I've seen a lot of people complain about the Karma/moderation system on slashdot, but I've never seen a problem with it
I think that moderation in a public forum (like Slashdot) can be much more equitable than in a small group of humans:
- Moderation is anonymous - Most of the people you are moderating are complete strangers - Most moderators are unmotivated to moderate abusively, as there's nothing for them to gain from it - There's a large enough pool of people that moderation can be distributed "fairly" (in theory?).
At work, I certainly don't feel like I know enough about what the hell other people are doing to be able to competently "rank" them or "moderate" their work. I don't feel like anyone has a shortage of cluefulness or skill, it's just that I don't know how ranking their contributions could be an honest thing, as I am worried that I might undervalue someone's accomplishments. Part of this is that few of my direct coworkers are programmers (some are engineers), and part is that significant portions of our programmers are working on Other Projects or in another office.
I worry that trust rankings of coworkers would devolve (even if only subconsciously) into a "who has helped me" metric. Your peers rate their contributions based on what they feel is important. Considering a lot of what we do are things like "Fix X software error" or "make Y integrate properly", it's difficult for some of the tasks which are important in the abstract to seem important to people. I worry that a collaborative trust metric among a small group would end up being a measure of who was most willing to Do Something for other people -- solve their problems, answer questions (do their work?)... and, of course there's my core worry that as humans competing for resources (profit share), they'd be unable to truly honestly rate one another.
Now, in a company that's small enough to only really be working on a single project (or meta-project), where people can communicate enough to grok the problems in their entirety, I guess it might work better... but I am skeptical. I hope it works out well, as it sounds like it could potentially be a dream job.
Because FLAC is lossless compression, its audio quality is by definition as good as a CD.
Whether it's a good consumer model, or whether people care enough about quality to buy FLAC rather than 320 kbps mp3s is a completely separate argument. I suspect most users wouldn't... but there are some of us who would buy FLAC encodings. OTOH, ripping the Daft Punk CD I bought yesterday to FLAC took me ~10 minutes, so it's not all that inconvenient.
I think you are correct that it's a niche product, right now -- but the GP didn't say that it was a majority of users, merely an increasing population. I doubt that many people, after understanding and using FLAC, then decide to go back to MP3 as the sole-source of music. The game changes from CD->MP3 to CD->FLAC->MP3,OGG,Whatever, and storage is cheap enough that often times we CAN keep our FLAC collection on the computer.
I agree, in principle. I don't think I have a problem with them reading stories about romantic sexy encounters and the like, but most of the porn one finds semi-easily on the internet is not really a normal depiction of sex; it's pretty stylised and extreme. I don't really want them reading things that glamorize cheating, incest, rape, snuff, or things like that. I don't think most visual porn promotes a healthy body image for either gender. (Playboy is like sesame street in comparison to most internet porn, IMO.) I don't believe children who are that young should be sexual with one another, so I certainly want to try to limit the exposure to the glamorous treatment of it that most porn is. You'll also notice that I said "might" be confiscated: it depends on their maturity, on the nature of the porn, etc.
If they are skillful enough to hide it from me, there's nothing I can do about that. If I do find out they're consuming porn, then the discussions we will have had about consequences will be apropos. If they're 16 and having sex, there's not much I can do to stop it -- they will have been educated and supplied with protection, and will know about the consequences.
Of course, my kid is rather young, so I have another decade or so before any of this really matters, and my thoughts may evolve.
Usability, I guess. I'm not a frequent user of office-type tools, but when I use the new Office (excel or word), I find its handling of some things just a bit easier than in the older version of MS Office I normally use. When I go home and use OpenOffice, the differences in convenience are GLARING.
For example, deleting the contents of cells in OpenOffice Calc is significantly more annoying than in MS office (of any recent version). It sounds silly, but it's also really annoying, and if I had both on my system I'd be using Excel with no hesitation. If productivity is a concern, rather than merely cost, I feel like MS Office would win out. (I have no studies to cite, peer-reviewed of otherwise -- this is just my opinion.)
While I appreciate that there are those who want Portable Power (and nice form), I am really looking forward to the ARM-based laptops, such as the ~$200 one that Pegatron was talking about back in January. Why would I need a laptop like the Adamo? O_o
Perhaps if I were a constant traveling computer-user... doing some sort of heavy computing?
do you think seeing porn will rape your daughters eyes or something?
