You make the mistake of lumping me in with the Slashbots who want to hold parents accountable but don't think they have the right to exercise control over their child's life. Your entire argument is built on this strawman.
MySpace should not be responsible for behavior that parents allow to happen. When you give your children unrestricted and unmonitored access to the internet, you accept that they are at risk of being exposed to predators.
When my own children are old enough to get their own computers and have unmonitored (as in without me standing/sitting beside them) computer time, you can bet I'll have a few precautions in place. Rather than using a content filter to prevent access, I'll simply monitor their browsing history via my router. I'll use VNC or some other program that will allow me to remotely observe their activities from time to time without them knowing about it.
Once I'm confident they are making good decisions I'll back off some but make it known that I have the ability to keep tabs on them should I feel the need--and make it a condition of having a computer that they do not disable my ability to check it by turning off the VNC service or anything like that.
You failed to do my job for me by protecting my child from my own inability to monitor their activity and teach them how to make good decisions. Now you must make me rich.
aside from the $400 price tag for the non-crippleware version?
You must have ignored the entire point of my post to be able to say this sincerely.
Or perhaps it's because they've finally managed to copy the Macintosh's interface design more closely
XP had a much better interface than Mac when it hit the market. Vista is just raising the bar again. I personally much prefer it to OSX, which I find convoluted and not exactly user-friendly compared to even XP.
Different UIs are built for different kinds of users. I like Windows. You like OSX. I don't see why it has to be an all-or-nothing deal where one is definitely better than the other.
many more well-done real time strategy games.
Someone needs to check the pipeline.
Company of Heroes has got us RTS fans thoroughly addicted and Supreme Commander and Command & Conquer 3 are due out this year. Find just one or two more to come out soon and you'll have a great year by the standards of any genre on any platform.
Vista is probably going to be a better OS than XP, and it won't kill anyone to have DX10 since DX9 titles will work on it. You don't need to rush out and buy Vista, but you'll most likely wind up with a copy sooner or later and there's no good reason to not use it in favor of XP.
I'm 28, have two kids and a mortgage, and apparently some of our elected officials think that I lack the maturity to purchase my own games. I guess I'll have to find other ways to get my games.
Yes, some artists may have benefited from having their music put on mix tapes. No, not all artists involved did. No, he didn't get their permission, nor did he give them royalties from any profits made.
He was selling copies of recordings made by artists without cutting the artists in. In this one case, I'm all for throwing the book at the guy. He ripped them off and made a fortune doing it.
first off, DRM allows for what amounts to unbound copyrights.
This is a failure of current DRM schemes, not DRM in general. It would be easy enough to design DRM so that the DRM no longer applies after a certain date.
first off, DRM allows for what amounts to unbound copyrights.
Again, this could be done with DRM, though it would require a much more robust and flexible system than will exist any time soon.
You misunderstand. My point was about perception, not reality. It doesn't matter if that little bit of cash actually makes a difference; many of those who live that way got there by choice. I personally got out of such a situation a few years ago, only to find my way back in (temporarily) due to medical expenses.
What employees see is massive profits on the part of the company, huge bonuses going to the CEOs, and little or no attention paid to their personal accomplishments for the company.
I've used Exxon as an example in another post here. They owe some of their record profits to a local group of workers who are responsible for a substantial reduction in maintenance costs through some serious innovation that has since been mirrored across the state. Their reward? A pat on the back, a "job well done", and...nothing else. They probably saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in the next decade and saw absolutely no return. But their CEO gets tens of millions of dollars for the company turning big profits in a year when it was almost impossible for oil companies to not make big profits.
Do you think those Exxon employees are going to go out of their way to improve things next time? Do you think they're going to be loyal to the company? That's how most big businesses treat their people these days. They're nothing but "human resources"...supplies to be used, assets to be tapped. Corporate culture is going back to the old ways, paying employees as little as they possibly can while the executives live like royalty.
$50,000,000 for most people means never having to work again. Yet CEOs see sums like that multiple times in their lives. Their lifetime salaries can exceed a billion dollars. The vast majority of people won't make 1% of that in their lives. I'm saying that CEOs don't need that much and wouldn't miss that kind of money if it hadn't become such a trend to give huge bonuses to begin with.
They earned their position by going through the ranks either at the company they are at or others.
No, for the most part the CEOs have their jobs because of the silver spoon they were born with. That spoon put them through college and allowed them to get the key positions necessary to maneuver into a CEO position.
The CEOs who worked their way up don't need $50M bonuses...they own the company, its profit is their profit.
Amazing all the people who cry about CEO's getting big paychecks totally ignore sports stars and actors/actresses who rake in large amounts of dough. Sorry, but I have far more respect for any CEO that those other groups.
I don't disagree with you at all here. But the income levels of entertainers (which both actors and athletes really are) is outside the scope of the post which prompted this discussion.
