Re:Ethics in just 5 days?
on
Hacker Boot Camp
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Sorry, but people can't really learn ethics in a 5 day camp. Ethics begin at home and in early childhood. It comes from the people who raise you and the people you're around as you grow."
So, let me see if I understand what you're saying: If a teacher makes a list of situtaions that are both ethical and non-ethical, and teaches his pupil which is right and which is wrong, this will have absolutely no effect...? Are you sure you're not over-generalizing here?
"And your manager was okay with you turning down sales for him?"
I used to work at Funcoland, if anybody remembers that store these days. My boss would likely have been pretty happy with me there. Yes, it was a turned down sale, but I also would have been doing my job as "Games Advisor". I had to keep the customers happy, and that meant giving good advice about which games to buy. I can imagine the parents being rather happy if I had stopped them to say "Are you aware of the content of this game?"
I think this law is pretty damned silly, but I have a lot of respect for the dude for doing what he did. If that were more commonplace, these laws would have even less ground to walk on.
"I could gold-plate a cow turd to create the most expensive cow turd in the world... but that doesn't make it any BETTER than any other piece of shit out there!"
Well, you can keep the non-gold-plated cow turd. I'll take that other one off your hands.
BTW, I just reread my previous post, and I wanted to apologize for sounding doubtful about what you said regarding battery life. It wasn't my intention to challenge you or anything like that. It was meant to be more like "I'll accept that", but I utterly failed to communicate that. Serves me right for trying to post while arguing with somebody on ICQ.
I understand where you're coming from, but I have a different perspective on it. My computer has all my music on it. I am near a computer most of my waking life. My work computer has my music as well. That's where I listen to all of my 'spontaneous' music. A portable player is worthless to me as a "use it during most of my waking hours" device. What I *do* have one for is for long car trips or when I'm out and about. In that case, having all of my music at my disposal is nice, but hardly something I seriously demand. I certainly don't need it enough to spend $300 on. It's really hard to justify when a gig of space can hold more than 10 hours of music. And, although it's slow, I can use it as a USB storage device. I have a seperate disc available just for that. Dirt cheap.
I'm glad your iPod is serving you well, but I have different needs. Heck, I'm one of those people who actually prefers a subscription service, though most around here would look at me funny about that.
"...and flash costs hardly any more. 1GB Secure Digital can be had for $27.14 at NewEgg."
That's almost 4x as much.
"And unlike your MiniDisc, you can use it in your other devices as well. Got an SD digital camera? (Most of them use it these days...) Just pop that card out of your MP3 player and into the digicam."... and toss all the music you have on it right now, to boot. I don't hear of people doing this often.
"Flash memory prices are continuing to fall, and capacities continuing to rise, and fairly quickly as well."
Yep, you're absolutely right. The Mini disc option was a lot more interesting a year ago when I originally bought it. Bear in mind, I'm not arguing that in most cases Sony's machine would be a better purchase. I'm arguing against the idea that it's a 100% total write-off. If the software wasn't so ridiculously stupid, I'd be fairly happy with this little guy. It really does have good battery life.
Cheap expandability. $8 buys you another gig of storage. It also lasts 20+ hours on a single AA battery.
That said, I wouldn't really recommend it over a Nano unless somebody had the opportunity to pick up a cheap used one. That software really is a pain in the ass.
" I guess if I wanted to look like a dork and carry around 30 1GB minidiscs, swap them every 5 minutes, and deal with the hassle of remembering which music is on which disc, I would go with that format."
Um, you lost me here. Lots of people would be just fine with only a gig for their music. 10 hours of music right there. They would most certainly NOT be swapping it every 5 minutes.
I have one of these. It really is a pity the software for it isn't such a pain in the ass. Otherwise, it'd be just fine for me. All of my music is on my computer. That's primarily where I listen to it. The Hi-MD player is great for jogging, long drives, and it's easy on the budget. No, I won't be putting my entire music collection on it, and no you're not going to find any dorks carrying around 30 discs with them. Niether are required.
"Flash-based MP3 players have the ability to equal or better MiniDisc players on every single count - reliability, size, weight, upgradeability, shock resistance, water resistance, speed, versatility (how many computers have built-in MiniDisc drives, versus built-in flash readers), etc. etc."
Almost, but not quite. You can buy a 1 gig disc for $8. I agree with your other points, but I wanted to mention this one because this is the reason I own one. (and, yes, I'd rather have an iPod.)
"I'm sorry, but I don't want to shop at my ATM. I want to do one thing - Deposit and withdraw money."
