The question that your statement begs is if the law is being violated by the majority, is it a just law?
This is the logic your mom used in that "If everyone else jumped off of a bridge, would you do it too?"
Just because everyone is doing it doesn't make it right. Then again, just because it is law, that doesn't necessarily make it right either. The only thing that can be taken from your statement is that if the majority is breaking the law then the validity, justness or application of the law to modern times needs to be revisited.
Copyright laws are meant to protect the rights of the intellectual property rights holder. Not necessarily the creator of that intellectual property, hence the RIAA.
If a software company is charging what the market believes is too much for software then the market adjusts itself by offering a better solution at a better price. Hence OpenOffice.
The black market in illegally traded software cannot be held up as a moral barometer to the current market and trends. The black market exists to undermine the establishment and is not in the best interests of open commerce. It will always exist no matter how just the laws that govern the market are. In addition, many proponents of teh black market support the poor behavior in the name of open software sources and standards. Which, in itself, is a fallacy.
That said, pirating software is flat out illegal. License agreements are put in place to protect rights that everyone has the right to protect. What makes pirating software wrong is that you are violating that license agreement that is meant to protect the intellectual property owner's rights. If you violate the agreement, you violate the rights of the owner because you take away thier control of thier intelletual property. When you violate rights outlined by something like, say, the U.S. Constitution, you are depriving someone else of thier rights and freedoms. That is a civil crime and punishable by the justice system established in this country.
If you feel that the law is unjust because "everyone is doing it" then, violating the law is not going to change it. Petitioning your elected officials in Congress will...provided you can get enough of that supposed "majority" to sign a paper saying that the law needs to be revisited and then voted on. Then again, there is a such thing as organized defiance of a law but it doesn't really apply to software piracy. Mainly because you are using that pirated software to your benefit. There can most likely be a monetary value associated with that benefit. If you are profiting off of that benefit and hoooo boy are you in for a doozie of a lawsuit! See, if you are benefitting from someone else's work/property, it's really difficult to claim some sort of organized definance of an "unjust" law.
Trying being an Oracle DBA maintaining databases of testing results and data for engineers that were plagued with Ingres for decades. Every time they screw up a query and get zero results, the call comes in to check something relating to Ingres that Oracle doesn't have or need. Either that or the servers get bogged down because the network group refuses to admit that there might be a problem with the network and that I need to "check my settings". Nevermind that all interfaces are either set to auto-negotiate or forced to maximum performance.
Anyway, I digress.
I have experienced it before and it comes and goes as the people in charge move up the ladder and others take thier places. Often times it can be incredibly difficult to get past it. However, that is one of the challenges of being in IT. Convincing people that the technology isn't the problem is difficult. I think the difficulty lies in the fact that as an IT professional, if you are doing your job correctly, your work should be invisible to the users. They should think that you do nothing all day. If that is the case then you have already done your job effectivly unless they are complaining about something. Then, of course, you have to fix it.
However, users are funny creatures. They will not notice the systems and immerse themselves completely in the computing environment...until something goes wrong. Then it's like The Matrix is skipping a beat and Agent Smith jumps in and gives them the stink eye. Then the phones start ringing and you, you slackass, you ain't doin' nuthin'! Since they never realize the good because it works the way they have come accustomed to it working, problems that boot them out of the environmental warm-fuzzy are glaring. It's not only a work stopage but it's like waking someone up by dumping a bucket of water on thier face. It's jarring to them and leaves as much of an emotional/mental impact as a work stopage leaves a physical impact.
The reaction then becomes more of a fight or flight type deal. A work stopage or less then rosy data results can be devasating to anyone. When these people you are dealing with see thier numbers come up less desireable that expected, the first thing they tend to do is panic. The blame starts flying every which way to get them back to thier non-panic striken happy place.
You will never solve the "blame techonology" problem because it isn't really rooted in a lack of education. It's human nature to find a scapegoat to accept blame to avoid the pain, physical or emotional, of dropping the ball and getting called on it. About the only thing you can do is do you job as best as you can. If they call asking about the reporting program, be professional and calm and work through thier problem with them. Afterall, you know things are OK on your side and things aren't ok on thier side. They don't know that though. They are just trying to follow every path as quickly as possible to find out what is wrong so that they can get a handle on it and maybe put a stop to the downward slide, quickly.
Above all, don't take it personal, you likely do not report to them. If they become unmanagable, refer them to your management and have your manager act as the intermediary. If you are the management then it is your responsibility to find an amiacable solution.
A single instance of Corvettes made with hand-built engines from an era when GM's quality control was in the dumper can hardly qualify as anything more than anectdotal evidence when comparing it to your average family sedan. On top of that, you yourself said that GM recalled the vehicles in question. However, a search of the Internet at all the usual sites offers no evidence of the recall in question.
Your statement in regards to mileage may have had some validity 10-20 years ago but those cars are no longer new. In 2007, it is a non-issue because most vehicle, unless they are specialty vehicles like a ZR-1, have already gone through a break-in period. Almost all manufacturers do not mention anything about a break-in period anymore and when asked directly, they state that it is unecessary.
Beyond all of that, the most glaring problem with your argument is that you state that the workers "let the RPMs get too high during the break-in period ". In the absence of any evidence of a recall being issue for any reason would you care to elaborate on what "too high" entails? The LT5 was a DOHC, all aluminum engine hand assembled by Mercury Marine and using Lotus designed heads. The engine had a redline around 7200 RPM.
Lastly, none of your proported "evidence" supports or refutes your claim to mileage. Care to elaborate or do you want to spew forth more flamebait and make outlandish claims with no backing evidence whatsoever?
I'm sorry, I think I was mistaken about the trim level on the Civic. I believe it was the VX and not the HX because the HX has a 1.6L engine and the car I am referring to had a 1.5L engine which was only available in the VX. The Honda Civic VX is the "economy version" of the Civic. You can find economy numbers for the 1995 Honda Civic here:
It came with 13 inch wheels with low rolling resistance tires and weight saving options like manual window cranks and lightened wheels and suspension components to reduce unsprung weight. It was the lightest Civic and it returned 20-30% better economy over a Civic DX or EX. I have not owned one personally but a friend in college did and we tracked actual gas mileage to be above 45 MPG on the highway and around 35-40 MPG in the city depending on conditions and speeds.
Given the adjustment of mileage standards that the U.S. recently instituted, the Civic equals if not betters the Prius' economy. If you want to better it Suzuki's mid-90's Swift had mileage ratings in the 50 MPG category and actual measured mileage in the mid 40's for city and highway driving.
Many Prius owners are seeing real world mileage numbers of 35-40 MPG on average. What I don't have numbers for and seems to be harder to find is emissions statistics for all of these cars mentioned. I do know that the Civic has been for a very long time a Low-Emissions Vehicle or Ultra Low-Emissions Vehicle. The Swift was never rated on the LEV or ULEV vehicle scale as far as I know and the scale is adjusted for engine size and so on anyway. My truck is rated as a LEV.
I will reiterate the point that the Prius is not necessarily an eco-friendly car because there are too many factors that go in to determining that to say for certain. Gas mileage is only a small part of a much bigger picture. It is not even accurate when it can be shown that a car that does not have to lug around the weight of the sophisticated electric drive system can achieve better mileage numbers than the "godsend" that is the Prius.
Stop deluding yourself. You bought a nice car with gadgetry that will lead to better systems in the future. Unfortunately, the Prius has turned into a fad. The Prius is not going to save the planet. All it will do is give you the self-righteous satisfaction of thinking you are doing something to save the planet. I'll keep trying to actually do something to save the planet. You can continue to feel good about yourself because you bought a Prius. You could probably conserve more energy, save more resources and do more work to save the planet by recycling trash you find in the gutters than driving a Prius.
If the car is junk to begin with, the car is junk. No amount of test driving will change that. If the car is prone to failure, you can drive it like Miss Daisy was in the back seat and it will still fail. Abuse may make those failures manifest sooner but overall, aggressive test driving at the dealer's lot has minimal impact on the reliability of a vehicle over its serviceable life.
I'm sorry, this post is a misnomer. I also only fill up once a week. It doesn't matter how many times you fill up your gas tank, your mileage on that tank is more important. My truck will travel about 450 miles on a tank of gas. It takes 25 gallons to fill that tank. My car will also travel about 450 miles on a tank of gas however, it only takes about 14 gallons to fill that tank.
Both vehicles can be driven to work every day of the week, do some errand running and even make a trip or two to hang out with a friend on a single tank of gas in one week. Does that mean I'm saving the world too? According to your logic and rationalization of your decision to buy a Prius, I am not because neither of my vehicles are a Prius. They aren't even of Japanese origin.
Your Prius is nice but I can take a mid-90's Honda Civic HX and get better mileage on a car that is cheaper to own and do more to save the planet then any Prius will. The Prius is an exercise in engineering and technology. The only thing it has to do with being eco-friendly is the marketing strategy that Toyota uses to play to the sensibilities of the insensible bourgeoisie and the out-of-touch celebrities they like to immitate.
