Developers are a problem too. I mean come on, Rockstar was an idiot with this whole sex game thing. They obviously didn't include it in the normal game because they felt it was too much. They should have never left that content in the game. And, if they are bound and determined to make an "adult" game, they need to stop being so half way about it and just make an adult content game.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Rockstar and other game companies are doing exactly what music labels and movie producers have been doing for years. They know how difficult it is for parents to control what their children hear, see, and play. They know what titilates teenagers, a market with tremendous disposable income and the time to spend it.
Of course Rockstar can't control who plays their games, regardless of how they are labelled. But it could also be said that as a purveyor of wildly successful games, they have a responsibility beyond the bottom line. I find it bothersome that people get on Slashdot and bash the crap out of Microsoft, Apple, IBM, et. al. for their business maneuverings, but the moment anyone cries foul at the games industry, the shield goes up and everyone rallies around companies that promote murder, misogyny, theft, and a host of other sociopathic behaviors.
I'm not in favor of legislation forcing Rockstar and other game companies to change their games. I think the rating system could use better enforcement. I also think game companies are out for big money, and they don't really give a rat's ass about the effect their games have on society.
Very different. Apple charges for each and every software upgrade/update. They've been doing it with OSX since it came out. I don't even know how mayn iterations they came out with, but each time, I remember reading articles about people standing in line outside the stores, waiting for the second that they could buy the "new" software. And from what I understand, they are all relatively minor updates and they seem to happen every year or so.
That's false. Here's how it actually works.
Every year, Apple comes up with a major upgrade to OS X. These upgrades are numbered 10.2, 10.3, and so on. The most recent, 10.4, includes a boatload of entirely new features, including system-wide Spotlight searches, Automator scripting tools, Dashboard widgets, smart folders, burnable folders, and many other small feature improvements that make a difference in the utlility of the OS. Not every Mac user upgrades to the latest rev each year, but in my experience each.x upgrade has been worth the $130 price, because Apple is adding to the capabilities of the OS.
Microsoft's Windows Service Packs are quite different. They're collections of bug fixes, security updates, and application compatibiliity fixes. Apple provides those too, but they're handled as.x.x releases (10.3.1, 10.3.2, etc.), and they're free.
The Microsoft approach is to come out with one major release every several years, and market it as a wholly different operating system. The Apple approach is to come out with significant improvements to OS X each year, and to market each release as a better version of OS X.
You've underscored the unfortunate reality: most consumers don't care. If the Slashdot sentiment were correct, it would have been eMusic (or Magnatunes, or MP3Tunes, or another one of the struggling DRM-free sites) in the article headline, and some lone Slashdotter would have been exhorting others to give the iTMS a chance.
I'm not sure that consumers don't care, but they care more about the actual music than the format in which it arrives. Anyone who talks first about the format, then secondly about the actual music found on the store is missing the big picture. For better or worse, people want music they like (and have been told to like), not music they've never heard of, from acts that couldn't land a big contract.
Any scheme with the premise that INNOCENT NONINFINGING PEOPLE face PRISON is draconian and evil.
I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding at the heart of your message. I did not support the DMCA, and I *do* support the DMCRA. But you're conflating two very different issues.
The first issue is whether in the United States the interpretation of fair use of copyrighted works should be radically restricted, restricted somewhat, or rolled back to where it was when the Betamax ruling came down from the Supreme Court. You could certainly make the case that the DMCA is draconian and utterly unbalanced in favor of copyright holders, and I'd agree with that.
The second issue is whether a company that is trying to expand the market for paid music downloads (and make money in the process) is going to be capable of doing so without introducing some form of DRM, *given the current state of American laws*. As a business case, there are several ways to incorporate DRM, and Apple chose a DRM that for the vast majority of users seems to present no problem (it may be that there is a huge underground of disgruntled iTunes purchasers, but I haven't seen evidence of this).
Do you see the iTunes model as "sharing?" Downloading, sure, but the model is clearly focused on a single provider. Maybe I misunderstood your last sentence, but it seemed a bit inaccurate.
I was referring to the sharing of music once it has been downloaded initially, whether from a P2P source or iTMS. If I am using unrestricted MP3 files, I can share them over a P2P network once I obtain them from someone else. If I am using FairPlay-protected AAC files, I can burn CDs for friends and pass the files on to different computers, but not in an unlimited fashion.
Hey, I have no problems with being pragmatic and knowing whch way the wind blows but giving it a honourable spin based on nothing more than your impressions on Apple is freaking retarded.
I didn't ascribe "honorouble" motives to Apple. I clearly stated that they were trying to grow the market and make money. That seems fairly pragmatic to me.
The reason that 3rd party plugs aren't allowed in iTunes is because they would be used to circumvent the measures that Apple has taken to apease the labels, and I think we can all agree that if they were allowed, that's exactly what most of them would do.