There is a difference, though. In the case of actors and athletes, their income is directly related to their ability to sell tickets. It's a sort of speculative commission: the hottest actors get tens of millions per movie because their casting translates directly into ticket sales. When twenty-odd baskbetball players can sell 60,000 tickets per game for an entire season plus merchandise plus draw television audiences that generate advertising revenue, they *should* get a huge paycheck. The consuming public is responsible for their salaries; we'll spend the money, and they get paid for it.
On the other hand, a CEO is given credit for the performance of tens of thousands employees. While Michael Jordan's ability to generate income can be very directly measured, a CEO's "success" relies on the performance of employees he has no contact with, an economy he has little influence over, and a thousand other factors. A business can thrive in spite of a useless CEO, and he can just soak up the credit because it can be so difficult to gauge his impact on the company.
That may be the case at GS, but I was talking about corporations in general.
Exxon's CEO pulled in nearly $50M last year, and I know a lot of Exxon employees. They're the ones drilling the wells and maintaining the equipment that Exxon can't exist without, and they get paid *decent* wages. They don't get significant end-of-year bonuses and these oil field guys are some of the hardest working people I've met.
When the peons who live paycheck to paycheck while being the backbone for a company see executives get yearly salaries totalling more than they'll make in a year, do you REALLY expect them to work hard? For the average corporate employee, the most they can hope for is a middle management position where they take blame for others' mistakes while their bosses take the credit for anything good that happens.
Companies need to remember that even a genius CEO is worthless without the underlings who follow his successful plans. Imagine if that $53,000,000 had been distributed among the employees as a company-wide bonus.
Yeah, I've had about as much headway pushing Linux as we have buying new computers. It doesn't help that I'm the only one even remotely familiar with Linux, and I'm a novice myself.
If only I could have gotten Linux to boot on those Old-World G3 Macs last year. We'd have 60 thin clients rather than putting them into storage until they are recycled.
I'm specifically thinking of a media-centric approach.
I'd like to see a server that can tune and stream live television to all the PCs and televisions in the home while recording several others for later viewing. I'd also like to see it archive DVDs for direct access from any television without having to load a disk. I'm basically envisioning a single centralized system for everything entertainment-related. As I understand WHS, it won't be quite so full-featured.
HTTP and FTP functionality would be excellent as well...HTTP for headless administration as well as anything else the user cares to do with it, and FTP because...well, it's cheap to implement and *someone* will find a good reason for it to be there if it's not included.
If and when I actually have a system running WHS, I'll have a long list of things I wish it did.
Actually, we experimented with this last year. The cost savings weren't enough to justify the reworking of our network and time spent in deployment. It'd have taken us years to see a significant cost benefit, and the school board would never have gone for the initial investment based on such a slow return.
It's not the managers you have to put up with in most schools. It's the elected people who know nothing about education or the technology it uses, yet have all the power over both.
Good luck with that $400 phone, I'll stick with my free-with-purchase one:D
As for the "New Bugs for Old" thing, we really don't see it that way. Sure there will be some minor bugs with the OS, but the switch would force us into using a lot of web-based software, which is what we want. That essentially removes our software-related bugs.
I learned something very early with my wife: when she hits ovulation, she's less interested me when I'm clean-cut and smelling good and all that and more interested in me when I haven't shaved, have been working outside all day, and am wearing some pretty rough-looking clothes.
The theory is that she goes for rugged-looking me because it makes me look stronger and tougher and so I look like a better choice for reproduction. "Strong man make strong babies" or something like that.
Knowing when she ovulates means knowing which days I can skip shaving and don't have to clean up before giving her a kiss after doing yardwork.
1) Are increasingly moving toward a multi-PC household, with a desktop, laptop, and one or more computers for their children. 2) Are willing to spend money on a low-end server to accomodate the growing demand for shared files and applications. 3) Are looking for a way to get the most out of their WMC PC and their new XBOX 360 by streaming video.
Personally, I've been predicting this move since Media Center was announced. It's a logical step toward the "digital home" that we've heard so much about. WHS won't do anything near everything I want it to, but it's a step in the right direction. I'm hoping this will up the ante and get some good, easier-to-use OSS servers designed around home use.
Slashdot Mirror
When you actually have kids
Have two, thanks. Try again.
You make the mistake of lumping me in with the Slashbots who want to hold parents accountable but don't think they have the right to exercise control over their child's life. Your entire argument is built on this strawman.
MySpace should not be responsible for behavior that parents allow to happen. When you give your children unrestricted and unmonitored access to the internet, you accept that they are at risk of being exposed to predators.
When my own children are old enough to get their own computers and have unmonitored (as in without me standing/sitting beside them) computer time, you can bet I'll have a few precautions in place. Rather than using a content filter to prevent access, I'll simply monitor their browsing history via my router. I'll use VNC or some other program that will allow me to remotely observe their activities from time to time without them knowing about it.