Any damage caused by test drivers is unlikely to have recurring/chronic problems associated with it. On top of that, as long as the car is within the new car warranty, the manufacturer is legally bound to honor that warranty and make sure the car is repaired and made road-worthy. If they determine that the car's damage is from abuse then they must prove that it was you. This is why testers are gone over with a fine-tooth comb before leaving the lot. If you don't want the chance of having problems and having to deal with the hassle of repairs than that is a much more reasonable reason for avoiding testers. Basing a decision on mere mileage alone is no grounds for determing the intelligence level of those who would buy a vehicle with 11 or more miles on it.
Calling the previous poster an idiot because you seem to have an inability to apply common sense to a rather simple problem is not really a good way to win friends and influence people nor does it lend credibility to your status as a legitimate, constructive poster. You should curb your paranoid pete attitude and take a look at things for what they are, not what you want them to be. Many posters here on Slashdot could benefit from that approach.
Maybe even then, all the Prius lovers out there (who could benefit from the same attitude adjustment) would stop getting so defensive when common sense is applied to the "ultimate solution" of the venerable Prius and see it for what it is, a technology showcase and an exercise in engineering. It's not the eco-friendly mode of transportation it is being made out to be. If anything, it's biggest redeeming quality is that it is a big step in weening not only the U.S. but the world off of oil as a source of energy.
Sounds like another one of those studies that "show" that the virtual world of video games has a direct correlation to real world behavioral patterns. Just like the violent fighting and war simulation games, people have been driving like idiots for years before video games ever surfaced. Just ask your grandpa about his days as a hot rodder or hell, just pick up a Hot Rod magazine and flip to thier now monthly coverage of "Hot Rod History".
Aggressive driving and street racing have been part of all motoring cultures since the start. The first guy with a car was a neat idea and a novelty when it first hit the cart paths. Not until the second guy to get his car running did anything really take off. You know what the first thing that they did with those cars was? The took them to the beach and raced them to see who's car was faster!
Yeah, video games cause violence, aggressive driving and other degenrate bahvioral patterns. I suppose next we'll hear that Liesure Suit Larry has cause an entire generation of males to have a propensity towards visiting hookers?
On one hand, I'm excited! The previous LEGO Star Wars titles have been a blast even though they are obviously geared towards kids. I'd certainly jump at the chance to take a look at this game.
However, this worries me. I know I'm not the only one that fondly remembers LEGOS. Sure the game is geared towards kids but unless they put an age cap on the game (not that anyone wouldn't lie about thier age, I mean c'mon, who does THAT?) I can only see the LEGO virtual world being innundated by not only those pervs that another poster already mentioned but also by those lovely online gamers. Not just any online gamers though. We have all seen the guy who camps at a spawn site just to blast the next poor schmuck who spawns into a game so he can boost his body count. Thier is also the guy who plays CONSTANTLY and has the most under-handed tactics that it can be very difficult for others to advance in a game. Then there are the people who aspire to be like these guys and can't. This leaves a place like the LEGO virtual world rife for thier abuse of the system. Most adults can't handle these people well, how are kids going to deal with it?
This is also going to end up being another babysitter so mom can go spend time with her "little helper". If the kid is crying because he/she can't play the game that mommy and daddy paid for because some n00b is jerking around on the virtual world, there will be hell to pay from mommy.
Yeah, I'm excited and I'm not. I see this wonderful pie-in-the-sky idea being quickly corrupted and destroyed without some serious controls that work being placed on game play. Either that or make it so immature (Dora the Explorer or Barney and Friends immature) that no adult would want to go anywhere near that annoying piece of tripe. However, LEGOS are fundamentally un-boring, at least to the extent of your imagination, so I don't see it coming out as immature, pseudo-educational tripe.
Like most of the un-funny posts to this article already. However, you managed to hit on something that it seems the article missed. Africanized (Killer) Bees have been a problem reported by bee keeps over much of the southern United States for over a decade now and the problem seems to creep farther north every year.
The problem stems from the Killer Bees infiltrating a colony of another type of bee and wiping out the colony. Since the killer bees do exhibit the same food gathering and other critical behaviors to pollination, the lost colonys have a bigger impact. I can see the fungus, virus, pesticide and other aspects causing problems in climates farther north but I would not doubt that Killer Bees could be a large contributing factor to this problem.
It may seem silly but it is a critically important roll that the bees have to crop production. Many grains and vegetables do not require external pollination to produce a crop but there are plenty of other fruit and vegetable crops out there that do. The crops may not go away completely because bees are not the only way they are pollinated but they are one of the most efficient ways.
If you want to know what the weather is doing...at least in North America, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website is my favorite place for getting weather related info. There is no "fear mongering" like what is found on the network news. If it's going to snow, they say "It's going to snow." and then they tell you how much and let you freak out all on your own. They aren't about the fluff like The Weather Channel with thier silly shows and travel planning. NOAA's website even has tide schedules and nautical charts. That may not be important to most people but try planning a fishing trip with weather.com and you'll see how nice NOAA's website really is.
Back in the days when there were not a whole slew of service providers available, AOL was one of the few with easy access and local dial-up numbers. (Am I dating myself yet?) And back in my AOL days before it became the bane of the Internet, the portal features allowed one to type in a "keyword" which would then take you to a web page that was associated with that keyword. However, you did not leave thier portal and never really hit the actual webpage because the portal seemed to cache the most popular sites to improve performance on slow dial-up (we're talking 14.4 modems, not even a 33.6). Now, in the present days of accessible broadband, many people are jumping to the fatser connections and being forced to abandon the AOL dial-up services they came to know, love and abuse.
Due to this phenomena, it seems that many people are inadvertantly using the search features of newer browsers to type in keywords and get the page they are looking for immediatly. The search engines are shooting themselves in the foot by adding the Google and Yahoo toolbars and making this ability accessible to users. What's worse is that with these toolbars in the browsers, even if the page is cached, unlike how AOL's portal used to operate, every time the ENTER button is pressed, it hits the search engine. Since computers have become more accessible to the general public and arguably more intuitive to use (even Windows) there are many people who know only a world like AOL. This limited knowledge leads to poor behavior on the actual Internet. Since more of these AOL'ers are tearing off the AOL portal training wheels, they are hitting the real Internet in droves and using bad habits propogated by AOL's effort to preserve a competative advantage in thier portal.
V8 engines are inherently unbalanced because the firing order is often not evenly spaced in a single rotation. Infact, pretty much any engine that does not have a number of cylinders evenly divisible by 6 and a firing seperation of 45 degrees will be out of balance and require either external or internal balancing and vibration dampening. That is why inline 6 cylinders and V12s are so smooth in operation. The cylinders fire at 45 degree intervals and two cylinders fire 180 degrees apart. They are natually balanced because the combustion strokes occur 180 degrees apart or opposite each other. Thier negative vibrations cancel each other out.
A V8, depending on whether it is a 90, 60, 45 or 30 degree V will fire anywhere from 60-30 degrees apart and that puts cylinders firing at anywhere from 240 degrees opposite to 90 degrees opposite. It makes for rough running and a lopey idle which is why they need dampening. To illustrate the point, one needs only to look at the venerable Harley Davidson V-twin which gets it's lopey "rumperty-rump" idle from the two pistons sharing a common throw on the crank shaft and firing as close as 30 degrees apart. If you look at the copies from the Japanese companies like Honda and Yamaha that have tried to take a chunk out of HD's market, you will see V-twin imitations very similar to what those companies are running in thier automotive engines.
The biggest benefit to a large displacement engine is raw power. A big V8 will be able to make more power at a lower RPM than a smaller, higher strung I4 that is half the displacement. It's not an efficiency issue but rather a durability issue. A V8 has to do less work to achieve the same results as the smaller and less powerful 4 cylinder. This reduces stress on the engine and enables the engine to last longer...with proper maintenance of course. Not only does it reduce stress but it also leaves the vehicle it is installed in with more capability to handle larger payloads. Thus the reason why if one wants to tow his RV, he doesn't use a Toyota Tacoma but rather something along the lines of a Ford F-150 or a Chevy Silverado. It's also the reason why companies like Nissan and Toyota now have large displacement V8 engines in vehicles of similar size to thier American counter parts. The smaller Japanese trucks could not compete with the brutes the American companies are rolling out.
We had a similar problem in a much larger department (about 350 employees supporting a user base of about 15,000) and we had issues getting helpdesk tickets logged. Sure we had all the extra work to do that was much more fun than the life-sucking, mind-numbing Luser support of the help desk but there was enough time during each call to add 5 minutes on to it to write the log.
