The fact remains that PCs can do quite a bit of things that tablets/phones can not
Really? Let's see...they have CPUs...RAM...SSDs...touchscreens... So what is it that these devices cannot do, but that PCs magically can do?
Oh, you must have been talking about those arbitrary and unnecessary restrictions imposed by tablet and phone makers. Unfortunately, many popular tablets and phones are being made by PC vendors and those PC vendors know a chance to profit when they see one. They just need some time to phase such systems in; they are not shying away from creating such systems, and there is no technical reason why they cannot.
Apple provides PC desktops/laptops too, which allow you to do anything you like. They will continue to do so.
...and if you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, your life will improve.
What will probably happen is that by 2015, Apple will have locked down all of their systems. User-programmable computers will be available from Apple at astoundingly high cost (because they will only be high end workstations) and should the user distribute a program Apple disapproves of, their license to use Apple's OS will be revoked and the OS will be remotely deactivated. Apple's product strategy is about control; what makes you think they will continue to make user-controlled computers once they have phased in a system to retain such control?
In fact even on mobile platforms Apple does not eliminate choice, they could shut down jailbreaking if they really wanted (or make it way harder than it is) - they choose not to.
If they were uninterested in that option, why did they make jailbreaking harder than plugging the phone into a computer and entering some commands in a terminal? Companies do not typically patent techniques of doing things they consider to be out of the question.
Before Apple introduced the "App Stores" to the world at large (and I know there were plenty around before, just not as widely known) the users only had a choice of what was basically a wide-open system where apps just came from anywhere.
No, before Apple introduced the "App Store," you had these:
Timesharing computation utilities, that allowed users to rent time on a computer to run whatever software the utility did not ban.
Video game systems that would only run programs that had been digitally signed by the manufacturer.
Cable and satellite TV receivers that were designed to only run manufacturer-approved firmware.
Word processor computers that could perform a few pre-installed tasks.
Thousands of other computers that people have come to depend on, but which are designed to thwart any sort of hacking, modification, programming, etc.
Apple just saw this sort of thing and said, "Well if it works for mainframes, video game consoles, and printer catridges, we can make it work for tablet computers (and maybe even laptops)!" The user's choices are now "curated" by Apple, just like their choices were previous "curated" by Nintendo, IBM, or Xerox.
Lots of freedom, but too much freedom for a non-technical user to handle easily - hence a world of viruses and malware that arose as a result.
Yet despite that problem, it was also a world that had governments terrified of their citizens, a world which exposed scientology, a world that made Wikileaks possible, a world that allows Chinese and Iranian citizens to read banned material, a world that resulted in one new innovation after another. Once you start telling people that they cannot run unapproved software, you wind up here:
This is not about choice or about security, it is about freedom -- freedom is inconvenient, which IBM knew in the 70s when Apple was actually giving people freedom. If Apple had any interest in respecting its users' freedom, they would have made a standardized, not-hard-for-technical-users method of removing the restrictions. Apple has become the new IBM: they want to make money on computation, and they have lost whatever respect they might have had for the users of their systems.
TiVo? Android? There are places where the Linux kernel (and related utilities) are being deployed in a way that prevents the users from accessing hardware, running their own software, etc., and it is being done to a greater degree than it is being done with Windows (at least for now -- we will probably see a change with Windows 8).
"Why can't I watch this DVD on my tablet when I lack an Internet connection?"
"...because your tablet has a walled garden and they want to force you to buy the movie again. We warned you about that before you bought that thing."
"Damnit make it work now!"
People most certainly do care about general purpose computing; they just do not know what that terms means or that they actually want it. Apple is not marketing the iPad as, "Do everything you want that we approve of! The magic is in us controlling your computer use!" because that is not what people want to buy. Look at the outcry when Amazon deleted 1984 from the Kindle; people expect their computers to do what they want and not just what Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, the MPAA, the Chinese government, etc. approve of.
On a subconscious level, people know that a PS3 is somehow different from their PC. They cannot articulate what that difference is, but they refuse to call the PS3 a "computer" -- even when they see a PS3 with a keyboard and mouse, running Firefox in YDL. People absolutely do care; they just lack the sophistication needed to express that, to identify when someone is tricking them into giving up their freedom, or to know how to protect themselves from such attacks.