I agree. One of the problems with these conspiracy theories is that they ignore the realities of give and take in a competitive environment. Apple had to get in bed with the RIAA in order to get the ball rolling with the iTunes store, which was a critical component of their iPod strategy. Apple seems to have figured that there's money to be made in a legal download market that doesn't include draconian DRM.
Apple may or may not like the RIAA, but that's beside the point. Their goal is to grow the digital music market and take a slice of that growing market. The only way for them to do that was to come up with a compromise solution, and they only way to protect that compromise is to keep iTunes from becoming a Trojan Horse for pirating.
You can look at Apple's use of DRM as the first step on the road to further restrictions on fair use rights, or you can look at it as the first step toward getting the RIAA to see that there's middle ground between totally unlimited sharing and no sharing at all.
You seem to be making the argument that essentially a habitable planet is a habitable planet is a habitable planet. Don't you think, though, that if Earth had three suns, life might have evolved in a vastly different fashion?
I don't know the answer, but it does seem to me that many of the assumptions we take for granted about organic life and its development might not apply on a world with three suns. For example, on a "desert planet" like Tatooine, there may be no aquatic mammals. Assuming current speculation about the evolution of mammals on Earth is true, perhaps on a desert planet large-brained creatures might not ever evolve.
My ignorance in matters of biology outstrips my knowledge of the subject by a wide margin, so I am just poking around curiously to see what others think.
Actually, for as much of our culture that's dictated by the sun, a *lot* of it is dictated by the moon.
Excellent points, of course. This all makes me think of an exercise that my Physical Anthropology prof in college used to run each year. He'd invite anthropologists, artists, psychologists, writers, paleontologists, historians, engineers, of all stripes together for the creation of a mock species.
The group would start out with a skull, created by one or two of the participants. Then everyone would extrapolate the creatures form, it's level of intellect, and how its society would have evolved based on its physical characteristics. I don't recall, but I believe the assumption was that the critter evolved on an Earth-like planet.
It would be interesting to create a gathering akin to this, but postulating the creation of a world instead. Describe its relative solar position, the number, proximity and size of its moons, and so on, then theorize as to how evolution would have proceeded on such a planet, and take that evolution to the point of human-level intellect. The resulting world could be pretty amazing - moreso perhaps than the vast majority of the worlds we are exposed to in run of the mill sci-fi.
Imagine if such a planet were habitable (that is, a planet with three suns). Think about how much of our human existence is dictated by the cycles of our single sun. I wonder how different things would be with three suns.
Would agriculture ever start? Would dwellings all be subterranean? Would concepts of work and play be utterly different? Religions would evolve differently. Would gender roles be affected?
Does anyone know of a work of science fiction that delves into this, in the way that The Left Hand of Darkness explored gender issues?
Quit drinking the koolaid, dipshit.
Hey, how'd you know I was drinking Kool-Aid?! Damn, you're a jeenyus!
No sysadmin in his right mind runs OSX.
Brilliant! Can't wait for more! I can tell this is gonna be a fact-filled, detailed primer on what to do right. Give me the straight dope, dude. I'm waiting for it.
Unless he doesn't want *real* support.
Ah, yes. I get it. What you mean is that if you buy Apple products, you won't get *real* support. I don't know what that means or who does provide *real* support, but I guess that's because I'm a dipshit. Damn! I hate when that happens!
Or performance.
I thought Apple hardware was sexy, but I guess it doesn't really "put out" the way other hardware does. I don't need factual comparisons. You're teaching me a lot here. I can't wait to read the next kernel of wisdom.
Or security.
Yeah, OS X is a fucking sieve! If it's not trojan horses it's Mail.app viruses and malware. Every zombie machine out there is running OS X. It's a plague on us all. Fucking Apple!
Or configurability.
I never thought about that, but you're so right. That one configuration fits all XServe sucks major goat ass.
Or standards.
You said it, buddy! I wish Apple would get with the program. I mean, I can run WebStar on OS 8, but why don't they wake up and smell the coffee? It's 1996, and the world is changing. If Apple doesn't wake up, this World Wide Web thing is going to really catch them off guard.
Or a real journaling file system.
That's like *real* support, right? You must mean that HFS+ isn't *real*. I think I'm starting to understand, but you're so brilliant you may have to slow down so I can catch up.
Or real hardware.
Ah, I'm on to you now, you clever sysad, you! This is another one of those "it's not *real*" things. It looks like the hardware is there, doing its job, but it's actually not.
Thanks for clearing this all up, AC. I really learned a lot, and am looking forward to more comments from you. It's going to be tough to read them all though, because you sure are prolific!