There were several people tasked with finding out how to fix the logging problem. I was one of them. We were put into a team and had weekly meetings. We tried the usual gestapo tactics that never work and just alienated the employees and ticked everyone off. What was obvious from that was that the work was getting done and getting done quite well. Out of all the calls we would get in a month, less than 5% came back on a return call for an unfixed problem. That doesn't sound very good but check those numbers above again. 350 admins to support 15,000 users and only 5% of total calls came back. Granted, that's only what was supported and given the documenting problem, that number could be dubious but overall, even if it was fudged by 50%, that's still stellar performance from a department that even if you go just by the numbers alone is woefully over-worked.
So we tried a different approach and shut our mouths about the logging. Started talking to people candidly in breakrooms, at lunch or even stopping by a desk and starting a personal conversation. What we quickly found out was the pretty much everyone HATED the tool we used for logging calls. It was cumbersome, slow and not intuitive with a horrendous UI when you actually sat down and looked at it from a user's point of view.
Needless to say, we changed the software. Someone had suggested that we write our own but in an already over-worked group, that's like telling a one-armed paper hanger that he has to tie one arm behind his back and still hang paper. So we went with a COTS solution that seemed to work better, tested it with a control group and found it much better to work with. We rolled it out and within a month, we went from 70% of calls with undocumented updates to just under 20% of calls with undocumented updates. A 50% improvement by just changing how we did something rather than standing on the typical management premise of "The beatings will continue until morale improves."
So don't look at the people as the only source of the problem. Thier lack of documenting may be the message they are trying to tell you that the tools suck. Afterall, a carpenter could use a screw driver to cut a piece of wood but a saw works so much better!
Bill might have a point here to an extent but, he makes this statement in only the 3rd paragraph of the article:
American society is changing for the worse because of the machines... In the past to flee the real world people usually chose drugs or alcohol... now you don't have to do that, Now all you have to do is have enough money to buy a machine...
So drugs and alcohol are better?
He also equates standing on line for several "hours" (guess he missed all the news about lines piling up two weeks ahead of time) as being a drug addict/junkie and exhibiting addiction symptoms. So I guess all those kids in the 60's standing on line just to get a glimpse of The Beatles getting off an airplane are addicts in that respect too? Or maybe all those people who stood on line to get Led Zepplin or Madonna tickets were crazed by addiction too? Or what about all those moms and dads who stood on line at the silliest hours just to get a Tickle Me Elmo are all crazed by addiction too? He's equating a behavior of a drug addict to peple seizing an opportunity to get a limited number of an item so then can have one. I highly doubt any parent out there relishes thier Tickle Me Elmo so much that they are unwilling to part with it in the same vein as a drug addict.
But then he not only goes on to further insult all gamers, not just the ones who are detached from reality but he then slams every "computer geek" out there and insinuates an intelligence deficit in those "geeks" by asking if you ever tried to talk to them.
It seems Mr. O'Reilly is the one out of touch with reality. If it wasn't for those "computer geeks" he likely would not have the facilities and resources he has available to him to not only have a TV show but a radio show, a podcast, a website, a blog and pretty much every other media outlet he uses. Does this guy ever think before he speaks anymore?
He destroyed any credibility in his point before he ever even got around to making it.
What is it lately with all these celebrities seemingly afflicted with constipation of the brain and diarrhea of the mouth?
The article is not about subsidizing game makers. The article is about the economic impact a very large company like EA or Ubisoft could make to an area. Game makers provide numerous jobs in not only software development but also in IT, any business discipline and if the company manufactures on-site, there are skilled labor jobs and even unskilled labor jobs available.
Providing incentives for a company to a move a plant of any kind into an economically depressed area is almost always a boon to the area. Even if the tax hit is taken in the incentive, the tax revenue goes up because more people are working than before and that is a constant source of revenue. There doesn't have to be any tax revenue expenditure to make that happen. However, it does need the support of the law makers and government to make it happen.
In the same vein, having another company the size of EA or Ubisoft is a good thing, regardless of anyone's opinions about the quality of the product they produce. A large company provides a large environment, full of resources and experienced people that can support many entry level positions. Those entry level positions are filled by entry level candidates that have a vast environment to learn in. Once they learn, they either move up the ladder and make thier own impact on that company or they go elsewhere to try and do better than that company. Either way, it provides choices to consumers. Give consumers choices and they will go for what they like. That drives competition which drives advancements and yields a more enjoyable gaming experience for teh consumer.
Just because Madden 2007 isn't the Slashdot communitiy's cup of tea doesn't mean that there aren't a million other sports fan out there who love the thought of being able to play NFL Coach on thier couch at home and see how well they will do. EA and Ubisoft are large and incharge because no matter how poor anyone thinks thier games are, the bottom line is that they sell games and that is what drives any business, profit.
I went to a school that ranks in the top five on Wired's Most Wired Campuses list. I work for a company that builds advanced computer systems with capabilities far beyond the average joe's imagination. Since my youngest days I have been surrounded by computers and technologically astute people. All of these intelligent people with vast amounts knowledge and experience yet, when it comes to things like emails, I get nothing but urban legends and forwards, even after I debunk thier tripe with snopes.com. If they need to find something on the internet, they ask me for help.
I think the problem lies not in comprehension ability but in the ability to ask the right question to get what you want. The way people are taught to solve problems in school affects how they solve problems in life. It doesn't help any that so few students actually grasp the idea behind problem solving and even less are any good at actually doing it. Most people see a problem that has a solution or a question that has an answer. If they don't get the right solution, they immediatly think that there is something wrong with that question or problem or how they worked it out. They waste time and energy trying to find thier mistake. In reality, the first thing that should be taught is if you are asking a question and not getting the answer you expected, maybe you are not asking the right question.
To illustrate the point, working in IT, I, like many others, have had an opportunity at one point to have the luxury of operating a help desk hotline. What fun! The most tedious part is getting the clueless user on the other end to get you the information you need to solve thier problem and send them on thier blissfully merry way. I cannot count the number of times I asked a question that seemed entirely sane to me only to recieve the most insane answer from the user that I never expected. At first I would be frustrated and blame the user and bring in to question thier level of intelligence. Eventually I learned that it might not be the user...or anybody for that matter. There is a communication break down because of different realms of knowledge relating to both parties involved. For me to get the answers I needed, I had to find creative ways to rephrase the question. I asked numerous users the same questions 9 different ways from Sunday and very few actually figured out that I asked the same question over and over again, just in a way to shift the focus of the question to get the right detail I needed in an answer.
Search engines work much the same way. If you didn't get the results you wanted, rephrase the search terms or change the priority of the terms in the search string. The same principle can be applied to questioning the validity of a website. Unfortunatly, this way of dealing with a problem is not taught at school. It is also unfortunate that it would be difficult to do so without real world application. The fact that so few actually eventually pick it up later in life is a testament to the idea that there something fundamentally wrong with how we teach and develop problem solving skills at an earlier age than college. These kids should be entering higher education with the foundations of these skills already laid. If they were, there wouldn't be these cognitive problem solving issues.
Don't be so sure of yourself. There are quite a few reasons for the government and military to need all kinds of computing power. Clustered super computers can come in handy for lots of things including simulations, software testing for many systems such as guidance systems and radar systems and even things as simple as artillary trajectories. You remember those problems right? The whole reason the computer widely accepted as the FIRST computer was ever built.
Just because it doesn't seem to fit what we see as the NSA's MO doesn't mean that the NSA doesn't have use for floating-point math. The whole idea of the NSA is to make sure secrets are kept safe. To help keep those secrets safe, they don't even talk about what secrets they are keeping safe or how they are keeping them safe. There are plenty of scenarios that I can think of off the top of my head for using a floating point processor in building something like an algorithm for a statistical model to show trends apparent in data mined from internet search engines.
The realm of government secrets is an odd area to play speculation in. Just because you don't know about is the best reason to think that something like it actually exists. Will you know about something such as that? Unlikely. At least not any time soon. I wouldn't doubt that there is already technology out there so far ahead of it's time that it may never be declassified due to the dangers it could pose if it was obtained by people looking to do harm.
Each conflict is different so it takes a different approach each time. They differ in all aspects from what the conflict is about to the personalities and egos of the stakeholders involved. Because of that, one single conflict resolution method will not work for every instance.
I have used several methods in the past. Petty disagreements between employees whose feelings are hurt can be solved as easily as getting the two employees away from the workplace for lunch or maybe a drink or two after hours. It removes the environment where the hostilities are most intense and puts everyone in a neutral setting. It helps "take the edge off". Also, because it's a public place, people are less likely to have outbursts and behave poorly because there are more eyes watching and those eyes don't care about the petty disagreement. It kind of leverages the whole social anxiety thing against all parties involved. At work, it's posturing for position and power. At the local Hooters, everyone is on equal footing and a bit of humility is sometimes all a resolution effort needs.