Once I'm confident they are making good decisions I'll back off some but make it known that I have the ability to keep tabs on them should I feel the need--and make it a condition of having a computer that they do not disable my ability to check it by turning off the VNC service or anything like that.
Correction:
You failed to do my job for me by protecting my child from my own inability to monitor their activity and teach them how to make good decisions. Now you must make me rich.
aside from the $400 price tag for the non-crippleware version?
You must have ignored the entire point of my post to be able to say this sincerely.
Or perhaps it's because they've finally managed to copy the Macintosh's interface design more closely
XP had a much better interface than Mac when it hit the market. Vista is just raising the bar again. I personally much prefer it to OSX, which I find convoluted and not exactly user-friendly compared to even XP.
Different UIs are built for different kinds of users. I like Windows. You like OSX. I don't see why it has to be an all-or-nothing deal where one is definitely better than the other.
many more well-done real time strategy games. Someone needs to check the pipeline. Company of Heroes has got us RTS fans thoroughly addicted and Supreme Commander and Command & Conquer 3 are due out this year. Find just one or two more to come out soon and you'll have a great year by the standards of any genre on any platform.
Vista is probably going to be a better OS than XP, and it won't kill anyone to have DX10 since DX9 titles will work on it. You don't need to rush out and buy Vista, but you'll most likely wind up with a copy sooner or later and there's no good reason to not use it in favor of XP.
The artists already got their payday from the studios, it's the studios who own the copyrights and have the investment to protect.
The artists need to take back control of their art from the studios before they really have much of a voice.
I'm 28, have two kids and a mortgage, and apparently some of our elected officials think that I lack the maturity to purchase my own games. I guess I'll have to find other ways to get my games.
Yo ho, yo ho...
Yes, some artists may have benefited from having their music put on mix tapes. No, not all artists involved did. No, he didn't get their permission, nor did he give them royalties from any profits made.
He was selling copies of recordings made by artists without cutting the artists in. In this one case, I'm all for throwing the book at the guy. He ripped them off and made a fortune doing it.
"The Lich lunges forward and...trips over a dead kobold."
"I pick up the dead kobold and hit the lich with it."
"Eww"
Your exhibit is not an OS. Also, I've never heard of it having a problem with non-DRM music.
If we're going to blame anyone for DRM on media players, it's Apple.
I'm sorry, I must have missed the part where a Microsoft OS wouldn't play DRM-free music.
As I understand it, MS included DRM support in Vista but doesn't force the use of it.
first off, DRM allows for what amounts to unbound copyrights.
This is a failure of current DRM schemes, not DRM in general. It would be easy enough to design DRM so that the DRM no longer applies after a certain date.
first off, DRM allows for what amounts to unbound copyrights.
Again, this could be done with DRM, though it would require a much more robust and flexible system than will exist any time soon.
I really don't see how anyone could object to DRM if it only prevented illegal copying.
Of course, I can't imagine a way to make it work that wouldn't be so intrusive that I wouldn't use it.
You misunderstand. My point was about perception, not reality. It doesn't matter if that little bit of cash actually makes a difference; many of those who live that way got there by choice. I personally got out of such a situation a few years ago, only to find my way back in (temporarily) due to medical expenses.
What employees see is massive profits on the part of the company, huge bonuses going to the CEOs, and little or no attention paid to their personal accomplishments for the company.
I've used Exxon as an example in another post here. They owe some of their record profits to a local group of workers who are responsible for a substantial reduction in maintenance costs through some serious innovation that has since been mirrored across the state. Their reward? A pat on the back, a "job well done", and...nothing else. They probably saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in the next decade and saw absolutely no return. But their CEO gets tens of millions of dollars for the company turning big profits in a year when it was almost impossible for oil companies to not make big profits.
Do you think those Exxon employees are going to go out of their way to improve things next time? Do you think they're going to be loyal to the company? That's how most big businesses treat their people these days. They're nothing but "human resources"...supplies to be used, assets to be tapped. Corporate culture is going back to the old ways, paying employees as little as they possibly can while the executives live like royalty.
$50,000,000 for most people means never having to work again. Yet CEOs see sums like that multiple times in their lives. Their lifetime salaries can exceed a billion dollars. The vast majority of people won't make 1% of that in their lives. I'm saying that CEOs don't need that much and wouldn't miss that kind of money if it hadn't become such a trend to give huge bonuses to begin with.
They earned their position by going through the ranks either at the company they are at or others.
No, for the most part the CEOs have their jobs because of the silver spoon they were born with. That spoon put them through college and allowed them to get the key positions necessary to maneuver into a CEO position.