Because one general in an obscure military journal tossed out the idea doesn't mean that the US supports this position, is working towards achieving this goal, or really much else.
Space Command is a relatively new command in the USAF structure. The guy in charge of Space Command is obviously going to be interested in making the Command look as important and useful as possible. However, the generals at the top of the pecking order in the US military are not the uneducated buffoons of Dr. Strangelove caricatures. These days they all have advanced degrees and are extraordinarily deft politicians in the corridors the Pentagon.
Military journals are usually obscure to outsiders, but they can on occasion be hugely influential within the military community. They can influence training, doctrine, and the consensus view of what a branch's mission constitutes. So there is some potential that in time this journal article will be looked back on as the moment when the ball started rolling.
The general in question (an airman, not a soldier) is doing what he's supposed to do - he's thinking ahead to the future and thinking of worst-case scenarios and how to prevent them. That being said, the higher-ups at the Pentagon still have to prioritize their spending needs, and they still have to get authorization from Congress before proceeding on any serious plans to take control of LaGrange Points.
Bottom Line: The cat is out of the bag, and some people in USAF are thinking about LaGrange Points. Whether control of them becomes a USAF goal, a Pentagon goal, or a US goal is, as you deftly pointed out, completely unknown.
Make school about learning, not socialization
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Improving Education?
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The American public school system was developed as a means of socializing Americans. Because the US is an immigrant nation, this socializing function was at one time very important. Now of course, mass media performs that function much more powerfully than the K-12 school system.
I recall at my highly stratified high school the exchange students from Europe told me how startling the cliques and power structures were to them. Not having been to school in Germany or the Netherlands, I don't know if they were exaggerating or not. Regardless, the stereotypes of jocks, nerds, socialites and so on doesn't just exist in the movies. It's real in American schools.
It seems to me that any attempt to clean up the American education system must be based first and foremost on changing the emphasis of the system from socialization to education. Teaching young people in a way that provides them critical thinking and learning tools that will last a lifetime is vastly different than presenting students a standard package of information they merely have to regurgitate.
The current system provides good opportunities for those students who for whatever reason (internal motivation, excellent teachers, involved parents, an upper-class school district) are fired up to succeed. But the vast majority of students are in the middle, and they are justifiably unengaged by a system that doesn't expect and require true intellectual engagement.
There are of course other factors, such as parental involvement, the larger social attitude towards intellectual achievement, the manner in which schools are funded locally, poor teacher pay, and the deadly grip of teachers' unions. Perhaps they all need to be attacked simultaneously.
That's for sure. I picked up the 2nd ed. rules in about 1982-83, and it was the first time I'd ever seen a skills-based RPG system. The world of Glorantha was also years ahead of anything TSR published, because Chaosium rightly focused on the histories, the religions, and the beliefs of the world's denizens, rather than on valueless data and charts upon charts upon charts.
Even more than previous bizarre new TLDs, this one is all about money. The idea is that companies with successful.com addresses will need to buy.mobi domains in order hedge against encroachment. Whether you already have a mobile-capable website or not, you'll want to grab the domain to protect your existing brand marketing in the.com address. If you have a mobile-capable website you may put up an alternate home page for mobile-only at the.mobi webroot, but there's no reason to maintain two separate sites on separate domains. If you don't have a mobile-capable website, the existence of the.mobi TLD isn't going to make you build one any faster.
With.tv, and.web already out there, what's next? Why not.pda? Or.cam? When clothes become 'Net enabled, maybe we'll see.gap.
Or are willing to pay for their music and then liberate it using Jhymn [hymn-project.org].
The overwhelming majority of iTunes users don't even know Jhymn even exists, and they likely don't care, either. I can use iTunes music on up to five computers, plus every iPod I own. Until someone can come out with a portable MP3 player that beats the snot out of the iPod, people will continue to find the iTunes DRM acceptable.
RuneQuest's 2nd and 3rd edition rules were brilliant in their simplicity. Mechanics were skill-based, combat had a realistic feel but proceeded rapidly, and the system was so flexible and easy to use that GMs could adapt on the fly. The system encouraged creativity and never had a dogmatic feel. The RQ rules were modified slightly for Call of Cthulhu, which ultimately became a far more popular and long-lived game.
The problem I have with d20 is not that it creates standardized rules. In theory a standardized set of core rules could lead to more creative individual game suppliments and worlds. But that's only if the game system itself is open-ended and flexible enough to allow for wide variety without necessitating endless reams of additional world-specific rules.
One of the worst things about D&D and the d20 system is its emphasis on classes. Sure, characters can multiclass, but that only adds to the confusion. I find it much more interesting when characters are not identifiable as being of a certain class. Classes are essentially templates, and even when you modify them by creating many options within the class, you're still creating an artificial and needlessly confusing system.