If the issues are not resolved so easily, mediation is required. The whole point of mediation is not to pass judgement but to ensure that all sides have thier fair say and a chance to get thier points across so the involved parties can reach a conculsion themselves. If they both agree to a solution they worked out themselves then they are much less likely to feel slighted or treated unfairly because they had a hand in thier own destiny, so to speak. If a side feels slighted then mediation was not successful. If one side cannot get a fair say without the other side interrupting, a harsher method needs to be instilled. I usually revert to a method that worked with children who couldn't agree. We had a "talking stick". I would control who has the talking stick and for how long. If you didn't have the talking stick, you were not allowed to speak. If you had the talking stick, the floor was yours until you gave the talking stick back to me or if you were abusing your talking stick priviledge through verbal abuse or personal attacks of the other party. If you spoke without the talking stick and were not addressed or asked a question of, you were warned two times. The third time, you would be swatted with the talking stick. The whole point here is that if two parties cannot recognize each other's right to the speaking floor then give them a tool that leave no doubt whose turn it is. The "talking stick" does that and it also requires the other party to curb thier emotions and hold thier thoughts until thier turn. This keeps then from responding with thee knee-jerk, incensing remarks, responses and comments. By the time it's thier turn to speak, the knee-jerk impulse has left and they are more capable of carrying on rationally.
Granted, you don't have to use a talking stick but a physical display of such a tool is effective because it symbolizes a boundry that shouldn't be crossed. Sometimes, without that physical boundry, parties in a heated argument can be blind to any symbolic boundry represented only by an authority figure. An authority figure holds little weight when both parties feel threatened by each other. Give the authority figure the ability to enforce the rules and suddenly they have an equal footing with both parties involved.
Anything beyond simple things like a lunchroom disagreement would require lawyers, an HR department and probably an ethics officer of some sort. Any time a disagreement poses legal liabilities and implications for the company, the company needs to do what it needs to do to protect assets and other employees.
They should stay put because Time/Warner makes money without even trying and provides AOL with a source of capital to keep them in enough cash to keep current customers happy and entice new customers to join. They have been emphasizing services like what Google and Yahoo provide but thier infrastructure is not set up in a way that would exploit those services soon enough to turn a profit. If they stay with Time/Warner, they have a parental backing that has stockpiles of cash and assets that AOL can leverage in its favor to gain the market share it needs to survive against giants like Google and Yahoo and even MSN.
The only way I can see AOL being successful in a break-away bid to leave the Time/Warner corporation is if they can find a cost effective way to not only distribute but support broadband on at least a DSL level. Currently, they have no solid way of providing broadband to customers across thier entire customer base without 3rd party providers. That keeps costs high and doesn't look attractive to new customers. Granted, there are still millions of people in America not online and that is a vast resource left untapped for AOL but, for AOL to successfully exploit those untapped customers, the phone system in this country needs to be brought into the 21st century.
Another factor that comes to mind is the Verizon and Comcast solutions of fiber to the home. Verizon is probably much farther along with the FIOS than Comcast is with their fiber efforts but, a "demerger" does not sound like a swift and expedious thing and these other companies might be to market much sooner than AOL can get "demerged" and be offering a low-cost, high-bandwidth solution. That solution will likely make prices for all ISP services from dial-up to fiber drop across the board. That would destroy AOL's business because even though they are expensive for dial-up, they are still cheaper than the investment needed for even the slowest DSL service. Having to adapt to price drops would kill the profitability of thier dial-up access and they would have to rely too heavily on thier portal based search engines and other services where thier business model is unproven out side the AOL world.
Lawn grass does nothing? Did we forget high school biology so quickly?
Lawns are made up of grass. Grass, like all green plants use photosynthesis to create food. During the process, they consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen. On top of that, grass prevents erosion. Something that weeds and cultivated vegetables do not necessarily do because thier root structures grow deep in a search for water. Grass has a net-like root structure that stays close to the surface.
Native grasses are a good solution but can often be difficult to care for and maintain. On top of that, just because they are native does not mean that they are hearty enough to withstand local climate extremes. However, they do provide a better habitat for local fauna.
Rocks will not help one bit, neither will bark. This is especially true in places where there aren't large rock beds underlying the soil. Much of the northeast and a good chunk of the midwest is comprised of glacial fallout fields and water shed areas that are made up of sandy and/or silty soil deposits. Rocks would only exacerbate the water problem because they would not retain water and do little prevent erosion and bark would do nothing to stop erosion.
It appears that your anger towards green lawns is misplaced. The lawns are clearly not the problem because they provide many benefits and will likely survive without the excessive watering that most people give them. The problem lies in the watering of those lawns and overall water useage. Is it a problem that is easily solvable? Maybe, maybe not. It seems easier to move a mountain than change human behavior. On the flip side, rainfall is dictated by weather patterns. Can it be argued that pollution and "global warming" affect weather? Yes, it can but the proof is vague and weather is weather. We can cut back on pollution but we are already doing that and it requires human behavior modifcation which isn't an easy task to accomplish. So the going is slow and the weather is still a much larger factor. As powerful as man is, we are still no match for mother nature and cannot change the weather.
Wow. Way to belittle someone else's experience! Good job!
It may not mean a whole hell of alot to you but, like any drug addiction, a video game addiction is a life-changing experience. It ruins lives and destroys people, just like what the author of the blog stated. When someone has the fortunate circumstance to actually wake up and realize that thier life is now based on a reality that does not exist outside of thier own mind, it can be devastating.
The same thing happens with drug addicts. They start out casual, like any WoW player and all they have to do is hit that first high. WoW deserves the accolades it gets. Blizzard did an excellent job with the game and it is very well done. The standard Warcraft games were very immersive too. What makes that worse is after that first high is hit in such an immersive experience, the euphoria and emotional high of success can be misplaced and serve to replace reality. The high from that accomplishment coupled with the praise of peers can be a siren song for an emotionally stunted youth or socially outcast adult.
Like drugs, WoW offers an escape and that escape can often replace the depression that many people struggle with in thier lives and causes them to neglect the real problems they have. Afterall, in the game, they are winners but in real life they view themselves as losers. People with such esteem and emotional problems don't like looking at themselves in the mirror in the morning. Just like every drug addict I ever met.
Now before you can slam me in a flame, I have never played WoW myself. I have played the standard Warcraft and even had Battlenet servers set up at one point in my life. I too like video games like most here. However, I drove an ambulance for a period of time in my life and I have seen humanity in all it's forms at it's lowest point. Times where you walk in to a house to pick somebody up off the floor because they reached a point where they cannot pick themselves up anymore, it's a humbling experience. It's exactly like what the author of the blog related.
For any addict to be successful at beating an addiction, they cannot turn thier back on thier lives and conditions. They need to face it and see it in all of it's uglyness. That's not denial, that's acceptance. If they don't accept it, it is easier for them to relapse back in to thier addiction and return to the miserable state they were in before they had thier awakening. Acceptance allows one to see who they really are and face that person. Until you face that person, you cannot see what you need to do to fix that person you are looking at in the mirror. Before you judge others and try to diminish thier experiences in thier own lives, walk a while in thier shoes and see what it's really like. Knowledge comes from learning and knowing. Wisdom comes from experience.
When DVD-ROM drives first came out, one could purchase the drive with a card for handling things like encryption for the multi-channel soundtracks, copyright protections and various picture formatting. Having the hardware handle that made it fairly simple to access anything on the disk, even if it was "protected". Granted, that is fairly old technology in today's computer world but the beauty of hardware is that for input, there is output. If you want to see what is going on, there are ways to access the hardware at a basic, sub-system/sub-software level that would allow you to circumvent any measures like this silly stuff to be put in place. The hardware needs commands to run and to build those commands, you need input. At some point, you can extract that input from the hardware, encrypted or not, especially if the hardware is what is handling the encryption.
I suppose new laws could be written to cover such technology and tighten the noose on it for new purchases but the old hardware is out there and there are no current restrictions on it. A creative coder could find ways around it if the incentive was there. I think this just notched that incentive mark up a few notches.
This just flat out makes sense. If I am looking to aquire credit card information for identity theft or fraudulent purposes, I want to get it as easily and un-noticed as possible. Big companies like Amazon.com and the like invest large amounts of money into security and fraud prevention. They have trained staff whose only purpose is to stop the baddies. Small companies aspiring to be an Amazon.com don't have the capital to invest and therefore rely on 3rd party vendors liek Yahoo! Shopping to handle thier credit card management. If theey don't then they are an easy target. As my management likes to say, they are "low hanging fruit" and "easy pickings".
So if I want to steal information, I'm going to go where it is easy to get. It's amazing that it took a study and investigative reporting to "uncover" this whole "conspiracy". Then again, it can apply to brick and mortar stores too where small business can make a dirty habit of tossing credit card signature slips in the trash where an unscrupulous person can make use of them. that's not to say a big chain store wouldn't do that but they might be less likely to so. Maybe The Washington Post should investigate that one too?
Slashdot Mirror
The question that your statement begs is if the law is being violated by the majority, is it a just law?