I understand and agree with your comments about exploits. I don't want those either. But this statement that I quoted here, well I just don't agree with that. I buy stamps at the ATM all the time. Another poster said that ATMs where he lives can be used to pay off utility companies. I wouldn't mind that, either. (Admittedly, though, I typically use the internet for this so I cannot say I'm dying for it.) Just using a little imagination here, I can see purchasing movie tickets at an ATM. Does the world need it? Nah. But I'm sure that's the sort of thing I'd use once or twice.
I agree that there's little need for a multi-media show when using ATMs, but there is something to be said for the convenience of getting other things done with an ATM.
Honestly man, if they start extending past April 1st, I can totally sympathize. But I learned ages ago that April 1st is a writeoff for Slashdot. For that matter, just about any other news site as well. In the 3D Art Community I'm active in, there's all kinds of BS stories flying around. From my point of view, it's easier to just smile and avoid news that day than it is to get worked up about it.
Don't get me wrong, I understand your frustration, but by tomorrow, it's over. No biggie.
This has been true for years. Seriously, every single fucking year, blah blah blah SLashdot sucks on April 1st. I don't know why you guys are so dependent on this site.
"I don't know what the most frightening aspect of this topic is. -The extraordinarily detailed answers from people who spend a lot of time thinking about this sort of thing. -The retarded answers from people who don't spend a lot of time thinking about this sort of thing. -The retarded jokes forthcoming about people's pulsing hot lightsabers -The prospect of spending all day sifting through stuff like this looking for real news -The fact that I'm rather curious about this myself."
The retarded "Here's an almost comprehensive list of what's wrong with this topic..." posts.
"I remember back in the day when April Fools news stories were discreet and you had to spend a couple of seconds/minutes looking at them to see whether they were fake or not."
My favorite is when Slashdot disabled anonymous posting.
"My subscription shouldn't pay for this tired old crap, you cunts!"
Bitch bitch bitch.
Slashdot does this EVERY year. You don't have any excuse for buying a Slashdot subscription if the one day out of the year they act a little silly is a deal breaker.
"The DS Lite is expected to have a theoretical battery life of 15 hours..."
I wouldn't take that for granted just as yet. The DS Lite has a larger capacity battery, but it also has a much brighter screen. Now maybe my information isn't as up to date as yours, but it read to me like the extra battery capacity was needed for the screen, not because they were trying to double the life.
Take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, though. I personally am not expecting greater battery life from the Lite. Either I'll be satisfied or I'll be pleasantly surprised.:)
"even if we're prepared to accept that there's a causal link in this case between observation and mimicking, surely that he played it 'obsessively' is enough to reject the argument. if you eat/drink/smoke/gamble/have sex/do anything 'obsessively' there are bound to be negative consequences."
What gets me is that if somebody did play GTA so obsessively that they tried to play it for real, they'd not only know that killing will bring the cops down on your ass, but that it's also a roll of the dice whether they'll get caught or not. The game also shows you that guns kill, cars kill, golf clubs kill, and chainsaws kill. Supposing he did run out and shoot somebody, there is absolutely no way he could claim that he didn't know what he was doing.
" Movies that required a $300 device to play and were lower resolution than DVDs?"
Resolution isn't the problem. The resolution of the PSP is fine. The problem is the inability to play it on TV. No video out on the PSP, no Sony DVD player with a UMD slot. Frankly, I'm amazed that Sony is this stupid. With 1.5 gigs of storage, they could not only have stored a DVD quality MPEG 4 (or related) version of the movie, they could ALSO have provided a PSP optimized version of the movie on the same disc. (Assuming this is even necessary considering the PSP's ability to resize imagery etc.) If Sony had gone in this direction, the purchase of UMD media would have been based on different factors. It would ask people to buy their format instead of DVD, as opposed to buying it along with a DVD. The PSP would have been a nice touch to get people to 'invest' in their new movie purchases.
Would that have worked? Elephino. At the very least, though, more thought would have been put into the whole UMD purchase decision.
Slashdot Mirror
"Sorry, but people can't really learn ethics in a 5 day camp. Ethics begin at home and in early childhood. It comes from the people who raise you and the people you're around as you grow."
So, let me see if I understand what you're saying: If a teacher makes a list of situtaions that are both ethical and non-ethical, and teaches his pupil which is right and which is wrong, this will have absolutely no effect...? Are you sure you're not over-generalizing here?
"And your manager was okay with you turning down sales for him?"