The CEOs who worked their way up don't need $50M bonuses...they own the company, its profit is their profit.
Amazing all the people who cry about CEO's getting big paychecks totally ignore sports stars and actors/actresses who rake in large amounts of dough. Sorry, but I have far more respect for any CEO that those other groups.
I don't disagree with you at all here. But the income levels of entertainers (which both actors and athletes really are) is outside the scope of the post which prompted this discussion.
There is a difference, though. In the case of actors and athletes, their income is directly related to their ability to sell tickets. It's a sort of speculative commission: the hottest actors get tens of millions per movie because their casting translates directly into ticket sales. When twenty-odd baskbetball players can sell 60,000 tickets per game for an entire season plus merchandise plus draw television audiences that generate advertising revenue, they *should* get a huge paycheck. The consuming public is responsible for their salaries; we'll spend the money, and they get paid for it.
On the other hand, a CEO is given credit for the performance of tens of thousands employees. While Michael Jordan's ability to generate income can be very directly measured, a CEO's "success" relies on the performance of employees he has no contact with, an economy he has little influence over, and a thousand other factors. A business can thrive in spite of a useless CEO, and he can just soak up the credit because it can be so difficult to gauge his impact on the company.
That may be the case at GS, but I was talking about corporations in general.
Exxon's CEO pulled in nearly $50M last year, and I know a lot of Exxon employees. They're the ones drilling the wells and maintaining the equipment that Exxon can't exist without, and they get paid *decent* wages. They don't get significant end-of-year bonuses and these oil field guys are some of the hardest working people I've met.
From the CNN article:
"Lloyd Blankfein's bonus reflects earnings performance of Goldman, which earned $9.5 billion this year."
They gave away all their earnings in the form of bonuses? how generous of them.
When the peons who live paycheck to paycheck while being the backbone for a company see executives get yearly salaries totalling more than they'll make in a year, do you REALLY expect them to work hard? For the average corporate employee, the most they can hope for is a middle management position where they take blame for others' mistakes while their bosses take the credit for anything good that happens.
Companies need to remember that even a genius CEO is worthless without the underlings who follow his successful plans. Imagine if that $53,000,000 had been distributed among the employees as a company-wide bonus.
Yeah, I've had about as much headway pushing Linux as we have buying new computers. It doesn't help that I'm the only one even remotely familiar with Linux, and I'm a novice myself.
If only I could have gotten Linux to boot on those Old-World G3 Macs last year. We'd have 60 thin clients rather than putting them into storage until they are recycled.
I'm specifically thinking of a media-centric approach.
I'd like to see a server that can tune and stream live television to all the PCs and televisions in the home while recording several others for later viewing. I'd also like to see it archive DVDs for direct access from any television without having to load a disk. I'm basically envisioning a single centralized system for everything entertainment-related. As I understand WHS, it won't be quite so full-featured.
HTTP and FTP functionality would be excellent as well...HTTP for headless administration as well as anything else the user cares to do with it, and FTP because...well, it's cheap to implement and *someone* will find a good reason for it to be there if it's not included.
If and when I actually have a system running WHS, I'll have a long list of things I wish it did.
Actually, we experimented with this last year. The cost savings weren't enough to justify the reworking of our network and time spent in deployment. It'd have taken us years to see a significant cost benefit, and the school board would never have gone for the initial investment based on such a slow return.
It's not the managers you have to put up with in most schools. It's the elected people who know nothing about education or the technology it uses, yet have all the power over both.
Good luck with that $400 phone, I'll stick with my free-with-purchase one :D
As for the "New Bugs for Old" thing, we really don't see it that way. Sure there will be some minor bugs with the OS, but the switch would force us into using a lot of web-based software, which is what we want. That essentially removes our software-related bugs.
I learned something very early with my wife: when she hits ovulation, she's less interested me when I'm clean-cut and smelling good and all that and more interested in me when I haven't shaved, have been working outside all day, and am wearing some pretty rough-looking clothes.
The theory is that she goes for rugged-looking me because it makes me look stronger and tougher and so I look like a better choice for reproduction. "Strong man make strong babies" or something like that.
Knowing when she ovulates means knowing which days I can skip shaving and don't have to clean up before giving her a kiss after doing yardwork.
How appropriately named you are.
Microsoft thinks people:
1) Are increasingly moving toward a multi-PC household, with a desktop, laptop, and one or more computers for their children.
2) Are willing to spend money on a low-end server to accomodate the growing demand for shared files and applications.
3) Are looking for a way to get the most out of their WMC PC and their new XBOX 360 by streaming video.
Personally, I've been predicting this move since Media Center was announced. It's a logical step toward the "digital home" that we've heard so much about. WHS won't do anything near everything I want it to, but it's a step in the right direction. I'm hoping this will up the ante and get some good, easier-to-use OSS servers designed around home use.