This is the logic your mom used in that "If everyone else jumped off of a bridge, would you do it too?"
Just because everyone is doing it doesn't make it right. Then again, just because it is law, that doesn't necessarily make it right either. The only thing that can be taken from your statement is that if the majority is breaking the law then the validity, justness or application of the law to modern times needs to be revisited.
Copyright laws are meant to protect the rights of the intellectual property rights holder. Not necessarily the creator of that intellectual property, hence the RIAA.
If a software company is charging what the market believes is too much for software then the market adjusts itself by offering a better solution at a better price. Hence OpenOffice.
The black market in illegally traded software cannot be held up as a moral barometer to the current market and trends. The black market exists to undermine the establishment and is not in the best interests of open commerce. It will always exist no matter how just the laws that govern the market are. In addition, many proponents of teh black market support the poor behavior in the name of open software sources and standards. Which, in itself, is a fallacy.
That said, pirating software is flat out illegal. License agreements are put in place to protect rights that everyone has the right to protect. What makes pirating software wrong is that you are violating that license agreement that is meant to protect the intellectual property owner's rights. If you violate the agreement, you violate the rights of the owner because you take away thier control of thier intelletual property. When you violate rights outlined by something like, say, the U.S. Constitution, you are depriving someone else of thier rights and freedoms. That is a civil crime and punishable by the justice system established in this country.
If you feel that the law is unjust because "everyone is doing it" then, violating the law is not going to change it. Petitioning your elected officials in Congress will...provided you can get enough of that supposed "majority" to sign a paper saying that the law needs to be revisited and then voted on. Then again, there is a such thing as organized defiance of a law but it doesn't really apply to software piracy. Mainly because you are using that pirated software to your benefit. There can most likely be a monetary value associated with that benefit. If you are profiting off of that benefit and hoooo boy are you in for a doozie of a lawsuit! See, if you are benefitting from someone else's work/property, it's really difficult to claim some sort of organized definance of an "unjust" law.
Trying being an Oracle DBA maintaining databases of testing results and data for engineers that were plagued with Ingres for decades. Every time they screw up a query and get zero results, the call comes in to check something relating to Ingres that Oracle doesn't have or need. Either that or the servers get bogged down because the network group refuses to admit that there might be a problem with the network and that I need to "check my settings". Nevermind that all interfaces are either set to auto-negotiate or forced to maximum performance.
Anyway, I digress.
I have experienced it before and it comes and goes as the people in charge move up the ladder and others take thier places. Often times it can be incredibly difficult to get past it. However, that is one of the challenges of being in IT. Convincing people that the technology isn't the problem is difficult. I think the difficulty lies in the fact that as an IT professional, if you are doing your job correctly, your work should be invisible to the users. They should think that you do nothing all day. If that is the case then you have already done your job effectivly unless they are complaining about something. Then, of course, you have to fix it.
However, users are funny creatures. They will not notice the systems and immerse themselves completely in the computing environment...until something goes wrong. Then it's like The Matrix is skipping a beat and Agent Smith jumps in and gives them the stink eye. Then the phones start ringing and you, you slackass, you ain't doin' nuthin'! Since they never realize the good because it works the way they have come accustomed to it working, problems that boot them out of the environmental warm-fuzzy are glaring. It's not only a work stopage but it's like waking someone up by dumping a bucket of water on thier face. It's jarring to them and leaves as much of an emotional/mental impact as a work stopage leaves a physical impact.
The reaction then becomes more of a fight or flight type deal. A work stopage or less then rosy data results can be devasating to anyone. When these people you are dealing with see thier numbers come up less desireable that expected, the first thing they tend to do is panic. The blame starts flying every which way to get them back to thier non-panic striken happy place.
You will never solve the "blame techonology" problem because it isn't really rooted in a lack of education. It's human nature to find a scapegoat to accept blame to avoid the pain, physical or emotional, of dropping the ball and getting called on it. About the only thing you can do is do you job as best as you can. If they call asking about the reporting program, be professional and calm and work through thier problem with them. Afterall, you know things are OK on your side and things aren't ok on thier side. They don't know that though. They are just trying to follow every path as quickly as possible to find out what is wrong so that they can get a handle on it and maybe put a stop to the downward slide, quickly.
Above all, don't take it personal, you likely do not report to them. If they become unmanagable, refer them to your management and have your manager act as the intermediary. If you are the management then it is your responsibility to find an amiacable solution.
A single instance of Corvettes made with hand-built engines from an era when GM's quality control was in the dumper can hardly qualify as anything more than anectdotal evidence when comparing it to your average family sedan. On top of that, you yourself said that GM recalled the vehicles in question. However, a search of the Internet at all the usual sites offers no evidence of the recall in question.
Your statement in regards to mileage may have had some validity 10-20 years ago but those cars are no longer new. In 2007, it is a non-issue because most vehicle, unless they are specialty vehicles like a ZR-1, have already gone through a break-in period. Almost all manufacturers do not mention anything about a break-in period anymore and when asked directly, they state that it is unecessary.
Beyond all of that, the most glaring problem with your argument is that you state that the workers "let the RPMs get too high during the break-in period ". In the absence of any evidence of a recall being issue for any reason would you care to elaborate on what "too high" entails? The LT5 was a DOHC, all aluminum engine hand assembled by Mercury Marine and using Lotus designed heads. The engine had a redline around 7200 RPM.
Lastly, none of your proported "evidence" supports or refutes your claim to mileage. Care to elaborate or do you want to spew forth more flamebait and make outlandish claims with no backing evidence whatsoever?
I'm sorry, I think I was mistaken about the trim level on the Civic. I believe it was the VX and not the HX because the HX has a 1.6L engine and the car I am referring to had a 1.5L engine which was only available in the VX. The Honda Civic VX is the "economy version" of the Civic. You can find economy numbers for the 1995 Honda Civic here:
m l
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/11700.sht
It came with 13 inch wheels with low rolling resistance tires and weight saving options like manual window cranks and lightened wheels and suspension components to reduce unsprung weight. It was the lightest Civic and it returned 20-30% better economy over a Civic DX or EX. I have not owned one personally but a friend in college did and we tracked actual gas mileage to be above 45 MPG on the highway and around 35-40 MPG in the city depending on conditions and speeds.
Given the adjustment of mileage standards that the U.S. recently instituted, the Civic equals if not betters the Prius' economy. If you want to better it Suzuki's mid-90's Swift had mileage ratings in the 50 MPG category and actual measured mileage in the mid 40's for city and highway driving.
Many Prius owners are seeing real world mileage numbers of 35-40 MPG on average. What I don't have numbers for and seems to be harder to find is emissions statistics for all of these cars mentioned. I do know that the Civic has been for a very long time a Low-Emissions Vehicle or Ultra Low-Emissions Vehicle. The Swift was never rated on the LEV or ULEV vehicle scale as far as I know and the scale is adjusted for engine size and so on anyway. My truck is rated as a LEV.
I will reiterate the point that the Prius is not necessarily an eco-friendly car because there are too many factors that go in to determining that to say for certain. Gas mileage is only a small part of a much bigger picture. It is not even accurate when it can be shown that a car that does not have to lug around the weight of the sophisticated electric drive system can achieve better mileage numbers than the "godsend" that is the Prius.
Stop deluding yourself. You bought a nice car with gadgetry that will lead to better systems in the future. Unfortunately, the Prius has turned into a fad. The Prius is not going to save the planet. All it will do is give you the self-righteous satisfaction of thinking you are doing something to save the planet. I'll keep trying to actually do something to save the planet. You can continue to feel good about yourself because you bought a Prius. You could probably conserve more energy, save more resources and do more work to save the planet by recycling trash you find in the gutters than driving a Prius.
If the car is junk to begin with, the car is junk. No amount of test driving will change that. If the car is prone to failure, you can drive it like Miss Daisy was in the back seat and it will still fail. Abuse may make those failures manifest sooner but overall, aggressive test driving at the dealer's lot has minimal impact on the reliability of a vehicle over its serviceable life.
I'm sorry, this post is a misnomer. I also only fill up once a week. It doesn't matter how many times you fill up your gas tank, your mileage on that tank is more important. My truck will travel about 450 miles on a tank of gas. It takes 25 gallons to fill that tank. My car will also travel about 450 miles on a tank of gas however, it only takes about 14 gallons to fill that tank.
Both vehicles can be driven to work every day of the week, do some errand running and even make a trip or two to hang out with a friend on a single tank of gas in one week. Does that mean I'm saving the world too? According to your logic and rationalization of your decision to buy a Prius, I am not because neither of my vehicles are a Prius. They aren't even of Japanese origin.
Your Prius is nice but I can take a mid-90's Honda Civic HX and get better mileage on a car that is cheaper to own and do more to save the planet then any Prius will. The Prius is an exercise in engineering and technology. The only thing it has to do with being eco-friendly is the marketing strategy that Toyota uses to play to the sensibilities of the insensible bourgeoisie and the out-of-touch celebrities they like to immitate.