To me, I don't think you have to do anything more on this issue but compare the first 5 years of Windows XP malware (seemingly infinite â" at one point XP malware was the majority of Internet traffic) to the first 5 years of iOS native malware (zero.) END OF DEBATE
End of debate? Really? I would have thought the debate ended when Apple decided that the Bush II countdown app was not allowed on iPhone because it might offend Republicans, but then again, maybe I care more about free speech than I care about run-of-the-mill viruses (don't think for a moment that an intelligence agency could not create the iPhone equivalent of Stuxnet).
Nobody is taking away your Unix
This is not about Unix, this is about my ability to run the programs I want to run and to use my computer to do the things I want to do, and yes, that includes my ability to copy files without permission. If I want to run an Obama countdown app, why should I be prevented from doing so? Heaven forbid Democrats might be offended, right?
It is a sad day when we can honestly say that Windows users have more freedom than Linux users, but that is where we are now (but not for much longer it seems). Everyone loves it when their computers "just work," but when their computers start saying, "No you cannot play that movie, "No you never purchased 1984," and "That file is not allowed to be printed, except for a few author-selected paragraphs" people will suddenly demand their PCs back -- and by then it will be too late.
Me too -- when I instruct my computer to play a movie, copy a file, or print 1000 pamphlets criticizing the government, I want it to do what I tell it to do.
I don't want to spend hours trying to get Wine to run World of Warcraft better
So complain to Blizzard -- what does that have to do with running a free operating system? Blizzard ships malware with WoW; why are you not pointing the finger at them for failing to deliver an easy to use, malware-free product?
I use an iPhone because its working is binary
No, whether or not any particular program works is binary, and that decision is up to Apple. Do you consider a product that will run an email program but will not run a political cartoon program to be working or broken?
Who really care if you can't telnet to your phone?
That's a red herring and you know it. Hardly anyone is trying to telnet to their phone, but large numbers of people have been told that their program cannot run on iOS for one arbitrary reason or another -- it performs bytecode translation, it might offend Republicans, it might offend Democrats, it might enable jailbreaking, etc. Your iPhone only does what you want as long as Apple approves, and Apple's approval process is not about stopping you from telnetting to your phone (though I must wonder why they would even care), it is about making sure you keep paying them and the politicians stay happy.
After all, if you work for your machines, who owns who?
Funny how my laptop running ScientificLinux does everything I ask it to do without first checking with CERN...
Too bad "responsibility" has come to mean things like, "buying things from corporations," "obeying pointless and destructive laws," and "not helping dissidents in China."
I can still go to Newegg.com and order a bunch of commodity parts and assemble a general purpose computer
Until every motherboard comes with a locked-down BIOS that only supports Microsoft/Verisign approached bootloader signing keys. Unless you are building your computer from discrete logic, this argument does not fly. We also have to worry about possible bans on general purpose computers connecting to the Internet (see e.g. ITU proposals for "next generation" networks, past proposals in the US congress, etc), or de facto bans i.e. ISPs/banks/utilities/etc. requiring a locked-down computer (and not everyone can afford two computers). This is not as simple as, "I can build one for myself!"
Walled gardens can peacefully co-exist without threatening general purpose computing.
Thus explaining the prevalence of not-locked-down cable and satellite TV receivers, DVD players, and video game consoles.
as we've seen from every iOS device, even walled gardens don't keep people locked in if they are determined to leave
Which is a nonsense argument for most users, and is simple silly -- you are suggesting that it is reasonable for people to have to attack their own computers just to run the software (or in a dystopian nightmare, compose the documents) they want to run.
If you make compelling hardware people will always find ways to use it how they wish
Yet someone who publishes a book on hacking cable modems is arrested. Do you really think the police would hesitate to arrest someone who is teaching people how to unlock their laptop's bootloader?
A phrase used to justify upholding the conviction of someone who dared to hand out anti-draft flyers.
You can test those limits at an airport if you want to, but you'd best be prepared to accept the subsequent government-mandated prostate exam and you'd best be prepared to lose your court case too.