I heartily concur with you that story and roleplaying are at the heart of truly satisfying roleplaying. Rules facilitate great games, but too many rules bury the game in the overhead of excessive die rolls and rules consultations.
I'm part of group of friends who have known each other since high school, when we spent a lot of time gaming. We are now all approaching our 40s, and for many years we have only been able to get together infrequently at best for gaming sessions. But when we do get together, usually I GM a game. Recently we have experimented with games in which the players don't even have standard character sheets.
They know their relative strengths and weaknesses, and have a list of what things they're good at and to what relative degree. The game mechanics are invisible to the players. I let them know when they have to make a good roll, and what it is for, but other than that, the certainty of numbers is removed from the equation altogether.
When your character is hit and bleeding, feeling woozy and impaired in his ability to fight; but you as a player don't know how many hit points the character has left (or even how many he had when healthy), it puts the uncertainty back into the game and forces a player to think like a character.
This approach doesn't work all the time, and I don't recommend it as the be all, end all of pencil and paper gaming, but to me it's a reminder that roleplaying games are about letting your imagination take charge.
I somehow got the impression that the submitter has spent a whole bunch of time on slashdot, but not much at all outside of his parent's basement.
I've actually been living out on my own for about 20 years now, and I own a web development business. I know the number of people making money by writing Open Source software is rather small.
My question seems to have raised a lot of hackles, because the repsonses haven't been at all uniform. Without the idealists who created Free Software and the Open Source movement, there would be no JBoss, no Red Hat, et. al. The flip side is that without the hard-nosed businessmen who saw innovative ways of structuring their businesses around Open Source, the adoption of Open Source software may have permanently stalled.
I've read plenty about how the "suits" don't understand the motivation of programmers who develop Open Source tools. I was simply surprised to see Fleury take the flip side of the coin and seemingly distill the entire Open Source movement down to the profit motive, then dismiss those who don't embrace his particular ethos and business tactics as chumps.
This is why the EFF loses the big cases, they are always fighting the wrong battle, the Constitution does not enshrine the right to pirate tunes, quite the contrary it establishes Copyrights.
So basically you're saying that the EFF is not effectively protecting "real" civil rights online. By defending Grokster, they're actually promoting a cause that has nothing to do with civil rights as enshrined in the Constitution. In casting too broad a net, they're making it more difficult not only for themselves, but for other civil rights organizations to defend core Constitutional rights that apply to the electronic sphere.
If I've paraphrased your argument correctly, it does make sense to me. It is interesting that I've heard the same case made against the ACLU. Because the ACLU often takes positions on behalf of some incredibly venal people (the KKK for example), they are often accused of being completely unbalanced in favor of individual rights as opposed to the well being of society at large. The ACLU philosophy is that individual rights must be defended as a matter of principle, and the law can only work properly if everyone's civil rights are defended.
I'm not sure if the EFF has the same philosophy. It could be that they feel every attempt to regulate Internet activity is a threat to individual freedom. It could also be that they simply feel that every time big business or the government acts to regulate what people can do on the Internet, such action should be opposed as a matter of principle. Not many people feel that Grokster deserves much sympathy, and my guess is that the EFF was defending Grokster not because they believed in what Grokster was doing as much as they were afraid of what a negative ruling would do to other, more legitimate P2P efforts.
Your premise is interesting. I'm not won over, but I am now more interested in which cases the EFF turns its attention to, how it makes policy decisions, and how the EFF and ACLU coordinate their efforts.
One final note: I agree that niche groups can't address larger issues, and I prefer it that way. I tend to fear organizations that are too broad in their mandate. The ACLU sometimes goes a bit too far for my tastes. The AARP is downright scary at times. The Family Research Council freaks me out 24/7. Smaller entities may have ideological zeal, but their limited range makes them less dangerous to society than organizations with broad scope and intense "us versus them" fervor. The absurd Blue vs. Red dilemma we find ourselves in today stems in large part from the extended power of broad groups that focus on the "big picture" rather than on more modest goals.
I agree that the ACLU is the single most effective organization in the fight for civil rights. However, the ACLU was slow to recognize the need for protections in the electronic sphere, which is part of the reason the EFF was formed in the first place.
Your argument that rights in the electronic realm are in no way separate from traditional civil rights is of course in its largest context true, but if civil rights should only be tackled by the ACLU, where does that leave the UFW (United Farm Workers), the Southern Poverty Law Center, NOW (the National Association for Women), and other organizations that tackle "niche" issues?
My take on it is that a diverse collection of organizations taking on civil rights abuses in a variety of venues is more effective than a single organization. I certainly give to only some of them, but I do like to have choices.