You should go back and read my post again. It basically states the same thing that took you two posts to say.
By the way, it's spelled WARRANTY. There is no 'e' in the word warranty.
Any damage caused by test drivers is unlikely to have recurring/chronic problems associated with it. On top of that, as long as the car is within the new car warranty, the manufacturer is legally bound to honor that warranty and make sure the car is repaired and made road-worthy. If they determine that the car's damage is from abuse then they must prove that it was you. This is why testers are gone over with a fine-tooth comb before leaving the lot. If you don't want the chance of having problems and having to deal with the hassle of repairs than that is a much more reasonable reason for avoiding testers. Basing a decision on mere mileage alone is no grounds for determing the intelligence level of those who would buy a vehicle with 11 or more miles on it.
Calling the previous poster an idiot because you seem to have an inability to apply common sense to a rather simple problem is not really a good way to win friends and influence people nor does it lend credibility to your status as a legitimate, constructive poster. You should curb your paranoid pete attitude and take a look at things for what they are, not what you want them to be. Many posters here on Slashdot could benefit from that approach.
Maybe even then, all the Prius lovers out there (who could benefit from the same attitude adjustment) would stop getting so defensive when common sense is applied to the "ultimate solution" of the venerable Prius and see it for what it is, a technology showcase and an exercise in engineering. It's not the eco-friendly mode of transportation it is being made out to be. If anything, it's biggest redeeming quality is that it is a big step in weening not only the U.S. but the world off of oil as a source of energy.
Sounds like another one of those studies that "show" that the virtual world of video games has a direct correlation to real world behavioral patterns. Just like the violent fighting and war simulation games, people have been driving like idiots for years before video games ever surfaced. Just ask your grandpa about his days as a hot rodder or hell, just pick up a Hot Rod magazine and flip to thier now monthly coverage of "Hot Rod History".
Aggressive driving and street racing have been part of all motoring cultures since the start. The first guy with a car was a neat idea and a novelty when it first hit the cart paths. Not until the second guy to get his car running did anything really take off. You know what the first thing that they did with those cars was? The took them to the beach and raced them to see who's car was faster!
Yeah, video games cause violence, aggressive driving and other degenrate bahvioral patterns. I suppose next we'll hear that Liesure Suit Larry has cause an entire generation of males to have a propensity towards visiting hookers?
On one hand, I'm excited! The previous LEGO Star Wars titles have been a blast even though they are obviously geared towards kids. I'd certainly jump at the chance to take a look at this game.
However, this worries me. I know I'm not the only one that fondly remembers LEGOS. Sure the game is geared towards kids but unless they put an age cap on the game (not that anyone wouldn't lie about thier age, I mean c'mon, who does THAT?) I can only see the LEGO virtual world being innundated by not only those pervs that another poster already mentioned but also by those lovely online gamers. Not just any online gamers though. We have all seen the guy who camps at a spawn site just to blast the next poor schmuck who spawns into a game so he can boost his body count. Thier is also the guy who plays CONSTANTLY and has the most under-handed tactics that it can be very difficult for others to advance in a game. Then there are the people who aspire to be like these guys and can't. This leaves a place like the LEGO virtual world rife for thier abuse of the system. Most adults can't handle these people well, how are kids going to deal with it?
This is also going to end up being another babysitter so mom can go spend time with her "little helper". If the kid is crying because he/she can't play the game that mommy and daddy paid for because some n00b is jerking around on the virtual world, there will be hell to pay from mommy.
Yeah, I'm excited and I'm not. I see this wonderful pie-in-the-sky idea being quickly corrupted and destroyed without some serious controls that work being placed on game play. Either that or make it so immature (Dora the Explorer or Barney and Friends immature) that no adult would want to go anywhere near that annoying piece of tripe. However, LEGOS are fundamentally un-boring, at least to the extent of your imagination, so I don't see it coming out as immature, pseudo-educational tripe.
Like most of the un-funny posts to this article already. However, you managed to hit on something that it seems the article missed. Africanized (Killer) Bees have been a problem reported by bee keeps over much of the southern United States for over a decade now and the problem seems to creep farther north every year.
The problem stems from the Killer Bees infiltrating a colony of another type of bee and wiping out the colony. Since the killer bees do exhibit the same food gathering and other critical behaviors to pollination, the lost colonys have a bigger impact. I can see the fungus, virus, pesticide and other aspects causing problems in climates farther north but I would not doubt that Killer Bees could be a large contributing factor to this problem.
It may seem silly but it is a critically important roll that the bees have to crop production. Many grains and vegetables do not require external pollination to produce a crop but there are plenty of other fruit and vegetable crops out there that do. The crops may not go away completely because bees are not the only way they are pollinated but they are one of the most efficient ways.
If you want to know what the weather is doing...at least in North America, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website is my favorite place for getting weather related info. There is no "fear mongering" like what is found on the network news. If it's going to snow, they say "It's going to snow." and then they tell you how much and let you freak out all on your own. They aren't about the fluff like The Weather Channel with thier silly shows and travel planning. NOAA's website even has tide schedules and nautical charts. That may not be important to most people but try planning a fishing trip with weather.com and you'll see how nice NOAA's website really is.
Back in the days when there were not a whole slew of service providers available, AOL was one of the few with easy access and local dial-up numbers. (Am I dating myself yet?) And back in my AOL days before it became the bane of the Internet, the portal features allowed one to type in a "keyword" which would then take you to a web page that was associated with that keyword. However, you did not leave thier portal and never really hit the actual webpage because the portal seemed to cache the most popular sites to improve performance on slow dial-up (we're talking 14.4 modems, not even a 33.6). Now, in the present days of accessible broadband, many people are jumping to the fatser connections and being forced to abandon the AOL dial-up services they came to know, love and abuse.
Due to this phenomena, it seems that many people are inadvertantly using the search features of newer browsers to type in keywords and get the page they are looking for immediatly. The search engines are shooting themselves in the foot by adding the Google and Yahoo toolbars and making this ability accessible to users. What's worse is that with these toolbars in the browsers, even if the page is cached, unlike how AOL's portal used to operate, every time the ENTER button is pressed, it hits the search engine. Since computers have become more accessible to the general public and arguably more intuitive to use (even Windows) there are many people who know only a world like AOL. This limited knowledge leads to poor behavior on the actual Internet. Since more of these AOL'ers are tearing off the AOL portal training wheels, they are hitting the real Internet in droves and using bad habits propogated by AOL's effort to preserve a competative advantage in thier portal.
Not true.
V8 engines are inherently unbalanced because the firing order is often not evenly spaced in a single rotation. Infact, pretty much any engine that does not have a number of cylinders evenly divisible by 6 and a firing seperation of 45 degrees will be out of balance and require either external or internal balancing and vibration dampening. That is why inline 6 cylinders and V12s are so smooth in operation. The cylinders fire at 45 degree intervals and two cylinders fire 180 degrees apart. They are natually balanced because the combustion strokes occur 180 degrees apart or opposite each other. Thier negative vibrations cancel each other out.
A V8, depending on whether it is a 90, 60, 45 or 30 degree V will fire anywhere from 60-30 degrees apart and that puts cylinders firing at anywhere from 240 degrees opposite to 90 degrees opposite. It makes for rough running and a lopey idle which is why they need dampening. To illustrate the point, one needs only to look at the venerable Harley Davidson V-twin which gets it's lopey "rumperty-rump" idle from the two pistons sharing a common throw on the crank shaft and firing as close as 30 degrees apart. If you look at the copies from the Japanese companies like Honda and Yamaha that have tried to take a chunk out of HD's market, you will see V-twin imitations very similar to what those companies are running in thier automotive engines.
The biggest benefit to a large displacement engine is raw power. A big V8 will be able to make more power at a lower RPM than a smaller, higher strung I4 that is half the displacement. It's not an efficiency issue but rather a durability issue. A V8 has to do less work to achieve the same results as the smaller and less powerful 4 cylinder. This reduces stress on the engine and enables the engine to last longer...with proper maintenance of course. Not only does it reduce stress but it also leaves the vehicle it is installed in with more capability to handle larger payloads. Thus the reason why if one wants to tow his RV, he doesn't use a Toyota Tacoma but rather something along the lines of a Ford F-150 or a Chevy Silverado. It's also the reason why companies like Nissan and Toyota now have large displacement V8 engines in vehicles of similar size to thier American counter parts. The smaller Japanese trucks could not compete with the brutes the American companies are rolling out.
We had a similar problem in a much larger department (about 350 employees supporting a user base of about 15,000) and we had issues getting helpdesk tickets logged. Sure we had all the extra work to do that was much more fun than the life-sucking, mind-numbing Luser support of the help desk but there was enough time during each call to add 5 minutes on to it to write the log.