There are other consequences of daring to stand up to the TSA, beyond the gropings. When I told the TSA that there was no way I would step into a full body scanner, they made me wait 10 minutes before giving me a pat down, and when they opened the metal detector they said I still had to wait. The entire time, my luggage was sitting unattended on the other side of the checkpoint, including my laptop -- anyone could have stolen or damaged my things. When I asked why I couldn't go through the metal detector like all the other people, I was told that I had opted out of the scanner and therefore had to be patted down. When I asked if I was being punished for exercising my rights, a TSA employee suddenly found the time to do the pat down.
We are beyond just "accepting the consequences" of exercising our rights at this point. We are talking about a lawless organization (how else do you describe people who ignore court orders?) that reeks of corruption and which actively and deliberately attacks Americans and American rights.
Why would a news agency shit on its own sources like that?
s/malice/incompetence/
Most news agency have no clue about computer security or cryptography. Wikileaks is one of the few places that does a reasonable job of protecting whistle blowers these days; major media outlets are clueless, still applying techniques that worked decades ago.
But governments have the right to their own secrets
Sorry, but our faith in the US government has been sufficiently shaken that we no longer trust them when they say, "These secrets are being kept to protect the US." Everything you said would be true...if the US were the bastion of freedom and of the enlightenment principles upon which it was founded. Instead, the US government has turned into a machine for inflating corporate profits at the expense of its own citizens and of citizens in other countries.
A democracy requires an open government; yet over the past 30 years, the executive branch has done more and more things in secret. Domestic and foreign policy decisions are made in secret. Decisions that affect the lives of millions of people are shrouded in mystery. It is hard for anyone to believe that the amount of classified information is really justified by the interests of public safety or of national security.
Schools education children; that is not limited to what teachers say. You are talking about putting children in an environment where their Internet use is being censored by people in positions of authority (and in most cases, who work for the government), and where daring to circumvent those restrictions results in punishment. You are also talking about restrictions on things that have nothing to do with "protecting" those children from pornography -- Facebook/etc., and some have even suggested whitelisting sites that have some approved academic purpose.
Not only that, but elementary and middle school kids have absolutely no choice about whether or not to go to school. If they do not go, they are punished by some authority. It is also common for students to be required to use computers and required to connect to the Internet, or risk punishment (low grades, etc.).
School censorship is a form of education, just like all other aspects of school policy, from the structure of classes to the architecture and interior of a school building. Making pervasive monitoring and censorship a standard thing in schools teaches students that pervasive monitoring and censorship are something they should expect, and that no amount of protest or complaint will change that.
As soon as one creative or determined student defeats your firewall, every student in the school will know how to do it
Your students will be taught that people in authority will impose censorship on them, and that they should just quietly evade that censorship and keep it hush-hush from the authorities (can you think of other places like that?).
You will punish your brightest students i.e. those who defeat your firewall quickly and then tell everyone else how to do it. After all, not only is the kid a hacker, but he dared to teach students in a school -- maybe he could avoid punishment if he just kept his ideas secret.
They are not fans of censorship either, they just want to maintain decorum in their country (yes, pornography is blocked) and ensure that people don't start rioting.
High school is not college. College students are adults fully responsible for their own behavior. High school students are legally children, and giving them access to things their parents don't approve of is not only going to cause administrative problems, but may even be illegal in some cases.
Then do not give them Internet access at all; your cute little firewall is not going to stop high school students. Ten years ago, my friends and I all found ways to defeat the school's firewall: some used SSH, some used open proxies, and I discovered that by manually setting my computer's IP address so that it was in the block used for teachers' machines, the firewall would not stop me. In the past decade, there has been a proliferation of tools that can be used to defeat firewalls, and teenagers know what they are and where to get them.
There is a broader problem than futility here, however: we are training K-12 students to think that censorship is something that should be expected. If you grew up with Internet filtering in school, why oppose national filtering? I wonder what teachers talking about China say about the Great Firewall, or how they answer the clever students who say, "But there is a firewall here in our government-run school!"