Yes. Now, in detail:
At 4-8, I don't want them seeing porn, ever. At 8-12, I don't want them seeing porn, though I expect that one of their friends may show them some. I recall being baffled by what little porn I glimpsed at those ages. At 12-16ish, I still don't think they can handle porn well, but should have had The Talk by then so at least it's less bizarre. At 16, I expect my kids will be savvy enough computer users to Find A Way to get porn. However, they'll also know that I will find out afterwards, and it might be confiscated (or their priveleges revoked temporarily) as punishment. We will definitely have the talk that Porn is Out There, and may consider reducing some of the restrictions. At 18, I'd rather not know about it. Ew. They're old enough to pay for a separate network connection, if they want to look for porn; we can talk as a family about whether to lower the restrictions.
I live in a distant suburb of Los Angeles county; we have nearly no public transportation, and most people that live here commute ~20-60 minutes by car. (The train station into the LA basin is ~20 minutes drive from my house.) It's just not a feasible thing to be a pedistrian or take public transit here, unfortunately.
If someone can't afford ~1500/year in car insurance, it's unlikely they will be able to afford the costs of moving to a different (cheaper) location, either.
And, if it's not safe to stop then, you are perfectly OK to continue driving through the intersection while you have a yellow light. Or, at least, it is in California ( http://dmv.ca.gov/pubs/hdbk/traff_lgts_sgns.htm ), your mileage may vary.
Peoples' perception of "safe" depends on an expectation of how long they have until it will be red -- if it turns from green to yellow to red in less time than it physically takes me to stop, then either the speed limit needs to be lowered, or the yellow time increased, or both.
Your kids are gonna find out. Accept it. The right approach is education.
If theoriginal poster is like me, he's relatively OK with his kids looking for pictures of naked people, once they are of an appropriate age. We're realistic to recognize that there's not a thing we can do to completely stop a determined seeker. However, the primary concern was prevention of accidental stumblings. There are many terms which your child might want to search for, and that you don't want them to find. Imagine if your daughter loved lemons, and wanted to have a lemon-themed party. I'm certain that the first page of web search results would return some undesirable content. That's a part of the internet I'd like to be a black hole (at least when viewed from my computers), and therefore keep my kids safe from accidental exposure.
None of this is to imply that we don't think education is good. Of ocurse it is. I think we downplay the hazards of the internet, though, as: - Most of us were already relatively mature teenagers when we discovered pictures on the internet - Most of us have already put in mental or other controls to avoid seeing bad stuff.
We have already been scarred by exposure to things like Goatse, tubgirl, 2g1c, and even rickrolling such that we avoid clicking on random links to pictures or video. I don't mind if my kids get rickrolled, but I don't want them to start out learning the Hard Way when they're too young (IMO) to be able to handle it. Six year olds don't need to see goatse.
Writers recycle failed ideas in a new light on occasion. I can understand him wanting to keep that private so that he can use it on future stuff. Who knows, 5 years from now he may come up with something quite good. (I know, suspend your skepticism. It/could/ happen.) Imagine if Joss Whedon's notebooks or failed pre-Firefly stuff were all publically known (and I don't mean just Buffy and his other series).
This is different, though, from Van Eck Phreaking. VEP is based on the idea of intercepting video from the person's monitor, whereas this is basically a remote keylogger. Both capture information via electromagnetic radiation, but it sounds like this has a higher signal to noise ratio.
> This message brought to you from the 'please channel your anger towards things that actually matter dept
I believe that when you say "things that actually matter", you really mean "things that you feel you can change". Politicians not reading bills is Very Bad -- but there's little one feels they can do about it.
Even with the content of their comic, I still think they sound like awesome people. I am continually impressed at the wonder that they will express at such things as the joys of fatherhood.
You may have cash, but if the economy goes to hell in a handbasket, what will you buy with it? More specifically, what will your cash or investments be worth (relative to what you can buy) if inflation hits us hard, or the stocks in your investment portfolio lose half their value?
Apologies for off-topicness, just felt I should reply to that.:)
what I do hear about this band, metallica, is that they are anti-technology, anti-consumer and basically a bunch of greedy assholes. Do they have talent? I don't know, I never listened to their stuff. never bought it, never went to concerts, never really cared.
I'll go out on a limb and say Yes, they do have talent. If you have never listend to the Black Album, go borrow it from a friend or get a used copy at a local shop, and give it a trial spin.
I was never really a metal fan; I grew up with classical music. When I was in high school, I heard mostly only what was playing on pop radio.. and generally didn't like it much. At some point, I heard some songs by Metallica, and found that I actually really enjoyed them. Now, the songs I liked are all from the Black Album -- it's possible their talent has declined and their current work is all crap; I don't know. I do know that Metallica was one of my first tastes of "metal".