It seems to me that your real gripe about the EFF is that the organization is run ineffectively. Because it hasn't won as many court cases as you'd like, or rolled back legislation even in the face of massive corporate-financed Congressional power, you see it as ineffectual. But given that money donated to the EFF goes directly to the fight for online rights, while money donated to the ACLU goes to a wide array of causes, I'm not sure that support of the ACLU and exclusion of support for the EFF is such a good idea.
I hedge my bets by supporting both of them, even though I sometimes disagree with positions taken by both organizations. If you want to influence the EFF to become a more capable organization, why not get involved in it?
EFF has never won any significant legal battle it has taken on. In fact, some of the cases the EFF fought most heavily have been lost in a manner that substantially weakens the EFF positions. It is my opinion that the EFF should disband before it does more damage to our civil rights.
I don't buy your argument that the EFF hasn't won any battles. But let's assume for a moment that I do. You've convinced me that the EFF is counter-productive. Given that there are many corporate and political interests in the US that want to limit our civil liberties and control what we can do online, how will removing the EFF from the battle help us, and what would you propose in its place?
A smart industry/society would realise that if the easy stuff just got easier, we have more resources to focus on harder stuff.
Beautifully put, ABG.
I often get into arguments with a good friend of mine who feels that the GPL and other open source licenses are anathema to capitalism. His argument is that if software is devalued and consumers expect software for free, the worth of software will diminish to zero.
My rebuttal is precisely what you pointed to: It's not as if there is a finite quantity of software that can be created. As sophisticated software becomes a commodity, more sophisticated software gets developed. The average consumer doesn't have to pay for the software that runs home computers, but large organizations have to pay for the effort required to build and support specialized software.
The correlary to that is that no technology stays on top of the heap forever. Many Americans seem to think that binary computer technology is going to reign forever as the engine of economic growth. Instead, we should be paying a lot more attention to biotechnology, quantum computing, green energy, and other technologies that have tremendous growth potential.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you hit the nail on the head. Rockstar and other game companies are doing exactly what music labels and movie producers have been doing for years. They know how difficult it is for parents to control what their children hear, see, and play. They know what titilates teenagers, a market with tremendous disposable income and the time to spend it.
Of course Rockstar can't control who plays their games, regardless of how they are labelled. But it could also be said that as a purveyor of wildly successful games, they have a responsibility beyond the bottom line. I find it bothersome that people get on Slashdot and bash the crap out of Microsoft, Apple, IBM, et. al. for their business maneuverings, but the moment anyone cries foul at the games industry, the shield goes up and everyone rallies around companies that promote murder, misogyny, theft, and a host of other sociopathic behaviors.
I'm not in favor of legislation forcing Rockstar and other game companies to change their games. I think the rating system could use better enforcement. I also think game companies are out for big money, and they don't really give a rat's ass about the effect their games have on society.
That's false. Here's how it actually works.
Every year, Apple comes up with a major upgrade to OS X. These upgrades are numbered 10.2, 10.3, and so on. The most recent, 10.4, includes a boatload of entirely new features, including system-wide Spotlight searches, Automator scripting tools, Dashboard widgets, smart folders, burnable folders, and many other small feature improvements that make a difference in the utlility of the OS. Not every Mac user upgrades to the latest rev each year, but in my experience each .x upgrade has been worth the $130 price, because Apple is adding to the capabilities of the OS.
Microsoft's Windows Service Packs are quite different. They're collections of bug fixes, security updates, and application compatibiliity fixes. Apple provides those too, but they're handled as .x.x releases (10.3.1, 10.3.2, etc.), and they're free.
The Microsoft approach is to come out with one major release every several years, and market it as a wholly different operating system. The Apple approach is to come out with significant improvements to OS X each year, and to market each release as a better version of OS X.
I'm not sure that consumers don't care, but they care more about the actual music than the format in which it arrives. Anyone who talks first about the format, then secondly about the actual music found on the store is missing the big picture. For better or worse, people want music they like (and have been told to like), not music they've never heard of, from acts that couldn't land a big contract.
I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding at the heart of your message. I did not support the DMCA, and I *do* support the DMCRA. But you're conflating two very different issues.
The first issue is whether in the United States the interpretation of fair use of copyrighted works should be radically restricted, restricted somewhat, or rolled back to where it was when the Betamax ruling came down from the Supreme Court. You could certainly make the case that the DMCA is draconian and utterly unbalanced in favor of copyright holders, and I'd agree with that.
The second issue is whether a company that is trying to expand the market for paid music downloads (and make money in the process) is going to be capable of doing so without introducing some form of DRM, *given the current state of American laws*. As a business case, there are several ways to incorporate DRM, and Apple chose a DRM that for the vast majority of users seems to present no problem (it may be that there is a huge underground of disgruntled iTunes purchasers, but I haven't seen evidence of this).