I guess the person asking the question didn't specify, but I was under the assumption that this was for an elementary level type school....so, you're policing children, and you'd likely start with things mostly turned off, and then let on what you needed as required by the instructors.
So at the most impressionable age, we'll train kids to think that censorship is the norm and that people in authority should control what they get to read and do online? Interesting approach to education.
If these kids are "too young" for things on the web, why are they being given Internet access by the school? Do you really think the most creative and clever students won't find a way to defeat the firewall? Do you think that they will keep it secret from their friends? What do the teachers actually need on the Internet that cannot be mirrored by the school itself?
So, if the embassy says, "No, the UK police are not allowed to come in an arrest Assange," what will happen then? I guess then the UK government would "take action" by ignoring the embassy's refusal, kind of like how they want to "take action" to ignore political asylum. "Storm" is a commonly understood term for what the police do when they want to arrest someone who is hiding in a building and not cooperating with the police demands to come outside, which is what we see here.
Or we could just play games with words. Kind of like how the US war in Iraq ended in 2003.
Have you ever seen parents pushing their kids to become champion Chess or Go players? I see little difference with Starcraft, except perhaps that video games are still too new for something as "timeless" as Chess to emerge. Chess went through quite a bit of development, and games like Shogi might be considered "forks."
What will really be interesting to see is an RTS that is played for centuries, even as computers and computer software become more advanced.
Neither did anyone come along one day and say, "Hey, it would be awesome if we could have a game with three alien species that are nearly evenly matched, where the players command the species in epic battles." Starcraft was based on Warcraft; Warcraft was inspired by earlier RTS games, and those games were inspired by Chess and by RPGs, etc.
Chess, Go, and Poker have world championships as well; why should those games receive more respect than Starcraft?
They also missed out on predicting that a dangerous, violent cult would attack that network and its users in court when people dared to tell the truth about that cult. Then again, the contest is sponsored by a subsidiary of that same cult, so I guess we should not be surprised...
Slashdot Mirror
The fact remains that PCs can do quite a bit of things that tablets/phones can not
Really? Let's see...they have CPUs...RAM...SSDs...touchscreens... So what is it that these devices cannot do, but that PCs magically can do?
Oh, you must have been talking about those arbitrary and unnecessary restrictions imposed by tablet and phone makers. Unfortunately, many popular tablets and phones are being made by PC vendors and those PC vendors know a chance to profit when they see one. They just need some time to phase such systems in; they are not shying away from creating such systems, and there is no technical reason why they cannot.
Apple provides PC desktops/laptops too, which allow you to do anything you like. They will continue to do so.
What will probably happen is that by 2015, Apple will have locked down all of their systems. User-programmable computers will be available from Apple at astoundingly high cost (because they will only be high end workstations) and should the user distribute a program Apple disapproves of, their license to use Apple's OS will be revoked and the OS will be remotely deactivated. Apple's product strategy is about control; what makes you think they will continue to make user-controlled computers once they have phased in a system to retain such control?
In fact even on mobile platforms Apple does not eliminate choice, they could shut down jailbreaking if they really wanted (or make it way harder than it is) - they choose not to.
They chose not to because of the outcry:
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=apple+bricks+jailbroken+iphones&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a
If they were uninterested in that option, why did they make jailbreaking harder than plugging the phone into a computer and entering some commands in a terminal? Companies do not typically patent techniques of doing things they consider to be out of the question.
Before Apple introduced the "App Stores" to the world at large (and I know there were plenty around before, just not as widely known) the users only had a choice of what was basically a wide-open system where apps just came from anywhere.
No, before Apple introduced the "App Store," you had these:
Apple just saw this sort of thing and said, "Well if it works for mainframes, video game consoles, and printer catridges, we can make it work for tablet computers (and maybe even laptops)!" The user's choices are now "curated" by Apple, just like their choices were previous "curated" by Nintendo, IBM, or Xerox.
Lots of freedom, but too much freedom for a non-technical user to handle easily - hence a world of viruses and malware that arose as a result.