I used to work at Funcoland, if anybody remembers that store these days. My boss would likely have been pretty happy with me there. Yes, it was a turned down sale, but I also would have been doing my job as "Games Advisor". I had to keep the customers happy, and that meant giving good advice about which games to buy. I can imagine the parents being rather happy if I had stopped them to say "Are you aware of the content of this game?"
I think this law is pretty damned silly, but I have a lot of respect for the dude for doing what he did. If that were more commonplace, these laws would have even less ground to walk on.
"How is one closed/propriatary DRM scheme "more standard" than any other?"
For the simple reason that you can buy a bunch of different players that'll play the format. Next question?
"I could gold-plate a cow turd to create the most expensive cow turd in the world... but that doesn't make it any BETTER than any other piece of shit out there!"
Well, you can keep the non-gold-plated cow turd. I'll take that other one off your hands.
Fair enough.
BTW, I just reread my previous post, and I wanted to apologize for sounding doubtful about what you said regarding battery life. It wasn't my intention to challenge you or anything like that. It was meant to be more like "I'll accept that", but I utterly failed to communicate that. Serves me right for trying to post while arguing with somebody on ICQ.
"The whole idea is to fool people. But now it's to pretend to fool people."
It wasn't funny. BFD. News Flash: Slashdot has historically been monumentally un-funny on April 1st.
I'm unfamiliar with that device. I'll have to take your word for it. I've never heard of an iPod Nano with that kind of battery life.
I understand where you're coming from, but I have a different perspective on it. My computer has all my music on it. I am near a computer most of my waking life. My work computer has my music as well. That's where I listen to all of my 'spontaneous' music. A portable player is worthless to me as a "use it during most of my waking hours" device. What I *do* have one for is for long car trips or when I'm out and about. In that case, having all of my music at my disposal is nice, but hardly something I seriously demand. I certainly don't need it enough to spend $300 on. It's really hard to justify when a gig of space can hold more than 10 hours of music. And, although it's slow, I can use it as a USB storage device. I have a seperate disc available just for that. Dirt cheap.
I'm glad your iPod is serving you well, but I have different needs. Heck, I'm one of those people who actually prefers a subscription service, though most around here would look at me funny about that.
"...and flash costs hardly any more. 1GB Secure Digital can be had for $27.14 at NewEgg."
... and toss all the music you have on it right now, to boot. I don't hear of people doing this often.
That's almost 4x as much.
"And unlike your MiniDisc, you can use it in your other devices as well. Got an SD digital camera? (Most of them use it these days...) Just pop that card out of your MP3 player and into the digicam."
"Flash memory prices are continuing to fall, and capacities continuing to rise, and fairly quickly as well."
Yep, you're absolutely right. The Mini disc option was a lot more interesting a year ago when I originally bought it. Bear in mind, I'm not arguing that in most cases Sony's machine would be a better purchase. I'm arguing against the idea that it's a 100% total write-off. If the software wasn't so ridiculously stupid, I'd be fairly happy with this little guy. It really does have good battery life.
Cheap expandability. $8 buys you another gig of storage. It also lasts 20+ hours on a single AA battery.
That said, I wouldn't really recommend it over a Nano unless somebody had the opportunity to pick up a cheap used one. That software really is a pain in the ass.
" I guess if I wanted to look like a dork and carry around 30 1GB minidiscs, swap them every 5 minutes, and deal with the hassle of remembering which music is on which disc, I would go with that format."
Um, you lost me here. Lots of people would be just fine with only a gig for their music. 10 hours of music right there. They would most certainly NOT be swapping it every 5 minutes.
I have one of these. It really is a pity the software for it isn't such a pain in the ass. Otherwise, it'd be just fine for me. All of my music is on my computer. That's primarily where I listen to it. The Hi-MD player is great for jogging, long drives, and it's easy on the budget. No, I won't be putting my entire music collection on it, and no you're not going to find any dorks carrying around 30 discs with them. Niether are required.
In short, your argument is bogus.
"Flash-based MP3 players have the ability to equal or better MiniDisc players on every single count - reliability, size, weight, upgradeability, shock resistance, water resistance, speed, versatility (how many computers have built-in MiniDisc drives, versus built-in flash readers), etc. etc."
Almost, but not quite. You can buy a 1 gig disc for $8. I agree with your other points, but I wanted to mention this one because this is the reason I own one. (and, yes, I'd rather have an iPod.)
"I'm sorry, but I don't want to shop at my ATM. I want to do one thing - Deposit and withdraw money."