I was referring to the sharing of music once it has been downloaded initially, whether from a P2P source or iTMS. If I am using unrestricted MP3 files, I can share them over a P2P network once I obtain them from someone else. If I am using FairPlay-protected AAC files, I can burn CDs for friends and pass the files on to different computers, but not in an unlimited fashion.
I didn't ascribe "honorouble" motives to Apple. I clearly stated that they were trying to grow the market and make money. That seems fairly pragmatic to me.
Bad proofreading on my part.
"more so"
This one seems to be changing a bit, but I still consider your correction to be valid.
"run-of-the-mill"
This is open to interpretation. Check out The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition, page 301, item 7.88, which discusses multiple hyphens.
I agree. One of the problems with these conspiracy theories is that they ignore the realities of give and take in a competitive environment. Apple had to get in bed with the RIAA in order to get the ball rolling with the iTunes store, which was a critical component of their iPod strategy. Apple seems to have figured that there's money to be made in a legal download market that doesn't include draconian DRM.
Apple may or may not like the RIAA, but that's beside the point. Their goal is to grow the digital music market and take a slice of that growing market. The only way for them to do that was to come up with a compromise solution, and they only way to protect that compromise is to keep iTunes from becoming a Trojan Horse for pirating.
You can look at Apple's use of DRM as the first step on the road to further restrictions on fair use rights, or you can look at it as the first step toward getting the RIAA to see that there's middle ground between totally unlimited sharing and no sharing at all.
You seem to be making the argument that essentially a habitable planet is a habitable planet is a habitable planet. Don't you think, though, that if Earth had three suns, life might have evolved in a vastly different fashion?
I don't know the answer, but it does seem to me that many of the assumptions we take for granted about organic life and its development might not apply on a world with three suns. For example, on a "desert planet" like Tatooine, there may be no aquatic mammals. Assuming current speculation about the evolution of mammals on Earth is true, perhaps on a desert planet large-brained creatures might not ever evolve.
My ignorance in matters of biology outstrips my knowledge of the subject by a wide margin, so I am just poking around curiously to see what others think.
Excellent points, of course. This all makes me think of an exercise that my Physical Anthropology prof in college used to run each year. He'd invite anthropologists, artists, psychologists, writers, paleontologists, historians, engineers, of all stripes together for the creation of a mock species.
The group would start out with a skull, created by one or two of the participants. Then everyone would extrapolate the creatures form, it's level of intellect, and how its society would have evolved based on its physical characteristics. I don't recall, but I believe the assumption was that the critter evolved on an Earth-like planet.
It would be interesting to create a gathering akin to this, but postulating the creation of a world instead. Describe its relative solar position, the number, proximity and size of its moons, and so on, then theorize as to how evolution would have proceeded on such a planet, and take that evolution to the point of human-level intellect. The resulting world could be pretty amazing - moreso perhaps than the vast majority of the worlds we are exposed to in run of the mill sci-fi.
Would agriculture ever start? Would dwellings all be subterranean? Would concepts of work and play be utterly different? Religions would evolve differently. Would gender roles be affected?
Does anyone know of a work of science fiction that delves into this, in the way that The Left Hand of Darkness explored gender issues?
Hey, how'd you know I was drinking Kool-Aid?! Damn, you're a jeenyus!
No sysadmin in his right mind runs OSX.
Brilliant! Can't wait for more! I can tell this is gonna be a fact-filled, detailed primer on what to do right. Give me the straight dope, dude. I'm waiting for it.
Unless he doesn't want *real* support.
Ah, yes. I get it. What you mean is that if you buy Apple products, you won't get *real* support. I don't know what that means or who does provide *real* support, but I guess that's because I'm a dipshit. Damn! I hate when that happens!
Or performance.
I thought Apple hardware was sexy, but I guess it doesn't really "put out" the way other hardware does. I don't need factual comparisons. You're teaching me a lot here. I can't wait to read the next kernel of wisdom.
Or security.
Yeah, OS X is a fucking sieve! If it's not trojan horses it's Mail.app viruses and malware. Every zombie machine out there is running OS X. It's a plague on us all. Fucking Apple!
Or configurability.
I never thought about that, but you're so right. That one configuration fits all XServe sucks major goat ass.
Or standards.
You said it, buddy! I wish Apple would get with the program. I mean, I can run WebStar on OS 8, but why don't they wake up and smell the coffee? It's 1996, and the world is changing. If Apple doesn't wake up, this World Wide Web thing is going to really catch them off guard.
Or a real journaling file system.
That's like *real* support, right? You must mean that HFS+ isn't *real*. I think I'm starting to understand, but you're so brilliant you may have to slow down so I can catch up.
Or real hardware.
Ah, I'm on to you now, you clever sysad, you! This is another one of those "it's not *real*" things. It looks like the hardware is there, doing its job, but it's actually not.