Yet despite that problem, it was also a world that had governments terrified of their citizens, a world which exposed scientology, a world that made Wikileaks possible, a world that allows Chinese and Iranian citizens to read banned material, a world that resulted in one new innovation after another. Once you start telling people that they cannot run unapproved software, you wind up here:
http://www.juggleware.com/blog/2008/09/steve-jobs-writes-back/
This is not about choice or about security, it is about freedom -- freedom is inconvenient, which IBM knew in the 70s when Apple was actually giving people freedom. If Apple had any interest in respecting its users' freedom, they would have made a standardized, not-hard-for-technical-users method of removing the restrictions. Apple has become the new IBM: they want to make money on computation, and they have lost whatever respect they might have had for the users of their systems.
TiVo? Android? There are places where the Linux kernel (and related utilities) are being deployed in a way that prevents the users from accessing hardware, running their own software, etc., and it is being done to a greater degree than it is being done with Windows (at least for now -- we will probably see a change with Windows 8).
Nobody* gives a shit about GPC
"Why can't I watch this DVD on my tablet when I lack an Internet connection?"
"...because your tablet has a walled garden and they want to force you to buy the movie again. We warned you about that before you bought that thing."
"Damnit make it work now!"
People most certainly do care about general purpose computing; they just do not know what that terms means or that they actually want it. Apple is not marketing the iPad as, "Do everything you want that we approve of! The magic is in us controlling your computer use!" because that is not what people want to buy. Look at the outcry when Amazon deleted 1984 from the Kindle; people expect their computers to do what they want and not just what Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, the MPAA, the Chinese government, etc. approve of.
On a subconscious level, people know that a PS3 is somehow different from their PC. They cannot articulate what that difference is, but they refuse to call the PS3 a "computer" -- even when they see a PS3 with a keyboard and mouse, running Firefox in YDL. People absolutely do care; they just lack the sophistication needed to express that, to identify when someone is tricking them into giving up their freedom, or to know how to protect themselves from such attacks.
To me, I don't think you have to do anything more on this issue but compare the first 5 years of Windows XP malware (seemingly infinite â" at one point XP malware was the majority of Internet traffic) to the first 5 years of iOS native malware (zero.) END OF DEBATE
End of debate? Really? I would have thought the debate ended when Apple decided that the Bush II countdown app was not allowed on iPhone because it might offend Republicans, but then again, maybe I care more about free speech than I care about run-of-the-mill viruses (don't think for a moment that an intelligence agency could not create the iPhone equivalent of Stuxnet).
Nobody is taking away your Unix
This is not about Unix, this is about my ability to run the programs I want to run and to use my computer to do the things I want to do, and yes, that includes my ability to copy files without permission. If I want to run an Obama countdown app, why should I be prevented from doing so? Heaven forbid Democrats might be offended, right?
It is a sad day when we can honestly say that Windows users have more freedom than Linux users, but that is where we are now (but not for much longer it seems). Everyone loves it when their computers "just work," but when their computers start saying, "No you cannot play that movie, "No you never purchased 1984," and "That file is not allowed to be printed, except for a few author-selected paragraphs" people will suddenly demand their PCs back -- and by then it will be too late.
I just want things to work.
Me too -- when I instruct my computer to play a movie, copy a file, or print 1000 pamphlets criticizing the government, I want it to do what I tell it to do.
I don't want to spend hours trying to get Wine to run World of Warcraft better
So complain to Blizzard -- what does that have to do with running a free operating system? Blizzard ships malware with WoW; why are you not pointing the finger at them for failing to deliver an easy to use, malware-free product?
I use an iPhone because its working is binary
No, whether or not any particular program works is binary, and that decision is up to Apple. Do you consider a product that will run an email program but will not run a political cartoon program to be working or broken?
Who really care if you can't telnet to your phone?
That's a red herring and you know it. Hardly anyone is trying to telnet to their phone, but large numbers of people have been told that their program cannot run on iOS for one arbitrary reason or another -- it performs bytecode translation, it might offend Republicans, it might offend Democrats, it might enable jailbreaking, etc. Your iPhone only does what you want as long as Apple approves, and Apple's approval process is not about stopping you from telnetting to your phone (though I must wonder why they would even care), it is about making sure you keep paying them and the politicians stay happy.