There were several people tasked with finding out how to fix the logging problem. I was one of them. We were put into a team and had weekly meetings. We tried the usual gestapo tactics that never work and just alienated the employees and ticked everyone off. What was obvious from that was that the work was getting done and getting done quite well. Out of all the calls we would get in a month, less than 5% came back on a return call for an unfixed problem. That doesn't sound very good but check those numbers above again. 350 admins to support 15,000 users and only 5% of total calls came back. Granted, that's only what was supported and given the documenting problem, that number could be dubious but overall, even if it was fudged by 50%, that's still stellar performance from a department that even if you go just by the numbers alone is woefully over-worked.
So we tried a different approach and shut our mouths about the logging. Started talking to people candidly in breakrooms, at lunch or even stopping by a desk and starting a personal conversation. What we quickly found out was the pretty much everyone HATED the tool we used for logging calls. It was cumbersome, slow and not intuitive with a horrendous UI when you actually sat down and looked at it from a user's point of view.
Needless to say, we changed the software. Someone had suggested that we write our own but in an already over-worked group, that's like telling a one-armed paper hanger that he has to tie one arm behind his back and still hang paper. So we went with a COTS solution that seemed to work better, tested it with a control group and found it much better to work with. We rolled it out and within a month, we went from 70% of calls with undocumented updates to just under 20% of calls with undocumented updates. A 50% improvement by just changing how we did something rather than standing on the typical management premise of "The beatings will continue until morale improves."
So don't look at the people as the only source of the problem. Thier lack of documenting may be the message they are trying to tell you that the tools suck. Afterall, a carpenter could use a screw driver to cut a piece of wood but a saw works so much better!
Bill might have a point here to an extent but, he makes this statement in only the 3rd paragraph of the article:
American society is changing for the worse because of the machines... In the past to flee the real world people usually chose drugs or alcohol... now you don't have to do that, Now all you have to do is have enough money to buy a machine...
So drugs and alcohol are better?
He also equates standing on line for several "hours" (guess he missed all the news about lines piling up two weeks ahead of time) as being a drug addict/junkie and exhibiting addiction symptoms. So I guess all those kids in the 60's standing on line just to get a glimpse of The Beatles getting off an airplane are addicts in that respect too? Or maybe all those people who stood on line to get Led Zepplin or Madonna tickets were crazed by addiction too? Or what about all those moms and dads who stood on line at the silliest hours just to get a Tickle Me Elmo are all crazed by addiction too? He's equating a behavior of a drug addict to peple seizing an opportunity to get a limited number of an item so then can have one. I highly doubt any parent out there relishes thier Tickle Me Elmo so much that they are unwilling to part with it in the same vein as a drug addict.
But then he not only goes on to further insult all gamers, not just the ones who are detached from reality but he then slams every "computer geek" out there and insinuates an intelligence deficit in those "geeks" by asking if you ever tried to talk to them.
It seems Mr. O'Reilly is the one out of touch with reality. If it wasn't for those "computer geeks" he likely would not have the facilities and resources he has available to him to not only have a TV show but a radio show, a podcast, a website, a blog and pretty much every other media outlet he uses. Does this guy ever think before he speaks anymore?
He destroyed any credibility in his point before he ever even got around to making it.
What is it lately with all these celebrities seemingly afflicted with constipation of the brain and diarrhea of the mouth?
The article is not about subsidizing game makers. The article is about the economic impact a very large company like EA or Ubisoft could make to an area. Game makers provide numerous jobs in not only software development but also in IT, any business discipline and if the company manufactures on-site, there are skilled labor jobs and even unskilled labor jobs available.
Providing incentives for a company to a move a plant of any kind into an economically depressed area is almost always a boon to the area. Even if the tax hit is taken in the incentive, the tax revenue goes up because more people are working than before and that is a constant source of revenue. There doesn't have to be any tax revenue expenditure to make that happen. However, it does need the support of the law makers and government to make it happen.
In the same vein, having another company the size of EA or Ubisoft is a good thing, regardless of anyone's opinions about the quality of the product they produce. A large company provides a large environment, full of resources and experienced people that can support many entry level positions. Those entry level positions are filled by entry level candidates that have a vast environment to learn in. Once they learn, they either move up the ladder and make thier own impact on that company or they go elsewhere to try and do better than that company. Either way, it provides choices to consumers. Give consumers choices and they will go for what they like. That drives competition which drives advancements and yields a more enjoyable gaming experience for teh consumer.
Just because Madden 2007 isn't the Slashdot communitiy's cup of tea doesn't mean that there aren't a million other sports fan out there who love the thought of being able to play NFL Coach on thier couch at home and see how well they will do. EA and Ubisoft are large and incharge because no matter how poor anyone thinks thier games are, the bottom line is that they sell games and that is what drives any business, profit.
I went to a school that ranks in the top five on Wired's Most Wired Campuses list. I work for a company that builds advanced computer systems with capabilities far beyond the average joe's imagination. Since my youngest days I have been surrounded by computers and technologically astute people. All of these intelligent people with vast amounts knowledge and experience yet, when it comes to things like emails, I get nothing but urban legends and forwards, even after I debunk thier tripe with snopes.com. If they need to find something on the internet, they ask me for help.
I think the problem lies not in comprehension ability but in the ability to ask the right question to get what you want. The way people are taught to solve problems in school affects how they solve problems in life. It doesn't help any that so few students actually grasp the idea behind problem solving and even less are any good at actually doing it. Most people see a problem that has a solution or a question that has an answer. If they don't get the right solution, they immediatly think that there is something wrong with that question or problem or how they worked it out. They waste time and energy trying to find thier mistake. In reality, the first thing that should be taught is if you are asking a question and not getting the answer you expected, maybe you are not asking the right question.
To illustrate the point, working in IT, I, like many others, have had an opportunity at one point to have the luxury of operating a help desk hotline. What fun! The most tedious part is getting the clueless user on the other end to get you the information you need to solve thier problem and send them on thier blissfully merry way. I cannot count the number of times I asked a question that seemed entirely sane to me only to recieve the most insane answer from the user that I never expected. At first I would be frustrated and blame the user and bring in to question thier level of intelligence. Eventually I learned that it might not be the user...or anybody for that matter. There is a communication break down because of different realms of knowledge relating to both parties involved. For me to get the answers I needed, I had to find creative ways to rephrase the question. I asked numerous users the same questions 9 different ways from Sunday and very few actually figured out that I asked the same question over and over again, just in a way to shift the focus of the question to get the right detail I needed in an answer.
Search engines work much the same way. If you didn't get the results you wanted, rephrase the search terms or change the priority of the terms in the search string. The same principle can be applied to questioning the validity of a website. Unfortunatly, this way of dealing with a problem is not taught at school. It is also unfortunate that it would be difficult to do so without real world application. The fact that so few actually eventually pick it up later in life is a testament to the idea that there something fundamentally wrong with how we teach and develop problem solving skills at an earlier age than college. These kids should be entering higher education with the foundations of these skills already laid. If they were, there wouldn't be these cognitive problem solving issues.
Don't be so sure of yourself. There are quite a few reasons for the government and military to need all kinds of computing power. Clustered super computers can come in handy for lots of things including simulations, software testing for many systems such as guidance systems and radar systems and even things as simple as artillary trajectories. You remember those problems right? The whole reason the computer widely accepted as the FIRST computer was ever built.
Just because it doesn't seem to fit what we see as the NSA's MO doesn't mean that the NSA doesn't have use for floating-point math. The whole idea of the NSA is to make sure secrets are kept safe. To help keep those secrets safe, they don't even talk about what secrets they are keeping safe or how they are keeping them safe. There are plenty of scenarios that I can think of off the top of my head for using a floating point processor in building something like an algorithm for a statistical model to show trends apparent in data mined from internet search engines.
The realm of government secrets is an odd area to play speculation in. Just because you don't know about is the best reason to think that something like it actually exists. Will you know about something such as that? Unlikely. At least not any time soon. I wouldn't doubt that there is already technology out there so far ahead of it's time that it may never be declassified due to the dangers it could pose if it was obtained by people looking to do harm.
Each conflict is different so it takes a different approach each time. They differ in all aspects from what the conflict is about to the personalities and egos of the stakeholders involved. Because of that, one single conflict resolution method will not work for every instance.
I have used several methods in the past. Petty disagreements between employees whose feelings are hurt can be solved as easily as getting the two employees away from the workplace for lunch or maybe a drink or two after hours. It removes the environment where the hostilities are most intense and puts everyone in a neutral setting. It helps "take the edge off". Also, because it's a public place, people are less likely to have outbursts and behave poorly because there are more eyes watching and those eyes don't care about the petty disagreement. It kind of leverages the whole social anxiety thing against all parties involved. At work, it's posturing for position and power. At the local Hooters, everyone is on equal footing and a bit of humility is sometimes all a resolution effort needs.
