been reading (and buying) books by that author ever since.
If anyone from Baen ever reads this, Thanks. You've made me a loyal customer. Now, I can't wait until the next Honor Harrington book is out in paperback ... (:
I find it especially handy when you need to debug (or just report on) or test the parts of an equation. My giant multi-term formula is Failing Somehow ... why? is it bad input? Which sub-term is nil? Am I even implementing the formula correctly? Intermediate named variables really help with this.
Well, a voice synthesizer and an AI unsympathetic to human life. :D
It would certainly be an excellent dalek mimic, though. I would totally love to hear my roomba chanting "Exterminate! Exterminate!" while it wheels around my porch zapping mosquitos. (Or, I would if I had a porch, roomba, mosquitos, and a mosquito-killin' laser.)
It needs to be MUCH earlier. Yes, there need to be classes for teens, but also in earlier grades. Otherwise, the kids will already be accustomed to formulating poor questions (or none at all), not seeing bias, or trying to argue based on opinion rather than evidence.
That was a poor way to word the last part. Opinions are good. What I'd like to see less of is, "I believe X, so let me find evidence that supports it and not even bother to look for contradictory evidence or arguments". (To be fair, they tried to teach us the process of finding such information for good arguments in our advanced writing classes ... but the vast majority of kids won't get that.)
I realize the grandparent was modded funny, but thank you for the sane and well-written (and complete) response which was better than what I would have written. If I had mod points I would have modded you up.
That argument sounds remarkably similar to a claim that guns aren't designed to kill people, they just are designed to accurately propel projectiles at high velocities. The fact that the main intended use for such a device is to facilitate killing is secondary.
TPM, while having many technical niceties ("Oh, I don't have to remember my passphrase!"), has been seen for a long time as a tool to prevent people from using their computer in ways that they like. Sure, it can make sure you've not been rootkitted before booting Windows (or your iPad) ... but it can also ensure that you are only able to run the [cryptographically signed] Official OS for your hardware, rather than the latest version of Linux, BSD, or a hacked firmware on your XBox.
Similarly, microchipping everyone and tracking us all in realtime by your favourite means would [if possible] allow all sorts of GREAT things like preventing child abductions, lost Alzheimer's patients, and a super Twitter. It would also be a gigantic invasion of privacy, capable (and perhaps designed for) of mass monitoring of Anyone that the government might care to monitor. Or suppress. Best of all, it could be run by a corporate entity, contracted by the gov't, and therefore be much more opaque to the citizenry. Lots of potential bad stuff, marketed to us under the guise of Something Awesome. It might even have been originally intended as something innocent and awesome and non-repressive, but history shows that if we humans can abuse some power, we will. Witness patent trolls and DRM on DVDs.
As a counter-anecdote, I find focus-follows-mouse absolutely indispensable. I will go to nearly any lengths to enable it, even following obscure and hard to find tutorials on what registry values to change in order to get that behavior in Windows Vista. Clicking to change windows is very jarring to me, because things aren't working the way I expect them to.
I consider Raise-on-focus to be a similar degree of abomination as you feel focus-follows-mouse to be. (If I wanted it raised, I would have clicked on it!)
Different users have different likes and expectations. I'm sorry you don't like focus following the mouse, in much the same way that I am sad to hear when people dislike sushi.
I do not believe that members of the police anywhere have a sense of humor, at least not while acting in any official capacity.
I enjoyed it as a story, as well as the visual spectacle. Its pacing was better than Dances with Wolves, even if the story isn't all that different. I'm after entertainment, not necessarily originality. Both together is best, but I'll settle for the former. I've seen some dreadfully original or "creative" movies that failed completely to entertain me (Mulholland Drive, for example).
The movie was spectacular without 3D, as I haven't seen it in 3D yet. The Navi could have been people in blue paint and I'd have liked it pretty much just as much -- the breathtaking parts for me were the bioluminescent flora and the breathtaking landscape views.
Most importantly, you can help your child understand their behavior, and how it affects their experience. Also, a bully's behavior is not in your (or your child's) locus of control. Beating up a bully only encourages him to stop bullying you ... sure, it may work a lot but ultimately your kids (or you) need to learn those social skills, rather than relying on fists.
When someone is suing you for a life-destroying amount of money, I could imagine someone (who doesn't believe in an afterlife where suicide or murder are punished) deciding that it was financially better for their loved ones and offspring to:
- Divorce oneself from one's family legally
- Murder-Suicide.
What are they going to do, stick your children with the bill?
I mean, on the one hand it's completely ethically bankrupt. On the other, it discourages potential counsel for the life-destroying corporation, protects (?) your family, etc. Is losing one's parent that way more or less traumatic than losing them in war? (Thank god I don't know.)
I'm sure this is redundant, obvious, etc, but ... what a tragedy.
I was going to moderate some very good posts, but it occurred to me ...
I would gladly drive extra or pay extra to fly the Unsafe Skies. I bet that if some airlines and a specific airport in a major metropolitan area were to adopt a "We won't scan/frisk/xray/etc you" policy, customers would jump on it. Imagine this scenario:
- You don't have to take off your shoes.
- We don't want to see you naked.
- Aside from some bomb sniffing dogs and some Israeli-style attention, we don't check for much on planes.
- You can bring knives on the airplane. So can everyone else, though.
- Please no guns.
- We only fly to other airports with similar "relaxed" security, or else you need to go through normal security when you get where you're going.
I guess x-raying might be necessary, or perhaps a chemical sniffer (?) for bomb-stuff... but the general idea would be that we are Okay with armed passengers, as anyone that tries something with a box cutter will have a herd of angry passengers to deal with.
I wonder how financially viable that would be. Would it get more demand than the strip-search airports?
In contrast to your anecdote, I read the entire Honor Harrington series of books in my web browser, usually in the evenings in blocks of 3-4 hours. I felt noticeable eye fatigue. I'm currently reading some Warhammer 40k books at a similar pace, but in paperback form, and have felt none of those symptoms. Perhaps it's the nature of reading on an uninterrupted scrollable window, rather than having to turn (real or virtual) pages, perhaps its the nature of what I'm looking at. I don't know.
I agree. I'm curious as to what it was, but appreciated that he took the time NOT to shill for it. The comments above about building social circles of shared interest, and of trying to cater to what users need (rather than adding features in hopes that they might attract users). Both were great and generic advice.