Thanks for clearing this all up, AC. I really learned a lot, and am looking forward to more comments from you. It's going to be tough to read them all though, because you sure are prolific!
Space Command is a relatively new command in the USAF structure. The guy in charge of Space Command is obviously going to be interested in making the Command look as important and useful as possible. However, the generals at the top of the pecking order in the US military are not the uneducated buffoons of Dr. Strangelove caricatures. These days they all have advanced degrees and are extraordinarily deft politicians in the corridors the Pentagon.
Military journals are usually obscure to outsiders, but they can on occasion be hugely influential within the military community. They can influence training, doctrine, and the consensus view of what a branch's mission constitutes. So there is some potential that in time this journal article will be looked back on as the moment when the ball started rolling.
The general in question (an airman, not a soldier) is doing what he's supposed to do - he's thinking ahead to the future and thinking of worst-case scenarios and how to prevent them. That being said, the higher-ups at the Pentagon still have to prioritize their spending needs, and they still have to get authorization from Congress before proceeding on any serious plans to take control of LaGrange Points.
Bottom Line: The cat is out of the bag, and some people in USAF are thinking about LaGrange Points. Whether control of them becomes a USAF goal, a Pentagon goal, or a US goal is, as you deftly pointed out, completely unknown.
I recall at my highly stratified high school the exchange students from Europe told me how startling the cliques and power structures were to them. Not having been to school in Germany or the Netherlands, I don't know if they were exaggerating or not. Regardless, the stereotypes of jocks, nerds, socialites and so on doesn't just exist in the movies. It's real in American schools.
It seems to me that any attempt to clean up the American education system must be based first and foremost on changing the emphasis of the system from socialization to education. Teaching young people in a way that provides them critical thinking and learning tools that will last a lifetime is vastly different than presenting students a standard package of information they merely have to regurgitate.
The current system provides good opportunities for those students who for whatever reason (internal motivation, excellent teachers, involved parents, an upper-class school district) are fired up to succeed. But the vast majority of students are in the middle, and they are justifiably unengaged by a system that doesn't expect and require true intellectual engagement.
There are of course other factors, such as parental involvement, the larger social attitude towards intellectual achievement, the manner in which schools are funded locally, poor teacher pay, and the deadly grip of teachers' unions. Perhaps they all need to be attacked simultaneously.
That's for sure. I picked up the 2nd ed. rules in about 1982-83, and it was the first time I'd ever seen a skills-based RPG system. The world of Glorantha was also years ahead of anything TSR published, because Chaosium rightly focused on the histories, the religions, and the beliefs of the world's denizens, rather than on valueless data and charts upon charts upon charts.
With .tv, and .web already out there, what's next? Why not .pda? Or .cam? When clothes become 'Net enabled, maybe we'll see .gap.
The overwhelming majority of iTunes users don't even know Jhymn even exists, and they likely don't care, either. I can use iTunes music on up to five computers, plus every iPod I own. Until someone can come out with a portable MP3 player that beats the snot out of the iPod, people will continue to find the iTunes DRM acceptable.
The problem I have with d20 is not that it creates standardized rules. In theory a standardized set of core rules could lead to more creative individual game suppliments and worlds. But that's only if the game system itself is open-ended and flexible enough to allow for wide variety without necessitating endless reams of additional world-specific rules.
One of the worst things about D&D and the d20 system is its emphasis on classes. Sure, characters can multiclass, but that only adds to the confusion. I find it much more interesting when characters are not identifiable as being of a certain class. Classes are essentially templates, and even when you modify them by creating many options within the class, you're still creating an artificial and needlessly confusing system.
I heartily concur with you that story and roleplaying are at the heart of truly satisfying roleplaying. Rules facilitate great games, but too many rules bury the game in the overhead of excessive die rolls and rules consultations.
I'm part of group of friends who have known each other since high school, when we spent a lot of time gaming. We are now all approaching our 40s, and for many years we have only been able to get together infrequently at best for gaming sessions. But when we do get together, usually I GM a game. Recently we have experimented with games in which the players don't even have standard character sheets.
They know their relative strengths and weaknesses, and have a list of what things they're good at and to what relative degree. The game mechanics are invisible to the players. I let them know when they have to make a good roll, and what it is for, but other than that, the certainty of numbers is removed from the equation altogether.
When your character is hit and bleeding, feeling woozy and impaired in his ability to fight; but you as a player don't know how many hit points the character has left (or even how many he had when healthy), it puts the uncertainty back into the game and forces a player to think like a character.
This approach doesn't work all the time, and I don't recommend it as the be all, end all of pencil and paper gaming, but to me it's a reminder that roleplaying games are about letting your imagination take charge.
I somehow got the impression that the submitter has spent a whole bunch of time on slashdot, but not much at all outside of his parent's basement.