If the issues are not resolved so easily, mediation is required. The whole point of mediation is not to pass judgement but to ensure that all sides have thier fair say and a chance to get thier points across so the involved parties can reach a conculsion themselves. If they both agree to a solution they worked out themselves then they are much less likely to feel slighted or treated unfairly because they had a hand in thier own destiny, so to speak. If a side feels slighted then mediation was not successful. If one side cannot get a fair say without the other side interrupting, a harsher method needs to be instilled. I usually revert to a method that worked with children who couldn't agree. We had a "talking stick". I would control who has the talking stick and for how long. If you didn't have the talking stick, you were not allowed to speak. If you had the talking stick, the floor was yours until you gave the talking stick back to me or if you were abusing your talking stick priviledge through verbal abuse or personal attacks of the other party. If you spoke without the talking stick and were not addressed or asked a question of, you were warned two times. The third time, you would be swatted with the talking stick. The whole point here is that if two parties cannot recognize each other's right to the speaking floor then give them a tool that leave no doubt whose turn it is. The "talking stick" does that and it also requires the other party to curb thier emotions and hold thier thoughts until thier turn. This keeps then from responding with thee knee-jerk, incensing remarks, responses and comments. By the time it's thier turn to speak, the knee-jerk impulse has left and they are more capable of carrying on rationally.
Granted, you don't have to use a talking stick but a physical display of such a tool is effective because it symbolizes a boundry that shouldn't be crossed. Sometimes, without that physical boundry, parties in a heated argument can be blind to any symbolic boundry represented only by an authority figure. An authority figure holds little weight when both parties feel threatened by each other. Give the authority figure the ability to enforce the rules and suddenly they have an equal footing with both parties involved.
Anything beyond simple things like a lunchroom disagreement would require lawyers, an HR department and probably an ethics officer of some sort. Any time a disagreement poses legal liabilities and implications for the company, the company needs to do what it needs to do to protect assets and other employees.
They should stay put because Time/Warner makes money without even trying and provides AOL with a source of capital to keep them in enough cash to keep current customers happy and entice new customers to join. They have been emphasizing services like what Google and Yahoo provide but thier infrastructure is not set up in a way that would exploit those services soon enough to turn a profit. If they stay with Time/Warner, they have a parental backing that has stockpiles of cash and assets that AOL can leverage in its favor to gain the market share it needs to survive against giants like Google and Yahoo and even MSN.
The only way I can see AOL being successful in a break-away bid to leave the Time/Warner corporation is if they can find a cost effective way to not only distribute but support broadband on at least a DSL level. Currently, they have no solid way of providing broadband to customers across thier entire customer base without 3rd party providers. That keeps costs high and doesn't look attractive to new customers. Granted, there are still millions of people in America not online and that is a vast resource left untapped for AOL but, for AOL to successfully exploit those untapped customers, the phone system in this country needs to be brought into the 21st century.
Another factor that comes to mind is the Verizon and Comcast solutions of fiber to the home. Verizon is probably much farther along with the FIOS than Comcast is with their fiber efforts but, a "demerger" does not sound like a swift and expedious thing and these other companies might be to market much sooner than AOL can get "demerged" and be offering a low-cost, high-bandwidth solution. That solution will likely make prices for all ISP services from dial-up to fiber drop across the board. That would destroy AOL's business because even though they are expensive for dial-up, they are still cheaper than the investment needed for even the slowest DSL service. Having to adapt to price drops would kill the profitability of thier dial-up access and they would have to rely too heavily on thier portal based search engines and other services where thier business model is unproven out side the AOL world.
Lawn grass does nothing? Did we forget high school biology so quickly?
Lawns are made up of grass. Grass, like all green plants use photosynthesis to create food. During the process, they consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen. On top of that, grass prevents erosion. Something that weeds and cultivated vegetables do not necessarily do because thier root structures grow deep in a search for water. Grass has a net-like root structure that stays close to the surface.
Native grasses are a good solution but can often be difficult to care for and maintain. On top of that, just because they are native does not mean that they are hearty enough to withstand local climate extremes. However, they do provide a better habitat for local fauna.
Rocks will not help one bit, neither will bark. This is especially true in places where there aren't large rock beds underlying the soil. Much of the northeast and a good chunk of the midwest is comprised of glacial fallout fields and water shed areas that are made up of sandy and/or silty soil deposits. Rocks would only exacerbate the water problem because they would not retain water and do little prevent erosion and bark would do nothing to stop erosion.
It appears that your anger towards green lawns is misplaced. The lawns are clearly not the problem because they provide many benefits and will likely survive without the excessive watering that most people give them. The problem lies in the watering of those lawns and overall water useage. Is it a problem that is easily solvable? Maybe, maybe not. It seems easier to move a mountain than change human behavior. On the flip side, rainfall is dictated by weather patterns. Can it be argued that pollution and "global warming" affect weather? Yes, it can but the proof is vague and weather is weather. We can cut back on pollution but we are already doing that and it requires human behavior modifcation which isn't an easy task to accomplish. So the going is slow and the weather is still a much larger factor. As powerful as man is, we are still no match for mother nature and cannot change the weather.
Wow. Way to belittle someone else's experience! Good job!
It may not mean a whole hell of alot to you but, like any drug addiction, a video game addiction is a life-changing experience. It ruins lives and destroys people, just like what the author of the blog stated. When someone has the fortunate circumstance to actually wake up and realize that thier life is now based on a reality that does not exist outside of thier own mind, it can be devastating.
The same thing happens with drug addicts. They start out casual, like any WoW player and all they have to do is hit that first high. WoW deserves the accolades it gets. Blizzard did an excellent job with the game and it is very well done. The standard Warcraft games were very immersive too. What makes that worse is after that first high is hit in such an immersive experience, the euphoria and emotional high of success can be misplaced and serve to replace reality. The high from that accomplishment coupled with the praise of peers can be a siren song for an emotionally stunted youth or socially outcast adult.
Like drugs, WoW offers an escape and that escape can often replace the depression that many people struggle with in thier lives and causes them to neglect the real problems they have. Afterall, in the game, they are winners but in real life they view themselves as losers. People with such esteem and emotional problems don't like looking at themselves in the mirror in the morning. Just like every drug addict I ever met.
Now before you can slam me in a flame, I have never played WoW myself. I have played the standard Warcraft and even had Battlenet servers set up at one point in my life. I too like video games like most here. However, I drove an ambulance for a period of time in my life and I have seen humanity in all it's forms at it's lowest point. Times where you walk in to a house to pick somebody up off the floor because they reached a point where they cannot pick themselves up anymore, it's a humbling experience. It's exactly like what the author of the blog related.
For any addict to be successful at beating an addiction, they cannot turn thier back on thier lives and conditions. They need to face it and see it in all of it's uglyness. That's not denial, that's acceptance. If they don't accept it, it is easier for them to relapse back in to thier addiction and return to the miserable state they were in before they had thier awakening. Acceptance allows one to see who they really are and face that person. Until you face that person, you cannot see what you need to do to fix that person you are looking at in the mirror. Before you judge others and try to diminish thier experiences in thier own lives, walk a while in thier shoes and see what it's really like. Knowledge comes from learning and knowing. Wisdom comes from experience.
When DVD-ROM drives first came out, one could purchase the drive with a card for handling things like encryption for the multi-channel soundtracks, copyright protections and various picture formatting. Having the hardware handle that made it fairly simple to access anything on the disk, even if it was "protected". Granted, that is fairly old technology in today's computer world but the beauty of hardware is that for input, there is output. If you want to see what is going on, there are ways to access the hardware at a basic, sub-system/sub-software level that would allow you to circumvent any measures like this silly stuff to be put in place. The hardware needs commands to run and to build those commands, you need input. At some point, you can extract that input from the hardware, encrypted or not, especially if the hardware is what is handling the encryption.
I suppose new laws could be written to cover such technology and tighten the noose on it for new purchases but the old hardware is out there and there are no current restrictions on it. A creative coder could find ways around it if the incentive was there. I think this just notched that incentive mark up a few notches.
This just flat out makes sense. If I am looking to aquire credit card information for identity theft or fraudulent purposes, I want to get it as easily and un-noticed as possible. Big companies like Amazon.com and the like invest large amounts of money into security and fraud prevention. They have trained staff whose only purpose is to stop the baddies. Small companies aspiring to be an Amazon.com don't have the capital to invest and therefore rely on 3rd party vendors liek Yahoo! Shopping to handle thier credit card management. If theey don't then they are an easy target. As my management likes to say, they are "low hanging fruit" and "easy pickings".
So if I want to steal information, I'm going to go where it is easy to get. It's amazing that it took a study and investigative reporting to "uncover" this whole "conspiracy". Then again, it can apply to brick and mortar stores too where small business can make a dirty habit of tossing credit card signature slips in the trash where an unscrupulous person can make use of them. that's not to say a big chain store wouldn't do that but they might be less likely to so. Maybe The Washington Post should investigate that one too?