I understand and agree with your comments about exploits. I don't want those either. But this statement that I quoted here, well I just don't agree with that. I buy stamps at the ATM all the time. Another poster said that ATMs where he lives can be used to pay off utility companies. I wouldn't mind that, either. (Admittedly, though, I typically use the internet for this so I cannot say I'm dying for it.) Just using a little imagination here, I can see purchasing movie tickets at an ATM. Does the world need it? Nah. But I'm sure that's the sort of thing I'd use once or twice.
I agree that there's little need for a multi-media show when using ATMs, but there is something to be said for the convenience of getting other things done with an ATM.
Minos? Muons? Soudan? They're just making stuff up! This article just reeks of April Fools!! /Peter Griffin Voice
Honestly man, if they start extending past April 1st, I can totally sympathize. But I learned ages ago that April 1st is a writeoff for Slashdot. For that matter, just about any other news site as well. In the 3D Art Community I'm active in, there's all kinds of BS stories flying around. From my point of view, it's easier to just smile and avoid news that day than it is to get worked up about it.
Don't get me wrong, I understand your frustration, but by tomorrow, it's over. No biggie.
"Slashdot SUCKS on april 1st."
This has been true for years. Seriously, every single fucking year, blah blah blah SLashdot sucks on April 1st. I don't know why you guys are so dependent on this site.
So... is doing a Wookiee legal in most states?
"I don't know what the most frightening aspect of this topic is.
-The extraordinarily detailed answers from people who spend a lot of time thinking about this sort of thing.
-The retarded answers from people who don't spend a lot of time thinking about this sort of thing.
-The retarded jokes forthcoming about people's pulsing hot lightsabers
-The prospect of spending all day sifting through stuff like this looking for real news
-The fact that I'm rather curious about this myself."
The retarded "Here's an almost comprehensive list of what's wrong with this topic..." posts.
"I remember back in the day when April Fools news stories were discreet and you had to spend a couple of seconds/minutes looking at them to see whether they were fake or not."
My favorite is when Slashdot disabled anonymous posting.
"My subscription shouldn't pay for this tired old crap, you cunts!"
Bitch bitch bitch.
Slashdot does this EVERY year. You don't have any excuse for buying a Slashdot subscription if the one day out of the year they act a little silly is a deal breaker.
"That depends where you live. The world doesn't revolve around the USA..."
Mm hmm. It is 9:23pm in New York City, March 31st, as of my current post here.
Not everybody who thinks the world revolves around them is from the USA.
"The DS Lite is expected to have a theoretical battery life of 15 hours..."
:)
I wouldn't take that for granted just as yet. The DS Lite has a larger capacity battery, but it also has a much brighter screen. Now maybe my information isn't as up to date as yours, but it read to me like the extra battery capacity was needed for the screen, not because they were trying to double the life.
Take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, though. I personally am not expecting greater battery life from the Lite. Either I'll be satisfied or I'll be pleasantly surprised.
"Tech website Slashdot article links to vulnerability exploiting websites. Read more here"
Read more here? That wouldn't work. They should say "Click here to comment..."
"even if we're prepared to accept that there's a causal link in this case between observation and mimicking, surely that he played it 'obsessively' is enough to reject the argument. if you eat/drink/smoke/gamble/have sex/do anything 'obsessively' there are bound to be negative consequences."
What gets me is that if somebody did play GTA so obsessively that they tried to play it for real, they'd not only know that killing will bring the cops down on your ass, but that it's also a roll of the dice whether they'll get caught or not. The game also shows you that guns kill, cars kill, golf clubs kill, and chainsaws kill. Supposing he did run out and shoot somebody, there is absolutely no way he could claim that he didn't know what he was doing.
" Movies that required a $300 device to play and were lower resolution than DVDs?"
Resolution isn't the problem. The resolution of the PSP is fine. The problem is the inability to play it on TV. No video out on the PSP, no Sony DVD player with a UMD slot. Frankly, I'm amazed that Sony is this stupid. With 1.5 gigs of storage, they could not only have stored a DVD quality MPEG 4 (or related) version of the movie, they could ALSO have provided a PSP optimized version of the movie on the same disc. (Assuming this is even necessary considering the PSP's ability to resize imagery etc.) If Sony had gone in this direction, the purchase of UMD media would have been based on different factors. It would ask people to buy their format instead of DVD, as opposed to buying it along with a DVD. The PSP would have been a nice touch to get people to 'invest' in their new movie purchases.
Would that have worked? Elephino. At the very least, though, more thought would have been put into the whole UMD purchase decision.