I've actually been living out on my own for about 20 years now, and I own a web development business. I know the number of people making money by writing Open Source software is rather small.
My question seems to have raised a lot of hackles, because the repsonses haven't been at all uniform. Without the idealists who created Free Software and the Open Source movement, there would be no JBoss, no Red Hat, et. al. The flip side is that without the hard-nosed businessmen who saw innovative ways of structuring their businesses around Open Source, the adoption of Open Source software may have permanently stalled.
I've read plenty about how the "suits" don't understand the motivation of programmers who develop Open Source tools. I was simply surprised to see Fleury take the flip side of the coin and seemingly distill the entire Open Source movement down to the profit motive, then dismiss those who don't embrace his particular ethos and business tactics as chumps.
So basically you're saying that the EFF is not effectively protecting "real" civil rights online. By defending Grokster, they're actually promoting a cause that has nothing to do with civil rights as enshrined in the Constitution. In casting too broad a net, they're making it more difficult not only for themselves, but for other civil rights organizations to defend core Constitutional rights that apply to the electronic sphere.
If I've paraphrased your argument correctly, it does make sense to me. It is interesting that I've heard the same case made against the ACLU. Because the ACLU often takes positions on behalf of some incredibly venal people (the KKK for example), they are often accused of being completely unbalanced in favor of individual rights as opposed to the well being of society at large. The ACLU philosophy is that individual rights must be defended as a matter of principle, and the law can only work properly if everyone's civil rights are defended.
I'm not sure if the EFF has the same philosophy. It could be that they feel every attempt to regulate Internet activity is a threat to individual freedom. It could also be that they simply feel that every time big business or the government acts to regulate what people can do on the Internet, such action should be opposed as a matter of principle. Not many people feel that Grokster deserves much sympathy, and my guess is that the EFF was defending Grokster not because they believed in what Grokster was doing as much as they were afraid of what a negative ruling would do to other, more legitimate P2P efforts.
Your premise is interesting. I'm not won over, but I am now more interested in which cases the EFF turns its attention to, how it makes policy decisions, and how the EFF and ACLU coordinate their efforts.
One final note: I agree that niche groups can't address larger issues, and I prefer it that way. I tend to fear organizations that are too broad in their mandate. The ACLU sometimes goes a bit too far for my tastes. The AARP is downright scary at times. The Family Research Council freaks me out 24/7. Smaller entities may have ideological zeal, but their limited range makes them less dangerous to society than organizations with broad scope and intense "us versus them" fervor. The absurd Blue vs. Red dilemma we find ourselves in today stems in large part from the extended power of broad groups that focus on the "big picture" rather than on more modest goals.
Your argument that rights in the electronic realm are in no way separate from traditional civil rights is of course in its largest context true, but if civil rights should only be tackled by the ACLU, where does that leave the UFW (United Farm Workers), the Southern Poverty Law Center, NOW (the National Association for Women), and other organizations that tackle "niche" issues?
My take on it is that a diverse collection of organizations taking on civil rights abuses in a variety of venues is more effective than a single organization. I certainly give to only some of them, but I do like to have choices.
It seems to me that your real gripe about the EFF is that the organization is run ineffectively. Because it hasn't won as many court cases as you'd like, or rolled back legislation even in the face of massive corporate-financed Congressional power, you see it as ineffectual. But given that money donated to the EFF goes directly to the fight for online rights, while money donated to the ACLU goes to a wide array of causes, I'm not sure that support of the ACLU and exclusion of support for the EFF is such a good idea.
I hedge my bets by supporting both of them, even though I sometimes disagree with positions taken by both organizations. If you want to influence the EFF to become a more capable organization, why not get involved in it?
I don't buy your argument that the EFF hasn't won any battles. But let's assume for a moment that I do. You've convinced me that the EFF is counter-productive. Given that there are many corporate and political interests in the US that want to limit our civil liberties and control what we can do online, how will removing the EFF from the battle help us, and what would you propose in its place?
Beautifully put, ABG.
I often get into arguments with a good friend of mine who feels that the GPL and other open source licenses are anathema to capitalism. His argument is that if software is devalued and consumers expect software for free, the worth of software will diminish to zero.
My rebuttal is precisely what you pointed to: It's not as if there is a finite quantity of software that can be created. As sophisticated software becomes a commodity, more sophisticated software gets developed. The average consumer doesn't have to pay for the software that runs home computers, but large organizations have to pay for the effort required to build and support specialized software.
The correlary to that is that no technology stays on top of the heap forever. Many Americans seem to think that binary computer technology is going to reign forever as the engine of economic growth. Instead, we should be paying a lot more attention to biotechnology, quantum computing, green energy, and other technologies that have tremendous growth potential.