Since then, I've found other power metal bands that I really like -- apparently, I enjoy ballad-style metal songs; I now listen to Kamelot, Nightwish, and a few others. (Metal fans are probably rolling their eyes at my noobery. Whatever, I enjoy The Black Halo.:)) I don't listen to Metallica often, anymore, but I do find some of the songs on the black album to be very enjoyable, even now. (I especially like Enter Sandman, for example.) Moreover, it led me to listen to a "classic rock" station (KLOS) which now pretty much plays a ton of stuff I've found I like.
So, I can't speak towards any technical talent they may have. However, I can certainly say that they made music I enjoy listening to. I recently heard more recent song by them on the radio, and it's somewhat compelling... but I don't know that I like it enough to want to listen to it over-and-over, which is my album buying criteria.;)
From reading the article linked in the GP's post, the sound engineer reported that that was how it was when they got it: that Metallica nad sent it to them that way. The analysis of the blogger was convincing enough to me. (Caveat: I am not a recording professional, and so can'treally critique their analysis at all. But, it seemed to pass the initial; bullshit filter.)
New York state never has, and never will be, part of New England. It's MA, RI, VT, NH, ME.
While that is technically true (at least according to Wikipedia), for a large portion of the rest of the world, it's pretty much Close Enough. Similarly, Arizona and Nevada are technically not the "west coast", but from the perspective of someone on the eastern side of our nation, it's pretty close.
"We" Americans have weird opinions about porn (and sexuality in general). It's widely practiced/pursued, but we have a real social stigma on it. For example, a recent president was soundly persecuted and villified by nearly half the nation for what was effectively marital infidelity (and lying about it, which is certainly bad). The entire rest of the planet wondered what the hell was wrong with us for thinking this had any bearing on his ability to do his job.
This attitude towards sexuality (which may be derived from our Puritan origins) is the reason why it's OK to have people blown up, dismembered, dissected, shot, beaten, raped, stabbed, and murdered on TV and movied, but showing a breast on national TV leads to public censure and irate complaints from viewers. This is why racy ads from Europe for things like pants or beer are often "banned" in the US. This is why movie theaters will (generally) not show any unrated or NC-17 rated movied (which is pretty much what any porn movie would be rated, if they were rated).
Slashdot Mirror
I think that moderation in a public forum (like Slashdot) can be much more equitable than in a small group of humans:
- Moderation is anonymous
- Most of the people you are moderating are complete strangers
- Most moderators are unmotivated to moderate abusively, as there's nothing for them to gain from it
- There's a large enough pool of people that moderation can be distributed "fairly" (in theory?).
At work, I certainly don't feel like I know enough about what the hell other people are doing to be able to competently "rank" them or "moderate" their work. I don't feel like anyone has a shortage of cluefulness or skill, it's just that I don't know how ranking their contributions could be an honest thing, as I am worried that I might undervalue someone's accomplishments. Part of this is that few of my direct coworkers are programmers (some are engineers), and part is that significant portions of our programmers are working on Other Projects or in another office.
I worry that trust rankings of coworkers would devolve (even if only subconsciously) into a "who has helped me" metric. Your peers rate their contributions based on what they feel is important. Considering a lot of what we do are things like "Fix X software error" or "make Y integrate properly", it's difficult for some of the tasks which are important in the abstract to seem important to people. I worry that a collaborative trust metric among a small group would end up being a measure of who was most willing to Do Something for other people -- solve their problems, answer questions (do their work?)... and, of course there's my core worry that as humans competing for resources (profit share), they'd be unable to truly honestly rate one another.
Now, in a company that's small enough to only really be working on a single project (or meta-project), where people can communicate enough to grok the problems in their entirety, I guess it might work better... but I am skeptical. I hope it works out well, as it sounds like it could potentially be a dream job.
Because FLAC is lossless compression, its audio quality is by definition as good as a CD.
Whether it's a good consumer model, or whether people care enough about quality to buy FLAC rather than 320 kbps mp3s is a completely separate argument. I suspect most users wouldn't ... but there are some of us who would buy FLAC encodings. OTOH, ripping the Daft Punk CD I bought yesterday to FLAC took me ~10 minutes, so it's not all that inconvenient.
I think you are correct that it's a niche product, right now -- but the GP didn't say that it was a majority of users, merely an increasing population. I doubt that many people, after understanding and using FLAC, then decide to go back to MP3 as the sole-source of music. The game changes from CD->MP3 to CD->FLAC->MP3,OGG,Whatever, and storage is cheap enough that often times we CAN keep our FLAC collection on the computer.