After all, if you work for your machines, who owns who?
Funny how my laptop running ScientificLinux does everything I ask it to do without first checking with CERN...
Too bad "responsibility" has come to mean things like, "buying things from corporations," "obeying pointless and destructive laws," and "not helping dissidents in China."
I can still go to Newegg.com and order a bunch of commodity parts and assemble a general purpose computer
Until every motherboard comes with a locked-down BIOS that only supports Microsoft/Verisign approached bootloader signing keys. Unless you are building your computer from discrete logic, this argument does not fly. We also have to worry about possible bans on general purpose computers connecting to the Internet (see e.g. ITU proposals for "next generation" networks, past proposals in the US congress, etc), or de facto bans i.e. ISPs/banks/utilities/etc. requiring a locked-down computer (and not everyone can afford two computers). This is not as simple as, "I can build one for myself!"
Walled gardens can peacefully co-exist without threatening general purpose computing.
Thus explaining the prevalence of not-locked-down cable and satellite TV receivers, DVD players, and video game consoles.
as we've seen from every iOS device, even walled gardens don't keep people locked in if they are determined to leave
Which is a nonsense argument for most users, and is simple silly -- you are suggesting that it is reasonable for people to have to attack their own computers just to run the software (or in a dystopian nightmare, compose the documents) they want to run.
If you make compelling hardware people will always find ways to use it how they wish
Yet someone who publishes a book on hacking cable modems is arrested. Do you really think the police would hesitate to arrest someone who is teaching people how to unlock their laptop's bootloader?
An accused criminal hiding in an embassy...where have I heard that one before...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_Alliluyeva
Fire in a crowded theater and all that
A phrase used to justify upholding the conviction of someone who dared to hand out anti-draft flyers.
You can test those limits at an airport if you want to, but you'd best be prepared to accept the subsequent government-mandated prostate exam and you'd best be prepared to lose your court case too.
There are other consequences of daring to stand up to the TSA, beyond the gropings. When I told the TSA that there was no way I would step into a full body scanner, they made me wait 10 minutes before giving me a pat down, and when they opened the metal detector they said I still had to wait. The entire time, my luggage was sitting unattended on the other side of the checkpoint, including my laptop -- anyone could have stolen or damaged my things. When I asked why I couldn't go through the metal detector like all the other people, I was told that I had opted out of the scanner and therefore had to be patted down. When I asked if I was being punished for exercising my rights, a TSA employee suddenly found the time to do the pat down.
We are beyond just "accepting the consequences" of exercising our rights at this point. We are talking about a lawless organization (how else do you describe people who ignore court orders?) that reeks of corruption and which actively and deliberately attacks Americans and American rights.
Why would a news agency shit on its own sources like that?
s/malice/incompetence/
Most news agency have no clue about computer security or cryptography. Wikileaks is one of the few places that does a reasonable job of protecting whistle blowers these days; major media outlets are clueless, still applying techniques that worked decades ago.
Hm...could have gotten people killed...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_industrial_complex
But governments have the right to their own secrets
Sorry, but our faith in the US government has been sufficiently shaken that we no longer trust them when they say, "These secrets are being kept to protect the US." Everything you said would be true...if the US were the bastion of freedom and of the enlightenment principles upon which it was founded. Instead, the US government has turned into a machine for inflating corporate profits at the expense of its own citizens and of citizens in other countries.
A democracy requires an open government; yet over the past 30 years, the executive branch has done more and more things in secret. Domestic and foreign policy decisions are made in secret. Decisions that affect the lives of millions of people are shrouded in mystery. It is hard for anyone to believe that the amount of classified information is really justified by the interests of public safety or of national security.
Schools education children; that is not limited to what teachers say. You are talking about putting children in an environment where their Internet use is being censored by people in positions of authority (and in most cases, who work for the government), and where daring to circumvent those restrictions results in punishment. You are also talking about restrictions on things that have nothing to do with "protecting" those children from pornography -- Facebook/etc., and some have even suggested whitelisting sites that have some approved academic purpose.