Exactly. Without freedoms of speech and assembly, you're deluding yourself if you think you live in a democracy.
I agree, in principle. I don't think I have a problem with them reading stories about romantic sexy encounters and the like, but most of the porn one finds semi-easily on the internet is not really a normal depiction of sex; it's pretty stylised and extreme. I don't really want them reading things that glamorize cheating, incest, rape, snuff, or things like that. I don't think most visual porn promotes a healthy body image for either gender. (Playboy is like sesame street in comparison to most internet porn, IMO.) I don't believe children who are that young should be sexual with one another, so I certainly want to try to limit the exposure to the glamorous treatment of it that most porn is. You'll also notice that I said "might" be confiscated: it depends on their maturity, on the nature of the porn, etc.
If they are skillful enough to hide it from me, there's nothing I can do about that.
If I do find out they're consuming porn, then the discussions we will have had about consequences will be apropos.
If they're 16 and having sex, there's not much I can do to stop it -- they will have been educated and supplied with protection, and will know about the consequences.
Of course, my kid is rather young, so I have another decade or so before any of this really matters, and my thoughts may evolve.
I'd forgotten reading that story a long time ago. It just goes to show you that it's often better to start off being polite to other people.
Usability, I guess. I'm not a frequent user of office-type tools, but when I use the new Office (excel or word), I find its handling of some things just a bit easier than in the older version of MS Office I normally use. When I go home and use OpenOffice, the differences in convenience are GLARING.
For example, deleting the contents of cells in OpenOffice Calc is significantly more annoying than in MS office (of any recent version). It sounds silly, but it's also really annoying, and if I had both on my system I'd be using Excel with no hesitation. If productivity is a concern, rather than merely cost, I feel like MS Office would win out. (I have no studies to cite, peer-reviewed of otherwise -- this is just my opinion.)
While I appreciate that there are those who want Portable Power (and nice form), I am really looking forward to the ARM-based laptops, such as the ~$200 one that Pegatron was talking about back in January. Why would I need a laptop like the Adamo? O_o
Perhaps if I were a constant traveling computer-user... doing some sort of heavy computing?
I'm most amused that that was marked insightful. I really really really hope that it isn't. ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coot
I assume that's close enough.
Yes.
Now, in detail:
At 4-8, I don't want them seeing porn, ever.
At 8-12, I don't want them seeing porn, though I expect that one of their friends may show them some. I recall being baffled by what little porn I glimpsed at those ages.
At 12-16ish, I still don't think they can handle porn well, but should have had The Talk by then so at least it's less bizarre.
At 16, I expect my kids will be savvy enough computer users to Find A Way to get porn. However, they'll also know that I will find out afterwards, and it might be confiscated (or their priveleges revoked temporarily) as punishment. We will definitely have the talk that Porn is Out There, and may consider reducing some of the restrictions.
At 18, I'd rather not know about it. Ew. They're old enough to pay for a separate network connection, if they want to look for porn; we can talk as a family about whether to lower the restrictions.
I live in a distant suburb of Los Angeles county; we have nearly no public transportation, and most people that live here commute ~20-60 minutes by car. (The train station into the LA basin is ~20 minutes drive from my house.) It's just not a feasible thing to be a pedistrian or take public transit here, unfortunately.
If someone can't afford ~1500/year in car insurance, it's unlikely they will be able to afford the costs of moving to a different (cheaper) location, either.
And, if it's not safe to stop then, you are perfectly OK to continue driving through the intersection while you have a yellow light. Or, at least, it is in California ( http://dmv.ca.gov/pubs/hdbk/traff_lgts_sgns.htm ), your mileage may vary.
Peoples' perception of "safe" depends on an expectation of how long they have until it will be red -- if it turns from green to yellow to red in less time than it physically takes me to stop, then either the speed limit needs to be lowered, or the yellow time increased, or both.
If theoriginal poster is like me, he's relatively OK with his kids looking for pictures of naked people, once they are of an appropriate age. We're realistic to recognize that there's not a thing we can do to completely stop a determined seeker. However, the primary concern was prevention of accidental stumblings. There are many terms which your child might want to search for, and that you don't want them to find. Imagine if your daughter loved lemons, and wanted to have a lemon-themed party. I'm certain that the first page of web search results would return some undesirable content. That's a part of the internet I'd like to be a black hole (at least when viewed from my computers), and therefore keep my kids safe from accidental exposure.
None of this is to imply that we don't think education is good. Of ocurse it is. I think we downplay the hazards of the internet, though, as:
- Most of us were already relatively mature teenagers when we discovered pictures on the internet
- Most of us have already put in mental or other controls to avoid seeing bad stuff.
We have already been scarred by exposure to things like Goatse, tubgirl, 2g1c, and even rickrolling such that we avoid clicking on random links to pictures or video. I don't mind if my kids get rickrolled, but I don't want them to start out learning the Hard Way when they're too young (IMO) to be able to handle it. Six year olds don't need to see goatse.
So ... if the store publically says, "We will sell M-rated games to ANYONE", they're in the clear? Interesting.
Writers recycle failed ideas in a new light on occasion. I can understand him wanting to keep that private so that he can use it on future stuff. Who knows, 5 years from now he may come up with something quite good. (I know, suspend your skepticism. It /could/ happen.) Imagine if Joss Whedon's notebooks or failed pre-Firefly stuff were all publically known (and I don't mean just Buffy and his other series).
This is different, though, from Van Eck Phreaking. VEP is based on the idea of intercepting video from the person's monitor, whereas this is basically a remote keylogger. Both capture information via electromagnetic radiation, but it sounds like this has a higher signal to noise ratio.
> This message brought to you from the 'please channel your anger towards things that actually matter dept
I believe that when you say "things that actually matter", you really mean "things that you feel you can change". Politicians not reading bills is Very Bad -- but there's little one feels they can do about it.
Even with the content of their comic, I still think they sound like awesome people. I am continually impressed at the wonder that they will express at such things as the joys of fatherhood.
You may have cash, but if the economy goes to hell in a handbasket, what will you buy with it? More specifically, what will your cash or investments be worth (relative to what you can buy) if inflation hits us hard, or the stocks in your investment portfolio lose half their value?
Apologies for off-topicness, just felt I should reply to that. :)
Change the data so that everything is listed as 3 seconds early. It's no longer the same time table.
I'll go out on a limb and say Yes, they do have talent. If you have never listend to the Black Album, go borrow it from a friend or get a used copy at a local shop, and give it a trial spin.
I was never really a metal fan; I grew up with classical music. When I was in high school, I heard mostly only what was playing on pop radio .. and generally didn't like it much. At some point, I heard some songs by Metallica, and found that I actually really enjoyed them. Now, the songs I liked are all from the Black Album -- it's possible their talent has declined and their current work is all crap; I don't know. I do know that Metallica was one of my first tastes of "metal".
Since then, I've found other power metal bands that I really like -- apparently, I enjoy ballad-style metal songs; I now listen to Kamelot, Nightwish, and a few others. (Metal fans are probably rolling their eyes at my noobery. Whatever, I enjoy The Black Halo. :)) I don't listen to Metallica often, anymore, but I do find some of the songs on the black album to be very enjoyable, even now. (I especially like Enter Sandman, for example.) Moreover, it led me to listen to a "classic rock" station (KLOS) which now pretty much plays a ton of stuff I've found I like.
So, I can't speak towards any technical talent they may have. However, I can certainly say that they made music I enjoy listening to. I recently heard more recent song by them on the radio, and it's somewhat compelling... but I don't know that I like it enough to want to listen to it over-and-over, which is my album buying criteria. ;)
From reading the article linked in the GP's post, the sound engineer reported that that was how it was when they got it: that Metallica nad sent it to them that way. The analysis of the blogger was convincing enough to me. (Caveat: I am not a recording professional, and so can'treally critique their analysis at all. But, it seemed to pass the initial; bullshit filter.)
While that is technically true (at least according to Wikipedia), for a large portion of the rest of the world, it's pretty much Close Enough. Similarly, Arizona and Nevada are technically not the "west coast", but from the perspective of someone on the eastern side of our nation, it's pretty close.
Moral courage is hard. However, claiming that it's hard is insufficuent reason to not be ethical.
"We" Americans have weird opinions about porn (and sexuality in general). It's widely practiced/pursued, but we have a real social stigma on it. For example, a recent president was soundly persecuted and villified by nearly half the nation for what was effectively marital infidelity (and lying about it, which is certainly bad). The entire rest of the planet wondered what the hell was wrong with us for thinking this had any bearing on his ability to do his job.
This attitude towards sexuality (which may be derived from our Puritan origins) is the reason why it's OK to have people blown up, dismembered, dissected, shot, beaten, raped, stabbed, and murdered on TV and movied, but showing a breast on national TV leads to public censure and irate complaints from viewers. This is why racy ads from Europe for things like pants or beer are often "banned" in the US. This is why movie theaters will (generally) not show any unrated or NC-17 rated movied (which is pretty much what any porn movie would be rated, if they were rated).