Not only that, but elementary and middle school kids have absolutely no choice about whether or not to go to school. If they do not go, they are punished by some authority. It is also common for students to be required to use computers and required to connect to the Internet, or risk punishment (low grades, etc.).
School censorship is a form of education, just like all other aspects of school policy, from the structure of classes to the architecture and interior of a school building. Making pervasive monitoring and censorship a standard thing in schools teaches students that pervasive monitoring and censorship are something they should expect, and that no amount of protest or complaint will change that.
Unlike adults, teenagers won't have any qualms about bypassing your filtering
Unlike adults? There are many Chinese and Iranian adults who would disagree with you.
I'm not a fan of censorship in general but this is more like just maintaining decorum in public
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_firewall_of_china
They are not fans of censorship either, they just want to maintain decorum in their country (yes, pornography is blocked) and ensure that people don't start rioting.
Really though, that argument is suspect whether or not the Chinese try it when it comes to their own firewall. What does blocking sites about hacking have to do with decorum? Yes, that sort of thing is not unheard of: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/02/27/0436224/ask-slashdot-dealing-with-university-firewalls
The very question Slashdot was asked has nothing to do with decorum either: Facebook is already policed for pornography by their own employees.
High school is not college. College students are adults fully responsible for their own behavior. High school students are legally children, and giving them access to things their parents don't approve of is not only going to cause administrative problems, but may even be illegal in some cases.
Then do not give them Internet access at all; your cute little firewall is not going to stop high school students. Ten years ago, my friends and I all found ways to defeat the school's firewall: some used SSH, some used open proxies, and I discovered that by manually setting my computer's IP address so that it was in the block used for teachers' machines, the firewall would not stop me. In the past decade, there has been a proliferation of tools that can be used to defeat firewalls, and teenagers know what they are and where to get them.
There is a broader problem than futility here, however: we are training K-12 students to think that censorship is something that should be expected. If you grew up with Internet filtering in school, why oppose national filtering? I wonder what teachers talking about China say about the Great Firewall, or how they answer the clever students who say, "But there is a firewall here in our government-run school!"
I guess the person asking the question didn't specify, but I was under the assumption that this was for an elementary level type school....so, you're policing children, and you'd likely start with things mostly turned off, and then let on what you needed as required by the instructors.
So at the most impressionable age, we'll train kids to think that censorship is the norm and that people in authority should control what they get to read and do online? Interesting approach to education.
If these kids are "too young" for things on the web, why are they being given Internet access by the school? Do you really think the most creative and clever students won't find a way to defeat the firewall? Do you think that they will keep it secret from their friends? What do the teachers actually need on the Internet that cannot be mirrored by the school itself?
So instead of teaching students that their Internet access will be censored, we can teach the students that their Internet access will be monitored?
So, if the embassy says, "No, the UK police are not allowed to come in an arrest Assange," what will happen then? I guess then the UK government would "take action" by ignoring the embassy's refusal, kind of like how they want to "take action" to ignore political asylum. "Storm" is a commonly understood term for what the police do when they want to arrest someone who is hiding in a building and not cooperating with the police demands to come outside, which is what we see here.
Or we could just play games with words. Kind of like how the US war in Iraq ended in 2003.
Have you ever seen parents pushing their kids to become champion Chess or Go players? I see little difference with Starcraft, except perhaps that video games are still too new for something as "timeless" as Chess to emerge. Chess went through quite a bit of development, and games like Shogi might be considered "forks."
What will really be interesting to see is an RTS that is played for centuries, even as computers and computer software become more advanced.
Neither did anyone come along one day and say, "Hey, it would be awesome if we could have a game with three alien species that are nearly evenly matched, where the players command the species in epic battles." Starcraft was based on Warcraft; Warcraft was inspired by earlier RTS games, and those games were inspired by Chess and by RPGs, etc.
Chess, Go, and Poker have world championships as well; why should those games receive more respect than Starcraft?
They also missed out on predicting that a dangerous, violent cult would attack that network and its users in court when people dared to tell the truth about that cult. Then again, the contest is sponsored by a subsidiary of that same cult, so I guess we should not be surprised...
Well, he is pretty popular -- his sci fi series has a devoted fan base who keep trying to introduce others to his prose...